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Making the Right Decisions to Combat the Coronavirus
If the current pandemic is a test of the global emergency response system, the international community is flunking big time. It has done just about everything wrong, from the failure to contain the coronavirus early on to the lack of effective coordination thereafter. As the predicted second wave begins to build — the world is now adding over 400,000 new cases per day — it is truly disheartening to think that the international community hasn’t really learned any lessons from its snafu.
Sure, some countries have successfully managed the crisis. South Korea, despite several super-spreading outbreaks, has kept its death toll to below 450, which is fewer than Washington, DC, alone has suffered. Thailand, Vietnam, Uruguay and New Zealand have all done even better to address the public health emergency. After its initial missteps, China has managed not only to reopen its economy but is on track for modest growth in 2020, even as virtually all other countries confront serious economic contractions.
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It’s not too late for the rest of the world. Robust testing, tracing and quarantining systems can be set up in all countries. Richer nations can help finance such systems in poorer countries. Governments can penalize non-compliance. Even before a vaccine is universally available, this virus can be contained.
But perhaps the most important takeaway from the COVID-19 experience so far has little to do with the coronavirus per se. The pandemic has already killed more than a million people, but it is not about to doom humanity to extinction. COVID-19’s mortality rate, at under 3%, is relatively low compared to previous pandemics (around 10% for SARS and nearly 35% for MERS). Like its deadlier cousins, this pandemic will eventually recede, sooner or later depending on government response.
Other threats to the planet, meanwhile, pose greater existential dangers. At a mere 100 seconds to midnight, the doomsday clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now stands closer to the dreaded hour than at any point since its launch in 1947. As the quickening pace of this countdown suggests, the risk of nuclear war has not gone away while the threat of climate change has become ever more acute. If fire and water don’t get us, there’s always the possibility of another, more deadly pandemic incubating in a bat or a pangolin somewhere in the vanishing wild.
Despite these threats, the world has gone about its business as if a sword were not dangling perilously overhead. Then COVID-19 hit, and business ground to a halt.
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The environmental economist Herman Daly once said that the world needed an optimal crisis “that’s big enough to get our attention but not big enough to disable our ability to respond,” notes climate activist Tom Athanasiou. That’s what COVID-19 has been: a wake-up call on a global scale, a reminder that humanity has to change its ways or go the way of the dinosaur.
Athanasiou is one of the 68 leading thinkers and activists featured in a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, the Transnational Institute, and Focus on the Global South. Now available in electronic form from Seven Stories Press, “The Pandemic Pivot” lays out a bold program for how the international community can learn from the experience of the current pandemic to avoid the even more destructive cataclysms that loom on the horizon.
The Path Not Taken
Let’s imagine for a moment how a reasonable world would have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic when it broke out late last year. As the virus spread from Wuhan in January, there would have been an immediate meeting of international leaders to discuss the necessary containment measures. The Chinese government closed down Wuhan on January 23 when there were fewer than 1,000 cases. At the same time, the first cases were appearing in multiple countries, including the United States, Japan and Germany. On January 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic a global health emergency.
Instead of working together on a plan, however, countries pursued their own approaches that ranged from the sensible to the cockamamie, the only common element being the restriction of travel and the closure of borders.
The US and China, embroiled in a full-spectrum conflict over trade, technology and turf, were barely talking to each other, much less working together to contain this new threat. The United Nations didn’t get around to discussing the pandemic until April. There was precious little sharing of resources. In fact, many countries took to hoarding medical supplies like drugs and personal protective equipment.
To be sure, scientists were sharing knowledge. The WHO brought together 300 experts and funders from 48 countries for a research and innovation forum in mid-February.
Political leaders, however, were not really talking to each other or coordinating a cross-border response. Indeed, a number of leaders were running screaming in the opposite direction. US President Donald Trump stepped forward to head up this denialist camp, followed by Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico. Authoritarian leaders like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua focused on consolidating their own power rather than fighting the COVID-19 disease.
As the global economy went into a tailspin, there was no international effort to implement measures to contain the damage. Countries like the US refused to lift economic sanctions on countries hard hit by the coronavirus. International financial institutions issued debt moratoria for the poorest countries but have yet to consider more substantial restructuring (much less loan forgiveness). Trade wars continued, particularly between Beijing and Washington.
