China seemingly has the COVID-19 pandemic well under control these days. Hardly any new infections have been recorded and only a few restrictions remain in place. However, when new cases arise, measures are taken immediately and without any regard to civil rights.

Snapshot from China

People are once again living their lives in China’s major cities and beyond. The shops are packed, and the clubs are bustling. Based on the statistics, the risk of being infected is only shallow in the world’s most populous country. The official figures of day by day new infections remain steady in the single-digit range. New infections are mostly based on individuals returning to China, thus importing the virus.

In order to enter restaurants, banks, doctors, or other authorities, individuals’ temperature is often still measured, but otherwise, everything is normal again in China. Department stores, bars, or gyms are all open, so are schools and universities’ education facilities.

Temperature App

All that is required is the aforementioned temperature check or show the health code on the phone when one enters bars or clubs. The health code is generated via a smartphone app. It has been omnipresent for individuals in China since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. The app estimates a personal risk from the area and wireless network data: green, yellow, or red. Without the app and without the green code, it is nearly unattainable to move around in China. As a result, the authorities can track individuals’ precise location at all times, even more, accurate than previously.

One usually requires a green code, especially at train stations, airports, and motorway toll stations. In short: whenever one moves across city and provincial borders within China. However, no uniform Corona app in China exists.

Every local administration, every city administration are working independently, causing somewhat chaotic moments regarding the app. The reciprocal trust of the respective Chinese authorities is unmistakably not that splendid. If several on-site infections are confirmed somewhere in China these days, then the excitement is great. When two new cases became known a few days ago in Manzhouli, the television news deserved extensive coverage in the far north of the country.

Mass Testing

As a practice, mass tests are then immediately administered on-site. Hundreds of thousands to several million individuals are tested for the virus in only a few days. The cities involved will be largely isolated from the rest of the country for the time being.

Many large-scale testing and consistent follow-up of contacts are the most important means of the Chinese authorities fighting against the coronavirus.

Personnel and financial commitment are also basically irrelevant. Moreover, the almost entirely closed external borders also play a pivotal role. Most importantly, however, data protection and fundamental personal rights do not play a role in China’s dictatorship. The authorities create digital movement profiles of individuals and utilize the images from surveillance cameras, all without worrying about the rule of law.

Unlike in Europe, there are no public debates: neither about the coronavirus measures nor about the pandemic’s origin. Both of these facts have undoubtedly made it easier for China to get the pandemic under control.

In fact, the latter allowed China to tackle the pandemic with swiftness and efficiency that is globally unparalleled and equally impressive, particularly in regard to its coastal megacities.

It can undoubtedly be argued, however, while some European and Americans even consider masks as a form of oppression, the fight against the virus in China has come at the expense of even less individual right in the Land of the Rising Sun and hence marks – as so often – a high price.

L'articolo Chinese Pay High Price for Effective Fight Against COVID proviene da InsideOver.

Beijing is attempting to utilize the ongoing pandemic to celebrate its most significant victory over the United States to date. It reportedly managed COVID-19 better than Washington and now aims to deliver the world’s first meaningful vaccine.

With America never having had the virus under control and Europe currently stumbling into the second wave, the country responsible for the virus is steadily climbing up the ladder to its previous status quo and beyond.

China’s Strong Position

As of now, China is the world’s only major economy that has grown. The public does not fear the virus and has somewhat resumed its everyday life, even regarding travel. Compared to October 2019, the month of China’s national day, national travel decreased by only 20 percent.

It is thus no surprise that China is currently exuding confidence. The virus appears to be an issue of the past. While occasional local outbreaks continue to occur, the government has set up a gigantic test apparatus that has helped contain the virus. As a result, the situation in China has largely normalized. The success translates into marketable self-confidence, particularly in light of the mediocre crisis management Washington has delivered.

Beijing is Devoting Enormous Resources for Creating a Vaccine

But China’s magnum opus is yet to come. Beijing has put all its resources behind the development of a vaccine. Those who have paid attention to China over those past four decades will know that if China needs to get something done, it will get it done – and generally in record time.

Naturally, the sought-after acceleration in finding vaccines takes a level of creativity. Beijing has hence outsourced its testing. As a result, Chinese vaccines are currently being tested in more than a dozen countries. It is a quid pro quo in which the participating countries will receive priority access to a vaccine in return. It is the often mentioned and controversial “corona diplomacy”.

With Beijing throwing the kitchen sink at the vaccine, the New Yorker even recently reported a vaccine is set to be released in October. Four Chinese companies are currently conducting Phase III testing: the critical phase of vaccine clinical testing.

Vaccination is Already Taking Place in China

However, although none of the Chinese companies have concluded the clinical tests yet, vaccination is already taking place in China. The National Health Commission announced this in September and justified its decision with the emergency rules of the WHO. The commission left open how many Chinese receive a vaccine.

