“The pandemic can be a pivotal moment in history. One that propels us out of a state in which we were not prepared, sleepwalking toward the next pandemic, and turning a blind eye to widening inequalities, towards a world prepared for the next pandemic.” – Mandeep Dhaliwal, @UNDP https://t.co/BdLSqVkTZX
— CEPI (@CEPIvaccines) March 2, 2022
More than 90% of U.S. population in areas where masks not needed -CDC https://t.co/iLlS1uogBb pic.twitter.com/McLsA0Jmxd
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 4, 2022
Very interesting: CDC's estimates of the % of Americans who have had covid, broken down by age group and over time. https://t.co/grxNRQFjhI pic.twitter.com/1c9LXFEiOu
— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) March 3, 2022
Terrific piece by @CarolineYLChen on what's known about why there still isn't a Covid vaccine authorized for kids under 5. The issue is fraught, but the communications on it have made it worse. https://t.co/NRmHxTD75j
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) March 3, 2022
Ancient Lenten folk saying: Live, horse, and you’ll get grass:
… It’s true that the FDA is legally limited in discussing data particulars and manufacturers are traditionally secretive about ongoing trials. But nobody has acknowledged that the legal and conventional restrictions mean that answers to basic questions like, “Why was this review delayed?” tend to result in impenetrable answers like, “We realize now in data that came in very rapidly because of the large number of cases of omicron that at this time it makes sense for us to wait until we have the data from the evaluation of a third dose.” None of this helps the public understand the scientific process.
What is apparent is that while many parents would like to see more data, what they want even more is to be reassured that their kids’ health is a priority.
“They’ve never spoken to parents of underage kids to say: ‘We’re sorry this is so hard. It grieves us too that it’s been so complicated,’” said Jennifer Martin, a parent of three in Seattle. “There’s a lack of urgency,” said Samirah Swaleh, parent to a 9-month-old boy in the Los Angeles area. “They just don’t seem to care about babies and toddlers?!” wrote Wendeln, the mother in Cincinnati. Cho, the emergency room physician, longs for a clearer timeline. “If you’re running a marathon and you know there’s an end, people can do amazing things. But it’s really, really hard when you don’t know if there’s an end in sight.”
I brought these sentiments to the FDA official I spoke to. The response hit many of the notes the parents said they wanted. I wish it could have come earlier, more often and been on the record, but I hope it provides some parents a bit of reassurance that they’ve been heard.
“We are going to work as expeditiously as possible,” the official said. “What does that mean? In general — though I can’t promise anything — you’ve seen that after an EUA [application] in this area, we generally are trying to take action in two to four weeks.”
The official emphasized: “We’re not going to be sitting on anything here.”
“I would want parents to know that we understand their concerns. We’re parents too,” the official added. “We are going to move as fast as we can once we have the data in our hands.”
======
Top U.S. health officials say they intend to offer other nations technology to be used against Covid. Aid will be offered to low & middle-income countries. The offer arrives as President Biden plans his 2nd global Covid summit in the coming weeks https://t.co/ZwIu6UL9cw
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) March 4, 2022
Hong Kong reports 52,523 new coronavirus cases and 188 new deaths
— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) March 4, 2022
Hong Kong reported a record daily high of 56,827 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday and 144 deaths, as a worsening outbreak overwhelms healthcare facilities and sees authorities scramble to contain cases in the Asian financial centre. https://t.co/YvuA49UuLl
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) March 3, 2022
Ambulance wait times are as long as a day in Hong Kong, which has been besieged by #omicron. Worse, one-third of HK’s ambulance workers have tested positive for the coronavirus & many are isolating. HK's healthcare system has been overwhelmed for weeks https://t.co/8exQ5Zbjxk
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) March 4, 2022
Hong Kong retail chains ration staples to curb COVID panic buying https://t.co/QUQUA4RsU1 pic.twitter.com/hdumwdGF7Q
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 4, 2022
S.Korea reports record daily COVID-19 cases and deaths amid Omicron surge https://t.co/SloQ3D5Q7Y pic.twitter.com/qQdlZgn0Xo
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 4, 2022
Taiwan's success in quashing an Omicron outbreak with minimal domestic restrictions (restaurants/churches open) hasn't received a lot of global media coverage pic.twitter.com/olsSHzqofB
— Tom Hancock (@hancocktom) March 3, 2022
End of a (long) thread on QAnonsense being weaponized for propaganda:
This is Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov directly repeating this conspiracy theory, claiming (per translation) America "built two biological war labs, and they have been developing pathogens there, in Kyiv and in Odessa." pic.twitter.com/KDk33rP4Gd
