Middleboro Review 2: POLITICO NIGHTLY: Closing night for pandemic theater

Thursday, March 10, 2022

POLITICO NIGHTLY: Closing night for pandemic theater

With help from Meredith Lee

An employee wearing rubber gloves and a mask is seen cleaning tables at Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant in Franklin, Tenn. | Jason Kempin/Getty Images

SERIOUS REASONS TO STOP THE SILLY STUFF — We have embarked on the newest less scary stage of the pandemic. Even Hawaii, the last holdout among the 50 states, said today that it too would end mandatory masking.

So masks are coming off. People are returning to work (and play.) It’s getting harder to find a parking spot. But we still do too many things that are so last stage of the pandemic. Or the stage before that.

Things like keeping the Smithsonian’s outdoor carousel closed (which Matt Yglesias noted on Twitter the other day) aren’t just silly, from an epidemiological point of view. They’re counterproductive. Putting the sillier things on the same plane as measures that really do prevent spread of disease makes it easier to ridicule or undermine all Covid mitigation. And that’s bad for public health — now and for whatever comes next.

“The pandemic theater, of which there has been a lot, has had negative consequences for our ability to successfully manage the pandemic,” Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.C. Chan School of Public Health, emailed Nightly.

It’s not really clear why we are still doing some of these things months — in some cases now, two years — after we learned a lot more about how the coronavirus does and does not spread.

Maybe it’s bureaucratic inertia. Maybe it’s confusion and excessive caution. Maybe it’s just not wanting to admit an error. We do know that the public has often been confused — or outraged — by changing advice and guidelines. Sometimes the advice has changed because the science has evolved, sometimes because the virus has evolved.

It was worth shutting things like a merry-go-round down “in the teeth of an oncoming surge of unknown final size barreling into health care,” Hanage said. “But that changes as we learn more. There is a tendency to think that any change in guidance implies that your previous advice was wrong. But that is obviously not the case. “

Making changes to Covid guidance is, in fact, “following the science.” My colleague Myah Ward recently wrote in Nightly about some of the more serious practices that really need to be updated — like the strict limits on family visits to critically ill hospitalized patients. But there are a host of other things people and businesses are still doing that just don’t make a whole lot of sense now, even if they seemed like worthwhile precautions in 2020.

It’s time to end the silly stuff. It only fuels the skeptics, the deniers, and makes it harder to reimpose or reemphasize the measures (masking, distancing, vaccination) that we would need if another, dangerous variant came our way.

Here are a few things to rethink:

Businesses that have “clean” and “dirty” pen jars. When was the last time anyone got Covid from a pen? Is anyone actually checking to make sure that no customer inadvertently picks up a dirty pen when she wanted a clean one, or mistakenly puts a dirty one in the clean jar? Having hand sanitizer nearby is still welcome — and not just for Covid. But most of us do not live in mortal fear of pens.

Grocery stores that still make you pack your own bags if you brought in your eco-friendly reusable ones from home.

Those ubiquitous grocery cart handle wipes probably aren’t really doing much to protect us from Covid (although I often use them anyway so I don’t have to think about why those bars are so sticky; I too once had a toddler).

Car insurance companies that won’t send an adjuster to look at a damaged vehicle — outside. It’s not like the car is going to launch a partisan broadside against an adjuster for wearing a mask.

Last year’s cloth masks. Particularly those one-layer stretchy ones that keep slipping off. If you still want to mask (and many of us do, at least in some settings) or if you still must mask (in health care settings or public transport), it’s well past time to upgrade to an N95 or similar mask that actually works.

Some practices that hotels are promoting as they try to lure travelers back — like plastic-wrapped TV remotes. Planning some business travel this month, I saw a hotel that said that its dining rooms were all open but for safety’s sake, room service is closed! Also guests have to park their own cars; valet service is suspended. (Even if someone is still worried about having a stranger in their car, a masked valet and an open window would address it.) I did see one hotel that boasted it leaves a mask in every guest’s room. How nice! But I had to wonder whether they were high-quality, effective KN94-type masks, and whether the hotel was providing them to its staff, who might need them more than the presumably more affluent and sheltered guests.

