More COVID news from abroad: New Zealand and North Korea – Deborah Birx’s portrayal of the initial response to the pandemic – Evening statistics
Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, has tested positive for COVID. Her reaction is characteristic: even though parliament sessions are scheduled this coming week for two set-piece events in the emissions reduction plan and the budget, she has conformed with the restrictions she has placed on others and has put herself in quarantine. She will conduct some administrative work remotely, but much of the interaction with the press, for instance, she has delegated to her deputy, Grant Robertson. “This is a milestone week for the government and I’m gutted I can’t be there for it,” she said. “Our emissions reduction plan sets the path to achieve our carbon zero goal and the budget addresses the long-term future and security of New Zealand’s health system. But as I said earlier in the week, isolating with COVID-19 is a very Kiwi experience this year and my family is no different.” I cannot stress enough how greatly she differs from American politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, who unabashedly act as though they are “different.” Some decades ago many American politicians would not have dreamed of claiming to be above the law, but that attitude has passed away from the political life of this country long ago.
North Korea has admitted that 350,000 of its population have been afflicted with “an obscure febrile disease” that has included fever among its other symptoms. Further than that, not much information is being disclosed – the mortality rate, for instance. There is, of course, no respiratory disease other than COVID that is currently spreading so rapidly as to affect hundreds of thousands of people in a short time, but the North Korean government seems to regard COVID as the Disease-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, every bit as fearful as Harry Potter’s associates were of uttering the name of Lord Voldemort. The country’s medical system ranks 193rd among the 195 nations of the world and well over 40% of the population are suffering from malnutrition, so it seems likely that COVID will be infecting many more North Koreans in the near future. Any attempt, however, to obtain reliable statistics from that country is simply a lost cause. Lina Yoon, a Human Rights Watch researcher, summed up the situation as follows: “Most North Koreans are chronically malnourished and unvaccinated, there are barely any medicines left in the country, and the health infrastructure is incapable to deal with this pandemic.”
Deborah Birx has recently published a book called Silent Invasion, which goes into great detail about how the Trump administration botched the crisis created by the pandemic. Her book is of interest because most of the coverage up to this point has focused on Trump alone– I have done as much myself in several entries – whereas she provides details about the rest of the team that formulated the disastrous response to the disease in its initial phases. Chief among this group was Scott Atlas, the radiologist from whom Trump took epidemiology advice. Atlas had a habit of repeatedly responding to group emails from her by hitting “Reply All” and then removing her from the list before sending. Others that she names include presidential Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (who, however, has already received a measure of fame, or rather infamy, for his consistent misrepresentations to the public), vice-presidential Chief of Staff Marc Short (who was mainly concerned about protecting his boss), Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the entrenched and inflexible staff of the CDC, the out-of-its-depth staff of the Council of Economic Advisers, the politically wobbly World Health Organization, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who, Birx indicates, knew better but caved to political pressure. She does praise some participants for quietly facilitating a few positive responses, including, rather surprisingly, Mike Pence and Jared Kushner. Some governors, also, such as Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Doug Ducey of Arizona, took the pandemic seriously from the beginning.
Birx is known, of course, for failing to stand up to Trump when he went so wildly astray. In the book she laments her most public lapse: when Trump seemed to advocate consuming disinfectant in a live televised briefing, and she feebly and quietly uttered, “Not as a treatment.” She should have been more forceful, she writes, and “should have ignored my deeply ingrained, military-honed instinct not to publicly correct a superior” – which, of course, raises the question of how it is possible for any sane person to consider Donald Trump a superior.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 520,269,695; # of deaths worldwide: 6,286,458; # of cases U.S.: 84,159,845; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,026,485.