Only Zero Covid Worked and Everyone Knows It

I think of unmasked events in Wuhan and Wellington, those packed pool parties and rugby matches. Back in 2020. And I contrast with MAGA superspreader rallies and petulant anti-masker Karen videos. And that North Dakota is a place where few Americans have reason to travel, let leads the nation in per capita covid.

The difference is obviously in the government working with the citizenry to nip this thing in the bud early, so everybody could get on with life as usual.

But it’s not just that America saw more dead in 1 year, than in 3 ½ years of combat deaths in WW2. It’s the hospital bills. Well into six figures for many. I don’t know any mainland Chinese or Kiwis, but I’m fairly certain that most of them have very little respect for American ideas these days. They may even think that we Americans consider eating our own a decent price for “liberty”.

In what real universe does the U.S. have the power to do that though? How? Get money through the Senate. Impossible with the Senate then, truthfully maybe even impossible now as some Dems actively sabotage, but *certainly* impossible then. Do an end run around the Senate and send money to people through say the Fed? Never been done except to bail out the financial system. Interesting to think about I guess.

So yea a lot of things are theoretically possible, but if I was making predictions would I care, if I was making POLICY would I even care? I’m not making policy, but no I really would only consider what could actually be done given the givens.

Isolating travelers for a period of time goes back to the Black Death in the mid-1300s. A 40 day isolation was codified in Venice in 1448 and gave us our word “quarantine” from French “quarantaine” from Italian “quarantana,” a group of 40, here meaning days. Seminal work leading to the discovery of viruses was going on around 1900. We had the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918-1920. And just to throw it in, Camus’ La Peste or “The Plague” came out in 1947. Some things about how to deal with epidemics/pandemics we have known literally for centuries. In the 20th century, we had not just the discovery of viruses but their genetic make-up, their modes of transmission, and much better public health ideas about how to combat them. What has been so disheartening about the covid pandemic is that we knew what to do, and except in a few notable countries, we failed to do it. Our reactions were instead driven by profit and power. In China, the virus was allowed to spread because of the dictum that the emperor does like to hear bad news, but subsequently using the relatively closed, authoritarian nature of their society they were able to lockdown and trace limiting that initial spread. In more open societies in the West, like the US and the UK, we had the deadly combination of braindead political leadership and the blank refusal to lockdown and in the US to even do serious contact tracing. So yes, too many of us were stupid and greedy, and way too many people died or will carry the effects of long covid with them the rest of their lives as a result.

https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1379095491233910785

Check out CNN. What a bag of rats – with apologies to real rats for the insulting comparison to CNN reporters.

The death toll is likely 2-3 times the official count.

Worldwide it is that much indeed.

Insufficient testing plus outright lying in a lot of countries.

In the US, it is only 20-25% higher than the official

Perhaps if we had automatic stabilizers to deal with economic crashes, it wouldn’t be up to an obviously dysfunctional government, to deal with the economic fallout of TSHF at high velocity, in a global pandemic.

But the kind of stabilizers that could deal with a pandemic are by definition large, larger than anyone is considering I suspect.

“Is there a limit on how rich they be or get?”

Yes, it’s called the guillotine.

What has been so disheartening about the covid pandemic is that we knew what to do, and except in a few notable countries, we failed to do it.

I don’t think “we” knew what to do. Ignorance and incompetence, even or especially among official experts and institutions, as well as misguided attitudes among the public at large, played a big part in failures, large and small.

At the level of grand strategy, “zero covid” is the only choice that should have ever made sense to policymakers on economic grounds as well as humanitarian ones. It was not the choice that was made by public health authorities or the politicians they advised. The choice made was to accept that COVID would run rampant, probably become endemic, while policy measures would be directed only at the goal of protecting the emergency medical care system from being overwhelmed, from collapse. That is the goal that has guided policy in my state, California, and it has been an economic and humanitarian disaster.

I may differ from Ian in that in my judgment, as a practical matter, zero-covid as a goal was only a realistic option early on in the spread of the disease. There is a point at which the numbers involved after exponential spread outrun any possible application of resources to testing and tracing and isolation (from family!) of individuals known to have been exposed.

It may seem a subtle point, but there is a connection between failing to choose zero covid as the goal and then adopting a lockdown policy that is more puritanical than practical, and both draconian without purpose and feeble in key respects. In a lot of places in the U.S., apparently feeling they lacked resources, authorities sent people home to their families to isolate. We saw vividly early on that “isolating” people in their cabins on a cruise ship was like building a virus incubator, but authorities who were not able or willing to isolate individuals identified as potential sources of contagion away from their families were choosing to be ineffective.

