Covid was an enemy which attacked our country. The key thing to defend against an attack and win the enemy is the unity among people. But that was the time we were divided the most. This may be why we lost so many people and still losing in the fight against Covid compared to any other country in the world. When some kids were grieving for the Parents they lost to Covid - there were some parents fighting the school officials about the mask mandates, When some people are wearing a N95 mask in flight to protect their loved ones with underlying health condition - some others refuse to wear mask in flights to protect their personal freedom, when some teachers are double masking because of their old age and health conditions - some other teachers are wearing a mesh in place of mask to show that they comply, when poor people are struggling with the inflation during pandemic - billionaires are doubling their wealth during pandemic, when some governors mandated masks in indoor public places - some governors banned the mask mandate in indoor public places put forth by the local authorities, when the a local court enforced a mask mandate in schools - the state supreme court bans the mask mandate in school, when the federal government is pushing on vaccine mandate for all employees public and private - The supreme court of this country revokes it, Even we have one President wears the mask and former one never wore a mask in the public.
To see the aftermath of these divisions, Please check the Covid Death toll by country in the Statista link below with US at the top with 15% of all the Covid deaths in the world.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093256/novel-coronavirus-2019ncov-deaths-worldwide-by-country/
Statista Graph on Covid deaths around the world
From the beginning of the Pandemic, the Trump administration was always silencing or sidelining the scientists and their recommendation to control the pandemic. They even delayed and changed the daily epidemiological data containing the pandemic spread in this country. Trump himself floated unproven dangerous Covid treatments like the use of hydroxychloroquine and injecting bleach into the body, just like a shaman from an uncivilized community will do. These unproven treatments were announced on Covid 19 press briefings from the White House podium and people were watching in disbelief. When it comes to Covid, US Leadership was putting out contradicting messages with CDC and FDA during the Trump administration. In my opinion that could have caused all the distrust among people on the mask mandates and Vaccines. The Social divisions Trump caused also fueled this distrust. Social Media companies propagated the distrust using their platform. Initially, people thought pandemic only affects the minority and the elderly. The back and forth between Trump and FDA on Covid vaccine approvals before the Nov 3 election may be one of the reasons why Americans lost confidence in vaccine safety. Trump was putting pressure on FDA for a faster vaccine approval anticipating that the EUA approval before the election could benefit him to win the election. But FDA approved the vaccine after the election which made Trump to hate the vaccines because it could not help him to win the election. That’s why he didn’t even encourage the Americans to take the vaccine, especially his base. He could have been the first one to take the vaccine. That way many in his base would have got convinced on the vaccine safety. But he didn’t care less, and he took the vaccine secretly without even telling anyone in order to protect himself. It’s all about winning for him, not the American lives.
When Covid was spreading in China back in early 2020, I used to watch Videos of deserted Chinese Cities and people going to get groceries wearing masks. I saw videos of the Chinese government announcing to wear a mask all the time when people are out on the streets. They were even using Drones to do the public announcements. One of the ABC news articles shows, during the first 3 months of 2020, there were around 3200 flights landed in the US from China carrying roughly 750,000 Chinese nationals. Many of these people could have been carrying the virus. US should have quarantined and isolated them like the Chinese government. When China was quarantining and isolating their people in massive camps, we just assumed that Covid 19 won’t affect this country. Please see the ABC news article on this below
Meantime, I saw in news that the Heads of CDC and NIH were telling the American people that there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. I was thinking, why would China chase their people to wear masks if it was not required. China’s CDC director George Gao locked down the Wuhan city in late January of 2020 and forced his people to mask up since then. He even warned the US that “Not wearing masks to protect against coronavirus is a ‘big mistake” in an interview with Science magazine in March 2020. Please see the article below.
With the Delta and Omicron surge, any mask other than KN95 or N95 is pretty much useless. That’s how contagious these variants are. But CDC hasn’t advised people to wear KN95 or N95 until mid-January 2022. Most people including kids were wearing cloth masks and they were getting Covid because of this and attributed a huge number of Omicron climb.
When United States was averaging 800,000 cases a day due to Omicron surge and our CDC is putting Germany in Level 4 – Covid 19 high-risk Travel list. Germany has 60,000 cases a day at the same time. You do not have to go to Germany to get a covid with the number of cases we have here. With the rate it’s spreading in the US, there is a good chance that you might get infected before you even board the flight out of the US. And there are many African countries in CDC’s Level 1 –Low risk to Travel list. These countries have a very low vaccination rate and there is no proper testing in place in those countries. I am not sure how CDC is determining the cases in the countries where there is no testing infrastructure is in place. Please check the CDCs portal showing the Travel Risk levels and countries.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/map-and-travel-notices.html#travel-4
When it comes to uniting people to address the Pandemic in this country, most of the officials from the Biden administration go to CNN or MNSBC to convince the viewers on vaccine mandates and masks. Most of the viewers of CNN and MSNBC are all vaccinated and follow all the mandates. Biden administration should instead go to the right-wing media like Fox News and address the concerns of unvaccinated people who are watching those channels. That’s where the help is needed.
