The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 430 (930)

Given what we've learned during the coronavirus pandemic, how ready are we for another? A 2019 assessment of global health security ranked the US first at preventing and detecting outbreaks, the most adept at communicating risk, and second only to the UK in terms of the speed of a response. This analysis did not account for the then-president's administration. Besides the attitude of the administration, the national response was hampered by a lack of data-sharing between states or between states and the federal government. Some states, it seems, even have laws that forbid data sharing. Dr. Fauci calls what we have a "patchwork" system. That's a big reason we ended up getting and using pandemic information from the UK, Israel, or South Africa.

But maybe there won't be another in the near future. Or will there? The Rockefeller Pandemic Prevention Institute carries out pathogen surveillance that suggests there will be another and it could be sooner than we might like. From 2012 to 2022, Africa saw a 63 percent increase in outbreaks of pathogens jumping from animals to humans compared to the period 2001 to 1011. The director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health says that this could be the new normal. The house in which I live sits in the 100-year flood plain of a large creek; what if one of those floods came every three years? That could be what we're looking at in terms of pandemics. The CDC director during the Obama administration notes that the US spends 300 to 500 times more money on military defense than on health systems and yet "no war has killed a million Americans."

A late September survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half of adults had heard little or nothing about the bivalent booster. This is certainly not going to help prevent any winter covid surge. The president of the Foundation  said that the country "seems to have mostly moved on." Do we have covid information overload? Have people just heard too much? That attitude contributes to decision-making fatigue. Adults ages 65 and older are the most informed; ages 50 through 64 are not far behind them. At least the groups that most need the bivalent booster know the most about it. 

Zero covid is still alive and well in China. Because of this, the use of propaganda is more apparent than usual. At least 120 covid-related propaganda  phrases have been created. For example, "lockdowns" are now "static management" or "working from home." At least "working from home" here has never meant a "lockdown" of the extent used in China.

Remember my comment about how the US benefited from pandemic information from the UK? Eight UK hospitals have declared a "critical incident" or asked people not to come to Accident and Emergency unless they are seriously ill. Covid is up almost 37 percent in one week. While it is too soon to declare an autumn wave, the issue does need to be addressed now. The incoming president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine calls covid "a very heavy straw on the camel's back." Adding influenza to covid to create a twindemic means that winter "could become even grimmer ... like two playground bullies getting together and forming a gang." We've depended on news from the UK throughout the pandemic; let's not stop now.