It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Three years ago, as part of the public health messaging in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization launched the "Wear A Mask" campaign on social media.
However, despite their benefits to public health, mask-wearing quickly became a highly politicized and divisive issue across the globe.
But the campaign gained impressive traction after World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued the following tweet on X, the social media platform known at the time as Twitter, on August 21, 2020, thanking BTS, a South Korean K-pop group, for supporting the mask-wearing public health practice as part of the release of their new single, "Dynamite":
"Thank you, #BTS for the uplifting #BTS_Dynamite and for reminding the #BTSARMY and the rest of us to #WearAMask and take care of our health and well-being during this #COVID19 pandemic."
K-pop fans with different ideologies and from throughout the globe retweeted Tedros' message making it the most shared mask-wearing tweet.
When health officials and agencies such as Tedros leveraged entertainment groups like "#BTS" into their public health messages on COVID-19, this generated 111 times more virality or retweets, according to a new Dartmouth-led study.
"With the COVID-19 pandemic, government health agencies often became targets of partisan politics that challenged public health messages," says lead author Ho-Chun Herbert Chang, an assistant professor of Quantitative Social Science at Dartmouth. "If government officials and opinion leaders can leverage entertainers who are perceived as neutral third-parties, this creates a powerful driving force for getting a public message out."
"Through our study, we wanted to determine if social media still has the power to serve as a democratizing force as it did in 2010," says Chang.
Social media was perceived as such during the Arab uprisings in 2010 and 2011 when pro-democracy protestors took to social media to speak out against the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
"But after Brexit in 2016, when the United Kingdom officially voted to leave the European Union and the Cambridge Analytica data breach in 2018, people became quite pessimistic towards social media and its lightning speed spread of misinformation as studies reported on how social media can undermine democracy," says Chang.
The researchers focused on one simple question: Who was the biggest voice on social media driving public health practices, particularly, mask-wearing?
Using the largest and most comprehensive public COVID-19 dataset on Twitter, the researchers analyzed 7 million tweets on mask-wearing. The team applied natural language processing to extract the tweets from a dataset of 3.5 billion tweets and then conducted a social network analysis to figure out how the tweets travel through the social network. They also looked at the use of K-pop specific hashtags: #BTS and #BTSArmy, as well as BlackPink and Twice, the two other most popular K-pop groups on Twitter.
The findings show that leveraging the popularity of BTS was part of the WHO's communications strategy on COVID-19 public health messaging.
The 16 unique tweets by health officials containing BTS, most of which were tweets by Tedros, generated nearly 234,600 retweets. In comparison, Dr. Tedros' 2,140 other tweets that did not mention BTS yielded 282,650 retweets. The 16 tweets mentioning BTS packed nearly the same punch (84% of the retweet value) as that of the 2,140 tweets without K-pop. So, tweets mentioning BTS garnered 111 times more virality or retweets.
The team also investigated the rates of mask-wearing tweets with and without BTS in all countries that use Twitter, which included assessing the rate of tweets in a country relative to its population.
Tweets with K-pop saw a huge uptake in Western countries with the U.S. at the top. However, the increase of virality between retweets with K-pop over those without K-pop was largest in the global south, including in Southeast Asia and South America, which as the researchers explain, are regions that are typically underserved by Western-based global organizations, while the West had a modest increase. The retweet data showed Vietnam had a 3,840% increase (38.4 times more virality), South Korea had a 3,190% increase, Philippines had a 1,290% increase, Peru had a 1,080% increase, and Argentina had an 845% increase. In contrast, the U.S. had just a 56% increase and the United Kingdom had a 28% increase.
For BTS-related tweets in the U.S., the biggest viral boosts by percentage were observed in South Dakota (52%), North Dakota (41%), Mississippi (39%), Missouri (39%), Utah (37%), Louisiana (37%), Wisconsin (36%), and Nebraska (33%), most of which are heartland states.
As part of the analysis, the researchers examined users' political diets (left, center, and right) and the timelines of users, which enabled them to plot a retweet network of users before and after the Aug. 21, 2020, tweet by Tedros over a four-month span.
Apart from K-pop, tweets mentioning Eric Ding, chief of the COVID Response Task Force at the New England Institute and Grey's Anatomy, the American medical drama, were the two other most popular drivers of mask-wearing messaging.
"There is a lot of criticism over hashtag activism; however, to support South Korea's COVID-19 relief efforts, BTS fans donated money and ticket refunds from BTS concerts cancelled due to the pandemic, showing that the organizing potential of fandoms should not be underestimated," says Chang.
"Fandoms can act as powerful catalysts for online and offline collective action," says Chang. "They can generate interventions at a global scale."
Chang is available for comment at: herbert.chang@dartmouth.edu. Becky Pham and Emilio Ferrara at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, also contributed to the study.
COVID-19 public health tweets mentioning BTS had a significant virality increase in Southeast Asia and South America, and a moderate increase in the West.
Network of users retweeting #WearAMask before (on left) and after (on right) the tweet referencing BTS by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on August 21, 2020, within a four-month span. Nodes represent users and are labeled by their political diet, left-leaning (blue), central (pink), and right-leaning (red).
Parasocial diffusion: K-pop fandoms help drive COVID-19 public health messaging on social media
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
5-Oct-2023
Sunday, March 12, 2023
About Xi Jinping’s Third Term Trending on Weibo A hashtag related to Xi Jinping’s third term received over 1.2 billion views on Weibo.
