H5N1

South Dakota gripped by COVID-19 pandemic amid Kristi Noem's no-mask approach

Via The Guardian, a long, scathing report:South Dakota gripped by pandemic amid Kristi Noem's no-mask approach. Excerpt:

Isolating herself from family after a Covid-19 diagnosis on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, grandmother Cheryl Angel had few options for safe shelter and ended up far afield traipsing from one lonely hotel room to another. 

“Our tribe didn’t have anything set up, and if it weren’t for my relatives, I would have died in there,” she said.  

Relatives made two-hour drives to leave breakfast and supper outside her impromptu isolation ward, while inside she followed instructions to use a steroid inhaler four times a day and learned to inject herself with an epinephrine medication when she felt faint. 

She vowed that if she survived the deadly disease, she would do all she could to help others receive better treatment, as South Dakota fell further into the grip of the coronavirus pandemic. 

By the time her two sons caught coronavirus this fall, Angel had recovered and become involved in a grassroots community encampment taking care of homeless fellow Native Americans on Sioux land on the outskirts of Rapid City, in the west of the state.  

Physician Nancy Babbitt, who agreed to supervise training for coronavirus testing at the settlement, Camp Mniluzahan, lamented the heightened risks such vulnerable residents are facing amid state governor Kristi Noem’s determinedly hands-off pandemic policy – including being the only state without a mask mandate to curb infection.  

“My experience dealing with Covid-19 in South Dakota is one of failed leadership. Our governor has made it clear it’s up to the people, so we have to come up with creative ideas to help stop the spread,” Babbitt said.

Challenging world leaders amid medical populism

A letter in The Lancet: Challenging world leaders amid medical populism.

The Lancet COVID-19 Commission Statement warned about medical populism, and I would like to underscore a couple of points about this framework. 

First, medical populism describes the style—not the content—of political actors' responses to health crisis. In Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil and Donald Trump's USA, dramatic displays of defiance to public health guidelines would have resonated among libertarian constituencies, but not in Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines, where no such movement exists. It is thus unsurprising that Trump's reaction to his own illness mirrored his Brazilian counterpart's: both used their own illness to vindicate their having downplayed the pandemic.3

Second, if, as the medical populism framework suggests, “simplification of the pandemic” is a familiar response, then one can anticipate the further emergence of vaccines as a populist trope in the coming months. Whereas the first phase of the pandemic was marked by claims of fake cures and dramatic lockdowns, the ongoing situation involves a vaccine messianism that echoes the “culture of optimism” in previous outbreaks. 

In response to medical populism, the Lancet COVID-19 Commission Statement recommend that leaders “prioritise advice from the professional public health community”, but, as Donald Trump illustrates, the subordinate position of public health officials makes such fiscalisation difficult. How effectively global health institutions can advise or challenge political leadership is a question that demands urgent reflection amid the sustained popularity of medical populists, regardless of their countries' successes in suppressing the pandemic.

Brazil health minister back in hospital with COVID-19

Via Reuters: Brazil health minister back in hospital with COVID-19. Excerpt:

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello, who is ill with COVID-19, will stay in a military hospital overnight on Sunday, after having been discharged from a civilian facility earlier in the day, the ministry said in a statement. 

Pazuello, an active duty Army general, will stay in the military hospital as “a precautionary measure,” the ministry said.    

“Pazuello is well and stable and should stay resting until tomorrow,” the statement said.  

The minister tested positive for coronavirus on Oct. 21. He checked into a hospital on Friday, suffering from dehydration, the ministry said earlier. 

Roughly half of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro’s 23-member cabinet has gotten the coronavirus, with the president and his wife coming down with the disease in July.

In another Reuters report: Brazilians protest mandatory COVID-19 immunization, Chinese vaccine.

A time traveller’s look at Canada and COVID-19 from 2022

The Tyee has published my article A Time Traveller’s Look at Canada and COVID from 2022. Excerpt

An American think tank, the Millennium Project, has been in the business of looking at the country’s possible futures since 1996.   

