"I recently returned from a month in Perú where I learned more about the proper response to Covid than I had learned over two years in the United States.The Peruvians seemed willing to follow the rules, almost universally. They wear masks as required and are vaccinated when vaccines are available. Shoppers cannot enter a supermarket or commercial shopping centers without wearing a mask and showing a vaccine card. Travelers on intercity buses, planes or colectivos must do the same, and the buses have curtains between the seats or the seat and the aisle. In Lima and smaller cities I usually saw more pedestrians walking on the sidewalks wearing masks than not wearing masks.
People I knew were very interested in knowing how many shots I had received and were quick to tell me how many shots they had received. I heard nothing about people resisting either vaccines or masks.
The hotels all had large posters with instructions about washing hands, wearing masks, being vaccinated and two or three other practices that people in the United States would not imagine are necessary.
Over the five years in which I have spent time in Perú I have noticed the irony of the Peruvians living with successive absolutely incompetent and corrupt governments and the almost universal willingness to cooperate with the directions issued by the Peruvian Department of Health.
In short, with regard to Covid I felt safer in Peru than I do in this country, and it was a joy to get away from the controversies and bickering."
15 July 2022
Management of Covid outside the United States
Excerpts from an email I received this evening from one of my cousins:
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I've spent a lot of time in Panama, and my experience was the same. Everyone cooperates.
ReplyDeleteThe Peruvians and Panamanians obviously aren't educated intricacies of destroying democracy except the crude gun and explosive traditions of the last century.
ReplyDeleteThey are also probably concerned about other people's health and welfare too.
I'm being sarcastic, or trying to be, but somehow it sounds too close to reality.
There's a childish streak in American culture. A fondness for magical thinking, from the New Age to the literal interpretation of Genesis. Our rejection of science and history, and intellectualism in general, is costly. On the other hand, we have an academic culture supporting "safe spaces" and all kinds of irrational hyper-identity nonsense, undermining credibility. Our 1,000,000 Covid deaths are the result of cherished obstinacy. Obstinacy equated with freedom. Of course the bigger question is how this mindset affects policy, in the most polluting nation in history, in a perilous moment. Children put their heads under the blankets. So far...
ReplyDeletePeru has the highest COVID Deaths Per Capita in the entire world and a poor testing infrastructure that has kept case rates artificially low. There's no success story in Peru and this is just empty praise for NPIs that haven't shown efficacy in any randomized study.
ReplyDeletePeru is a poor country and was caught with its guard down. (As opposed to a rich country that had every advantage and squandered much of that advantage.) The posted narrative (above) describes a country that has since adapted. But, yes, there was a perfect storm in 2021:
Deletehttps://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/27/1057387896/peru-has-the-worlds-highest-covid-death-rate-heres-why
I am Minnesotastan's cousin and the author of the short piece describing the current Peruvian response to Covid. Peruvians have a poor country and a corrupt and dysfunctional government, so Covid thoroughly overran the country in the early days of the pandemic. Their first vaccines were Chinese vaccines, that is to say, they were really not vaccines. The impact was so great - bodies were stacked in the streets - that they seemed to have learned important lessons, and they continue to practice them. Most importantly, they wear masks almost everywhere, particularly in the public marketplaces, while traveling in public vehicles and entering supermarkets, hotels and retail outlets. I would venture to say that more than half of the pedestrians wear masks while walking on sidewalks in commercial areas. Peruvians do not leave home without a mask. Because HUAC systems are not common in homes, many people live with windows open or sit on the balcony while they are eating or socializing. And this is the case year-round. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are now available, and the people I know wanted to be vaccinated. As in this country many of the poor were not well informed about vaccines, had a lower rate of vaccination and higher rates of infection. I did not talk to a single person who did not want to be vaccinated or refused to use a mask. If you look at the world maps that color countries based on their rate of infection or vaccination, you will note that the United States is usually a deep red and Peru is a pale yellow, as are its neighboring countries.
DeleteIn short, I have been working in Peru for about five years, I stay in local, low cost housing and I travel overland by public transportation, usually by bus, often for 8-10 hours per trip. While I was in Peru, I felt safer than I had been in the United States for the duration of the pandemic. As I side note, I just contracted Covid, probably Omicron BA.5, perhaps while traveling from Florida to Utah on Delta - and notably I was one of the few on the flight wearing a mask.
On NPR news this morning about the Global South and vaccines:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.npr.org/transcripts/1111985674 Middle-income countries have come up with a game-changing plan for COVID vaccines
WilliamRocket says - Seems different here in New Zealand. We are geographically remote but the flying machines came here often during 2020.
ReplyDeleteThe government, via the national newspaper and TV and radio stations, told us the vaccine would stop the virus ... it didn't.
Then they told us 2 vaccines and 2 booster shots would make the covid sickness, should we still catch it, less severe - which is unquantifiable.
The government issued 'vaccine passports' meant only those with all the shots could go to sports, shows, movies, bars and the like ... this led to a large number of vaccinated people catching covid.
Strangely, very few unvaccinated people caught covid.
The daily news reports state in large type how many people have died per day with covid, but you have to read the fine print on the government health site to realise that 'with covid' means anyone who died from any cause, be it heart failure, cancer, car accident or any other reason, and was tested for covid within 28 days, before or after death, with the result being positive.
As to people actually dying from covid, who knows, those numbers are not publicised.