— Justin Ling (@Justin_Ling) March 3, 2022
The World Health Organization raised concerns about the 'humanitarian catastrophe' taking place in Ukraine, a senior official told Reuters, spelling out the triple threat of war, COVID-19 and an ongoing outbreak of polio pic.twitter.com/2w6KRlIBB0
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 4, 2022
Why are COVID-19 vaccination rates still low in some countries? Limited supplies remain a problem, but other challenges include unpredictable deliveries, weak health care systems and vaccine hesitancy. https://t.co/JcFtqQBXkV
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 3, 2022
Ottawa police misjudged protesters who besieged Canada's capital – testimony https://t.co/jWD1PLMmIb pic.twitter.com/35JD7uIuJb
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 3, 2022
======
Only 1 approved antibody treatment has activity against all #omicron subvariants—BA.1, BA.1.1 & BA.2. New study reported in journal Nature. The 3 subvariants share 21 spike mutations. Monoclonal antibody Bebtelovimab approved last month works against all 3 https://t.co/PWpLSQDAp2 pic.twitter.com/byXxdhIaFd
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) March 3, 2022
Eli Lilly and Incyte's arthritis drug baricitinib helped reduce the risk of death in hospitalised COVID-19 patients by 13% regardless of which other coronavirus treatment they were given, according to a large British study. https://t.co/UZlxMGh56k
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) March 4, 2022
Highly contagious #omicron sparked a jump in hospital-onset SARSCoV2 infections. Clusters occurred in at least 1 large academic hospital where the infections were documented. Probably occurred in other institutions as well. Clusters stopped after universal N95 use & daily testing https://t.co/sDV9nIxoDx
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) March 3, 2022
I’m not a scientist, nor do I play one on Twitter. But when in doubt I lean toward the virologist with receipts (this thread) over the pundit with no relevant expertise (referenced in first tweet). Give both a read and judge for yourself https://t.co/bIAYZq74Jl
— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) March 3, 2022
======
U.S. waives COVID test for Americans leaving Russia, Belarus https://t.co/1EKoMaXxZa pic.twitter.com/ISe9fdp0Cm
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 4, 2022
As demand for COVID-19 vaccines collapses in many areas of the U.S., states are scrambling to use stockpiles of doses before they expire. Millions of doses have already gone to waste. https://t.co/0K8L23tQfJ
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 3, 2022
Detroit's Big Three automakers to let workers stop wearing masks https://t.co/T2aBTwzXAG pic.twitter.com/hXpxcgrbPG
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 4, 2022
New grift emerges, from a guy who’s used up a lot of old ones:
things continue to go extremely well for Milo Yiannopoulos as he now has COVID dementia, for which he blames the vaccine he didn't get pic.twitter.com/e9a2UNSOqe
— K. Thor Jensen (@kthorjensen) March 2, 2022
The liberals’ ‘vaccine-enhanced’ super-virus made me weak and stupid! I could die ‘mercifully abruptly’ at practically any moment! Are you gonna send me money, or do I accuse you of abandoning a crippled martyr for The Cause?
On The Road – BretH – Peace Corps, Niger, West Africa – 1989
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
99 new cases on 3/3. Looking better than yesterday.
Baud
If you can pronounce the name of the drug three times fast, you’re cured!
YY_Sima Qian
On 3/3 Mainland China reported 61 new domestic confirmed (5 previously asymptomatic), 56 new domestic asymptomatic cases.
Guangdong Province reported 22 new domestic confirmed & 6 new domestic asymptomatic cases. As the province does not breakdown recoveries between domestic & imported cases, I cannot track the count of active cases in parts of the province.
Guangxi “Autonomous” Region reported 3 new domestic confirmed (2 previously asymptomatic, all mild) & 5 new domestic asymptomatic cases, all at Fangchenggang, all the new domestic positive cases are traced close contacts already under centralized quarantine. The outbreak at Fangchenggang is of Omicron BA.2 Variant. 5 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 151 active domestic confirmed (103 at Baise, 47 at Fangchenggang & 1 at Nanning) & 15 active domestic asymptomatic cases (all at Fangchenggang) in the province. 1 zone at Fangchenggang is currently at Medium Risk.
At Shaoyang in Hunan Province there currently is 1 active domestic confirmed case in the city, part of the transmission chain spreading from Shenzhen in Guangdong.
Inner Mongolia “Autonomous” Region reported 9 new domestic confirmed cases. 30 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 309 active domestic confirmed cases in the province.
Tianjin Municipality reported 1 new domestic confirmed case (moderate), a worker at the airport, found via daily screening. There currently are 22 active domestic confirmed cases (15 mild & 7 moderate) in the city. 1 massage parlor is currently at High Risk.
Shandong Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 6 active domestic confirmed cases (all at Qingdao) & 1 active asymptomatic (at Yantai) cases in the province. 1 residential compound at Qingdao is currently Medium Risk.