March 11, 2023
By Manya Koetse
It is the news that was widely expected yet still made international headlines on Friday, March 10: Xi Jinping secured his third term as president.
The official appointment happened after the members of the National People’s Congress (NPC) voted unanimously for Xi Jinping. There was no other candidate. In February 2018, it was announced that the constitution of mainland China would change in some important ways, including the indefinite rule for Xi Jinping after his second five-year term of the presidency would end in 2023.
At that time, What’s on Weibo reported how the news of a third Xi Jinping term caused some consternation on Chinese social media, where some called the idea of Xi’s potential indefinite rule “scary” and some netizens joked about “our emperor has received the Mandate of Heaven, so we have to kneel and accept.”
Now, three years later, there is less room for such discussions at a time of the Two Sessions, when the social media environment is always more controlled. The online discourse surrounding Xi Jinping is also less playful than before. In 2017, during the 19th Party Congress, an online game that allowed netizens to “clap” for Xi became a social media hit.
Around the same time, state media outlets published short videos or gifs featuring Xi as a cartoon character. In 2023, the overall tone of state media reports on Xi is much more serious. On Friday, Xi Jinping’s third term went top trending on Weibo, where one related topic received over 800 million views. A day later the hashtag had over 1.2 billion clicks (#习近平当选中华人民共和国主席#).
While refreshing and searching on the Weibo platform, some comment sections were closing and opening, some videos went online and offline, and even Xi’s own name was temporarily unsearchable on the Weibo site, suggesting that online control systems were going into overdrive.
A video of Xi Jinping taking his oath received over 75 million views (times played) and over 14,000 comments on Weibo. “Serve the people,” “congratulations,” and “strong country, happy people,” were among the typical comments listed in the reply sections below the news posts on Xi’s third term.
Another hashtag was also promoted on Chinese social media by state broadcaster CCTV, namely that of Xi Jinping always focusing on putting the people first (#始终把人民放在心中最高的位置#). The phrase “the people first” (人民至上 rénmín zhìshàng), also “putting the people in the first place,” is an important part of the Party’s ‘people-based, people-oriented’ governing concept. The phrase became especially relevant as part of Xi Jinping’s now-famous “put people and their life first” slogan (人民至上，生命至上, rénmín zhìshàng, shēngmìng zhìshàng), which became one of the most important official phrases of 2020 in light of the fight against Covid19. By Manya Koetse
HKUMed researchers found a reduction in hospitalisations and a concurrent increase in deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in Hong Kong: implications for healthcare planning during public health emergencies
HKUMed researchers at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine at The University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) found a significant reduction in public hospital admissions and an increase in mortality, particularly from cardiovascular diseases, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong in 2020. The findings, which may reflect avoidable deaths caused by changes in healthcare seeking during the early pandemic, are now published in The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific. [link to the publication]
In addition to the respiratory morbidity and mortality caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, there exists a broad range of direct (e.g. SARS-CoV-2 infection of the heart or brain) and indirect (e.g. increase in cancer mortality due to reduced cancer screening or delayed treatment) public health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy responses. To describe these impacts across many medical outcomes, the research team used comprehensive long-term hospitalisation and mortality data collected from the Hospital Authority and the Census and Statistics Department of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR), to quantify the health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
They found an absolute reduction of 359,790 hospitalisations in public hospitals largely from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and 1,873 additional deaths particularly from cardiovascular diseases in 2020, above what would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic. Children under 5 years of age and older adults aged over 65 years were most affected. Reductions in the number of deaths occurring inside public hospitals were accompanied by increases in deaths occurring outside of public hospitals, which may suggest a reluctance to seek care even when gravely ill.
The results of this study suggested important, indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on public health in Hong Kong, likely resulting from worry about SARS-CoV-2 exposure in hospitals or other barriers reducing timely access to medical services. These impacts may outweigh even the direct consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection in some jurisdictions and high-risk population groups. With the possible emergence of more virulent or transmissible strains of SARS-CoV-2 or other epidemics, medical institutions and policymakers should prepare adequate resources, including risk communication, to ensure maintained access to healthcare for non-infected patients during public health emergencies.
About the research team The researchers from the School of Public Health, HKUMed are: Mr Hualei Xin, PhD candidate; Dr Peng Wu, Assistant Professor; Dr Jessica Wong Yuen-ting, Research Officer; Mr Justin Cheung Kai-him, Research Assistant; Dr Eric Lau Ho-yin, Scientific Officer; Dr Joshua Nealon, Research Assistant Professor; Professor Gabriel Leung, Honorary Clinical Professor; Professor Benjamin Cowling, Chair Professor of Epidemiology, Head of Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control.
This project was supported by the Health and Medical Research Fund (grant no. CID-HKU2), the Collaborative Research Scheme (project no. C7123-20G) of the Research Grants Council, and AIR@InnoHK administered by Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong SAR Government.
About the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, HKUMed The School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine of The University of Hong Kong (HKUSPH) has a long and distinguished history in public health education and high impact research. With world leading research in infectious diseases as well as on non-communicable diseases of both local and global importance, the School has made significant contributions through its research and advocacy to improve the health of populations and individuals, both locally and globally. The School is a leading research and teaching hub in public health on influenza and other emerging viruses, control of non-communicable and infectious diseases, tobacco control, air pollution, psycho-oncology, behavioural sciences, exercise science, life-course epidemiology, population mental health, and health economics, health services planning and management. Work done by HKUSPH researchers has informed international (e.g. the US Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada, the World Health Organization), national and local public health policies.