Usual thing we get to see nowadays with every senate hearings on Covid is the Feud between Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci. American people are tired of seeing this. Everyone in US administration has failed to protect its people because they were divided in every way possible to address pandemic and it’s still continuing. This country outspends every other country in the world when it comes to Covid and failed miserably in protecting its people compared to any country in the world. After 2 years into the Pandemic, the United States had vaccinated only 62% of our population. China was able to give out 2.5 billion doses vaccinating 83% of their population. All the major European countries and South American countries are way ahead of us on vaccination. Even Cuba vaccinated 86% of their people using their homegrown vaccine. A developing country, India administrated 1.5 billion doses vaccinating 45% of the population. Please see the One world InData portal link below for the vaccination percentages by country.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
As I mentioned earlier, most of the underdeveloped or Developing countries are administering Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and Chinese vaccines like Sinovavc and Sinopharm which are inexpensive and easy to store. Out of the 8.5 billion vaccines administered around the world, around 7 Billion is AstraZeneca Sinovavc, Sinopharm, combined. Please see graph on the nature.com article in the link below on the vaccine distribution around the world by the manufactures.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03686-x
This is because poor countries don’t have the means to buy the expensive American mRNA vaccine. That’s why they are using Vaccines like AstraZeneca which is not approved by the United States. Don’t you think that this will create hesitancy in underdeveloped and developing countries against vaccination? United States FDA is considered as the highest authority when it comes to drugs and vaccines around the world and if our FDA thinks that AstraZeneca is not safe or efficient, what kind of message we are sending out to the world? Most of Africa is unvaccinated. In Most populous countries in Africa like Ethiopia and Nigeria, the vaccination rate is around 5%. As long as these countries stay that way, there will be new variants evolving every month.
Why is not United States leading in the effort vaccinating the world.? Without a global strategy, this Pandemic is never going to end.
The bottom line is the more prevalent the virus is around the world, the more the chances of new variants to evolve. So if the world wants to come out of Pandemic, Companies like Pfizer and Moderna need to share the new mRNA Vaccine technology with the rest of the world and work with the other companies who are trying to come up with an mRNA vaccine that does not have to be kept or transported in ultra-cold freezing temperatures. German company CureVac made such an mRNA vaccine that didn’t have the requirements to be kept in ultracold temperature. Standard refrigerated temperatures was enough to store it. But they failed to meet the efficacy, it was only 47% effective in preventing serious illness. mRNA technology has the potential to create a vaccine blueprint quickly as soon as the new variant evolves with changes to the Virus spike protein. The traditional vaccine making that other countries are relying on does not have this capability. It will take more time for them to come up with a vaccine to address the changes in virus variants and by that time there will be another variant. mRNAs vaccines have more efficacy too. Pfizer and Moderna have made enough money from a pandemic, proved their excellence, Now help the world to come out of this Pandemic and end it for good. This way low-income countries including the developing nations can have an mRNA-based vaccine without the need for super expensive ultra-cold freezers.
Covid mRNA Vaccine technology needs to be shared with the world because that could save lives. This is where the United States needs a strong leader who could twist the arms of these Big biomedical companies to make them share the technology to end the Pandemic in the world. But those companies are using lobbying firms to push the government away from making that decision. This way they can keep making vaccine boosters every time a new variant originates out from an unvaccinated low-income country. People can be on the edge all the time and there will be a free flow of money to them for years to come.
Looks like out Politicians and Public health officials need to learn to play the famous board game called “Pandemic” from Z-Man to acquire the skills to deal with a pandemic. I am saying this cynically because these politicians or officials do not even show the level of skills a kid can acquire by playing that game. I don’t know the people running these vaccine rollouts have played the simple Pandemic game either.
The key to winning that game is adopting different strategies to mitigate the virus outbreaks around the world by working together as one team.
https://www.zmangames.com/en/products/pandemic/
Every country in this world needs to work together as one team against this Pandemic and share the vaccine technologies and medicine manufacturing. We also need global leadership. Without that this Covid may never go away and haunt us for the rest of our lives.
by Hari Ramachandran