As most hospitals here are rife with the virus, that means if you go to hospital there is a fair chance you will get covid, and if you die there, you will test positive and be listed as a covid death, even if you were involved in a horrific car accident.
We had a gang shooting here, the guy was shot and bled out on the side of the road, but in the newspapers he was headlined as a covid death.
I don't doubt covid exists or kills people, but such manipulation of the truth is just fear mongering.
The vast majority of people catching covid in New Zealand are vaccinated.
The majority of people actually dying from covid are in their 80s and 90s and are frail and suffering from other ailments.
I know that doesn't fit the agenda, but that is the real truth.
It would be nice if our government was open and honest about things, but, lol, unlike other governments they seem to think we the people are stupid, they seem to forget they work for us.
"Seems different...?" It may seem any way you think it seems, but then there's evidence (please site evidence/study/source). Unless New Zealand is a magical place, it's probably experiencing very similar patterns to the rest of humanity. More specifically the US, where studies have shown drastic reductions in infection, hospitalization and death with vaccine use: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm?s_cid=mm7037e1_whttps://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm?s_cid=mm7037e1_w
DeleteAre you saying that in a fully vaccinated population there will still be Covid infections, hospitalization and deaths (agreed), or are you saying the data establish that the unvaccinated, controlling for all lifestyle variables, fare better than the vaccinated in New Zealand? I don't see that any of these studies establish the latter. They describe the impact of Covid on an essentially fully vaccinated populace. Imagine if this variant swept through a NZ with no vaccine protection. As with every other population, I think you'd see exponentially more infections, hospitalizations and deaths. In any case, I'm sorry to hear that New Zealand has these numbers. It's been a great example of a country with highly effective management of the contagion--mostly by leveraging its isolated geography effectively.
DeleteDo you have a citation or data for the extraordinary claim that "very few unvaccinated people caught covid" ?
ReplyDeleteTo crunch the numbers appropriately, we would need to know what proportion of the NZ population is unvaccinated/partly vaccinated/fully vaccinated. I haven't found those data, but did see at Reuters that "New Zealand has administered at least 11,275,493 doses of COVID vaccines so far. Assuming every person needs 2 doses, that’s enough to have vaccinated about 114.7% of the country’s population."
DeleteThe number of unvaccinated persons would seem to be small, which might explain the observation that "very few unvaccinated people caught covid." But "very few" does not mean a low percentage in this scenario.
I agree that dying "with covid" has limited usefulness; it seems to be a way around the logarithmically more complicated process of determining a cause of death - which isn't easy even in normal non-covid situations (cf the prevalence of "heart attack" as cause of death in persons found dead, when the definition of death is used as the cause of death).
Thank you, Kolo. So roughtly 90-95% of the population of New Zealand is fully vaccinated. That explains a lot. And it is an awesome achievement.
DeleteAs a resident and now citizen of Portugal, I share your cousin’s sense of greater safety outside the US. I flew to Oregon to visit my ill mother last December and have never felt so unsafe in my life. After two years of staying put in my adopted nation — where mask compliance was universal, the vaccination rate hit 98% of people over the age of 12, and everyone was motivated to protect their community — it was damned unnerving to go into stores and find people refusing to wear masks. At the time, Oregon’s hospitalization numbers were spiking thanks to the then-new omicron variant, and my cancer-patient mother was told by her oncologist NOT to go to a hospital if she felt ill (as she often does, thanks to chemo). “That would be suicide,” the oncologist said. “Come to the cancer clinic instead and we’ll do whatever we can for you.” So my mom couldn't go to a freaking hospital because a bunch of yahoos couldn't be bothered to wear a mask? And the yahoos think *their* rights are the ones being trampled? What a laugh.
ReplyDeleteMy sister took me to Costco and assured me it was safe because “you can’t get in without a mask.” And indeed, the door clerks did check both membership cards and masks — but once inside, we saw unmasked people all over the place. Shocked, my sister said “It wasn’t like this last time!” and flagged down a clerk to ask about it. The clerk called her manager. The manager told us that since Oregon had just made mask compliance voluntary rather than compulsory, Costco had immediately changed its rules to forbid its employees from enforcing the store’s own mask requirement. “But you have to wear a mask to get in?” I asked in confusion. “Yes,” the manager said with an expression that perfectly conveyed I Know, Stupid Isn’t It? “You must be masked to enter, but not once you’re inside.” She leaned in and confided, “It’s because we’ve had physical assaults on employees by anti-maskers. So now, even those of us who *want* to enforce the store rules aren’t allowed to.”
In other words, a few violent yahoos who trampled the rights of fellow Americans (i.e., the right to conduct one’s employment without being physically assaulted) got a major national store chain to change its rules in their favor. American individualism for the win!
I cannot even express the relief I felt upon returning home to Portugal with its family- and community-minded culture. Over here, that kind of asshattery is not celebrated. It is seen for what it is: toddler-level selfishness that endangers others. I’ll stay here with the adults, thanks, where I worry a hell of a lot less about my personal safety or that of my loved ones.
Regarding your cousin’s final comment of “It was a joy to get away from the controversies and bickering,” all I can say is AMEN.
I moved from Cleveland to Abu Dhabi during the pandemic. Ohio and the UAE have similar population sizes and you can see the effect of enforced mask requirements, 99% vaccination rate, and overall responsibility in this graph:
ReplyDeletehttps://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries&highlight=United%20Arab%20Emirates&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=Ohio#countries