Covid-19 Politics

[sukumvit boy]

Excellent 40 page article in the current issue of the "New Yorker" magazine "The Plague Year" about how and why the US failed so badly in controlling the pandemic.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...sam&stream=top

[Stavros]

Excellent 40 page article in the current issue of the "New Yorker" magazine "The Plague Year" about how and why the US failed so badly in controlling the pandemic.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...sam&stream=top

Lawrence Wright is an impeccable source, so this is compelling reading. I think we can all agree that where many of our governments have failed -and where others have succeeded- it is in the failure to establish a test and trace system early on, and to mandate mask wearing by the public -two of the three major failures Wright identifies. I would also add the national co-ordination thay Wright refers to, and its absence, notably in the US and in the UK. That the UK was promised a 'world-beating' test and trace system that flopped at its first trial is sadly typical of the grandiose drivel Boris Johnson excels at, to the extent that I no longer bother taking anything he says seriously, as far as I am concerned, he can talk to the wall.

The area of difficulty is in the first phase, when the first cases were identified in China, and how the Chinese handled information exchange, but also how demanding or not extermal actors were. I think we can say that in the three years prior to January 2020, the US made not the slightest effort to improve its influence at the highest levels of the WHO, and that this indifference, exaggerrated by Trump's disdain for anything and everything associated with the UN and in particular its agencies, helped the US to take a more distant stand than it probably should have. The clinical issues to me must relate to the previous SARS epidemic that was successfully contained, so begs the question why the Chinese do not appear to have been more willing to share all of their information, and in particular the evidence which I think was there in December that human-to-human infection was already taking place. The seriousness of the first SARS epidemic ought surely to have created an emergency mind-set, and I wonder if the difference is that President Xi, as a more activist premier, and one developing his own cult, has induced a fear mentality among those Chinese officials who factor in a fear of 'bad news = failure' where their failure becomes Xi's failure and his failure becomes China's, the sad irony being that if this is what they wanted to prevent, they ended up making it worse than it needed to be.

It is frustrating, because the 'West' has co-operated with China in the study of zoonotic disease and had we a more collegiate attitude to the internatonal relations of public health, who knows how soon we could all have taken common action to limit its effect?

That said, the usual suspects -false predictions of the course of the viral infection, a hope rather than the fact that it could be/woud be limited to China/Asia, and the greater fear of its economic consequences, clouded decision making. It ends up as a cluster-fuck of global proportions, from which we ought to learn the value of international cooperation and knowledge transfers and sharing.

But also the warning that the human race is fast expanding into wilderness areas where unknown pathogens lie in wait to feast on the human body, and yield exotic animals whose flesh no human need ever eat.

[sukumvit boy]

I was also saddened to read about how the CDC ,which since its inception in 1946 has been a beacon and model of public health , was undermined and its' reputation sullied by politics and budget cuts by the Trump administration.

[blackchubby38]

I'mposting this here because it ties directly into Covid. Apparently Governor Cuomo has finally seen the light and has to decided to legalize marijuana because of the economic impact the pandemic has had on the state. You know there was something wrong when South Dakota decided to make weed legal before NY.

Now Cuomo just has to go all in and legalize sports betting.

[broncofan]

In Pennsylvania we have medical marijuana cards but the list of conditions one can get a card for is so extensive it seems like the road to legalization of recreational use. Some states have that too. I went to one of the dispensaries pre-pandemic and the place was packed. The salespeople take you back and tell you about thc cbd ratios and ask whether you want to be mellow or less mellow. It hasn't caused any major problems here.

[Stavros]

I was also saddened to read about how the CDC ,which since its inception in 1946 has been a beacon and model of public health , was undermined and its' reputation sullied by politics and budget cuts by the Trump administration.

Some among the new generation of 'Conservative' politicians and activitist who in reality have never read Gramsci, nevertheless cite the concept of cultural hegemony this famous/notorious Italian Marxist described as the means whereby Capitalism sustains bourgeois power based on the 'means of production'. The argument thus developed that socialists could develop their own narrative and resistance culturally, as well as politically, and that this would become part of a more general 'mind set' or mentaliy to make socialism appear to be a logical as well as a desirable alternative.

To the Conservatives, this explains their allegation that Schools and Universities are now 'woke' factories in which 'Cultural Marxism' has established its hegemony, indoctrinating generations of students who are well-disposed to socialist ideas, and hostile to liberal views of the market, individualism, the family, binary sexuality, religion and so forth -and this in spite of the billions spend by the Koch Brothers, Moral Majorty and Christian organizations in Universities to do the opposite, and the rather obvious fact that in spite of schools and universities in Europe and North America being 'woke' from head to toe, when they become tax-paying workers, all those students and young people vote Republican and Tory as well as Democrat and Labour.

The extension of this view thus sees Government bureaucracy as captive to either 'left-wing' or 'Liberal' ideas, and thus cannot be trusted to implement a radical conservative agenda, be it 'Austerity', Brexit, or whatever consensus-busting acts one associates with Trump. The long term impact has been a civil service in which able people have been filleted out, to be trimmed down for financial purposes, and where, politically, Weber's claim that a neutral civil service is vital for the creation of a stable State, it is replaced with its opposite, a partisan civil service where people are appointed for their political loyalty rather than their expertise.