Conflict has not been confined to the level of trade. A sane world would have not only rallied around the UN secretary-general’s call for a global ceasefire in conflicts around the world, it would have actually enforced a cessation of hostilities on the ground. Instead, wars have continued — in Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan. New violence has erupted in places like the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Military spending and the arms trade have continued unchecked. At this time of unprecedented economic need, countries continue to pour funds into defending against hypothetical threats rather than to defeat the enemy that is currently killing people on their territory. Both the US and China are increasing their military spending for next year, and they’re not the only ones. Hungary announced in July an astonishing 26% increase in military spending for 2021, while Pakistan is increasing its military expenditures by nearly 12% for 2020-21.
Meanwhile, on this economically polarized planet, the ones who have borne the brunt of this pandemic are the poor, the essential workers, and all the refugees and migrants currently on the move. The stock market has recovered its value. Everyone else has taken a hit.
Looking Ahead
The international community took a giant step backward in its fight against COVID-19. Rather than build on the cooperation established in the wake of the 2003 SARS epidemic, countries suddenly acted as if it were the 19th century all over again and they could only fall back on their own devices. The hottest heads prevailed during this crisis: right-wing nationalists like Trump, Bolsonaro, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi, who not coincidentally head up the four most-afflicted countries.
It’s not too late for a pandemic pivot, a major shift in strategy, perspective and budget priorities. “The Pandemic Pivot” looks at how COVID-19 is changing the world by showing us (briefly) what a radical cut in carbon emissions looks like, dramatically revealing the shortcomings of economic globalization, distinguishing real leadership from incompetent showboating, and proving that governments can indeed find massive resources for economic restructuring if there’s political will.
Our new book lays out a progressive agenda for the post-COVID era, which relies on a global Green New Deal, a serious shift of resources from the military to human needs, a major upgrade in international cooperation and a significant commitment to economic equity. Check out our new video to hear from the experts quoted in the book.
The coronavirus forced leaders around the world to hit the pause button. Even before the pandemic recedes, many of these leaders want to press rewind to return to the previous status quo, the same state of affairs that got us into this mess in the first place.
We can’t pause and we can’t rewind. We need to shift to fast forward to make our societies greener, more resilient and more just — or else we will sleep through the wake-up call of COVID-19. We won’t likely get another such chance.
*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Joe Biden: I’m going to ‘shut down the virus’, not the US – video
Joe Biden said he would not shut down the country in response to the coronavirus pandemic during a campaign event in Wilmington, Delaware, reinforcing his answers during Thursday’s presidential debate.Donald Trump had claimed Biden would force a nationwide lockdown if he became president, but the Democratic nominee has repeatedly said he does not believe that will be necessary to get the virus under controlUS election: early voting could reportedly fuel highest turnout since 1908 – liveBiden and Trump diverge sharply on major issuesTrump v Biden: the key moments of the final presidential debate – video highlightsContinue reading… More
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Trump v Biden: the key moments of the final presidential debate – video highlights
Joe Biden and Donald Trump have gone head-to-head for the last time before the US election on 3 November in the final television debate, helped by a mute button on the candidates’ microphones that prevented interruptions.
Squaring off in Nashville, Biden had to field aggressive questioning about his son’s business dealings and when Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, the challenger branded his opponent ‘one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history’. Here is a look back at the key moments
The final presidential debate – as it happened
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Trump and Biden clash on coronavirus during final presidential debate – video
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have clashed over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic during the final presidential debate. While Trump says a vaccine will be available within weeks, Biden questioned the veracity of Trump’s claims after the president’s previous predictions the pandemic would end by Easter. The pandemic has killed more than 220,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president
Trump and Biden offer sharply different visions to tackle Covid in final TV debate
Biden slams Trump on coronavirus response, family separations and racism in final debate – live More - in Elections
Biden and Trump diverge sharply on major issues in final presidential debate
The Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden assailed Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic during Thursday night’s final presidential debate, as the president attempted to reset a race that shows him trailing his opponent in opinion polls less than two weeks before election day.
The evening in Nashville began relatively calmly, with the rivals making their closing arguments to the nation amid a pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president. In part due to the pandemic, more than 40 million Americans have already cast their ballot, shattering records and leaving Trump an increasingly narrow window to reset the debate around his handling of the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout.
But Trump continued to downplay the severity of the public health crisis, defending his response and predicting that a vaccine was imminent, even though his own public health experts have said one would likely not be widely available to the American public until next summer.
“It will go away,” Trump said, offering a rosy assessment of the pandemic’s trajectory even as cases have started rising again across the US and public health experts warn that the US is on the precipice of a dangerous new wave.
“We’re rounding the corner,” he added.
“We can’t keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy,” Trump said. “There’s depression, alcohol, drugs at a level nobody’s ever seen before. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself.”
