Cases have been found outside of Britain, including in the US and, ironically, France (slammed the door too late.) The practical result of the increased infectiousness are discussed by Tomas Pueyo.
The points are, as you’d expect, that it increases the speed of exponential growth. If it becomes the dominant strain (and it almost certainly will, because it grows faster), you have to really lock down. No sham lockdowns, people don’t go out for anything but food (maybe you even deliver that); schools are closed, no one works outside the house unless they truly are an essential worker.
Herd immunity now requires 75 percent+, not 60 percent of the population. That means it will take longer, and with respect to vaccines, people will need to be convinced to take them, or if necessary, forced to.
Countries that already got Covid-19 under control, like Vietnam, New Zealand, China, and Taiwan (notice a trend?) will be fine. They just keep tracking and tracing; keep quarantining visitors, and keep clamping down hard on even a hint of a break-out. Those of us who haven’t, like most of Europe, the US, Canada, Brazil, and so on, can either get serious RIGHT now and close schools and go to a real lock down, or we are going to have to wait for vaccine immunity, which may take until the end of 2022 depending on how many doses your country is getting and when (and if people will take them, or be forced to).
In general terms, my sense is that the first half of 2022 is going to be worse than 2021 in countries that have fumbled Covid, after that things should start improving noticeably.
This was a pro-active choice by our elites: They decided not to handle Covid. It was handled in many countries, the playbook is known to anyone who cares to know it just by seeing what was done or reading a 101 textbook, but “fumbling” Covid made elites in countries like the UK, Canada, and the US a lot richer and more powerful, so it was allowed to rage through the population and destroy the small business economy so that those who were able to stay open, like Amazon and Apple, and so on could grab huge amounts of market share.
Grandma died and young people got life-long heart problems so Jeff Bezos and private equity scum could get richer.
All the content here is free, but subscriptions and donations do help, a lot.
GM
A few corrections/clarifications:
1. The 60% number was yet another unfortunate piece of propaganda/desinformation perpetuated by the scientific establishment in its willingness to play ball with the politicians.
The HIT (herd immunity threshold) value is not a static number, but it depends on the R_0 value for each virus, with the simplest formula being 1-1/R_0.
If you assume that R_0 for SARS-CoV-2 is 2.5, then you get the 60% number. But in reality R_0 is not a static number either, it depends on human behavior. And back in February when nobody was paying attention to what was happening in China and then Iran, etc., and you had mass congregations events under business as usual behavior, the R_0 was actually around 6, not 2.5. Which takes us to HIT = 85%.
But of course when you work under the usual mandate to deliver good news, the 60% number was the one embedded in the public consciousness.
With the new mutation we are probably taking that 85% to 90+%.
Good luck vaccinating that many people.
Mass vaccination only works because it’s done on children who can’t resist.
2. All the vaccines existing right now are non-sterilizing, i.e. people can catch it (and probably spread it), they just don’t get seriously sick. Well, guess what that does when you have rampant spread everywhere? It creates very strong selective pressure towards the appearance of vaccine evading mutants. The new strain actually already has one of those that has been seen repeatedly appearing and conferring some resistance to treatment with plasma. Expect to see much stronger such phenotypes as the vaccines get rolled out.
Good luck redoing the vaccine formulation and vaccinating 90% of the population every year for a new strain or a cocktail of new strains (we will eventually end up with many different variants with distinct antigenic properties)
3. People are for some strange reason focused primarily on the UK strain but not the one in South Africa (or maybe it is not a strange reason — the UK is the UK, South Africa is, well, South Africa, so who cares). It shares a lot of the same mutations as the UK one, and appears to be just as transmissible, if not more transmissible, but based on the available data, it seems to also be at least twice as deadly (the mortality in South Africa is at least 2X higher now than it was during their first wave in the summer) and to be hitting young healthy people too, not primarily the old and the sick.
Now add that to the equation, and the picture changes dramatically. Yet countries were quick to shut ban travel from the UK, but slow to pay attention to the South African strain. Which has probably spread widely at this point too.
And, of course, we know about these strains because in those two countries they were doing enough sequencing to notice them. The virus is evolving in most of the world completely in the dark because that infrastructure does not exist there, so who knows what we are to see in the near future.
GM
I don’t think this is the whole story though.
It is part of what happened — the inadequate lockdowns were used as a tool to crush small business and to further take over the economy.
