Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Duque de Bragança]

Part of it is the usual deflection from him. Anytime something is criticized about his government he will deflect responsibility elsewhere, or lash out at the sources (be it the prosecutors who investigate corruption of his cabinet members and political friends, vaccinations happening too slowly for public opinion, etc.).

Damn, Macron-like. 

[Sheilbh]

I wonder what has gone on behind closed doors, on the face of it it looks absolutely counter-intuitive. On top of that some things don't make much sense, if Austria thinks that EMA is too slow it can move to its own emergency system, as EU regulations allow it during the pandemic. Also, it doesn't seem to be for now, but for the future, in case yearly vaccinations are necessary, and when it becomes routine they'll need EMA approval anyway. And it's not as if Israel has developed its own, top-secret vaccine, it's using the same ones the rest of Europe is using. It's quite head-scratching.

Two thoughts that might drive it.

The EMA contracts out its work to European regulators. From a legal perspective it's entirely right that the Austrian regulator could authorise for emergency use, practically they may have been working to support the wider EMA authorisations so there's just no resource to do the analysis for an emergency authorisation. So it may be that in the future the Austrian regulator will be instructed to not apply for work from the EMA to do with covid so they can focus on emergency authorisations?

In terms of countries it seems like a good group for Austria to join - similar populations, size, wealth etc. But Israel have a bit of a deal with Pfizer where they're providing lots of information about the vaccine in the real world, plus Denmark being the world leader in sequencing. If Austria are helping put up the money or whatever for manufacturing, Denmark's doing sequencing, Israel's providing near real-time data on health care - I feel like that might be a very attractive set of countries for Pfizer (and I think it would only be Pfizer) to work with?

[Syt]

https://www.vox.com/2021/2/28/22305905/kristi-noem-face-the-nation-interview-south-dakota-coronavirus-cpac

Kristi Noem tried to take a victory lap for her coronavirus response on CBS. It did not go well.

South Dakota's governor got a great reception at CPAC. Her interview on Face the Nation hours later was a different story.

South Dakota governor and rising conservative star Kristi Noem was a big hit at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, where she bragged about her state's response to the coronavirus during a headlining speech. But an interview she did hours later with CBS highlighted how her attempt to turn reality on its head doesn't survive scrutiny.

In reality, South Dakota's laissez faire approach to the pandemic — including Noem's refusal to enforce a mask mandate — has amounted to "a failed experiment in herd immunity," as Bloomberg recently put it. The state has one of the 10 highest mortality rates in the United States. More than 1 in 500 residents has died since the pandemic began. And, as Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan noted during the CBS interview, South Dakota's mortality rate has been the highest in the country since last July.

Noting that the governor is a staunch conservative, Brennan pressed Noem to explain how someone who claims to care about the sanctity of life can "justify making decisions that put the health of your constituents at risk." Her response was nonsensical whataboutism.

"Those are questions that you should be asking every other governor in this country as well," she said, even though the whole point of the question is that South Dakota's Covid-19 response has been a failure — and far more limited — when compared to the vast majority of other states.

Perhaps most egregiously, Noem encouraged people to come to her state last August for the Sturgis motorcycle rally, despite the raging pandemic.

Public health experts said holding the rally, which ultimately drew nearly 500,000 people, was a very bad idea. And at least one study has borne that out — research from the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University found it not only could have infected hundreds of thousands of people with the virus, but will potentially involve more than $12 billion in health care costs.

Asked about the San Diego study by Brennan, Noem indicated she values allowing "people to make decisions for themselves" above all else.

"Listen, what we did was allow people to make decisions for themselves," she said. "We gave them all the information on this virus — how to protect their health — and then we allowed them to make decisions on what they would do."

"My question is, if we had mandated that people had to stay home, if we had mandated that businesses had to be closed, would that have made a difference?" Noem continued. "I would argue that it wouldn't have."

As Brennan pointed out, however, Noem's position is not backed up by facts. In addition to the aforementioned San Diego study linking Sturgis with many thousands of cases, President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force coordinator, Deborah Birx, recently described Noem's decision to allow Sturgis as "not okay." And as the Washington Post reports, health experts believe the rally may have seeded coronavirus cases across the Midwest, contributing to the rise in cases seen nationally last fall.

