There has to be the first canary down the mine shaft.
When it comes to providing a how-to on moving from lockdowns to opening public spaces and economies, it’s the United States which will make the most fascinating viewing. With the end of the presidential stay at home order ending last week, states are now allowed to make their own decisions.
No one could say the US has handled the pandemic well thus far. It has broadened the already vast political divide in the country with gun-toting protesters in the Michigan Capitol building in Detroit all the way to shoulder to shoulder rallies in the US homes of progressivism, California and Massachusetts.
It is in these weird times one has to look for satire wherever it comes.
Brent Terhune is an American comedian who sports a MAGA hat and among other things demands his constitutional right to open carry an AR-15 assault rifle at a Build-A-Bear down at the mall.
“It’s what the founding fathers would have wanted,” he says deadpan.
The best satire is barely distinguishable from reality and so it is with the short videos Terhune routinely posts on social media.
Amusingly, many of those on the left think Terhune’s southern drawl, ferocious demeanour and ersatz COVID-19 dry cough that he intersperses throughout his rants, are a fervent call to arms against the stay at home orders. Terhune gleefully reposts his many progressive critics whose sense of humour left them long before the pandemic struck.
To those who have misplaced their capacity to laugh, here’s a hint: when someone kicks off a sentence, “The Constitution of these United States, which I haven’t read …” or “It got me to thinkin’ which I very rarely do …” he is probably not being serious.
Meanwhile, that most seismic of shock jocks, Alex Jones, is battling with the nutritional shortcomings from stay at home orders.
As far as I can tell Jones isn’t a satirist but might have a real talent for the caper. He has been eyeing off his neighbours to see which one he will eat first. His superpower is truth telling or so he says, and so Alex went off tap last week, pondering how he was going to gut, slice and dice his neighbours none of whom, unsurprisingly, were invited to comment.
I get the sense that Jones is comfortable in front of the broiler and may be only looking at choice cuts. At least Wisconsin serial killer, Ed Gein knew how to make a stew.
In the midst of this craziness, the US has begun to do away with state-based stay at home orders with 24 of the fifty states opening businesses including restaurants, entertainment and retail centres, generally with some form of mandated social distancing in place.
President Trump has signalled the Coronavirus Task Force headed by Vice-President Mike Pence will soon be shut down and replaced with “something in a different form”.
Some in the US refer to this as preparation for a second wave of infection but that is erroneous. The US remains deeply immersed in a first wave of COVID-19 infection that continues to spread across the continent.
Take New York State out of the statistics — where there has been a plateau in deaths and a decline in recorded cases — and there is growth in infection and death rates across the US.
Most alarming is epidemiological analysis that infection and death rates are rising more in rural America than in its urban centres.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit, apolitical reporter on health care issues in the US determined that in rural counties in the US, “both cases and deaths are growing at a faster rate compared to metro counties. In the two-week period between April 13 and April 27, non-metro counties saw a 125 per cent increase in coronavirus cases (from 51 cases per 100,000 people to 115), on average, and a 169 per cent increase in deaths (from 1.6 deaths per 100,000 people to 4.4). Meanwhile, metro counties saw a 68 per cent increase in cases (from 195 cases per 100,000 people to 328) and a 113 per cent increase in deaths (from 8.0 deaths per 100,000 people to 17.0).”
The county with the highest death rate per capita in the US is Terrell County, Georgia a rural county 300 kilometres from Atlanta.
While areas of small population and low population density won’t provide the appalling death tolls seen in New York City, the lack of health care resources and logistics in rural areas mean higher death rates per capita.
Meanwhile Metro Atlanta continues to report sharp increases in recorded cases.
The real impact of opening up economies in terms of infection rates and deaths won’t be properly understood for four to six weeks. Those who scan the statistics now looking for evidence will not find much at present. It is later this month and into June when the data and then judgment will come.
One thing we should not expect is wholesale infection. There is something very odd about the way infections occur with SARS-COV-2. The Italian example is instructive. The south of the country has barely been touched by COVID-19 while infection and death rates in the north have exploded. We might put this down to population density but overall deaths due to respiratory illness which include influenza and COVID-19 and pneumonia unrelated to COVID-19 infection, have increased in Rome by only two per cent. Rome has a greater population density than that of Italy’s COVID-19 ground zero, Milan.
We could also examine Sweden’s attempts at fighting COVID-19 transmission which include no mandated lockdown. Sweden’s death rates are high, much more so than their other Scandinavian neighbours. In sheer number of deaths, Sweden sits between Turkey and Mexico.
Nevertheless, Sweden has a better idea of community infection rates than most other countries. It will be worth watching and offer lessons to policy makers in Australia.
But it is the US which will provide the most compelling case for how other countries, including this one, should go about the how and most critically the when on opening up their economies. It may very well be that what the US offers the rest of the world is a comprehensive template on how not to go about it.
