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The Ugly Politics of COVID-19's Birth
The Ugly Politics of COVID-19's Birth
China’s COVID-19 coverup continues. Earlier today (July 22), Chinese officials firmly rejected a request by the World Health Organization (WHO) to grant access to laboratories in the area the novel coronavirus was first identified. China’s deputy health minister says the request shows “disrespect for common sense and arrogance toward science.” Beijing did allow WHO investigators to visit the city of Wuhan back in January, but its bureaucrats say there’s no need to investigate labs, because Chinese authorities have already ruled them out as a source of the virus.
When future historians write about COVID-19 and this global pandemic, they’ll lead with the losses—human and economic. The number of dead. The economic toll. The debts incurred. The lasting damage.
But they’ll have to start the story from the beginning. Where exactly did COVID-19 come from? Most people around the world accept that it came from China, but was it the result of an animal biting a human, an accident for whom no one in power is directly responsible? Or did the virus escape from a research lab, casting blame squarely on the Chinese government for hiding the truth?
We don’t know. We’ll probably never know, because Chinese authorities, those who might be able to answer these questions, aren’t credible and won't give outsiders full access to study the evidence.
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Even if we can’t track the origin of the virus, we can trace the coverup. On December 27, 2019, a doctor in China’s Hubei province reported to local authorities that he’d encountered a disease with dangerous respiratory symptoms. Doctors in Wuhan, Hubei’s largest city, began discussing their fears on social media. After monitoring their conversation, China’s public security service summoned Dr. Li Wenliang and accused him of “making false comments” and disturbing social order. They then arrested others for “spreading rumors.” Dr. Li later became one of COVID-19’s first casualties.
When a Chinese scientist sequenced the coronavirus’ genome on January 5, 2020, Beijing blocked him from publishing his finding. It was an Australian scientist who arranged for online publication of the genome on January 11 after receiving it secretly from a Chinese colleague. Today, experts accuse China of continuing to frustrate the ability of the WHO, and everyone else, to get at the truth.
COVID-19 and the global emergency its variants continue to create leave world leaders with a problem: How to demand accountability from the authoritarian government of one of the world’s most powerful countries (not to mention commercial partner), one which sees secrecy as essential to survival?
The Biden administration has made its choice. The new US president has called for a full investigation into the so-called "Lab Leak Theory," which posits that the negligence of Chinese scientists accidentally unleashed COVID-19 on the world. Washington’s line isn’t surprising. It comes at a time of US-China trade and technology wars. President Biden has continued the more confrontational approach toward Beijing advanced by former President Trump. Biden’s lead Asia advisor says the “era of engagement” with China is over. Competition is now the norm, and the risk of conflict, in various forms, is on the rise.
European leaders are none too happy with Beijing either. “The world has the right to know exactly what happened in order to be able to learn the lessons," said European Council head Charles Michel in early June. An EU-US summit then called for “progress on a transparent, evidence-based and expert-led WHO-convened phase 2 study on the origins of COVID-19, that is free from interference.”
Beijing’s credibility is even taking a hit in countries that are far more dependent on good economic relations with China. More than 90 countries are using vaccines created by Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech, China’s vaccine makers. The New York Times reported in June that though Chile, Mongolia, Bahrain, and the Seychelles have inoculated higher percentages of their populations than the United States, these four countries on the list of top ten worst current COVID-19 outbreaks in the world. That’s why the dozens of countries that have depended on Chinese-made jabs are worried that COVID-19 variants may kill a lot more their people and force many more lockdowns in coming months.
There’s little the US and Europe can do to force China to become more transparent. Smaller countries, increasingly dependent on good commercial relations with China, have even less leverage. We know that China is unlikely to become less secretive whenever its leaders believe the ruling party’s image and their hold on power face a serious threat.
But we also know that COVID-19 isn’t the last novel coronavirus we’ll see. For all its ongoing damage, COVID-19 was much more infectious but less deadly than severe acute respiratory syndrome (2003), Avian Influenza strains like H7N9 (2013) and H5N1 (2014) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (2019). Combine the transmissibility of COVID-19 with the lethality of any of those other viruses, and the next pandemic would be far worse than the one we’re battling now.
The pandemic has surely taught China’s leaders a valuable lesson. Whether they’ll ever admit it publicly, they must know that, with help from the WHO, they could have done much more to contain this virus in those first few dangerous days. Their international reputation would have taken a short-term hit that would now be long forgotten by most of the world’s people. Compare that with the hit China is taking.
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The myth of feeling safe from the pandemic: former CDC chief Tom Frieden
Although COVID will likely become endemic sometime this year in some parts of the world, the virus will still rage on everywhere else.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer catches out on the pandemic's state of play with former CDC chief Tom Frieden, who has a message for everyone who hasn't gotten vaxxed yet: do it, since new variants could emerge and make the virus more deadly.
Frieden says he's stunned by how infectious COVID is compared to other diseases — and that's why those who claim they can predict what's going to happen in a few weeks don't know what they're talking about.
Frieden thinks China should get better vaccines to the most vulnerable, and accept "almost" zero-COVID, like Singapore.
If we've learned anything from COVID, it's that we need to invest a lot more in public health. And now that many parts of the world have moved on from COVID, should we be worried about monkeypox?
Certainly, but we need to know more about the disease, Frieden tells Bremmer.
COVID ain't over
We're not done with the pandemic — yet.
In the US, infections are up five-fold from a year ago, although both hospitalizations are down.