The fact that the risk of infection in China is practically zero is positive for the people, but it is detrimental for vaccine development. It is impossible to find out whether a vaccine protects against infection. Therefore, the Chinese vaccine developers test their vaccines in more than a dozen other countries, including Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

China’s Attempt to Wield Increased Global Influence With a Vaccine

The Chinese “corona diplomacy” even led to new alliances. The UAE, a historical partner of the United States, recently introduced a Chinese vaccine for emergency use. Beijing has also promised preferential access to a vaccine to several countries in Africa and Asia.

However, the “corona diplomacy” undermines China’s pledge, namely to make a vaccine available to the world as a “global public good”, as President Xi Jinping announced at a WHO meeting in May.

Moreover, China has utilized the opportunity to extend its influence globally by joining the Covax initiative. Under the leadership of the WHO, Covax aims to promote the development and dissemination of affordable vaccines. China’s engagement continuous the trend of filling the vacuum the US isolationism under President Trump has occurred.

If China were to become the first nation to produce an effective vaccine on a large scale, the symbolic weight would further exacerbate its rise and the US’s decline on the global stage, and so far, the country where the pandemic had its origin appears to be in great shape to deliver.

L'articolo Signs of Sino Ambition: China and its Quest for a COVID-19 Vaccine proviene da InsideOver.

On 17 November 2019, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in China. The media began talking about “a strange pneumonia”, which was gradually infecting the inhabitants of Hubei. Nobody could have imagined what was about to happen in the months to come.

The virus moves rapidly, too rapidly. Chinese leader Xi Jinping declares war on the coronavirus “demon,” however China’s efforts – too late and insufficient – are unsuccessful in stopping contagion. In just a few months the coronavirus hits Germany, Italy, India and the United States. Whereas in the 14th century it took the plague 16 years to reach Europe, COVID-19 travelled the same route in just a few months. Times have changed and trade between countries, even very distant countries, is increasingly frequent, and especially fast.

And so the virus was free to spread.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the pandemic: “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries climb even higher,“ announced General Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that “The WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that #COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic. Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly.”

And so COVID-19 became a global issue. To this day, this is what we know about the virus. This and little else. We can trace its origins and its circulation, however we do not know how long it will be before we get rid of it.

Yet History can be of help to us. An article which appeared on May 10 identified two fundamental moments which determine the end of a pandemic “The medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.”

What point are we at now? It is hard to say for certain. Last summer it looked like the virus had decreased in force and appeared less dangerous. From mid-May to the end of September, infections were in the order of a few hundred / thousand per day, intensive care units were stable and deaths at a minimum.

During the past weeks however, following the European trend, the number of people infected in Italy has soared to over 11,000 (of which 95% without symptoms as declared by virologist Giorgio Palù), intensive therapy units are slowly filling up again and the number of deaths appears stable. The current situation cannot be compared to that of last winter, as Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte also explained: “It is not March, we have to make adequate and well-thought choices”.

To this day, the government’s objective has been to contain the virus in such a way that it impacts health institutions like a constant small wave and not like a tsunami with a devastating effect. Because maybe the best thing to do is learn to live with the virus, mitigating it as much as possible and reducing to a minimum its impact on hospitals.

The second and maybe more brutal manner of declaring the end of a pandemic is when the population, tired of the epidemic, decides to simply live with the virus. According to Allan Brandt, a Harvard historian quoted by the New York Times, this could be the case with COVID-19: “As we have seen in the debate about opening the economy, many questions about the so-called end are determined not by medical and public health data but by socio-political processes.”

The first thing which needs to be done to accelerate the end of the coronavirus pandemic is to chronicle what is happening in a clear manner and without giving in to useless alarmism. We are undoubtedly dealing with a complex virus, however, COVID-19 is not the bubonic plague.

Moreover, the latter which on many occasions decimated populations throughout the world, teaches us something extremely important: diseases come and go. Sometimes in mysterious ways. The “black death” has not even entirely disappeared, it has only momentarily retreated: “In the United States – reports the New York Times, “infections are endemic among prairie dogs in the Southwest and can be transmitted to people.”

Recently, cases have also been reported in China. “The plague” – points out Giuseppe Pigoli in I dardi di Apollo (Utet) (“Apollo’s Darts” ed.n) – “was never completely eradicated. In the year 2000 a WHO report listed over 34,000 cases in 24 nations over a 15-year span. The 1990s especially witnessed a resurgence of the infection, to the point that it has once again been included in the category of re-emerging illnesses.”

The Spanish Flu

Many have compared COVID-19 to the Spanish flu which, between 1918 and 1920, infected over 500 million people, killing (according to some estimates) 50 million. One hundred years later, we still do not yet know where the virus originated. There are diverse hypotheses: some believe it initially broke out in Haskell County in Kansas and was brought to Europe by American soldiers, while according to others it was widely spread by 96,000 infected Chinese workers sent to the Western front during the First World War to help English and French troops.

