It was such a noble public health dream, even if rather hazy to begin with.\u00a0 Run down SARS-CoV-2.\u00a0 Suppress it.\u00a0 Crush it.\u00a0 Or just \u201cflatten the curve\u201d, which could have meant versions of all the above.\u00a0 This created a climate of numerical sensitivity: a few case infections here, a few cases there, would warrant immediate, sharp lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, the closure of all non-vital service outlets.<\/p>\n
Then came mutations and variants.\u00a0 Delta became the word mentioned like a terrorist saboteur, placing bombs under the edifice of the health system.\u00a0 The pro-market factions within governments receptive to using lockdown formulas could claim that harsh stay-at-home rules were not working.\u00a0 It was time to open up the economy; time to live with the virus, and, consequently, a good number of deaths.\u00a0 It was time for the epidemiologists to do more modelling.<\/p>\n
A crucial factor to this was the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines and the acceleration of vaccination programs.\u00a0 Studies showing how increased vaccination coverage would reduce cases of COVID-19 and precipitate a fall in hospitalisation began to catch the attention of policy makers.\u00a0 One, a preprint and yet to be peer-reviewed paper<\/a> from August, looked at the effects of vaccination coverage among the 112 most populous counties in the United States.\u00a0 It found that a 10 percent increase in vaccination coverage could be associated with a 28.3 percent decrease in the rate of hospitalisation and a 16.6 percent decrease in COVID-19 hospitalisations per 100 cases.<\/p>\n In Australia, New South Wales became the first state to accept that a lockdown policy coupled with a mass vaccination push, the stress being on the latter, would be necessary to cope with the ravages of the Delta variant.\u00a0 Eventually, the number of infections would fall, as they now seem to be doing.\u00a0 \u201cWhat we need to do is all of us have to start accepting that we need to live with COVID because COVID would be around for three or four years,\u201d the now departed Premier Gladys Berejiklian stated<\/a> in September.\u00a0 But it was less a stance of wisdom than one of necessity, given the initially carefree approach of the Berejiklian government to staying open despite the dangers posed by new variants. \u201cWe have to live with the virus,\u201d meant not having to say sorry.<\/p>\n Victoria followed, digesting a harsh reality that the virus, active and present, had ceased to be ineradicable.\u00a0 It had not been that long ago that the same government had proclaimed that it had \u201crun the virus\u201d into the ground like an unwanted invader.\u00a0 But Melbourne, the city lockdown for the longest period on this planet, went the way of Sydney, despite having more stringent measures in place. \u201cWe think there may be a number that is not zero but is low that we can contain,\u201d Victoria\u2019s Premier Daniel Andrews cryptically speculated<\/a>.\u00a0 A debate was taking place on \u201ca sweet spot that is not zero, but it\u2019s not so high\u201d. A stumbled slaying of the COVID Zero vision, but a slaying nonetheless.<\/p>\n Even as this was taking place, the true believers, largely untouched by the effects of the virus in the first place, continued to believe in a certain public health heaven.\u00a0 West Australian Premier Mark McGowan made clear his ambitions of keeping his state \u201cunscathed\u201d which prompted observations<\/a> that West Australia might become a bastion of COVID-19 \u201csecessionism\u201d.<\/p>\n Recently, two countries also removed their names from one of the world\u2019s shortest lists, reading COVID Zero its funeral rites.\u00a0 There was New Zealand\u2019s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose country had followed the elimination strategy for a year and a half, discarding it in full view of the press.\u00a0 In doing so, she used the word \u201ctransitioning\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re transitioning from our current strategy to a new way of doing things,\u201d she revealed<\/a> to reporters earlier this month.\u00a0 \u201cWith Delta, the return to zero is incredibly difficult, and our restrictions alone are not enough to achieve that quickly.\u00a0 In fact, for this outbreak, it\u2019s clear that long periods of heavy restrictions has not got us to zero cases.\u201d\u00a0 Some imagery was in order: \u201cWhat we have called a long tail feels more like a tentacle that has been incredibly hard to shake.\u201d<\/p>\n There was Singapore, a model example of strict border controls despite being a global economic hub, a nation-state dedicated to firm contact tracing, social distancing and mask mandates.\u00a0 Having reached a vaccination rate in the populace of 80 percent, the government was keen to move<\/a> the small country towards a \u201cliving with COVID-19\u201d strategy.<\/p>\n The co-chair of the COVID multi-ministry taskforce (MTF), Lawrence Wong, went so far on October 2 as to suggest<\/a> that \u201csooner or later, many of us will end up catching the virus, but we will have zero or mild symptoms (and) recover from home after a few days\u201d.\u00a0 While 98 percent of those catching the virus would not fall seriously ill, two percent probably would suffer severely.\u00a0 Wong also thought it important to say that the government was stabilising \u201cour protocols [to] make sure the procedures are in place and build up the necessary capacity (in the health care system)\u201d.<\/p>\n It was telling that these words were coming from the finance minister, rather than a public health official of Spartan gravity and moral severity.\u00a0 In New South Wales, Dominic Perrottet, the new premier, till recently the state\u2019s Treasurer, is an open-economy hawk in the face of the lockdown lobby.\u00a0 The pendulum is again swinging in pandemic health, and the citizens of the once COVID zero countries are being softened for tolerable mortality and acceptable risk.<\/p>The post Funeral Rites for COVID Zero<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was such a noble public health dream, even if rather hazy to begin with.\u00a0 Run down SARS-CoV-2.\u00a0 Suppress it.\u00a0 Crush it.\u00a0 Or just \u201cflatten the curve\u201d, which could have meant versions of all the above.\u00a0 This created a climate of numerical sensitivity: a few case infections here, a few cases there, would warrant immediate, [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post Funeral Rites for COVID Zero<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27153,175,304,2178],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349520"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349553,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349520\/revisions\/349553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}