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On 3/15/20 1:16 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30600-0/fulltext
A comrade had trouble with this link, so here's the whole thing:
In a world of polarising distrust and trade tensions, the spread of
coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), both within nations and
internationally, is aided and abetted by misinformation that
circumnavigates the planet in microseconds. Such misinformation is not
all malevolent, although its impact can be devastating. The only bastion
of defence against rising public panic, financial market hysteria, and
unintended misunderstandings of the science and epidemiology of severe
acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is agile,
accurate, worldwide-available counter-information that takes the high
moral ground and conveys a consistently science-driven narrative. Some
have sought to limit misinformation about COVID-19 on social media by
pressuring corporations, such as Facebook, Weibo, and Twitter, to censor
bad actors—an approach that has not stopped conspiracy theorists,
trolls, and liars.
If financial markets are jittery about the flow of information and
disruption to production and supply chains with the global spread of
COVID-19 and governments are seeking to avoid panic among their
populaces, they need to invest in bastions of truth—or, at least, in
those that attempt to identify information based on scientific
principles. The “truth” can, and should, change as investigations and
data analysis of COVID-19 proceed, but its bottom line ought to
consistently reflect empiricism, a solid dose of scepticism and
scrutiny, and absolute conviction in timely dissemination of life-saving
research and analysis. And those bastions must resist attempts to sway
their messaging to reflect institutional or political interests.
• View related content for this article
Despite numerous pleas, starting in January, 2020, to donors from WHO
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for US$675 million for the
agency's response to COVID-19 and assistance to poor countries in
handling their outbreaks, only $54·5 million (including $37 million in
financing on March 3, 2020, from the US Government) was in WHO coffers
before stock markets worldwide tumbled and financial panic went viral.
That's appalling. On March 3, the World Bank Group announced the quick
release of $12 billion to support COVID-19 responses in resource-scarce
nations. And the International Monetary Fund Managing Director
Kristalina Georgieva, forecasting a dramatic slow down in global
economic growth due to the epidemic, announced the creation of $50
billion worth of funds to support low-income and emerging market
countries in the response to COVID-19.
Inside the USA, meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) has seen its overall budget plummet from about $11·5
billion in fiscal year (FY) 2018 to $7·7 billion in FY 2020. For FY
2021, Robert Redfield, the CDC's Director appointed by US President
Donald Trump, is seeking a further cut to $7 billion, and the White
House proposes reducing CDC funding to levels below $6·7 billion. The
Redfield FY 2021 budget reduction would be partly achieved by reductions
in spending on programmes for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases,
global health, and public health preparedness and response—the three
areas most closely tied to the COVID-19 epidemic.
However, there is even less funding for professional communications
staffing at WHO, the various Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
in Africa, Europe, North America, and Asia, or their counterpart offices
nested in local departments of public health. If the media isn't getting
the message, in all likelihood the messengers have insufficient
resources for delivery.
The current global COVID-19 epidemic features mechanisms of delivery of
scientific information that are frankly unprecedented, adding to
pressure for proper interpretation by the media and public. Scientific
and medical publications are expediting research and analysis through
peer review, while preprint services are publishing unreviewed work.
Some researchers are engaging in open online venues, debating the
calculus of crucial epidemic COVID-19 features, such as its basic
reproduction number (R0), case fatality rates, age and gender
distributions of severe and deceased cases, or the accuracy of case
reporting, itself. Those debates have fuelled media reporting, even when
the evidence is still uncertain and research is ongoing.
The difficulty in sifting fact from inaccurate information is aggravated
by the speed of unfolding events, how much is still to be researched and
understood by scientists and clinicians about COVID-19, alongside
earlier deliberate obfuscation by some governments. Had China allowed
physician Li Wenliang and his brave Wuhan colleagues to convey their
suspicions regarding a new form of infectious pneumonia to colleagues,
social media, and journalists without risking sanction, and had local
officials not for weeks released false epidemic information to the
world, we might not now be facing a pandemic. Had Japanese officials
allowed full disclosure of their quarantine and testing procedures
aboard the marooned Princess Diamond cruise ship, crucial attention
might have helped prevent spread aboard the ship and concern in other
countries regarding home return of potentially infectious passengers.
Had Shincheonji Church and its supporters within the South Korean
Government not refused to provide the names and contact information on
its members and blocked journalists' efforts to decipher spread of the
virus in its ranks, lives in that country might have been spared
infection, illness, and death. Had Iran's deputy health minister, Iraj
Harirchi, and members of the country's ruling council not tried to
convince the nation that the COVID-19 situation was “almost stabilised”,
even as Harirchi visibly suffered from the disease while on camera, the
Middle East might not now find itself in grave danger from the spread of
the disease, with Saudi Arabia suspending visas for pilgrims seeking to
visit Mecca and Medina. Neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia has free and open
journalism, and both nations seek to control narratives through social
media censorship, imprisonment, or even execution. And had the Trump
administration not declared criticism of its slow response to the
encroaching epidemic a “hoax”, claiming it was a political attack from
the left, the US CDC might have been pressured to do widespread testing
in early February, discovering pockets of community transmission before
they dispersed widely.
