Well, it’s baaaaaaaack! But it never really went away. Following a brief respite in some areas of the world, COVID-19 is returning everywhere, everywhere. In the US it simply rages on, unabated.
As the ultra hot spot of New York started to abate, midwest areas and southern areas which explicitly spurned active measures due to politics are now starting to hot up. They will presumably feed back into areas like NY and California, just as they start to get things under control.
With no national leadership to speak of, the US has set itself up to be a zone in which COVID-19 circulates indefinitely. The pitiful state of the place is a glimpse of both an alternative present and a possible future.
This is underlined by the situation in Victoria. After some initial hesitation when the virus hit, the Andrews government went into “rainbow bulldozer” mode, imposing order, and also ramrodding the theatre of authoritarianism — Dad Dan, strong but fair — that it loves to do.
The trouble with that is that the theatre can obscure the real need to impose order, and since Labor state ministers in our era can be a tad, well, what’s the phrase, utterly mediocre, the second part doesn’t get done.
So it’s difficult to know whether the current Victorian outbreak is due to a particular failure in multiculutral outreach (the failure itself does not seem in doubt) or whether it would have happened anyway.
It’s quite possible to attribute a level of general causality to a particular manifestation, which is to say, if the virus hadn’t reflared at a family party in Broadmeadows, then it would have come some other way. There is not only political spin in blaming non-anglos for the reflare, there is a degree of magical thinking at work. If we could identify one cause, maybe we could…
But we can’t. The basic dilemma has never gone away. The lockdowns were meant to prevent a US-style wildfire spread, to give us breathing space to work out what to do next, and to avoid a crowding of acute medical services.
Because New Zealand appears to have managed to virtually eradicate the virus, that became the hope. But New Zealand is pretty unique in being small, rich, isolated, well-governed, well-led, and hit late.
How likely was it that a continent-nation of 25 million could mimic that? What are the odds that other states will avoid a Victorian-style flare-up? If they do, we’ll know that the Andrews government really didn’t walk the walk. If they don’t, that will make it clearer that the virus was always going to re-bounce once things began to reopen, and Victoria was first simply because it had got the virus under control first.
The right’s attempt to use this as a stick to beat Victoria’s progressivism with, and to paint as a competent alternative, of all things, the Berejiklian government (they make the trams run on time, but on non-connecting differently-gauged lines), is going to look particularly silly if Sydney becomes plague town once again.
Things have only happened at all when they happen a second time, so the return of COVID to the West (the first hit hasn’t yet peaked in the global South) is really its debut.
Here it is, not a one-off, not a fluke, not something that happens and leaves no trace. This is the thing to be dealt with, the virus that currently has no vaccine, and may never, and may be joined by COVID-21 by the time we get one.
This is a far more grim situation than the first lockdown, which our current mass culture managed to turn into a mix of World War II nostalgia and lifestyle articles. This is working out how to move to a situation in which more life is resumed without a pretence that we can simply regard COVID as done and move on.
To a degree, it’s our mass culture that’s leading us to think like that. We’re regarding COVID as a fad, like aperol spritzes, that we passed through, rather than a situation we now have to actually deal with.
That is going to mean working out how to manage a society in which the life activities and possibilities of low, medium and high-risk people start to differ sharply.
Governments of both right and left are going to have to work out how to repeatedly reconstruct an economy whose standard key source of widening demand — the discretionary semi-luxury of entertainment, including drinking and eating out — is permanently lessened.
The obvious point is that a “divider” effect has started to set in, as laid-off employees in discretionary sectors cut back on semi-discretionary and then necessary purchases. No amount of bluster about JobSeeker bludgers is going to solve that.
If this is simply the kickback of the first wave, and not even a second wave, then it won’t matter what a government’s politics are — capitalism will have to be further reconstructed to ensure that the basic framework of economic life does not break down altogether.
And behind all this lurks the darker possibility — that COVID-19 is, or is becoming, a blood- and immune-system disease, targeting our T-cells, with the prospect of becoming much, much worse.
If that occurs, or if new and more lethal viruses emerge, in what may be the viral stage of global human history, then a total social reconstruction may be required, and an epochal cultural shift would occur. The chaos in the US would appear to be a sort of small taster, the very least glimpse of what the beginnings of that might look like.
None of this might ever happen. I pray that I’m wrong. But one way or another, it’s baaaaaaaaaack!
What is going on? Why is there no discussion on cleansing the blood, a process that has been known about and used successfully by Lance Armstrong. If cleansing the blood can get rid of cancer, bacteria and parasites then why not Covid 19?
Wut?
Used by Lance Armstrong? Say no more! (Please!!)
Hey, doan forget Keef, the most elegantly wasted ™ ® man in rock music – he and others of similar predilections regularly went to a Swiss clinic for complete changes of blood to ease the consequences of their various indulgences.
