How to avoid "wasting" the COVID-19 crisis?
April 26, 2021 12:52 PM Subscribe
SARS, MERS, COVID-19... The next viral outbreak is inevitable. What should nations be doing to prepare? What should individuals be doing to encourage these preparations?
As vaccination programs ramp up, I expect the public's sense of urgency regarding COVID-19 will start to wind down. How do we avoid "wasting" this crisis? What organizations are best equipped to prepare for (or better yet avert) the next pandemic? And what can individuals do to encourage/demand legislation, funding, or funneling of other resources toward preparedness?
As vaccination programs ramp up, I expect the public's sense of urgency regarding COVID-19 will start to wind down. How do we avoid "wasting" this crisis? What organizations are best equipped to prepare for (or better yet avert) the next pandemic? And what can individuals do to encourage/demand legislation, funding, or funneling of other resources toward preparedness?
In my country, Canada, there has been a lot of buck-passing and blame-shifting between different levels of government. I think one thing that needs to be ironed out is where the various powers and responsibilities lie so that the various levels can act appropriately the next time around and know that they'll be judged on how they're doing their part.
For example our borders are controlled by our Federal government, which has been really slow to limit travel to and from Canada and has only recently put in place a quarantine system for people coming into the country BUT the Provinces have the power to place their own quarantine restrictions, and in the Atlantic Provinces have been doing this since last spring, but the other Provinces are just relying on the Federal system.
I think we'll also see more vaccine and PPE production capacity created everywhere. No one wants to be waiting on shipments of needed items from another country, especially if they may get cancelled or diverted en route. Just think of everyone trying to get N95 masks out of China or the EU suing AstraZeneca to prevent them from shipping orders outside of EU borders. This increased redundancy is a good thing, but will come at a cost.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:37 PM on April 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
For example our borders are controlled by our Federal government, which has been really slow to limit travel to and from Canada and has only recently put in place a quarantine system for people coming into the country BUT the Provinces have the power to place their own quarantine restrictions, and in the Atlantic Provinces have been doing this since last spring, but the other Provinces are just relying on the Federal system.
I think we'll also see more vaccine and PPE production capacity created everywhere. No one wants to be waiting on shipments of needed items from another country, especially if they may get cancelled or diverted en route. Just think of everyone trying to get N95 masks out of China or the EU suing AstraZeneca to prevent them from shipping orders outside of EU borders. This increased redundancy is a good thing, but will come at a cost.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:37 PM on April 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
Fund public health. Address inequity. Vote for leaders who believe in science. Take Fox News, The Doctors, and all the other pseudo-science, pseudo-fact outlets down.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:56 PM on April 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by warriorqueen at 1:56 PM on April 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
Need to point out another angle: We know Trump is kinda tight with Putin.
You think it's Putin that put the idea into Trump's head that COVID ain't nothing to be worried about?
But put all that aside... We have a chance now that people have trust in CDC and science in general. This is the best time to push pro-science agenda, with antivax sentiments at their lowest and sounds the most crazy (COVID and 5G, for example)
Use the chance to spread real-science, have Biden, Harris, Fouci, Surgeon General, CDC, etc. talk about what had been accomplished (all those shots in 100 days), so those people who had died will not be joined by hundreds of thousands more.
posted by kschang at 1:58 PM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
You think it's Putin that put the idea into Trump's head that COVID ain't nothing to be worried about?
But put all that aside... We have a chance now that people have trust in CDC and science in general. This is the best time to push pro-science agenda, with antivax sentiments at their lowest and sounds the most crazy (COVID and 5G, for example)
Use the chance to spread real-science, have Biden, Harris, Fouci, Surgeon General, CDC, etc. talk about what had been accomplished (all those shots in 100 days), so those people who had died will not be joined by hundreds of thousands more.
posted by kschang at 1:58 PM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Some ideas in here:
Public health experts worry about a boom-bust cycle of support.
One of the things that hobbled the response this past year was a lack of up to date federal data infrastructure - particularly around reporting and sharing. As a result there were wildly different standards and processes. The Covid Tracking Project has written extensively about this, so diving into their work might be another good place to start on the very unsexy infrastructure end of things.
posted by entropone at 2:27 PM on April 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
Public health experts worry about a boom-bust cycle of support.
One of the things that hobbled the response this past year was a lack of up to date federal data infrastructure - particularly around reporting and sharing. As a result there were wildly different standards and processes. The Covid Tracking Project has written extensively about this, so diving into their work might be another good place to start on the very unsexy infrastructure end of things.
posted by entropone at 2:27 PM on April 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
As an individual: get involved in emergency prep in your community (e.g. if you're in the US, sign up with CERT or your local equivalent).
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:30 PM on April 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:30 PM on April 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
What should nations be doing to prepare?
One of the big problems in this pandemic is vaccine shortages. The forecasts have been that much of the world isn't going to be vaccinated until 2022, and that was before the current giant wave in India, which is one of the largest producers of vaccines.
One of the problems is patents. Another problem is lack of facilities, training, and materials. A third problem is vaccine hoarding and vaccine nationalism. For future pandemics there need to be more production facilities in more countries (and more continents!) capable of producing more vaccines (and/or medications), and a stronger mechanism for encouraging or enforcing the sharing of medical patents when necessary for the public good.
I don't know how individuals can work towards this.
