The Plague Year
December 28, 2020 5:42 PM   Subscribe

 
Only a few times in its 95 year history has The New Yorker devoted nearly an entire issue to a single essay.

This is one of those times.

John Hersey's Hiroshima was another.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 5:51 PM on December 28, 2020 [32 favorites]


Summaries at The Verge and Axios contain links to the magazine which weren't paywalled when opened in incognito windows.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:18 PM on December 28, 2020 [9 favorites]


Reporter Lawrence Wright is as good as they come. I first became aware of him when his awesome 1995 New Yorker article on twins [likely paywalled] appeared. His 2006 book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction; it's fascinating and highly readable. And so much more.
posted by neuron at 6:46 PM on December 28, 2020 [11 favorites]


I have only just started reading this, but even so far it is powerful and angering. So many needlessly lost lives.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:16 PM on December 28, 2020


I’m glad this has been so ably documented in a single narrative, because holy cow it’s been a disaster of a year.

I read the essay through section 11, to the point back in March when Trump refused to step up with the federal government, while actively undermining state Governors’ efforts, and simultaneously telling reporters that the Governors needed to be “more appreciative”, and had to nope out of reading any further.

My heart can’t handle re-living the worst parts of this past year, just yet.
posted by darkstar at 8:26 PM on December 28, 2020 [31 favorites]


“Larry Kudlow, the President’s chief economic adviser, had been questioning the seriousness of the situation. He couldn’t square the apocalyptic forecasts with the stock market. “Is all the money dumb?” he wondered. “Everyone’s asleep at the switch? I just have a hard time believing that.” (Kudlow doesn’t recall making this statement.)”

Amazing. Just... just amazing.
posted by mhoye at 8:40 PM on December 28, 2020 [25 favorites]


Within a day after Graham and McLellan downloaded the sequence for sars-CoV-2, they had designed the modified proteins. The key accelerating factor was that they already knew how to alter the spike proteins of other coronaviruses. On January 13th, they turned their scheme over to Moderna, for manufacturing. Six weeks later, Moderna began shipping vials of vaccine for clinical trials.

If there's one good thing to come out of this damn pandemic, it's that the baptism by fire of mRNA vaccines is going to make any subsequent pandemics a lot shorter. Six weeks it took them to have the answer. The rest of the time was making sure the tech was safe and effective enough on a mass level and they condensed that to under 8 months.

Science is a god damned miracle.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:42 PM on December 28, 2020 [131 favorites]


The rest of the time was making sure the tech was safe and effective enough on a mass level and they condensed that to under 8 months.

And I’ve seen people complaining it took that long, as if the idea of “let’s make sure it’s safe properly” was stupid.

They also seem to think the FDA itself is a mistake, so I don’t know what to tell you.
posted by mephron at 8:59 PM on December 28, 2020 [14 favorites]


“Is all the money dumb?” he wondered

Well, at least we now have definitive proof that the answer to this is “yes, now tax the fuck out of those hoarding idiots”
posted by schadenfrau at 9:17 PM on December 28, 2020 [102 favorites]


I read the essay through section 11, ... , and had to nope out of reading any further.

Good move. The end of section 12 was a gut punch.
posted by brambleboy at 10:07 PM on December 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


This article is SO long! Stopping for tonight, will resume probably tomorrow evening.

Thanks for pointing it out. What a piece of journalism!
posted by hippybear at 10:23 PM on December 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


John Hersey's Hiroshima was another.

If anybody hasn't read this, do so. If... you're up for it. Ooof. What a read. It's brilliant.
posted by brundlefly at 10:26 PM on December 28, 2020 [10 favorites]


I'm glad this exists but I can't read it now
posted by emjaybee at 10:45 PM on December 28, 2020 [30 favorites]


They also seem to think the FDA itself is a mistake, so I don’t know what to tell you.

We've forgotten the days of "Charlatan Dave's Cure All Tonic" which was basically some mixture of random shit along with cocaine in a bottle.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:48 PM on December 28, 2020 [6 favorites]


Wrights' brilliant. An article I've linked several times over the years, 'The Master Plan' is chilling.
His use of chronology is interesting in as the subject matter is covered without book report tone hyperbole.
posted by clavdivs at 10:58 PM on December 28, 2020 [4 favorites]


there's one good thing to come out of this damn pandemic, it's that the baptism by fire of mRNA vaccines is going to make any subsequent pandemics a lot shorter.

SARS and MERS helped prep us for this one. And as the TWiV people like to say, the spike protein was a "soft target" with a fair amount of research already done on it. I would not count on the next one being so easy. We are really lucky spike vaccine does not seem to generate autoantibodies at a high frequency (which could happen independent of the delivery method).
posted by benzenedream at 11:22 PM on December 28, 2020 [12 favorites]


I want to read this, but we're still in the middle of this tragedy.

Also, I will have to be around people who are absolutely confident that this was someone else's fault.
posted by meowzilla at 11:48 PM on December 28, 2020 [6 favorites]


Meta: thanks to the plague year, we haven't gotten our NYer in the mail for many weeks now. Just crossing our fingers that it will magically reappear after the holidays.
posted by Dashy at 12:05 AM on December 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


Only a few times in its 95 year history has The New Yorker devoted nearly an entire issue to a single essay.
For good reason, I think. Unfortunately the great journalistic writing is spoilt be what comes over a sloppy editing. If the story merits different takes then split them into articles - its a magazine, not a book.
posted by rongorongo at 3:02 AM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


Unfortunately the great journalistic writing is spoilt be what comes over a sloppy editing.

