Is Asia picking up the United States' dropped brain torch?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

22 May 2020

 

 

I have sadly resigned myself to . . .

 

. . . documenting the United States' decline into historical irrelevance.

 

Every day, new information reveals our squalid infatuation with debasing ourselves via self-destructive actions and omissions.

 

 

Consider, for instance . . .

 

. . . the following indication of a change in the world's Brain Leadership.

 

Despite the incomparably wealthy United States supposedly having (by far) the most cases of and deaths from COVID-19 — American research into SARS-CoV-2's nature and behavior has been slow or non-existent.

 

Lack of curiosity, purpose and follow-up characterize our experience with the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Now contrast (one-sixth the size) South Korea.

 

Not only is South Korea coping successfully with COVID, its scientists are actively dissecting the illness's nature and spread, so as to better manage its effects.

 

 

Want partial proof of this observation?

 

South Korea, in its evidence-minded fashion, just published an overview of a recently completed epidemiological study of arguable substance.

 

This study asked whether post-infection SARS-C0V-2 viral fragments — in patients with a positive re-test for the virus itself — remain infectious:

 

 

Based on active monitoring, epidemiological investigation, and laboratory testing of re-positive cases and their contacts, no evidence was found that indicated infectivity of re-positive cases.

 

Of the 447 re-positive cases as of 15 May, epidemiological investigation was conducted on 285 cases and laboratory analysis on 108 cases. (473 as of 18 May)

 

From monitoring of 790 contacts of the 285 re-positive cases, no case was found that was newly infected solely from contact with re-positive cases during re-positive period.

 

Virus isolation in cell culture of respiratory samples of 108 re-positive cases, all result was negative (i.e. virus not isolated).

 

Of the 23 re-positive cases from which the first and the second serum samples were obtained, 96% were positive for neutralizing antibodies.

 

© 2020 Korea Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Press release — Findings from Investigation and Analysis of Re-positive Cases, cdc.go.kr (19 May 2020) (see PDF download link) (PDF at page 5)

 

 

This is (very obviously so) critically important epidemiological and medical action information.

 

It is exactly what responsible officials and business owners would want answered, before they made plans for returning to para-normality.

 

 

Notice that South Koreans actively looked into the matter . . .

 

. . . but we Americans have not. Either in reinfection's regard, or with respect to the myriad other questions that still plague us and most of the rest of the coronavirus-concerned world.

 

 

With this disparity in investigative oomph in mind — ask yourselves

 

Why would the wealthiest nation on the planet — and the one with an impressively overflowing supply of coronavirus illness and deaths — not also be the leader in investigating the scientific and medical aspects of the pandemic?

 

We have the most money, COVID illness, and arguably the (once-) best scientists and researchers.

 

So — why are, proportionately speaking, the most medically useful COVID studies and reports consistently coming out of China and developed Asia?

 

 

Do think that this and other similar cultural contrasts say something . . .

 

. . . when packaged with all the other ways that significant parts of the Far East are drubbing the US — when it comes to mounting evidence-based responses to the pandemic?

 

 

The moral? — 'Stupid and incurious' are not survival traits in humans

 

Our American lapses are not just failures of leadership, emergency preparedness, national security and planning.

 

They reveal, also, a now-characteristic form of American cultural mindlessness.

 

Instead of probing the nature of the viral pandemic with our arguably God-provided gray matter, as some Asian societies visibly are — we are literally and metaphorically:

 

 

going to 'church'

 

(which, in the COVID context, means indulging in magical thinking)

 

reopening the economy

 

(under circumstances still precisely identical to those that closed it)

 

and

 

wall-to-wall incuriously

 

continuing to spread the disease —

 

without manifesting the slightest inkling

 

as to how

 

such an absence of scientific investigation

 

and

 

medical-manufacturing

 

are going to play out.

 

 

Ants could do better.

 

Even leaf-cutter ants know when and how to get out of the rain.

 

 

Note

 

Curious humans once investigated why that is so, here.

 

 

Ironic, isn't it, that some unwarrantedly conceited Americans consider crowded Asian cultures ant-like?

 

Change ticks clock and History.