The School of Public Health hosts the WHO Collaborating Centre (WHO CC) for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control. With a view to protecting the public's health in Hong Kong and across the region, the WHO CC aims to coordinating research on the control and prevention of infectious diseases and providing local and regional education and training in infectious disease epidemiology and control. Members of the WHO CC are involved in the response to COVID-19 and conducted a range of scientific research projects. The team has created a website to share the latest scientific findings and the implications for evidence-based public health policies on the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak [link to website: https://covid19.sph.hku.hk/].
Media enquiries Please contact LKS Faculty of Medicine of The University of Hong Kong by email (medmedia@hku.hk).
As the 27th Conference of State Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) draws near, African leaders are speaking with perhaps the loudest voice on why Africa’s needs should be prioritised given the unprecedented effects of climate change on the continent in spite of its inconsequential contribution to global carbon emissions.
In this interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Egypt’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Ihab Awab, outlines the several strategies being put in place by Egypt which will host the COP in November. Excerpts
PT: COP27 is nicknamed Africa’s COP. What should Africa expect from Egypt, given that it is playing host, in terms of putting Africa’s interest first?
Mr Awab: It is true that the Sharm El-Sheikh Conference of State Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as COP27, is Africa’s COP.
It is taking place at a very significant juncture of our worlds, of course, with all the challenges facing the world now, economically, recovery efforts from the Covid19 pandemic; the implications of the conflict in Ukraine and also the very clear indications that the world is not doing enough to combat climate change. But at the same time, the whole narrative around climate change has been developed outside Africa, it is time now to use the Sharm El-Sheikh conference to bring Africa’s voice to the forefront of the discussions on what can be done in order to combat the impact of climate change on the future of our continent.
Our continent is basically the least contributor to carbon emission, not more that four per cent, and at the same time it is a continent that is developing, that is growing, a continent that has adopted and took upon itself to implement and achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2030 on sustainable development and the road is very long; the challenges to meet those goals are enormous. Some of them must be prioritised vis-a-vis other commitments in climate change, simply because since we as a continent are not the primary contributor, then we should not be taking up extra commitment on ourselves that might stifle or hinder our development aspirations. So this is basically the main tenet of how Egypt’s incoming presidency of COP27 is thinking about Africa’s stance.
Africa’s voice needs to be very clear that we are all in the same boat and it is essential for there to be joint effort to combat climate change. But at the same time, we have our development aspirations and this is something I believe the Egyptian presidency during its Pre-COP consultations within Africa and with the rest of the world has been very clear about.
The other thing about the Sharm El-Sheikh conference is that we will like to call it the implementation conference. Many of the pledges made in previous conferences regarding support to the developing countries especially in Africa, or how the transition to renewable energy for example should take place without undermining our development/growth aspirations, is yet to materialise. The aspect of financing some of the projects is a key priority for the incoming Egyptian presidency of COP27 and it is something that all African countries agree that COP27 should and must actually come out with practical actions and we at the same time do realise that the moment may be a little challenging because of the cost of the conflict in Ukraine, the incomplete recovery of the global economy after covid19. There are competing priorities for finance all over the world. If we are serious about combating climate change and also equally serious about achieving the SDGs, then this is the conference and this is the kind of discussion that needs to take place in Sharm El Sheikh.
So that is why we believe in the opportunity for Africa to speak with one voice on the issues that matter the most for the future of Africa and for the issues that challenge Afrca in terms of climate and economic development.
PT: You said Africa needs to speak with one voice and Egypt by virtue of being the next COP president, has assumed a leadership position. How is Egypt mobilising and organising other African Heads of State to make sure we are speaking with one voice?
Mr Awab: The consultations at different political levels have been ongoing as well as consultation at the technical level. First of all, Africa has a group of negotiators that have been established a long time ago to participate and represent Africa’s common position at the expert technical level. This group has been mobilised and through that group, we go a step up to the African Council of Ministers of Environment, which is also the higher political level of ministers of environment which is also a very important configuration to discuss what is coming out of the expert level.
President El-Sisi of Egypt has invited other African leaders to a segment of the Sharm El-Sheikh conference called the leaders summit. He has prioritised inviting African leaders to be present at COP27 to the extent possible in big numbers and in order for the concerns of Africa to be voiced not only jointly in one meeting but also in the various bilaterals that are expected to take place around Sharm El-Sheikh.
World leaders will be there and African leaders will be there. And of course there is hope that we synchronise and synergise our messages at that highest political level so that the message does not come only in declarations that we are planning to put together but also in the messages of the various leaders and ministers among themselves and other ministers and leaders all over the world.
So this is how we try to mobilise/formulate the message. There are levels of formulating the messages, putting the priorities and the leaders will be there, hopefully in numbers, to make sure that those messages come across at the highest political level.
PT: At the Africa Adaptability Summit in Rotterdam, we saw that leaders of western countries did not show up at the meeting. How does that impact climate action?
Mr Awab: As I mentioned, we do recognise the challenging moment that the world is living in. Our preparations and close coordination with the outgoing presidency -UK- is focusing on the fact that, despite the fact that there are various challenges, the world cannot afford not to act. We still have a few weeks until COP27, we are receiving indications that world leaders, especially from developed countries and industrial countries, they do recognise that we cannot walk back from the commitments we have made in previous conferences.