Although COVID will likely become endemic sometime this year in some parts of the world, the virus will still rage on everywhere else.
China's zero-COVID strategy is having a tremendous cost, while barely 17.4% of Africans are vaccinated. That bodes well for new variants.
Meanwhile, rich countries keep hoarding jabs, now also against monkeypox. Did we not learn anything after more than two years?
Watch the GZERO World episode: How depoliticizing the US health response will save lives (COVID isn't over)
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US ends federal mask mandate; COVID protection is personal responsibility
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses the end of federal mask mandates:
What are the implications of the end of the federal mask mandate?
A federal judge in Florida this week ruled that President Biden's order requiring masks, facial coverings on federally regulated forms of transportation, including planes, buses, and trains is unlawful and should not be enforced. The mask mandate was the most visible and impactful mandate handed down by President Biden, who campaigned in 2020 on doing more than his predecessor, Donald Trump to stop the spread of the virus, but was really limited by the limited authorities the federal government has to take drastic measures to control public safety, most of which are controlled by the states. This is the latest setback to Biden's pandemic policies. Earlier this year, a federal judge said that he did not have the ability to impose a vaccine mandate for large employers. And at this point, Biden lacks both the policy tools and the political standing to do much else.
Polling indicates that Americans are done with the pandemic. The pandemic has dropped precipitously as a number one concern for voters who now say, they're more worried about things like inflation, immigration, crime, and more broadly healthcare. Air travel's hovering at about 90% of where it was from pre-pandemic levels and mobility data suggests that people are largely returning to their pre-pandemic routines.
One thing that has not happened, however, is a return to office: data from the largest cities shows that fewer than half of workers nationwide are returning to their pre-pandemic commuting patterns, which could end up being one of the more enduring shifts on public behavior coming out of the pandemic.
When it comes to masks, there's massive partisan splits in the polling, as there is many things, with Democrats and the vaccinated generally saying they support mask mandates when you're out and about with other people, and Republicans and the unvaccinated saying that they're largely against them.
Regardless, the Biden administration is unlikely to appeal this ruling and the mask mandates on planes is unlikely to come back. Case counts are low. The new variants are relatively mild. Biden has bigger political fights to fight. And the benefits of universal indoor masking are too tenuous to make this worth his while. The US has now firmly pivoted to the view that protection from the virus is a personal responsibility, which is why you're going to see vulnerable people and people who worried about the virus continue to mask and social distance. And the rest of the population will continue to try to return their lives as normal. The US is still on track to record its one millionth death from COVID sometimes soon and most of these deaths, sadly will have come under President Biden, despite his campaign promise to get the virus under control.
The end of the affair (COVID edition)
Experts say that the omicron wave may be what ends the acute phase of the pandemic. But one couple isn't ready to let go just yet.
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Biden administration's COVID response likely to impact midterms
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses the Biden administration's response to the omicron variant:
How is the Biden administration's response to omicron?
Well, it hasn't been great. It started with the travel ban from affected countries that was already probably behind the curve given how widespread the variant was and the administration admitted they did not see this new variant coming. They were caught flat-footed on the surge in demand for testing over the holidays. And while they first promised to make tests reimbursable by insurance, which is, of course, a real pleasure for Americans who love to deal with their insurance companies, they then said they were going to make 500 million tests available for free, but this isn't even enough to have two tests for every American. And news came out that they were instead of investing in increased manufacturing capacity, what they were doing was going to purchase surplus tests, which could exacerbate private sector shortages. But probably, more importantly, it means that the new free tests were going to arrive probably after the current surge in cases is over.
The CDC changed its guidance last month to say that instead of isolating for 10 days, people should isolate for only five. And this was done in order to minimize economic disruptions instead of for public health reasons, which led to criticisms of the administration that they were no longer following the "science" as they promised to at the beginning of the administration.
The administration's top infectious disease specialist, Anthony Fauci, this week made headlines for sparring with Republican Senators at a congressional hearing and not for his public health advice. And the CDC Director seems to only get attention for her missteps and misstatements at this point. The administration's strategy seems to boil down to hope that this thing goes away quickly. Their vaccine mandate looks like it could be overturned by the courts any day now and it's unclear if the mandate's even worth doing given how many vaccinated people are catching the omicron variant and then being forced to isolate anyway. The US is probably running up against its natural limit of who's willing to get vaccinated at this point and it's unclear how many more people are going to get their first shot.
Now, at the same time, the fiscal response is starting to slow as some of the extraordinary pandemic measures start to run off and it doesn't look like the Biden administration's going to be able to push a lot of new spending through Congress with the Build Back Better agenda stalled. Biden's approval has dragged all year because of COVID and right now he's in the low 40s and high 30s, which is right around where President Trump was, even though he started last year at about 55% approval. So this has been a real problem for him but at this point the pandemic response comes down to individual caution and states, who have been doing a much better job getting out free tests to individuals but are saying they are not going to impose any new lockdown measures because of the political unpopularity of this. Rough time for President Biden, probably going to affect the Democrats in the midterm elections.
The Graphic Truth: Omicron dominates America
And just like that, omicron is everywhere in the US. The COVID variant, barely known just a few weeks ago, now accounts for three-quarters of all cases in America, and has quickly outpaced the once-dominant delta. Cases are spreading like wildfire, particularly in Florida, Washington DC, New York, and New Jersey — all of which have recorded massive hikes in recent days. We take a look at what percentage of all cases in the US are now from omicron, as well as the change in daily COVID cases nationwide.
The delta skelter song
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