Tag: u s surgeon general
Why The Surgeon General’s Silly Gaffe Actually Matters

Why The Surgeon General’s Silly Gaffe Actually Matters

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Surgeon General Jerome Adams is, unfortunately, not inspiring confidence as the United States faces the national health crisis presented by Covid-19, the novel coronavirus.

On Saturday, he criticized the media for looking into the origins of the Trump administration’s failures to adequately address the crisis as it emerged. He said there should be “no more finger-pointing or criticism” and that news outlets should produce “less stories looking at what happened in the past.” (He said there would be time for such stories later, but understanding why the government response has failed is important now.)

And on Monday, he made what seemed like a relatively minor gaffe on Fox News by falsely referring to South Korea as an “authoritarian.” But it was, in fact, a deeply revealing slip-up.

“We are not an authoritarian nation, so we have to be careful when we say ‘Let’s do what China did. Let’s do what South Korea did,’” Adams said of Fox & Friends.

At the same time, he discussed the fact that President Donald Trump and the rest of the federal government is leaning toward giving more direction to state and local governments. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, announced Sunday night that it is urging people across the country to refrain from holding gatherings of 50 or more people for at least the next eight weeks.

But Adams’s false implication that South Korea is an “authoritarian” nation (alongside the true claim that China is authoritarian) sends a misleading and troubling message about what is necessary and possible to fight Covid-19.

Because while the United States is clearly behind the curve on mitigating the worst effects of the outbreak, South Korea has actually been successful in breaking the tide. Implying that it can only do so with “authoritarian” measures send two troubling messages: that the techniques needed for slowing the spread of the virus are unacceptable, and that there’s no meaningful sense in which the United States should be going further to fight the pandemic.

In an article for The Hill, writer Chia-Yi Hou explained why South Korea has managed to get its outbreak under control:

One of the main reasons South Korea is handling the coronavirus outbreak well is that testing is widely available.

People in South Korea can get swabbed for testing in drive-thru clinics, which can reduce the burden on hospitals and reduce risk for health workers. A biotech company in the country developed a test within three weeks, according to CNN.

Individuals who would like to be tested for the virus and get the backing of a doctor can request one, making it easy and accessible. There’s a network of 96 laboratories that process the samples, with testing being a major priority.

Meanwhile, the testing regime in the United States has been and continues to be a disaster, with many people who want or need a test unable to find out if they’re infected. This is largely due to the abject failure of the Trump administration.

The South Korean government has also been more open in sharing information about the virus to the public. As the Washington Post explained: Officials have “undergone aggressive efforts to inform the public about how to respond and where the infection is spreading. South Koreans regularly get cell phone alerts notifying them of new cases near them. The government has shuttered schools and urged the cancellation of all mass gatherings. Government websites are regularly updated with information about testing.”

While some of these measures may be understandably unacceptable to the American public — such as the sharing of the GPS location of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 in an app — it shows that greater information sharing can help citizens make better decisions to protect their own health.

And the Daily Beast reported that the public has adopted many of the key social distancing measures that experts believe are necessary to quell the spread of the infection:

Quite aside from the availability of quick, no-cost testing, Dr. Gurel cites the discipline of Koreans in heeding advice of all sorts. “There is a constant message about social hygiene,” he says. Avoidance of public spaces, frequent hand-washing, all that “eventually improved the situation.”

It noted that these steps appear to explain the declining outbreak:

The proof is in the numbers showing new cases in South Korea decreasing steadily – just 110 on Thursday, the lowest in more than two weeks, while 177 were declared cured and sent home. All told, the number of cases totals 7,979, but the general feeling sense is the worst is over.

What shutting down the spread of the virus takes isn’t authoritarianism — but competent governance. If the Trump administration can’t manage that, it may try to convince that the alternative is unthinkable.

Study: More Smokers Worldwide Than In 1980

Study: More Smokers Worldwide Than In 1980

Washington (AFP) – More people smoke worldwide today than in 1980, as population growth surges and cigarettes gain popularity in countries such as China, India and Russia, researchers said Tuesday.

For instance, China boasted nearly 100 million more smokers in 2012 than it had three decades ago, even though its smoking rate fell from 30 to 24 percent in that span, said the findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The rise in the number of smokers comes despite overall declines in the smoking rate in recent decades, as many people have realized the health dangers of tobacco, said the report.

The data was published as part of a series of tobacco-related articles to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. Surgeon General’s report on the risks of smoking.

“Since we know that half of all smokers will eventually be killed by tobacco, greater numbers of smokers will mean a massive increase in premature deaths in our lifetime,” said co-author Alan Lopez of the University of Melbourne.

The study, led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, measured data from 187 countries.

It found that the global smoking rate among men was 41 percent in 1980, but has since declined to an average of 31 percent.

Among women, the estimated prevalence of daily tobacco smoking was 10.6 percent in 1980, and by 2012 that had fallen to 6.2 percent.

The most rapid decrease began in the mid-1990s, but smoking has actually risen again among men since 2010, said the findings.

“This deceleration in the global trend was in part due to increases in the number of smokers since 2006 in several large countries including Bangladesh, China, Indonesia and Russia,” said the study.

China had 182 million smokers in 1980, and nearly 282 million in 2012, it said.

India gained 35 million smokers — bringing its total to 110 million — even though the smoking rate fell from 19 to 13 percent of the population.

Russia, where about one third of people smoke, has added one million smokers since 1980.

Globally, the number of smokers has climbed from 721 million in 1980 to 967 million in 2012.

The number of cigarettes smoked annually has also risen 26 percent over the past three decades.

“The greatest health risks are likely to occur in countries with high prevalence and high consumption,” said the study.

Those countries include China, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Korea, the Philippines, Uruguay, Switzerland and Russia, it said.

The highest smoking rates among men in 2012 were in Timor-Leste (61 percent) and Indonesia (57 percent), followed by Armenia (51.5 percent), Russia (51 percent) and Cyprus (48 percent).

Top countries for women smokers were Greece (34.7 percent) and Bulgaria (31.5 percent).

Austria had a female smoking rate of 28.3 percent, followed by France (27.7 percent) and Belgium (26.1 percent).

A larger proportion of women in France smoked in 2012 (28 percent) than 1980 (19 percent), while the rate for men went the opposite direction, declining from 42 percent to 34 percent.

In all, France had 14 million smokers in 2012, two million more people than in 1980.

The study also measured how many cigarettes on average were consumed per smoker each day in 2012, and found Mauritania was the highest with 41, or two packs a day.

Saudi Arabia’s smokers averaged 35 cigarettes per day, and Taiwan’s 32.

“As tobacco remains a threat to the health of the world’s population, intensified efforts to control its use are needed,” said the study.

The research also examined where the biggest gains against smoking have been made since 1980, particularly in countries where more than one in five people smoked.

Iceland, Mexico and Canada had the most significant declines (three percent), followed by Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

The United States, New Zealand, Australia and Britain rounded out the top 10 for the drop in smoking rates.

The U.S. smoking rate went from 30.6 percent in 1980 to 15.8 percent in 2012. Similar trends were seen in Australia.

“Globally, there has been significant progress in combating the deadly toll of tobacco use,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, who was not involved in the study.

“Where countries take strong action, tobacco use can be dramatically reduced.”

Photo: Daniel Barry via AFP