Most recently, there was an IPCC report that said the world is in a very serious situation when it comes to emission and there was a lot of doubt on whether we will be able to reach the target of reducing emission and also temperature.
That came as a wake up call to all of us, that while we are experiencing these challenges, there is no turning back. So we do hope and we are confident that world leaders will still show up but not showing up only, which is a sign of commitment itself, but hopefully they are also showing up with readiness to make commitments and pledges for the implementation of previous commitments that were made.
There are diplomatic efforts ongoing to make sure we are able to get the best outcome in these circumstances.
PT: Are there specific roles other big players in Africa can play at COP27?
Mr Awab: Absolutely. And this is a very good segue to highlight the important role of Nigeria. Nigeria has been very vocal about the tenet of the African position and interest especially in the particular area of just energy transition. There is no development without energy and there is no development without access to energy and it is one of the 17 SDGs.
Egypt Ambassador to Nigeria, Ihab Awab with Premium Times reporter
Nigeria has been very vocal about it; President Buhari is a major champion of how Africa should mobilise itself to maintain its fair share of energy access and how access to energy and combating climate change should not necessarily be two contradictory goals for humanity.
Nigeria plays a major role within Africa, thanks to President Buhari’s very vocal and very clear position but also Vice President Osinbajo who has been very vocal; his writings in major publications, his most recent visit to the US and his presentation in Washington.
He is one of the champions to one of the most important African positions and aspirations which is just energy transition and this is shared widely across Africa and it is very important that countries such as Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria and many of the big economies in Africa are able to really mobilise within their respective subregions but also to be able to speak with one and to be very vocal about the priorities of Arica and that is why we work very closely with Nigeria and there is a very good synergy on many of the main priorities before Sharm El Sheikh.
PT: Could you quickly outline some of these priorities aside from just the energy transition which of course is very important. What other priorities are we looking at Africa speaking to with one voice?
Mr Awab: The question of adaptation, how developing countries could adapt to the transition to green economies, green energy, and renewable energy.
This is a very important aspect. We do recognise as Africa that this is a goal that we need to achieve. But at the same time, we know that this is going to cost… the international community has the responsibility to aid Africa in its transition to this kind of energy which is still not very affordable to all the economies. So the technology needs to be available and there is a lot of effort, commitment and political will that needs to be demonstrated by the international community in that particular direction.
It is not only the adaptation of energy, it is how our economies can be transformed into a green economy. It is not a button that you are going to push and you all of a sudden transform social and economic traditions and realities. We are talking about clean cooking in Africa; how are we going to make a transformation to clean energy for the regular household in the villages and small towns of Africa.
These are breaks for the future of the continent, the developing world and the global economy itself. If the majority of the population of the world that lives in the developing world is unable to make that transformation, then our goal towards combating climate change but also towards ending poverty will not be attained. So we are very clear that ending poverty and attaining the goals for preserving our earth and combating climate change should not be in contradiction.
PT: What specific demands should we look out for at the negotiation table at COP27?
Mr Awab: As I mentioned, it is not only government to government that will be solving our problems. The role of the private sector and business to business investment in that transformation is going to be key. If the larger title is financing, and the issue of financing is key because developing countries cannot do it alone and also I need to remind that developing countries are not the largest emitters especially African countries.
We are talking about financing that will have to come from governments, international financial institutions, investment funds, but also private sector and companies that are able to transfer the technologies needed at a cost effective rate. This is the main asks that will be presented at Sharm El-Sheikh that cuts across the various aspects of the agenda of the conference from adaptation to mitigation to compensation to risks and all of the agenda items.
PT: What role can the media play in spotlighting, highlighting and sending out the African message?
Mr Awab: I think there is a very important role for the media. By virtue of the several participations expected at COP27, it is not just about what the government says or agrees to. This is about how all levels of our society is able to achieve together and this is where the media’s role is key; synthesising societies; synthesising business; putting forward the accountability dimension of what we can achieve, whether in Sharm El Sheikh or in the follow conferences. I think this is where the media can be able to highlight the ending poverty, combating climate change and how they should not be in conflict and what that really means for human commitments.
Beyond governments in the developed countries, there are people in those countries who really care about the future of our earth and the more the media is able to present the kind of challenges we are facing in order to be part of our common drive. This is a major role the media can play.
This is the first of the two-part interview. In the second part, the ambassador talks about the 2013 unrest in Egypt, fighting terrorists, trade between Nigeria and Egypt and other matters. Stay with PREMIUM TIMES for the second part.
Chika Igba assisted with transcribing this interview.
Chiamaka Okafor is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe.
Monday, September 19, 2022
NO JOE, IT'S NOT
President Biden declares that the COVID-19 pandemic 'is over' weeks before the midterm elections
Adam Sabes
FOX NEWS Sun, September 18, 2022
President Biden said during a television interview on Sunday night that the COVID-19 pandemic "is over."
"Is the pandemic over?," a reporter asked Biden. "The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it," Biden responded.
Biden made the statement during an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," which was his first interview with a news organization in seven months.
"If you notice, no one's wearing a mask, everybody seems to be in pretty good shape," Biden added while he walked through the Detroit Auto Show.
US President Joe Biden
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty ImagesMore
Biden has used the COVID-19 pandemic emergency as a reason for his administration's plan to end Title 42 as well as the recent student loan handout.
Biden's remarks about the COVID-19 pandemic come as America is just about a month and a half away from the midterm elections.