A separate thing is helping small retail businesses stay afloat during the pandemic. All around the world, there need to be initiatives and organizations that help local businesses have effective web presences and online stores, combined with a way to easily find and search for local online businesses. (I think Shopify provides some of this, though I don't know how international they are or how affordable they are globally. I know that in my country very few of the small non-food retailers had online stores or even online catalogues, even though there's a good delivery infrastructure here.)
Relatedly, not everyone has access to internet-capable devices, to an internet connection, or to connections good enough to enable remote learning and work. That's a huge infrastructure problem that disproportionately hits people who are vulnerable to begin with.
And in general, it's a real problem when public health requires as many people as possible to stay home but huge numbers can't afford to financially. More countries need to do much more to enable people to actually stay home (for example, Germany subsidized many workers' wages). Individually that can mean supporting and helping to make visible politicians and others who are working toward these ideas.
Finally, one thing I personally have been missing is a site that lets people easily compare current realities in countries across the world. For example, I know that countries like Taiwan and NZ, among others, have been doing relatively great during the pandemic. What does that look like in practice? At any given moment, are schools closed, are businesses open, how many days have been spent in lockdown so far, are people on the streets wearing masks, are wages being subsidized? And alongside that, what's the unemployment rate, the infection rate, the death rate. I think this would be helpful in combating the mentality that lockdowns/masks/other measures are too hard or don't work; a lot of people don't seem to be really aware that in some countries, people spent much of the year living in a relatively normal way, because they poured everything into prevention and reaped the rewards. It would help to increase visibility of successful approaches and highlight the fact that deterioration isn't inevitable.
posted by trig at 2:45 PM on April 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
One of the big problems in this pandemic is vaccine shortages. The forecasts have been that much of the world isn't going to be vaccinated until 2022, and that was before the current giant wave in India, which is one of the largest producers of vaccines.
One of the problems is patents. Another problem is lack of facilities, training, and materials. A third problem is vaccine hoarding and vaccine nationalism. For future pandemics there need to be more production facilities in more countries (and more continents!) capable of producing more vaccines (and/or medications), and a stronger mechanism for encouraging or enforcing the sharing of medical patents when necessary for the public good.
I don't know how individuals can work towards this.
A separate thing is helping small retail businesses stay afloat during the pandemic. All around the world, there need to be initiatives and organizations that help local businesses have effective web presences and online stores, combined with a way to easily find and search for local online businesses. (I think Shopify provides some of this, though I don't know how international they are or how affordable they are globally. I know that in my country very few of the small non-food retailers had online stores or even online catalogues, even though there's a good delivery infrastructure here.)
Relatedly, not everyone has access to internet-capable devices, to an internet connection, or to connections good enough to enable remote learning and work. That's a huge infrastructure problem that disproportionately hits people who are vulnerable to begin with.
And in general, it's a real problem when public health requires as many people as possible to stay home but huge numbers can't afford to financially. More countries need to do much more to enable people to actually stay home (for example, Germany subsidized many workers' wages). Individually that can mean supporting and helping to make visible politicians and others who are working toward these ideas.
Finally, one thing I personally have been missing is a site that lets people easily compare current realities in countries across the world. For example, I know that countries like Taiwan and NZ, among others, have been doing relatively great during the pandemic. What does that look like in practice? At any given moment, are schools closed, are businesses open, how many days have been spent in lockdown so far, are people on the streets wearing masks, are wages being subsidized? And alongside that, what's the unemployment rate, the infection rate, the death rate. I think this would be helpful in combating the mentality that lockdowns/masks/other measures are too hard or don't work; a lot of people don't seem to be really aware that in some countries, people spent much of the year living in a relatively normal way, because they poured everything into prevention and reaped the rewards. It would help to increase visibility of successful approaches and highlight the fact that deterioration isn't inevitable.
posted by trig at 2:45 PM on April 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
I think one thing great that's come out of this pandemic already is that mRNA vaccines are now a mainstream thing. If it turns out they were Really Really Bad for some reason we haven't detected yet, well, that's a problem of course - but if it turns out they are as amazing as they seem, it's not unreasonable to expect we'll have a vaccine for the next viral pandemic way, way faster than we did for this one. I think we need to be funding research to make these vaccines easier to develop, manufacture at scale, ship, and store.
posted by potrzebie at 11:21 PM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by potrzebie at 11:21 PM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
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they really were emasculated.
for a terrific layperson's read, laurie garrett's the coming plague. also, quammen's spillover. the cdc has a terrific track record but were blocked from doing their job. legionaires, hanta, ebola, dengue, cchf, lassa...all dealt with incredibly well.
the us had an embedded researcher doing coronavirus surveillance in china - position eliminated by trump.
the chinese-us collaboration with ecohealth alliance: all funding stripped by trump.
the infrastructure for pandemic influenza response might have been leveraged - no. sidelined.
the problem is not: no one knows how to handle infectious disease. it is: the orgs that could have saved thousands were not allowed to act. they know how to do this.
see the (ok) netflix series on pandemic influenza prep. imagine if these amazing individuals were retasked on covid.
tell your sens/reps to start funding cdc like the dod. for all we spent since 9/11 on dhs, imagine how well these orgs could have responded to the larger existential threat: spillover virii.
posted by j_curiouser at 1:16 PM on April 26, 2021 [13 favorites]