In contrast, Biden opened his remarks by acknowledging the grim toll of the coronavirus pandemic and warned that the nation must prepare for “a dark winter”.
Biden said: “220,000 deaths. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this. Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States.”The 90-minute debate was a far more coherent and civil affair than the first presidential debate last month, which devolved into a chaotic brawl with Trump incessantly hectoring his opponent and sparring with the moderator. The shift in tone was probably due to a rule change that required a candidate’s microphone to be muted while his rival delivered a two-minute response to the opening question on each of the six debate topics.
On Thursday, Trump largely abided by the rules, allowing Biden to speak uninterrupted, and even complimenting the moderator, the NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker, who he spent the last week criticizing.
Biden, too, was more restrained. When Trump made a false claim about his opponent, Biden looked skyward, as if calling on a higher power to keep him from reacting. But it didn’t always stop him.
When Trump said Biden called his decision to impose Covid-19 related travel restrictions on China “xenophobic”, the Democrat shot back: “He is xenophobic, but not because he cut off access from China.”
The stakes were high for both candidates, even if the debate was unlikely to dramatically redefine the contours of the presidential race. Despite the cascading public health and economic crises, Biden has maintained a steady lead over the incumbent, according to public opinion polls, while Trump has struggled to outline his vision for a second term and grapple with voters’ disapproval of his response to the pandemic.
Despite the increasingly ugly and personal nature of the campaign, the evening featured a substantive policy debate as the candidates diverged sharply on the issues of race, immigration and climate.They were asked to speak directly to the black and brown Americans about racism in America. Biden said plainly that institutional racism exists and that combatting racial inequality would be a priority of his administration. Trump, ignoring the prompt, assailed his opponent for playing a central role writing the 1994 crime bill that many experts and critics say laid the groundwork for mass incarceration that disproportionately affected Black communities. Shielding his eyes to peer into the audience and concluding it was too dark to see properly, Trump was nonetheless confident that he was the “least racist person in this room”.
Biden was incredulous. “This guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn,” he said, accusing Trump of being “one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history” and a leader who intentionally “pours fuel on every single racist fire”.
In an exchange on immigration, Trump attempted to defend his administration’s decision to separate thousands of immigrant families at the southern border, even after revelations that 545 children have still not been reunited with their parents after two years apart. The president said the White House was working on a plan to reunite the children and their parents but insisted the blame lay with the Obama administration, which enforced a record number of deportations.
Biden forcefully denied that the previous administration was responsible for Trump’s family separation policy, decrying the situation as “criminal”.
But pressed on why voters should trust him to deliver immigration reform when the Obama administration failed to deliver on this promise, he conceded: “we made a mistake. It took too long to get it right.”The final moments of the debate were devoted to a discussion on climate change. Biden stressed the need to expand sources of renewable energy – while again disputing Trump’s claim that he intended to ban fracking, which he does not.
“I know more about wind than you do,” Trump retorted, drawing an exasperated laugh from Biden. “It’s extremely expensive. Kills all the birds.”
But at one point Biden said he would “transition from the oil industry” and replace it with renewable energy over the next several years. “That’s a big statement,” Trump said.
Departing Nashville after the debate, Biden sought to clarify the remark: “We’re not getting rid of fossil fuels. We’re getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels.”The candidates also clashed sharply on their finances and family business entanglements.
Citing revelations in the New York Times that Trump only paid $750 a year in federal income taxes while maintaining an undisclosed bank account in China, Biden implored Trump to “release your tax returns or stop talking about corruption”. Trump, who has not yet released his tax returns, claimed his accountants told him that he had “prepaid tens of millions of dollars” in taxes.
In turn, Trump repeatedly leveled unsubstantiated claims about the former vice-president’s son Hunter Biden. The Democratic nominee defended his son and categorically denied the accusations as he sought to turn the conversation back to policy.
“There’s a reason why he’s bringing up all this malarkey,” Biden said, speaking directly to the camera. “He doesn’t want to talk about the substantive issues. It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family.” More Traveling on America’s Dangerous Path
As America plunges toward its own version of an election demolition derby, a choice is very clear to just about everybody. The problem is that there are two choices, no consensus and a lot of angry right-wingers with guns who fervently support the choice that is almost certain to be rejected by the majority. There is rightly a sense of dread that voter intimidation and armed resistance to the otherwise likely outcome will create enough chaos and institutional failure to undermine the nation’s normally routine transfer of power.
I have just recently been on the road a couple of times in the US. First, for 10 days, trying to dodge COVID droplets in three deeply-divided states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. My car radio provided the backdrop for the journey, filled with right-wing radio, Christian radio (often the same thing), oldies and some country music. I stayed in motels, carried some of my own food, ate in some restaurants and did some take-out.
