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World

Germany defends preparation for floods, considers lessons

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BERLIN (AP) — German officials are defending their preparations for flooding in the face of the raging torrents that caught many people by surprise and left over 190 people dead in Western Europe, but concede that they will need to learn lessons from the disaster.

Efforts to find any more victims and clean up the mess across a swath of western Germany, eastern Belgium and the Netherlands continued Monday as floodwaters receded. So far, 117 people have been confirmed dead in the worst-affected German region, Rhineland-Palatinate; 46 in the neighboring state of North Rhine-Westphalia; and at least one in Bavaria, parts of which saw heavy rain and flooding over the weekend. At least 31 people died in Belgium.

The downpours that led to usually small rivers swelling at vast speed in the middle of last week were forecast, but warnings of potentially catastrophic damage didn’t appear to have found their way to many people on the ground — often in the middle of the night.

“As soon as we have provided the immediate aid that stands at the forefront now, we will have to look at whether there were things that didn’t go well, whether there were things that went wrong, and then they have to be corrected,” Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told the Bild newspaper. “That isn’t about finger-pointing — it’s about improvements for the future.”

Federal and state authorities faced criticism from opposition politicians for allegedly failing to warn citizens of the impending disaster, which came ahead of a national election in September. But Interior Minister Horst Seehofer dismissed claims that federal officials had made mistakes, and said warnings were passed to local authorities “who make decisions on disaster protection.”

“I have to say that some of the things I’m hearing now are cheap election rhetoric,” Seehofer said during a visit to the Steinbach Reservoir in western Germany, where authorities said Monday they no longer fear a dam breach. “Now really isn’t the hour for this.”

The head of Germany’s civil protection agency said that the country’s weather service had “forecast relatively well” and that the country was well-prepared for flooding on its major rivers.

But, Armin Schuster told ZDF television late Sunday, “half an hour before, it is often not possible to say what place will be hit with what quantity” of water. He said that 150 warning notices had been sent out via apps and media.

He said “we will have to investigate” where sirens sounded and where they didn’t.

Officials in Germany’s Rhineland-Palatinate state said they were well-prepared for flooding, and municipalities were alerted and acted.

But the state’s interior minister, Roger Lewentz, said after visiting the hard-hit village of Schuld with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday that “we of course had the problem that the technical infrastructure — electricity and so on — was destroyed in one go.”

Local authorities “tried very quickly to react,” he said. “But this was an explosion of the water in moments. … You can have the very best preparations and warning situations (but) if warning equipment is destroyed and carried away with buildings, then that is a very difficult situation.” Cellphone networks also were knocked out by the flooding.

There were already broader questions about Germany’s emergency warning system after a nationwide test last September, the first in 30 years, largely failed. Sirens didn’t sound in many places, or had been removed after the end of the Cold War, and push alerts from the national warning app arrived late or not all.

Schuster, the head of the civil protection agency, noted that a program to reform civil protection was launched earlier this year, including a drive to encourage local authorities to install more sirens. Germany doesn’t have a text messaging system for disaster warnings, but Schuster told Deutschlandfunk radio it is exploring the possibility.

As local communities contemplate the huge task of rebuilding smashed homes and infrastructure such as the water system, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet is set to draw up a package of immediate and medium-term financial aid on Wednesday.

At the Steinbach Reservoir, North Rhine-Westphalia state governor Armin Laschet said the dam was designed for a risk that might occur once in 10,000 years.

“This was exceeded in the last few days,” he told reporters. “It was a likelihood nobody had foreseen.”

___

Frank Jordans contributed to this report from the Steinbach Reservoir, Germany.