The bad strategic choice — not choosing zero covid and bending all efforts to that goal — was a corollary in the U.S. to other examples of bad judgment and incompetence by public health authorities. The failure to institute a test and scale testing in a timely way was a nearly criminal fault, as was the noble lie discouraging the wearing of masks. I do not think the importance of population testing early can be exaggerated. Severe lockdowns can be justified and motivated when they are a response to knowledge of where the disease is actually present and spreading and can be relaxed when timely knowledge is available. South Korea made effective use of massive testing and severe lockdowns of short duration and limited geographic scope.

I think Ian is right that the indifference of the super-wealthy to the suffering of people they barely live in the same world with is corrosive to American politics — every billionaire is a policy failure and the U.S. has a lot of billionaires! But, there is also another layer of corrosive effect in the way the professional and managerial classes have come to accept and conserve their alliance with the super-wealthy and their own role in running the predator state on behalf of corporations and institutions. Really seeing the incompetence of public health authorities, which has been on conspicuous display, is important.

I don’t think “we” knew what to do. Ignorance and incompetence, even or especially among official experts and institutions, as well as misguided attitudes among the public at large, played a big part in failures, large and small.

Ah yes, the proverbial “ignorance and incompetence” excuse. ALL failures are “ignorance and incompetence.” Calling it a failure allows for this excuse. Perhaps let’s start by saying the lack of an effective response to the pandemic was not a failure. When we do and when we see who benefitted fabulously thus far from the pandemic, we realize it was a fully cognizant success.

Misguided attitudes. If you mean a largely misinformed, a dazed and confused, populace, then yes, I agree. Consent for the mismanagement of the pandemic response or the lack of a coherent response to the pandemic was most certainly manufactured.

If America can incarcerate a sizable percentage of blacks, surely it can forcefully quarantine those who refuse to take the pandemic seriously and abide by strict lockdown measures. Take the Texas Rangers home opener yesterday. ALL of those people need to be taken into custody and quarantined for several months forcefully. The brazenly maskless need to have their asses beaten bloody. I will volunteer to deliver some of these bloody beatings. Make it legal and just say the word.

…unless you are willing to do a China style lockdown, which would never fly in the west.

It sure flew when two Chechen brothers, the Brothers Tsarnaev, allegedly set off bombs at the Boston Marathon and the city instantaneously became a police state and was effectively on lockdown for 24 hours and people by and large complied and accepted their temporary loss of liberty. Boston Strong. Priorities. Maybe COVFEFE-45 should start bombing events and people. Then we’d get a proper lockdown. Then it would fly.

Yeah, I always try to look at the bright side of life. There used to be starving children in China once, and now all the people in America are fat.

Covid was an American disaster of biblical proportions. Almost enough to have made Cecil B. Demille wanna craft an epic denial about all the fat MAGA people.

The old physicians mantra: Eat from a box, go out in a box. The Youtube algorithms have chosen me to tempt with slick advertisements about all those delicious snacky foods full of sugar, salt, and trans fats. Yet by some divine miracle I can avoid those things like the covid plague. Should I find it odd that so many others cannot?

PS is right. What’s happened with regard to the virus is pretty much what was intended by our ruling class and their enablers. They never had an aspiration for Zero Covid. Why would they when they could vastly enrich themselves by letting the virus run almost rampant and large quantities of useless eaters would be magically removed from society with only minor (comparatively) expense for funerals and maybe a ventilator. A two-fer.

Zero Covid of course was possible, and most people would have gone along with severe restrictions on their movement and activities — as long as they were provided for during the lockdown, as they were in China and everywhere else that Zero Covid was the goal. But our rulers made clear they weren’t going to do that. They made sure that mitigation factors like masks and such were optional at best, that use of ventilators rather than o2 saturation would kill rather than save, that testing was botched and late, that contact tracing wouldn’t happen, that the old, sick, poor, black, brown and other marginal populations would fee the brunt of the disease (and still do), and that, for the most part, the high and mighty would slither through unharmed and MUCH wealthier than before while everyone else was wondering when their eviction notice would be posted.

There was never any intention or effort to provide for people during lockdown, never. They were on their own, too bad, so sad. The pitiful amounts of money given to the lower orders could not provide for them in a strict lockdown situation. Not even close. But provisions that people wouldn’t need to go out for simply weren’t available even if they could be purchased with those “checks.”

