The Americas, Pandemic on the Back of Poverty: Mexico and Venezuela

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
International Relations, Media & Communications, National politics, Politics, Public health,, Society & Culture

While Brazil has sown up the unenviable title of the worst coronavirus hotspot in Latin America, Mexico has steered a similar course to disaster in the face of the pandemic. As Brazil’s coronavirus count climbs to well over 1.1 million confirmed cases and closing in on 53 thousand fatalities, the galloping toll in Mexico—60% the size of Brazil population-wise—now registers 191,410 cases and 23,377 deaths  (as at 24-June-2020).

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(Source: www.lonelyplanet.com)

False security?
Among some Mexicans there seem to be a sense that the country’s demographics which are skewed toward the young—around 85% of the population is under 55—may act as a barrier against coronavirus. This confidence may be misplaced due to several factors: pre-existing health conditions in Mexico which affect younger cohorts as well—make the population more vulnerable to the ravages of coronavirus, as the table below indicates [‘Many young Mexican at risk from Covid-19’, (James Blears), Vatican News, 31-March-2020, www.vaticannews.va]. the death-rate from COVID-19 among maquiladora workers in the border region of Baja California was found to be 25 times higher for the age bracket 40-49 than in the corresponding San Diego County, [‘COVID-19 killing young maquiladora workers, study shows’, (Salvador Rivera), Border Report, 11-Jun-2020, www.borderreport.com].

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A league of populist leader ‘bedfellows’?
The way Mexico under its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has approached the pandemic has disturbing parallels with that of Brazil’s leader Bolsonaro, and with the US under Trump. Despite a difference of ideological orientation—Obrador (who’s commonly known within Mexico as AMLO) is a Left-populist whereas Bolsonaro and Trump are Right-populists—the Mexican leader has pursued much the same course with similar outcomes. AMLO’s government was slow to engage in the fight against COVID-19 in the critical early period. The virus apparently entered Mexico via overseas returnees, primarily wealthier Mexicans returning from business trips to Italy and skiing holidays in Colorado, and then spread to low-income groups [‘Mexico’s Central de Abasto: How coronavirus tore through Latin America’s largest market’, (Mary Beth Sheridan), Washington Post, 21-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com].

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🔺 AMLO, pressing the flesh (Photo: Mexico’s Presidency Handouts/Reuters)

How not to contain a pandemic
Like his US and Brazilian counterparts, AMLO justified his inaction by being dismissive of the disease, continually downplaying its risk to people, and he was negligent by example. After the outbreak Obrador toured the country, holding rallies sans face masks, nonchalantly meeting and greeting supporters, freely shaking hands, embracing people and even kissing them✱. The president’s advice to the Venezuelan people was simply to continue to “live life as usual”…until late March he was encouraging people to go out, attend fiestas, dine in restaurants and go shopping, airports remained open◘  – a clear indicator that Obrador’s priority was the health of the economy rather than the health of the public [‘Poverty and Populism put Latin America at the centre of the pandemic’, (Michael Stott & Andres Schipano), Financial Times, 14-Jun-2020, www.amp.ft.com; ‘AMLO’s feeble response to COVID-19 in Mexico’, (Vanda Felbab-Brown), Brookings, 30-Mar-2020, www.brookings.edu].

Abject lack of medical preparedness.
Obrador’s dangerous indifference to the crisis extended to a half-hearted medical intervention. Testing for COVID-19 has remained woefully low, no program of widespread testing or of contact tracing – these vital measures dismissed as being impractical for a population of 128 million (Sheridan; Stott & Schipano). The reluctance to test extensively is no doubt also related to Mexico’s health care incapacity. Despite having gone through the experience of the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak, subsequent Mexican administrations have permitted the country’s health sector to run down, funding to hospitals and medical centres have been cut by millions. Mexico has only 1.4 hospital beds for every 1,000 persons and just over 2,000 ventilators all up. The shortfall extends to physicians, medical equipment including PPE and coronavirus test kits [‘Mexico’s coronavirus-sceptical president is setting up his own country for a health crisis’, (Alex Ward), Vox, 28-Mar-2020, www.vox.com].