Shanxi Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 18 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining in the province, all part of the transmission chain spreading from Hohhot in Inner Mongolia.
Hebei Province reported 5 new domestic confirmed cases (all mild), 4 at Xingtai & 1 at Shijiazhuang. There currently are 6 active domestic confirmed (4 at Xingtai & 1 each at Shijiazhuang & Handan, all part from the same transmission chain spread from Xingtai) & 1 active asymptomatic case (at Shijiazhuang) in the province.
At Huludao in Liaoning Province 1 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 190 active domestic confirmed cases in the city (all presumed Delta). 1 village at Suizhong County is currently at High Risk.
Heilongjiang Province reported 3 new domestic confirmed & 5 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 1 domestic asymptomatic case was released from isolation. There currently are 24 active domestic confirmed& 47 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
Jilin Province reported 5 new domestic confirmed (all mild) & 11 new domestic asymptomatic cases. There currently are 12 active domestic confirmed & 22 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
Hainan Province reported 1 new domestic asymptomatic case, at Sanya, a traced close contact already under centralized quarantine. There currently are 1 active confirmed (at Sanya) & 2 active domestic asymptomatic (1 each at Sanya & Chengmai County) cases in the province.
Shanghai Municipality reported 2 new domestic confirmed (both mild) & 14 new domestic asymptomatic cases, all are traced close contacts already under centralized quarantine. 1 domestic asymptomatic case is a quarantine hotel worker, a traced close contact of a domestic asymptotic case reported on 2/27. There currently are 6 active domestic confirmed & 29 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. An activity center & a supermarket are currently at Medium Risk.
Hubei Province reported 4 new domestic confirmed cases (all mild), all at Wuhan, all are traced close contacts already under centralized quarantine. There currently are 36 active domestic confirmed (28 mild & 8 moderate, all at Wuhan) & 8 active domestic asymptomatic (7 at Wuhan & 1 at Huanggang) cases in the province. 4 residential buildings & 1 hotel at Wuhan are currently at Medium Risk.
Jiangsu Province reported 1 new domestic confirmed case. 16 domestic confirmed cases recovered & 5 domestic asymptomatic cases were released from isolation. There currently are 63 active domestic confirmed & 25 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province reported 2 new domestic confirmed cases (1 mild & 1 moderate), both at Cangnan County, 1 found at fever clinic & the other is a traced close contact. Neither has travel history outside of Wenzhou in the past 14 days, or contact w/ persons coming from areas w/ active outbreaks.
Sichuan Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 36 active domestic confirmed & 13 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
At Xiamen in Fujian Province there currently is 1 active domestic confirmed case in the city, a person who entered centralized quarantine to care for in under aged child arriving from overseas.
At Henan Province 1 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 2 active domestic confirmed cases remaining.
Yunnan Province reported 4 new domestic confirmed (2 previously asymptomatic) & 14 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 2 domestic asymptomatic cases were released from isolation. There currently are 51 active domestic confirmed & 119 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining in the province.
Imported Cases
On 3/3, Mainland China reported 233 new imported confirmed cases (14 previously asymptomatic, 6 in Guangdong), 94 imported asymptomatic cases, 4 imported suspect cases:
Overall in Mainland China, 84 confirmed cases recovered (39 imported), 42 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (34 imported) & 19 were reclassified as confirmed cases (14 imported), & 3,833 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 3,304 active confirmed cases in the country (2,037 imported), 18 in serious condition (2 imported), 1,387 active asymptomatic cases (997 imported), 7 suspect cases (all imported). 89,609 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.
As of 3/3, 3,147.007M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 5.534M doses in the past 24 hrs.
On 3/4, Hong Kong reported 52,523 new positive cases (11 imported & 52,512 domestic), 136 deaths (only 10 fully vaccinated). 9% of the deaths in the Omicron wave so far are fully vaccinated.
On 3/4, Taiwan reported 64 new positive cases, 62 imported & 2 domestic.
YY_Sima Qian
Wuhan has seen 3 separate Omicron clusters in the past 2 weeks. The business meeting/training cluster has essentially been contained, but there are 2 active clusters without source of infection identified, w/ the cases roaming all over the city prior to testing positive. The city had decided to launch a mass screening campaign, actually started yesterday morning before abruptly suspending it, before resuming this morning. All school/kindergarten student & staff were tested yesterday, & were again today. This afternoon, the authorities announced that all schools are moving to online instruction, & all university campuses are under restricted access. We are all waiting w/ abated breath for the results from the mass screening campaign.