Sloppy what now?
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 3:26 AM on December 29, 2020 [71 favorites]


I think it's helpful to dive into this article with the understanding that it's a thorough accounting of recent events and not an exposé of them.

On my first read I made the mistake of assuming the latter, and it just made me angry because all of this information was known in real time, but the media kept framing it as an petty dispute between partisans (e.g. language like "Democrats allege that Trump isn't doing enough to combat the virus") instead of being honest about just how bad things are. There's very little in this article that we didn't already know, but on subsequent reads I've come to appreciate that it's all in the same place and carefully arranged to bring out the overarching narrative of disastrous incompetence.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:10 AM on December 29, 2020 [25 favorites]


Will be saving our copy in case our kids ever want a high-level view of what they lived through.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:23 AM on December 29, 2020 [4 favorites]


The image of Brix white-knuckling across a salt flat at > 100 mph with a back seat full of hamburger wrappers is going to stick with me.

Also, I had never seen covered anywhere else that the coding of the protein for both the mRNA vaccines was developed by the same government scientist, not the vaccine companies.
posted by joeyh at 6:26 AM on December 29, 2020 [11 favorites]


“Larry Kudlow, the President’s chief economic adviser, had been questioning the seriousness of the situation. He couldn’t square the apocalyptic forecasts with the stock market. “Is all the money dumb?” he wondered. “Everyone’s asleep at the switch? I just have a hard time believing that.” (Kudlow doesn’t recall making this statement.)”

It's a global pandemic! Where was the money supposed to go in his mental economic model?
posted by srboisvert at 6:26 AM on December 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


for the first time ever, i am listening to the provided audio (while i work) rather than reading it myself; runtime: 3:34:42.
posted by 20 year lurk at 6:36 AM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]


The article may be too early. There are still lots of mistakes yet to be made. The vaccination rollout looks like it is falling into a typical Republican governance trajectory.
posted by srboisvert at 6:41 AM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]


Only a few times in its 95 year history has The New Yorker devoted nearly an entire issue to a single essay.

This is one of those times.

John Hersey's Hiroshima was another.


And J.D. Salinger's Hapworth 16, 1924, which is also about humanity's limitless folly, basically.
posted by escabeche at 6:47 AM on December 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


If you want a much shorter summary without all the detail, this recent WaPo editorial is pretty good.

The real story needs to be written in about two years, after the congressional investigations. Particularly curious about the parts where various Trump folks trying to personally profit or bolster Trump's campaign caused unnecessary deaths.

For months I was angry at our failed government response. Now though my anger has shifted to selfish Americans. The ones who went to Sturgis, or celebrated Thanksgiving with friends and family, or travelled somewhere to be with loved ones at Christmas. The ones complaining about how they can't get their nails done right now because there's not a single ICU bed available in their county. The ones who are now thinking "I'm not sure I'm gonna get a vaccine, I don't know if I trust it.." as if the choice were entirely a personal one with no consequences for public health. We like to think of ourselves as individualistic in America, but really we're just selfish.
posted by Nelson at 7:23 AM on December 29, 2020 [34 favorites]


Totally Under control, the Netflix documentary, is another one that gathers all the mistakes together in one place. There's no way to watch that and think this crisis was handled in a competent, or even just a neutral way.
posted by subdee at 7:25 AM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


This has been a bit of a roundabout for me, as I signed up to follow ColdChef's Twitter account based on a different thread, he posted this there, and now I'm back here!

Unfortunately the great journalistic writing is spoilt be what comes over a sloppy editing.

I think that's unavoidable when the ending is basically "the end of the year has come and we don't know what's going to happen yet", which is where we are now. I'm pretty disheartened by the federal vaccine deployment "plan", which is basically everyone for themselves, since it was at least clear to the administration that the vaccine was the ultimate fix for the hold they'd dug themselves into. But they can't even get that right!

"[Larry Kudlow] couldn’t square the apocalyptic forecasts with the stock market."

I ... I just don't get this, what seems to me, fundamental misunderstanding about the difference between the stock market and the economy. We had a bull market starting in 1942, just as we entered WWII - and it wasn't at all clear that we'd win the war then.
posted by me & my monkey at 7:36 AM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


For months I was angry at our failed government response. Now though my anger has shifted to selfish Americans.

I feel like this would be a hard stance to maintain after reading this in its entirety. People are selfish, yes, but also we can only do our best with what we're given and frankly, we were never, EVER given enough (information, support, money, supplies, guidance) to do well with this.

Of course people get selfish when the government basically tells them they're on their own.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:42 AM on December 29, 2020 [19 favorites]


We had a bull market starting in 1942, just as we entered WWII - and it wasn't at all clear that we'd win the war then

But it was pretty clear that we'd be manufacturing a shit ton of stuff. War is extremely profitable if you're not the country being bombed and you don't have to suffer the consequences of what you've wrought, either by force or conscience (this is part of why America can't / won't stop bombing places). The machines of war get fired up and they spit out death and money. If you're not bothered by the death, you might be very interested in the money.