Shooting the messenger
Inevitably AMLO has copped a lot of internal criticism for his irresponsible response to the crisis. Rather than taking positive measures to try to undo the disaster of his own creation, Obrador has gone on the attack against the Mexican independent media. Again invoking the Trump playbook, he has railed against the “fake news” and “Twitter bots” who have opposed his government’s handling of the situation. Independent investigations in fact have brought to light the clandestine activities of Notimex (the state-owned news agency) which has created a network of bots and fake accounts to discredit prominent journalists and label them as ‘criminal’ [‘Mexican President López Obrador frets about the spreading virus of fake news, but not COVID-19’, (José Miguel Vivanco), Dallas News,16-Jun-2020, www.dallasnews.com]. 

AMLO has taken to giving regular video ‘sermons’ to the masses (he calls them “Decalogues to emerge from coronavirus and face the new reality”)…these are not as you might surmise updates on how the government is attempting to counter the pandemic, but an uninspiring mish-mash of banalities about staying positive, eating corn and getting sun and fresh air. With the unchecked escalating death toll from the disease, many believe Obrador has given up any pretence to even trying to combat the virus [‘Mexico’s president has given up in the fight against the coronavirus’, (León Krauze), Washington Post, 19-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com]. In this most unpropitious context AMLO is now taking an imprudent gamble by lifting restrictions – despite the curve of Mexican infections continuing to shoot upwards.

🔻 Mega-mercado, Mexico City

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Footnote: Mexico City epicentre
Mexico City accounts for about one quarter of all COVID-19 deaths in Mexico. The offical counts however are only starting points to explain the catastrophe. A Mexico City study by Nexos magazine found that there was an “excess mortality” of more than 20% unaccounted for by the official figures [‘8,000 ‘excess deaths’ in Mexico City as coronavirus rages: study’, Ajazeera, 26-May-2020, www.aljazeera.com]. One of the capital’s biggest clusters is the wholesale mega-market, the Central de Abasto. The enormous mercado providing 80% of the city’s food is a petri-dish for the virus which has cut a scythe through its 90,000-strong workforce, infecting its tomateros, chilli vendors and other workers whose need to keep working is often greater than their fear of the pandemicφ. The vendors and carters have another reason for continuing working even when they become ill – working class Mexicans are accustomed to poor quality health care and often harbour a distrust of hospitals (Sheridan).

⏦⏦⏦ ☤☤☤ ⏦⏦⏦

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(Image source: www.studentnewsdaily.com)

Venezuela: Showcase numbers but a lack of transparency
Although the available statistics relating to Venezuela don’t reflect the dramatic numbers in Mexico, the situation in the South American country is peer bit as parlous. Venezuela has fessed up to 4,186 cases and 35 deaths (24-Jun-2020), but these figures have little credibility with independent observers. Venezuela has done very limited testing for the disease with the testing data guarded very carefully by the government [‘Hunger, Infection, and Repression: Venezuela’s Coronavirus Calamity’, (Stephanie Taladrid), The New Yorker, 29-May-2020, www.newyorker.com]. Doubters outside the country have noted that Venezuela’s health system was already in a state of collapse before COVID-19 arrived, citing as evidence:  the country‘s functioning intensive care beds are estimated to number between 80 and 163; nil or intermittent supply to water to two-thirds of hospitals; power cuts off at regular intervals; shortages of gloves and face masks in 60% of hospitals; 76% of hospitals shortage of soap and 90% were short of sanitising gel [‘Venezuela’s Covid-19 death toll claims ‘not credible’, human rights group says’, (Tom Phillips), The Guardian, 27-May-2020, www.theguardian.com]. 

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 🔺 Maduro: “People, we are identity”

President Maduro—already embroiled in a political and socio-economic crisis acerbated by long-term US trade sanctions on Venezuela—imposed a national lockdown in March. A side benefit to the lockdown (now extended to July) is that it allows the regime more scope to crack down on its critics…the obvious targets being opposition politicians and increasingly journalists, doctors and nurses who report adversely on Maduro’s handling of the pandemic (especially if they query the reported official numbers). [‘Venezuela’s Zulia State emerges as coronavirus hot spot’, Reuters, 24-Jun-2020, www.news.yahoo.com].