Mainland China is now reporting more imported cases from Taiwan per day than Taiwan is reported domestically. In contrast, the number of cases imported from China into South Korea (generally from zero to high single digits) have followed the ebb & flow of the situation in China. I am concerned that Taiwan may be missing community Omicron BA.2 spread, until it blows up like Hong Kong. Taiwan has done a good job of test, trace & isolation, but there is no capacity to conduct mass screening & no appetite for even local lock downs. Cost of voluntary screening is very expensive there. I think Taiwan only counts a case as COVID-19 if the RT-PCT positive test results has CT found of <= 30, while the threshold is 40 on the Mainland (probably overkill). Taiwan still appears to be holding the line against Omicorn, but Hong Kong did as well, until it didn’t. At least Taiwan has better vaccination rate than Hong Kong, w/ 77% of the total population fully vaccinated, ~ 41% boosted.
New Deal democrat
Nationwide cases declined slightly to 55,700. Deaths declined to 1550.
The rate of decline in cases has decelerated to 25% in the past 7 days, while the rate of decline in deaths has accelerated to over 25%, leaving aside holiday distortions.
The worst 10 States (aside from NE which had a huge data dump) are ID, at 75 cases per 100,000, followed by ME, MT, KY, AK, WV, IA, VT, WA, and NV, at 24 cases. The best 10 jurisdictions are PR, at 7 cases per 100,000, followed by LA, IN, MD, SD, OH, NY, CT, DE, and DC, at 10 cases. For perspective, in the better months of 2020 many States were below 10, and in 2021 many States were below 2.
Cases have increased in the past 7 days only in MA, IA, NE, WA, and NV. Several of these are due to data dumps.
I have been trying to figure out why nationwide deaths have not followed cases as I originally anticipated. Deaths are down about 2/3rd’s from peak in the Northeast and Midwest, where the peaked over 5 weeks ago. Their peaks in cases were more rounded, and deaths are about 4.5 weeks behind. Cases in the South and West had much more rounded peaks about 2 weeks after the other two regions, and deaths peaked only 3 weeks ago. Deaths in the South have lagged particularly. If it is a question of regional lag, the decline in deaths should accelerate in the next few weeks. If it ultimately does catch up with cases, which still do not appear to be bottoming, that would be only about 200 deaths per day in about a month.
Ken
@Baud: Are you sure? I thought that caused the drug to jump out of the mirror and drag you to hell.
Baud
@Ken:
I didn’t say how the cure worked.
Ken
In this case the words “self-appointed” may be inserted before “pundit”.
lollipopguild
@Baud: Beetlejuice!
Ken
@Baud: Oh, yeah, I forgot. “Always read the drug label completely before using.”
New Deal democrat
Two comments on the linked material today:
(1) the rate at which age groups have contracted COVID since early 2021 has a lot to do with vaccinations, since the older the age group, the higher the rate of vaccination. Still, if there is any such thing as herd immunity with COVID, between about half of the population having been infected, and 2/3’s being vaccinated, probably 90% of the population probably has some resistance, so we may be close. Ultimately COVID will turn into a childhood disease like measles or mumps.
(2) Matt Yglesias is a fool. I stopped following him ages ago, and am smarter and less aggravated for it.
different-church-lady
Mandeep Dhaliwal appears to have zero understanding of human nature.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
The other problem with her tweet is that we were prepared. Obama had people come up with a plan about how to handle a pandemic. It was ignored.
germy
Ken
@different-church-lady: Specifically the part of human nature that’s captured in the old joke, “Can’t fix the leak in the roof when it’s raining, don’t need to fix it when it’s not raining.”
different-church-lady
@Baud: We don’t have inequities because we’re not trying hard enough. We have inequities because human beings fucking love inequities.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Agreed.
Kay
@New Deal democrat:
He’s “doing his own research”, which means skimming other peoples research and raising dumb questions about it because he comes to it without the background knowlege to read and understand it.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Professional thought-having is a hell of a drug.
Robert Sneddon
@Ken: New drugs are given unique names to make them easier to differentiate in a pharmacy setting (or in a Google search) hence the letter salad. They are pronouncable in a standard manner, no hononyms allowed so voice instructions can always be disambiguated. The letters at the end normally specify what kind of drug they are: “-mab” means monoclonal antibody.
different-church-lady
@Robert Sneddon: “Ask your doctor if Bebtelovimab is right for you… IF YOU CAN. “
Kay
@different-church-lady:
They’d be insulted to be put into the “doing my own research” category but I’ve read the covid deniers and anti-vaxxers. It’s exactly what they do. They take a reseach paper or piece of information, don’t understand parts of it because to read and really understand it they would need more background knowlege than they have, so they just glide past the parts they don’t really understand and thus make huge errors.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Hahaha.
different-church-lady
“People who cannot pronounce Bebtelovimab should not take Bebtelovimab.”
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reported 32,467 new Covid-19 cases yesterday in its media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 3,528,557 cases. It also reported 84 deaths for an adjusted cumulative total of 33,028 deaths – 0.94% of the cumulative reported total, 1.02% of resolved cases.
