Anniversaries

 

Anniversaries are quite often celebrations:

•     The baby is now one-year-old        
•   The marriage has lasted fifty years
•    I have survived another trip around the sun!

Sometimes they commemorate or memorialize:

•  One hundred years since the Spanish flu
•  The attack at Pearl Harbor
•  The fall of the Twin Towers and attacks at other places on 9-11.

This weekend is the anniversary of the death of the first known American patient (Patricia Dowd of San Juan, California) to lose her life to the coronovirus and the death of the Chinese physician (Li Wenliang of Wuhan, China) who first raised the alarm about the virus. Li was censored and silenced by the Chinese authorities, even as they were locking down the city of Wuhan and restricting travel throughout the country.  The Washington Post on Sunday had a strong editorial chastising the Chinese for their lack of transparency about the viral outbreak and the work being done by the viral research labs located in Wuhan.

This past week was the anniversary of the Senate acquittal of the former president after his 2020 impeachment trial. These two events are intimately intertwined and, I believe, have set the stage for this last year and the horrific times we have all suffered through. By voting to not convict, the Senate enabled an already out-of-control president to continue not only his non-traditional presidency but also further expand his aberrant behaviors.

The ineptitude of his administration to control or contain the virus has now brought this country to the place where we are approaching 500,000 COVID deaths and over 27 million total cases. The refusal to listen to scientists, the sidelining of the CDC, the battle against closures, and mask-wearing are all administration failures. Fanciful therapies, Hydroxychloroquine, Lysol, and bleach joined a realm of quack cures along with herd immunity claims.

The inability of the government to devise and implement a national COVID-19 policy, the dividing of the mask-wearing campaign into red states against blue states, the lack of any adequate health care stockpile, the absence of a national economic policy to address the significant loss of jobs all lie at the feet of the former president and vice-president. The reaching for quick and easy solutions, the denials (it will be gone by Spring), and false promises, i.e. churches can meet for Easter; all led to false hopes and deepened the spread. To their credit – they did manage to finance the development of several vaccines, some of which are effective and are now being implemented. But it has been a year of devastation to the economy, poverty for many in the working class, and the expansion of hunger across many classes. Oh sure, the stock market after an initial plunge has now reached new heights, but that mostly helps the few who own stocks, not the many who live paycheck to paycheck.

Many hoped that once the president and members of his family became afflicted that more attention would be paid to the scientists, but that did not happen and the White House itself became a super spreader site.  Many afflicted patients hoped that they, too, could receive the experimental therapy the president was treated with, but supplies were limited, so the public was mostly left out.  So, after a year, we have some therapies which help treat, but do not cure and vaccines that can immunize; the length of the immunization effectiveness is still uncertain.

President Biden has a national COVID policy and has hit the ground with an ambitious plan.  He has noted that the transition team had not been informed that there was no stockpile of vaccines, nor were there any coherent administration policies in place. He wanted 100 million vaccinations given within 100 days.  He asked for a national mask-wearing policy for the same 100 days and by executive order has required mask-wearing in all Federal buildings, in addition to social distancing.  He also instituted a mask policy for all transportation entities, buses, metros, planes, trains, and rideshares. Scientists have indicated that this short period of mask-wearing could save 80,000 lives.

The lack of mask-wearing at the insurrection at the Capitol has led to many members of local law enforcement testing positive for the coronovirus; the return of these domestic terrorists across the country to their home states has, undoubtedly, caused many more exposures. Several Democratic lawmakers have also tested positive, quite possibly from Republican members who refused to wear a mask when they were congregated in hiding. Biden cannot require states to follow his mask mandate, however, and Iowa’s Republican governor (Kim Reynolds) has just this week indicated that she will lift the limited mask requirements the state had in place. Health care providers, such as Dr. Fauci and others have worried about the Super Bowl being played in Florida this weekend as that activity brings many people to a state with few limits on gatherings and mask-wearing. The game itself did require mask-wearing and social distancing, but TV interviews demonstrated many fans partying without masks.  The aftergame partying in the streets sadly showed no social distancing and few masks being worn. (In case you hadn’t noticed, Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9.)

This week most national numbers are trending down and providers think we have passed the winter and post-holiday peaks. This is not the time to let one’s guard down as it is assumed, that by March, the UK variant will dominate the virus outbreaks in the US. Currently, the nation is now contending with two previously untracked variants, both of which are considered more easily transmitted, the UK variant and the South African variant.  The two RNA vaccinations are effective for these two but less so than the original configuration.  South Africa has determined that the Astra Zeneca vaccine is not adequate protection against their variant. One of the problems in the US is that there was no national genome sequencing program established to identify variants.  To date the US has sequenced only 0.3% of its cases; the UK has done 5%, Denmark has reviewed 12%, while Australia has examined over 60% of its cases. Most studies here are done by independent labs or academic centers that are not linked by data collections. An organization called SPHERES (SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology, and Surveillance) was launched in May by the CDC to track sequencing, but it was never nationally formally implemented into a vital collection database.

Vaccinations are proceeding at a faster pace and just this week mass vaccination centers are being set up across the country. Recently, the National Football league has offered its’ stadiums across the country as additional mass vaccination sites. The administration is also sending 1 million doses of vaccines to commercial pharmacies across the country to speed up vaccinations. Many states are reporting under vaccinations in communities of color and efforts are being made to overcome the clinic deficiencies in poor neighborhoods as well as vaccine resistance by this population. The incidence of Covid diseases in communities of black and brown supportive workers has been substantially higher than in comparable white workers. Additionally, it has been documented that many nursing home employees have refused the vaccines, even though they have seen high levels of deaths in their work environments.

Currently, approximately 30 million residents have been vaccinated in the US. Vaccination rates vary across the country. Since total vaccination requires 2 doses, only 2.5% of the necessary dosing has been given thus far. It is obvious that we need, as a country, to step up this pace. West Virginia ranks among the highest percentages with over 12% vaccinated, while Iowa is the lowest on the lists with only about 7.5% vaccinated.

Maryland currently is at 8.6%, which is too low. Vaccination registration has been confusing and implementation has been spotty as distribution rates are not yet stabilized. The state did open up two mass vaccination sites this week which should help increase the totals.

So much news, so little time to look at the upcoming Impeachment in the Senate, the troubled and divided Republicans in the House, or the antics of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia. No time to discuss other issues such as the necessary return to education in the classrooms, the 1.9 trillion dollars requested by the President to aid the economy, families, and COVID relief - and Black History Month.  Hopefully, next week!

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COVID stats – NY Times: 2/7/21

Total US cases: 27,041,000. Total new cases: 105,027.

Total deaths: 463,237.  Total new deaths: 2,613.

Maryland Cases: 362,084. New cases:1,500. Total deaths: 7,329. New deaths: 42.

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“Til next week – peace.