Footnote: Rich and poor, a widening of the divide 
At the point of corona impact, the contrast between Venezuela’s masses and the elite have sharpened even more. The brunt of the economic crisis has fallen squarely on the poor and middle-class citizens – skyrocketing prices, scarcity of necessities, a greatly devalued Venezuelan bolivar, the oil price plunge (oil accounts for 98% of Venezuela’s export revenues), and over-reliance on the informal economy by the lower socio-economic classes [‘Why coronavirus could be catastrophic for Venezuela’, (Katy Watson & Vanessa Silva), BBC News, 12-Apr-2020, www.bbc.com]. With corruption, cronyism and nepotism ingrained in Venezuela, the Maduro regime and its acolytes—the heirs of Chavismoism—continue to benefit lavishly from black-market and other illicit financial activities◊ [‘Freedom in the World 2020: Venezuela’, Freedom House, www.freedomhouse.org].

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✱ AMLO preferring to travel and mingle accompanied only by his personal amulets for ‘protection’

◘  only in the last week of March did the government retreat a bit and start to urge the public to stay-at-home

φ the CDMX-run market only acted, bringing in health workers, ramping up testing and contact tracing, after workers starting dropping in significant numbers (Sheridan)…as with the rest of Mexico, too little, too late

◊ beneficiaries of this state largesse and privilege include the bolichicos, the wealthy children of the regime’s top leaders 

The Americas, Pandemic on the Back of Poverty: Peru and Ecuador; and a Southern Cone Contrarian

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Environmental, Geography, Natural Environment, Public health,, Society & Culture

As Europe starts to pull itself out of the worst of the coronavirus outbreak, the Americas for the most part are still firmly mired in the devastating crisis of the pandemic…more worryingly, COVID-19 cases continue to rise and even accelerate in some countries as Latin America seems to be turning into “pandemic central”, the ‘new’ Europe❅. This is occurring despite the continent comprising only eight percent of the world’s population and having had the advantage of time to prepare for the virus which reached its shores some six weeks after ravaging Europe.

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(Source: www.maps-of-the-world.net)

Smallness helps
The picture of Central and South America is not uniformly bleak. Some of the smaller countries, such as Uruguay, Paraguay and El Salvador, have managed to restrict their nation’s outbreaks to low levels of infection and casualties. This last mentioned country was surveyed in an earlier blog entitled Courting Controversy in Coronavirus Country: Belgium and El Salvador – June 2020). Among the Southern Cone countries, Argentina and Uruguay stand in contrast to their neighbours Chile and Brazil. Argentina (population of >45 million)—its commendable performance vs the virus slightly tarnished by a recent upsurge following an easing of the lockdown—has a total of 39,557 COVID-19 cases and only 979 deaths, compared with Brazil (whose leader Jai Bolsonaro has taken a recklessly dismissive attitude towards the pandemic). Even on a per capita basis Argentina‘s figures are still a fraction of the human disaster befalling Brazil which has racked up 1,038,568 cases and 49,090 deaths (population: 212 million). The Argentine Republic’s results are also way better than Chile’s record of 231,393 cases and  4,093 deaths (from just 19 million) [‘Argentina’s president enters voluntary isolation amid coronavirus surge’, (Uni Goñi) The Guardian, 18-Jun-2018, www.theguardian.com].

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Brazil: COVID-19 mural message (Source: Getty Images)

Uruguay: Stellar success of an outlier
Uruguay has fared as well as anyone in Central/South America in avoiding a pandemic catastrophe on the scale of some of its neighbours. A tiny population (3.5 million) helps immeasurably but the sheer lowness of its corona numbers stands by themselves – just 1,040 confirmed cases and 24 deaths. This has been achieved despite a demographic profile that should have made it highly vulnerable to the disease: the largest regional proportion of  elderly citizens and a population which is 96% urban. And an outcome secured not by lockdowns and quarantines (allowing Uruguay to preserve its national economic health cf. the stricken economies of its large neighbours Brazil and Argentina), but by eliciting the voluntary compliance of its citizenry – and through the luxury of having a near-universal, viable health care system✺ [‘Why Is Uruguay Beating Latin America’s Coronavirus Curse?’, (Mac Margolis), Bloomberg, 30-May-2020, www.bloomberg.com].

