STRATEGY GUIDE: <strong><em>VACCINE GEOPOLITICS WILL DESTABILIZE</em></strong>
EXCESSIVE HEAT, ROLLING OUTAGES AS CALIFORNIA STRUGGLES
Rolling blackouts, in part due to yet another record-breaking heatwave across California, began Friday. Temperatures reached triple digits in many areas of Southern California. Fire season started early as well, even before the Santa Ana winds arrive next month.
“It’s worse than 20 years ago – even hotter, and now in the middle of a pandemic.”
— City of Los Angeles official
For the first time in 19 years, Californians experienced rolling blackouts -- or power outages -- that began on Friday, and that continued throughout the weekend.
The California System Operator (ISO) declared a state three emergency on Friday. That meant the three big utilities covering 80% of customers in the state had to implement measures to lighten the load on the power grid.
In Los Angeles, from Woodland Hills to Santa Monica, about 70,000 customers were impacted by the outage, but shortly after the outages began, the ISO called it off -- moving the state back to stage two as mitigating measures were successful such as ordering power plants online.
It’s one of the most significant heatwaves we have seen this past decade, say climate scientists. Keep in mind that 64 percent of Los Angeles residents do not have central air conditioning systems in their homes because the weather there is so uniformly temperate.
“We’re going to see a lot of nights, especially across the inland areas, where temperatures never drop to comfortable levels.”
--Daniel Swain, UCLA Climate Sciences
VACCINE GEOPOLITICS WILL DESTABILIZE
If it was unclear clear that the Cold War is back on, Russia named its vaccine program “Sputnik V.” Clear political messaging from an autocratic oligarchy populated with the former Soviet officials.
Why?
The nation that develops the first coronavirus vaccine will have a substantial geopolitical advantage. Many Americans take it for granted that a friendly country or organization will acquire the vaccine first. However, if a revisionist state like Russia, an opponent of Western liberalist governments, develops the first vaccine, it is more likely that they will use their advantage to undermine the western geopolitical global order.
There are already reports that Russia leaped ahead in its vaccine program. However, that is nothing but state propaganda. Sputnik V is fast-tracking a vaccine candidate that was tested in ~30 people and is manufacturing millions of doses. However, it skipped extensive Phase 3 studies of 30,000-person trials that guarantee efficacy and safety. They are also not making the Phase 2 trial data public.
Despite reports, Russia has not leaped ahead in the vaccine development, and western regulators are unlikely to approve the vaccine without first undergoing some late-stage trials. Professor Alexandre Chuchalin, Russia’s top doctor, quit the Russian Ministry’s ethics council over the questionable ethics of the quick approval process.
“Have you passed all the necessary paths approved by the Russian Federation legislation and the international scientific community? This job has not been done. Thus, one of the ethical principles of medicine has been grossly violated – to do no harm.”
-Prof. Alexandre Chuchalin, MD
He also said: “I am depressed by the position of some of our scientists who make irresponsible statements about ready-made vaccines.”
Russia’s aptly named “Sputnik V” may well be a moonshot that falls flat.
China reportedly inoculated Communist Party officials with the experimental Sinovac vaccine. These reports are corroborated and are possible because Sinovac is in advanced vaccine trials. However, there is no evidence that immunizations will be available for global distribution soon.
China’s modus operandi on the world stage is to give freely, without regard to a state’s human rights records.
If China develops an effective vaccine first, it is likely to make it available to the world, although perhaps delaying an announcement until after vaccinating strategic allies. While experts expect China to share its vaccine freely with the world, experts also anticipate China may share it in a way that undermines Western primacy and state security. Regardless, this will occur as the world turns to China as the United States crumbles.
The United States is the beacon of liberalist government. If it ceases to be a beacon of liberalism, then more nations will look to China, which presents an alternative form of government unseen in the 20th century. Its authoritarian market-driven Communism contributed to the highest pace of economic growth the world had seen since the United States. If the United States is no longer that pole, than China and opponents like Russia grow in their relative strength.
BAD DATA CAUSES WORSE OUTCOMES
Prolonged testing delays—over three weeks—reduced the validity of public health data. Statistical declines in the number of positive cases and other figures are suspect. The U.S., which failed to reach an adequate testing level, now experiences such long delays that it is impossible to track the epidemic even in historical snapshots.
The reality is that public health experts have no idea how prevalent the virus is in the United States. Scientists have no idea the communities in which outbreaks are occurring because of subversive political actions and messaging from public officials—Doctors, which have used recent scientific discoveries to treat hospital patients and improve medical outcomes. However, the most experienced doctors are falling ill and dying from the virus in higher numbers than the general population. Younger doctors, which have statistically better outcomes, then face overwhelming caseloads and traumatic levels of human carnage comparable to a World War.
Morale is failing among remaining health workers, and those that remain are finding the low pay and long hours not worth the trauma. Burnout and suicide rates are at record highs and climbing. Health professionals will require a 9/11 first-responders fund of their own in the months to come to pay for the inevitable fallout.
Testing delays and overwhelmed health professionals are the only sources of bad data, California, a cultural microcosm of the United States, is finding its lack of bilingual staff hampers their contact-tracing efforts. Spanish isn’t the only language they lack, as new immigrants work in disproportionately high numbers of “essential” jobs. While the good news is that they continue to earn income, they are unable to quarantine and not in an economic position to stay home when they get sick. Many new immigrants also live in multi-generational households, infecting higher numbers of elderly and high-risk populations that unilingual contact tracers are unable to reach.
The preponderance of circumstances indicates the U.S. data is worthless at the macro and micro levels. The backbiting by impeached President Donald Trump successfully crippled America.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
· https://www.freethink.com/articles/3-coronavirus-vaccine
· https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/15/forty-percent-of-us-covid-19-tests-come-back-too-late-to-be-clinically-meaningful-data-show.html
· https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/russia-produces-first-batch-of-virus-vaccine-sputnik-v-ministry-1.5065707
· https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/business/california-blackouts.html