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Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

globalhealthnow.org

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Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#91

Post by kevingadd »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #87
kevingadd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This crisis has mostly been a massive demonstration of how capitalism undermines society's ability to prevent and cope with disasters. We're seeing individual people show their best while profit motive leads to people sabotaging others' hope of success. A few examples: * A particular politician prioritizing low numbers (to look good) over actual infection reduction * A particular government not issuing orders for nee…

It will be also a big blow for individual freedoms worldwide. When those of us who survive will look back at it, they won't be able to ignore the fact that sending police to beat up people at a few mass gathering on beaches and streets, and then putting military out to enforce quarantine measures, would result in exponentially less loss of life and damage to the economy.

Yeah, that is a very good point. The emergency reactions to societal failure (not entirely due to capitalism, but in some cases due to capitalism) are by nature very authoritarian, which leads to the erosion of normal governance. My home country is already putting in place emergency measures that are likely to last until after the emergency is over and are conveniently very useful for maintaining a grip on power.

We've been looking at deploying the military too, which at the very least is going to increase tensions and potentially lead to unrest.

I mourn the potential damage to democracy almost as much as I mourn the lives lost because democracy being severely damaged by this incident will hurt future generations.

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#92

Post by kjaftaedi »

samsonradu wrote: post #76

My knowledge about industrial manufacturing is slim to none so can someone explain please why is it not possible to (globally) ramp up production of face masks and ventilators to a virtually unlimited quantity? What exactly is the bottleneck? Are we lacking materials, labour or the technical know-how? Are the factories currently producing them so advanced and hard to reproduce?

Regular masks it is possible to ramp up production.

N95 masks, it is not easily possible to ramp up production in a short time frame.

This article explains it well:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/8149292...

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#93

Post by TeMPOraL »

kevingadd wrote: post #82
selimthegrim wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan is authoritarian ultra capitalist?

Taiwan was super authoritarian in recent memory [1], so it's understandable that someone would think it's still true (of course, it's not). Maybe the confusion is because some of their disease mitigation strategies were authoritarian, but that's pretty common in war/disaster scenarios. Every country turns authoritarian when they need people to shelter in place or need to force factories to retool to build war equipme…

> Every country turns authoritarian when they need people to shelter in place or need to force factories to retool to build war equipment or medical essentials.

Those who survive this pandemic will look back and wish it was true. Right now, neither the US nor the EU are authoritarian enough. There should have been lockdowns in place a week ago, actually enforced by the military. I'm surprised to find myself believing this, but at this point I think that, were a few of the mass gatherings in defiance of social distancing met with batons, and were one of two cases of breaking quarantine met with a bullet, the madness would stop and countries in the West would have a much better chance of containing the virus.

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#94

Post by fulafel »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #89
fulafel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as many other problems (eg global warming) - the market economy can't deliver a solution because it's not short teem profitable for the relevant actors.

It could be priced to be short term profitable, but then the sellers would get accused of price gouging.

And poor countries would get nada.

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

kevingadd wrote: post #91
TeMPOraL wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be also a big blow for individual freedoms worldwide. When those of us who survive will look back at it, they won't be able to ignore the fact that sending police to beat up people at a few mass gathering on beaches and streets, and then putting military out to enforce quarantine measures, would result in exponentially less loss of life and damage to the economy.

Yeah, that is a very good point. The emergency reactions to societal failure (not entirely due to capitalism, but in some cases due to capitalism) are by nature very authoritarian, which leads to the erosion of normal governance. My home country is already putting in place emergency measures that are likely to last until after the emergency is over and are conveniently very useful for maintaining a grip on power. We'…

I meant something a tad different.

Survivors will look back at how badly the West handled the pandemic and vote authoritarians in willingly. And it will be fully justified at that moment. The danger being, of course, that authoritarianism is hard to root out and gets worse over time.

Because it will be hard to deny that a faster, stronger reaction and a few beatings here and there would've spared a lot of future suffering and loss of life. You won't be able to say with a straight face that letting idiots do their idiocy is a small price to pay for freedom.

To be clear: I don't like the authoritarian future I predict. But I would love to see military on the streets right fucking now, instead of reading every single day a story about some idiot breaking quarantine to run some errands, and in process shutting down a store, a clinic or a hospital ward.