As Pigoli points out in the above-mentioned volume, “the illness initially appeared as a “banal” influenza: temperature, aching joints and weakness. However in just a few days the clinical picture underwent a dramatic change: the temperature rose drastically, mucus and blood appeared in the lungs causing patients to “drown” and bringing people, who until only a few days earlier had appeared healthy, to a rapid death”. This description reminds us a lot of COVID-19.

Contrary to what one might think however, it was not the more fragile and elderly people who were most affected, as is usually the case with coronavirus, but men who were generally healthy. Tired, dirty, and worn out by the mud in the trenches, the soldiers became the virus’ main target with hundreds of thousands wiped out.

In May 1918, death rates peaked to 70%. It was the start of the massacre: upon returning home, the veterans brought the disease with them, infecting relatives: “Accounts describe how funerals were celebrated continually. People wore protective masks, entire families fell ill and were confined to their homes with law enforcement watching their doors”.

Two years later, the Spanish flu suddenly disappeared. Pigoli points out that “viruses survive by camouflaging themselves to escape from antibodies. The history of these mutations is full of episodes which clearly show how this infectious agent is almost invincible and how, despite every year health authorities prepare new vaccines, occasionally virulent epidemics which are very difficult to control occur, such as those which broke out in 1957, 1968 and 1977”.

Viruses, moreover, come and go. And as Andrew Nikiforuk wrote in the Fourth Horseman, they are “a mutating reminder of how life is”.

Translation by Audrey Sadleir

L'articolo When Will COVID-19 Finally End? What History Teaches Us proviene da InsideOver.

In the spring, various European countries closed their borders unilaterally and overnight. This resulted in uncoordinated chaos. With the start of the second wave and a sharp rise in infections that are already causing severe problems in most European countries, a standard European COVID-19 map has been issued. It is based on the traffic light system, allowing adequate coordination intra-European travel and is intended to prevent similar chaos to that of the past spring.

Learning from Past Mistakes

The principle of freedom of movement was exposed to chaos in the spring when all European countries closed their borders unilaterally without relying on a European Union solution beforehand. The hasty reaction paired with an utter lack of coordination resulted in long traffic jams and, as delivery trucks sometimes had to wait days to be processed, it also resulted in a shortage of supplies for supermarkets and sometimes stalled goods altogether.

However, the European countries appear to have learned from their past mistake. With the rapid increase in coronavirus infections across the continent, and the urgent need to have mechanisms in place to provide some efforts to slow down cross-border infections, the chaos is unlikely to repeat itself.

Several European countries have already introduced new and tight restrictions: risk areas, quarantine, testing obligations — different rules apply everywhere. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen speaks of a patchwork quilt that hardly anyone comprehends. A change and increased cooperation are thus needed.

A Reliable COVID-19 Mapping System?

Europe’s new hope is based on a standard European COVID-19 map based on the traffic light system that significantly increases coordination. Depending on the infection rate, individual regions are classified as green, yellow, or red zones. If there is no reliable information, the area concerned remains gray.

If, on average, less than 25 people per 100,000 inhabitants are infected with the coronavirus within two weeks, the traffic light shows green, meaning travel restrictions do not exist. If there are more than 25 cases, the traffic light jumps to yellow. The red level is reached at 50 or more new cases. When evaluating the regions, the rate of positive tests also plays a role.

For travelers from the yellow and red zones, each country should be able to decide for itself whether and, if so, which restrictions apply. However, the states are concerned, and the EU Commission must be informed of this as quickly as possible.

Will the Travel Map Work?

The COVID-19 map is created by the Sweden-based European Health Agency (ECDC, European Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and updated weekly. However, whether this strategy is coherent and useful to tackle the previous chaos is uncertain. Some European ministers have their doubts.

Luxembourg’s Minister for Foreign and European Affairs Jean Asselborn, for example – or Austria’s Federal Minister for the EU and Constitution Karoline Edtstadler — remain doubtful. Both are concerned that the strategy of the three-tier system is already obsolete.

“There is now something on the table that we can, unfortunately, see that reality has overtaken it,” says Edtstadler.

Moreover, the criteria were not sufficiently accurate. Both argue that if one thought it through and did the math, most of Europe’s regions should alreadybe  colored red on the map. However, a higher level than red is currently non-existent.

The German EU Council Presidency, on the other hand, considers the map to be a first and important step which would have to be followed by others. After all, the coordination of the coronavirus restriction measures is a dramatic test for the entire European Union. It can be adjusted and increased to the best of the union’s ability, but will also almost always entail some form of a trial-and-error approach.