But a global pandemic is a great stopping of things. Machines idle, people stay put, money freezes in the veins of the global economy while various economic appendages begin to die off. And no one knows how long this stopping is going to last, or how many industries or companies or people will die before it's over.

Viewed from the bloodless, utilitarian remove of the "rational" investor, these situations should not be comparable.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:51 AM on December 29, 2020 [14 favorites]


I agree that a proper national response might have helped Americans to be less selfish. Even if we had something as simple as a clear national mask mandate, it'd make it a lot harder for folks to say "it's my choice whether to wear a mask". (We're about to find out on masks, actually, although a year too late.)

But my frustration with American selfishness is mostly motivated by my experience here in California. Which has had a pretty good response to the crisis, including our government. Which has devoted resources to prevention and education. It was working reasonably well until this fall when folks just.. stopped caring. Now we have the worst infection rate in the country. Both the governor of the state and the mayor of San Francisco also personally chose selfishness over setting a good example, violating social distancing orders for $300+ a person luxury dinners at a Trump collaborator's restaurant. My nail salon example comes from my local county Facebook group. The same rural county where several restaurants have been operating for months illegally with support from our local congressman. And where our kooky left wing mayor helped fuck the consensus to wear masks before resigning.

Part of the problem here is bad leadership, even in firmly Democratic California. But a lot of it is that selfish Americans latch on to any shred of information that lets them continue to be selfish. "Vaccines don't work 100% so I won't get one". "Masks might trap CO2 so I won't wear one". "The governor went out to dinner, so why shouldn't I?"

I hope someone writes a convincing explanation why so many Asian nations have gotten through Covid so well while so man Western nations have failed miserably. There's such an obvious answer rooted in stereotypes about selfishness vs obeying the will of the group. Maybe it's even really true, I don't know. It's definitely not so simple; Australia and NZ are good counterexamples.
posted by Nelson at 8:01 AM on December 29, 2020 [20 favorites]


But a global pandemic is a great stopping of things.

Some things stop, other things start. Shipping companies and Amazon and Doordash etc are doing just fine. Restaurants went down and grocery stores went up. I just don't think the market, as a whole, is capable of doing much better than predicting the instability of the very next day, and it doesn't "care" about lines of business ceasing to exist as long as there are others that don't.
posted by me & my monkey at 8:16 AM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


I just saw a link to this Atlantic article about Pandemic Year Two that's really good, as well, highly recommend if you prefer prediction for next year to documentation of the last year.

Also this amazing story about Hungarian researcher Dr. Katalin Karikó who was treated very shoddily by UPenn for years, left, and ended up being critical to the mRNA research.
posted by emjaybee at 8:54 AM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]


Science is a god damned miracle.

I share the awe, but no, it's merely science. That's the point. A miracle is something a grifter president proposes in order to get folks looking the other way while he cunningly keeps at his confidence game ...
posted by philip-random at 8:56 AM on December 29, 2020 [7 favorites]


I hope someone writes a convincing explanation why so many Asian nations have gotten through Covid so well while so man Western nations have failed miserably.

this piece doesn't so much pursue an Asian explanation as lay bare a fundamental human problem ...

Why the 'sucker's payoff' is one of B.C.'s biggest obstacles this Christmas

Tiffany highlighted a particular problem in decision theory called the "sucker's payoff": you do something for the greater good, but you see another group making a different choice, receiving a bigger immediate payoff and overall case counts and restrictions continue to rise.

It's a hard temptation at any time but particularly during the holidays.

"If people start looking at it, they say I don't want to be the sucker," said Tiffany.

"You have to change how people think about the problem … one way is instilling a sense of duty. You're not just thinking about it from the sense of self-interest."

posted by philip-random at 9:01 AM on December 29, 2020 [6 favorites]


Ok I am quoting my own link here but re: Asian countries (and others) vs. US, in the Atlantic article:

The idea that “America and the West are more advanced than Eastern and African countries is not true, but is seeded in the way global health operates,” said Abraar Karan of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “But when the tires hit the ground, the car didn’t start.” In retrospect, many Western health experts were too focused on capacities, such as equipment and resources, and not enough on capabilities, “which is how you apply those in times of crisis,” said Sylvie Briand of the World Health Organization. Many rich nations had little experience in deploying their enormous capacities, because “most of them never had outbreaks,” she added. By contrast, East Asian and sub-Saharan countries that regularly stare down epidemics had both an understanding that they weren’t untouchable and a cultural muscle memory of what to do.

Vietnam, the first country to contain SARS in 2003, “immediately understood that a few cases without an emergency-level response will be thousands of cases in a short period,” said Lincoln, the San Francisco State medical anthropologist, who has worked in Vietnam extensively. “Their public-health response was just impeccable and relentless, and the public supports health agencies.” At the time of my writing, Vietnam had recorded just 1,451 cases of COVID-19 all year, fewer than each of the 32 hardest-hit U.S. prisons.

Rwanda also took the pandemic seriously from the start. It instituted a strict lockdown after its first case, in March; mandated masks a month later; offered tests frequently and freely; and provided food and space to people who had to quarantine. Though ranked 117th in preparedness, and with only 1 percent of America’s per capita GDP, Rwanda has recorded just 8,021 cases of COVID-19 and 75 deaths in total. For comparison, the disease has killed more Americans, on average, every hour of December.


