The second wave
For obvious reasons, certain international events (I am not talking rugby here) have trumped the pandemic (forgive me for bad pun) over the past week. As every writer in the world seems to have felt it necessary to express their opinions on these events over the past couple of days, I won’t bother. Except to say, in the new post-Trumpian language of moderation and consensus, that I am very pleased and slightly apprehensive about the next few weeks.
So having got that out of the way, can we please once again turn our urgent attention to the galloping pandemic? About two weeks ago, I wrote that the daily tally of known cases internationally hit a new high of 444,000. I then mentioned it had gone up to over 500,000. As of yesterday, these records had been smashed by a daily tally of 642,000. At the current rate it will soon be a million a day.
Tomorrow, the number of reported global cases will reach 50 million. In the USA, in two day’s time the case tally will be 10 million, rising by 127,000 yesterday (about 85 new cases a minute). A thousand people per day are dying in the USA from the Covid.
Only in China, it seems, plus Taiwan, New Zealand and a few other countries, is there the will and the means to battle the pandemic. The rest of the world seems to have almost given up. In the first phase, February to May, most countries practiced mitigation strategies such as lockdown and social distancing, reinforced by public health messaging, which worked well, but temporarily.
Looking back, I think that we now have to consider this period the phony war. While it seemed at the time that cases were raging, and there were many deaths, the numbers have been dwarfed already by the second wave.
From May onwards, in what might be called the interregnum, many countries dithered, argued and protested against government lockdowns, and many governments took the view that continuing economic activity was crucial. During this period, we saw surges in the USA (almost a second wave), Brazil and increasingly in India and other countries that were less affected at first.
Now the world is heavily into phase two, which might really be called the ‘real’ phase. The petit pandemic has been followed by its full-force successor. As noted above, the US number are terrifying. Europe is in huge trouble as numbers surge with the winter. In the UK, there is now a full lockdown, although this has worrying cracks such as schools and tertiary institutions still being open. Also, England’s lockdown in scheduled to end on 2 December, which is hardly enough time to get the numbers down. It might provide a Christmas respite, but numbers are set to surge again in January.
We will find out in the next 3-4 months what history will eventually say about this pandemic. At best, the books might read “2 million people died, before an effective vaccine was able to slow and eventually stop the Covid 19 pandemic”.
If the vaccines are not as effective as hoped, or they cannot be manufactured in large enough numbers, or countries are held to financial ransom, things will get much worse than this.
We are one of the countries that has shown that clear messages, stringent lockdowns, excellent tracking and tracing, good quality scientific advice, a ‘swiss cheese’ model of multiple shields and so can eliminate the virus and continue to be effective. We have followed scientific advice which was just not available to our ancestors. We have mostly shown patience and endurance.
Why can’t other countries use the same tried and true methods? We know that they would work. But confusion, fear of economic loss, political confusion, lack of leadership and a simple failure to apply and support what is needed has caused thousands to needlessly die. Humans now know how to contain a novel virus, but whether that knowledge will be applied to save the human race in the future remains to be seen.
Dr Liz Gordon is a researcher and a barrister, with interests in destroying neo-liberalism in all its forms and moving towards a socially just society. She usually blogs on justice, social welfare and education topics.
We made a mess of it like everyone else. For example we would not let people from Iran in initially but Italy was fine. Then we let movie types in under an exemption. Then we chased people with the virus round the country. People in isolation were possibly exposed to new arrivals. Sorry but where’s the excellence exactly?
Its worth noting too this is nowhere near as bad as the Spanish flu epidemic. Over 200+ million people would have to have died adjusted for today’s global population for this contagion to meet that criteria. Thankfully the majority of people who contract it recover save the elderly and sick. We don’t have the true numbers as a lot of decisions as to what someone died from are guess work. What is clear is the frail and compromised need special care and conditions to keep them safe. That’s where our attention should be.
The reason that this was not as bad as the Spanish flu is that there were no public health measures available in 1918, the virus was carried on repatriation ships for troops and few mitigation factors were available. The excellence is in the fact that, in a world raging with the Covid, NZ has managed to pursue a policy of eliminating the virus in our community, and has strong measures in place to stop its re-emergence (track and trace etc).
I do not agree with your policy to let it range freely and protect (i.e. confine to their homes) the vulnerable. That means the old, the sick, people with disabilities etc are to be locked up so that healthy can have free run of the world. Good grief! Might as well just shoot them now!
“a ‘swiss cheese’ model of multiple shields ”
Swiss cheese is full of holes, hardly apt for a description of an adequate shield. Did you mean Swiss (army) knife?
Hi Richard
No, do look it up. The idea is that Emmental does have holes, but in a range of different places, so each ‘slice’ has holes, but stick a number of slices together and they are all covered up. So every thing we do – hand washing, mask wearing, using the app, social distancing, test and trace, quarantine and so on, adds a further layer of protection. Each layer has flaws in itself (no protection is absolute), but together they are /should be impermeable. I think it is a great analogy and empowers each of us to put our own protections around us, which we now need, given the nature of the pandemic. Look up ‘Wiles emmental’ on a search engine.
If you change a few words here and there Dr. Liz, then you could be describing mankind’s response to climate change. Are humans capable of doing what’s right when money is involved? We have the intelligence, and yet we are so dumb?
I agree our health response was amazeballs. I’m encouraged that given resources our ministry can come up with something functional (I work in acute psych, I know what disfunction looks like).
We made a helluva good decision early.
It’s kind of beyond my imagination how countries with it there in such numbers can cope.
Pretty hard for me to compare our success with their failure.
Are the other countries offering compensation at our levels for lockdown?
Seem to recall Boris was offering loans for renters.
Liz, I totally agree with you re the second phase, and the effectiveness of the Swiss cheese model. And until now New Zealand’s containment of the virus has also been successful largely because most people cooperated well in following fairly basic sort of rules. This could change.
We already had a growing number of people living harsh lives under trickle-down practices, where all that trickles down are the rat droppings in the ceiling.
Any unexpected event, such as the current civil defence emergency in Napier, can cause mayhem in the lives of people already under pressure. The continuing effects of climate change will inevitably alter the social dynamics which have served us well so far.
If people voted Labour because government policy helped save them from what we are witnessing happening overseas, this may suggest that most people’s main interest is self-preservation, i.e., that most people are selfish. I like to think that this is not true of NZ Maori, whose philosophical community focus I have long envied, but it may be true of others. A further virus outbreak, is possibly inevitable. It can’t be assumed that an effective virus will be readily available with a mutating virus, and therefore we do have to learn to live with it.
The physical realities of doing so, combined with the increasing number of people trying to cope with financial stressors, plus the likelihood of unpredictable weather events, means that social cohesion can no longer be assumed. It is the people at the bottom who may be impacted upon the most, especially the women and children. This is a fairly compelling reason for govt to act pronto as requested by the NGO’s, simply in the interest of maintaining social stability, if nothing else. At this point I move onto the same page as GreenBus.
And seventy three days left of this delusional narcissist being left to control complete ! I!m not a loser! JUST TO PROVE, I have just Terminated the Minister off Defence of our Nation, and appointed one who will do as I deem, what has to be done about this fraud election. And still the proper elected President has to wait 73 days of possible if not probable Americans contacting Covid at the rate of at least ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND,PER DAY,as this sacked delusional narcissist sacked president refuses the truth, of losing.
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