L'articolo The EU’s COVID-19 Traffic Light System proviene da InsideOver.

Massive crowds of protesters rallied in central Berlin on Saturday, Aug. 29 to protest coronavirus lockdown measures. Police ordered the crowd to disperse for breaking distancing rules and at least 300 arrests have been made.

How Big Was the Protest?

There were only 18,000 protesters present according to Deutsche Welle and 38,000 according to Reuters, although one protester who was at the protest called Andrea, who preferred that her full name not be used, said she estimated there were definitely hundreds of thousands and as many as 500,000 protesters. She believes the mainstream media was deliberately downplaying the amount of support for the protest.

Andrea said she and other protesters walked 8 kilometers around the city center because there were so many people and police had cordoned off the overcrowded central area and blocked a planned parade from taking place.

“At the main demo there was a huge crowd of people around the Brandenburg Gate,” Andrea said. “It was really dramatic because when we came past the embassy of the Americans and the Russians there were people outside who were demanding a peace treaty and a new constitution for Germany. Police came and arrested some of them and the others went away.”

Who Organized the Protests?

As a fairly grassroots protest there were various groups involved, but the main initiator of the protest was a Stuggart-based group called Lateral Thinking 711 which mobilizes followers online via social media like Facebook and Telegram.

The event had protesters from across the political spectrum from right to left and had a common theme of not believing that restrictions on freedom are necessary or valid and that the government is lying about many aspects of coronavirus and the reasons for the lockdown.

Protester: ‘Last Chance for Germany and the World to Remain Free’

Andrea said she attended because she no longer trusts her government to uphold basic democratic freedoms and does not believe the virus is as dangerous as health authorities claim.

“We could end up in authoritarian or even totalitarian surveillance and hygienic state without freedom and humanity. We need free media, but nobody listens, so we demonstrate,” Andrea said. “For me this is the last chance for Germany and the world to remain free, for our children to remain healthy and not get vaccinated, not get forced under a mask, not get quarantined all the time, locked down, not get all our basic economy and basis of living destroyed even further by all these lies the media and politicians tell us. They are all very corrupt.”

“This is the last chance for our freedom. If it doesn’t work out now, we are lost,” she added.

RFK Jr.: Lockdown Part of a Shift Toward a ‘Totalitarian’ World System

Remarks were made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the son of the late RFK and nephew of JFK, who stated that a powerful medical lobby wants to force unsafe vaccines on children and citizens and that the demonstration in Berlin was the site of an uprising against the new totalitarianism of worldwide surveillance and tyrannical global government which RFK Jr. terms a “bio-security agenda” run by Bill Gates and powerful political and corporate figures.

“They are in the process of shifting us towards a digital currency, which is the beginning of slavery,” Kennedy told the assembled thousands. “Because if they control your bank account, they control your behavior.”

Kennedy made further remarks that the pandemic is being intentionally used by plutocrats to crush the middle class.

“The pandemic is a crisis of convenience for the elites who are dictating these policies. It gives them the ability to obliterate the middle class, to destroy the institutions of democracy, to shift all of our wealth to a handful of billionaires to make themselves rich by impoverishing the rest of us,” Kennedy stated.

Germany and Coronavirus

Germany has recorded 240,986 cases of coronavirus and 9,289 deaths, many occuring with comorbidities. The country has seen less coronavirus-related fatalities than other European nations of a similar size.

Experts have credited this to Germany’s high testing rate, strong institutional and hospital capacity, rapid response once outbreak occurred and emphasis on preventing elderly patients from contracting the disease.

L'articolo Germans Flood the Streets of Berlin to Protest COVID-19 Restrictions proviene da InsideOver.

Russia has become the world’s first country to approve a vaccine against COVID-19. The international response, however, has been consistently negative. Criticisms from the international community claim that approval may have been granted too prematurely while meaningful test results are missing.

Putin’s Announcement

President Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s advancements in the global race for vaccine supremacy on Tuesday. The vaccine developed by the Moscow Gamaleja Institute received approval from the Ministry of Health, Putin announced, further noting that one of his two daughters had already been vaccinated. He stated that he hoped that mass production could begin soon.

The vaccine was approved after less than two months of testing. Putin stressed, however, that all the necessary tests had been conducted, nonetheless. According to health authorities, medical staff, teachers, and other risk groups in Russia should be vaccinated first.

Critics: Vaccine is Not up to International Standards

So far, experts had assumed that a vaccine would likely not be ready before the end of this year or the beginning of 2021. One of the reasons for this is that vaccines need to progress through various stages of testing. According to reports, the third and decisive stage of testing was not carried out in Russia.

Besides, the vaccine has so far only been tested on an infinitesimal group of individuals, which is contrary to international criteria. General suspicion regarding the vaccine’s safety, even after Russia had first announced progress in its research, thus seems warranted.

