Some Positives of the US COVID Response
“Don’t believe everything you read”, Mr Hall, Yr 11 History Teacher, 1989, and quoted by many others…
I have no idea how many times Mr Hall quoted this phrase in class back in Yr 11 history, but it must have been a lot, because I’m reminded of it time and time again in my daily life. It infiltrated my mind so deeply that the phrase has now become a constant companion, but funnily and somewhat annoyingly, one also associated with pesky images of his thin moustache and pastel pants - perhaps this has helped with the memory recall though! He was a memorable teacher - whose favourite hobby was to count how many mistakes he could find in movies (!) - but who taught us to always be curious, scrutinising, and to frequently question what was being told to us. Thank goodness he did, as he helped prepare us for the future of the 24hr news cycle and click-bait sensationalist journalism.
When the Australian bushfires were ravaging in late 2019/early 2020, the way they were reported in the media around the world gave some the distinct impression that the whole country was on fire. Yes, the bushfires were absolutely devastating, and they did affect much of the country, but the whole country was not on fire, and many abroad cancelled holidays to Australia unnecessarily. In the US, almost every person I came across asked if my family was safe and whether they had lost property in the fires. The generosity shown by Americans in donating to the bushfire effort was extraordinary, such was their concern for our country and our people.
The map below is typical of the visuals Americans saw of Australia during that bushfire season.
Now that I’m back in Australia – having recently experienced Victoria’s 5th lockdown and now lockdown #6 - which has led to the inability to help care for my mother in another State due to closed borders and a 5km from home travel restriction, four kids online learning at brand new schools (when one or two are not refusing), and uncertainty of what the next 6-12 months will hold for this country - I’ve (perhaps flippantly) told a few friends that maybe our family should have stayed in the US for the next 6 months, as was our original plan. I’ve been met with astonishment by some. They can’t understand how we could still rather live in the US, a country with so many COVID deaths, compared to Australia, a country with so few deaths. It made me realise that, much like the Australian bushfires, the media reporting of COVID in the US (and throughout the world for that matter) has led many Australians to believe that the whole of the US was a complete COVID disaster. Yes, over 600,000 deaths IS a disaster, and many of these could have been avoided if there was different leadership throughout 2020, but from where I sat in Memphis, Tennessee, what I saw was amazing leadership from people around me that were trying their absolute hardest to learn from the mistakes of others and turn a really negative situation into a positive one.
Australia recently found itself at the bottom of the OECD vaccination rate chart with 4.68% of the population fully vaccinated at the end of June. Much like other successful ‘COVID Zero’ countries, I guess complacency set in and the public were advised by their leader that vaccination ‘wasn’t a race’. Whilst I jumped at the chance to be vaccinated with anything that was offered to me in the US, it was a different story here in Australia, the details of which I won’t go into here. Whilst we’re now up to 17.7%, we’re still a very long way behind the rest of the OECD, and currently find ourselves precariously trying to eliminate the new Delta strain by putting over half the country’s population into strict lockdown. Some experts are saying elimination may not be possible. Whilst Victoria almost warded off the Delta variant during the latest lockdown, only for it to pop up again to cause lockdown #6, there is hope that these short, sharp lockdowns keep working. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not convinced. The Delta variant seems to have changed the game. The contract tracing here in Victoria is extremely impressive, and a shorter, sharper lockdown is definitely preferable to a longer one; but how long is this sustainable for? It feels like we’ll be living more ‘in lockdowns’ than ‘out of lockdowns’ for the time being, in order to keep aiming for ‘COVID Zero’.
The Americans were forced to ‘live with COVID’ from the get-go without vaccines. Australia now has the ability to wait until the majority of the population are vaccinated – thanks to the sacrifices that have been made by so many. A COVID elimination strategy was never the intention from American leaders – that horse had bolted, but what looked like good leadership to me there was those that sought to mitigate the risk of COVID, without completely sacrificing all of the freedoms Americans hold so dearly. Whilst the two countries are quite different in their approach to personal responsibility, I think it’s probably still worth hearing some success stories in the US, rather than focusing on what went wrong, just in case this elimination strategy doesn’t hold? I’m not sure about you, but I can’t see lockdowns being a viable solution for another year!
School Leadership
The greatest leadership that I personally experienced in the US was from our school Principal - Teddi, and the COVID response team that she set up in the summer of 2020 (June-August). Teddi was able to enact a stringent COVID plan that enabled ‘in-person’ learning for the full year. The process went like this:
Children were not to be sent to school if there were ANY signs of COVID (we checked these off a list every morning)
Temperatures were taken on arrival (as per the photo above)
Children stayed in the one classroom for the day and did not move around to specialist classes – the teachers were the ones that moved
Desks were separated by flexi-glass
Social distancing, mask-wearing and hand sanitation were adhered to
Windows were to be left open in the classroom
Regular mask breaks were taken outside
Children ate at their desks rather than in the cafeteria
If any child from a class tested positive for COVID, the whole class would isolate for 2 weeks and move to online-learning from home
At any time, if you felt uncomfortable with this arrangement, you could keep your child home for online-learning. We had a number of friends that had family members with health issues, and they kept all their children home, just to be safe.
(I will note here that this was with the initial strain of COVID. With the Delta strain now dominant in the US, it will be interesting to see how this affects the US when school and College go back in the new school year).
Personally, I was extremely grateful that our children were able to attend in-person learning. But it also highlighted to me once again the privileges afforded to those that could pay for it. Ours was a Catholic school (which are considered private in the US) that fell under the banner of the Memphis Diocese, so the leaders were able to make independent decisions on the direction of the school. Sadly, the public schools - that were probably the ones that needed to stay open the most - were closed for the whole year. Online learning was still available to them, but many children were just not getting the education and attention that they needed.
