The United States deservedly earned the reputation as the medically most dangerous country on earth. Notwithstanding federal support for vaccine research, we lacked a centralized plan – where only a centralized plan could work – to inoculate our population as quickly and efficiently as possible. Israel showed that centralized planning can quickly immunize most of an entire population. Imagine December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, roping the United States into an active combatant role in WWII, if FDR had declared that defense of the nation was now in the hands of the governors of our various states, not the federal government. We’ve been attacked again, this time by a much more widespread villain, a virus that does not recognize “borders” of any kind.
Other countries banned US travelers or subjected them (and still subject them) to true quarantines in pure, controlled isolation. With 4% of the global population, the United States topped the world as the number one statistical leader in COVID infections (25%) and deaths (20%). Under prodding by the former administration, governors in red states rapidly reopened – a process which only seems to be accelerating today – and eschewed the kinds of safe protocols that the CDC still strongly advises remain in place pending sufficient inoculations. Infections exploded.
Immediately after the installation of the Biden administration, our inoculation process exploded in a good way, exceeding the most optimistic projections by a long shot. Even as surges occurred in those states pressured to reopen to early by their governors, inoculation success embraced our older demographics and rapidly percolated down into the balance of the adult population. Accelerated vaccine manufacturing and distribution, still a way to go, became a federal mandate with federal assistance and personnel pushing needles into increasingly willing arms. After the recovery bill passed by a sliver, combined with the new vaccine availability, Biden’s popularity rose to an astounding 54%.
Despite the inane trend of states to open without precautions prematurely, which is creating the anomaly of rising infection rates accordingly even as a greater percentage of people are being vaccinated, we are now outpacing Europe’s inoculation rate by a significant margin. It clear that Europe fumbled the ball. A stall in the rollout of the EU/UK predominant vaccine from AstraZeneca – a fear that the inoculation was causing blood clots (it turned out to be no more what would have been normal without the vaccine) – amped up the anti-vaxxers (so many in France, believe it or not) and slowed the entire process.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has criticised the rollout of coronavirus vaccines in Europe as being ‘unacceptably slow’… It also says the situation in the region is more worrying than it has been for several months…
“Vaccination campaigns in much of Europe have been hit by delays and the number of infections is rising… France is the latest country to announce new lockdown measures, lasting four weeks… [The last week of March] saw increasing transmission of Covid-19 in the majority of countries in the WHO European region - which includes more than 50 countries and extends from Greenland to the far east of Russia. There were 1.6 million new cases and close to 24,000 deaths, the WHO said… Cases were rising in all but one age group, the organisation said… Only 10% of the nearly 900 million people in the region have had a single dose of coronavirus vaccine.” BBC.com, April 1st. As neighboring Mexico disclosed, it under reported COVID infections by half, now rising to the third most infected nation behind the United States and Brazil.
The problem with vast swaths of people who have not been inoculated, particularly in nations where people move around a great deal, in and out of crowded urban concentrations, is that the virus has more time and greater samples in which to mutate. And with more mutations, sooner or later we face the prospect of a strain that resists the current vaccines and necessitates a do-over with a booster shot. Time favors the virus, not humanity. Africa, for example, does not have that kind of human movement that we find in Latin America, much of Asia, Europe or the United States. And that’s where the problems are most troubling.
“[Europe] remains the second most affected by the virus of all the world's regions, with the total number of deaths fast approaching one million and the total number of cases about to surpass 45 million, [WHO] added… The WHO also warned of the risks of greater spread associated with increased mobility and number of gatherings over the forthcoming religious holidays of Passover, Easter and Ramadan.
“Some 27 countries of the more than 50 included in the WHO Europe region have implemented partial or full coronavirus lockdowns… Only 16% of the EU's population has so far received a dose of vaccine… The EU was slow to negotiate a contract with vaccine manufacturer AstraZeneca which caused supply problems. It also sparked a political row with the UK, where AstraZeneca has plants and where 52% of the population has had at least one dose… The EU's deals with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna also ran into early problems with production and distribution.
“EU regulators were then slow to authorise vaccines for use. Some EU countries subsequently paused their rollouts of the AstraZeneca jab over reports of blood clots among a small number of people who had received a dose. Others restricted its use among older people over concerns that the company had not provided enough testing data.” BBC.com. Government ineptness enables accelerated mutation and infections. As destructive as mythology and denial are to containing this pandemic, government officials who failed to face reality and act quickly and accordingly are complicit in the death and misery of their own people.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder whether the world can act cohesively and effectively in the future… that we actually learn the harsh lessons that nature is dispensing now.
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