Little is known about the vaccine “Gam-COVID-Vac Lyo” at this stage. It is a so-called vector vaccine, in which harmless viruses serve as carriers for characteristic genome segments of the pathogen Sars-CoV-2. The immune system of the vaccinated person should react to this genetic material and develop an appropriate immune response.

However, many scientists in Russia as well as abroad have expressed criticism of registering a new agent before the aforementioned third test phase has been completed. The latter usually takes several months and involves several thousand test subjects.

However, in Russia, the experimental corona vaccine was first tested on a few dozen volunteers less than two months ago, and no scientific results have yet been published. Some observers suspect that the reason for the ambitious timetable is that Moscow hopes for a propaganda success.

Sceptics Abound

Vitali Swerjew from the Russian Metschnikof Institute explained, for example, that developing the vaccine was the smallest problem. The real hurdle was that it is impossible to prove a vaccine’s effectiveness and potential danger. Nor can be said how long the immunity will last, without sufficient research. Sverjew was thus concerned that Russia has been neglecting its duty of care in the process.

The World Health Organization also emphasizes that potential vaccines always have to go through all test phases before they come onto the market in order to adhere to “established practices and guidelines”, said spokesman Christian Lindmeier. Anthony Fauci, the top expert on infectious diseases in the USA, has expressed his concerns over Russia’s advancements, also.

“Claims to have a vaccine that can be widely used before testing is problematic at best,” he said.

The Price for Russians Could be High

Already the previous week, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister for Education, Health and Social Policy Tatyana Golikova announced that her country would approve a vaccine in August. Golikova had only limited the roadmap to successful clinical tests with around 1,600 subjects.

On Monday then, Health Minister Mikhail Muraschko announced that Gamaleja had completed the clinical trials with the vaccine. Russia seeks to start the first mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus as early as October and officially win the international race.

However, the price that the Russian population could have to pay for what may end up being nothing more than a temporary propaganda success could be exceedingly high.

L'articolo Russia Approves World’s First COVID-19 Vaccine proviene da InsideOver.

Sweden’s approach to the coronavirus continues to stir controversy as Anders Tegnell, the country’s leading epidemiologist, said that there is no point in Swedish citizens following the World Health Organization’s advice, which is to wear face masks when social distancing is not possible. Tegnell said that there is no point in adopting this measure because Sweden’s number of COVID-19 infections is dropping sharply.

The Health Agency of Sweden says that since reaching a peak in late June, the infection rate has rapidly dropped despite an increase in testing over the period.

Sweden’s Unorthodox Approach to COVID-19

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Swedish Government has consistently refused to take its country into lockdown while many of its EU counterparts and the UK took the opposite direction. At one stage, the number of Swedish deaths exceeded those in the US and Brazil. On Tuesday 28th July, Sweden reported only two new deaths. The current death toll there stands at 5,743. This is a remarkable achievement for a nation that bucked the trend and kept its economy open as COVID-19 crippled the rest of Europe.

The Science Behind Face Masks is Unclear

As Sweden continues to recover from the coronavirus in its own way, was Tegnell right to argue that face masks should not be mandatory in his own country? The one reason why the face coverings debate remains unresolved is because there are a lot of contradictory arguments over their purpose and efficacy.

In the UK, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) that is advising the British Government on its response to the coronavirus argues that the evidence of coverings preventing the spread of infection from one person to another is “marginal, but positive.”

This argument is supported by a study conducted by Cambridge and Greenwich universities which discovered that requiring everyone to wear a face mask would prevent a ‘second wave’ of coronavirus for 18 months.

Some Studies Show Face Masks are Effective

Nonetheless, Denis G. Rancourt, PhD, conducted a study into whether face masks work or not. He reviewed established knowledge about viral respiratory diseases, the mechanism of seasonal variation of excess deaths from pneumonia and influenza, and other factors.

He found that the “second wave” of an epidemic is not a result of ‘human sin’ regarding mask wearing and hand-shaking. Instead, it is a consequence of an air-dryness-driven many-fold increase in disease contagiousness among populations that have not yet gained immunity from a virus.

Furthermore, mask stoppage efficiency and host inhalation are only half of the equation because the minimal infectious dose (MID) must also be considered. If the MID surpassed by the virions carried in a single aerosol particle is able to evade mask-capture, then the mask is of no practical utility.

Do Face Masks Actually Work?

Rancourt states that because there is no sufficient scientific evidence on face masks, governments should not make policies that have a hypothetical potential to cause harm.

Radonovich et al (2019) conducted a study that investigated whether N95 respirators and medical masks prevent influenza among healthcare personnel. It also found that among 2,862 participants, 2,371 completed the study. Among outpatient health care personnel, N95 respirators versus medical masks as worn by volunteers in this experiment resulted in no substantial difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

This was also supported by a 2020 Hong Kong study which came to the same conclusion, but also stated that improper use of these masks increases the chances of getting transmitted.