Biden says the 'pandemic is over' despite the US maintaining one of the highest death rates worldwide with nearly 400 Americans dying of COVID-19 daily
Isabella Zavarise Sun, September 18, 2022 President Joe Biden speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on September 1, 2022.AP Photo/Susan Walsh President Biden said the COVID-19 pandemic was over in an interview with CBS News on Sunday.
"We're still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over," said Biden.
According to the CDC, the US is averaging around 400 deaths per day.
President Joe Biden said the COVID-19 pandemic was over in an interview with CBS News on Sunday, despite the US maintaining one of the highest death rates worldwide.
The comment was made during a tour of the Detroit Auto Show with 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley. As they were walking, Pelley asked Biden: "Is the pandemic over?"
"The pandemic is over," Biden said, but acknowledged the virus is still a problem. "We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it," he added.
Gesturing to attendees who weren't wearing masks to support his point, Biden said "Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it's changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it."
While cases are falling, Biden's comments come as hundreds of Americans continue to die from the infectious disease. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US is averaging around 400 deaths per day.
As of September 17, data from Johns Hopkins University found that the US has some of the highest COVID-19 figures globally in terms of cases and deaths. Next to the US is Japan, with 1,139 deaths recorded over the previous week.
States across the US are rolling back pandemic-related restrictions such as lifting mask mandates. Federal regulations still require passengers flying to the US from international destinations to be vaccinated.
In May, the President told Americans to not grow numb as the country's death toll rose to 1 million people.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson from the World Health Organization said the "end is in sight" but urged countries to maintain their vigilance, according to Reuters.
The news outlet reported that experts from the organization will meet again in October to decide whether the pandemic is still an international public health emergency. Biden says 'the pandemic is over' even as death toll, costs mount
A woman takes a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) test at a pop-up testing site in New York
Sun, September 18, 2022
By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview aired on Sunday that "the pandemic is over," even though the country continues to grapple with coronavirus infections that kill hundreds of Americans daily.
"The pandemic is over," Biden said during an interview conducted with CBS' "60 Minutes" program on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Detroit auto show, an event which drew thousands of visitors.
"We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lotta work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it's changing."
The toll of the COVID-19 pandemic has diminished significantly since early in Biden's term when more than 3,000 Americans per day were dying, as enhanced care, medications and vaccinations have become more widely available.
But nearly 400 people a day continue to die from COVID-19 in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Biden spent more than two weeks isolated in the White House after two bouts with COVID-19, starting in July. His wife Jill contracted the virus in August. Biden has said the mild cases were a testament to the improvements in care during his presidency.
Biden has asked Congress for $22.4 billion more in funding to prepare for a potential fall case surge.
Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Shri Navaratnam
Health experts dismayed by President Biden’s view that the pandemic is over: ‘Hell no — not even close’
Health experts reacted with dismay Monday to President Joe Biden’s assertion that the pandemic is over in an interview on “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday.
“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. … But the pandemic is over,” Biden told CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley. “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”
Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, accused the president of magical thinking and perhaps having too much confidence in the new bivalent boosters.
Others noted that with more than 400 deaths from COVID every day on average, the U.S. is suffering 9/11-level casualties every week, hardly a sign that the pandemic is fully contained.
Others said there’s no way of knowing what will happen once winter sets in and people spend more time indoors together.
Just last week, the head of the World Health Organization said that while the end is in sight, “we’re not there yet.”
The statement sent the stocks of vaccine makers sharply lower. Moderna was last down 9.5%, Pfizer was down 1.8% and BioNTech was down 11.8%. Novavax which had its protein-based vaccine win authorization in the U.S. in July, was down 2.4%.
U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease, although the true tally is likely higher than reported, because data is not being collected on the many people who are testing at home.
The daily average for new cases stood at 61,712 on Sunday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 29% from two weeks ago. The tracker is showing that cases are rising in seven states, all in the Northeast — Connecticut, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont — and that cases are flat in Pennsylvania.
• A bus reportedly taking 47 people to COVID-19 quarantine in southwestern China crashed before dawn Sunday morning, killing 27 and injuring 20 others, the Associated Press reported. The bus overturned on an expressway in Guizhou province, according to a brief statement from the Sandu county police, which did not mention any connection to quarantine.
• The beer is flowing at Munich’s world-famous Oktoberfest for the first time since 2019, the AP reported separately. With three knocks of a hammer and the traditional cry of “O’zapft is” — “It’s tapped” — Mayor Dieter Reiter inserted the tap in the first keg at noon on Saturday, officially opening the festivities after a two-year break forced by the coronavirus pandemic.
• Cities from Anchorage to New Orleans have ended or are winding down a program that housed homeless people in hotels and motels during the pandemic, the AP reported. The program was designed to avoid crowding in shelters. In Denver, Federal Emergency Management Agency funds directed through the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless helped keep a Quality Inn running for the past two and a half years. But the $9 million spent to lease the hotel from its owner and an additional $5 to $6 million in operational costs became unsustainable, said John Parvensky, president and CEO of the coalition.The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed interest in the practice of testing sewage to track outbreaks of disease, including polio, an outbreak of which prompted a disaster emergency declaration in New York state earlier this month. The Wall Street Journal visited a Bay Area wastewater facility to find out how testing works and what it can tell us about public health. (Photo illustration: Ryan Trefes)
The U.S. leads the world with 95.7 million cases and 1,053,461 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 224.6 million people living in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, equal to 67.7% of the total population. Just 109.2 million have had a booster, equal to 48.6% of the vaccinated population, and 22.5 million of those 50 and over who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 34.7% of those who received a first booster.