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Uruguay (Photo: Daniel Rodrigues/adhoc/AFP via Getty Images)

Peru:   
Aside from Brazil the country in the region most in strife due to the pandemic at the moment is probably Peru. Peru’s statistics are stark – over 247,925 confirmed cases and 7,660 deaths in a population of 32 million. What is particularly troubling about Peru is that, unlike Brazil, at onset it seemed to be pulling all the right reins, implementing one of Latin America’s earliest and strictest lockdowns. Months of enforced lockdown have however failed to flatten the curve of infections. Peru finds itself in a demoralising “double whammy”, the public health catastrophe continues unabated❈ while the recourse to a tough national lockdown has further crippled the economy [‘Poverty and Populism put Latin America at the centre of the pandemic’, (Michael Stott & Andres Schipano), Financial Times (UK), 14-Jun-2020, www.amp.ft.com; ‘Peru’s coronavirus response was ‘right on time’ – so why isn’t it working?’, (Dan Collyns), The Guardian, 21-May-2020, www.theguardian.com]✪.

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⇑ Andean pabluchas patrol Cuzco streets to enforce social distancing and mandatory mask measures (Photo: Jose Carlos Angulo/AFP/Getty Images)

Indicators of the poverty trap
The economic predicament Peru finds itself stems from the country’s high reliance on an informal economy (reaching some 70%). What Peru has in common with Brazil—and has been exacerbated by the pandemic—is very high social inequality. The poorest Peruvians cannot afford to stay home, to isolate as they should. Many are without bank accounts and under the informal economy have to travel to collect their wages, those without home refrigerators also need to shop frequently – all of which makes them more vulnerable to be exposed to the virus [‘Latin America reels as coronavirus gains pace’, (Natalia Alcoba), Aljazeera, 15-Jun-2020, www.aljazeera.com]. Disease and impoverishment have converged in Peru to make the predicament more acute for those of the poor who need life-saving oxygen of which there is now a scandalous critical shortage – the situation being exploited by profiteering hit men (the sicarios) controlling the black market oxygen supplies [‘In Peru, coronavirus patients who need oxygen resort to black market and its 1,000 percent markups’, (Simeon Tegel), Washington Post, 18-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com].

Ecuador and Guayaquil ⇓

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Ecuador:  
In Ecuador the pandemic epicentre is the western city of Guayaquil, the country’s largest city. This is thought to be due to a couple of factors, the city’s sprawling slums where “many residents live hand-to-mouth and routinely violate the government lockdown…in order to work”, and because many Guayaquil exchange students and migrant workers came back to the city from Spain and Italy in March [‘COVID-19 Numbers Are Bad In Ecuador. The President Says The Real Story Is Even Worse’, (John Otis), NPR, 20-Apr-2020, www.npr.org]. The unpreparedness and inability of the authorities to cope with the crisis has affected the woeful degree of testing done, the lack of hospital facilities for patients and even the capacity to bury the dead as the bodies of coronavirus victims were left piling up on the city’s streets. In the wake of the disaster the Guayaquil Council entered into a slinging match with Quito (the national government), asserting that the government has under-represented the city’s death toll by as much as four-fifths, that it failed to provide it with the health care backup demanded of the disaster, as well as calling out the corruption of public utilities which has accentuated the crisis (Alcoba). Ecuador currently has 49,731 confirmed cases and 4,156 fatalities in a population of 17 million.

⋕ ⋕ ⋕ ⋕ ⋕ ⋕

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End-note: The hypothesis of virus protection at high altitude 
Among the multitude of worldwide research projects triggered by the pandemic, a multi-country study looking at Bolivia, Ecuador and Tibet has advanced the theory that populations that live at a height of above 3,000 metres have significantly lower levels of susceptibility to coronavirus than their lowland counterparts. The study attributes the capacity of high altitude to nullify the disease down to the fact that living at high altitude allows people to cope with hypoxia (low levels of oxygen in the blood), and that the altitude provides a favourable natural environment—dry mountain air, high UV radiation and a resulting lowering of barometric pressure—reduces the virus’ ability to linger in the air. The COVID-19 experience of Cuzco in Peru seems to corroborate this hypothesis, being lightly affected compared to the rampage elsewhere in the country – the high Andean city has had only 899 confirmed cases and three deaths. Similarly, La Paz, Bolivia, the world’s highest legislative capital, has recorded only 38 coronavirus-related deaths to date⊠ [‘From the Andes to Tibet, the coronavirus seems to be sparing populations at high altitudes’, (Simeon Tegel), Washington Post, 01-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com].