But why is it that they did not accomplish largely the same while also eliminating the virus with a harsher and prolonged lockdown? And why is it that they refused to do a remotely serious second one? Seems to me that one has to answer that question too.
And the answer is that you can’t do that within neoliberalism — it would require even a temporary abandonment of the foundational principles of the system regarding the relationship between corporate power and the state (the state being always subservient) and the direction of wealth redistribution (always upwards).
So it was more like “Millions of you will have to die and be permanently crippled so that we don’t have to pay taxes. Of, and we will use that as an opportunity to grab as many trillions off you as we can while we’re at it”. It wasn’t just the latter part.
Ten Bears
One out of every 1,500 Americans over the age of 25 is hospitalized for Covid.
One out of every thousand (1,000) are dead.
It didn’t have to be this way.
The Trump Plague
GM
Trump deserves a lot of the blame for what happened, because as the president he could have done a lot to stop it, and he chose not to. So no matter what behind-the-scenes influences played a major role, this will be on him forever.
But let’s not also pretend that there were no such behind-the-scenes influences, that it is entirely on Trump, and therefore it would have been substantially different under a different administration.
Most governments around the world adopted the same do-nothing approach, it was not just Trump. You see what is happening in Germany now.
In fact in the UK they were talking about “herd immunity” before Trump started openly saying he will just let it rip, and Merkel said that everyone will get infected and hundreds of thousands will die already in early March. And she said it in a way that implied that the decision had been made to let that happen. This is all forgotten by now by most because so much has happened since then. But that does not mean it did not happen, and I certainly remember it very well. And Merkel is the epitome of the competent well-spoken properly mannered respectable politician.
What changed the policy in Europe towards lockdown was the fact that the bodies started piling up at a rate that was just too ugly.
There is little reason to think it would have been substantially different under a Democrat administration. The optics would have been different, but the policies would have been largely the same — let everyone get infected subject to that constraint that people dying in huge numbers on the streets is bad PR.
And Biden is already on the record saying that he will not do anything to stop the spread either.
We got incredibly lucky with the vaccines, and the US in particular got doubly lucky that it bet strongly on the winning technology. So the US still might end up exiting the crisis with less than half the population infected. But none of that was a sure thing when the decision to not seriously attempt to stop the spread was made.
astrid
Until there is strong evidence of sterilizing immunity from the vaccines, that the immunity lasts for more than 6 months, and that the coronavirus will not quickly out evolve acquired immunity, I don’t think we can yet say we got lucky with the vaccines. We may be setting ourselves up for something that mutates as quickly as a flu strain (prior recorded rates of coronavirus mutation were based on quickly contained SARS and MERS) and becames as infectious as measles.
Chicago Clubs
There won’t be any evidence, strong or otherwise, of sterilizing immunity from the vaccines because as GM says above the vaccines we have don’t provide it.
Jeremy
Or – you could end this within a couple of weeks.
Sheesh.
https://c19ivermectin.com/
And did anyone notice how the WHO recently changed the age-old definition of ‘herd immunity’.
https://tinyurl.com/y9jgqx3f
So much about this whole affair just stinks,
A confluence of interests indeed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2020/12/23/meet-the-50-doctors-scientists-and-healthcare-entrepreneurs-who-became-pandemic-billionaires-in-2020/?
Bob Hertz
I can’t quite buy the assertion that Apple-and-Amazon elites were directing the pandemic response (or lack of same), as a means of taking over small businesses.
Here is what I think really happened:
1. The hospitality industry had to be shut down for health reasons (in virtually every country).
2. Most small businesses have very little in savings.
3. There was no quick cash program ready to go off the shelf in America. Only a stumbling Congressional debate. And no unions to co-ordinate unemployment benefits.
I have no love for the Amazon elite, but they did not cause this state of affairs (it pre-dates them by decades.)
The munition makers did not start World War I, though of course they profited mightily from it.
That is my view of history.
Keep up this great blog!
Dan Lynch
Sure, the covid vaccines will have to continually evolve to keep up with the latest mutations, similar to flu vaccines, but flu vaccines do save lives, and ditto the vaccines for other viruses, so I’m not feeling GM’s pessimism.
