The American Epidemic Continues

What month is this? Huh, June, oh yeah. Half over. And when did we shut down? Oh yeah, March, middle of March. It's been three months.

People are getting tired of it. They want to work, buy things, socialize. Hear some music. In fact, a lot of people are acting like the pandemic is over.

But it's not.

Many countries around the world are opening for business. They implemented measures when the pandemic hit, followed the playbook, and when cases were reduced to a certain number people were able to come out again.

The Washington Post talks today about the success of some countries, and notes the odd fact that many of them relied on American research that was ignored by US policy makers.

Germany, for instance, with a large older population, has had 9,000 covid deaths, compared to 120,000 in the US so far. The Post interviewed a German leader who said Germany had especially looked at American research. They were one of the first countries to require face masks on public transportation and supermarkets and to practice social distancing. They watch the data, and public policy makes adjustments as the cases decrease or increase.

Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch has recently met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and officials or advisers from Canada, New Zealand and South Korea. He said when he went to the Trump White House, early in the outbreak, "the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic did not reflect his conclusions. 'I think they have cherry-picked models that at each point looked the most rosy, and fundamentally not engaged with the magnitude of the problem, he said." In countries keeping the coronavirus at bay, experts watch U.S. case numbers with alarm

[Epidemiologist and German MP] Lauterbach said that even though most Germans disapproved of Trump before the pandemic, even his staunchest critics in Germany were surprised by how even respected U.S. institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, struggled to respond to the crisis.

The CDC, for instance, initially botched the rollout of test kits in the early stages of the outbreak.

“Like many other aspects of our country, the CDC’s ability to function well is being severely handicapped by the interference coming from the White House,” said Harvard epidemiologist Lipsitch. “All of us in public health very much hope that this is not a permanent condition of the CDC.”

The good news, I'd say, is that there was no surge in cases after the BLM protests. The experts note that most people wore masks and most continued to keep marching and moving from place to place. So maybe you don't have to be an isolated hermit, you can go out, you just have to be careful.

Japan, a country with 126 million people -- about half of the US -- has had a total of 858 covid deaths without shutting down or even social-distancing. How did they do it? The government told people to avoid the three C's: closed spaces, crowded places, and close-contact settings. According to Business Insider, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said recently, "We need to create a new lifestyle from now on. We need to change our way of thinking."

Lockdowns in the United States have been framed as extreme, temporary procedures, while in Japan the three C's have been framed as a new, permanent lifestyle for residents. This may bode well for the sustainability of the approach.

Under flailing leadership, the US is not even thinking about permanently changing our way of life, as we continue at a plateau level of about 20,000 new cases a day.