Biden declares COVID ‘pandemic is over.’ Here’s what experts say about the data
Alex Brandon/AP Julia Marnin
Since President Joe Biden’s declaration that the COVID-19 pandemic is done, a number of health experts are speaking out in response with some pointing to virus data.
“The pandemic is over,” Biden said Sunday, Sept. 18 during an interview with “60 Minutes.” “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it…but the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”
A snapshot of recent U.S. data shows there have been more than 2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and about 12,700 deaths due to the virus across the country within the past 28 days, according to Johns Hopkins University. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 1 million people have died nationwide.
The dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, Dr. Megan Ranney, disgreed with the president’s assertion that the pandemic is “over” by referencing recent death counts.
“Is the pandemic DIFFERENT? Sure,” Ranney wrote on Twitter on Sept. 18. “We have vaccines & infection-induced immunity. We have treatments. We have tests (while they last). The fatality rate is way down. And so we respond to it differently.”
“But over?! With 400 deaths a day?! I call malarkey,” Ranney added.
In the week before Sept. 15, 2,743 people died from COVID-19 in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Based on the data, that is about 391 deaths each day.
In another Sept. 18 tweet, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist, wrote “with all due respect, @JoeBiden — you’re wrong. Pandemic is not over,” and noted the number of deaths within the past week.
“Almost 3,000 Americans are dying from #COVID19 every single week. A weekly 9/11 is a very big deal,” Feigl-Ding added, referencing how nearly 3,000 people died in during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
What is the definition of a pandemic?
There are several similar definitions of a pandemic out there that emphasize one detail in particular — it is a global occurrence.
“A true influenza pandemic occurs when almost simultaneous transmission takes place worldwide,” according to a scholarly paper published 2011 in the National Library of Medicine.
Internationally, there have been nearly 16 million COVID-19 cases and about 54,000 deaths within the past 28 days, Johns Hopkins University data shows.
During a Sept. 14 World Health Organization news briefing, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “Last week, the number of weekly reported deaths from COVID-19 was the lowest since March 2020.”
“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic,” Ghebreyesus added. “We are not there yet, but the end is in sight.”
When asked about what is next for COVID-19 and the pandemic, Dr. William Gruber, senior vice president of Pfizer Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, told McClatchy News in an interview on Sept. 12 that “no one can absolutely predict the future, but we’ve seen with each successive wave that there have been fewer hospitalizations.”
“I’m optimistic that we’ll see a continuum where yes, COVID-19 is something we have to reckon with every winter, like we do influenza. But it won’t create the degree of illness that we’ve seen filling up our hospitals and overwhelming our medical personnel,” Gruber added, “provided we do vaccinate, and provide protection to individuals so the virus doesn’t have an opportunity to mutate and come back and produce serious disease.”
More experts comment on the status of the COVID pandemic
Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote Sept. 19 on Twitter that “remember when the pandemic was over in June 2021, when we were down to <12,000 (real number) confirmed cases per day, and Independence was declared?”
Meanwhile, Dr. Vinay Prasad, an epidemiology and biostatistics professor at the University of California San Francisco, described Biden’s pandemic comments as “important.”
“The emergency or pandemic phase is over,” Prasad wrote on Twitter on Sept. 18. “COVID will be around for tens of thousands of years. Time to stop using EUA at FDA and time to actively advise people to throw away their n95s and get back to living. Getting COVID is inevitable.”
Dr. Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, described Biden’s Sept. 18 statement about the pandemic being “over” as “deeply craven, cynical” in a Sept. 19 Twitter thread.
Gonsalves added that it “dishonors our 1M+ dead, those who have fought to keep people alive and safe.”
As of Sept. 19, about 50% of the U.S. lives in a location where COVID-19 levels in the community are considered medium or high, while the other half of the nation lives in a location where virus transmission levels are considered low, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
U.S. COVID-19 cases were dominated by the omicron BA.5 subvariant for the week ending Sept. 17 as it made up 84.8% of cases, agency data estimates show.
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
The Lancet: New report details “massive global failures” of COVID-19 response, calls for improved multilateral cooperation to end pandemic and effectively manage future global health threats
IMAGE: WIDESPREAD FAILURES AT MULTIPLE LEVELS WORLDWIDE HAVE LED TO MILLIONS OF PREVENTABLE DEATHS AND A REVERSAL IN PROGRESS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FOR MANY COUNTRIES.view more
CREDIT: THE LANCET
Peer-reviewed/ Review, Opinion and Analysis/ People
New Lancet Commission critically considers the global response to the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing widespread failures of prevention, transparency, rationality, basic public health practice, and operational cooperation and international solidarity that resulted in an estimated 17.7 million deaths (including those not reported).
The report also finds that most national governments were unprepared and too slow in their response, paid too little attention to the most vulnerable groups in their societies, and were hampered by a lack of international cooperation and an epidemic of misinformation.
World-renowned expert authors provide practical steps to ensure COVID-19 is no longer a pandemic threat through a vaccination-plus strategy and call for actions to strengthen multilateralism, alongside actions to strengthen national health systems and preparedness plans to defend against future global health threats and achieve sustainable development.
Widespread, global failures at multiple levels in the COVID-19 response led to millions of preventable deaths and reversed progress made towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in many countries, according to a new Lancet COVID-19 Commission report.
