Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs
Don’t mis-serve your own needs
Speed it up a notch, speed, grunt, no, strength
The ladder starts to clatter
With a fear of height, down, height
Wire in a fire, represent the seven games
And a government for hire in a combat site
REM, “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
So, now that an NPR world news story about Wuhan, China has pretty much transformed the world in about a month, let me give you my personal experience with the coronavirus scare.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been experiencing notable shortness of breath, not just “fat guy out of shape” shortness of breath but “if I stand up or walk for any period of time I get headaches and almost black out” shortness of breath. This was accompanied by various aches, not just headaches. And yet when I took my temperature, it was usually under 99 degrees and often under 98. And while I haven’t traveled and have no reason to believe I was in contact with a coronavirus case, I fit several of the risk factors: Over 50? Check. Existing respiratory issues? Check. Other pre-existing conditions? Check!
It got bad enough on Tuesday morning to where I politely asked my manager to let me take the rest of the day off – which because of the existing scare they freely granted – and I ended up spending the rest of the day trying, and failing, to get a coronavirus test.
I went straight to my doctor’s office. They told me they don’t do the test and referred me to Southern Nevada Health District. I couldn’t reach anybody on their phone line (for some reason). So I drove all the way out there, and even though there are big signs above the desk saying that if you’re experiencing respiratory issues to let someone on staff know, when I explained the situation they told me I had to get diagnosed by my doctor first. They gave me a handout list of various clinics, but when I went to the one in my area, they told me they don’t take my insurance.
I was told by my employer that Quest Diagnostics does have a test, and when I read their site it said that they don’t do the test directly for patients but rather collect samples from the doctor’s office. So I called my office again, and scheduled an appointment for Wednesday. And when I did, I was told by them that they don’t actually have a coronavirus program set up but they’re supposed to be doing that eventually. So I asked to be examined for what I did have, and since I have no fever, swelling or communicable issues, I was told that I am suffering an exacerbation of my existing asthma. I was already prescribed an inhaler which I normally don’t need, but I’ve used it more in the past five days than I have in the past five months. I did get a five-day prescription of Prednisone and Azithromycin, which have not solved my issue completely but made it less intense.
And if this is where I am WITH insurance, imagine what it’s like in the rest of the country, such as the New York school districts that stay open because otherwise kids wouldn’t have lunch, or with my friend who has his own diabetes, respiratory problems, and heart disease, and who is on public assistance and needs to travel everywhere on the bus.
The problem with coronavirus (COVID-19) is that even if more people have died from the flu (which seems to be no big deal, apparently) the coronavirus is potentially more threatening, largely because it takes longer to manifest and it is therefore easier for asymptomatic people to spread the virus.
This is what I got this week when I searched “are covid 19 tests available”:
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
“CDC has developed a new laboratory test kit for use in testing patient specimens for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19. The test kit is called the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase (RT)-PCR Diagnostic Panel.” It is intended for use with the Applied Biosystems 7500 Fast DX Real-Time PCR Instrument with SDS 1.4 software. This test is intended for use with upper and lower respiratory specimens collected from persons who meet CDC criteria for COVID-19 testing. CDC’s test kit is intended for use by laboratories designated by CDC as qualified, and in the United States, certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) to perform high complexity tests.
On Monday, February 3, 2020, CDC submitted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) package to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in order to expedite FDA permitted use of the CDC diagnostic panel in the United States. The EUA process enables FDA to consider and authorize the use of unapproved, but potentially life-saving medical or diagnostic products during a public health emergency. The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services declared the SARS-CoV-2 virus a U.S. public health emergency on Friday, January 31, 2020. FDA issued the EUA on February 4, 2020. IRR began distribution of the test kits to states, but shortly thereafter performance issues were identified related to a problem in the manufacturing of one of the reagents which led to laboratories not being able to verify the test performance. CDC is remanufacturing the reagents with more robust quality control measures. New tests will be distributed once this issue has been addressed. CDC continues to perform initial and confirmatory testing.
Serology Test for COVID-19
CDC is working to develop a new laboratory test to assist with efforts to determine how much of the U.S. population has been exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19.
The serology test will look for the presence of antibodies, which are specific proteins made in response to infections. Antibodies can be found in the blood and in other tissues of those who are tested after infection. The antibodies detected by this test indicate that a person had an immune response to SARS-CoV-2, whether symptoms developed from infection or the infection was asymptomatic. Antibody test results are important in detecting infections with few or no symptoms.
Initial work to develop a serology test for SARS-CoV-2 is underway at CDC. In order to develop the test, CDC needs blood samples from people who had COVID-19 at least 21 days after their symptoms first started. Researchers are currently working to develop the basic parameters for the test, which will be refined as more samples become available. Once the test is developed, CDC will need additional samples to evaluate whether the test works as intended.”
Short answer: NO.
What we are witnessing is on one hand a challenge to libertarian premises and on the other hand a justification of them. On one hand, we can see that a coordinated response to public crises is necessary, or at least would prevent a lot of unnecessary suffering and death. On the other hand we can see that a coordinated government is not what we have, and we now know the consequences of not only handing over government to the worst possible people, but depending on a government that was not that dependable in the first place.
The people of the Soviet Union were no less in need of a wise hand during the Chernobyl disaster, and that is what they did not have. And while China is praised in some quarters for taking harsh but necessary measures to contain the virus in the short term, and the spread in Wuhan itself now seems to be contained, the Communist Chinese had at first downplayed the initial reports, including from one Wuhan doctor who later died of the virus. And as the disease left China, it had arguably its worst effect in Iran, where several government officials have turned out to be infected, or killed, because they were so determined to downplay the seriousness of the outbreak that they did not take their own precautions and engaged in casual contact with patients.
