Dr Walensky Reveals A Tell

I've been wondering about Michigan now for more than a week, and the COVID surge there is finally getting full media attention. Clearly the state has now emerged as the worst case in the US, with ideas from various quarters on what to do about it:

COVID-19 cases have started spiking in Michigan, which currently has the highest number of positive tests per 100,000 in the nation. The state’s seven-day average is 515 per 100,000. The next closest state is New Jersey, with 300.

. . . In October of 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court stripped Whitmer of the emergency powers she had assumed during the pandemic, declaring the orders an “unlawful delegation of legislative power to the executive branch in violation of the Michigan Constitution.” Now, faced with increasing COVID-19 spread, the governor is powerless to issue the same kind of restrictions she did in the past without the Republican-controlled legislature’s consent. With the friction between the branches caused by her overarching actions earlier in the pandemic, getting back her authority to act is not likely.

In reponse, although Gov Whitmer has asked for voluntary compliance with new restrictions, the reply from schools and businesses has been that they don't intend to make changes. In response, Gov Whitmer has asked the federal government to increase its supply of COVID vaccines to the state. The Biden administration has so far refused, but the strangest take by far is from Dr Walensky:

“When you have an acute situation, an extraordinary number of cases like we have in Michigan, the answer is not necessarily to give vaccines — in fact, we know the vaccine will have a delayed response,” Walensky said in a briefing with reporters. “The answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer… to flatten the curve, decrease contact with one another, to test to the extent we have available, to contact trace.”

It goes without saying that the question being asked all over independent media is where has this woman been for the past 13 months? She's advocating a new "two weeks to flatten the curve"? But, stripped of her legal authority to impose a new lockdown, this is no longer an option for Gov Whitmer. Her alternative is to ask for more vaccine.

One puzzle for me is what Dr Walensky does all day in her office, and indeed, what her staff does as well, besides run for lattes. Nowhere in any media, beyond that, is anyone asking the big question, what about California? Every US state began receiving allocations of vaccine from mid-December 2020. No state got all the vaccine it wanted. California immediately distributed its limited supply to elder care homes and those over 75, who would benefit most.

Although I questioned this at first, it also began incentivizing vaccine distribution to the poorest zip codes, again on the basis that if cases were highest there, each dose would prevent more new cases. The result was that California turned the late 2020 surge around by mid-January, and the COVID data has continued to fall to the point that the state is now at levels comparable to those a year ago.

Surely a CDC director, charged with following effective epidemiological strategies, is aware of this. I won't even say she ought to be aware of this. She's smart. She's made it to the top of a system with lots of smart people. She knows about this. Why isn't she asking the obvious question, what is California doing that Michigan isn't? But I bet that, since she's smart, she knows the answer.

Instead, she gives the dinosaur brain answer from more than a year ago: Gov Whitmer, just say two weeks to flatten the curve. That'll fix it! From the link above,

White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt told Michigan officials to “follow the science.” Science says those 65 and older with comorbidities are at the highest risk for COVID-19-related mortality. One might assume following science would mean getting shots into those individuals as quickly as possible in an identified hotspot.

The implication from the White House is that Michigan hasn't been doing what California has been doing for four months, but it appears that nobody in authority is quite willing to come out and say that. But it's hard to avoid thinking Gov Whitmer and her staff have either been slow-walking effective vaccine distribution or simply incompetent at it, which is resulting in a Canadian situation. And Dr Walensky's public advice is effectively to do the worst possible thing, the one thing that will continue the crisis.

The vaccine isn't the answer -- oh, no, "we know the vaccine will have a delayed response". But "flatten the curve" will have no effect at all!

I think there are two reasons for this. One is that the most powerful wing of the public health establishment, at the Fauci-Walensky level, has never wanted vaccines, which it sees as a Trump program, no matter its clear success in places like California, whose own public health authorities are anything but Trumpist. We see the same downplaying of vaccine in public remarks by Dr Fauci:

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday advised people who have been vaccinated for COVID-19 to hold off on congregating indoors to eat or drink.

. . . “No, it’s still not OK for the simple reason that the level of infection, the dynamics of infection in the community are still really disturbingly high,” Fauci advised. “Like just yesterday, there were close to 80,000 new infections, and we’ve been hanging around 60,000, 70,000, 75,000.”

These people want a permanent crisis.