Public health had long been a low priority for our rulers, and the system which was once pretty good had been hollowed out to the point where it was on the verge of collapse even before the pandemic. Public health? What’s that? Communities that most needed public health attention were largely ignored. Flattery of the rulers and the ruling class (lookin’ at you Birx, lookin’ at you Fauci) had to substitute for rigorous action, and to this day, the system is shot through with the disabilities and decadence built over decades of neglect.

The situation is not really better now, though the talk is better. Death and infection rates are still high, and all the vaccination, while welcome, isn’t really slowing it down. We’re stuck.

Too late now…

I agree with Plague Species that the hoocoodanode/incompetence defense is as bankrupt as it ever was. Years ago we said the old cop-out “Never explain by malevolence what you can explain by incompetence” had been superseded by events and that nowadays the old saying was a lot truer reversed: “Never explain by incompetence what can be by malevolence.”

Along those lines, remember the Trump-Woodward phone call? It occurred on February 7, 2020 but Woodward didn’t release it until mid-September. It’s where Trump calls covid “deadly stuff.” So even early on, Trump knew, and yet did nothing. There was no national response. No call to patriotism to energize and warn Americans. No sidelining his clowns at HHS and CDC. Not incompetence, malevolence.

Remember also in mid-May 2020, McConnell tried to deflect criticism of Trump’s covid non-response by blaming Obama for not having one. The problem was he did have a game plan, and Press Secretary McEnany waved it at a press conference a few days later even as she said for no particular reason that it wouldn’t work. Well, after Trump’s dithering for 3 and a half months, it probably wouldn’t have worked. No use closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out, and had time to die of old age.

But that’s the thing. We have had the public health protocols around probably since the polio vaccination drives in the 1960s. And these were updated by the ebola outbreak in Africa that began in 2013, and before that the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak. We knew. Anyone who wanted to know could know. But with Trump’s anti-leadership and his Administration’s delays and screw-ups, the pandemic went from being avoidable to inevitable.

We have had the public health protocols around probably since the polio vaccination drives in the 1960s. And these were updated by the ebola outbreak in Africa that began in 2013, and before that the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak. We knew. Anyone who wanted to know could know.

You keep saying that but I do not see the evidence in the record.

1.) Test. That’s surely a requirement, but creating, distributing a test, a test protocol and authorization, and then scaling testing capacity in a timely manner — every aspect of that was botched thoroughly by the “experts” responsible.

2. Quarantine and isolation processes and procedures: bringing people home from the Far East on airplanes or holding them on cruise ships or just taking them to stay in motels — every aspect of that was either abdicated — “own recognizance” with very little guidance — or botched repeatedly.

3. Masks. Fauci. And the Media made him a hero.

4. Ventilators. There was a panic over a supposed shortage of ventilators till someone noticed that being put on a ventilator usually killed the patient. (No exaggeration.)

5. Nursing homes. The focus on preserving ICU capacity led to sending COVID patients to nursing homes — that was clearly idiotic and I don’t think the initiative came from Cuomo. It was policy in parts of my state, too.

6. Aerosol transmission — aerosol transmission was seen in 2003 with SARS, acknowledging as much from the higher reaches of the WHO has been slow going.

7. Apropos 6.), closing parks and beaches and confining people strictly to home or making people feel they had to wear a mask driving alone in their car — those idiotic pictures of people on beaches in Florida — that was all just puritanism. Not helpful when people needed to not go stir crazy at home and needed to know exactly what was really risky — confined spaces, prolonged contact, eating drinking shouting and singing.

8. Intelligence Agencies — the morons not-protecting us from RT and Facebook ads were where? Clearly not in Wuhan in December. Someone should have been panicking, “hair on fire” by January 1. Trump the Idiot-in-Chief would not want to do anything, would not even understand his responsibility to put the machinery of the state in motion, but someone should have tried. (Self-flattering leaks to the Media months later do not count.)

Some failings do come down to neoliberal starving of the public sector and fire-bombing domestic manufacturing and that is malevolence of a kind, but to do better mere good will is not enough, it is necessary to see how what is done has the consequences it does. Then, maybe, understand a different course of action.

Know them by their actions is good advice. It is not advice to presume ill-will and ignore the actions so you can get in your 15-minute hate without a critical, rational thought crossing your mind.

