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By Michael V. Callahan
Dr. Callahan is an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and has dealt with epidemics in Asia since 2002.
In early December, China canceled its long-running strategy against the “zero covid” pandemic, which had the country for nearly three years. immunity to adequately protect the population.
The weather couldn’t be worse. Just weeks into a post-zero Covid reality, the country’s largest annual migration for the Lunar New Year, which ends in February, has begun. After years of restrictions, it’s expected to be huge by 2023, as urban workers return home celebrating with a circle of family and friends. The mix of densely populated transit systems, winter conditions, and multigenerational gatherings is so ideal for reading disease transmission that the Lunar New Year is a non-unusual table simulation for public physical education officials. This year, you won’t really see any spin-offs.
The challenge will become more complicated with the arrival of the most infectious subvariant of the coronavirus to date, XBB1. 5. Cases. If the U. S. experienceis an indication, XBB1. 5 can also be devastating if spread widely in China. Locally made Chinese vaccines (Beijing has so far refused to import mRNA vaccines from the US)to the virus and its variants. This is something the world will see spread in the coming weeks.
What can America do, assuming our government is motivated to do something?Given Beijing’s threats against Taiwan, its oppression of Uighurs, and efforts to block research into the origins of the coronavirus, Congress could be susceptible to a tough decision. line to China or do nothing at all for the Chinese government. And the new Congress is even more aggressive.
But doing nothing is a harmful game. The refusal to power not only causes incalculable suffering and death; This risks undermining our own hard-won gains to end the pandemic.
When will the pandemic end? We asked 3 experts, two immunologists and an epidemiologist, to weigh in on this and some of the many other questions recently collected from readers, and they added how to make sense of the recall and when to get tested, recommendations for children, whether they get covid is simply inevitable and other urgent questions.
How about things like prolonged covid and reinfections?It’s a question that’s difficult to answer with certainty, writes opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci, because of a lack of studies good enough and for those affected, as well as confusion about the very nature of the disease. She has advice on how to approach the problem. Regarding another ongoing Covid risk, that of reinfections, a virologist makes things clear: “There is still no variant that cancels out the benefits of vaccines. “
How will the virus continue to change? As one organization of scientists who examine viruses explains, “There is no reason, at least biologically, why the virus deserves not to continue to evolve. “From another angle, science David Quammen reviews some of the highly effective equipment and techniques being used Covid and other viruses must now be tested, but notes that this wisdom alone will not mitigate the risk.
What would endemic covid look like? David Wallace Wells writes that, according to one estimate, 100,000 Americans may die each year from the coronavirus. Stopping this will require an artistic effort to develop and achieve the highest levels of vaccination. Immunobiologist Akiko Iwasaki writes that new vaccines, especially those administered through the nose, may be only part of the answer.
Given the politics on both sides, direct government agreements seem unlikely. In recent years, U. S. -Mexico studio collaborations have been used to develop studies. The U. S. and Chinese studies, dating back decades, have declined, adding my own studies on emerging diseases. Beijing has also been slow on transparent virus monitoring. However, some U. S. educational and trade partnershipsand China have continued the pandemic in spaces such as clinical trials and vaccine studies and development. Imaginatively, many of those collaborations may be temporarily reoriented to help China in the coming weeks.
For example, in 2021, the U. S. National Academy of Engineering will be able to do so. The U. S. Department of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering of Great Britain issued a joint statement affirming their commitment to facilitating global action to respond to the pandemic through engineering approaches, in addition to sharing public information on fitness. In December, at least one online pharmacy in China began promoting the Covid drug Paxlovid, manufactured through US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, directly to patients. The pharmacy sent Paxlovid to any Chinese with a positive coronavirus control. If the Beijing government were to link the government’s formula for reporting the effects of home controls to Paxlovid’s home delivery providers of ads, many lives could be saved.
What can the U. S. government do to help? Although the Chinese government has rejected U. S. help to save lives, Chinese doctors, patients, and families devastated by covid have not. U. S. agencies are not allowed to do so. The U. S. can save more lives and prevent further disruption to China’s economy, and ours, by passing through Beijing and leveraging long-standing educational and business partnerships to move to provinces, communitiesArray, businesses, hospitals, and Americans who have the most to lose.
Some possible answers come with exporting successful methods from the U. S. Operation Warp Speed playbook, which accelerated the delivery of the manufacturer’s mRNA vaccines into people’s arms. This massive logistical challenge can be revised for the immediate deployment of a new Chinese-made mRNA vaccine. Other imaginable projects include sharing crisis drug protocols that expand hospital drug stocks to treat many more patients and sharing pandemic methods shown to help protect Chinese healthcare personnel during Covid outbreaks. These include prioritising the protection of GPs, employing expert telemedicine to increase the number of doctors available, and bringing clinical staff together to reduce infections and absenteeism in the workplace. A high-impact technology technique would be the percentage of intellectual assets funded through U. S. taxpayers that can make average Chinese vaccines more potent.
Those who think the Chinese government is unlikely to cooperate, do their homework. Although it is still early, Pfizer reached an agreement with China to sell Paxlovid through a state-owned company. In September, Merck
Any solution that saves lives, prevents the collapse of China’s fitness formula, and reduces the threat of a pandemic restart is in our national interest. A pandemic disaster in China will reverberate around the world, making it an incredible epidemic to contain. Many cheap answers are based on hard classes learned through U. S. physical care. Many can be seamlessly transferred to spousal hospitals in China. This will come at a negligible cost to taxpayers, petty thinking, and politics.
Michael Callahan is an infectious disease physician scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a former program manager for various Darpa systems and a former Covid special advisor to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services’ deputy secretary for public health preparedness and response. U. S. He has worked on viral disease outbreaks and biosecurity in Asia since 2002.
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