Sweden’s Approach is the Right One

People in many countries are being told that cloth masks are better than nothing, but in 2015 MacIntyre et al compared medical masks to cloth masks. They found that cloth masks are ineffective and can put people at a greater risk of catching a virus. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in an increased risk of infection.

Considering Sweden has succeeded in curbing the rate of COVID-19 infections without the need to impose a lockdown so far, it would appear that Tegnell’s decision not to force Swedes to wear face masks is justified based on the scientific evidence currently available. There is no certainty that they do work and more countries would do well to follow Tegnell’s lead. It should be a matter of choice for people to wear a face covering. Sweden may well be the unsung hero of the coronavirus pandemic in years to come.

L'articolo Is Sweden Right to Refuse to Make its Citizens Wear Face Masks? proviene da InsideOver.

Sweden, typically a poster child for healthy living, has been forced to defend its coronavirus strategy as the state finally begins to see the curve flatten. The fact that Sweden — a state that was rated 8.5 for healthy by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) —failed to control the disease for so long even as its neighbors managed to succeed gives reason to question the Swedish strategy, which was unconventional from the beginning.

Voluntary Measures

From the onset, Stockholm decided not to lockdown, a decision it maintained through the worst of the crisis in April. The Swedish strategy essentially boiled down to trusting its residents to do the right thing. Social distancing has been voluntary and the only hard rule issued by the government is a prohibition of gatherings with more than 50 people, BBC News reported.

Although the government did not explicitly declare herd immunity a goal, some health experts suggested Sweden could be a test bed for the theory. However, others have argued against such an approach and most agreed that for it to work properly, an average 60-85% of a state’s population would need to be infected, according to the New York Times.

Furthermore, vulnerable demographics such as the elderly are unlikely to mingle in public as frequently as a healthy individual, thereby decreasing the likelihood that they would obtain the antibodies. Finally, the jury is still out on whether an immunity can even be established against COVID-19. Even with a vaccine, it is possible that it may not be 100% and permanently effective with the first dose.

The Swedish Public Health Agency revealed a paltry 6% of its population has tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, as BBC News reported, which is hardly a raving endorsement for herd immunity.

Astronomical Death Rate Among the Nordic States

For these reasons, Sweden stirred controversy when it decided that it would not shutdown with the rest of the world and it continued to pay a price in casualties. As of Friday, it ranked 27th with 5,676 deaths according to health data compiled by Worldometers.

Its neighbors boast far better results, however. Denmark has only 612 deaths, Norway 255, and Finland 328. Even when considering population differences (Sweden has roughly twice the population of each of its neighbors, the numbers are harrowing. So why then are Swedish health experts so resolute in defending their strategy and insistent upon declaring it a national success?

“The epidemic is now being slowed down, in a way that I think few of us would have believed a week or so ago,” said Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist.

‘No Strong Evidence’

It is true, the numbers are now looking incredibly favorable particularly when compared with the virus’ peak in April. Tegnell hailed recent statistics as vindication of the Swedish strategy saying, “We have managed to [slow the spread] with substantially less invasive measures.

Have daily deaths and cases fallen? Yes. Did resisting a nationwide lockdown keep the Swedish economy afloat? Yes. However if these are the only metrics, then what is the point of fighting the coronavirus at all, if we are to entirely ignore the lives sacrificed needlessly?

Tegnell conceded there may have been too many casualties, but he remained in stark denial that lockdown measures would have helped, declaring there was “no strong evidence that a lockdown would have made the much of a difference.”

Lofven Government Loses Support

Lives weren’t the only casualty as a result of the strategy—support for the government, including Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, plummeted. Although Lofven and his Swedish Social Democratic Party have enjoyed higher approval numbers since before the pandemic began, June marked a turning point as Lofven’s approval rating fell 10%, according to SBS News. Public faith in Lofven’s party similarly dropped 9%.

Swedes are now questioning whether or not Stockholm leaders made the right call. Estimates anticipate a 5% economic contraction this year, less than Sweden’s neighboring states. Consumer spending was higher, however, but an unemployment rate of 9% leads the Nordic states, BBC News reported.

“Sweden, like the other Nordic countries, is a small, open economy, very dependent on trade. So the Swedish economy tends to do poorly when the rest of the world is doing poorly,” said Prof. Karolina Ekholm, a former Deputy Governor of Sweden’s central bank.

It remains to be seen if Sweden’s strategy has further reciprocal effects, but for now the damage, aside from casualties, appears to be limited to its image. The state, usually a top-tier nation in terms of health and wellness, now is forced to defend the sacrificing of its citizens to preserve its economy. 

L'articolo Sweden Defends Coronavirus Strategy Despite High Casualty Rate proviene da InsideOver.