Malaysia’s nationwide Rt stands at 1.01.
145 confirmed cases are in ICU, 82 of them on ventilators. Meanwhile, 27,629 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 3,197,298 patients recovered – 90.6% of the cumulative reported total.
11 new clusters were reported yesterday, for a cumulative total of 6,809 clusters. 466 clusters are currently active; 6,343 clusters are now inactive.
32,054 new cases reported yesterday were local infections. 413 new cases were imported.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 96,621 doses of vaccine on 3rd March: 23,871 first doses, 1,469 second doses, and 71,281 booster doses. The cumulative total is 67,516,578 doses administered: 27,084,107 first doses, 25,755,241 second doses, and 14,884,828 booster doses. 83.0% of the population have received their first dose, 78.9% their second dose, and 45.6% their booster dose.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Well, to be fair, that’s how I got through grade school…
Ken
@different-church-lady: The one that perplexes me is “Do not take <drug> if you are allergic to <drug>.” I guess the idea is when you get a new prescription, you take one and see if you break out in hives?
Mind you, that’s usually the least alarming thing in the list of side effects.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
It’s not written for them. It’s written for people who already have basic knowlege.
These scientific papers are going to be really long with with a whole “definitions” section if they now have to write them for pundit/ “doing my own research” review.
Why doesn’t he write about something he knows, like how cancel culture is the major threat to civilization of the modern era? That’s their area of expertise- how Louis CK making slightly less money means the end of intellectual debate
sdhays
@YY_Sima Qian: Taiwan also has a different mix of vaccines – AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna compared with Hong Kong’s Pfizer-BioNTech and Chinese vaccines.
Baud
@Kay:
Heh. Vicious, but apt.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@different-church-lady:
My college chemistry TAs accused me of this….
sdhays
@Kay: I like how people like Yglesias will write these stupid things and then take credit for educating people when they spark a smack down from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
You know, you could just ask someone with real knowledge before publishing your bullshit…
sab
@Kay: Many many years ago Matthew Yglesias was a young man trying to break into punditry or reporting by blogging, about healthcare.
He and his friends had an incident where someone in their household was bitten by the household dog that had been over-excited from fighting a rat.
A long discussion ensued while they debated whether the bitten person should go to the ER and whether she could afford to do so without insurance. And Matt was under the impression that ERs might be free.
He was already a college graduate at that point. Writing about healthcare on a blog.
Ken
@sdhays: So it’s kind of a hark back to Galileo’s Dialogue, with Yglesias playing the role of Simplicio.
germy
thread:
germy
I remember one of the “Pundits” (I think maybe Dreher) graduated college with a BA in English, and his first job was reviewing films for the Washington Times. No minor leagues, just right to working for the big boys.
different-church-lady
@Kay: The really sad thing here is Louis CK has a grasp of human nature that’s about three orders of magnitude deeper than Mandeep Dhaliwal.
germy
…among other things.
different-church-lady
@germy: You’re welcome. Nice working with you.
JAFD
Since my heart attack, have been taking a half-dozen pills a day. Every refill, get a ‘Patient Information Sheet’. Read thru first set of these (lotsa possible side effects, major warning ‘Don’t Get Pregnant While Taking These’). Would save paper if they only noted ‘changes since you started taking this drug’, but I can see where that could cause other problems…
Have a great weekend, regardless
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: Could these be reporting problems?
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I disagree. Dhaliwal is saying better things are possible and if no one really believed that no one would try or do anything.
Louis CK is proof of this. What was perfectly acceptable but horrible behavior towards women in a workplace is no longer acceptable to a really large group of people, if not everyone. They didn’t “cancel” him. The culture just left him behind. No one makes jokes about beating their wife anymore either. It was acceptable behavior and then there was a higher standard and now it isn’t.
I was on a school committee when an anti-bullying initative went in. There were a whole group of parents who were basically “Lord of the Flies! This is human nature!” but really it wasn’t. The kids were given a higher standard for how to treat other people and most of them rose to it. You can do that. You can say “making a classmate miserable in school by attacking them every day will no longer be tolerated”, you can make a new norm.
Soprano2
I think this obsession some people have about where Covid came from is so stupid. That’s a subject for academic researchers to worry about, not everyday online pundits. So if it did come from a lab somehow, then what? What difference does it make to the world what the origin of Covid-19 is? They just want to bash China and Chinese people.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Because they think it wasn’t investigated out of a “politically correct” fear of anti-Chinese backlash. That’s why they care. Because it “proves” a wholly unrelated hobbyhorse about how “wokeness” is dampening intellectual inquiry.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Let’s just say Putin and Trump have cured me of my optimisim.