If governments, agencies, and health organisations want people at risk
of infection to respond to COVID-19 with an appropriate level of alert,
to cooperate with health authorities, and to act with compassion and
humanity, I believe that they must be willing to fund their messengers
on an unprecedented scale, with genuine urgency. It's time to put
information in the driver's seat of global and national epidemic responses.
When WHO named the disease COVID-19, the choice was based on scientific
standards. But it also matters how the global public might use the name.
COVID-19 seems to be a tough term for news media worldwide and the
general public. Perhaps even more confusing to the general public is the
notion that the disease and the virus (SARS-CoV-2) have seemingly
unrelated monikers. Parts of the media have settled for calling the
microbial threat the coronavirus. One assumption could be that no expert
in communications was asked to weigh in on the namings. But had WHO
given serious consideration to future control of the public narrative,
the agency's communications staff would have had opportunity to capture
online brands and social media monikers before public announcement, such
as #COVID19 or a myriad of Facebook page names using permutations of
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. This was not done, and online public discourse
using those tags is in private hands.
Scientists and public health leaders, from local city tiers all the way
to WHO headquarters in Geneva, need to understand that press conferences
and government media releases are necessary, but are not enough in the
emotionally charged atmosphere of 24/7 virally distributed social media
stories and news about COVID-19, laced with sensationalism, at times
massaged by some government agencies, and exploited by trolls and
disruptors. Getting ahead of COVID-19 requires not only slowing its
spread, adequate funding for the health response, supporting research to
advance our knowledge of it, integrated actions to mitigate the health,
economic, and social impacts of the epidemic, among others, but also
control of narratives regarding its scientific and clinical attributes
and pandemic containment efforts—an effort that I do not think can be
successful if executed on inadequate budgets by sleep-deprived
communicators.
We are now in a crisis. Stock markets worldwide are showing
record-breaking plummets, global supply and production systems are in
danger of collapse, and in some places panic has gone viral—even where
the virus, itself, has not. I believe that corporations and financial
firms should invest immediately in the messengers. Social media
companies like Facebook, Google, WeChat, YouTube, Amazon, and Instagram
are devoting some resources to identifying and removing disease trolls
and liars from their internet services. But these social media platforms
remain packed with anti-science and conspiracy claims. Wall Street and
the rest of the stock investment world are trying to calm markets, only
to witness ongoing financial turmoil and huge stock market falls. It
would behove the world's wealthiest families, financial institutions,
and corporations to spend millions in support of media and public
information offices in their countries and in the UN system, especially
at WHO, in hopes of slowing the viral source of economic panic.
Public fear in some sectors is rising as COVID-19 spreads in many
countries. I propose a potential mechanism to help allay fear. The
United Nations Foundation could designate a special Emergency Fund for
Pandemic Information (EFPI) to be managed by an independent (non-UN)
panel of communications experts. The EFPI would seek and accept
donations from social media companies, wealthy individuals, and
multinational corporations now financially endangered by the epidemic.
The funds could be dispersed, urgently, to the UN agencies' media
operations on the front lines, chiefly WHO and UNICEF, both for their
direct operations and for secondary dispersal to lead public health
offices in resource-scarce countries. As Canadian social analyst
Marshall McLuhan put it in the 1960s, “The medium is the message”, and
today that message is chaos.
Further reading
Cox, Feb 24, 2020.Cox J
“Dr. Doom” Nouriel Roubini warns of multiple “white swans” posing danger
ahead.
CNBC, Feb 24, 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/dr-doom-nouriel-roubini-warns-of-multiple-white-swans.html?recirc=taboolainternal
Date accessed: March 9, 2020
Google Scholar
WHO, March 9, 2020.WHO
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) donors & partners: WHO says thank you!.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/donors-and-partners/funding
Date: March 9, 2020
Date accessed: March 9, 2020
Google Scholar
Hancocks et al., March 1, 2020.Hancocks P Seo Y Yeung J
Shincheonji director denies responsibility for South Korea coronavirus
infections.
CNN, March 1, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/01/asia/shincheonji-director-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html
Date accessed: March 9, 2020
Google Scholar
US Department of Health and Human Services.US Department of Health and
Human Services
Fiscal year 2021. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Justification of estimates for appropriation committees.
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2021/FY-2021-CDC-congressional-justification.pdf
Date accessed: March 9, 2020
Google Scholar
Wright, Feb 28, 2020.Wright R
How Iran became a new epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
The New Yorker. Feb 28, 2020;
Google Scholar
Garrett, Jan 31, 2020.Garrett L
Trump sabotages America.
Foreign Policy. Jan 31, 2020;
Google Scholar
Franck, Feb 28, 2020.Franck T
Trump says the coronavirus is the Democrats' “new hoax”.
CNBC, Feb 28, 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/trump-says-the-coronavirus-is-the-democrats-new-hoax.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain
Date accessed: March 9, 2020
Google Scholar
Ossinger and Worrachate, Feb 24, 2020.Ossinger J Worrachate A
How strategists and investors see coronavirus playing out.
Bloomberg, Feb 24, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-24/market-players-see-coronavirus-triggering-further-risk-off-moves
Date accessed: March 9, 2020
Google Scholar
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