Noem's coronavirus response has even been panned by Republicans like West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, who responded to critics of his mask mandate last November by saying, "I don't want to be South Dakota." Brennan asked Noem about Justice's remark, but instead of engaging with it, Noem immediately pivoted to bashing blue-state governors like Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom, both of whom have faced questions over their Covid-19 response.

In short, Noem's CBS interview did not go well for her. But Margaret Brennan is not the GOP base, and if Noem's CPAC reception is any indication, Republican voters actually view her coronavirus response as a success.

Noem's CPAC speech illustrated how little conservatives have learned about the coronavirus

"Let me be clear — Covid didn't crush the economy, government crushed the economy," Noem claimed at CPAC on Saturday, before taking a direct shot at trusted public health experts.

"Dr. Fauci is wrong a lot," she added, to huge applause.

Noem's position that personal freedoms are more important than public health seemed to be the consensus view at CPAC. This was illustrated by a remarkable scene on Friday in which organizers of the conference had to beg attendees to follow hotel rules and wear a mask on the premises, to boos and yells of "freedom!"

Noem isn't big on masks herself. Earlier this month, she was widely criticized for tweeting out photos of herself posing maskless with a group of legislative pages during a dinner at the governor's mansion (all but one page in the photo was maskless).

At the very least, the photo set a bad example for her constituents — particularly given she has left it up to them whether to wear masks. But in these polarized times, what to the scientifically minded looks like a bad example looks to Republicans like a heroic example of owning the libs.

[alfred russel]

"a failed experiment in herd immunity," as Bloomberg recently put it. The state has one of the 10 highest mortality rates in the United States. More than 1 in 500 residents has died since the pandemic began. And, as Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan noted during the CBS interview, South Dakota's mortality rate has been the highest in the country since last July.

Noting that the governor is a staunch conservative, Brennan pressed Noem to explain how someone who claims to care about the sanctity of life can "justify making decisions that put the health of your constituents at risk." Her response was nonsensical whataboutism.

"Those are questions that you should be asking every other governor in this country as well," she said, even though the whole point of the question is that South Dakota's Covid-19 response has been a failure — and far more limited — when compared to the vast majority of other states.

I'm cool with mask mandates, but if arguing that South Dakota in the top 10 in mortality rate is evidence that the absence of a mask mandate is a failed policy, is the corollary true? Ie, since 9 of the other 10 states in the top 10 in mortality rate have mask mandates, that is evidence that mask mandates are failed policies?

[Admiral Yi]

Ie, since 9 of the other 10 states in the top 10 in mortality rate have mask mandates, that is evidence that mask mandates are failed policies?

Where are you getting this from?

[ulmont]

Ie, since 9 of the other 10 states in the top 10 in mortality rate have mask mandates, that is evidence that mask mandates are failed policies?

Where are you getting this from?

Top 10 deaths by 1M pop are, per Worldometers.info:

New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Arizona, Connecticut, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Alabama.

Per the AARP "Does Your State Have A Mask Mandate" site, Mississippi, Arizona, and South Dakota do not have mask mandates.  So it's 7-3 of the top 10, not 9-1, but Alfred Russel's general point seems to hold up.

[The Larch]

Hey Syt, a news piece has appeared in the press here quoting tweets from Kurz saying that Austria is moving away from the EU vaccine system, blaming EMA for being too slow, and looks to cooperate with Israel and the future. What has been said over there?

Yeah be interested to know - I saw that Austria, Israel and Denmark would cooperate on second generation vaccines. But I'm not sure what necessarily means.

It's also happening across CEE - Poland has requested the Chinese vaccine, Slovakia and other countries are buying Sputnik separately.

The thing that's somewhat striking is that it's precisely the countries that the EU common procurement was meant to protect/help who are moving for other sources of vaccine first. In part that may just be that this wave in CEE has been awful. But the purpose of common procurement was to ensure equitable access and avoid the risk of large and rich European countries hoovering up or seizing vaccines (in the way they did PPE) - and the first countries going outside that are poorer countries in the CEE or small countries like Denmark and Austria. It's interesting.

I just read an interesting take, and it's that all the countries that are moving away from the common EU framework (Austria and Denmark on one side, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia on the other) are all part of the EU's "problem children", with the first two being part of the "Frugals" and the others of the Visegrad group, so in a way they were the most likely to break away from the consensus as they're the ones more at odds with whatever is decided in Brussels, each with their own reasons.