Recently it published Three Futures of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States Jan. 1, 2022 — an extensive look at where the U.S. will likely be more than a year from now, and what will lie ahead. 

The report’s three scenarios are based on surveys of recent research plus “real-time Delphi studies.” Experts in fields like public health, politics and economics were asked for their best estimates of what might happen in the next year or so. The results were then shared with participants, giving them a chance to refine their projections based on what the other experts were saying.  

The final results were collated by teams of writers who distilled them into three outcomes. 

1. America Endures: Leaders make a mix of good and bad decisions, there are no big surprises, and the country makes its way through the pandemic with a mix of good and bad outcomes.

2. Depression, Hubris and Discord: A plausible negative scenario based on major bad decisions being taken amid social and political discord. 

3. Things Went Right! A plausible positive scenario, based on good decisions and citizens behaving responsibly. 

To a recovering science fiction writer like me, the scenarios look like interesting but doomed pitches for disaster novels. The COVID-19 pandemic and the other events that have aggravated it are already far beyond the plausibility expected of a science fiction novel.  

The Millennium Project’s implicit premise is a mistaken view of the American status quo, ante Donald Trump.  

The scenarios assume the U.S. had the world’s best health care, a functioning democracy and a “responsible citizenry.” Events since Jan. 20, 2017 have thoroughly disproven those assumptions. 

A substantial minority of Americans are working hard to deprive the majority of affordable health care. Gerrymandering and vote suppression, not to mention billionaires’ big spending on political campaigns, have made American democracy an oxymoron. Even if Joe Biden wins, scores of millions of his irresponsible fellow citizens will remain Trumpists for the rest of their lives.  

I’m not sure any scenario can anticipate where the U.S. might be on New Year’s Day, 2022. But a “Canada Endures” scenario does seem fairly plausible. Our health-care system, for all its problems, is dramatically better than the Americans’. Our democracy is at least less dysfunctional than theirs, with no gerrymandering and our elections run by competent non-partisan federal and provincial agencies. Big money and corporate media have skewed our politics to the right for the past 40 years, but we still have a broader range of acceptable debate than the Americans.

Winnipeg epidemiologist faces online threats, as concerns about COVID-19 misinformation deepen

Via CTV News: Winnipeg epidemiologist faces online threats, as concerns about COVID-19 misinformation deepen. Excerpt:

Over the past seven months, the effects of COVID-19 have been real and far-reaching in Manitoba, yet some are trying to cast doubt on the pandemic and intimidate the scientists fighting the virus.  

“I think this is a tiny portion of people on social media. But just like an infection, it can just keep spreading,” Epidemiologist Cynthia Carr, founder of EPI Research, told CTV News Tuesday.  

Carr has become a familiar face to many Manitobans. However, her work has made her and her 18-year-old the targets of online threats and harassment.  

“There were all kinds of messages, which were both myth and misinformation as well very personal, very aggressive attacks,” said Carr. “As a parent, I certainly didn’t like seeing those things directed towards my daughter.” 

Carr is not alone. Scientists and public health officials across Canada have faced insults, intimidation, and death threats.  

Last month, B.C.’s top doctor revealed she had to step up security. 

“There are many people who don't like what I do and feel quite able to send me nasty notes, leave phone calls, to harass my office staff,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry. “I've had to have security in my house. I've had death threats.”  

EXPERTS SAY THERE IS ‘MISTRUST IN SCIENCE’  

Experts say the hostility against public health officials is being fueled in part by online conspiracy theories.  

“There is a lot of mistrust of science in the public,” Christen Rachul, University of Manitoba Director of Educational and Faculty Development, told CTV News.  

She is part of a research team examining the rise of online misinformation related to COVID and said it has “exploded” since the emergence of COVID-19. 

“When we start looking at misinformation and people making choices and acting upon misinformation it can actually cause harm. We’ve seen that in a fair amount of cases where people have tried treatments that are potentially harmful.”