(Side joke: What’s the difference between the US and Iran? One country is technically a democratic republic but is actually run by a cabal of old fundamentalist whackjobs who want to start World War III in hopes that the Messiah will appear in the Middle East. The other is Iran.)
And the American apocalypse cult that used to be a main political party has been making much the same public front, with its Leader frequently shaking hands, touching mics and getting exposed to various people who have since tested positive for coronavirus.
Yet the designated official “anti-socialist” and “pro-business” party has been the primary barrier to private efforts to address epidemics through its control of government, even as it uses policy to deliberately hamper public efforts at disease control. There was an article in The American Conservative (no less) pointing out that before Trump took over, the US Army decided to help kickstart funding of development of a Zika virus vaccine to be licensed for commercial use, working with manufacturer Sanofi. However Health and Human Services withdrew its commitment to the project once the virus began slowing down.
“In 2017, Eric Sagonowsky of FiercePharma reported that “the collaboration [between Sanofi and the government] had come under intense public and political scrutiny this year as critics demanded pricing guarantees if a commercial vaccine grew out of the taxpayer-funded research.” These pressure groups typically fail to mention the immense costs of bringing life-saving treatments to market due to an onerous Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals process. It can take manufacturers a decade and more than $2 billion to bring a medication to market, and excessive FDA testing requirements hinder patient access to care.
“Currently, hundreds of COVID-19 patients are being treated with the antiviral drug called Remdesivir, which has had promising initial results but is not yet FDA approved. While the agency is allowing seriously ill patients to take the medication through their “compassionate use” program, this is only permitted on a limited, last-resort basis, and the drug remains unavailable to most of the population. Producers of novel treatments may need to wait months to bring life-saving therapies to market and face the real risk of getting FDA rejection letters if, say, new evidence were to come to light on the drug’s efficacy after the application was submitted.”
Another piece, on Reason Magazine’s site: “As the Times reports, Seattle infectious disease expert Dr. Helen Chu had, by January, collected a huge number of nasal swabs from local residents who were experiencing symptoms as part of a research project on flu. She proposed, to federal and state officials, testing those samples for coronavirus infections. As the Times reports, the CDC told Chu and her team that they could not test the samples unless their laboratory test was approved by the FDA. The FDA refused to approve Chu’s test on the grounds that her lab, according to the Times, “was not certified as a clinical laboratory under regulations established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a process that could take months.”
“In the meantime, the CDC required that public health officials could only use the diagnostic test designed by the agency. That test released on February 5 turned out to be badly flawed. The CDC’s insistence on a top-down centralized testing regime greatly slowed down the process of disease detection as the infection rate was accelerating.”
And yet, when we knew that the Obama Administration had contained Ebola in the United States to two fatalities (both African patients treated in America), Trump’s advisor John Bolton closed the National Security Council’s task force on global pandemics and the Administration cut most Centers for Disease Control funding on pandemics. As the global situation became more serious and cases were announced in America, Trump continued to downplay the threat, fearing (correctly) that a public response would lead to a downturn in business, when business growth has been his main public justification for staying in office and running for re-election.
It has in fact been the business community at all levels that took the initiative in fighting coronavirus in America, weeks before the Trump Organization finally announced a national emergency. It has been businesses that closed buffets, closed athletic events, removed audiences from taped media programs, all to encourage social isolation in order to tamp down the spread of disease. This ought to make sense. As arrogant as the upper class might be, they still have to run businesses and address the current moment and weigh the consequences of one decision over another. Some have had to lay people off because they simply can’t afford the overhead. Others have decided to have some level of paid leave because they are trying to keep employees in expectation of recovery after the worst passes. Most businesses are assisting in social isolation because losing customers in the short term can reduce the chance of having fewer customers in the long term – either due to preventable deaths or the hit to reputation that comes with customers knowing that the businesses could have helped prevent spread of disease and refused to do so. Businesses by and large deal in a world of consequences. Governments don’t have to.
The Trump Administration is what you get when you combine class privilege with the government’s monopoly on force. Trump himself is the natural result of a system that pretends to capitalism but actually relies on social capital – what Randians would call “pull” and we in Las Vegas call “juice” – in order to avoid the checks and balances that are supposed to be inherent in the capitalist system, in much the same way that party solidarity has destroyed the checks and balances written into the Constitution. Trump has never actually been the CEO of a corporation, because he has never run an incorporated business. The Trump Organization is a group of entities of which Donald Trump is the sole or principal owner. For that very reason, its financial returns are private. The Trump Organization is a family outfit, in every sense that applies. Trump has never been responsible to shareholders. Trump has a record of stiffing his creditors when his bills come up, raising the question of exactly how profitable and healthy his businesses are. And yet, someone more powerful has always covered his tab – his Daddy, Roy Cohn, his friends in government, Deutsche Bank, Vladimir Putin – and he’s always been able to avoid the consequences of his own mistakes. Trump’s survival up to this point is a measure of how the system traffics in deceit, and in retrospect, his quest for political power makes sense as a drive to the only position that would make his conduct literally unimpeachable.
When such a person is elected President of the United States, the present moment is what you ought to expect.
When Senator Lamar Alexander reviewed the impeachment case and made it perfectly clear that he knew how guilty Trump was and also made it perfectly clear that in professional solidarity he and the other members of the Party of Trump refused to hold their Leader accountable, I and many other people observed at that time that everything that would happen to America from that point on would be primarily their fault.
Now more than ever.