This list is by no means comprehensive. I happened to walk by the meditation room at an airport the other day — closed for Covid. LaGuardia, apparently, believes we should keep panicking and carry on.

And silly stuff isn’t always silly. These measures can be painful, creating what Hanage called “wrenching disconnects.” We’re barring someone from putting a flower on her mother’s casket, while allowing tens of thousands of screaming people, some infected, to cram into sports arenas.

My personal favorite 2020 artifact remains those questionnaires we still have to fill out at the doctor’s office. During one appointment, when Omicron cases in D.C. were sky-high and the rest of the country wasn’t much better, I again had to disclose whether I had traveled to any state with high coronavirus spread in the last 14 days (fwiw, the incubation period for Omicron is far shorter than 14 days).

I checked “No.” But I was tempted to write in: “Yes. Our Planet.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Happy 2nd birthday to Nightly. Hope our 3rd is happier. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author on Twitter at @JoanneKenen.

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FROM THE AGRICULTURE DESK

Women and children who had just arrived from war-torn Ukraine receive food in a tent shelter on a freezing day at the Medyka border crossing in Poland. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

GLOBAL BREAD LINE — Food and agriculture reporter Meredith Lee emails Nightly:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is fueling a global food crisis on a scale rarely seen before. U.S. officials fear it will ripple through already strained food systems for years to come.

Shortages, skyrocketing prices and a new humanitarian crisis are slamming into global food systems badly damaged by climate disasters and Covid-19.

“It’s going to be a major issue for the entire world,” said Gregg Doud, who served as the U.S. Trade Representative’s chief agricultural negotiator during the Trump administration.

In a matter of a few days, two major food-producing regions of the world have been essentially taken out of the global food supply. Russia and Ukraine provide about 30 percent of the world’s wheat, which is now effectively cut off from global markets. Both countries have restricted exports in an effort to keep enough food for their own populations.

Governments across wide swaths of Europe, Africa and the Middle East are scrambling for a new source of food for millions of people. And in a one-two punch, China and other countries are panic-buying to top off their immense grain reserves and are likely to hold back on rice exports, another major source of global nutrition, as food insecurity grows.

The U.S., a major grain exporter, can help fill some of those voids. But even as U.S. lawmakers push to expand the number of acres farmers can plant this year, it’s not enough to make up for the losses, especially after Western states suffered severe drought last year.

The ricocheting disasters could end up doubling the number of people in the world suffering from acute hunger over the next 18 months, according to an estimate from Matthias Berninger, Bayer’s senior vice president of public affairs and sustainability.

U.S. lawmakers are especially worried about shortages and price spikes unleashing social unrest in countries across Africa and the Middle East. Even before Russia’s invasion, a Republican Senate aide said the consequences of such action could be “catastrophic” for global food supplies given that the World Food Program buys so much grain from Ukraine.

WFP’s David Beasley this week warned the grain that normally feeds starving populations in Afghanistan, Yemen and Sudan is currently stuck in Ukraine or won’t be harvested this year. To make matters worse, the organization is now being forced to buy grain at sky-high prices in order to feed millions of displaced Ukranians.

Government officials and food experts are unsure where or when the ripples will stop. The full scope of the crisis is unknown. The Agriculture Department slashed estimates today for upcoming Ukrainian wheat and corn exports as farmers there have been forced to abandon their farms ahead of the spring planting season. The crisis will likely push up already elevated food prices in the U.S., but nowhere near the spikes across other countries.

“Everything is kind of up in the air right now,” Doud said.

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WHAT'D I MISS?

— House yanks Covid aid after bumps in drive to pass $1.5T gov funding plan: House Democrats have yanked plans to vote on President Joe Biden’s $15 billion coronavirus relief package, after multiple members revolted against paying for that aid using their home states’ stockpiles of pandemic cash. The chamber still plans to vote today on a sweeping funding measure that includes $14 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine.