In the US one saw this when Anthony Fauci was effectively replaced by Scott Atlas, and as you address, the manner in which the CDC has been marginalized. Consider the case of Nancy Messonier, recognized as one of the most brilliant Americans with a lifetime of research and practice in Immunization and Respiratory Disease. Shortly after her statement on February 26th 2020, a furious Trump effectively banned her from speaking in public, indeed, she went from being the first major voice on Covid-19 to silence in the space of 24 hours. Thus:

"It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” she said during a briefing on 26 February.
The speech marked a tipping point in the agency’s messaging and sent the stock market plummeting."
"Upon the president’s discovery of the briefing, he was reportedly furious and threatened to fire Dr Messonnier according to The Wall Street Journal.
"By the time Trump lands, the whole thing had spun out of control, and he was livid. He calls Alex Azar, wakes him up screaming, 'What had happened ... did you know Nancy Messonnier had scared the s*** out of people?'" Mr Shear said.
Dr Messonnier was not fired but was sidelined in favour of the newly set up coronavirus taskforce led by Mike Pence, the documentary reports."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b1205877.html

From that day to this, Nancy Messonier has been silenced. But who was right? Nancy or Donald? And who has paid the highest price for this institutional failure -that perhaps with the right leadership from day one might have prevented the worst that has happened?

I hope Biden will give this extraordinary woman a voice, if she still has something to say. I would like to hear it.

[broncofan]

I read today that Johnson and Johnson will be seeking FDA EUA for its one shot vaccine in February. If they get it that will help supply enormously since the doses go twice as far. I'll post an article when I see one.

[Stavros]

So far, two countries have been lauded for their vaccination programmes: Israel and the UK. There is some speculation on the speed with which Israel has acquired so many doses, and at what cost, but as most of the adult population are military reservists who can be called up and with a popuation less than 10 million, one can appreciate the country has an existing infrastructure that makes such national programmes easier than in most others. That the Israelis don't appear to have any intention of vaccinating Palestinians is fairly typical of their attitude, and it is not likely to change, while the rate of infection continues to cause concern.

The other country is the UK. Here, we have an in-built, national structure called the NHS which not only has large general hospitals serving the commnity (and often more than one), I get my annual 'flu jab at my GP surgery, where most of the vaccinations can and will be done that are not being transported to care homes, hospitals, or pop-up clinics in town. But what this also does is beg the question, why at the beginning of the pandemic, did the Govt fail to anchor a test and trace system on the existing network of GP surgeries, Hospitals and Clinics all of which could do it, or do it with extra help? The 'world beating' test and trace system Boris Johnson promised has not materiaized, though millions has been spent on it. It is all very well people applauding the UK but we still have high rates of infection in some areas, and there is a long way to go before we can relax the restrictions that are in place.

Intially I stated I did not think this Pandemic would kill a lot of people, and I was wrong. I thought last year that as a SARS-variant virus, the same measures that controlled the first outbreak would be sufficient to control this one, and I was wrong. In part it is because this strain of the virus is more efficient than the first, and because, as discussed with Sukumvit Boy above, there has been a catastrophic institutional failure, in the US, in the UK and to some extent across the EU. Any success in China as filghy2 has said must be the result of China's merciless party dictatorshp, plus our not knowing what the cost has been in terms of lives lost and lives ruined. Where the success has also been recorded, such as Taiwan -population 23.78 million, 855 cases, 7 deaths- the success may be due to the ease with which an Island can isolate, but also institutional success, and public support for measures it has dealt with before in the fist SARS episodes ten or so years ago.

Where it has failed, the consequences have been grim. Had I been told last year the US would record 24 million cases, I would have disbelieved it as even being possible, but it is a fact.

I think the incoming Administration not only has a major vaccination programme to co-ordinate nationally, it is still essential to create a test and trace system and I would hope this is given as much urgency as the vaccination drive. It makes no sense to me to live in a country where the authorities don't know who is infected, or where and how they were infected, and who they were in contact with. There needs to be national co-ordination of data management, as well as clinical treatment.

And I would add, that for at least a month, the US needs to shut down, including minimal entry and exit from the Lower 48 and Alaska. I hate the phrase because it was made up by a UK Chancellor in the 1990s as an excuse for Govt cuts to expenditure, but is appropriate in this case:
If it's not hurting, it's not working. And the US has a whole lot of pain yet to live.

[broncofan]

Intially I stated I did not think this Pandemic would kill a lot of people, and I was wrong. I thought last year that as a SARS-variant virus, the same measures that controlled the first outbreak would be sufficient to control this one, and I was wrong. In part it is because this strain of the virus is more efficient than the first,

Where it has failed, the consequences have been grim. Had I been told last year the US would record 24 million cases, I would have disbelieved it as even being possible, but it is a fact.

Sars-cov-2 isn't more efficient, it just results in a contagious pre-symptomatic period that makes it more difficult to contain. This was already suspected in February 2020 and the virus looked like it was going to be a major problem as soon as it was in South Korea and Italy.

The UK is one of a handful of countries that has done as poorly as the US in deaths per capita. Perhaps the mistakes weren't as obvious in the UK as the US (I haven't been paying attention) but there are many countries that have done a better job.

[broncofan]

Sars-cov-2 isn't more efficient, it just results in a contagious pre-symptomatic period that makes it more difficult to contain.

Anyhow, if by efficient you mean transmissible, the r0 of sarscov1 and sarscov2 are about the same. The biggest difference is interval between symptom onset and maximum infectivity which makes it harder to contain. It's why by April 3 most health agencies were on the same page about mask wearing, though Trump didn't quite understand the guidance.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...484-9/fulltext