Why Isn't the U.S. Trying To End the Pandemic? (w/ Lily Sánchez)

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2021

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

Current Affairs editor and physician Dr. Lily Sánchez joins Nathan to discuss her new (and first) Current Affairs article, "Continuing The Pandemic Is A Choice." Lily explains: - the many things the U.S. could do differently if it was actually trying to get COVID-19 cases as close to 0 as possible - the weird lack of a serious public education and messaging campaign around vaccination - why having 50 different state policies makes no sense when you're trying to control a pandemic - the need for us to refuse to accept the status quo, and demand the elimination of preventable suffering Correction: the horrifying Rosa Parks tweet is in fact from contrarian writer James Lindsay, not a Daily Wire writer. Nathan was thinking of a different horrifying recent tweet that was from a Daily Wire writer. That one was in defense of genocide. Point of clarification from Lily: "I did not mean to imply I endorsed a "vax or test" approach when I was talking about vaccine outreach and testing. "Vax or test" doesn't really make sense because anyone can spread the virus regardless of vaccination status. I do support a universal testing approach. What I meant was that doing a universal testing program can keep people safe even if you cannot convince everyone to get vaccinated." You can follow Lily on Twitter @lefty_md

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine, and I am here
0:24.4	tonight with my colleague, my current affairs online editor, Lily Sanchez. Hello, Lily.
0:34.1	Hi, Nathan. Thanks for having me. Lily is not only a colleague of mine at Current Affairs, but is a physician and has written
0:42.3	her first article recently published in Current Affairs, which is called Continuing
0:48.3	The Pandemic is a Choice. And today we are going to discuss that article, which argues that, well,
0:58.0	not necessarily that we can get completely out of the pandemic, but that the United States
1:04.0	in particular is not acting like a country that is trying to get out of the pandemic.
1:08.4	And there's a lot that we could be doing and are not doing.
1:11.6	And it makes a case for, if not, optimism, then at least some determination.
1:18.5	Is that right?
1:21.0	Exactly.
1:21.9	Before we get to the argument you make, let me begin with the state of things as they are right now. We are in early October of
1:30.7	2021. Could you maybe go through for us where things stand with the pandemic? I mean, this thing
1:41.2	ebbs and flows. We've had this delta variance, the death count rises and it falls.
1:47.4	There's a lot of differences around the country in terms of policy and in terms of how bad the COVID outbreaks are.
1:55.6	What is the sort of general lay of the land in the United States right now that you are looking at in thinking
2:04.4	about, you know, where the pandemic goes from here? Well, right now we're seeing a wave
2:10.5	from the Delta variant. And things change day to day. But what I've seen just looking at the
2:16.8	numbers today is that there are around 2,000 deaths and that that was a few days ago lowering to below 2000, but now is at 2000 again.
2:26.4	And we're at a point where, as you mentioned, there are varying degrees of vaccination rates throughout the country, right?
2:34.7	Wildly different.
2:35.7	You have states in the Northeast that have close to 80 percent, and then other states
	...

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