Some further contemplations of mine regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
How has the US performed during the pandemic?
When I first shared a series of contemplations in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, I noted David Harsanyi’s prediction that the United States would be the best place to ride it out. This was in response to pieces in The Atlantic suggesting the country was a failed state and Politico saying the nation was completely unprepared. As Harsanyi noted at the time:
[T]here is no nation that can scale up production the way we can when we do take a war footing. I suspect that the risk-taking and entrepreneurial spirit embedded and fostered in American life will pay off.
It was a bold prediction given the initial stumbles the country made. But unless you were a resident in a rest home in Governor Cuomo’s New York, it was a prediction I also believed in. 15 months later, in June “Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking” ranked America the best place to be during COVID-19 with the headline, “The U.S.’s Stunning Turnaround in the Pandemic“. (In July, Norway captured first place, but the U.S. still ranked in the top five.) Harsanyi’s prediction about American enterprise leading the way was also right, as I wrote in National Review in January.
There are plenty of metrics to support Bloomberg’s ranking from the rapid vaccine rollout to COVID mortality, which Martin Kulldorf noted is now at a record low:
But for me another measure is that life largely returned to normal for our family when the kids went back to school in-person last fall. As the vaccine rollout proceeded apace, other minor COVID-19 inconveniences here disappeared when mask mandates ended and minor lingering business restrictions were lifted in Texas in March. Remote learning was no longer an option at the kids’ school after Easter and the school year ended with no masks being worn in their classes. While restrictions and experiences differed across the 50 states, that’s been one of the country’s strengths during the pandemic, as I’ll discuss further.
Other countries and COVID
Bloomberg noted in June that Singapore and my home country of New Zealand had been top-performing countries in its ranking but fell as they’ve struggled to find a path to reopen. New Zealand’s vaccine rollout has been one of worst in the OECD. Its 35.8 doses per 100 residents is behind, for example, Peru (39.8), Russia (42.9) and Australia (48.1). Radio New Zealand reported in late July:
At his weekly press conference updating progress on the vaccination roll out today, [New Zealand’s COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins] essentially slapped another padlock on the border gate, warning people requirements for isolation will stay the same at least until the end of the year and likely beyond that.
It has had to halt its quarantine-free travel from New South Wales with the recent Sydney outbreak. It also temporarily re-instituted restrictions in certain parts of the country, just as it has had to do from time to time when its border security has been breached.
Residents are de facto unable to travel outside the country because upon returning they face a 14-day quarantine in government-run facilities. This has also destroyed its tourism and other key economic sectors. The country’s economy shrank a record 2.9% in 2020.
Australia had been less restrictive, but it too now faces an uncertain future. Lucie-Morris Marr of Melbourne penned an op-ed describing her current situation entitled: “Australians were quietly smug – now we’re trapped and scared”.
Sydney is under an extreme lockdown with only one resident per household able to leave their houses for essential travel and they may venture out no further than six miles. Reports suggest this could last until Christmas; hundreds of Australian Defences Force soldiers began patrols enforcing the lockdown this week.
Australians wanting to travel overseas must receive permission from the federal government and applications are only approved about 50% of the time. Other states have either just come out of lockdown (Victoria) or entered one (Queensland). As James Morrow wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
It’s hard to know exactly when Australia’s pandemic response crossed the line from tragedy into farce. But future historians could do worse than pinpoint the moment when Sydney’s chief health supremo told the city’s residents to stop being friendly to one another when they ventured out to buy essentials, lest they get themselves and others killed.
He also commented:
Australia also has no tradition of liberty in a sense Americans might understand, and appeals to freedom are looked at suspiciously. Australians living in small towns are now congratulated by police for “dobbing in” outsiders who have fled cities for the countryside while recent anti-lockdown marches attracted widespread condemnation.
One could make a similar point about New Zealand and its absence of constitutional protections for individual liberty.
Many journalists and commentators in New Zealand and Australia pilloried America’s COVID response last year. To be sure, there were many stumbles at the start. Those in Germany also mocked the U.S. with headlines such as “A world power embarrassing itself.” However, as German Sebastian Thorman wrote in June for FEE, residents there have since watched in disbelief as America returned to normal life, vaccinating its citizens four times faster than Germany.
Meanwhile, his country has fluctuated in and out of ‘temporary’ lockdowns, with its harshest ever lockdown imposed before Christmas. It was initially set in place for four weeks and ended up lasting half a year. As he wrote:
Gone was the earlier view of a chaotic American Corona-Wild West. Instead, many Germans began to envy the pictures of American drive-through vaccination sites and Americans returning to normalcy, unthinkable in Germany, with slow, overly bureaucratic vaccination centers and restrictions harsher than one year before.
The challenge for countries with an elimination strategy, known in Australia as “COVID Zero”, is that, as Holman Jenkins has written, we’ve moved from a pandemic to a situation where the coronavirus is endemic. The coronavirus will stay with us and continue to change. We may need seasonal booster shots depending on the strains. As he wrote:
If you haven’t had Covid yet, you will. If you’ve had it once, you’ll have it again. If you’re vaccinated or were infected previously—which will one day be most people except the very young—your symptoms will likely be mild or nonexistent, but it’s not guaranteed. Words the CDC says about the flu it will say about Covid: “Vaccination is especially important for people 65 years and older because they are at high risk of developing serious complications from flu. Flu vaccines are updated each season as needed to keep up with changing viruses.”
The question will be, once sufficient numbers of New Zealanders and Australians are vaccinated, how many cases of COVID will the countries be able to tolerate without taking away its citizens’ liberties again? Given New Zealand hospitals have already had several crises this year, brought on not by COVID cases but because that’s what happens there from time to time, how will they manage when COVID becomes a way of life like the flu?
Related posts:
The Private Sector’s COVID-Era Triumph
Pandemic learning gaps make clear the need for public school reform
Don’t let COVID-19 dominate your life
Reopen schools for the sake of our children
Seattle exemplifies the fast-growing private-public school pandemic gap
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.