madeleine

In a Feb. 4 interview with NPR, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIH emphasized the urgency of taking a global approach to the eradication of the coronavirus, and of doing so quickly before it has more time to mutate. 

“You’ve got to be able to get — with the help of the developed world — the entire world vaccinated,” Fauci stated. “As we allow this infection to exist to any degree in any part of the world, it will always be a threat. So we’ve got to approach this the way we approach smallpox, the way we approach polio, and the way we approach measles and other devastating global outbreaks.” 

He said that the pandemic is far from over, and that the danger is that the virus will mutate and new strains will emerge, as is already occurring. The key is to vaccinate “as many people as quickly and as efficiently as you possibly can” and “to double down on the public health measures of uniform wearing of masks, physical distancing, avoiding congregate settings — particularly indoors.” 

Fauci added: “The more the virus replicates, the more opportunity you give it to mutate. So when you have so much infection in the community, as we have had in the United States over the last few months, where you literally have hundreds of thousands of new infections per day… that means the virus has almost an open playing field to replicate, [which] means you give it an opportunity to mutate.” 

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus argued the same point, telling reporters in Geneva on Jan. 5: “Globally, the number of vaccinations has now overtaken the number of reported infections. In one sense, that’s good news, and a remarkable achievement in such a short timeframe. But more than three quarters of those vaccinations are in just 10 countries that account for almost 60% of global GDP.” And 130 countries comprising 2.5 billion people have yet to administer a single vaccine shot. “The longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,” he said.  

Tedros called for “a massive scale-up in production” of COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, including pharmaceutical companies providing access to their manufacturing infrastructure, as well as issuing non-exclusive licenses to allow other producers to manufacture their vaccine. “This sharing of knowledge and data could enable immediate use of untapped production capacity and help build additional manufacturing bases, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” he said. 

This is “the best way to protect the rest of their own population,” he argued.

The ECR (European Society of Radiology) and the Renew group of the European Parliament commissioned an independent study to assess the effectiveness of EU climate neutrality, and analyse and compare two climate-neutral power-generating technologies that, if they effectively replace fossil fuel infrastructure, can result in decarbonisation of the electricity system – wind/solar and nuclear. The study was initiated by Dutch MEP Rob Roos and Czech MEP Ondřej Knotek and peer-reviewed in part by, among other scientists, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus. 

The study – Road to EU Climate Neutrality by 2050: Spatial Requirements of Wind/Solar and Nuclear Energy and Their Respective Costs found that, in realistic scenarios, there is insufficient land to meet all the power demand of the Netherlands – “a country along the North Sea with abundant wind” – and the Czech Republic – “a landlocked country with no access to the sea and a geographically more challenging landscape” – were to rely solely or predominantly on wind and solar power. It also concluded nuclear energy is more cost-effective than renewables. Even when major efficiency improvements in solar and wind farms are taken into account, nuclear energy will remain the cheaper option in 2050, it said. 

“Because current EU policies favour renewable energy over nuclear energy, an assessment of the relative cost of both technologies can easily be led astray and reflect the policy status quo, rather than anything inherent to these technologies,” the report says. “Massive funding found its way into the development and deployment of wind and solar energy solutions. This had the effect of reducing the price of renewable energy, but it has also had a relative inflating effect on the cost of nuclear power and of [its] deployment thereof in the EU. “Given the advantages of nuclear power from spatial and economic viewpoints, however, Member State governments will likely need to add nuclear power to their energy mixes to stay on track in their attempts to meet the EU’s climate neutrality objective.” 

A lengthy report in the New York Times underlines the absolutely disastrous situation facing Africa as it is hit with what is described as the “second wave” of the epidemic. During the last few months, it was generally reported that the epidemic was not as serious In Africa as what we have experienced in the U.S. and in Europe, although the dearth  of statistics and information coming from some parts of the continent may have caused a good deal of scepticism over these claims. And it’s very possible that many cases simply went undetected. But now the disaster is at hand – and readily apparent.

The report is authored by Sheri Fink, a NYT reporter who has written extensively on health and medicine and covered the Ebola crisis. In South Africa, the epidemic is spreading from Port Elizabeth to the entire country. Nigeria, Mali, and Uganda recorded their highest daily death count in the year. In South Africa, they admit that they really don’t know how many people have died from COVID. One government analysis shows that more than twice as many excess deaths simply could not be explained by the number of confirmed COVID cases. ““We don’t know what the real number is,” said Dr. John Black, the only infectious disease specialist for adults in Port Elizabeth.

The greatest number of COVID cases and deaths has been in South Africa, where the hospital system has been stretched beyond its limits. This includes cases which are suspected of being of the new mutated variety now found in Great Britain.

At the beginning of the epidemic early in the year, the African countries had instituted strong restrictive measures and lockdowns, but the measures proved to be so economically problematic that they began to ease up. South Africa brought in 200 physicians from Cuba, medical staff from Doctors Without Borders and scientists from the W.H.O. By late August, the numbers had dropped.

But the closed borders and canceled flights also prevented the rapid supply of equipment and outside experts to help in the fight. In Somalia, some areas were not reporting any cases at all. And investigations in areas controlled by the Shabab terrorist group, when they could be conducted, showed a rampant spread of the epidemic.

Even in hospitals in South Africa, which is probably the best equipped of all sub-Saharan African countries to deal with the crisis, the system has been swamped. And doctors have found it necessary to triage in the case of the limited ventilators and other equipment for the more serious cases, often prioritizing the younger candidates who are more likely to recover and live long lives rather than the elderly.

And the other dilemma that will  be faced as a vaccine is developed is getting it to Africans, and conducting mass vaccinations. Here also, the report notes there is “vaccine scepticism”  among many people as we also experience in the West. And many people still view COVID as a disease that Westerners get, and is not a threat to Africans. And the logistics of a mass vaccination on the African continent is absolutely daunting.  With the intense competition among countries to obtain vaccines from the various producers, African countries are not high on the priority list. Only China has promised that they would prioritize developing countries for their vaccine. But only a concerted effort  from the outside, and with the help of military-style logistics of a country  the size of the United States or China could accomplish the goal of getting vaccines to those in need in Africa quickly enough to avoid a total disaster.

Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIH told an American University audience on Oct. 6 that as many as 400,000 Americans could die of COVID-19, if the proper measures are not adopted as the flu season hits, this Fall and winter. That’s higher than a University of Washington study from August that talked about possibly 300,000 deaths by Dec. 1. The total as of Oct. 7 was about 211,000. According to The Hill, Fauci also said “that a vaccine will probably not be available to most Americans until next summer or the fall… `Maybe 50 percent of you hate me because you think I’m trying to destroy the country, but listen to me for six weeks or so, and do what I say, and you’ll see the numbers go down’”.