On ‘herd immunity,’ vaccines, and pandemic whiplash

Via the Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop writes: On ‘herd immunity,’ vaccines, and pandemic whiplash. Excerpt:

In mid-March, as the British government dragged its feet on implementing strict coronavirus lockdown measures that it would soon impose anyway, Patrick Vallance, the country’s chief scientific adviser, gave a series of interviews and discussed a concept with which many people were not then familiar: “herd immunity,” or the threshold at which enough members of a given population are immune to an infectious disease that the disease’s spread is controlled. 

Vallance—and, later, other officials—seemed to suggest that the government’s goal was to allow the virus to circulate while shielding only the most vulnerable against it. As The Atlantic’s Ed Yong put it at the time, the message appeared to be: “Keep calm and carry on… and get COVID-19.” 

That notion met with a swift, fierce backlash, including among sections of the press—it was inhumane, critics charged, as well as being scientifically illiterate. Vallance and his colleagues quickly backtracked, insisting that letting the virus spread in the name of herd immunity wasn’t their plan, but merely a scientific concept; Matt Hancock, Britain’s health minister, insisted as much in an (initially paywalled) article for a right-wing newspaper. More charitable observers criticized the episode as merely a messaging disaster. (As one expert told Yong, “It’s been a case of how not to communicate during an outbreak.”) 

Others claimed that herd immunity actually was, at one point, Britain’s plan: In late March, the Sunday Times reported that Dominic Cummings, a controversial top aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had privately summarized the government’s policy as “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad,” before undergoing a “Damascene conversion” and instead backing lockdown measures. 

What was clear was that the words “herd immunity” had become toxic in the public debate. In an unusually-stern rebuke, a government spokesperson called the Sunday Times story a “highly defamatory fabrication” and charged that it contained “invented” quotes.

In the months that followed, as Britain shut down in a bid to beat back the virus, the concept of herd immunity receded from the media conversation. In other countries, including the US, the concept similarly took a backseat in mainstream coverage; when it was broached, it was mostly dismissed as fringe quackery. In right-wing American media, though, herd immunity continued to surface, usually as a supposed alternative to the tyranny of lockdown. In May, Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, said that “healthy people” should have the “courage” to leave the house more, adding, “herd immunity is our friend.” (Hegseth was, of course, speaking from his home.) 

Normally, this would be so much babble—but the president is an avid consumer of right-wing media, and, seemingly as a consequence, the idea of herd immunity has, in recent months, wormed its way into the White House. In August, Trump appointed Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist he’d heard discussing the pandemic as a frequent guest on Fox, to serve as a White House health adviser. Quickly, we heard reports that Atlas was pushing Trump to adopt herd immunity as policy. 

This week, the Washington Post reported, in a big story, that Atlas has since “consolidated his power over the government’s pandemic response”—sidelining experts including Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx; pushing back on the need for more testing, masks, and social distancing; and continuing to push herd immunity. (Atlas “emphatically denied” to the Post that he “pursued or advocated for a wide-open strategy of achieving herd immunity,” and accused the paper of “overt lies”; elsewhere, he has referred to the media as “contaminated.”) 

The Post notes that Atlas’s denial “conflicts with his previous public and private statements,” including his recent endorsement of a document, known as “the Great Barrington Declaration,” that has exploded in right-wing media and driven herd immunity back into the mainstream conversation. Authored, earlier this month, by three scientists and signed by many more, the declaration—which grew out of an event hosted by a free-market think tank—advocates shielding high-risk individuals from COVID while those at low risk “live their lives normally.” 

A great many experts have spoken out against the document, calling its suggestions unethical and highly dangerous. While the elderly and those with comorbidities are at greater risk from COVID, young and (seemingly) healthy people routinely die from the disease, or experience severe symptoms that, in many cases, can persist for months. And the idea that a society can shield all its vulnerable members is, as Fauci told ABC recently, “total nonsense.”