But that’s only for the rich wastrels – the rest will have to make do with Prez Clorox’s suggestions.
Science illiterate WARNING.
Aotearoa/New Zealand has not quite manage to eradicate the virus because overseas New Zealanders have a ‘right of return’ but there is also an extraordinary level of official transparency on a daily level which gives the public who bother to read a real sense of what is going on day by day, case by case – see https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases/covid-19-current-cases-details
We have the right of return, but we also have to go through 14 day’s quarantine and at least two tests before being released into the populace.
But how long can my NZ survive with its borders closed and a huge chunk of its service economy non-existent?
Tourism supplies a full 20%of NZ’s GDP. All those praising Ardern for going for eradication may well wish they were living elsewhere in a year of so, as the NZ economy tanks and it heads for a deeper economic depression than almost anywhere else. Countries which have learned to live with the virus, and all its risks can survive this. Those still cowering in fear behind locked gates for however long it takes for a vaccine to miraculously become widely available, with their populations incredibly vulnerable, will not.
Sadly for the fate of my homeland, it really is that brutal.
It is one of the small number of nations well suited to tell the rest of the world to get lost and go for self sufficiency.
This country is even better placed to do the same thing except that owners would never allow it … ie not the government, much less the population.
NZ has virtually no manufacturing industry, and few of the natural resources needed to preserve its first world standard of living. Lots of timber, but I’m assuming you don’t want that strip-mined… It survives by exporting agricultural products and attracting overseas tourists. Like Australia, it also relies heavily on foreign students paying for tertiary education, and immigration.
I’m not sure what sort of closed borders, self sufficient economy you have in mind, Dounreay, but its not one that would support paying anyone a pension, or provide the internet required to post comments like yours.
A slightly better one than the majority of the world is going to have before very long.
The sooner we start practising, the better.
We in the Antipodes can, should, must eschew the onrushing Crapocalypse.
What you said is just not true and so wrong. The border closure only affects trade that involves the movement of people (like tourism; which is understandably bad for tourism corporations & workers). It doesn’t stop international trade. NZ can, and should, continue its international trade in agricultural products, as it currently does (although there is a strong moral case for stopping the export of dairy powder that is responsible for many infant deaths and morbidity globally, massive pollution of NZ rivers, and a big proportion of NZ’s greenhouse gas emmissions). NZ can, and should, continue its trade in education services, but not through the modality of movement of people. And, of-course, as anyone with a basic grasp of economics would know, domestic trade contributes far more to GDP than international trade despite what farmers’ incorrectly bleat about export dollars. Oh, and don’t forget that GDP only measures something like 60% of the economy, totally ignoring the 40% of mostly uncounted women’s caring work (so well documented by NZ’s own Maralyn Waring’s book ‘Counting for Nothing’). There’s no reason that NZ shouldn’t be able to continue its world leading aged pension scheme, nor its telecommunications without movement of people across borders.
Not sure why foreign students would be affected greatly. Anyone who is coming to study for a semester, let alone a few years, would be happy to go into quarantine for a fortnight.
Especially when, on the other side, is one of the few countries in the world where life has returned to the “old normal” to a large extent.
Even tourists might be tempted – in fact, it could be a selling point, if more enjoyable quarantine conditions were provided. There will be a growing number of people ready to travel somewhere safe and relatively free in coming months and years, even if it means making the trip a much longer one than usual.
Wrong
Ng on many counts BTRI, they have a very small foreign student market, I know, I work in the sector. All agricultural goods are fine. That leaves a worst case of maybe 5 – 10% economic reduction, which the vast majority of countries will be pleading for in a year’s time. If Oz got its Shite together they could even have Oz tourists, which is a huge percentage of their tourist market. What if we can’t go anywhere else. Well virtually invade them.
The downside of the NZ model is small, everywhere else is living on a hope and a dream.
Agree that any nation that restricts traffic over it’s borders in the current milieu risks severe economic and social collapse. I note that one commenter says that ” The border closure only affects trade that involves the movement of people” citing tourism as an example. People move about for a lot of reasons, business, family, immigration. So you would have to deal with the social and economic consequences of stopping travel for those reason at the same time dealing with the collapse of a mass tourism industry that has cost billions to build over the last few decades. Then you would have to account for the collapse of the airline sector which has been built over an even longer period.
I find a lot of the doom-saying a bit premature. Compared with major catastrophes like the 2 world wars of last century, the second of which was the very definition of world changing, the current crisis, and it is a crisis, is, up to this point, far more manageable in its consequences. It may be that this just the beginning of the end but on the balance of probabilities, it’s far too early to tel so probably not.