[Admiral Yi]

Top 10 deaths by 1M pop are, per Worldometers.info:

New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Arizona, Connecticut, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Alabama.

Per the AARP "Does Your State Have A Mask Mandate" site, Mississippi, Arizona, and South Dakota do not have mask mandates.  So it's 7-3 of the top 10, not 9-1, but Alfred Russel's general point seems to hold up.

The three states without a mandate are in the top ten for fatalities, and you think this helps Fredo's point that masks are a failed policy?

FYI Iowa lifted their mandate a while back.  I've seen a sprinkling of unmasked customers in the supermarket since then.  I asked the dude at Subway and he said about every 100th customer comes in unmasked.

[alfred russel]

Ie, since 9 of the other 10 states in the top 10 in mortality rate have mask mandates, that is evidence that mask mandates are failed policies?

Where are you getting this from?

I didn't research it...if ulmont says it is 7 out of 10 I believe him. My point was that people start with a presumption the policies are effective, and the absence of them reckless, and only examine the evidence in one direction.

[ulmont]

The three states without a mandate are in the top ten for fatalities, and you think this helps Fredo's point that masks are a failed policy?

Those aren't the only 3 states without a mandate.  Alaska (49th), Florida (28th), Georgia (21st), Idaho (41st), Iowa (17th), Missouri (29th), Montana (32nd), Nebraska (38th), North Dakota (11th), Oklahoma (36th), South Carolina (19th), and Tennessee (18th) also don't have statewide mask mandates.

So 15 states without mandates, 3 in the top 10, compared to 35 states with mandates, 7 in the top 10.

I personally think masks work, and that what people are doing on the ground has little to do with the existence of a statewide mandate, but I definitely don't think you can look at the mortality numbers and conclude anything about statewide mask mandates.

[Admiral Yi]

Ah OK.  I thought your AARP reference was exhaustive.  My bad.

[Berkut]

The argument is being made that SD had a shitty outcome, and part of the reason for that shitty outcome was how the government handled the crisis.

Now, you can argue that perhaps the reasons for the shitty outcome have little or nothing to do with mask use, if you want. But you have to actually MAKE that argument. Just noting that some places with masks use had shitty outcomes as well is rather lazy, an obviously so.

New York had rather stringent mask mandates and compliance, and still had a lot of deaths. If you don't care about thinking, I guess you could then conclude that masks don't do anything at all. But also noting that NYC has one of the densest population centers in the world along with one of the busiest international traffic hubs in the world might suggest to those who actually care about understanding instead of point scoring might recognize that in fact the factors that go into overall outcomes are complex - but that doesn't mean that individual variables are still not important.

So my response to someone noting that New York had less than great outcomes as well when South Dakota is noted, is to question why they would even try to compare such radically different areas when trying to isolate a particular variable, and wonder whether they are actually motivated by any interest in learning anything at all.

I mean - wouldn't the obvious thing to do if you actually cared be to compare SD to other states that are similar to SD in all those OTHER variables, if you want to try to isolate the effect of mask and mandates?

[Barrister]

I mean - wouldn't the obvious thing to do if you actually cared be to compare SD to other states that are similar to SD in all those OTHER variables, if you want to try to isolate the effect of mask and mandates?

Yeah.  The thing is South Dakota, all other things being equal, should have escaped Covid fairly lightly.  It has a very low population density, whereas New York was always going to have a harder time due to it's high density.

I understand Florida Governor DeSantis is taking a victory lap for his handling of the pandemic.  Dude, you're governor of a state with a near-tropical climate that allows people to be outside a lot.  Florida was a lot better situated than almost any other state in the union to handle Covid before you lifted a finger.

[Sheilbh]

I understand Florida Governor DeSantis is taking a victory lap for his handling of the pandemic.  Dude, you're governor of a state with a near-tropical climate that allows people to be outside a lot.  Florida was a lot better situated than almost any other state in the union to handle Covid before you lifted a finger.

Also from what I can see Florida has marginally fewer deaths than the US average. There's a lot of states that did a lot better.

From what I can see Florida's death rate is basically the same as Spain's which is not a great victory.

[celedhring]

So, Draghi has sacked Italy's Covid czar and appointed an army general, a logistics specialist. I'm sure there's a WWII joke here but I'm drawing a blank.