(seriously it's a good piece, Ed Yong is an amazing writer)
posted by emjaybee at 9:09 AM on December 29, 2020 [41 favorites]


It's definitely not so simple; Australia and NZ are good counterexamples.

Australia and NZ couldn't really be more different in terms of how they've approached the pandemic. The NZ Labour government has crushed the pandemic through national focus, run the money tap wide open to keep economic activity humming along, and has basically come through the pandemic almost unscathed.

Australia on the other hand has had a center-right government which has largely abdicated its responsibility leaving the states in charge of the herculean effort to keep COVID-19 at bay. Scotty from Marketing let the plague ship release cases into the country while siding with a right wing nut job billionaire in his court case to force Western Australia to open its borders. Getting them to spend any money has been like getting blood from a stone with their almost childlike glee of being able to revoke any possible economic assistance as soon as possible.

Australia is not a good counterexample. If anything, Australia is an example of how sometimes people can triumph in the face of overwhelming incompetence of their national leaders. Sadly, the US was not that lucky in this case.

I hope next federal election WA Labor does nothing more than run ads highlighting how the Liberals (economic, not social unlike the US) tried to force the border open. Western Australia has for far too long been a federal Liberal stronghold and next election should be the one to remind everyone of how the Liberals don't give a fuck about anyone but their rich mates.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:17 AM on December 29, 2020 [22 favorites]


It’s not just the leaders. 2020 was the year that proved how willfully, suicidally ignorant and almost incomprehensibly selfish a good third of the U.S. is.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:29 AM on December 29, 2020 [33 favorites]


(seriously it's a good piece, Ed Yong is an amazing writer)

I just read the article, from your link, and enthusiastically agree--to the degree that I finished it consciously thinking 'who wrote this, this is fantastic writing, OK, Ed Yong, mental note.'
posted by LooseFilter at 9:48 AM on December 29, 2020 [8 favorites]


The White House notion that stock markets would/should send the first signal on the pending danger of the virus, combined with their policy of forcing 50 states to bid against each other for imported protective gear, is more evidence of how incompetent they are within their own self-image of savvy business people.
posted by Brian B. at 10:04 AM on December 29, 2020 [13 favorites]


It's not East vs West. It's about basic competence and making health the number one priority and having the clearest possible comms.

I doubt the US culturally or logistically could execute NZ's "team of 5 million" approach, but for sure there was a chance for an appeal to patriotism, and funding state govts (Australia's successes are driven at their state level not federally). A different Republican president could have been using the horrifying "support the troops" mentality and the inappropriate war on the virus metaphor to support medical staff. A different administration could have delivered a clear consistent message about what to do in a daily briefing. But not this one.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:59 AM on December 29, 2020 [6 favorites]


The White House notion that stock markets would/should send the first signal on the pending danger of the virus, combined with their policy of forcing 50 states to bid against each other for imported protective gear, is more evidence of how incompetent they are within their own self-image of savvy business people.

If you think about it, though, it's about as pure an exercise of capitalism and "the market will sort it all out" thinking as you can get. That it was, and continues to be, an abject failure in thinking will probably be lost on the string-pullers, though.

It should, of course, stand as prima facie evidence that government being run as a business is a horror we should never again visit.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:43 AM on December 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


I don't know if any administration could keep this in check. As soon as the virus became partisan that was it. I don't think if a "responsible" Republican government could stop it from becoming partisan with the nut jobs (economy above all else) while Democrats would be hamstrung by spending the money required by the deficit hawks of convenience of the Republican senators.

Controlling the virus in a place like the US would require regional co-operation, a lot of it on the scale of what New England did, throughout the US. The biggest problem is that cities agglomerate over states. East of the rockies, basically all the crossroad cities bleed into two states so you can't just close state borders. Kansas City, Louisville, Chicago, Cincinnati, Memphis, and Fargo just to name a few of the biggest. It would basically be a disaster. A potential flare up in Chicago closing the border between Illinois and Missouri is unthinkable for people across the river. Keeping people from transiting out of green zones is neigh on impossible because of the massive interconnects in urban areas. Not to mention, if one police officer or sheriff manning a checkpoint becomes partisan and refuses to co-operate the whole thing collapses in a heap.

I'm not sure if there is a successful strategy.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:50 AM on December 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


Keep in check, perhaps not. Probably not.

However, I am at pains to imagine any prior administration (even going back to the gilded age) who would think pitting states against each other to find needed supplies a workable or desirable strategy with which to address a pandemic. Rolling in and actually stealing the supplies from the states once they bought them is whole other level of evil which, again, I'm at pains to imagine any other administration stooping to.

We would certainly still be in the dark throes of the pandemic, but I am pretty certain that even a semi-functional administration of any party would, at the very least, not be taking policy advice from nutjobs while thousands of citizens are dying.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:00 PM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]


Agreed with i_am_joe's_spleen. Imagine if President Romney had consistently focused on a message of:

1) Christian caring for the poor, elderly, and disenfranchised
2) "Small town values" of caring for your (white) neighbors
3) Military Preparedness
4) Directing free-floating paranoia towards the virus rather than the government
5) Direct xenophobia towards closing the borders and making sure only properly tested/quarantined visitors are allowed in
6) Vilify non-mask wearers as entitled, selfish, "cheater" elites who are closing down the economy
7) Held out professional sports resuming as a reward for good behavior

Even Trump's "strategy" of vilifying China might not have been all bad. A real politician would have decided to use this as a propaganda strategy, then communicated to China that they were doing this for purely internal PR purposes and it would not affect trade or military activity. Then use the Fox News xenophobia to reinforce mask wearing with "don't let the Chinese win by spreading the virus and shutting down our all important MALLS and FOOTBALL".