The Brazilian government's mistakes in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

Via The Lancet, correspondence: The Brazilian Government's mistakes in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is unfortunate to read the unsubstantiated and misguided opinion of a few physicians about the role of the current administration during the COVID-19 crisis in Brazil. For those of the international scientific community who base their understanding on reliable data, the conclusion that Brazil has shown one of the worst responses to the pandemic is unequivocal. 

The gravity of the pandemic in Brazil is evidenced by the current epidemiological facts: Brazil is among the three countries with the largest number of confirmed cases (more than 5 million as of Oct 15, 2020, according to WHO), with high mortality, evidence of underreporting, and a high number of deaths among health professionals, pregnant women, and the indigenous population. 

The federal government's denial of science and, consequently, of the seriousness of the pandemic to the health and wellbeing of Brazilians has led to a failure to coordinate, promote, and finance internationally sanctioned public health measures. The ministry of health has not developed a national plan to combat the pandemic, nor has any other federal government agency. States and municipalities continue to be neglected and receive insufficient assistance. Influenced by political interests, the federal government has disrupted the flow of financial transfers and slowed the deliveries of essential supplies to certain regions. 

Furthermore, Brazil's public health system, Sistema Único de Saude (SUS), is the largest in the world and provides universal coverage without any cost to patients. It is accessible nationwide and provides community-based primary health care to more than 70% of the population. Yet, primary health care has been overlooked by the federal government as a key element in this public health crisis response. 

Financial emergency aid to the most vulnerable populations was gravely delayed, insufficient, and cumbersome to obtain. Moreover, the federal administration denies international recommendations for non-pharmacological interventions, refusing to establish a national mandate for social isolation and mask use.

It is necessary to analyse the Brazilian Government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic based on trustworthy knowledge built upon scientific facts. The negative effects of governmental decisions represent important risks to the health of Brazilians and for the pandemic's global situation. A coordinated political response guided by social justice and evidence-based knowledge is essential to managing any public health emergency, especially one with as broad economic and health impacts as COVID-19. Regrettably, this is not what is happening in Brazil.

COVID-19: Anti-mask protestors cause disturbance and verbally abuse passengers on BC ferry

Via CBC News: Anti-mask protestors cause disturbance and verbally abuse passengers on B.C. ferry.

BC Ferries has banned a dozen anti-mask protesters from sailing for the day after they caused a disturbance and verbally abused other passengers Saturday morning.    

The disturbance happened on the 8:30 a.m. PT sailing from Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay according the the corporation.  

"BC Ferries has a mandatory mask policy," said BC Ferries spokesperson Deborah Marshall.  "We don't tolerate this type of behaviour." 

The group was believed to be travelling to the B.C. Freedom Mega Rally 2020 event, which is being held Saturday and Sunday at the Vancouver Art Gallery.  

Marshall says the corporation called West Vancouver police, who met the ship at the Horseshoe Bay terminal. 

Corporal Neil Schafer says the initial report from BC Ferries indicated there were 12 anti-mask protestors, but when officers arrived they said the group was about 50 people. 

Schafer says multiple officers responded to the group when they disembarked from the ferry, but Schafer says by then things had calmed down.  

"Our officers had a couple interactions with a few of the protestors. Again nothing much of note, and really had de-escalated into a non-incident," said Schafer. 

No arrests 

"There were no arrests. There was nothing violent, no weapons from the protestors and our officers just stood by and kept the peace." 

Schafer says the participants in the disturbance were permitted to continue on their way. 

BC Ferries said they banned approximately 12 of the participants for at least the rest of today. It also said the ban could be extended. 

The Queen of Oak Bay was delayed about 45 minutes as a result of the incident. 

According to the Facebook page for the B.C. Freedom Mega Rally, the group is opposed to censorship, lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, social distancing and contact tracing, among other things. 

White House embraces declaration by group of scientists that relies on ‘herd immunity’

Via The Globe and Mail, a New York Times report: White House embraces declaration by group of scientists that relies on ‘herd immunity’. Excerpt and then a comment:

The White House has embraced a declaration by a group of scientists arguing that authorities should allow the coronavirus to spread among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and the vulnerable – an approach that would rely on arriving at “herd immunity” through infections rather than a vaccine.  

