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India Needs Help. Now
Last month, BofA's closely-watched Global Fund Manager survey revealed that for the first time since the onset of the crisis, COVID-19 (or something related to it) was no longer seen as the top tail risk.
It was an anecdotal assessment, but it nevertheless spoke to waning anxiety. The vaccine push in the US was accelerating and the stimulus writing was on the wall in big letters. The world's largest economy was poised to boom, and the Fed was unequivocal in its commitment not just to countenanc
It’s a reminder that there was a calculus to the lock downs in Western, developed nations.
The human suffering. It’s hard to read about. But, quite honestly, I made decisions decades ago that I just can’t live cheap in a suburban tract home in the Sun Belt, sufficing on losing sports teams, Doritos, and flat beer.
All the while, there are “love them from afar” family members on both sides of the family in my household who refuse to get vaccinated, citing distrust in the government. I’m still not sure which government they are referring to. So far, they haven’t been able to articulate who, or what, they mean exactly. I thought for a while they were motioning with their lips that they were fearful of getting injected with a tracking chip.
My “love the from afar” family members don’t care what happens in India…they are privileged…and lucky, and don’t think so. Preferring instead to believe that they deserve what they have, that no one can take it away from them. I can’t make them watch India. But, I do wish they had enough awareness to make the connection from the polio and smallpox vaccines, to burning bodies in public and the COVID vaccine.
When I think I have it bad, I remind myself that there are maybe seven billion people who would love to exchange positions and balance sheets with me. My vacant family members, of course, would discount such footage of burning the dead in public as some kind of Hollywood propaganda funded by a Hungarian-born billionaire. They can still plan trips to Walmart….so, I know they do still have a functioning, frontal cortex.
We think we are special. We are lucky.
India will reach herd immunity the hard way.
Manaus, Brazil, was thought to have reached herd immunity in the spring of 2020 through widespread natural infection. Roughly six months later, Manaus was hit again by a significant outbreak, with apparent widespread reinfection of previously-infected people–this was the source of the P1 variant which has subsequently spread throughout Brazil and South America (and now Vancouver, BC, etc). The concept of “herd immunity” doesn’t apply when your previous infection does not actually give you immunity to reinfection.
And then there’s the oxygen shortages. Hospitals are running out of oxygen. People who are A) lucky enough to get a bed in a hospital, and B) would live if they just get some ordinary O2, are dying.
[You may have mentioned Oxygen shortages in a previous post]
I did, yes
The US needs to permit export of the raw materials and supplies that Serum India is near to running out of. We should also send some of our unused AZN doses.
Other than that, I am at a loss to think what other countries can do for India fast enough to really help. India is the world’s largest producer of vaccines, and surely has enough medics and nurses capable of giving an injection. Foreign medical teams will be like a drop in a bucket. PPE and oxygen might be something we can help their medical system with. We should do everything we can, but how do you quickly help 1.3 billion people?
The fundamental problem is the Indian government’s shambolic response. A rich country like the US can screw up bigly – as we did – and get bailed out by its resources. A super-organized country like China can screw up bigly – as it did in Wuhan – and get bailed out by its ability to clamp down on people and movement. India doesn’t have either luxury.
In a rational world, this would spell the end for both Modi and Bolsinaro. (Not to mention countless Republican officials and talking heads in this country.)
Points on US and China responses very well taken. To defeat a pandemic takes a global effort which takes global leadership, something we abdicated with 45. Might the covid pandemic be a drop in the bucket compared to what climate change will do to our rocky little spaceship.