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When the results of his study came in, Kondwani Jambo was stunned.
He’s an immunologist in Malawi. And last year he had set out to determine just how many people in his country had been infected with the coronavirus since the pandemic began.
Jambo, who works for the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, knew the total number of cases was going to be higher than the official numbers. But his study revealed that the scale of spread was beyond anything he had anticipated — with a huge majority of Malawians infected long before the omicron variant emerged. “I was very shocked,” he says.
Most important, he says, the finding suggests that it has now been months since Malawi entered something akin to what many countries still struggling with massive omicron waves consider the holy grail: the endemic stage of the pandemic, in which the coronavirus becomes a more predictable seasonal bug like the flu or common cold.
In fact, top scientists in Africa say Malawi is just one of many countries on the continent that appear to have already reached — if not quite endemicity — at least a substantially less threatening stage, as evidenced by both studies of the population’s prior exposure to the coronavirus and its experience with the omicron variant.
To understand how these scientists have come to hold this view, it helps to first consider what the pandemic has looked like in a country such as Malawi.
Before the omicron wave, Malawi didn’t seem to have been hit too hard by COVID-19. Even by July of last year, when Malawi had already gone through several waves of the coronavirus, Jambo says it appeared that only a tiny share of Malawians had been infected.
“Probably less than 10% [of the population], if we look at the number of individuals that have tested positive,” says Jambo.
The number of people turning up in hospitals was also quite low — even during the peak of each successive COVID-19 wave in Malawi.
Jambo knew this likely masked what had really been going on in Malawi. The country’s population is very young — it has a median age of around 18, he notes. This suggests most infections prior to omicron’s arrival were probably asymptomatic ones unlikely to show up in official tallies. People wouldn’t have felt sick enough to go to the hospital. And coronavirus tests were in short supply in the country and therefore were generally used only for people with severe symptoms or who needed tests for travel.
So to fill in the true picture, Jambo and his collaborators turned to another potential source of information: a repository of blood samples that had been collected from Malawians month after month by the national blood bank. And they checked how many of those samples had antibodies for the coronavirus. Their finding: By the start of Malawi’s third COVID-19 wave with the delta variant last summer, as much as 80% of the population had already been infected with some strain of the coronavirus.
“There was absolutely no way we would have guessed that this thing had spread that much,” says Jambo.
Similar studies have been done in other African countries, including Kenya, Madagascar and South Africa, adds Jambo. “And practically in every place they’ve done this, the results are exactly the same” — very high prevalence of infection detected well before the arrival of the omicron variant.
Jambo thinks the findings from the blood samples in Malawi explain a key feature of the recent omicron wave there: The number of deaths this time has been a fraction of the already low number during previous waves.
Less than 5% of Malawians have been fully vaccinated. So Jambo says their apparent resistance to severe disease was likely built up as a result of all the prior exposure to earlier variants.
“Now we have had the beta variant — we have had the delta variant and the original,” notes Jambo. “It seems like a combination of those three has been able to neutralize this omicron variant in terms of severe disease.”
Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images
And now that the omicron wave has peaked across Africa, country after country there seems to have experienced the same pattern: a huge rise in infections that has not been matched by a commensurate spike in hospitalizations and death.
Shabir Madhi is a prominent vaccinologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
“I think we should draw comfort from the fact that this has been the least severe wave in the country,” he says.
The most likely reason, he says, is that — like Malawi — South Africa gained immunity through prior infections, he says.
One difference is that in South Africa’s case, this immunity came at a high price. South Africa’s population is substantially older than Malawi’s, and during the delta wave last summer, hospitals in the country were swamped.
Still, the upshot, says Mahdi, is that “we’ve come to a point where at least three-quarters — and now after omicron, probably 80% — of South Africans have developed immunity and at least protection against severe disease and death.”
Of course, whether Africa is truly now in a less dangerous position depends on a “key question,” says Emory University biologist Rustom Antia. “How long does the immunity that protects us from getting ill last?” Antia has been studying what would need to happen for the coronavirus to become endemic.
But Mahdi says there’s reason to be optimistic on this front. Research suggests this type of protection could last at least a year. So Mahdi says in African countries — and likely in many other low- and middle-income countries with similar experiences of COVID-19 — the takeaway is already clear: “I think we’ve reached a turning point in this pandemic. What we need to do is learn to live with the virus and get back to as much of a normal society as possible.”
What does that look like? For one thing, says Mahdi, “we should stop chasing just getting an increase in the number of doses of vaccines that are administered.” Vaccination efforts should be more tightly targeted on the vulnerable: “We need to ensure that at least 90% of people above the age of 50 are vaccinated.”
Similarly, when the next variant comes along, Mahdi says, it will be important not to immediately panic over the mere rise in infections. This rise will be inevitable, and any policy that’s intended to stop it with economically disruptive restrictions, such as harsh COVID-19 lockdowns, isn’t just unnecessarily damaging — “it’s fanciful thinking.” Instead, officials should keep an eye out for the far more unlikely scenario of a rise in severe illness and death.
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/28/1072591923/africa-may-have-reached-the-pandemics-holy-grail
Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) decision to move ahead with a reconciliation deal that doesn’t involve climate change risks consigning the entire world to a warmer future, scientists, Democrats and advocates said Friday in reacting to the news.
Democratic senators for about a year have been negotiating with Manchin to try to get him on board with investments that would dramatically reduce U.S. contribution to climate change.
But on Friday, Manchin said he’s not interested in immediately moving forward with a deal that includes those investments.
Manchin told West Virginia radio host Hoppy Kercheval that the latest inflation data means it’s “not prudent” to make the investments in climate change — or raise taxes on the wealthy.