Many experts say “herd immunity” – the point at which a disease stops spreading because nearly everyone in a population has contracted it – is still very far-off. Leading experts have concluded, using different scientific methods, that about 85 per cent to 90 per cent of the American population is still susceptible to the coronavirus. 

On a call convened Monday by the White House, two senior administration officials, both speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to give their names, cited an Oct. 4 petition titled The Great Barrington Declaration, which argues against lockdowns and calls for a reopening of businesses and schools.  

“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” the declaration states, adding, “The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.” 

The declaration has more than 9,000 signatories from all over the world, its website says, though most of the names are not public. The document grew out of a meeting hosted by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian-leaning research organization.  

Its lead authors include Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at Stanford University, the academic home of Dr. Scott Atlas, President Donald Trump’s science adviser. Atlas has also espoused herd immunity.  

The declaration’s architects include Sunetra Gupta and Gabriela Gomes, two scientists who have proposed that societies may achieve herd immunity when 10 per cent to 20 per cent of their populations have been infected with the virus, a position most epidemiologists disagree with. 

Last month, at the request of The New York Times, three epidemiological teams calculated the percentage of the country that is infected. What they found runs strongly counter to the theory being promoted in influential circles that the United States has either already achieved herd immunity or is close to doing so, and that the pandemic is all but over. That conclusion would imply that businesses, schools and restaurants could safely reopen, and that masks and other distancing measures could be abandoned.  

“The idea that herd immunity will happen at 10 per cent or 20 per cent is just nonsense,” said Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which produced the epidemic model frequently cited during White House news briefings as the epidemic hit hard in the spring.

One lesson I have drawn from events this year is that pandemics are nature's way of telling you to quit what you're doing and figure out another way to live. The "declaration" is a political document, not a medical argument.

Trump’s latest madness may herald large-scale GOP collapse

Via The Washington Post, an opinion piece: Trump’s latest madness may herald large-scale GOP collapse. Excerpt:

It’s hard not to see the spread of covid-19 through the White House and the Republican Party as a metaphor for Trumpism: The party hoped and believed that they could keep themselves safe from the damaging effects of the virus. 

For a while, they succeeded. But it couldn’t last. 

Consider this: President Trump just announced that he will head home to the White House on Monday night. There is no way in which this represents a rational move. But now, with Republicans hitched to an infected Trump, they have to hope that it doesn’t backfire, say, by requiring Trump to return to the hospital after a downturn.  

And consider this: Because of Trump’s recklessness, we’re only just beginning to see how far the virus is spreading among Republicans. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany just announced that she has tested positive, bringing the total number of senior Republican officials and lawmakers who have recently announced contracting the virus to over a dozen.  

With Republicans tied to Trump’s utter contempt for social distancing and his cultlike command that all Republicans treat the virus as largely a nonissue, they have to hope it won’t spread much deeper into their own ranks.  

As it is, Trump’s announcement last Friday that he had tested positive already looked to be putting him and numerous down-ballot Republicans in deep trouble. It took him off the campaign trail for an unknown length of time after his already-disastrous debate. Trump trails Democratic nominee Joe Biden by eight points in national polling averages, and there is not a single battleground state where he has a lead. 

As one GOP strategist told Politico: “The polls have dropped all last week everywhere, it just feels like the end is near.” 

Now the madness is only intensifying. And with it, so is the uncertainty. 

Republicans always feared this day would come, when Trump would become not just an erratic, divisive president but someone whose manifest unfitness for office would result in full-blown catastrophe. 

They decided they had no choice but to stand behind him, and convinced themselves that it might work out well. It would be a crazy four years, but maybe Trump would grow into the job, and maybe retaining the support of a dwindling constituency would be enough to squeak out another election win or two. 

Plenty of them went further and eagerly embraced Trump and Trumpism, too, while actively working to insulate him from accountability for all of his degradations. Now a new possibility has emerged: that this election could be not just bad for Republicans, but positively cataclysmic.