The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic synthesises evidence from the first two years of the pandemic with new epidemiological and financial analyses to outline recommendations that will help hasten the end of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic emergency, lessen the impact of future health threats, and achieve long-term sustainable development.
The report warns that achieving these goals hinges upon a strengthened multilateralism that must centre around a reformed and bolstered World Health Organisation (WHO), as well as investments and refined planning for national pandemic preparedness and health system strengthening, with special attention to populations experiencing vulnerability. Crucial investments also include improved technology and knowledge transfers for health commodities and improved international health financing for resource limited countries and regions.
The Commission is the result of two years of work from 28 of the world’s leading experts in public policy, international governance, epidemiology, vaccinology, economics, international finance, sustainability, and mental health, and consultations with over 100 other contributors to 11 global task forces.
"The staggering human toll of the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic is a profound tragedy and a massive societal failure at multiple levels”, says Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Chair of the Commission, University Professor at Columbia University (USA), and President of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “We must face hard truths—too many governments have failed to adhere to basic norms of institutional rationality and transparency; too many people have protested basic public health precautions, often influenced by misinformation; and too many nations have failed to promote global collaboration to control the pandemic.” [1]
He continues, “Now is the time to take collective action that promotes public health and sustainable development to bring an end to the pandemic, addresses global health inequities, protects the world against future pandemics, identifies the origins of this pandemic, and builds resilience for communities around the world. We have the scientific capabilities and economic resources to do this, but a resilient and sustainable recovery depends on strengthened multilateral cooperation, financing, biosafety, and international solidarity with the most vulnerable countries and people.” [1]
Failures of global cooperation and inequality between countries
The COVID-19 response has shown several aspects of international cooperation at its best: public-private partnerships to develop multiple vaccines in record time; actions of high-income countries to financially support households and businesses; and emergency financing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
But the events of the past two years have also exposed multiple failures of global cooperation. Costly delays by WHO to declare a “public health emergency of international concern” and to recognise the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 coincided with national governments’ failure to cooperate and coordinate on travel protocols, testing strategies, commodity supply chains, data reporting systems, and other vital international policies to suppress the pandemic. The lack of cooperation among governments for the financing and distribution of key health commodities—including vaccines, personal protective equipment, and resources for vaccine development and production in low-income countries—has come at dire costs.
Pre-COVID-19 rankings of country preparedness for pandemics, such as the 2019 Global Health Security Index, ranking the USA and many European countries among the strongest for their epidemic response capabilities, turned out to be poor predictors of the actual outcomes of the pandemic. The Commission found that the Western Pacific region, including East Asia and Oceania, primed by previous experience with the SARS epidemic of 2002, adopted relatively successful suppression strategies resulting in cumulative deaths per million around 300, much lower than in other parts of the world. Disjointed public health systems and poor-quality public policy response to COVID-19 in Europe and the Americas resulted in cumulative deaths around 4,000 deaths per million, the highest of all WHO regions.
“Over a year and a half since the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered, global vaccine equity has not been achieved. In high-income countries, three in four people have been fully vaccinated, but in low-income countries, only one in seven,” says Commission co-author, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence, Ecuador. “All countries remain increasingly vulnerable to new COVID-19 outbreaks and future pandemics if we do not share vaccine patents and technology with vaccine manufacturers in less wealthy countries and strengthen multilateral initiatives that aim to boost global vaccine equity.” [1]
Isolated and unequal national responses, with devastating socioeconomic and health effects
The report is also critical of national responses to COVID-19, which often featured inconsistent public health advice and poor implementation of public health and social measures, such as wearing face masks and vaccination. Many public policies did not properly address the profoundly inequitable impacts of the pandemic on vulnerable communities, including women, children, and workers in low- and middle-income countries. These inequities were exacerbated by extensive misinformation campaigns on social media, low social trust, and a failure to draw on the behavioural and social sciences to encourage behaviour change and counter the significant public opposition to routine public health measures seen in many countries.
“National pandemic preparedness plans must include the protection of vulnerable groups, including women, older people, children, disadvantaged communities, refugees, Indigenous Peoples, people with disabilities, and people with comorbid medical conditions. Loss of employment and school closures due to the pandemic have devastated progress made on gender equality, education and nutrition and it is critical to prevent this from happening again. We ask governments, private sector, civil society, and international organisations to build social protection systems and guarantee universal health coverage,” says Commissioner, Gabriela Cuevas Barron, Co-Chair of UHC2030 (Geneva, Switzerland), Honorary President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and former Senator in the Mexican Congress, Mexico.
Ending the pandemic emergency requires a comprehensive vaccination-plus strategy
The deepening of socioeconomic inequities, coupled with economic and public health setbacks and growing social and political tensions, has jeopardised the 2030 SDG agenda. Two clear timelines have been set for pandemic response and preparedness: immediate actions in the short-term to end the COVID-19 emergency, and longer-term policy recommendations for a new era of multilateral cooperation to achieve long-term sustainable development (see panel on pages 3-4).
To finally control the pandemic, the Commission proposes that all countries adopt a vaccination-plus strategy, combining widespread vaccination with appropriate public health precautions and financial measures.
“A global vaccine-plus strategy of high vaccine coverage plus a combination of effective public health measures will slow the emergence of new variants and reduce the risk of new waves of infection while allowing everyone (including those clinically vulnerable) to go about their lives more freely. The faster the world can act to vaccinate everybody, and provide social and economic support, the better the prospects for exiting the pandemic emergency and achieving long-lasting economic recovery,” says Commission co-author Prof. Salim S. Abdool Karim of the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA. [1]
To prepare for future pandemic health threats, the Commission recommends strengthening national health systems and the adoption of national pandemic preparedness plans, with actions to improve coordinated surveillance and monitoring for new variants, protect groups experiencing vulnerability, and create safer school and workplace environments by investing in ventilation and filtration.