I think some here are imagining that the resolve and resources to sustain prolonged, widespread and strict lockdowns is possible and I do not think that is accurate. With great population testing / tracing, while still at low rates of prevalence and with support for strict, short targeted lockdowns, and with zero covid as the goal, yes. But, I do not think strict lockdowns for prolonged periods over wide areas is possible — and no one anywhere has tried. It is also obnoxious to shun people who rebel against measures that are not very effective (on the numbers in my state, almost irrelevant).

New Zealand is a dictatorship? Huh! Who knew? Amazing the little nuggets of knowledge you find on the inter webs.

Side note: does anyone take edmondo for anything more than entertainment?

I feel like Cassandra with one brain cell. But at least I am not alone. Thanks.

The Western Empire is simply incapable of caring about or protecting its citizens. “Profits over lives.” Closing the borders, contact tracing, safe/paid quarantines are impossible for it, then and now.

More money is made treating rather than curing COVID-19. Jabs now and forever are a given living in a disease-ridden continent. In a corrupt nation, lawless for the rich, you are more and more on your own. Careful. If you lower your guard, lose your income, in the wrong place at the wrong time, don’t wear a face mask, make enemies – the consequences are becoming quite dire.

Worse, there are things you have no control over — NATO starting a war with Russia over Ukraine, China invading Taiwan. This is a multi-polar world again although the Empire denies it and may risk everything to stay the financial hegemon.

There was a brief window in February when it became clear that the Chinese lockdowns were working and the news coming off of the cruise ships and ski parties makes clear this was a very serious matter. I chatted with a co-worker then about what I would have done. I’m convinced that if the US government actually did those things (essentially what the Chinese did, using preexisting US martial law and social supports to do a hard lockdown with quickly escalating fines for failure of people/governments to comply, and using international carrot/stick to push the rest of the world to do the same), we would have been largely out of the woods by April/May 2020. Then it’s a matter of swatting out small breakouts and strict quarantines for any regions that failed to contain their COVID outbreak.

The Neoliberal/neocon governments of the West could have done something, but doing the right thing would have harmed their standing whether they were right or wrong (witness the ROK non-rightwing government getting pummeled in recent elections despite their outstanding work on COVID19). They focused on the solution that minimized damage to themselves and spent the time perfecting their whowuddaknown/theydiddit defenses. The opportunities to vastly loot public treasuries via bailouts and sweetheart “emergency” deals were just icing on the cake. BoJo and Fauci rides high and demented rapist kleptocrat Biden is the second coming of FDR. So much better than doing the right thing!

This is the neoliberal playbook on everything.
They want to manage every problem as a chronic condition with a continuous and reliable profit stream. When gay rights were won too quickly and completely, they had to invent transphobia (now broadened to include anyone even questioning the appropriateness of invasive irreversible procedures for adolescents or making any kind of distinction between”CIS” and “trans” women) to lock in the revenue stream. It’s why they keep dangling abortion in front of us when it could have had a legislative resolution one way or another decades ago. It’s why nuclear chicken with Russia and China is preferred to knocking down a few rice bowls at Raytheon. If others were harmed while they benefited, the others were deplorable anyways. The beauty of the transphobe/Antisemite slander is that their so broad that it can apply to just about everyone. So now you know who to blame when you did from the effects of mutant COVID or inadequately tested Covid vaccines, it’s your own deplorable antisemite transphobic self.

Ah Hugh, I forgot to include Troll. You love to use that word on others. Truly, whatever you say [about others] is what you are yourself.

Toward the end of Ian’s fine article, I cannot follow the suggestion that America’s billionaires are happy about Covid.

There are about 650 Americans with a net worth over $1 billion. Based on my cursory review, most of them are majority or sole owners of huge corporations. (or heirs, like the Walton families)

Many large companies like Amazon and Walmart did very well during the pandemic. Their supply lines and distribution systems were more robust than what small business could provide.

This probably happens in every natural disaster. I don’t think it proves that these companies either caused or rejoiced in the pandemic.

Astrid google “fourth industrial revolution”.

@ importan6t points:

1) The SARS-CoV-2 has STILL NOT been isolated by Koch’s postulates; the 2 papers on SARS_CoV-2 isolation are fraudulent in the isolation procedures;

2) The “authorities” chose a test that can easily be manipulated, as well as fraudulent in the detection of the “virus”. The human body produces so much more RNA than a virus that to claim any RNA is viral RNA is outright lying.