By summer 2021 any American who wants to be vaccinated, will be vaccinated. From that point onward I’m not going to have a lot of sympathy for Americans who opt out of the vaccine. Maybe society will be better off without them? Also, while I don’t see American politicians requiring vaccination, I would have no problem if they did. Some jurisdictions already require vaccinations for school children, so the precedent is there and could be extended to nursing homes and hospitals. U.S. employers have a legal right to require vaccination, and I suspect some of them will — Walmart, Amazon, McDonalds — so eventually the anti-vaxxers will either cave or die off.
Meanwhile, global warming is still a thing and it’s going to kill us even though we’re probably going to survive covid.
NR
GM,
Something to consider about the COVID vaccines is that they all target the virus’s spike protein (the spike protein is what allows the virus to attach to certain receptors on cells and infect them). And there is only so much that the spike protein can change without becoming unable to infect cells anymore. So it may be the case that infinte mutations to evade vaccines isn’t possible in this case.
Ten Bears
Trump Flu, Trump Bug, Trump Virus; Trump Plague, Trump Pandemic. Whatever.
He opened the door, let it in, gave it time to spread; continued/continues to give it time to spread, is doing everything he can to ensure its continued spread. Trump owns this. By whatever nym.
I’m still not at all unconvinced it didn’t come out of a bio-weapons lab in Cincinnati.
Didn’t have to be this way.
Stirling S Newberry
Good response GM.
NR
Also, apparently there’s no evidence that the South Africa strain is more dangerous than the UK strain.
https://www.nicd.ac.za/no-evidence-that-501-v2-variant-is-more-dangerous-than-uk-variant/
S Brennan
Back at the end of April the DNC dominated editorial board of Newsweek tried to shed a little light on the source of Covid-19…and a little bit about the man that originally told American that Covid-19 “was not a concern”; the man who bamboozled Americans into not wearing face masks for three months is also the same guy who funded the Wuhan Labs work on gain-of-function work. Only Trump is to blame…or so say our resident propagandists and anybody who says otherwise is censored in flurry of comments. Here, once again is the story that should’ve been headlines for weeks.
—————————————————
“Americans trust Fauci more than Trump…
But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research which included gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019. [which, as luck would have it, was when the pandemic started].
Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.
SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats.
U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus could only have occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab.
At this point most scientists say it’s possible—but not likely—that the pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.”
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741
Hugh
In 1962, there was a massive vaccination using the Sabin oral vaccine against polio. It was for both children and adults.
The name coronavirus refers to the virus’ crown /corona, or spike. As NR notes, the spike is how the virus attaches to cells. If the virus can’t attach to enter a cell and use its machinery, the virus can’t reproduce and that means no more virus. So the spike will tend to be a conservative element and not mutate significantly.
The HIT and R naught are dynamic and not particularly well known with covid-19. But vaccines and the return of good weather in the spring and summer should reduce both, which is good.
GlassHammer
As we lurch from one crisis to the next, the days feel longer and the years feel shorter.
A crooked sense of time has set in.
A byproduct of too many hours spent in one’s own head.
This is what normalization feels like, what it always feels like.
GM
Well, there is the problem — there is a very serious mismatch between the number of those who want to be vaccinated and the much larger number of people that need to be vaccinated for herd immunity to be reached.
And what I am really skeptical about is that number going up in subsequent rounds of mass immunization — it is more likely that it will in fact go down.
bruce wilder
The whole vaccine development and distribution project is playing out in what is rapidly becoming a classic American fashion: the financially motivated, corrupt and incompetent elite oversell a seriously deficient program, and the people divide between a paranoid faction on the one hand who think in terms of conspiracy and scientifically illiterate mcguffins, and on the other, pious and self-satisfied fools who praise the scientists and advocate blind faith “in the science” while expressing contempt for less educated but genuinely concerned citizens.
Kfish
With all due respect to New Zealand and Taiwan, being an island nation is a significant advantage. Here in Australia we have that advantage plus a good dose of xenophobia which made ‘shut the borders’ a politically palatable solution. But all of these nations also had a welfare system that could pay people to stay home.
GM
It is an advantage, but Vietnam is not an island and it is right next to China.
And, of course, China itself is located within, well, China.
All of those places would have long forgotten about COVID if it wasn’t for the complete dysfunction of other countries, for where it keeps getting reimported
bruce wilder
How many people really grasp the critical importance of radical, collective mobilization early on. There was a window of time from the first realization of what was happening in late December or early January, when a major effort on many fronts could pay off. Mobilizing testing on a massive scale, mobilizing PPE provision, lockdowns including resources to allow isolation away from family.