Promoting multilateralism to build a more resilient future, and unlock a new approach to global health funding
To improve the world’s ability to respond to pandemics, the Commission calls for WHO to be transformed and bolstered by a substantial increase in funding and greater involvement from heads of state representing each region to better support decision-making and actions, especially on urgent and controversial matters. The Commission supports calls from other panels for a new global pandemic agreement and an update of the International Health Regulations.
With the support of WHO, the G20, and major financial institutions such as the World Bank, the Commission recommends increased and more effective investment for both pandemic preparedness and health systems in developing countries, with a focus on primary care, achieving universal health coverage, and disease control more generally.
To achieve this goal, the Commission estimates that around $US60 billion would be required yearly, equivalent to 0.1% of the gross domestic product of high-income countries. Consolidation and expansion of several existing health funds should be closely aligned with the work of WHO, and the Commission emphasises that health-system strengthening must be implemented at the local level, reflecting regional needs and priorities, rather than from the top-down by a few donor countries.
Alongside this long-term funding commitment, the Commission recommends a 10-year effort by G20 countries to bolster research and development and investments in infrastructure and manufacturing capacity for all critical pandemic control tools including testing, diagnostics, vaccines, treatments, and PPE, alongside support and training for health workers in low- and middle-income countries.
These investments and the restructuring of multilateral global health efforts are essential to achieve the 2030 SDG Agenda. In 2019, the IMF estimated that LMICs face a financing gap of $300-500 billion a year to achieve SDGs, and this gap has increased as a result of the pandemic. Global recovery plans from the pandemic are not aligned with the SDGs and do not do enough to counter climate change.
Further recommendations are made, such as the call for an expansion of the WHO Science Council to apply urgent scientific evidence for global health priorities, including future emerging infectious diseases; strengthening of WHO through the establishment of a WHO Global Health Board with representation of all six WHO regions; and strengthening of national health systems on the foundations of public health and universal health coverage, grounded in human rights and gender equality. The Commission also recognises the need for an independent, transparent investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, alongside robust regulations, to help prevent future pandemics that may result from both natural and research-related activities, and to strengthen public trust in science and public authorities.
A linked Editorial published in TheLancet says, “…as the Commission demonstrates, reassessing and strengthening global institutions and multilateralism will not only benefit the response to COVID-19 and future infectious diseases but to also to any crisis that has global ramifications. The release of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission offers another opportunity to insist that the failures and lessons from the last three years are not laid to waste but are constructively used to build more resilient health systems and stronger political systems that support the health and wellbeing of people and planet during the 21st century.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
The Commission received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, and the Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). A full list of authors and their institutions is available in the report.
[1] Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article.
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JOURNAL
The Lancet
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Systematic review
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
14-Sep-2022
COI STATEMENT
SSAK declares grants paid to the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa from the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), the South African Medical Research Council, the National Research Foundation, and the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership. He is a vicepresident of the International Science Council; a commissioner of the African Commission on COVID-19; and a member of the WHO Science Council, the Advisory Council of the Physicians for Human Rights, the Global Medical Advisory Board on COVID-19 for Sanofi Pasteur, and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. CBa declares consulting fees from and is a member of the advisory board of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. MEB and PJH are co-directors of a team of scientists at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, who are co-inventors of a COVID-19 recombinant protein vaccine technology owned by Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) that was licensed by BCM, non-exclusively and with no patent restrictions, to several companies committed to advancing vaccines for low-income and middle-income countries. The co-inventors have no involvement in license negotiations conducted by BCM. Similar to other research universities, a long-standing BCM policy provides its faculty and staff, who make discoveries that result in a commercial license, a share of any royalty income. To date, BCM has not distributed any royalty income to the co-inventors of the COVID-19 recombinant protein vaccine technology. Any such distribution will be undertaken in accordance with BCM policy. CBu declares grants from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; consulting fees from Johnson & Johnson Japan; payment from University of Malaya; and is the president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco—Oceania. GCB is co-chair of the UHC2030 International Alliance. AH declares grants and consulting fees from the Wellcome Trust and the Oak Foundation. NJ declares support from the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and consulting fees from the University of California, San Francisco Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability. ET declares consulting fees from the United Nations Development Programme. VV-F and IS are co-chairs of the Nizami Ganjavi International Centre. MAP declares grants from the Rockefeller Foundation to his institution and is a member of the Board of Directors for Management Sciences for Health, and non-executive Governing Board member of Sidra Medicine. JT declares funds from the Victorian Government to BehaviourWorks Australia for surveys and research on COVID-19 related behaviours, from Monash University and from Melbourne Water. AG was a member of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program until February, 2022. MH declares funds from the Victorian Government, the New South Wales Government, the Australian Government, and the Macquarie Foundation to the Burnet Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia for research and modelling work related to COVID-19, and grants from AbbVie and Gilead Sciences that are unrelated to this work. JVL declares grants from AbbVie, Gilead Sciences, MSD, and Roche Diagnostics, and consulting fees from NovVax, all unrelated to this work. All other authors declare no conflicts of interest. This report does not represent the institutions nor the organisations for which the authors work.