Soprano2
@Kay: This kind of thing is why pundits love the fights over things like CRT and diversity training – no long, complicated papers to read, they can just have an opinion without having to do any research (although none of them know what CRT is, they just accept the Republican framing of it). It’s why they hate discussions about actual policy, because having an intelligent discussion about it requires them to do some actual research, and they hate that. It’s why they loved TFG so much – he gave them all kinds of things to talk about that required no research at all.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: There’s a second angle, which is the supposed connection between Anthony Fauci and the research at the Wuhan lab that they say created the virus. Fauci has become a demon to the US right and they want to have a way of accusing him of actually causing the COVID pandemic.
germy
@Soprano2:
I don’t know.
I can understand that someone who lost loved ones to covid would want to know where and why the virus originated. And scientists would want to know in order to prevent it from happening again.
Soprano2
@Kay: Bill Maher talks about that on his show, that we “aren’t permitted” to look into anything China did because we’ll be accused of being racist. I see zero evidence of that, and no one ever challenges him on it. His show has gotten a lot more boring since he no longer allows anyone on the panel who will challenge his obsession that “wokeness” is the root of every problem Democrats have today. All of these things they say “we” “aren’t permitted” to do are things people are actually doing! What they are saying isn’t actually what they mean. The more I listen to Maher, the more I think his main anger is at the culture that has left his preferred bigotries behind. He wanted them to liberalize laws on drugs, and keep the rest of the culture basically the same so he could still use the jokes that made people laugh 20 years ago.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I had doubts myself! When I was in high school you could have a fist fight in the hall and a coach would come and break it up and everyone would go on with their day, like “of course they beat the shit out of each other once a week- they’re like that”. But they accepted the new rules and did better.
It’s odd that Louis CK doesn’t get it because he has a really funny bit about how people are allowed to smack kids and it’s barbaric. He wants to say to the parent in the grocery store who is hitting their kid “excuse me- did you just STRIKE that small person next to you?” It’s outrageous! No one should accept it.
Old norm/new norm. It’s his joke.
Kent
@germy: Washington Times is going the Moonie owned MAGA rag. Is that the big boys?
Matt McIrvin
@germy: I think a thing that the CDC and the coverage of the CDC aren’t emphasizing enough is the distinction between measures intended to collectively control the spread of infection, and what’s needed to protect you personally.
The CDC has calculated that the Omicron wave is now going to recede in most places whether people mask up or not, so they no longer need to tell people to wear masks in order to control the pandemic. But that doesn’t mean you’re safe without a mask. And it all gets lost in the headlines about “what you need to do”. And it definitely gets lost when bullies like DeSantis harass other people about whether they should mask up.
germy
@Kent:
In right wing circles, yes. It’s not some little local paper that most reporters would have to get experience on.
catclub
@Ken:
I have not read the Dialogue, but it is possible that Simplicio actually learns something by the end. … Yglesias?
NotMax
Tunisia the latest country to exceed one million total reported cases.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Maher’s two big things were drug legalization and animal rights/veganism, where he is a PETA-level extremist (and he got into alt-med craziness through animal rights). On everything else he acts like a smug libertarian.
Soprano2
@germy: I can understand why scientists want to know where it came from; it’s partly an effort to try to prevent it from happening again, and that makes total sense. What doesn’t make sense is the right-wing obsession with insisting that somehow the Chinese created Covid-19 to use as a bio-weapon against us, although it has none of the qualities of a good weapon – it’s indiscriminate, impossible to control without taking draconian measures, and doesn’t kill or even injure most of the people who contract it. No amount of proof that it wasn’t created by the Chinese in a lab in Wuhan with direct assistance from Fauci and who knows how many other Democrats is going to convince the conspiracy theorists, so I think we should quit trying.
New Deal democrat
@Soprano2: Probably not, but with a few of the Southern (red) States, it is always a possibility!
catclub
The second problem is that once you are a pundit, the news programs turn to you on any issue. Rather than look for someone who knows about the new issue that has come up. David Brooks discussing Afghanistani society, or cryptocurrency, or virology.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: What drives me crazy is that he acts so proud that he’s willing to have people on who he doesn’t agree with, but for the most part that’s no longer true. He never has anyone on the panel who will challenge him about “wokeness” being the absolute worst thing in the world these days. He hasn’t said one word about all the Republican attempts to ban books in schools, either. You’d think someone who is so worried about “cancel culture” would at least mention that, wouldn’t you?
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: We have a county in MO where the coroner refuses to put Covid-19 on any death certificates. I have to wonder how many other places there are with people like that.
different-church-lady
@catclub: Gotta remember, they’re making TV, not knowledge.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: More generally, as it stands, pandemic control is a left-liberal kind of story: it’s about trusting legitimate scientific research and collectively behaving in a selfless manner to control a disease that is not really anyone’s fault.