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Business

15 CEOs Reflect on Their Pandemic Year and the Lessons They’ve Learned

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Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Chris Nassetta worked from home in Arlington, Va., with his wife, six daughters and two dogs for two weeks before returning to the hotel chain’s nearly empty headquarters for the rest of the past year. Sharmistha Dubey has been leading Match Group Inc. from her dining room table near Dallas. Herman Miller ’s Andi Owen has her dog Finn to keep her company while working from her home office in Grand Rapids, Mich. Moderna Inc. CEO Stéphane Bancel relishes twice-daily 30-minute walks between his home in Boston and the vaccine maker’s Cambridge offices, where he resumed working in August, so he can crystallize his priorities and reflect on the day. The Wall Street Journal photographed them and 11 other business leaders in their pandemic office spaces as they discussed the past year and what’s to come.

More than a year after the coronavirus upended the way we work, the business leaders said they have found that more communication, flexibility and transparency have been crucial in staying connected to their employees.

Heads of companies across sectors including finance, hospitality and technology spoke from their current workspaces about what they’ve learned from the largely remote year, what challenges they faced and what changes they plan to leave in place during the next phase of work.

Brad Karp, chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, predicted his schedule will remain less hectic after the pandemic is over: “Personally, I can’t see myself reflexively flying cross-country for an hour-long presentation or meeting.”

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Health

10 lessons learned in a year of lockdown

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One year ago Saturday, the country went into its first stage of lockdown, though some adhered to guidelines better than others. Three hundred and sixty-five days later, Covid-19 has snuffed out more than 530,000 lives in the world’s most prosperous country — roughly one-fifth of the global death toll.

Despite a bumpy rollout campaign in some states, many foresee a summer filled with hugs, dining out, vacations, concerts, sporting events, beers at bars, worship services, in-person learning, parties, museums and packed movie theaters — among other pleasures that we took for granted.
After receiving his second dose of vaccine, Joe Sanders, 93, of Princeton, West Virginia, told CNN last month that he didn’t have audacious plans; he was simply looking forward to slipping out of the nursing home, where he’d been confined for his safety, for a little country ham and red-eye gravy.

“I was just really relieved, and I have hope that I’m going to get out of here and do some things,” Sanders said. “That kind of sustains you, instead of feeling you’re going to be here till the end.”

Hope, too, has been a valuable weapon. It’s one of many things Americans have learned in the last 12 months.

Other lessons:

1. On resilience

It wasn’t always pretty. The pandemic has exposed our swagger, and also our naivete and divisions, but we learned to adapt to the most devastating episode in recent history.
Not only did we acclimate to the jarring disruptions that came with pandemic life — at work, at school, in our social lives — we did it while navigating the busiest hurricane season on record and a long-simmering racial reckoning.
It was far from a uniform effort, but by all accounts, we showed our mettle, our resilience. The overwhelming majority of us kept donning masks and avoiding large gatherings to keep ourselves and others safe until the cavalry arrived in the form of vaccines.
Recovery appears near, but we would do well to remember those among us who lost loved ones and livelihoods. They could have been any of us, and for them, the effects of the pandemic will linger long after the final vaccination phase. The best prescription? Some collective compassion.

2. On sacrifice

What we’re willing to sacrifice in a catastrophe runs the gamut from almost nothing to just about everything.
Even the leaders most vocal on the virtues of masks, distancing and staying home couldn’t help heading to the hair salon or a Michelin-star restaurant. They set a terrible example, but their temptations aren’t foreign. Who among us didn’t want an inch or two trimmed off, or some expertly prepared surf and turf?
Still, many of us decided we could wait. Super-spreader events snared the headlines, but beneath the media spotlight were tens of millions of people giving up the favorite parts of their lives to save others.
Not everything was a choice, of course. Many businesses shut down. Hospitals and nursing homes banned visitation. Events were canceled and travel banned, but we would be remiss to ignore the accompanying sacrifices that amounted to tiny acts of heroism and doubtless saved myriad lives.

