Is the U.S. ready for another pandemic?
From an Opinion Today: “Is the U.S. ready for another pandemic?” in the New York Times. This is the question posed in the column of the New York Times by Eliza Barclay[1] February 24th.
The issue of health and safety has become too politicized for the USA to ever again properly respond to a pandemic. Heck, we can’t even respond to rising health care costs by implementing single-payer coverage and cost control negotiations! Per statistics, health spending per person in the U.S. was $12,914 in 2021, which was over $5,000 more than any other high-income nation (such as England, Germany, France, the nordic nations). The average amount spent on health per person in comparable countries ($6,125) is less than half of what the U.S. spends per person! We pay more and get less. The difference is profits to insurance companies which each garner billions in PROFIT!
For a brief moment of time, relatively speaking, the USA did indeed have ‘single payer’ health care coverage, albeit narrow and only Covid related. Covid tests were no charge to patient as were vaccinations. This will end May 11th and we will be back to enriching health insurance companies and providers.
But back to pandemics. Covid was novel, a pandemic not seen in 100 years. The science was evolving. Politicians and health experts were going by the best information at a given time. But leave it to Bret Stephens of the NYTimes to cite an article with the misleading (and hindsight riddled) title “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” In the interview he cites, the interviewer put it this way: “Jefferson doesn’t grant many interviews with journalists — he doesn’t trust the media.” Uh, okay.
The scientist interviewed was Tom Jefferson who claims the sterilization of surfaces. Except we know covid was air-transported and surface infections were rare, if even possible! He then goes on to say, regarding masks, “ It’s possible they could work in some settings…” This guy simply strikes me as a curmudgeon. One of the few “experts” trotted out for political fodder even as he claims those wanting masks used are the one’s who policized them! Talk about gas-lighting!
As usual, the Fauci statements on masks are taken out of context. And I blame Fauci to some extent for poor messaging. But he is a scientist, not a publicist. His original argument against masking in general was due to a lack of N95 masks which at the time were considered the only effective means. Once more virologists understood transmission, which Jefferson dismisses, ordinary masks in tandem with other features such as social distancing creating the “swiss cheese” model became recommended. Jefferson also dismisses the ‘swiss cheese’ model.
The study cited by Stephens is from Cochrane, so of course Stephens cherrypicked the study he wanted to present. A Health Feedback review of Cochrane is titled “Multiple studies show that face masks reduce the spread of COVID-19; a Cochrane review doesn’t demonstrate otherwise.” Well that sounds definitive. In any event, it appears the Cochrane ‘randomized study’ was not broad enough to actually draw the conclusion pushed by Jefferson and Stephens!
Stephens closes his column with the statement: “But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy.” Nobody said that ever. But “do something” has always been part of the American mindset. In this case, even if we assume masks did nothing, that ‘do something’ should have lent unity for the public in the face of a deadly pandemic. An action that said “we are all in this together.” But no. It immediately became politicized for political gain, NOT for health reasons. The side saying “no mask mandate because that is government over-reach” ALSO did not have any SCIENCE on their side either. Their position was entirely political, not health related.
As an aside, I found out a former co-worker from a company I worked for years ago died of covid. He was the typical “government over-reach” polemicist, continually railing on about the Leviathon [4] which for a smart guy that he was, he had it backward! His view of Leviathon was too strong a central government. But Hobbes advocated an absolute sovereign. My colleagues’ rants were the same anti-government attitude of uber-lassiez faire, libertarian nonsense in which our REPRESENTATIVE government is now an absolute- which it clearly is not, objectively. He, of course, would likely not have worn a mask- no governor was going to tell him what to do. He probably mixed in large groups regularly, defying distancing recommendations.
We need to resurrect the pandemic response team, give it a measure of political independence. We need to do the same for the NIH and CDC. Stockpiles of masks and other physical medical equipment need to be built up and staged around the nation. Fortunately, we have the ability to quickly ramp up vaccine production with the mRNA process.
For those that do not know, the arguments that mRNA was “new technology” was completey false! mRNA was discovered in 1987! It has been developed and used on diseases for three decades before the Covid pandemic. So the science was already there. It was merely a matter of scaling up production once the Covid virus was analyzed. The Johnson&Johnson vaccine was ALSO not ‘new’ as it was developed using old school process of a portion of the inert virus to stimulate an immune response. Using the actual virus as a vaccine goes back to the Revolutionary War when George Washington had American troops vaccinated against small pox using, at the time, small amount of live virus.[6]
So now comes ‘bird flu’ or Avian Influenza. Cambodia this week reported one death of a girl infected with H5N1. We know numerous other mammals got infected with Covid. Virus jump species. That’s what they do.
As of last November, 52 million birds have died of the virus and 1.8 million egg laying chickens have been slaughtered to slow the pandemic among birds[7], particularly chicken flocks. People are only recently taking notice due to the rise of egg prices which also, of course, have been politicized as somehow the fault of the current president.
Last year, Colorado health officials reported a human death from Avian Flu.[8] Fortunately the man, an inmate working with poultry, suffered only fatigue and was given antiviral drugs to recover.
But the question remains. Even IF avian flu turns out to be a big nothing in terms of pandemics, should we actually encounter another pandemic- will the USA be ready?
Frankly, in my opinioin: NO!
[2]
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/opinion/do-mask-mandates-work.html?
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)
[5]
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
[8]
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/colorado-reports-nations-first-human-h5-avian-flu-infection
