Coronavirus News (93)

'We are living through the first economic crisis of the Anthropocene' Forget the butterfly effect, this is the bat effect – our stranglehold on nature has unleashed the coronavirus outbreak. And the pandemic is forcing us to rethink how to run our networked world ......... The world was facing, she declared, a “crisis like no other”.

For the first time since records began, the entire world economy is contracting, rich and poor countries alike.

....... This isn’t 2008, which was triggered by a meltdown of North Atlantic banking. And it isn’t the 1930s; an earthquake that originated in the fault lines left by the first world war. The Covid-19 economic emergency of 2020 is the result of a massive global effort to contain an unknown and lethal disease. ............ our control of nature, on which modern life rests, is more fragile than we like to think ........ Covid-19 circled the globe in a matter of weeks ........ By calling into question our mastery over life and death the disease shakes the psychological basis of our social and economic order. ........

Neither in the 1930s nor after 2008 was there any question that getting people back to work was the right thing to do

. ....... As the pandemic surged in March 2020, the fragility of financial markets was only too apparent. If the lockdowns are followed by a prolonged recession, as is more than likely, the banks will suffer severe damage. ........ anthropological: what is at stake is the trade-off between economic activity and death ........

A chance mutation in the environmental pressure cooker of central China has put in jeopardy all our ability to go about our daily business.

It is a malign version of the butterfly effect. Call it

the bat effect

. ........... Sophisticated hospitals in China, Italy and the US have been reduced to chaotic, impotent despair. Nurses in New York resorted to swaddling themselves in rubbish bags. Face masks were hand-fabricated on sewing machines. We stack the dead in refrigerator trucks. ......... In a horrific mind-warp, advanced economies suddenly find themselves facing the kinds of dilemma habitually faced by poor countries. We don’t have the tools. In the poor world, the everyday result is that children are stunted and families are impoverished. Millions die for lack of treatment. Covid-19 has delivered a taste of that to the rich world. ..........

this is no coincidence. It is the result of humanity’s relentless incorporation of animal life into our food chain.

HIV/Aids, Sars, avian flu, swine flu and Mers could all be attributed to that dangerous appetite. Like the climate crisis, epidemics are not merely accidents of nature. They have anthropogenic drivers. .......... they have insistently called for is a global public health infrastructure commensurate with the risks that globalisation entails. .........

If we are going to keep huge stocks of domesticated animals and intrude ever more deeply into the last remaining reservoirs of wildlife; if we are going to concentrate in giant cities and travel in ever larger numbers, this comes with viral risks.

If we wish to avoid disasters we should invest in research, in monitoring, in basic public health, in the production and stockpiling of vaccines and essential equipment for our hospitals. ........... Whereas one can reasonably say that giant structures such as capitalism and geopolitics stand in the way of addressing the climate crisis, the same is not true of Covid-19.

The cost of vaccinating the entire world is estimated at around $20bn. That is the equivalent of roughly two hours of global GDP, a tiny fraction of the trillions that the crisis is costing.

The fact that this virus was allowed to become a global crisis is not explicable in terms of massive opposed interests.

It is first and foremost a failure of government

.............. Making good plans, following through on them and doing the basic things right turns out to matter. Addressing the climate crisis poses the daunting challenge of slowing the entire system down. What Covid-19 teaches is that it is not just the big picture that matters. So tightly knit is our global system that small failures of governance in a few crucial nodes can affect everyone on the planet. ............ It turns out that we are capable of pausing the world economy. But we now face the awesome responsibility of reopening. .............

On the one hand are the huge medical risks; on the other is a disastrous economic crisis.

.......... The magic bullet would be a medical solution – antibody tests, effective treatments, a vaccine. .........

We have never successfully developed a corona vaccine. We are betting not on normal science, but on a modern wonder, a “scientific miracle”.

........ The obvious solution is to make the investments in global public health that experts have been calling for since the 1990s. ........ The prevailing political tenor of the crisis, so far, has been conservative and nationalist. ....... Faced with the crisis, Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump have cut ludicrous figures. ........ If it is right that Covid-19 is a crisis like no other, what is to be feared is that there will be more like it to come

New US coronavirus hotspots appear in Republican heartlands Surge in infections in red state towns and rural communities ...... Rise in cases contradicts Trump assertion of rapid decline ........ the president declared: “All throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.” ........ county-specific figures show a surge in infection rates in towns and rural communities in red states such as Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and North and South Dakota ...... the list of top 10 surge areas included Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; Racine, Wisconsin; Garden City, Kansas, and Central City, Kentucky – a predominantly white town of 6,000 people which saw a 650% week-on-week increase. Muhlenberg county, where Central City is located, has voted Republican in every presidential election since 2004, with Trump winning 72% of votes in 2016 – the biggest ever victory for the party. .........

the virus is advancing quickly outside major coastal towns and cities such as New York, Newark and Seattle where infection rates are now plateauing or dipping.

............ Many of the new emerging hotspots, both rural and urban, are in states where governors refused to issue stay-at-home orders, or are following Trump’s advice to relax lockdown restrictions despite public health warnings about the dangers of doing so too soon. ......... In Nebraska, while statewide new cases have plateaued but testing remains limited, four counties which have been Republican strongholds for decades are now listed among the country’s worst hotspots. ......... The meatpacking industry is linked to several emerging hotspots in the Texas panhandle, a semi-rural region consisting of the 26 northernmost counties, where Trump won 79.9% of the vote in 2016 and his party dominates every level of government.

Coronavirus US live: whistleblower to warn inaction risks 'darkest winter in modern history' the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic and

there will be dramatic consequences if the US fails to develop a national coordinated response

.......... “the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged” without a response “based in science”. ........ “Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be [the] darkest winter in modern history” ........... he had urged dramatic action in response to the potential pandemic in January but “encountered resistance from HHS leadership, including health and human services secretary [Alex] Azar, who appeared intent on downplaying this catastrophic event”.

US nursing homes seek legal immunity as Covid-19 spreads ‘like brushfire’ Healthcare organizations insist protections are essential for under-resourced facilities as horror stories enrage families ....... horror stories from hard-hit facilities ........ The US “ground zero” for the virus was a nursing home outside of Seattle. Once the country became a global hotspot, elderly Americans suffered. In some states, nursing homes have accounted for a majority of Covid-19 deaths as facilities scrambled to adapt. ........

the virus has ravaged nursing homes “like a brushfire”

....... “Facilities mostly don’t want to flag that they have the virus even when it’s killing residents, because it’s such a publicity problem, it’s such a business problem, and they are for-profit enterprises.” ........ Nearly 70% of US nursing homes are for-profit .......

at least 21 states have granted some form of civil immunity to healthcare providers

........ “Putting a nursing home out of business because somebody died is really punishing at the wrong level, because certainly there are nursing homes that probably did not act responsibly, or they may have ignored the threat. But so did many government agencies.” ......... “I think we have to hold our fire, not put our energy into finger-wagging and blaming. And put more emphasis on stronger regulations, with teeth.”