Incidentally, as i write this RN has just started playing a panel talk predicting what the consequences will be. I think wanton, largely unsupported speculation is the biggest problem in a media saturated environment. And lets not forget, fear is a finely wrought weapon in the hands of ScoMo and his ilk.
I have repeatedly asked why there is no investigation into cleansing the blood of all diseases including cancer, as per Lance Armstrong. Who is preventing discussion?
It’s because it would be like discussing Trump’s (non)brainwaves – it would be a waste of time. I would suggest you educate yourself extensively on the subject you are trying to broach, before bringing it up to the public for discussion. It’s not your fellow readers’ job to educate you. And by educate yourself I don’t mean read all about your particular topic to feed your cognitive bias, I mean educate yourself a bit on basic science and medicine, before coming up with what you seem to imply would be a “miracle cure” or at least some kind of legitimate treatment the medical profession has somehow managed to miss, because they’re apparently not clever enough.
Also of interest here is something called the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
And because it’s not edifying to make a post like this one, other people are ignoring you. Now, don’t shoot the messenger. You asked.
How did this guy find his way onto Crikey? Is he channeling Malcolm Roberts, or some such?
I think they are wandering around the Interweb like zombies.
Maybe you could cleanse it with bleach?
Have a go and let us all know how you get on.
Thanks Sue. A cleansing time in an autoclave should see all bacteria and viruses eliminated. But I do so hope, despite self doubting moral feelings, that Trump self medicates along these lines.
Because many of us don’t rely on Facebook for our news.
Ok CommonBonds5 : enough sport at your expense. The answer to your question, because I have 30 minutes to spare, is as follows (although the other responses, especially that of Sue’s, are germane).
A coronavirus (of which there are quite a number – including [e.g.] rabies), in contrast to a typical seasonal flu attaches itself (via a lock and key mechanism) to the ACE2 receptor. Such receptors reside in the lower respiratory tract whereas the typical flu haunts the upper respiratory tract (as any analysis of what medication is offered for basic flu will confirm). ACE2 receptors are in the epithelial cells and, inter alia, protect heart, and other organ tissue including parts of the brain.
Are you inclined to hazard a guess at the size of the coronavirus that is causing all of the fuss? No? Its size compares with the upper end of the wavelength of ultra violet light. Call it (about) 340nm. In other words, the size of a red blood cell (about 7um) is about 20x smaller (or the red blood cell is 20x larger : take yer pick). See the problem? Would you buy fencing mesh for an animal that is 20x larger than the animal that you intended to enclose? In any event just who to you envisage reefing a particle, smaller than visible light, from an epithelial cell? Na. A chisel won’t do it (for more or less the reasons as outlined).
The origin of bleeding (or bloodletting) has a history of somewhere about 3,000 years and was motivated by any number of superstitions not excluding religion. By about the beginning of the 19th century the medical scene was snapping out of it – as the saying goes. Transfusions are useful for the purposes for which they are intended and eradicating a virus is not among them.
As always, a fun read. I’d actually be interested to know what a “progressive” lockdown would like in your world view?
I’m not a fan of Dan’s authoritarianism but I am struggling to think of the alternative.
I think that part of the problem is that all of us alive today have lived through a time when it has seemed that mostly, medical science has defeated those illnesses caused by the external factors that we used to call ‘germs’. There are still things that can take us out, like cancer or heart failure or dementia or kidney failure, but these are due to system breakdowns within ourselves: ‘lifestyle’ diseases that lead to the failure of particular organs. Disease due to bacteria or viruses are under our control and can be cured. People no longer die from cholera or polio or diphtheria or bubonic plague or malaria or tuberculosis, at least not in the developed world.
So we’ve all been working under the assumption that it is only a matter of time before medical science discovers a cure for CoVid, just like they have for all the other germs. We’ll all be injected with it and life will return to ‘normal’. It’s not a permanent situation and we won’t see anything like it again for another hundred years, as per Spanish flu. We see the illness off and then we’ll have nothing more to worry about.
That it might become the new normal, particularly as climate change realigns the fundamental relationships between species on this planet, is something that people are having a lot of difficulty getting their heads around. They are behaving accordingly.
Spot on.
There is a fundamental distinction to be made, Graeski, between a virus and a bacterium. As you infer the animal to human virus transmission will, with a global population out of control, will only become more prevalent and the trend has always been there. The trend may also come to be related to climate change.
The vaccine chat is intended to pacify the dial-up dinner brigade however promising a candidate molecule might be. Darwinism also applies to germs (as you put it) and a virus is capable of mutating to “avoid” the effect of a vaccine subsequently. In this regard, viruses will always be with Homo sapiens (sigh). With any luck herd immunities will develop over time (years) until another (e.g. M4) arrives on the scene.