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The second trip was to western Maryland, a red zone in a blue state. This trip included some time in the outdoors on popular hiking trails, one of which was a microcosm of everything wrong with America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On a beautiful fall day, hundreds of people clogged a one and a quarter-mile path along a stream and river with four distinct waterfalls. At least two-thirds of those on the trail carried on as if they and their families were immune from COVID-19. No masks, no effort at protective distancing and no concern about the vulnerable people in their midst, often including small children and aging parents.
“No Mask, No Entry“
On the road, I did find one motel that actually seemed to do everything I could think of to protect me, their staff and their other customers. Otherwise, it was a very mixed bag. Almost no motel cleaning staff wore masks — they are going into the rooms of strangers right after they have left to gather up bedding, towels and trash. They breathe it in and then just to make sure that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, they breathe it right back out while sanitizing. Great idea.
Bartenders with masks perched just below their noses were another common feature. I never saw a single owner, manager or employee of any establishment ever tell a customer to put on a mask or leave. Every place I went into had a big sign on the door requiring masks inside — no mask, no entry. I saw a guy with a gun on his hip but no mask on his face taking a leak at an Interstate rest stop — no mask, no entry. I left that rest stop quickly for a whole bunch of reasons.
These trips provided ample evidence of just how sick the American body politic is. Words like “choice” and “freedom” permeate conversations from those resisting government measures to control the coronavirus pandemic. These words have been perverted to create a space for some of the most alarming elements of the national divide. It is but a small leap to fighting “tyranny” for those willing to angrily confront their own government.
It should not be news to anyone that America is in the midst of a pandemic that is taking close to 1,000 lives a day and now infecting more than 50,000 Americans every day and getting worse. Wearing a mask in these times is a really good idea, according to every public health professional in the world. Every single one of them. No exceptions. Yet, here in America, the mask message is still not taking hold. Among some segments of the populace, a Halloween mask is good, but a cloth mask to protect yourself and the health of your family, friends and a bunch of strangers is somehow bad.
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The key concept at play here is “choice,” as an easily recognized variant of “freedom.” This is OK if you are choosing between milk chocolate and dark chocolate, coffee or tea, Nationals or Dodgers, and the like. It is pathetic as a response to a public health crisis — your choice, wear a mask or sneeze directly into my soup. It obviously isn’t as simple as this, but it should be a lot easier than it appears to be.
I am telling you this because there will be no end to the pandemic here until the vector segment of America either dies off or can be corralled and enclosed in one or more of the vector states. There is just too much stupidity and willful ignorance to be overcome by anything short of enforced mandatory masking, lockdowns and serious contact tracing. None of the above is on the menu yet, mask or no mask.
Some of this would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. For example, many people who identify as “pro-life” turn out to be “pro-choice” when it comes to masks, and often choose the path that leads to more death. On the other hand, as absurd as it sounds, it seems that “Zoom” meetings have actually increased human face time for those whose lives are defined by the latest ping on their supposedly “smart” phone.
A Political Symbol?
But let’s not be fooled. Large swaths of America and the world are living restricted lives circumscribed by disease while losing ground socially and economically. A nation in need of some measure of collective conscience finds itself sinking ever deeper into a world in which delusion substitutes for judgment and care for others is no longer part of the equation, if it ever was. Sadly, those who seem to have benefited most from prosperity and privilege are often those whose contempt for community puts those less prosperous and without privilege at even greater risk.
Too many of those with the opportunity to enjoy that waterfall trail seemed so unable to even consider a different way, a safer way. As long as callous people continue to wander dangerously in public places, it is hard to see how enough of these people will allow themselves to be organized to accept the type of vaccination mobilization program that will be necessary to finally end the pandemic.
To better understand the challenge, it is essential to recognize that wearing a mask in public has become a political symbol in America, and nowhere else. Parents choose to ignore the safety of their own children and children ignore the safety of their own parents to proclaim their “freedom” from government oppression and their support for a president who has abandoned them to disease. These people are choosing to endanger others. (Unbuckle those seat belts and watch the bodies fly.)
As the US presidential election approaches and the pandemic worsens, each of us has a clear choice to make. Side with the candidate whose venal face can be seen in full or the other candidate who wisely hides part of his face and shows all of his heart. This should not be hard.
*[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Covid cases increase across US as upper midwest sees rapid rise
Covid-19 cases are increasing across the United States and surging in the upper midwest, in what appears to be a third pandemic peak. In North Dakota, cases are increasing at a higher and faster rate per capita than in any other state throughout the pandemic so far.
