Omicron And The Slow Death Of Common Sense

“It is very likely that the Omicron variant has already arrived in Germany,”‘ Kai Klose, an official in the German state of Hesse, said Saturday. “Several mutations typical of Omicron were found last night on a returnee from South Africa.”

Complete sequencing was still pending, but it scarcely matters. Even if that particular traveler wasn’t infected with the variant, someone in Germany may well be. Just like Omicron might be present, but undetected, in countless other nations. Travel restrictions won’t prevent the variant from spreading. They can only buy time.

That’s hardly a scientific assessment. It’s just common sense. Preventing the spread of variants isn’t about shutting down airports or blacklisting this nation or that nation. It’s about vaccinating enough people globally.

Last month, the IMF’s Gita Gopinath described a “great vaccine divide” noting that although nearly two-thirds of the population in advanced economies was fully vaccinated, 96% of the population in low-income countries hadn’t been inoculated. That disparity, she warned, would exacerbate economic divergences.

The US has donated nearly a quarter of a billion vaccine doses (figure below), around eight million of which went to South Africa. Nearly 60 million were allocated to Sub-Saharan Africa, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The white figures on the chart show the number of doses. The percentages are based on the total donation pledge.

“The news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations,” Joe Biden said Friday, in a statement announcing Omicron-related travel restrictions. “The US has already donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country combined,” he added, calling on other nations to “match America’s speed and generosity.”

It’s impossible to say whether higher vaccination rates globally would have “prevented” a given mutation, but we can state the obvious: The more people vaccinated globally, the safer everyone generally is.

A piece in the Wall Street Journal underscored that (painfully) simple point. “The identification of a new, highly-mutated variant of the coronavirus in southern Africa this week highlights the risk to global public health posed by large, unvaccinated populations in the developing world, where countries have struggled to get immunizations and the virus is spreading and evolving,” Drew Hinshaw wrote, noting that according to Our World In Data, just 7% of Africa is fully vaccinated. Globally, that figure is more than 40%.

South Africa’s vaccination rate is far better than most African nations, but it’s still very low. Only 30% (give or take) of South Africans are fully vaccinated. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the country asked J&J and Pfizer to delay vaccine deliveries “because it now has too much stock.” Apparently, vaccine hesitancy was impeding the inoculation campaign. The current vaccination rate is just “half the government’s year-end target,” the linked article said, adding that “earlier this year the program was slowed by insufficient doses [but] now deliveries have been delayed due to oversupply, making the country an outlier in the continent where most are still starved of vaccines.”

The rapidity with which new travel restrictions were implemented left South Africa feeling betrayed. Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform who announced the new variant, apologized for what he called “very radical” decisions by the rest of the world.

Lindiwe Sisulu, South Africa’s tourism minister, called the travel restrictions “devastating.” “Our scientists’ ability to trace variants has been our biggest weakness,” she said, adding that South Africa is being “punished for the work that we do.”

The New York Times quoted WHO’s COVID-19 incident manager for the organization’s regional office in Africa. “This will just discourage different countries for sharing information which might be very important for global public health,” he said.

The pandemic continues to demonstrate how woefully underprepared the world is to cope with existential threats to the species. It would be hard enough in an ideal environment defined by cooperation, coordination and benevolence all guided by science. It’s impossible in a world where nationalism, selfishness, xenophobia, blame-casting, misinformation and outright ignorance are all considered virtues.

On Friday, the White House again urged Americans to get vaccinated if they haven’t yet received a shot. A recent “incident” (to employ a polite euphemism) involving an analyst at a Nordic bank underscored the extent to which the public discourse continues to be poisoned by vaccine cynicism, which can undermine confidence in the shots.

Forgive me, but society needs to accept the fact (because that’s what it is, a fact) that sundry inoculation caveats are no different from the paper insert in a box of over-the-counter pain relievers. Obviously, side effects are possible. The manufacturer can’t be sure, ahead of time, how your body will react to what’s in the bottle. Neither can your doctor be absolutely sure. You gamble with your life every, single time you try a new dish at a restaurant. You could be allergic to an ingredient and not know it. In nations all over the world, children are required to receive certain vaccines. Hardly anyone argues. People get flu shots all the time. How many of them read the disclaimer sheet? How many of them would care about the disclaimers if they read them? And so on and so forth.

Vaccines are different than Ibuprofen or eating a new kind of shellfish because if you fall ill, nobody else is affected as a result of your decision. Or at least not physically. Choosing not to be vaccinated, on the other hand, imperils the rest of society.

Tacitly suggesting other people not get vaccinated after you yourself have been inoculated on the premise you’re defending other people’s right to undermine the public health is akin to saying that although you would never drive drunk, you solemnly swear to defend everyone else’s right to get behind he wheel inebriated, free from governmental intrusions on personal liberties.