Instead Trump stoked the China Virus theory at the same time as denying its existence or importance. Just like the 2016 campaign he glurged out so many lies anyone could pick and choose a self-serving narrative that allowed them to go about their normal lives. He actively made Republican governors fear doing anything about the pandemic that might show disloyalty to God-Emperor Trump.

The US could never have done as well as New Zealand due to geography, the American strain of crazy, and a weak federal government. But it didn't have to be worst in the world.
posted by benzenedream at 12:02 PM on December 29, 2020 [26 favorites]


I feel that at least some of the poor response in the US, Canada and Australia is that because they're federal systems the federal and state/provincial governments are sometimes at cross-purposes. In the US it was Trump trying to sabotage the more proactive states and encouraging the states in denial. In Canada it was the Feds opening the money tap to let people stay home and the provinces trying to keep things business as usual for as long as they could which meant we never got to elimination. On the other hand it was also the Feds allowing people to enter Canada with little to no checking or follow-up if they were infected and the Provinces unable to require something more. Having a unitary system could still result in a series of fuck-ups, as we've seen in the UK for example, but it was one more thing that could go wrong in some country's responses in the pandemic.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:09 PM on December 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


This is one of the most important points in the Yong piece: "The more people who are infected with the coronavirus, the higher the odds that it will acquire vaccine-evading mutations."

That warning should be broadcast far and wide. It ought to give a lot of people a lot of motivation to stop the spread. Think the past nine months have been bad? Imagine the possibility of this becoming a permanent state of affairs.
posted by mikeand1 at 12:26 PM on December 29, 2020 [31 favorites]


“Is all the money dumb?” he wondered. “Everyone’s asleep at the switch? I just have a hard time believing that.”

I've let it sit for most of a day now, and I am still reeling from this statement. I've kept thinking, how the hell do you get to that level of play, that level of influence, without having some sort of understanding of what the raw material of your field even is? Is this just how far economics has fallen as a field, or has Kudlow really invested himself in this sort of willful, structural ignorance?

Then I glanced at Wikipedia, and discovered "In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests against racism and police brutality, Kudlow said, "I don’t believe there is systemic racism in the U.S."

So I guess it's both.
posted by mhoye at 12:30 PM on December 29, 2020 [16 favorites]


Rolling in and actually stealing the supplies from the states once they bought them is whole other level of evil which, again, I'm at pains to imagine any other administration stooping to.

This year I've come to hate the word 'unprecedented', and I admire the New Yorker piece for not using it even once. I think the word has become a sort of inverse-dog whistle that more reputable media outlets use when they know an accurate, objective description of the situation would cause a chorus of deplorables to cry bias, so they hide behind it. 'Unprecedented' is the word cowards use to describe the deaths of 300,000 Americans because they either can't or just don't want to acknowledge that Trump and Republicans are responsible for exacerbating the suffering.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:36 PM on December 29, 2020 [6 favorites]


But a global pandemic is a great stopping of things. Machines idle, people stay put, money freezes in

1968 Pandemic killed 100,000 Americans. Sure not as deadly but the world did not stop.

Imagine the possibility of this becoming a permanent state of affairs.
hmmm.
"The H3N2 virus continues to circulate worldwide as a seasonal influenza A virus."
posted by clavdivs at 12:39 PM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


Thank you emjaybee for this great article.

Others (and you!) have already pointed out a lot, so I'm just going to go with this: (emphases all mine)

Health-care workers, to start with, “are beyond fatigued,” said Lauren Sauer of Johns Hopkins Medicine, who studies hospitals’ surge capacity. “People have been doing this for almost a year without backup.Each COVID-19 peak has sapped more energy and morale, and afterward, fatigued health-care workers have had to deal with a backlog of postponed surgeries, as well as new patients who have been sitting on their medical problems and come in sicker than usual. In the current surge, as hospitals have bulged with up to 120,000 COVID-19 patients, nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists have faced the most grueling conditions yet. They’ve spent hours in intensive-care units packed with some of the sickest patients they have ever cared for, many of whom die. They fear infecting themselves or their families. They suffer the moral injury of fighting the virus while others party, travel, and cry hoax.

I am direct support to the HCWs. Everything I have bolded, I have seen on a regular basis. From the person that signs you in at a registration desk all the way up to if you need to see a specialist for an immediate surgery.

I keep all the computers, etc. running for a surprisingly large area, and it is beating me down.

I am loving that we have cafeteria. Absolutely still staying away from restaurants as much as I can (this from a former food service employee!), but at least I know the caf in the hospital is following best practices, when I am too tired to make a lunch, pack leftovers for dinner, or just flat out can't get back to my desk for whatever I brought.