The “lab leak” story turns COVID into a right-wing narrative. If one accepts it, now it’s about the machinations of evil nonwhite foreigners who mean us harm, and were abetted by the blunders of egghead scientists and the spinelessness of liberals who valued trying not to appear racist over protecting our people. The collective controls are just theatrics to create an appearance of trying to control the crisis after liberals stupidly let the horse out of the barn.
Naturally conservatives are going to prefer the second story to the first. (Similarly, they keep trying to claim that COVID has something to do with undocumented immigrants bringing disease in over the border.) There’s a certain amount of dissonance with the claim that COVID is actually no big deal, but it’s manageable.
sab
@Kay: Their arguments might have a little more traction if they actually did “intellectual inquiry” beyond asking stupid questions without bothering to do any investigation towards facts to think about answers. And investigation isn’t skimming an article they can’ t understand. It is bothering to find (at a bare minimum)++ a couple of actual experts who can explain it to them.
I actually respect Ezra Klein, who did plow through various permutations of the ACA in the making and report on it. He wasn’t Mayhew Anderson, but he really worked at it and God knows nobody else was willing to be down in the weeds reporting.
The anti-China feeling on Covid really irks me because they actually tried to control it after the initial two month fuck up.
Masks in China’s densely populated big cities are just good manners. What is wrong with that? I have seen customers at my11q+ Ohio bank go in with really bad cold symptoms, cough and sneeze on their paperwork and then hand it to the teller. Everyone in the bank line should have hissed and booed. But we just averted our eyes, ashamed at the customers bad behavior.
Kay
@Soprano2:
It’s complicated and I don’t understand all the connections but it’s also tied to Biden. They call him “Bejing Biden” – no fucking idea why. I stopped asking for details om their theories right around Benghazi.
catclub
and the one thing we CANNOT do in that situation is anything to reduce that harm. If Trump actually believed that China released it as an act of biological warfare, then maybe we should act to reduce the impact on us?
Lacuna Synecdoche
K. Thor Jensen via Anne Laurie @ Top:
How could they tell?
(h/t Dorothy Parker)
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: It’s their way of projecting back accusations about Russia and Trump. If the right is in bed with Russia the left must be in bed with China. (Or with Ukraine, but that one just hit its sell-by date.)
catclub
@Kay:
I stopped asking for details om their theories right around
Benghazi.anti-flouridation.FTFY
sdhays
@catclub: I haven’t either, but I doubt Simplicio is being payed to say stupid things in public.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: That’s where their other crank theories come in, that everything liberals want you to do actually has a perverse opposite effect. Vaccines are ineffective and are really poison, masks really make the infection worse or have some other baleful health effect, etc. The only thing that matters is demonizing the other.
But I’ve noticed that the lab-leak theories tend to crank up in the news when infection is down and the immediate health threat is lower. It’s a way of keeping the story alive but in re-spun right-wing form. And the media are hungry for COVID stories so when they don’t have stories about COVID cases to report on, they’ll bite at this stuff.
different-church-lady
@Lacuna Synecdoche: Does he have dementia from COVID or dementia with COVID?
Sloane Ranger
Yesterday in the UK we had 45,656 new cases. The rolling 7-day average is down 12.2%. New cases by nation,
England – 32,858
Northern Ireland – 2408
Scotland – 9491
Wales – 899.
Deaths – There were 194 deaths within 28 days of a positive test yesterday. The rolling 7-day average is down by 18.5%. 144 deaths were in England, 3 in Northern Ireland, 36 in Scotland and 11 in Wales.
Testing – 702,451 tests took place on 2nd March. The rolling 7-day average is down by 16.9%.
Hospitalisations – There were 10,649 people in hospital and 279 on ventilators on 2nd March. The 7-day average for hospital admissions is down by 5.9%.
Vaccinations – As of 2nd March, 91.5% of all Uk residents aged 12+ had had 1 shot, 85.3% had had 2 and 66.6% had had a 3rd shot/booster. Percentages rising as glacial rate.
YY_Sima Qian
@sdhays: Compared to Hong Kong, Taiwan definitely has done a better job rolling out vaccination, though procurement was a mess & the Taiwanese government ended up having to rely on donations by friendly governments & 2 massive purchases donated by Foxconn & TSMC. However, I do not believe it is as well vaccinated as the UK, for example, & there has been little prior infection among the population.
sab
@sab: And God knows I do not admire the CCP. They have been ruled by committee: elect a two terms limited who will kick the urgent policy cans down the road. But they have changed that with Xi. They need to be wary of a Putin situation with a leader that they can no longer stop.