 
<Þ> all country coronavirus counts quoted above are as at 20-June-2020

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

❅ for week ending 20th June 2020, confirmed cases for Latin America represented half of all new coronavirus cases (Source: WHO)  
✺ a like-for-like comparison to Uruguay might be Paraguay – also a small population (6.9 million), only 1,336 cases and 13 deaths but at the cost of a draconian lockdown with an economy-crippling end-game. 
❈ even prior to COVID-19 striking, the Peruvian public health system was struggling due to “decades of chronic underinvestment” (eg, spending <$700 a day on health care) (Tegel, ‘In Peru’)   
✪ the strict lockdown has been less rigorous when removed from the urban centres…in outlying areas, in the northern coast and the Amazonas region (particularly bad in the Amazonian city of Iquitos) it was less “honoured in the breach than the observance” leading to the formation of new virus clusters (Collyns)  
⊠ other experts discount the study’s findings noting that most coronavirus infections occur indoors, negating the relevance of UV levels (Tegel, ‘From the Andes’)

Coronavirus Responses and Patterns in Africa: Southern and West Africa

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, National politics, Public health,, Society & Culture

1836333B-64AF-49C9-B21B-7F66F21411A6Three months ago when the COVID-19 outbreak started to move around the globe, the World Health Organisation issued a warning to the continent of Africa whose nations were just starting to feel its impact [‘Coronavirus: WHO tells African countries to ‘prepare for the worst’, Eye on Africa, 18-Mar-2020, www.france24.com]. The pandemic was late in reaching Africa and initially slow to make inroads, taking 98 days to register its first 100,000 confirmed cases but is now accelerating – only taking 18 more days to hit the 200,000 mark of cases [‘COVID-19: WHO warns of virus acceleration in Africa’, Vanguard, 14-Jun-2020, www.vanguardngr.com]. Overall African fatalities sit at 6,793 (16-Jun-2020) with just five countries (Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Nigeria) accounting for 70% of the deaths✹.

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Southern Africa:
To date South Africa has been the nation most heavily affected by the public health emergency – over 73,000 confirmed cases and 1,568 deaths (16-Apr-2020). The Western Cape province has become the epicentre of the RSA pandemic, recording so far around 75% of the country’s fatalities. The province’s high incidence of cases has been attributed to the presence of poor, densely populated townships like Khayelitsha, a shantytown of 500,000 people. Cape Town’s thriving tourism (before the closedown) has also been advanced as contributing to the outbreak’s toll. South Africa, with a more developed economy and better health care system, has conducted more a million virus tests, while many other African countries have racked up only a few thousands. The clear implication of this is that ”the disease is spreading undetected elsewhere on the continent”  [‘Cape Town becomes South Africa’s coronavirus hotspot’, (Jevans Nyabiage), South China Morning Post, 12-Jun-2020, www.amp.scmp.com].

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⍐ Bulawayo, Zim.  (Photo: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters)

South Africa’s smaller, northern neighbour Zimbabwe has done surprisingly well on paper in the crisis (four deaths recorded only), but with the rider that testing for the disease—hampered by a critical shortage of health equipment and infrastructure—has been very limited…by 10th April it had tested a mere 392 people [‘In Zimbabwe, lack of tests sparks fear COVID-19 goes undetected’, (Chris Muronzi), Aljazeera, 10-Apr-2020, www.aljazeera.com].