As reported here last month, Israel’s initial battle with the new coronavirus actually went rather well. A few wise decisions, quickly deduced from Italy’s horrific experience, allowed Israel to close its borders early and limit the spread of the virus. The number of cases remained relatively low (around 20,000, or 460 per million) and so did the mortality rate (about 1.5% of all cases). But then things changed – and not for the better.

The Warning Signs Were There

In retrospect, the alarming signs had all been there. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government decided to end the country’s general lockdown in late April and quite quickly resume business as usual, most experts warned that this was happening too soon.

Two decisions in particular, received criticism and in retrospect had indeed created most of the damage. The first decision allowed all schools, from kindergarten to high school to get back to class without any restricting measures. Israeli schools are the densest in the OECD and very soon, they turned into hubs of infection.

The second decision allowed attendance at weddings as high as 250 participants. If that isn’t enough, then many families – in a rather typical Israeli behavior – actually invited 750 people to their celebrations, dividing the venues into three sub-areas, but not really bothering to make sure that these restrictions were respected. The end result? Multi-generational greater family infections, where participants returned to their respective hometowns and made sure small fires of illness soon rekindled all around the country.

Cases Rise in Mid-July

By late July, the number of new daily cases rose as high as 1,500-1,800 – a new Israeli record, relatively almost equivalent to the United States, where the disease had already become completely out of control. Israel’s lack of preparation for the next stage of the battle meant that it is now facing a second wave of COVID-19, while other countries are hardly getting over the first.

Earlier on, Israel planned to co-ordinate its actions with Austria, a country with a similar population, which had been hit by the pandemic about 10 days earlier. This allowed the Israeli government enough time to learn from the Austrian experience. But the plan never materialized: Israel rushed forward in order to revive its economy, while the more cautious Austria has yet to encounter a significant second wave.

A Second Lockdown is Possible in Israel

Israel also never bothered to establish a sufficient epidemiological organization, which would help test, trace and isolate new cases and thus prevent a rise in infections. Various countries, from South Korea to Germany have adopted such methods. All the Israeli teams of advisors recommended that this was a basic condition for lifting restrictions, but hardly anything happened. Wasn’t this supposed to be the “start-Up nation”, ready for any scientific or technological challenge? How did this happen and why is the country considering a second lockdown in an urgent attempt to bend down the curve?

The main explanation, unfortunately, has to do with Netanyahu himself. After the virus seemed to be retreating in late April, the prime minister apparently lost interest. He had enough on his plate: persuading his opponents from the Blue and White party to join a national emergency coalition; fighting and undermining the judicial system as his trial for three counts of corruption had been approaching; and trying to persuade the Knesset to approve the funding of some of his outrageous expenses. Netanyahu was so sure he had beaten the virus that he kept bragging leaders from all over the world were calling him for expert advice. This has since turned into a running joke for the Israeli public. The leaders are phoning, it has been said, just to make sure their countries don’t repeat Israel’s silly and costly mistakes.

Netanyahu’s Mistakes Will Have a Price

Now, there will be indeed a price to pay. Netanyahu faces what one of his predecessors, Ariel Sharon, used to call the corales (from Spanish – the bull’s only path into the matador’s arena). On the one hand, he has to stop the virus from spreading, because the Israeli hospital system may crumble under the growing pressure, the way it happened in Lombardi and New York in March. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are either unemployed or have lost their small businesses because of the crisis. They expect the government to help them out, but so far the state’s financial assistance has been limited.

Recently, nightly demonstrations have been held around the PM’s residence in Jerusalem. Many of the participants are young Likud voters. These events have clearly gotten under the Netanyahu family’s skin. Netanyahu’s distress is rather evident. For the first time, he cannot just announce a new election. He may just lose it, as the public seems to have lost faith in the politician that local newspapers nicknamed “the magician.”

And in the background, as always, lurks Iran. A series of mysterious explosions has hit the country since late June. The Iranians blame Israel for the most significant of these, an explosion in the nuclear facility in Natanz. Apparently, it has pushed back the Iranian nuclear program by a year or two. Iran will surely be considering retaliation. If it is successful, Israel and the United States may strike in return. The Middle East is on the verge of a possibly serious military escalation this summer, in spite of the coronavirus demanding most of the different leaders’ attention.

L'articolo COVID-19: Israel’s Many Mistakes proviene da InsideOver.

As some countries are relaxing their lockdown–the restriction measure aimed at curbing the spread of the COVID-19—the fear of the pandemic’s second wave is resurging, given the rise in the number of new cases numerous places.

What is a Second Wave?

Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University, Australia, described the second wave as what happens once the curve declines after reaching its peak of COVID-19 infection, then the numbers of new infections rise again.

