Covid-19 Politics

[fred41]

(Deleted post for redundancy...already agree with everything Bronco said above)...lol, also note you liked it right before I deleted it. You’re fast...lol.

[broncofan]

(Deleted post for redundancy...already agree with everything Bronco said above)...lol, also note you liked it right before I deleted it. You’re fast...lol.

Lol You did have new info there. I read it right after I read Stavros' post when it went to the second page. I didn't for instance try to explain the February hospitalization, but thought basically what you wrote. As you said, a cold might have gotten your Dad very sick and yet he was fortunate not to have a severe case of Covid in April.

I've gotten flu a bunch of times, and although I know the strains change so it's a different disease, the results have been wildly different. I've had mild sore throat and sweating in some cases. Yet, it put me in the hospital with pneumonia in both lungs when I was 17.

I agree with Stavros' post that there has been very little international cooperation in response to Covid. PPE, ventilators, and tests have not been shared very broadly and it's likely there will be a lot of protectionism once a vaccine is produced. Although I don't think private philanthropists can replace governments for this sort of thing, the Gates foundation has brought resources to the table and is testing parallel lines of vaccines. That should have been the international strategy.

[fred41]

There are a few studies to test whether it works prophylactically or not. This Detroit one came up first on Google... it makes an interesting read -
https://www.healio.com/cardiology/va...h-care-workers

BTW I have a sneaking suspicion Trump’s lying (again) about taking it. He lies so easily...off the cuff.

[fred41]

Okay, forgive the serial posts, but I can’t stop cause I had some good personal news and I’m like an excited kid on too much sugar. So I’m vaping a bit (I use the Firefly 2+) and drinking a bit of Prosecco (relatively cheap, but I’m drinking it in a fairly expensive glass, so...I think that evens it out). Anyway - did you ever go to that John Hopkins Covid map and scroll down as far as you can? Me neither, but I did just now. It leads to a whole potential Netflix series. At the bottom of the list (at the time of this posting) is the small kingdom of Lesotho. It has one case ...and he’s alive ( I think he got it studying in Saudi Arabia) so I’m gonna be rooting for him from now on. But it seems this tiny kingdom surrounded by South Africa (Which I didn’t knew existed) has a whole telenovela going on. Apparently the Prime Minister - 80 year old Thomas Thabane - is finally stepping down, due to the fact that he and his current wife are accused of murdering his former wife three years ago. What does this have to do with this thread? Well, as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say - “Well, it just goes to show you, it’s always something - if it’s not one thing, it’s another”.

[Stavros]

BTW I have a sneaking suspicion Trump’s lying (again) about taking it. He lies so easily...off the cuff.

Resentment again. He promoted the drug in spite of the experts saying it had no known impact on Covid 19. Fox News then promoted it more than 300 times until they decided it was not going to be a Miracle Cure, and particularly after the query about the positive benefits of disinfectant undermined any belief even Fox had that their guy could be trusted.

But if there is one thing that this President cannot cope with, it is any form of rejection, anything that proves he is not the smartest guy in the room. So he claims to be taking it every day, in order to prove, as he is neither dead nor infected, that he is right. As usual, in the midst of a national crisis, he broadcasts information that is focused only on himself.

As for the threat to withdraw from the WHO, as I have suggested before, in the short term it begs the question why the USA did not seek to improve its influence in the WHO when the new 'Republican' administration took charge in 2017; while in the long term it is part of the view shared by John Bolton and people like him that the UN is no longer relevant, and that this is the administration that, piece by piece, is dismantling the organization that was created, in part by President Roosevelt.

Resentment, again: he simply cannot accept that Roosevelt, or any President, has a better record than him. Just as he has been even more persecuted by the media than Abraham Lincoln, so I guess he believes he has done more for the US than FDR -and if now, they can be compared to their response to economic depression and mass unemployment, now is his chance to prove his critics wrong. Call me, maybe.