The Uighurs are a case in point. They weren’t a threat, but he is a Han nationalist heading a diverse country.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: …but right-wing theories about connections between Democrats and China go back a long way. I remember a weird conversation I had (mostly overheard really, I didn’t talk much) with a bunch of very Republican family friends sometime during the early 2000s in which they got on the topic of the crimes of Bill Clinton. They all started alluding to the terrible thing Clinton had done involving China, and there was a lot of nodding and agreeing and they all seemed to know what it was, but I could not for the life of me figure out what incident they were talking about, just that it involved somehow selling us out to the Chinese because Clinton had no loyalty to America. My best guess after some further research is that it was not firing Sandy Berger for failing to inform him about Chinese nuclear espionage in a timely manner, but I’m still not sure.
Sloane Ranger
@Matt McIrvin:
But I thought the pandemic was a ploy by liberals and the left to make “real” Americans miserable. Isn’t it just a glorified flu bug that macho men can and should ignore?
sab
@Sloane Ranger: Works pretty well except for the +50year old men and the pregnant women that actually die of it, filling up the hospitals and traumatizing healthcare workers in the process
sab
@Matt McIrvin: Yep. The Cheneys have been big on us 330,000,000 taking on 2 billion Chinese to stop them before they get too powerful.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Supposedly the Clintons rented out the Lincoln Bedroom to some shady ethnically Chinese tycoons (from Hong Kong & SE Asia) w/ alleged ties to the CCP regime. GOP has been hitting Dems using China since the very beginning of the Cold War. Remember the debate of “Who Lost China” aimed at Truman?
The Red Scare hysteria led to the expelling of Qian Xuesen back to China. He bad studied under Von Kármán, as a colonel in the US Army interrogated Werner von Braun at the end of WW II, helped found the Jet Propulsion Lab at Cal Tech. After returning to China, he became the father of the PRC’s ballistic missile program & the space program.
Ohio Mom
@Ken: Sometimes a drug is chemically similar to another, so if you have reacted badly to the other drug in the past, the doctor will be reluctant to prescribe the drug in question. Other times, the doctor will start by prescribing a small, non-effective dose to see what happens first.
But yeah, there is a certain amount of Russian roulette, especially if the drug is new. If there is a serious side effect that only effects one in a thousand people, and in development, they only tested the drug on 500 people so that side effect did not appear, and you are that one in a thousand — the doctor writes it up and sends his/her report to the authorities.
Searcher
@Ken: Yeah, but if you get it to say its name backwards, it has to grant you a wish and can’t return to this plane of existence for a hundred years.
smith
I’m not seeing this pattern of case peaks among the census regions. The Northeast peaked about 2 weeks before the West, but, at least according to 91-Divoc, cases in the South appear to have peaked on 1-16 and in the Midwest on 1-19. That’s not a 2 week lag, and the South peaked first. However, I agree that the South stands out in not getting deaths under control. Their peak in cases was almost exactly the same magnitude per capita as the peak in the Midwest, at almost the same time. Currently, the Midwest deaths stand at .36 per 100K (about the same as the Northeast and West), and the South at .668 per 100K. If the Southern red states are suppressing their data, they’re doing a pretty bad job of it. Or, more likely, it’s even worse there than the numbers show.
Searcher
@Soprano2: Agree 1000% percent on the senseless urgency to claim an origin.
There is a reason to care — if it was a lab leak, then we need better processes to reduce the risk in the future — but besides that being more the topic for the “blameless post-mortem”, it’s also only the remedy if it was a lab leak. If it was spillover from an animal species, then we need to revisit how we allow contact with some of these species that keep vectoring disease to us. Trying to shut down viral research if it wasn’t lab-related just leaves us less prepared for animal spillovers.
Origins of COVID and what to do to reduce the risk of a future pandemic are a 10-20 year problem, for once we have found all of the smoking guns and actually know what the problem was.
Robert Sneddon
There’s good evidence that SARS-CoV-2 virus is spreading widely in the US deer population. Good luck convincing ten million deer hunters in the US that they can’t shoot and eat their yearly buck because of the “Chyna Virus”.
The Feds are already trying to stop Chronic Wasting Disease from spreading further in the US deer population than it already has and there’s a requirement for hunters to have their kills tested for CWD in some areas. How effective that requirement is is another matter. CWD is a prion disease, attacking the brain and nervous system of cervids like CJD (“mad cow” disease) and it may cross the species border to humans if consumed.
Stuart in Austin
@New Deal democrat: You are missing one crucial point. COVID is and will continue to be one of the top causes of death for old people!
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: I remember learning about him after reading the Arthur C. Clarke novel 2010 mentioned in the Wikipedia article (the Chinese ship that landed on Europa, which was omitted in the movie adaptation, was named Tsien, different transliteration of the same name).
Searcher
@Stuart in Austin: Something like one in fifty of us will one day die of the flu, because a low IFR doesn’t mean much if you roll the dice every year.