Policymakers in the U.S. did not approach any with either urgency or ambition. They saw the problem as a narrow one of preserving hospital treatment capacity thru an unstoppable pandemic. If you do not even consider stopping contagion as a possibility, you do not try.
The goal-setting implied that the disease would become endemic. I am in Southern California where it is very, very bad now. As bad as it is, I would not myself cooperate in the kind of severe lockdown Ian is endorsing. It would not work to stem the spread. People are passing it on at home. We were shown “the cruise ship model” early on and it does not stop this virus. Certainly not once more than 1 in 100 are actively contagious. Clapping harder does not help.
GM
And that is another reason nothing was done — the last time there was serious collective mobilization was during WWII, and regular people got 30 years of general prosperity and downwards wealth redistribution out of it.
“Collective mobilization” means clearly showing people that things can be done in the name of the common good. But you have just spent 40+ years indoctrinating everyone susceptible to indoctrination that there is no such thing as society, there is only a market, etc. — you cannot afford to undo all that hard earned progress in order to fight the virus and save lives (lives that you absolutely don’t care about anyway). And who knows, people might get even more radical ideas out of the experience. Too dangerous.
What is the alternative though? “Living with the virus”? There can be no such thing with this particular virus for the next few decades — eventually natural selection might lead to some sort of coadaptation, as it has in the past, but that will take an untold number of millions lives lost and will completely ruin multiple generations.
You are also wrong it will not work. It will work, guaranteed, it is a matter of maintaining it for sufficiently long. But the duration can at this point be greatly cut down by mass testing — you lock down hard but you also test everyone in order to isolate the infected. Which is what China is doing (as usual in 2020, showing how things can be done to actually solve the problem).
It can be done, there isn’t really a technical problem here, all that is needed is the political will to do what has to be done.
someofparts
If the people being vaccinated can contract and spread the virus without getting sick they are a menace to anyone who has not been vaccinated.
Stirling S Newberry
“And that is another reason nothing was done — the last time there was serious collective mobilization was during WWII, and regular people got 30 years of general prosperity and downwards wealth redistribution out of it.”
No, the 1960s were another moment of radical action.
Klv
Ten Bears,
> One out of every 1,500 Americans over the age of 25 is hospitalized for Covid.
> One out of every thousand (1,000) are dead.
> It didn’t have to be this way.
> The Trump Plague
Sorry, but this is a meaningless statistics, because covid-19 is not an equal-opportunity killer. It has a very particular preference for striking down people – old and sick (pre-existing medical conditions).
If me and Jeff Bezos met up in a bar, the average wealth of the people in the bar would be like $10+ billion dollars, but he would be filthy rich and I would be on a different scale. But yeah, on the average everybody would be set for life; never need to work, etc…..
Klv
Ten Bear,
> Trump Flu, Trump Bug, Trump Virus; Trump Plague, Trump Pandemic. Whatever.
> He opened the door, let it in, gave it time to spread; continued/continues to give it time to
> spread, is doing everything he can to ensure its continued spread. Trump owns this. By
> whatever nym.
There is a big problem with this argument. If Trump was/is exceptionally bad at this, then US should be an outlier, it terms of number of cases & number of dead per 1 million, etc. But (BUT) the US is just totally average among the western countries. Draw a graph (pick a metric – number of case, number of dead per 1 million, etc.) and US is straight in the middle of the pack. Meaning there is nothing particularly wrong/different/substandard that the US did; all the other (western) countries are very much the same.
So the problem is not Trump per say. It more of western vs. eastern (Asian) approach.
> Ian Welsh
> This was a pro-active choice by our elites: they decided not to handle Covid.
I don’t think they “chose not to handle the Covid”. It is that stuff that works in eastern Asia (e.g. China, Vietnam) would never work in the US (or western world in general) (don’t bring up New Zealand; it is a special case – small isolated island). In Vietnam (which is run by a bunch of former communists) the people exist for the government; in the western world government exists for the people – government rules with the consent of the people; if a substantial minority of the people don’t go along, then there is no deal. If I wanted the governments boot on my neck, I would move to North Korea (or Vietnam).
The reason western elites are idiots is that they don’t understand that half-measures don’t work – either you do the Swedish thing (no lock-down) or the Vietnamese thing (total lockdown/control/testing/tracking). In the western world we have the worst of both worlds – lockdowns that don’t work – economy wrecked and virus still out of control.