It's not been easy for any of us (and I mean "all and any of us" in the world), really.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 12:43 PM on December 29, 2020 [32 favorites]


There's such an obvious answer rooted in stereotypes about selfishness vs obeying the will of the group.

Something I've observed is that people are generally good, but lazy. You have to make it easy for them to do the right thing. NY has mandatory quarantine for all travelers from out of state (though poorly enforced). You can get out of quarantine after 4 days if you can produce a negative test result. But the two aren't linked - inbound travelers aren't being automatically scheduled for COVID testing when they arrive, even though the state is taking their contact info, and there are plenty of public and private testing facilities, along with at-home mail-in kits. So people end up in hours-long lines outside CityMD because they don't know any better - if they make the effort in the first place. The lazier ones don't even bother. But I don't think they would've refused to get tested out of some dumb individualistic American principle had the appointment been made for them.
posted by airmail at 12:54 PM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


“Is all the money dumb?”

I've come to terms with the understanding that the US S&P is not the Nikkei, which is only now after a great rip up beginning to approach the 28,000 point high of 1988 (the blowoff top in 12/89 was ~39,000)

My guess is the USD is different, we've pushed so many trillions out that the most convenient and safest place for this money is in our stock market.

Hence our massive -$14T NIIP

It's dumb money, but with nowhere else to go . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:59 PM on December 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


Imagine the possibility of this becoming a permanent state of affairs.

Been thinking about nothing else until the vaccines got approved.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:35 PM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


I am so angry. I can't read this while we're still in 2020.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 2:56 PM on December 29, 2020 [5 favorites]


None of this would have happened if the family had stayed in Vietnam, if the boat had sunk in the storm, if the pirates had murdered them, or if they hadn’t been taken in by Americans who wanted to help them achieve the opportunities that freedom allowed.

America: the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems

(Just thought this was a very weird bit of editorializing!)
posted by tummy_rub at 5:50 PM on December 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


Does this article really talk about this response as if it were just a series of innocent bungles and not a purposeful attempt to sabotage the american people so they can continue to steal & loot.
posted by bleep at 6:01 PM on December 29, 2020


Does this article really talk about this response as if it were just a series of innocent bungles and not a purposeful attempt to sabotage the american people so they can continue to steal & loot.

Not really.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:20 PM on December 29, 2020


And this is unfortunately vey true.
The Year of the Idiot
2020 Was the Year We Found Out That Our Societies are Largely Made of Remorseless, Malicious Idiots.
posted by adamvasco at 7:13 PM on December 29, 2020 [15 favorites]


Putting a cluster of sociopaths in charge of the country during a pandemic doesn't seem like a good idea, in hindsight.
posted by benzenedream at 8:29 PM on December 29, 2020 [14 favorites]


It wasn't a good idea before the pandemic, either. But here we are, in THIS timeline. Woohoo.
posted by hippybear at 9:01 PM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


“Is all the money dumb?”


It continues to amaze me that anyone even asks.

1. Both political parties have tacitly decided to print dollars as a way to address the crisis. Having experienced hyperinflation, I agree that both parties are right to do this. Hyperinflation sucks. But it sucks less. In a hyperinflation scenario, it's smart to buy stocks.

2. The companies listed in the S&P 500 and Russel 2000 are best suited to ride out the crisis compared to, well, just about any entity you can think of, and that's before taking into account how many of them will directly profit from it, and how many will respond with plutocratic measures. They have supply chains and logistics people. That alone is reason enough to own their stocks in March 2020.

So TLDR: the stock market is not and has never been perfectly correlated with the general welfare of the nation. It rose during the crisis for reasons both good and bad.
posted by ocschwar at 10:07 PM on December 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


This was both a painful and an utterly worthwhile read. I am so enraged at the lack of leadership from the top here. This awful "president" and his team are directly responsible for thousands upon thousands of preventable deaths. My jaw hurts from clenching it the entire time I was reading that article. I am normally a pacifist, give-the-benefit-of-the-doubt kind of person who strives to be loving and accepting of others, even when it's difficult, but I want that man to SUFFER. And all those who helped him.
posted by widdershins at 9:37 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]


Meanwhile Ashley Bloomfield, the NZ Director General for Health / Chief Executive for the Ministry of Health has been heavily sampled in song, being played at a Summer Festival. We're pretty lucky the Govt listened to the scientists & health professionals because our public health system wouldn't cope (its barely hanging on at a steady-state as it is, after decades of under-investment & mis-management).
posted by phigmov at 6:07 PM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]


Thomas Pueyo thread.
it’s a bit like a new pandemic. It will take time before it’s everywhere. When it is, in Jan-Feb, the peak in infections will dwarf March’s peak.
It’s now a race between vaccines and the new strain.
when a virus is better at penetrating cells (as this new strain is), it means it probably infects many more cells, reproduces faster & spreads through the body faster, which means it’s harder to stop, which means it kills more. This was known 150y ago. It’s called passage
So what can you do? Trusting your gov at this point might not be the solution
posted by adamvasco at 6:25 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


Tomás Pueyo is a "VP Growth and Product" at some Bay Area edutech company. He is not a source on epidemiology.

It is not a whole new pandemic.

It is a more successful reproducer. This is not great news for public health. But the primary effect it has is that it will outcompete the other virus strains in the field and eventually dominate.