— Stoltenberg: ‘New normal’ forces NATO rethink: Russia’s war on Ukraine is forcing the military alliance to launch an urgent rethink of its long-term strategy , NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. “We need to … have a serious assessment of the longer-term adaptation of NATO — our posture, our presence and also how we can strengthen our ability to reinforce quickly,” Stoltenberg said during a virtual session of an Ottawa defense conference when asked if Russia’s assault on Ukraine will force NATO to establish a permanent line of defense in eastern Europe. Stoltenberg said the deliberations will start during next week’s meeting of NATO defense ministers. Final decisions on the alliance’s new direction should be made closer to the NATO summit in late June, he said after delivering a speech to the CDA Institute’s Ottawa Conference.

— U.S. closes door on sending fighter jets to Ukraine: U.S. officials today all but shut the door on arming Ukraine with fighter jets , one day after the Pentagon rejected a Polish proposal that would have transferred MiG-29 aircraft to the Ukrainian government via an American airbase in Germany. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin notified Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Błaszczak on a phone call today that the U.S. would not support a transfer of jets to Ukraine, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby holds a news briefing at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

— Finger-pointing ensues after Congress fails to extend universal school meals: Universal free meals at schools and in many summer programs are slated to come to an end this summer, after a provision to extend temporary pandemic programs was not included in a major spending bill introduced on Capitol Hill. The first major Covid-19 aid package, which was signed into law by then-President Donald Trump, gave USDA the authority to waive a slew of regulations, allowing schools for the first time to serve free meals to all students, regardless of income. That authority is now set to expire on June 30.

— Health experts plead with Biden to ‘reverse course’ in global pandemic response: More than 100 public health, medical and epidemiology experts and advocates sent the Biden administration a letter today begging it to do more to control the pandemic around the world, saying America’s current global efforts have failed. The authors asked the administration to share Covid-19 vaccine technology and increase manufacturing around the world, ask for more funding from Congress to support distribution in low- and middle-income countries and increase access to Covid therapeutics and rapid tests around the world, according to the letter obtained by POLITICO.

— Colorado elections clerk indicted in voting system breach: A grand jury in Colorado has indicted a county election clerk who sowed doubt about the 2020 presidential election, alleging she was part of a “deceptive scheme” to breach voting system technology that is used across the country, according to the indictment made public today. Tina Peters, a Republican elected in 2018 to oversee elections in Mesa County, was charged with seven felony and three misdemeanor counts, including attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation and first-degree official misconduct. Also facing charges in the case is Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley.

NIGHTLY NUMBER

At least 37

The number of children who have been killed in Ukraine, less than two weeks since Russia launched its attack, according to UNICEF. Another 50 have been injured, while more than 1 million children have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries.

PARTING WORDS

HILL HALTS D.C.’S WEED MARKET — Democrats may have control of Congress, but Washington, D.C., will not regain control of its weed industry this year.

The District will have to wait at least one more year before it can tax and regulate an adult-use cannabis market, despite hopes that Democratic majorities in the House and Senate would lift the limitations placed on the city’s cannabis industry, Natalie Fertig writes.

A rider which prevents D.C. from establishing a regulated cannabis market — commonly known as the Harris Rider — was left in the omnibus funding bill, H.R. 2471, released today. It came as a surprise to some advocates, because it was not included in funding packages put forth by the House and Senate. However, Biden’s proposed budget did include the controversial provision.

D.C. residents voted to legalize cannabis in 2014, and the Harris Rider was passed the year after, limiting the District’s power to regulate the newly legal product. The rider was introduced by Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris.

As it stands, D.C. residents are allowed to consume, grow and “gift” cannabis products. That gifting allowance created a gray market where shops sell things like tea or t-shirts — and pair each sale with a “gift” of cannabis.