Experts have long predicted cooler weather and pandemic fatigue would increase the spread of Covid-19 this fall. That now appears to be coming to pass, coupled with the longer and higher levels of death and disease the US has seen throughout the pandemic compared to peer countries.
“Everyone who knew anything about infectious disease and epidemiology predicted this six to eight months ago,” said Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, vice-provost for global initiatives at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Yes, it will surge in the fall, and the reason it will surge is because we are moving indoors,” said Emanuel. “Our surge is much higher than the surges in general,” he said, because the US has started, “from a higher baseline”.
Surges are especially pronounced in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, according to the Covid Tracking Project, but states from Wisconsin to Kentucky to Massachusetts are also seeing the curve bend upwards.
Last week, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, activated a field hospital on state fairgrounds to expand treatment capacity. Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, called increasing cases “grim” and said officials were now revisiting surge plans made last spring.
“We are now going back to our plans about capacity in hospitals, looking if we have to at hotel options and the use of state parks,” Beshear said during a press briefing. “Ensuring that we have the operational plans to stand up the field hospital, if necessary.”
In Massachusetts, Boston’s mayor, Marty Walsh, said children would return to virtual learning until the city’s positivity rate – the percentage of all Covid tests that come back positive – decreased for two weeks in a row.
But far and away North Dakota leads in increasing Covid-19. The state has the highest per-capita rate of Covid-19 infections anywhere in the nation, at 1,350 cases per 1 million residents. That is nearly double the rate of the second hardest-hit state, Wisconsin, where there are 805 new cases per 1 million residents.The COVID Tracking Project
(@COVID19Tracking)
ND is reporting far more new cases per capita than any other state has over the course of the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/QqbrDluMErOctober 20, 2020
Nearly three weeks ago, the state loosened public health guidance, telling residents they no longer needed to quarantine for 14 days if they came into close contact with a person positive with Covid-19, as long as both were wearing masks.
“There’s just no science to support that,” said Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Osterholm said that with “runaway” transmission in the upper midwest, “why would you be loosening up your recommendations, as opposed to [tightening]? Then it made no public health sense at all.”
The decision was driven in part by spread inside schools, North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, said at the time, because quarantining students was difficult for caregivers. The change would result in, “a more positive school experience”, Burgum said, according to the Grand Forks Herald.
This week, Burgum called in the national guard to notify people who have tested positive, and abandoned contact-tracing, advising people to self-notify contacts. Burgum has resisted a statewide mask mandate.
But even with increasing transmission across Europe, the United States has done worse on the whole than even “high-mortality” peer nations, studies have found.
Emanuel recently co-authored a research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which researchers examined how the United States had fared during the pandemic compared with 18 other high-income countries.
“We’ve done worse,” said Emanuel. “I think it’s that simple.”
Even compared to “high-mortality” countries such as Italy, the US has performed badly. If Americans had died at the same rate as Italians, for example, between 44,000 and 100,000 fewer Americans would have died.
“We’ve had bad leadership that has resulted in inconsistent, haphazard implementation of public health measures,” Emanuel said. “That has led to migratory outbreaks you might say – first in the north-east, then in the south, then in the south-west, and now in the midwest.”
European countries have also taken stricter measures to contain recent outbreaks.
Like North Dakota, France has also experienced more than 1,000 new cases per million residents in the last seven days, according to the World Health Organization. But France imposed masks at all workplaces and recently imposed a curfew. Germany, also hard-hit, is tightening mask rules and closing some schools. Some regions of Italy are also closing schools.
“It’s clear from the data that countries like Germany, France and others that have put into place clear health communication,” have been able to “manage the growth of the disease and the spread over time,” said Reginald D Williams II, vice-president of international health policy at the Commonwealth Fund. “Unfortunately, we have not put those policies into place in a uniform fashion across the country.”
At the same time, official case tallies probably underrepresent the problem. This week, experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published research that aligned with independent analyses, finding the true death toll is probably far higher than official estimates. By October, researchers said, the death toll was closer to 300,000 rather than the widely cited 215,000.
Osterholm compared the situation to a “coronavirus forest fire”.
“I’ve been saying it for some time – I think the darkest weeks in this pandemic are just ahead of us,” he said. “Between pandemic fatigue, pandemic anger and indoor air, everything is going to get much worse.”
Further, wide distribution of an approved vaccine is unlikely to take place before the middle or third quarter of 2021.
“We have to figure out how we’re going to live with this virus, or not live with it, meaning some people will, obviously many people will, get seriously ill and some will die.” More
