Surf’s Up

To understand what lies ahead for Hawaii, the nation, and our world during the current pandemic storm epidemiologists have been studying the countries first battered by the virus storm.

Waves of COVID-19?

Any surfer can tell you about waves, big ones, small ones, good ones, and wipe outs.  The one thing waves all have in common – there is always another wave that follows, and generally in sets of three or four waves at a time.

Science tells us that COVID-19 virus will likely come in waves, in great part due to the uneven and disjointed global response to the pandemic, and the nature of the corona family of viruses.

Presently, there is disparate talk and increasing pressure to cut and run from our virus-induced economic losses. Scientists warn that prematurely re-booting our global economic engine with the infection still raging will only feed waves of the pandemic’s impacts.  Others argue, if China can do it (put people back to work), so can we..?

However, the question is not should we, but when?

The more the President does his campaign-best to convince the nation that once we get through this grim month of April, the nightmare will be completely over, the economy will come back with a roar, and all will be fine – we all want to believe the President, and wouldn’t it be wonderful, if true.

But this virus is very resilient, and health experts warn that this may be just the first wave of what may be waves of infections until we get a vaccine sometime in 2021.

Already, Japan after initial success is seeing a surge of infections, both China and South Korea have struggled with imported infections; and that seems inevitable as economic activity restarts and travel resumes.

“There’s this biological fact that still in South Korea, the people who haven’t been infected aren’t immune, and as soon as there’s an end to social distancing they’ll be vulnerable again,” noted Dr. Mark Poznansky of Harvard Medical School.   The same is true in the United States.

“We’re just looking at this first wave,” noted Dr. Murray. He estimates that in June, some 95 percent of Americans will still be susceptible to the virus.

“The world’s on fire with this virus,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, and this means that even if one country succeeds in putting out the blaze, sparks will keep arriving from elsewhere to cause new outbreaks. He added: “I think the transmission will continue to occur for some time.”

COVID-19 VIRUS UPDATES

First, the good news — we have a policy toolbox that works. 

Even for countries that bungled their initial response to the virus, like Italy and the United States, there’s hope: Social distancing succeeds in slowing the contagion, and it does so quickly — within a few weeks of the adoption of tough measures.   On balance, this is excellent news. Early on, epidemiologists simply didn’t know how well social distancing would work.  It’s clear it works and we have an all important tool to save lives, if we use it…

Many Republican-controlled state governments are now seeing the consequences of their policy of virus-denial. Now faced with overwhelming facts from growing local virus impacts, the pandemic has come knocking at their front door, and it is no longer someone else’s problem, or just another science-driven conspiracy like human-caused climate change, this is the real deal.

“It’s the economy stupid.”     

That was the political calculus of 2008 presidential election.

In China, deaths didn’t fall sharply until a month after authoritarian controls had been imposed, in effect locking down the country. The government has now just as quickly reversed its effective national policy of economic lock-down, allowing sections of the country’s factory-rich areas to resume operations, leaving virus mitigation efforts selective applications and areas, all in the absence of a medical cure, and in nation of 1.2 billion people.

The consequence of China’s economy-first policy is a better managed rehearsal for Trump’s stated plan to offer the Country a quick release from its lock-down.  Is the Chinese government gambling with the lives of citizens – that’s a bet not yet called in a gamble with the COVID-19 virus, which until a vaccine becomes available, is holding all the cards.

The daily made-for-TV briefing to the Nation

Like the Chinese, Donald Trump is also focused on the economy during the present day pandemic.  Trump made it clear again today, in another of his daily made-for-TV briefings to the nation, that insulting reporters and anyone in the medical and scientific community who disagrees or challenges his unfounded assumptions and beliefs, they will face his wrath.

During the state of today’s TV briefing to the nation, our President went about setting the record straight with crooked statements.  Reporter questions, ranging from mounting virus-related deaths to Federal emergency response failures, to critical supply shortages in the nation’s hospitals resulting in mounting deaths measured in the lives of the nation’s healthcare workers and their patients – it was all but brushed aside with Trump’s unfounded assessments that he and the private sector would soon delivery a cure or treatment for the virus from existing and experimental medicines…America would be “great” again.

It is indeed a pleasure to hear Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases get his allotted 5 minutes at the microphone during the daily 2 hour briefings. Fauci uses his brief moment at the mic to reboot the conversation with refreshing wisdom and facts, providing the nation a reality check on Presidents statements. But as quickly as he appears on stage, he is then relegated to the back bench, so Trump can continue of daily show.

For the record, Dr. Fauci is the widely admired and much listened-to expert who has been in his position since 1984, advising six presidents along the way. He has taken on HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Zika and many other public health threats.

Ignoring the CDC, Dr. Fauci, and all creditable medical resources at his disposal, Trump, once again now that impeachment process is over and his personal lawyer has come out of the shadows, , doctor Rudy Giuliani is now advising the President on so-called miracle cures for the COVID-19 virus – yet none exist. The facts are that there are none, no vaccines have yet been invented, and therefore no proven existing drug work conclusively on the virus.  In this case, Rudy Giuliani’s cure advice may be worse than the disease, in some cases both can kill you.