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Can surveillance prevent the next pandemic?
While the Munich Security Conference was dominated by discussions about the ongoing war in Ukraine, there were many other critical issues on the table as the world faces converging crises. One of them was health security, and how nations can apply the lessons of the COVID pandemic to future public health threats.
On the sidelines of the 2023 MSC, GZERO’s Tony Maciulis spoke to Francis deSouza, CEO of the biotech company Illumina, about how countries and regions can better communicate to stop the spread of new pathogens and the road ahead for the rapidly growing genomics industry.
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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.
"We need to invest in public health," says former CDC director, lessons that "we better learn"
If we've learned anything from COVID, former CDC chief Tom Frieden says it's that we need to invest a lot more in public health.
"We need a renaissance in our public health system. We need a robust primary care system. And we need resilient populations," he tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Without good primary care, we can't get detect outbreaks, diagnose, treat, or vaccinate properly. Resilient populations means those that can withstand the shock of a pandemic because, for instance, chronic diseases are under control.
Trust is also an issue — and that's why Frieden wants the CDC to stay in Atlanta, far away from the White House.
Watch the GZERO World episode: How depoliticizing the US health response will save lives (COVID isn't over)
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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Chinese medical workers in protective suits wave at residents during a farewell ceremony in Changchun.
China is in a tough spot
This week, the head of the World Health Organization warned that China’s “zero-COVID” policy, which has left tens of millions of people locked inside their homes, is not “sustainable.” The Omicron variant is too transmissible to effectively isolate, and the cost of China’s lockdown strategy, for the country’s economy and the mental health of its people, is too high, warns the WHO.
But … also this week, a report from the peer-reviewed international scientific journal Nature Medicine warned that lifting the zero-COVID policy without taking a series of specific steps to mitigate the damage could create a COVID emergency on a scale the world hasn’t yet seen. More than 1.5 million would die within six months, according to the study, and demand for intensive care would be nearly 16 times greater than China’s hospitals can handle.
Limiting damage from a lifting of restrictions, according to the report, would demand the widespread availability of recently approved antivirals, more accurate testing, a lot more booster doses, and the vaccination of many more elderly people.
Analysts say a change in approach is highly unlikely. According to Michael Hirson, a China expert at Eurasia Group, China isn’t likely to take any major step away from a “dynamic zero-COVID” strategy of mass testing and strict quarantines to contain any outbreak of the virus. “For now, they’re more likely to tighten than to loosen,” says Hirson.
The stakes are growing, and not just for China. The uncertainty weighing on the entire global economy has many sources. Post-COVID damage to global supply chains and the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine on food and fuel prices are major contributors. But the effect of COVID lockdowns on the world’s second-largest economy, including on the more than 26 million people who live in Shanghai, the world’s busiest port, is also depressing growth expectations and stoking global inflation. By one estimate, dozens of cities responsible for about 30% of China’s economic output and a combined 290 million people (88% of the total US population) are currently under full or partial lockdown.
When measured strictly by the number of COVID deaths, China’s policy has been a big success. It has reported fewer than 14,000 COVID-related deaths. Even if the true number is significantly higher, that compares very well with the one million deaths that have now been reported in the US, a country with less than a quarter of China’s population. But the speed with which Omicron can move through a society that has no access to the world’s most effective vaccines and boosters – and little of the immunity that comes with much greater exposure to the virus – could generate an unprecedented emergency inside China over the next few months.
The economic, mental health, and potential political downside to sticking with an uncompromising lockdown strategy, however, comes at a cost. China’s government is encouraging already deeply indebted companies to continue borrowing to boost sagging economic growth, compounding a problem that can inflict long-lasting damage to China’s economy. The stresses of isolation are flooding mental health hotlines with calls. Angry messages are lighting up Chinese social media.
It’s all happening at a moment of historic political sensitivity in China. This fall, President Xi Jinping hopes to choreograph a Communist Party Congress that will set aside practices of the past to grant him an unprecedented third term as China’s leader. This week’s warnings make clear that Xi faces tough choices: stick with a policy that imposes pain on tens of millions of people and takes a large bite out of China’s economy or publicly shift course and adopt an uncertain new strategy.
China’s president is well aware that neither choice can guarantee that China avoids a health and economic crisis at the worst possible political moment.
FILE PHOTO of a F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the Argonauts of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 147, launches off the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) on Jan. 14, 2022.
Hard Numbers: South China Sea jet search, US economy surges, Cuban protesters charged, Africa gets vaxxed
100 million: The US Navy is scrambling to find a $100 million F-35 stealth fighter jet that crashed and sank soon after taking off on Monday from an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. One expert described the Cold War-ish race to locate the remains — stocked with classified equipment — before the Chinese do as "basically The Hunt For Red October meets The Abyss."
5.7: The US economy grew 5.7 percent in 2021 compared to the previous year, the biggest annual expansion in almost four decades. While this is very good news for the Biden administration, GDP growth is expected to slow down in 2022 due to high inflation, supply chain issues, and looming interest rate hikes.
790: The Cuban government has charged 790 people with sedition and other crimes for taking part last summer in the biggest anti-government protests since the early 1990s. So far, 172 have been tried and convicted.
70:Africa is on track to vaccinate 70 percent of its 1.3 billion population against COVID by the end of the year, according to the African CDC. (So far 11 percent have been vaxxed). This might be possible in part because of declining vaccine hesitancy in populous countries like Nigeria.
China’s pandemic playbook will fail with Omicron — Laura Yasaitis
China's zero-COVID strategy was a major success story in 2020-21. But it won't work with the new omicron variant, according to Eurasia Group healthcare consultant Laura Yasaitis.
Over 83 percent of the Chinese population is fully vaccinated with domestic vaccines. However, it turns out these jabs are much less effective at stopping omicron transmission compared to mRNA vaccines like Pfizer's and Moderna's.
The situation in China won’t be a health catastrophe, Yasaitis predicts, but the Chinese government will impose severe restrictions, including lockdowns such as the one in Xian.
“It's going to be like this game of whack-a-mole, trying to stop each small outbreak as it happens.”
What's more, she anticipates that Xi Jinping’s commitment to the zero-Covid approach will cause economic disruption not only in China, but all over the world.
Watch the full discussion here: https://www.gzeromedia.com/events/top-risks-2022-w...
Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, attends a ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the killing of senior Iranian military commander General Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. attack, in Tehran, Iran January 3, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Iranian revenge for Suleimani, China back in Nicaragua, German bleats for vaccines, Turkish inflation explodes
2: On the second anniversary of the US assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi vowed to avenge his death unless former president Donald Trump and other American officials are tried in court. At the time, Tehran hit back by attacking US military bases in Iraq.
32: China reopened over the weekend its embassy in Managua, which had been shuttered since the Nicaraguan government decided to recognize Taiwan almost 32 years ago. Nicaragua is the latest country to establish ties with Beijing, which has been pushing hard to increase its economic and political clout — and diminish Taipei’s — across Latin America.
700: About 700 goats and sheep were assembled in Schneverdingen, south of Hamburg, in the form of a syringe to encourage Germans to get vaccinated. If you're interested in crazy vax incentives around the world, take our quiz here.
36: Turkey's year-on-year inflation soared to 36 percent in December, the highest rate in almost two decades. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to defy economic orthodoxy by keeping interest rates low despite rising prices and a crashing lira.