This column was first published in The Australian on 6 May 2020
It seems absurd that China has the world holding it’s breath with it’s threats to boycott this and that – whilst pouring aid into third world countries they have their eye on.
If they won’t allow an investigation into the virus, maybe the entire first world (it would be dfficult to prevent third world countries taking their handouts)should take a stand and close borders to Chinese travellers and goods (yes, students and iron ore too). Sounds like an impossible dream, sure – and there would be hardship associated with that. It’s a chance to create new opportunities and a new, less China-dependant world – and who knows, a planet that is sustainable. Because, right now it’s not.
I appreciate that all sounds like horsepoo, but the world has had a warning – shape up or ship out. We can’t go on like this. Change is urgently required.
Hey, BASSMAN! Read your comment about Rodent’s wife and would like you to pass on my best wishes. I don’t know what that will do – probably nothing at all, but . . . you know . . .
There you go Dwight – a six sigma organisation for your students to study
200,000 deliveries a day, 400 errors a year.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170114-the-125-year-old-network-that-keeps-mumbai-going
Thanks mate! Haven’t taught that in a while, but it’s always good to have an exemplar.
Having watched that talk from Dr Zach Bush, and tbought about what he is saying, it would appear that this strain of the corona virus was just waiting to pounce – self inflicted – as we continue to pollute the atmosphere and ravage the land with habitat destruction and farming malpractice.
The countries that copped it real hard are those with an aged population (N Italy) or a sick society(quite literally) viz the USA. It’s actually the co-morbidities that kill people. The people of the USA have many illnesses – mostly diet-related, for which they take many drugs, mainly statins and ace-inhibitors (cholesterol and diabetes/ blood pressure). The action of corona virus on the lungs clashes wildly with these drugs apparently. I listened to a talk on a tour of Boston restaurants today and was appalled at how much fried food or food lashed with heavy doses of fat and cream they eat. And big servings. Hence the diabetes, obesity, blood pressure and general ill health .
This, combined with a disastrous health system is what got America.
COVID-19 will not be eradicated – it will hang around for at least 2 years. Eventually there will be yearly vaccines – against last year’s strain – much like flu.
So, for all these reasons, I think that it is time to just reopen society. Deal with the odd outbreak and get the economy going before it is completely stuffed. At the same time urge people to exercise caution sensibly. There seems no further point in trying to hide from this thing.
And then we need to think seriously about what we are doing to this planet, and how to change things – or, alternatively, our pathway to extinction. The planet will go on, and thrive, without humans.
I watched Dr Zach Bush on his podcast “A Pandemic of Possibility” last week. What a powerful message Boa. I also found his hopefulness profoundly inspiring, like nothing I’ve ever heard or felt in this battle to conserve & protect the planet.
“Greed will lead to the collapse of civilisation & while we do know how to change that course, we won’t do it.”
It was so deeply moving for me & I’m not ashamed to say it reduced me to tears by the end.
Thanks Boa. 💚
I suspect it will take a good while to unpack all the data on this and work out why some areas did much better than others, but one possibility in Northern Italy is close ties to China.
Chinese companies have bought up a lot of the fashion industry there and wanting to preserve the made in italy provenance of their products have imported hundreds of thousands of chinese workers to make the products.
In the US, why has SFO done so much better than NYC, both have bleeding heart Dem mayors and governors, but one is much better than the other.
There now seems to be data supporting the idea that it was travellers from NYC that spread the virus around the US, why?
why don’t kids and smokers seem to suffer as much as the rest?
Lots of questions, not many answers yet.
Boa, I noted from your synopsis of the good doctor’s quack-watch/COVID offerings (as plausible and reasonable as they may be) there was no mention of Asian geopolitical tensions, strategic international ambitions, modern day maritime silk road intentions, etc. at play that may have significantly contributed to the predicament the world now suddenly finds itself in.
I think the present pervasive pandemic has more to do with sino-skulduggery than it does with an extra helping of Feuchtwagner hot dogs,yellow mustard and brown sugar.
Anyhow, food for thought,eh.
jeez Boa and I thought I could be cold…..
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly is candid about the prospects of a second-wave of coronavirus in a society that hasn’t developed herd immunity. “There is a very large risk of a second wave as the virus mutates and changes into other forms”.
Mate sent this to me Bald.
I’m torn on this Bass. The “second wave” stories are being pedaled by the same folks who were so wrong in their end-of-world predictions a couple months ago. Will there be a second wave? Yes, in pandemics there always is. There will also be a third wave. I think the panic merchants aren’t happy that we’re not cowering under our beds.
Three guesses where the cyber attack on BlueScope Steel came from. The first two don’t count.
(see today’s Aus).