The Pandemic Is a $50 Billion Test That Rich Countries Are Failing
You may think you understand where we stand in this pandemic, but you don’t. No one entirely does. Scientists are taking in new information and giving guidance to politicians and bureaucrats who then decide what to do with it, even as demagogues and hucksters claim special understanding to take advantage of the public’s hunger for answers and an end to the suffering.
It was satisfying to see one of these hucksters get called out, as Rand Paul was by Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate hearing this week: "You do not know what you're talking about." But for the most part the anti-vaxxers and science-loathers and faux libertarians and con artists who have left a trail of death and suffering are still spreading an infodemic (a word I coined in a Washington Post article in 2002 in response to the disinformation and panic surrounding the SARS epidemic in Asia) that’s compounded the consequences of the epidemic.
One thing that we do in fact know is that there are two kinds of countries in the world: rich countries with the means to bring the virus under control where it is nonetheless resurgent, and poor countries that have never gotten the virus under control, in large part because those rich countries did not adequately share the vaccines needed to do so, and that will pay a price over generations.