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(Image: SABC News)

West Africa:
Results of the fight against the pandemic in West Africa have been mixed. Senegal began its counter-measures early in January, closing the borders, implementing contact-tracing, etc. The country was able to produce a test kit for COVID-19 costing only $1 per patient and has managed to accommodate every coronavirus patient either in hospital or in a community health facility. African countries who experienced the 2013/14 Ebola virus outbreak like Senegal put that experience to good use, prohibiting large gatherings, strict night-time curfews, banning intercity travel, etc. Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) followed Senegal’s approach, declaring a state of emergency and trying to impose curfews in it’s main city Abidjan, but the country’s buoyant economy has taken quite a hit from the coronavirus crisis. Ghana has utilised an extensive system of contact-tracing and a “pool-testing” mechanism which follows up only on positive results [‘Why are Africa’s coronavirus successes being overlooked?’, (Afua Hirsch), The Guardian, 21-May-2020, www.theguardian.com; ‘Women unite against COVID-19 in Senegal’, Relief web, 10-Jun-2020, www.reliefweb.int].

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The speeding up of coronavirus cases in a small African country like Guinea-Bissau has occurred notwithstanding it’s small population and limited testing, reflecting a reality stretching across the whole continent, the sheer incapacity of weak and under-resourced national health infrastructures to cope with the pandemic [‘West Africa facing food crisis as coronavirus spreads’, (Emmanuel Akinwotu),  The Guardian, 16-May-2020, www.theguardian.com].

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⍐ Kano   (Photo: Reuters/Luc Gnago)

B2ADCEDB-748F-4BBD-926C-6B2115F8760EIn Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, the most worrying hotspot has been the north in Kano state and metropolis. The pandemic has gotten out of hand here because of a confluence of factors, including the state government’s early failure to admit the presence of coronavirus (which it initially tried to pass off as an upsurge in other illnesses), costing it vital lost time in the fight against the disease; the closure of Kano’s only testing centre for a week in April; acute shortages of PPE; and the pre-existing displacement of 1.8m people in the region [‘Covid-19 Outbreak in Nigeria Is Just One of Africa’s Alarming Hot Spots’, (Ruth Maclean), New York Times, 17-May-2020, www.nytimes.com].

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Dakar, Senegal   (Photo: John Wessels/AFP via Getty Images)

PostScript: A young and rural population
Africa’s avoidance of the worse excesses of COVID-19 thus far has prompted the theory that the continent’s demographics is working in it’s favour. A study in the journal BMJ Global Health attributes this to Africa’s young, rural-based population▣ …60% of the population is under 25, cf. Europe (95% of its deaths from the virus have been people over 60). BMJ hypothesises that Africa will likely suffer “more infections but most will be asymptomatic or mild, and probably (go) undetected” [‘Africa’s young and rural population may limit spread and severity of coronavirus, study says’, (Jevans Nyabiage), South China Morning Post, 28-May-2020, www.amp.scmp.com].

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝ ↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝
✹ Egypt and South Africa alone account for nearly 48% of the entire continent’s corona-related deaths
▣ the study focused on Kenya, Senegal and Ghana

The Choral Powder Keg: A Health Hazard Tailor-made for the COVID-19 Crisis

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Public health,, Science and society, Society & Culture, Town planning

When a pandemic or some similar “Black Swan” event sweeps the world, hitting many countries with great intensity, particularly in Western societies with a high degree of religiosity, comfort and solace is often sought within the spiritual “safe house” of the church. As soon as the novel coronavirus landed and spread, it was apparent the church services especially where high rates of attendance was commonplace, would pose a public health risk.

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(Source: www.newslocker.com)

Yet in the US eleven state governors chose to maintain freedom of worship over community safety by exempting religious institutions from the general prohibition on public gatherings, notwithstanding that some of the states registered the biggest clusters of COVID-19. Even in other states there was a pushback by church men and women against government bans on assembly in places of worship. As a consequent 71 members of a single church in Sacramento were infected by the virus [‘Pastor who refused to close church due to coronavirus killed by outbreak’, (Rebecca Nicholson), Express, 15-Apr-2020, www.express.co.uk].

This was mirrored in overseas scenarios, in South Korea in February, one infected churchgoer infected at least 37 other members of her church on a single contact [“‘Superspreader’ in South Korea infects nearly 40 people with coronavirus’, (Nicolette Lanese), Live Science, 23-Feb-2020, www.livescience.com].