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#96

Post by jeltz »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #89
fulafel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as many other problems (eg global warming) - the market economy can't deliver a solution because it's not short teem profitable for the relevant actors.

It could be priced to be short term profitable, but then the sellers would get accused of price gouging.

Not all countries have laws against price gouging (e.g. I am pretty sure it is legal the price gouge the government in my country) and there is still a lack of face masks in those countries.

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#97

Post by oli5679 »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #47

Why do they keep saying 'until vaccines are ready' as though it's a foregone conclusion that we can make a vaccine for this? Is this type of virus always a good one to make vaccines for? There are tons of viruses we have failed to vaccinate for, despite trying for 30 or 40 years. People seem to be universally saying a vaccine is '12-18 months away'. Is this just misinformation? I would love to hear from an expert abo…

This thread is quite encouraging.

Argues that reason why we don't have one for other coronaviruses is because of cost-benefit not high enough, rather than technical hurdles. 20% colds caused by 4 different Coronaviruses, so hard to justify making a vaccine that reduces cold risk by a few %.

Agree that there is uncertainty though.

"Covid is so technically doable we already have vaccines for dog & cow coronaviruses. We’ll definitely make one for covid, trials will be simple since we’ll be specifically trying to prevent Covid, which is only caused by SARS-CoV-2 (not by dozen different viruses)"

https://twitter.com/PeterKolchinsky/status/12404980379585454...

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#98

Post by funcDropShadow »

gingerlime wrote: post #88
funcDropShadow wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are focused on the U.S., then I understand your sentiment. But if you look beyond, it is really promising. Medical science and biology are producing new scientific knowledge about CoViD-19 and SARS-Cov2 at break neck speed. That alone is amazing to see. On the other hand, you really see that people get it and that they have to do social distancing to help them and everybody else. On top of that you see, e.g. C…

I know it’s OT but would love to understand more about the health insurance situation in Germany and what’s happened in the last 20 years. Ideally in English which is a big ask I guess. Moved to Germany in 2011 and still can’t work out the whole insurance thing (and don’t understand German enough to read and figure those nuances)

To make it short, 20 years ago most hospitals were privatized, before they were run by universities, cities, and states and some other public actors. There were already some private hospitals, but not too much. Since, then most hospitals were sold to companies or in the better case transformed into companies, partly owned by their previous owner. Companies optimize for revenue, so they don't spend money on stocks of masks or reserve capacities that are only needed once in a lifetime. Nevertheless, there are significantly more ICU beds per capita in Germany than in most other european or western countries.

The insurance system is split in two almost separate systems. One for everybody, the public health insurance system, where you can choose and switch between a range of public insurers. You must have health insurance in Germany. E.g. you cannot spend a semester as an exchange student without health insurance. If you earn above a certain amount per year, you are assumed to be able to provide for your own health insurance. You can opt-out of public health insurance and get a private one. They are very competitevly priced for young and healthy individuals. And they usually have way wider coverage. But you cannot go back after a certain age. So it is a risk, and there have been insurers that raised the cost of private insurance for elderly people by multiple hundred percents. On the other hand, the cost of public health insurances depends on your income and not on your health. If you are unemployed and you show that you try to get a job, your public health insurance is free as well. And children are free, if both their parents are in public health insurance. Then, there are private insurance policies that add on top of public health insurance coverage. Most people are in the public health insurance system in Germany.

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#99

Post by TeMPOraL »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #89
fulafel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as many other problems (eg global warming) - the market economy can't deliver a solution because it's not short teem profitable for the relevant actors.

It could be priced to be short term profitable, but then the sellers would get accused of price gouging.

If manufacturers sold direct-to-consumers, they wouldn't. Problem with price gouging happens because of resellers, and that money does not work as a signal for manufacturers.

The solution for undersupply in times of emergency is, IMO, to ban resale. Some countries, including mine, went that route now.

Re: Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready

#100

Post by funcDropShadow »

tyingq wrote: post #86

"Yes. In fact, the Chinese sent 90 tons of plasma to Italy." That's impressive. I wonder how many individual donations that maps to. And how many people that could treat. Edit: Trying to answer my own question. Typical blood donation is 470ml. That weighs about 0.5 kilograms. Plasma is roughly half of what's in your blood, so half that again... 0.25 kilograms. So assuming they meant metric ton (1000Kg), 4000 individu…

There don't exist 360.000 recovered humans at the moment. At least officially.
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