I sure wish we had decent English language science journalism.
posted by Nelson at 8:42 PM on December 30, 2020 [9 favorites]


I finally made it through to the end. It is a strong piece which makes clear that it is one perspective on a huge event.
So, my critique isn't so much that things are missing, as a recognition that there is finite space for attention in an article like this. I am glad that beyond discussing the leaders and major public figures there are also the stories of at least a few of the victims.
I do wish there was a bit more record from the early period about what was being experienced and learned in other countries. The experience of Italy, for example, is treated as a quick aside. The opportunity of our government to directly engage and learn more early from countries that in any other administration would be close allies isn't even mentioned.
posted by meinvt at 8:42 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


Reading the article, it seems to me that Trump and his administration have presided over what is essentially a crime against humanity. Given that they knew that uncontrolled spread would heavily kill off Black and Latinos, the Trump people have comitted an act of genocide.

I'd like to see justice, but somehow, I doubt it will ever happen, since being president means immunity from post term criminal prosecution.
posted by wuwei at 9:10 PM on December 30, 2020 [14 favorites]


This is an admin that was so stupid and evil as to think a worldwide pandemic would stay localized in Democrat controlled big cities and magically spare rural MAGA hats.

In a real country this would end up with genocide charges. In this one you become a hero of White Supremacy and coalesce your support.
posted by benzenedream at 9:48 AM on December 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


This guy can really write. I've read bits and pieces about a lot of the individual topics covered in this story over the last year, but he really fit this all together in a way that was truly clear, poetic, and sobering.

I think I'm gonna save this for if anyone in the far future asks "What happened in 2020?"

Bless, bless, bless those vaccine researchers for thinking ahead, regardless of if it was partially accidental luck. The difference between having that knowledge ready to go vs having to start from scratch has probably saved millions of lives and prevented truly unfathomable amounts of human suffering. As much as this all feels like the opening stages of the The Jackpot playing out, I feel like another year of COVID lockdowns + mass death from a lack of a quick vaccine would be the difference between sliding down a steep hill vs heaving off a cliff.

As terrifying and depressing much of this was, knowing 1 small group of people can have a measurable influence on the abandoned, wildly spinning, burning wheel we've been behind all this time makes me feel hopeful.
posted by wafehling at 10:30 AM on December 31, 2020


(Has anyone who subscribes to the physical copy of the New Yorker received their copy of this issue yet? I’ve been holding off on reading it until I have the paper copy, but ours hasn’t arrived and there have been some mail thefts in our area lately.)
posted by skycrashesdown at 11:33 AM on December 31, 2020


I haven't yet, skycrashesdown.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:25 PM on December 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


Just got mine today. It's a double issue, Jan. 4 & 11, but not especially thick.
posted by mefireader at 5:11 PM on December 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


The failures continue -- we're on track to lose millions of vaccine doses to expiration.

Competence: In Israel, they are vaccinating about one percent of the population each day, meaning the full program of population-wide vaccination will be done by this March.

Incompetence: The first batch of vaccine is set to expire in late January, around the time Joe Biden takes office. On the current pace, about 6-10 million Americans would have been vaccinated. And, many million doses will be set to expire.

This administration can not send soon enough.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:33 AM on January 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


In the US, there are other concerns beyond expiration dates: a Wisconsin Aurora Health system hospital employee intentionally ruined over 500 doses of the Moderna vaccine last weekend by leaving vials out of the pharmacy fridge. The employee was fired, and is in police custody.

The employee (a pharmacist) later admitted to taking the same vials of vaccine out of the refrigerator overnight from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. By the time Aurora learned this fact, the vials of spoiled vaccine had already been used to vaccinate 57 people. (No ill effects are expected, and Aurora said these people had been contacted.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:36 AM on January 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


Once there is more information, I would love to see an FPP gathering all the news about the pharmacist who did this.

I just can't fathom why a pharmacist would do this. An anti-vaxxer? Sure. But, a pharmacist? Isn't this, like, what they believe in?
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 2:48 PM on January 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


Maybe it's not an ideological protest? Beyond the bone-deep exhaustion from this year, pharmacists can believe in vaccination while needing adequate staff, supplies, and $ to administer it. Wisconsin pharmacies ask state for regulatory reform to help distribute coronavirus vaccine.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:25 PM on January 1, 2021


Incompetence: The first batch of vaccine is set to expire in late January, around the time Joe Biden takes office. On the current pace, about 6-10 million Americans would have been vaccinated. And, many million doses will be set to expire.

I suspect this won't happen. The admin may be screw ups but there are competent local people who will work hard to make sure this doesn't happen. So if you factor in the reporting lags, second dose administration, increasing efficiency from practice and procedural streamlining and the end of the holiday season we should avoid mass vaccine expiration.

What I am terrified of is the new more infective covid strain outpacing the vaccine administration even if it is competent. A 50-70% increase in transmissibility if it were to become the dominant strain it could result in daily case counts over well 500,000 and death totals over the 7000/day range. And that not taking into account that it would be total medical system collapse time.

The abject failure of the Western response to the pandemic created tens of millions of petri dishes to accelerate the evolution of the virus and now a slow rolling vaccination program is going to select for vaccine escaping variants. We might be becoming the gods of Greek mythology creating the life that ends up destroying us.
posted by srboisvert at 4:48 PM on January 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


I suspect this won't happen.