S Brennan
“No, the 1960s were another moment of radical action.”
If you refer to the civil rights movement, that began pre-WWII and culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights act which, just this past summer was ruled to include all minorities, thus ending the struggle for equal standing [today’s “liberal” disdained the SC ruling, a Republican wrote it and for neoD’s it’s one less non-economic bogyman to keep folks on the plantation].
If you refer to the anti-war [really, middle-class draft-dodging] movement, that was the late 60’s and as soon as the threat of the middle-class having to serve their country in war was over, the “moment of radical action” morphed into, for those born 1935-1950 – “yeah-me”, the longest period of self-indulgent adolescence this nation has ever witnessed. Indeed, their selfishness is not over yet.
That particular “yeah me” generation’s disregard for what the FDR period 1932-1978 accomplished is legendary; Biden/Clinton are the pinnacle of that time period. And the neoD party is DOMINATED by the 1935-1950 generation…they almost lost power…but gosh darn it, Bernie and the #blameTrump4Covid campaign slogan kept them from being shoved onto the ice flow of time. Hell this comment section is dominated by Bernie to Biden “yeah-me” apologists.
js
In Vietnam the people exist for the government; in the western world the people exist for the corporations
fixed it for you
Temporarily Sane
@Klv
I don’t think they “chose not to handle the Covid”
Well, as you say they did the bare minimum. I just saw a clip from late February 2020 of the Dutch health minister reassuring people that there is absolutely no need to worry about Covid-19. In January 2020 a prominent think tank (its name escapes me at the moment) published a paper that ranked countries’ pandemic preparedness. The US and UK were #1 and #2 respectively, while China was at…#57. In the US and Canada federal and state/provincial governments were blasé about Covid until it exploded in northern Italy in early March and it became impossible to ignore. They then went into panic mode and implemented half-assed measures primarily to prevent the healthcare system from getting overwhelmed.
It’s clear most, if not, all governments in the “advanced” countries of Europe and North America did the absolute minimum possible to halt the spread virus and that they were convinced until the last minute that it wasn’t going to be a big deal. At they beginning there was a lot of flip-flopping over the efficacy of masks, how the virus is transmitted and the probability of a vaccine being produced in the near future. (Masks don’t work, just wash your hands prolifically and there will be no vaccine for at least two years was the initial message in March 2020.)
The reason the response was, and is, so hackneyed is…neoliberalism. As an ideology it’s not equipped to handle large scale public health emergencies where the profit potential for private operators is minimal. Hence, the system faltered and its limitations were glaringly revealed. It was decided early on to wait for a vaccine and in the meantime letting the virus run rampant, making sure hospitals and ICU’s aren’t overwhelmed. The “herd immunity” approach Boris Johnson was ridiculed for became the default across the west and the ongoing second wave of the virus beginning in fall 2020 was the result.
Everything about the response to Covid-19 is a bungled mess. The reason the vaccines are now being giddily hyped by the media is because they are making big pharma shareholders very rich. But at the same time people aren’t being told what these vaccines actually do. But who cares because a few people are making lots of money from them so it’s important to convince the public to unquestioningly roll up their sleeves and get the jab.
The Covid pandemic has shown that neoliberalism isn’t fit for purpose and that many western countries are only a crisis away from becoming failed states.
S Brennan
I agree with what KLV said:
“If Trump was/is exceptionally bad at this, then US should be an outlier, it terms of number of cases & number of dead per 1 million, etc. But (BUT) the US is just totally average among the western countries. Draw a graph (pick a metric – number of case, number of dead per 1 million, etc.) and US is straight in the middle of the pack. Meaning there is nothing particularly wrong/different/substandard that the US did; all the other (western) countries are very much the same.”
———————————–
I have tried for months to convince Ian Welsh [not a partisan hack but…it’s hard not to be influenced by the endless stream of electioneering commentary] that the numbers do not indicate anything exceptional happened in the US except Covid was used as a political cudgel by neoDs who had nothing else to run on.
Again, for the umpteenth time, the USA has the largest air traffic miles flown of any country by almost a factor of two.