Manchin, relaying a discussion he’d had telling Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) of his decision, suggested he might be able to agree to a deal at a later date.
“I said, ‘Chuck, can we just wait until the inflation figures come out in July?’” he said. “I want climate. I want an energy policy.”
But those comments rang hollow with climate activists, who noted he has made similar remarks in the past.
“Joe Manchin is waving the fate of human survival over our heads like a bone to hungry dogs and it’s really quite frightening,” John Paul Mejia, a national spokesperson for Sunrise Movement, told The Hill.
Evergreen Action Executive Director Jamal Raad said in a statement that Manchin should not be considered a good-faith negotiator.
“Senator Manchin has lost all credibility and can no longer be trusted to prioritize the well-being of Americans and the planet over his own profiteering and political grandstanding,” Raad said.
Democrats, activists and scientists reacting to the news worried that the inability of Congress to take meaningful reaction would consign the U.S. to more heatwaves, floods, droughts and intense storms.
With Republicans seemingly poised to win back the House majority this fall, Manchin’s decision felt like a death blow to the hopes of taking action on climate with Democrats in the White House and in charge of both chambers of Congress.
“Every ton matters,” said Dan Lashof, the U.S.director of the World Resources Institute, referring to tons of carbon emissions.
“Whether or not this bill gets done has a material impact on total emissions from the U.S. and that affects the magnitude of climate change that we will face,” he said.
Those who have studied the climate-saving potential of the Democrats’ climate bill agree that not passing it would likely lead to more emissions and a warmer planet.
Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins, who has modeled the potential emissions cuts of the legislation under consideration, told The Hill that based on what had been reported thus far, a climate deal would have probably cut emissions between 800 million and 1 billion metric tons in 2030. That’s the equivalent of taking between 172 million and 215 million cars off the roads for a year.
“We’re losing two-thirds to three-quarters of the progress we were hoping to make by 2030,” he said.
Robbie Orvis, senior director of energy policy design at the think tank Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology, also said the emerging bill could have cut emissions as much as by 1 billion tons.
“The probability of being able to hit the 2030 target is much lower now, so I think that implies that there will be more emissions, certainly, and that translates to higher warming,” Orivs said, referring to President Biden’s goal of cutting emissions in half by the end of the decade.
“Every amount that we continue to increase the global temperature brings more extreme storm events,” he said, adding that without action, “we’re going to continue to worsen the impacts of climate change, and it’s going to contribute to worsening extreme weather events and … ultimately human suffering and death.”
Biden pledged “strong executive action” on climate change in reaction to Manchin’s move.
But observers say it will be very difficult to reach the same goals without legislative action.
“Sure there’s probably a way to get there if you assume a whole bunch of things go right and are defensible in court, but it certainly makes it much, much harder,” Orvis said.
Some on Friday argued that the rest of the world may be less inclined to take bold action without the U.S. participating as well.
“The U.S. is THE largest historical all-time emitter, and for that reason occupies a special role. We can’t expect other countries to act meaningfully if we fail to,” said climatologist Michael Mann in an email to The Hill.
Jenkins added that not passing the bill is also expected to stifle technological innovation, hampering the global transition to clean energy.
David Victor, a professor at the University of California, San Diego took a slightly different view, arguing that a major climate deal has been unlikely since the get-go and that at least now the public can move ahead with some clarity.
“I think what you’re going to see is a lot more action in the states [and] a lot more action…sector-by-sector,” Victor said.
Most activists reacted in fury to the latest setback, castigating the West Virginia Democrat as potentially signing a death warrant for meaningful climate action against the backdrop of a generationally conservative court, the likely loss of a Democratic majority in Congress and the possible loss of the White House in 2025.
Raad said the inflation report was a convenient excuse that elided Manchin’s history of backing out of talks.
“Joe Manchin has pretended to be supportive of certain investments for over a year now, and it turns out that that was bulls—,” he told The Hill. “That will now be his lasting legacy — a person that tried to put his own profits and sense of his political standing over the planet.”
Source Article from https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3561864-manchins-decision-provokes-fury-over-potential-for-warmer-world/
Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence had been in somewhat regular contact after leaving office, speaking several times by phone in conversations that avoided discussion of the Capitol riot, according to their advisers. In an interview last year, Mr. Trump said that he had never told Mr. Pence he was sorry for not acting quicker to stop the attack — and that Mr. Pence had never asked for an apology.
But a rivalry has flared up behind the scenes.
On Monday, Mr. Pence announced that his book about his time in the administration, “So Help Me God,” would be published on Nov. 15. The book has been a source of tension with Mr. Trump, who, when he learned in early 2021 that Mr. Pence had a book deal, was still musing about obtaining one of his own.
But in most parts of the publishing industry, Mr. Trump was broadly seen as a risk. The former president seemed frustrated that Mr. Pence had gotten a deal, and within days of learning about it, he attacked the former vice president while speaking to a group of Republican donors at a Republican National Committee event at Mar-a-Lago, seizing on Mr. Pence’s refusal to do what Mr. Trump wanted on Jan. 6, 2021.
The two men’s paths have also differed this year along the midterm campaign trail. They have backed opposing candidates in several primary races, including the Republican governor’s contest in Arizona, which will be decided next week, and the party’s primary for governor in Georgia, where Mr. Pence’s pick, Gov. Brian Kemp, easily defeated his Trump-backed challenger, David Perdue.
Mr. Pence is widely seen as considering a presidential bid in 2024, but he would face stiff challenges.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll of Republican voters this month, just 6 percent said they would vote for Mr. Pence if the 2024 Republican presidential primary were held today, compared with 49 percent for Mr. Trump and 25 percent for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/us/politics/mike-pence-trump-speech-washington.html