The peak is counted with the infection rate at three to ten percent of the population, referring to the data in Wuhan, the city in China where the outbreak emerged for the first time.

“The second wave usually hits up to 90 percent of those who were not exposed to the virus,” the expert told Indonesia’s daily Kompas last April.

However, there is no confirmed definition of the second wave. We can tell one wave is over when the infection can be controlled, and the number of cases falls significantly.

“I think it’s really important that to wrap around, that there really isn’t a national epidemic that this is playing out locally across the U.S. and it’s hard to give single labels like first wave or second wave to the nation at large,” Eli Rosenberg Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics – University at Albany, said in an expert panel held by Newswise on Thursday, June 25.

“I think to have a second wave means you’ve successfully fought a first wave. I think that’s the really important piece to – that’s my starting definition. And I think in some places like Seattle, like here in New York State, we are to a large extent on the other side of the mountain as it were — not fully there, I would say, but we’re really — we’ve made it very far on the other side of that mountain, and that was due to massive public health efforts. And so now if we saw a resurgence after being all the way on that other side of the mountain, you might say. Yeah, we’ll call that a second wave. And it probably happened some time from now. It would have to happen sometime from now,” Rosenberg added.

South Korea is Facing a Second Wave

On June 22, South Korea announced that it was in the middle of the pandemic’s second wave, citing that most of the new infections came from Seoul.

As cited in Reuters, the country’s Center for Disease Prevention Control (KCDC) reported 79 new COVID-19 cases on May 28, the highest since April 5, when the country recorded 81 new cases in a single day.

Jeong Eun-kyeong, chief of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), cited the May’s holiday as the culprit behind the rise in the new COVID-19 infections, adding that the authority once predicted the second wave would fall in fall or winter.

“Our forecast turned out to be wrong. As long as people having close contact with others, we believe that infections will continue,” Jeong stated.

Due to its massive testing and contact tracing, South Korea’s effort to flatten the infection’s curve has drawn international praise.

The surge in the new cases — after reaching its peak in late February (900 a day) — made the government consider imposing a stricter social restriction if the infection rates stand at 30 cases a day for three respective days and hospitals’ rooms occupancy rate stands at 70 percent.

Starting next month, the country’s health authority will adopt a reservation system to limit the number of visitors to nursing homes and other facilities as the elderly population is prone to the virus’ infection.

As of Friday, June 26, South Korea has recorded 12,602 COVID-19 cases, with 282 deaths and 11,172 cases in recovery, Worldometer data showed.

China’s COVID-19 Case Count Rising Once Again

China has reported a surge in the new COVID-19 figures following the easing of its confinement measures. On June 14, the mainland reported 57 new numbers of COVID-19, the highest daily cases since April 13, the official data reported.

China’s capital Beijing had seen 227 new infections of COVID-19 in the last ten days as of June 23, ending its 56-day streak without new coronavirus cases.

The fresh outbreak was linked with imported salmon fish sold at a food market. However, experts said there was no evidence that food products can spread the virus.

“There is no evidence of infection via the digestive system through food consumption, including seafood products,” Feng Luzhao, a researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told a press briefing cited in Bloomberg.

Beijing has closed 40 high-risk neighborhoods, canceled thousands of flights, and conducted tests on more than two million people a week since the new outbreak hit on June 11.

China has recorded 83,462 COVID-19 cases, with 78,439 cases in recovery and 4,634 deaths.

What About Other Countries?

On June 16, New Zealand ended its 24-day streak of no new COVID-19 by reporting two new coronavirus figures; both were imported cases from the UK.

As of Friday, June 16, New Zealand has reported 14 new COVID-19 figures, all have been isolated, and no community transmission has been reported so far, the country’s health minister said.

Japan is also likely to enter the pandemic’s second wave following the new 119 cases in the city of Kitakyushu in Fukuoka in the last ten days, breaking a nearly one month-streak of no coronavirus cases, the Straits Times reported.

On June 3, the Japanese authority discovered 34 new coronavirus cases in the capital Tokyo, the first time since May 14 when the new figures of COVID-19 reached more than 30.

Europe is preparing to deal with the second wave following the reopening of its economic activity and mass protests against the excesses of a police force that killed an unarmed African-American George Floyd in the U.S. state of Minneapolis on May 25.

European nations have begun to give medical workers a crash course on how to treat COVID-19 patients and are planning to retrain medics to avoid a lack of human resources in case of the second wave.

“We need a healthcare army,” said Maurizio Cecconi, president-elect of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM).

Italy, Spain, and France are among European countries that saw the highest numbers of COVID-19 infections in March and April. On June 24, two schools inf France’s capital Paris had been closed due to precautionary measures following the discovery of coronavirus illnesses.

L'articolo Fear of a COVID-19 Second Wave Increases as Countries Ease Restrictions proviene da InsideOver.