It's going to be close. Distribution started 3 weeks ago, implying there are just a few weeks left in the cycle. (In super cold storage the Pfizer vaccine lasts 6 months, but once they go to dry ice, it's only 30 days.) So far only 28% of the vaccine has been used, with only a few states at or near the 50% mark.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:03 PM on January 1, 2021


We might be becoming the gods of Greek mythology creating the life that ends up destroying us.

That makes it sound so epic rather than stupid.
posted by benzenedream at 10:30 PM on January 1, 2021 [5 favorites]


I had a very negative view of Dr. Brix before reading this article, mostly due to the feeling that she was letting Trump's lies about COVID slide, but she comes across as a hero here. That road trip probably saved the lives of hundred of thousands.
posted by gwint at 12:04 PM on January 4, 2021


a non mouse, a cow herd, the pharmacist/saboteur, Stephen Brandenburg, made a "full confession": he's a conspiracy theorist who thought the vaccine was unsafe. Also a gun nut maybe. [T]he judge ordered the suspect to be released on a $10,000 signature bond. Brandenburg, who was fired from the hospital after his arrest, was ordered to surrender his firearms and was barred from serving as a pharmacist.[...] Two complaints by coworkers about Brandenburg allegedly bringing a weapon to work have been launched with the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services, a department spokesperson tells ABC. A department prosecutor has officially opened an investigation into those complaints, which will be evaluated appropriately as to his licensure in the state.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:17 PM on January 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


Thanks, Iris Gambol. I still don't understand it, though. It just seems diametrically opposed to his nearly quarter century chosen profession (and how much education beforehand?).

I'm probably hopelessly optimistic that he didn't get into it just for the money. Or maybe he naturally went off the deep end.

Regardless, I definitely appreciate the link.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 4:26 PM on January 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Much of US data to catch newest coronavirus variants is several months old
As part of the hunt for new coronavirus variants, an international database shows the United States ranks 61st in how quickly virus samples are collected from patients, analyzed and then posted online.

Countries with far fewer resources, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Suriname, process samples more quickly than the United States does.

"It's pathetic," said Dr. Peter Hotez, a virologist at Baylor College of Medicine.

The median number of days from the time a sample is collected from a patient's nose until the time its genetic sequence is posted on GISAID, an independent data sharing initiative, is 85 days, according an analysis of GISAID data by the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"By the time you wait (85) days, a sequence can go from being a rare variant to being half of the circulating virus in a population," Hotez said.
posted by homunculus at 3:42 PM on January 12, 2021 [1 favorite]


US reports over 200K new Covid-19 cases every single day for a week straight
The US set a grim milestone Monday as the country recorded over 200,000 new Covid-19 cases for seven straight days, according to John Hopkins University.

The nation has never hit this milestone before, JHU data shows. Over the last week, the US has tallied over 1.7 million total Covid-19 cases and over 20,000 deaths.

On top of that, Covid-19 hospitalizations have surpassed 100,000 for the last 40 straight days and officials are trying to ramp up the pace of vaccinations across the country.

"We really need to get this vaccine out more quickly, because this is really our only tool," Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Experts have long said the best combined defense against surging cases includes preventative measures such as masks and social distancing -- as well as widespread vaccination.

Nearly 9 million people have received their first doses of vaccine against coronavirus in the US and nearly 25.5 million doses of vaccine have been distributed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

"We don't have a public health infrastructure for mass vaccination," said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
posted by homunculus at 3:46 PM on January 12, 2021


California's new idea is mass vaccinations at big outdoor venues: California's Disneyland to become Covid vaccination site (BBC, Jan. 12, 2021) The Disneyland resort in Orange County will become the region's first "super" distribution site, Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do said on Monday. It will have the capacity to vaccinate thousands of people daily. The park has been closed to visitors since mid-March - unlike its sister resort, Walt Disney World in Florida, which has been open to reduced numbers of guests since July.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced similar vaccination sites would be opening up as early as this week at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium, Cal Expo in Sacramento and Petco Park in San Diego. "We recognise that the current strategy is not going to get us to where we need to go as quickly as we all need to go," Mr Newsom said. "That's why we're speeding up the administration not just for priority groups but opening up large sites to do so."


I'm not afraid of the vaccine, but I am afraid of queuing up with thousands of other people in a vast, exposed area. [Even covid-19 can’t kill the anti-vaccination movement, BMJ, June 2020]
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:57 PM on January 13, 2021


I'm not afraid of the vaccine, but I am afraid of queuing up with thousands of other people in a vast, exposed area.

I'm not sure what you mean by "exposed area". It's all done in open air, and a better scenario than what we're seeing further north, where it's too cold to be outside, so mass immunizations will need to be / are being held indoors at various expo halls. I think the Disney solution is a great one. From the footage I saw, people lined up, spaced apart, and it was all handled pretty well.
posted by hydra77 at 8:32 AM on January 14, 2021 [1 favorite]


I agree, hydra77. I wasn't concerned about contracting COVID-19 in that setting, and reading about the security precautions at open-air locations (ex. - Cal Expo) helped with the gun-violence fear that swamped me at the time of that comment. I apologize for the accidental opacity and any derail.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:48 AM on January 14, 2021


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