Or you might argue that nobody should be required to wear seatbelts. Or that speed limits are an intolerable intrusion on individual freedom. Or you could say that because the local library is taxpayer-funded, any taxpayer should be free to walk in, park themselves in a chair and scream all day. You wouldn’t do that, of course. But you recognize someone else’s right to scream in any library they partially funded.

For something that’s been made so complicated, there are two straightforward steps governments could take to end the world’s two-year-old virulent nightmare. First, mandate vaccines for everybody and tell people who don’t like it to get over it. Let people protest until they get tired of it. Eventually, they’ll quit because wandering around carrying signs is pointless when there’s no chance of the policy changing. Second, move heaven and earth to get vaccines to places where people want them, but can’t access them.

Obviously, taking those steps won’t “solve” COVID. But it’s important to remember that the sole reason our species dominates the planet is our capacity for cooperation on a massive scale. If we stop cooperating or, stupider, deliberately undermine our own capacity to cooperate by encouraging one another to be uncooperative, we’ll regress, devolve and, depending on the circumstances, die.


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17 thoughts on “Omicron And The Slow Death Of Common Sense

  1. Great graphic! Well put!
    I decided to look on the web a little bit for some meanings of common sense.
    “With tsunamis, it may seem only common sense to Earth scientists to run away from (and not toward) the water when the sea is drawn rapidly down and away from the beach as a tsunami approaches. But that response is counterintuitive for most people.
    — Thomas C. Pierson

    Pre-Covid In the United States anti-VAXors were loud and demonstrably wrong. Our administration was more concerned with reelection politics when the virus was getting a foothold. Thankfully, children were not dying from it but people of darker Skin were dying in disproportionate numbers which allowed prejudice an apathy cloaked. Misinformation running amuck.
    A perfect storm. A tsunami
    It only takes three chords of music to write 100,000 songs and some of them will be a child’s Lullaby. Viruses are brilliant survivalists. Most lifeforms spend great energy battling them.

  2. Yup 100% nailed it.

    I support ones right to choose, but the choice to not get vaccinated should come with consequences including being forced to a colony of unvaccinated and never being able to interact with the outside world. Of course, I’m being glib, but the full vaccine mandate is the only choice.

    1. Because most Americans are undereducated, they don’t understand that part and parcel of the “deal” (so to speak) is that we give up certain liberties and freedoms in order to ensure our collective safety, well-being, happiness and general quality of life.

      People understand that in certain contexts. But the undereducated suffer from a chronic inability to see how it applies to almost everything we do.

      For example, someone who loudly asserts their right to buy an assault rifle would be extremely irritated if, upon leaving the gun store, they stepped into someone else’s discarded styrofoam container with a half-eaten sandwich and soggy, ketchup-smothered fries in the parking lot.

      “Who just throws their trash into the parking lot?!”, that person would exclaim, as they put their new firearm in the trunk.

      Well, I’ll tell you who. Someone who’s asserting their right to toss an old sandwich into a parking lot rather than find a trashcan, because laws against littering are an infringement on personal liberty, that’s who.

  3. I disagree with Socrates in Plato’s Theaetetus. Knowledge is not the same as wisdom. I know intelligent, successful people who are apprised with the knowledge of Covid but are still anti-vaxxers. Quite pitiful!

  4. Sadly, the scenario arising in the US, and globally, largely consisting of obstinance , ignorance, and general self-centered attitudes, will be the determining factor that dooms our species … sooner rather than later. Don’t forget statistics tells us that half of the global population, something like 4 billion people, at least, is of below average intelligence. The reason we have lasted as long as we have is that enlightened leaders have arisen often enough to maintain the necessary spirit of cooperation among us. Today, it seems, too many people have decided that each individual is the most capable leader of their “me.” All the while they go around uttering, “It’s my right blah, blah, … (to be stupid).” Yesterday I turned 77. I feel like crap most of the time but today I’d rather be 77 than 37.

  5. The antivax movement is in part a form of war, by Russia and China against Western countries, via social media. What better way to weaken the US, EU, etc? Antivax messages are, of course, suppressed in R and C; those are strictly for export.

    It is also a political strategy, wherein politicians who rushed to get themselves vaccinated foment antivaxing as the most direct hold on the votes of a stupid, antisocial, or uneducated electorate.

    The two are related as those politicians are tacitly in league with those foreign powers. They should be executed for treason but instead they get elected to office.

    So, yeah, it is a lack of common sense but it is unfriendly a lot more as well.

  6. Enjoyed this post but is there a Joe Biden who isn’t President Joe Biden?. Not sure if you meant to leave out the President moniker but it should be used unless you’re trying to demean his position in the context of the quote. No matter our politics decorum helps bridge our differences. Or at least gloss over them! Says the cynic in me.

