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“President Joe Biden urged Americans on Monday not to panic about the new COVID-19 Omicron variant and said the United States was making contingency plans with pharmaceutical companies if new vaccines are needed. Biden said the country would not go back to lockdowns to stop the spread of Omicron…
“Omicron has prompted countries across the globe including the United States to limit travel from southern Africa, where the virus was first detected… A U.S. travel ban took effect earlier on Monday blocking most visitors from eight southern African nations from entering the country.” Reuters
The right cautions against drastic measures and preemptive panic.
“Instead of using this as an excuse for more authoritarian responses to the pandemic, our leaders need to start preparing Americans to learn to live with a problem that won’t go away but probably can be managed. If many of us are cynical about Omicron — and the South African doctor who first raised alarms about the new strain has stated that its symptoms are ‘unusual but mild’ — it’s because we know that there is nothing temporary about government measures that are supposed to protect us from COVID…
“In March of 2020, we were told extreme measures would merely last ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ of reported cases and hospitalizations, but we saw them drag on for months only to be replaced by a complex, illogical and often contradictory maze of regulations about social distancing and masks. We also noticed that the rules enforced by authorities when it came to ordinary citizens were often flouted by the politicians who promulgated them, something that continues to this day, with Biden ignoring mask mandates that he demands others obey.”
Jonathan S. Tobin, New York Post
“Public health experts understand keenly that the lockdown era is behind us barring some catastrophic development with the new variant. Unless and until the vaccines stop working, there’s no need for economy-crushing non-pharmaceutical interventions like we saw in 2020…
“This morning even Fauci ruled out any new restrictions in the near term apart from the travel ban to southern Africa. Scientifically there’s no need — ‘for now’ — and politically it’d be a calamity for Democrats. They watched the returns in Virginia. They read what focus groups had to say about school closures. They know the price.”
Allahpundit, Hot Air
When the news first hit, “Global markets collapsed. U.S. stock indexes suffered their biggest one-day percentage decline since February. The United States raced to impose a travel ban… New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul preemptively suspended elective surgeries for the first time since 2020 in anticipation of a ‘spike’ of new hospitalizations…
“By the weekend’s end, a correction was underway… But there was a panic. And if you have investments in the market or need crucial elective surgeries in the state of New York, it was a damaging one. Why was panic the default response of so much of the news-consuming world over the weekend? And why have sobriety and circumspection now returned to both media and markets? In part because panic has become a lifestyle choice among an influential few.”
Noah Rothman, Commentary Magazine
Finally, “Attributing Omicron to ‘vaccine deserts’ is premature and unsupported by evidence. This looks suspiciously like narrative journalism — an attempt to tell a preferred story and jump to conclusions without regard to evidentiary support… South Africa wasn’t a ‘vaccine desert,’ virtual or otherwise. A week ago, just prior to the emergence of Omicron, Reuters reported that South Africa had stopped accepting new shipments of vaccine doses thanks to a glut. The problem in that country was uptake, not provisions… If anything, one could wrap this around vaccine hesitancy rather than ‘hoarding’ and perhaps get a little closer to the truth…
“Until we have vaccine doses in the billions, we are forced to deal with a shortage structure, which requires rationing. Rationing will always have to take national interests into consideration as well as international and humanitarian interests. The countries that produce the vaccines will always want to protect their own citizens first and then take care of others next, especially representative republics with real accountability to voters. They will prioritize saving lives now over potential mutations to come, and for good reason.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
The left urges wealthy nations to do more to help developing nations fight Covid.
The left urges wealthy nations to do more to help developing nations fight Covid.
“The problem is that restricting the border feels like doing something more than it is actually doing anything… I’m not saying any of that stuff doesn’t work at all—it can and it does. When regulating the borders works, it is done in the extreme: for nearly 600 days starting in March of 2020, Australia pretty much did not allow any international travelers, and Australians returning home had to go into a quarantine hotel for two weeks…
“The Omicron border closures are in contrast rather porous; the US is blocking off travelers only from certain locations, even as it becomes clear that the spread of Omicron is unknown, and making exceptions for citizens. The virus, of course, does not care who issued your passport. The main thing we could be doing to lessen the burden of COVID-19 on the world and on ourselves has been obvious for a really long time: Rich countries need to share the vaccines with poor countries.”
Susan Matthews, Slate
“The emergence of Omicron should serve as a reminder of… the importance of genomic sequencing, which tracks the genetic structure of the virus. Omicron was spotted early thanks to South Africa’s huge investment in sequencing, which has allowed swift action to be taken. This could be valuable in terms of developing updated vaccines if needed. But this action takes the form of punishing travel bans, so there is a case for South Africa receiving global compensation in order not to disincentivise countries with similar sequencing capabilities from being transparent about their findings…
“Second… Omicron is a reminder that no one is safe until everyone is safe. By the end of the year, enough vaccines will have been manufactured to have vaccinated the whole world against Covid. Yet too many countries are facing this winter with low vaccination rates as a result of wealthier nations hoarding unused supplies. Only 3% of people in low-income countries are fully vaccinated, compared with more than 60% in high-income countries. This gap is not only ethically wrong – it increases the likelihood of a vaccine-resistant strain developing. High-income countries need to develop far more efficient and timely systems for delivering unused vaccinations to developing countries well in advance of their expiry date.”
Observer Editorial, The Guardian
Others note that “Boosting vaccine supply will be good, but not enough… People need outside public-health experts to show a genuine interest in the problems they face, from a lack of drinking water, sanitation and clean cooking facilities to more neglected and endemic diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and diarrhea…
“Ideally, vaccines should form part of a package of measures to improve health, rather than be a one-time campaign parachuted into remote communities. If the motivations of those driving the push and the direct impacts on those receiving doses are unclear, that can lead to suspicion and conspiracy theories, especially among vulnerable populations.”
David Fickling, Bloomberg
Finally, “The federal government must, must, must become more nimble. The announcement of Omicron's arrival came just a week after the Centers for Disease Control finally approved vaccine booster shots for all adults. Plenty of observers believe it should have happened sooner…
“Vaccine makers Pfizer and BioNTech now say they could ship variant-specific vaccines within 100 days, if necessary. It might be necessary — but it's difficult to have faith that the CDC and FDA will move with all due speed. The pandemic is nearly two years old, but Americans still don't have access to the kind of quick-and-easy COVID tests available to Europeans, largely because of U.S. agencies' laborious approval process. That obviously needs to change.”
Joel Mathis, The Week
40 times architects failed at their job.
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