Who benefits? Vladimir Putin, who wants the USA weak, divided, ineffective in international politics; Israel, which has repudiated the UN since 1948; Saudi Arabia, which maintains its long term ambition to re-unify the Caliphate under Wahabi control throughout the Middle East (incuding Israel); and China, which like Russia, wants to impose itself on the world without the obstruction of the UN and International Law.

I don't know where this is going, because I still think a war is not going to happen, though the potential for proxy conflicts and 'low intensity warfare' is there. But if you 'follow the money' no President since this one has had such a direct line, in terms of financial and political benefit, to the four states mentioned above, than the one now sitting in the Oval Office.

I feel sorry for Donald Hopkins and other Americans who through the WHO and other agencies have done so much since the 1940s to combat the world's most lethal diseases for the benefit of mankind. Now, for the benefit of one man's inflated ego, their legacy is to be cast aside as if they had, like Obama, never existed.

We can sit here and criticize US Foreign Policy for days on end, but sometimes it is worth taking time out to celebrate the best the US has been part of, and public international health is one of those.

[broncofan]

Having read your post on the first page again Stavros, I realize what an important issue this is. To whatever extent the WHO has not been as effective as they might be, it would only justify redoubling our efforts to support an international organization committed to addressing public health problems around the world. The international response has been hampered by collective action problems and countries facing internal pressure to protect their manufactured products and hoard whatever materials they can purchase in advance of others. Even the opposition, which has in some cases shown slight nods to internationalism and cooperation, have given mixed messages.

Democrats have hammered Donald Trump for sending limited goods to China in January, but on the other hand hammered him when he halted exports of 3m N95 respirators. Everyone is caught between an aspiration to unite and our instinct to mistrust. But just going back to the example of the Gates Foundation testing parallel vaccine strategies...if there is coordination, then every viable strategy can be tested without duplication of efforts. If instead countries believe that the vaccine will be their proprietary right and entitlement, then each country has an incentive to promote only the most likely strategy. Yet with coordination, every reasonable possibility can be tried because countries will know that they are all part of an effort to try the full gamut of possibilities. Collectively this provides the greatest possibility that one strategy will work.

What we've seen during this pandemic should only reinforce the idea that there has to be a better way to coordinate the international public health response.

[Stavros]

Everyone is caught between an aspiration to unite and our instinct to mistrust.

This sums up one of the key problems, and I fear we are living through an era when the trust that is needed most is the trust that few can give. But when you have leaders like Presidents Xi, Bolsonaro and Putin, it is no surprise if trust is weak.

The WHO is a large organization, and as such it has all the problems you find in bureaucracies, with the added fact that the top jobs are part of a horse-trading regime which has nothing to with public health, and everything to do with contemporary politics.

But, again, in the field, the American medics and scientists working on WHO or other agency projects, be it in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia or Latin America, have been examples of the 'soft power' that can do more to enhance a country's reputation with real people than a President, a Sports Star or some other kind of celebrity. And it has been one of the USA's strengths because it has the resources to help, and for comparison's sake, when the British Empire was in its 'sunset' years in the the Middle East in the 1950s, it maintained its atttempt to run the Empire on a shoestring budget when American projects were lavish in comparison -that doesn't mean money always works, but it was a culure of generosity that marked the difference between the two, and a generosity of spirit as well as money.

Now the US is not just mean, but callous too, and I say again this is disrespectful to the generations of Americans -most of them the same age as their President- who went abroad to help people racked with disease, who walked waist deep through an African river to a remote village to inoculate children against Polio, when he was walking into the dressing rooms of Miss America to leer at young women taking their clothes off.

We will overcome some day, but when that great day comes, what will be left? It looks on both sides of the Atlantic, like weakness and division, and a mountain range of debt. At the very least, can we expect an overhaul of public health, at both the domestic and international levels?

[Fitzcarraldo]

Looks like the state has started repressing the numbers in Florida:
https://cbs12.com/news/local/woman-w...m-her-position

[holzz]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...xico-bolsonaro

pretty poor. And Bolsonaro hardly has good PR as it stands.

[Jericho]

Joy of joys, they've just announced they're starting trials on it over here.

https://www.lbcnews.co.uk/uk-news/co...uine-start-uk/