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South Korean choir with face masks  (Source: AP)

The choral petri-dish
 The holding of packed sermons in churches and other places of worship, like any close contact between confined, concentrations of people, breaches the prescribed social distancing guidelines and exacerbates the incidence of coronavirus infection. But just as dangerous and with even more potential to transmit the viral disease through communities is the choral activities of churches. The activities of choirs initially continued unabated in the early stages of the pandemic but an incident in Washington state in early March brought home how risky choir practice is. 61 people attended a choir practice at a Presbyterian church in Skagit County, within a short time 45 of the group had been infected by COVID-19 and two had died. Other choir outbreaks, some fatal, have occurred In Calgary (Canada), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and in South Korea [‘Scientists to choirs: Group singing can spread the coronavirus, despite what CDC may say’, Richard Read), Los Angeles Times, 01-Jun-2020, www.latimes.com].

Infectious diseases experts have pinpointed the obvious dangers of contagion associated with choir singing…unrestrained vocal activity at close quarters in often poorly-ventilated, confined space. The vocalists exhale and inhale deeply to sing which makes them highly susceptible to the passage of airborne particles. Through the process of aerosolisation, the virus floats freely in the air (and has been observed to survive for up to three hours) [‘Churches can be the Deadliest Places in the COVID-19 Pandemic’, (Kevin Kavanagh), Infection Control Today, 03-Apr-2020, www.infectioncontroltoday.com; Read].

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Inexplicable change of stance by CDC
With eyes fixed on the November elections and the need to shore up vital support from the Evangelical Christian Right, President Trump from his White House ‘pulpit’ intensified his call in May for governors to reopen religious institutions as an essential service, eliciting pushback from some governors. At the same time, surprisingly the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided to drop their warnings against choral singing despite the inherent danger it poses. CDC justifies this change of position by downplaying the likelihood of airborne transmission beyond six feet⊞ [‘Behind Trump’s demands to reopen churches: Slipping poll numbers and alarm inside his campaign’, (Gabby Orr), Politico, 22-May-2020, www.politico.com; Read).

Heightening the risk of unleashing ‘super-spreaders’
CDC’s controversial move has drawn broad criticism from medical experts including specialists in bio-aerosol research who have refuted CDC’s claim, calling it “hazardous, very dangerous and irresponsible”, and that it exposes America to new waves of super-spreading from the activity of choir members (Read).

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⇑  With religious singing relegated to the home, some American churches have tried to get round the prohibition on in-house congregational services by organising drive-in sermons

Fallout from the churches
Although many parishes and parishioners in the US have adjusted well to the new world of online sermons, some traditional congregationalists worry that the new ‘norm’ will spell the disappearance of the in-person church experience altogether [‘How the Pandemic Will Change Us’,  (Rod Dreher), The American Conservative, 13-Mar-2020, www.theamericanconservative.com].

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(Photo: www.stjohnswhitchurch.org.uk)

 

Endnote: The economics of the choral closedown
The halt to choral activities due to COVID-19 has led to a whole bunch of “knock-on” problems worldwide. Like anybody else with their income source impacted adversely by the crisis, choristers, classical musicians and organists attached to the churches affected have been deprived of livelihood. But it goes even beyond that. As the Royal School of Church Music in the UK indicated, the pandemic ”has literally ripped apart the many close-knit groups of singers and instrumentalists who (need to) spend significant amounts of time together”. Church musicians who rely on the service are especially hard hit. It is doubly hard for self-employed church organists who have lost their access to practice – unlike other musicians who keep their instruments at home, they rely on “using instruments in public buildings for the vital practice which enables them to maintain their hard-earned skill” (Royal College of Organists). [‘Pandemic has ‘ripped apart’ church choirs’, (Hattie Williams), Church Times, 01-Apr-2020, www.churchtimes.co.uk].

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(Source: eBay)

PostScript: There is another side problem resulting from the non-use of organs in churches. Like the raft of airplanes grounded due to the coronavirus, complex and expensive organs require continual attention. They need “regular playing to ensure that the fragile technical components are kept in good working order“ and  free from damage (Williams).

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⊞ the Washington Post states that CDC acted on a White House directive to omit the choir warning from it’s website guidance information. CDC may have also relied on earlier statements from WHO contending that “there is no evidence of transmission of the virus as an airborne pathogen”. WHO’s conclusions have themselves been debunked as “decades-old dogma that held that droplets only travel an arm’s length in the air” (Read)