    1. It’s the same reason I don’t say “according to Goldman Sachs, an investment bank.” Everyone here knows what, who, etc. I’m talking about. The titles are superfluous. It’s not an attempt to demean anyone or any office or any institution or any bank. I have to strike a balance between being formal enough to distance myself from the “blog” label, but not so formal that it comes across as awkward for people who read the site multiple times every day. Everyone knows who Joe Biden is, just like everyone knows who Donald Trump is, just like everyone knows who Angela Merkel is. If I were referring to Olaf Scholz, I’d say “incoming chancellor” because he’s not as much of a known quantity outside of Europe. By contrast, I don’t have to remind people that Angela Merkel is “outgoing chancellor of Germany.” She’s just Angela Merkel. Just like Joe Biden is Joe Biden. And John Lennon is John Lennon. And Kim Jong-un is Kim Jong-un. And Elon Musk is Elon Musk.

  7. Many good comments here, but we’re missing a fundamental issue. Those of us commenting on this site (I think unanimously) have a fundamental trust in government; that is, we believe that our government, no matter how imperfect, is generally working on behalf of citizens. For a variety of reasons, a large percentage of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, and anti-gun-law folks have a fundamental, visceral fear of the government. Many of them truly believe that COVID and the accompanying restrictions are part of a government plan to control them. Whether it makes scientific sense or not, many truly believe that vaccines can alter their biology or serve to control their actions. They may think that mandatory mask wearing is just a stepping stone to other mandatory controls–which can sound ludicrous to us–hijabs, sharia law, etc. People who advocate for the right to carry assault rifles, when push comes to shove, are fully aware of the carnage they enable in civil society. But they see that as an unfortunate, but necessary consequence, of maintaining their right to have firepower equivalent to the US Army infantry–because they fundamentally believe that the threat that could face them IS the US Army infantry, under the command of a leftist American government. There are varying degrees of lucidity in the people who hold these beliefs, but don’t discount them as simply lacking in common sense or education.

    1. I don’t believe they really believe that. I think a lot of them are just afraid of needles but can’t say it (doesn’t go with the gruff frontier self reliant can-do image) and then there’s those who just will repeat whatever their side say uncritically.

      As to the rest, they are just getting driven to excess by the Fox News and then the remaining of the right wing media machine…

  8. On a slightly different angle, my 2c on the Omicron variant.

    Append “seems likely” and “based on available info” to all of the below:

    On variant and drugs:
    – existing mRNA vaccines from PFE and MRNA to retain significant efficacy vs serious disease, especially if boosted (3x vaxxed)
    – some other vaccines efficacy more degraded
    – new versions of mRNA vaccines, directly targeting this or any other variant, can start entering distribution in appx 4 months if all involved move quickly
    – leading mAb cocktails to lose much efficacy, a couple lesser-known mAbs to retain efficacy
    – oral antivirals from PFE and MRK won’t lose efficacy, granted MRK efficacy looking not impressive, and both EUA by year-end
    – and, very preliminary info from SA, Omicron associated with quite mild disease in vaccinated persons, not so in unvaxxed

    On impacts:
    – US and some EU, with high resources (vaccine, healthcare, antivirals) won’t necessarily be more impacted by Omicron than by the next Delta surge already underway. US will muddle through with no broad lockdown, little change in vaccination mandates, lots of unvaxxed casualties; political insanity precludes any alternative. EU will increase restrictions and mandates; political sanity will suffer.
    – China lacks good vaccine or antivirals, may close up tighter.
    – EMs are screwed, lacking vax, HC, and antiviral and can’t afford to lockdown again.
    – Add Omicron to list of bubble-unfriendly catalysts in 2022.

    Still in de-risking mode, myself.

  9. The US needs to finance the purchase of vaccines for the entire world. It is not just the right thing to do from a humanitarian standpoint. It makes economic sense. What is the cost to the economy of letting others go unvaccinated? Do we think a variant in S Africa, or even in Iran or North Korea, will not come our way eventually? If you want to protect Americans, you need to vaccinate the entire human population. With all respect to our President, we should have already bought the vaccines and supplied the world. Yes Europe and Japan should kick in some of the cost. We can fight about who should pay the bill later. And if Europe and Japan and China say no, then maybe the US will have purchased a little bit of goodwill in a world that doesn’t like America. Biden is missing the point in claiming pride in the fact that the US donated most. Donating a quarter billion doses to a world with 7 billion people is woefully shortsighted and inadequate, and what is happening now should not be a surprise. With all the trillions we have spend propping up the economy, I think we can buy vaccines for all. And all means all, regardless of whether we like the government in power.

    1. Agreed, the US being the reserve currency is in a pretty solid place to simply pay for the planet to vaccinate. It goes a long way to justify that status quo being preferable to a new regime.

  10. Spent some time in Cabela’s today. Crowded, but i only saw one other person wearing a mask. No Omnicron worries there!

    That said, I’ve always found other customers at the gun counter to be friendly. Even when my Asian wife accompanied me.

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