School is a place of refuge for so many; where they’re able to receive counselling, where they can access meals (for some, these are their only meals of the day), and it’s also where many escape domestic violence and abuse. Sadly, the crime rates also increased in Memphis during COVID, partly because many of these children no longer had the guidance and discipline of school.
In Victoria, Australia (where all schools are currently closed), I’ve heard alarming statistics about the mental health of teenagers. Kids Helpline reports that:
“Victoria has had an increase of 184% in *duty of care interventions enacted by Kids Helpline on behalf of children and young people. 75% of emergency interventions were for young people aged 13-18. For those aged between 5-25, 44% of emergency interventions over the past 6 months in Victoria have been in response to an immediate intent to enact suicide, with child abuse accounting for 31%.”
and overall in Australia:
“The escalation over the past 6 months across Australia is largely related to suicide attempts (38%) and child abuse (35%).”
*A duty of care intervention is an instance where Kids Helpline counsellors make contact with police, child safety or ambulance services because a child or young person is deemed to be at imminent risk.
With four children of my own aged from 9 – 15, who are trying to settle into brand new schools back in Australia, I worry for them. I also find it deeply concerning for our society. From what I’ve experienced ‘living with COVID’ in the US, I do not believe we can justify damaging our children’s mental health anymore by continuous lockdowns; and I hope we’re able to vaccinate the population as quickly as possible so we can get kids back in schools.
National Leadership
From a national leadership perspective, the change in the US from 2020 to 2021 felt exponential – to me anyway. COVID was highly politicised throughout the election process, and it could be felt at your core. The country went from having a leader who thought COVID was a hoax, that masks were unnecessary, and that COVID would just go away; to a leader that believed in the science and encouraged collective responsibility and vaccination. This continues to play out in regard to vaccinations, with Democrats much more likely to get vaccinated than Republicans. Interestingly, we now see Sean Hannity of the right-wing Fox News pleading with people to get vaccinated, as it becomes the pandemic of the vaccinated vs the un-vaccinated in the US. See here.
Vaccination Process
Whilst some believe President Trump should be credited with ‘Operation Warp Speed’ in regard to the fast development of vaccines, President Biden really got the vaccine roll-out happening quickly. I’ve written about the vaccination process before, but in brief, it was extremely impressive. Drive-through mass vaccination hubs run by the armed forces seemed to be the most popular and easiest places to be vaccinated amongst my acquaintances, but we also experienced the ease of pharmacy vaccination when I booked my 3 girls 2nd vaccinations at a CVS pharmacy in San Francisco, the day we were leaving the US. I made the bookings online for the following day, and once there, it was a simple 15-minute process. I was cheered on when I read today that drive-through mass vaccination hubs will now be opening in Victoria and offering Astra Zeneca – finally.
It’s worth noting here too the Americans penchant for ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘personal freedoms’. It’s certainly not my favourite American value – in a global pandemic, collective responsibility is imperative for a safer society, but, there was recognition that not all should sacrifice for the minority. The elders I knew in society (my neighbour, my friends parents etc) believed that young people should not have to sacrifice their lives for the elderly or those with underlying health conditions (who, at the time, were the ones most affected with the earlier strain of COVID). Those that were concerned with catching the virus isolated, and families were given the option to keep children at home and participate in home learning. Before planned family gatherings, eg Thanksgiving in November 2020 (before vaccinations), those that were planning to see elderly parents self-isolated for 2 weeks prior to seeing them and had COVID tests to ensure they were negative. For most of the Americans I knew, this was a much preferable way of ‘living with COVID’ than constant lockdowns and uncertainty – even when their own family members might have been at-risk.
Surge Hospital
Memphis, (and many other US cities), built a surge hospital at the beginning of the pandemic to deal with the expected COVID cases. It was NEVER used, and in fact has now been decommissioned. Source Daily Memphian.
The hospitals dealt with the COVID cases they had and at no time were they overflowing. Yes, there were a couple of times they were stretched – for example, after Thanksgiving in 2020 – but there was never the demand they expected. But with scenes like New York in the early stages of the pandemic being beamed around the world, you’d be forgiven for believing that the whole country was out of control.
The table below shows the COVID statistics for the state of Tennessee, a state of 6.83 million people, similar in number to the state of Victoria at 6.68 million people. In total to date, there have been over 900,000 COVID cases, with 12,731 deaths. Of those deaths, most of them were before vaccinations were available, and nearly all deaths now are in the unvaccinated, source NBC.
Whilst I am absolutely not a proponent of the overall US model of COVID management, there are many lessons to be learnt in others failings and subsequent risk mitigation. It’s clear and understandable that Australia ‘didn’t want to become like the US’, but this argument lacks nuance, and many fail to see what might have been done well in the US. Ironically, much like after the bushfires, many Americans once again look upon Australia with pity and concern when you explain to them the situation of stranded Aussies, separated loved ones, and rolling lockdowns. Much like what we’re seeing now in NSW, the lessons learnt from Victoria in the 2020 long lockdown were perhaps not taken seriously enough, and they’re suffering the consequences. We ignore the failings of others at our own peril.
Australia in August 2021 feels a bit like the US of April 2020 – but with vaccines. As Mr Hall also taught me, there is so much we can learn from history, and 16 months is a long time in a COVID world. Our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has loved to spray around platitudes like “we’re the envy of the world”, and “we like to do things our way”, but I just hope that he occasionally disbands some of that self-assuredness and attempts to learn from the countries that are out there battling COVID on the front lines. Not everything in the US was bad – don’t believe everything you read.