Multiply numbers below by 1000. UK/Ireland/United Arab Emirates are transfer hubs not destinations. Notice the whole factors between countries. And remember, China shutdown it’s internal state run airlines by Jan 2020. With the exception of medical experts on this blog, air travel is recognized as the most important vector in transmission of infectious airborne disease.
United States – 926,737.00
China- 659,629.07
Ireland -170,161.85
India – 167,499.12
United Kingdom- 142,392.53
Japan – 130,233.35
Russian Federation – 115,482.74
Turkey – 111,028.63
Germany – 109,633.75
Brazil – 102,917.55
Canada – 93,352.00
United Arab Emirates – 92,798.73
Korea, Rep – 92,434.08
Indonesia – 91,323.15
Spain – 88,237.17
Thailand – 78,227.31
Australia – 76,850.60
France – 71,289.28
Mexico – 69,937.84
Malaysia – 63,623.13
Vietnam – 53,227.03
Philippines – 47,776.89
Austria – 46,476.60
Hong Kong – 46,469.86
Netherlands – 46,358.46
And I skip down to NZ because of the the ridiculous assertions made on this blog.
New Zealand – 17,763.60
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_airline_passengers
Klv
js
> In Vietnam the people exist for the government; in the western world the people
> exist for the corporations
Thank you. This is a more accurate way of putting it.
bruce wilder
I agree with the narrative account provided by Temporarily Sane. And, I also agree with the point I think S Brennan is making about air travel and the special challenges the U.S. faced in being at the center of international air travel and a densely networked continent-sized country. Given the feeble early response of public health authorities, bollixed by neoliberalism, not much since has been effective at anything much more than damaging the economy in ways that benefit the extremely wealthy and giant business corporations.
I do think this anecdote from (I think this is Yves Smith writing, not sure)
I call this the cruise ship model and it is a formula for an epidemic spreading uncontrolled across the whole country.
I can roll my eyes at the moral carelessness of this guy or sympathize with his attachment to family. For myself, I am enough of a loner to tolerate isolation better and enough of a conformist to behave somewhat more responsibly, but I am personally worn out and living at ground zero. I know I would not support a more severe lockdown. There is such a thing as too little, too late. Doubling down on failed policies is what America does, so I expect that and worse from Biden, whose first concern is likely to be the abstraction of the federal deficit (standing in for the imperative of upward income and wealth redistribution), but at least he’s not Trump-Hitler, right?
S Brennan
Yes well if you read Hugh/Willey/10-feathers you KNOW that Trump is solely to blame for every single death from covid, even those people who died of gunshot woulds that were later classified as a covid deaths are blamed on Trump
Yes, it was Trump not…Oxiris Barbot, New York City Health Commissioner who said:
“Currently, the risk for novel coronavirus in New York City remains low, while our preparedness as a city remains high. There is no reason to avoid public settings, including subways and—most of all—our city’s famous Chinese restaurants and small businesses,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot. “While it is understandable for some New Yorkers to feel concerned about the novel coronavirus situation, we cannot stand for racist and stigmatizing rhetoric….We know that this virus can be transmitted from one individual to another, but that it is typically people who live together. There is no risk at this point in time…about having it being transmitted in casual contact.” Earlier in the month, Barbot encouraged residents to attend the Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown.
Yes, it was Trump not…Congresswoman Grace Meng who said:
“My message to people: come to Flushing! It is a dynamic and thriving community and it’s open for business,” said Congresswoman Grace Meng. “The area has so much to offer from fantastic restaurants and shops to exceptional markets and entertainment. Tourists and many from outside the area often come to Flushing to experience this outstanding food, culture and fun, and we want that to continue in spite of the concern about coronavirus”
Yes, it was Trump not…Councilman Mark Levine, head of the health committee
Who attended the Lunar New Year parade on February 9 and urged his constituents to join him.
Yes, it was Trump not…Anthony Fauci who said:
“There is no reason for American citizens to be concerned [referring to covid] at this time” this just after the Trump administration banned flights from China. [Not only was he, Fauci, wrong medically, he was attempting to make Trump appear as if he was over reacting.]
And finally, it was Trump not…Fauci who:
In late February and early March advised Americans against wearing masks.
Yeah, yeah, that’s the way it happened. And hey if you fact check “did Fauci say the above” you will find that factcheckers say that they are false statement even though there is video and multiple transcripts…who you gonna believe, a fact-checker or your bleeping eyes? We swim in a sea of propaganda. This comment section use to be a refuge but no more.