3. On our elders

Knowing a loved one is dying alone is excruciating, as is not being there to help ease their pain. Saying farewell via Zoom or from a parking lot is heartbreaking.
Before the pandemic, there was an epidemic of isolation and depression among seniors, and the nation got low marks in general for how it cared for its elderly. Older Americans were already missing physical touch and seeing people’s faces more than most. The pandemic magnified these shortcomings in profound ways.
Coronavirus homed in on the elderly with particularly deadly effect, and Americans were slow to step up and protect them. Take Gov. Andrew Cuomo, initially considered a stalwart and model of Covid-19 response: He now faces allegations he obscured the death toll among New York’s nursing homes.

America isn’t exceptional here. In September, many months into the pandemic, the World Health Organization director-general expressed disappointment in hearing a colleague say the massive global death toll was “fine” because the victims were mostly old.

“No, when the elderly are dying, it’s not fine. It’s a moral bankruptcy,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “Every life, whether it’s young or old, is precious and we have to do everything to save it.”
The takeaway: We can take much better care of our elders.

4. On who’s essential

Covid-19 highlighted the necessity of many professions. At the top of the list, health care professionals and teachers are underpaid, while doctors take their Hippocratic Oath seriously, too often at their peril.
Those employed in agriculture and the restaurant and grocery industries, as well as delivery drivers, are vital to keeping people healthy in times like these. Janitors, police and social workers also put their safety on the line.

In a nation that places immense, some might say lopsided, value on athletes and celebrities, the pandemic forced a re-evaluation of priorities, of who is essential. Now that Covid-19 has laid that bare, will it stick?

5. On versatility

This was supposed to last only a few weeks. For all the detriment the pandemic delivered, we showed we can pivot.

We now know just about anything can be delivered to our doors. We’ve learned how to socialize online, or on a porch or yard — BYOB, of course. Work from home and remote learning haven’t been ideal — in fact, they’ve been quite taxing for many — but we’ve found ways to make them work, and in some cases, better.
Living rooms, dining rooms, basements, spare bedrooms and backyard sheds have become (almost) functioning office spaces. Neighbors have banded together to form pods, where children can connect with their teachers from afar, while easing the burden on parents who still have to work and pay bills, no matter the state of the world.
At the same time, the effects of the lockdown preyed on the same racial and socioeconomic disparities as many of society’s ills. Many feel the education gap has widened. Though we’ve all felt like tearing our hair out, we’re still assessing the pandemic’s actual influence on mental health, and experts worry about the ripple effects on Generation C, the Covid generation.

6. On technology

Technology has been immensely helpful, whether it’s leading us to the nearest vaccine clinic, sending a grocery list to a delivery service, entertaining ourselves, remotely seeing doctors and therapists, educating our kids or connecting with our friends, family and coworkers. We also learned a lot of those meetings could’ve been emails.

But it hasn’t all been smooth.

The tech landscape tilted away from the have-nots, denying many access to important innovations. Social media is a blessing and a curse. Video conferencing get old quickly. Ordering in isn’t as gratifying as dining out. In-person worship trumps watching services on a laptop. “Wonder Woman 1984” and “Tenet” would’ve been more fun in the theater. And while we owe D-Nice, Post Malone, Norah Jones and others our gratitude for the distractions they offered us, nothing replicates live music.

7. On science

Science is amazing and, in many ways, is the only thing that can save us, regardless of whether we believe in it. Science, of course, yielded several vaccines in record time and provided us with vital guidance on how to protect ourselves.

Too many opted to ignore the latter, but those who heeded the science can take some credit for helping save lives.

We learned, however, that science doesn’t always move as hastily as the problems it aims to solve. More worrisome is that when science is emerging, some will exploit uncertainties for political ends, and even our best experts can get the guidance wrong when the science is new and fuzzy.

8. On truth

In the Age of Internet, when most of the answers to life’s questions are a few keystrokes away, some of us still struggle to reach truth and facts. This isn’t new. In 2017, CNN felt the need to launch a house ad campaign targeting those who peddle in disinformation.
The struggle to find truth has dealt us deadly consequences during the pandemic. Exacerbating matters have been those of us who feel so strongly about our civil liberties we are willing to risk hurting ourselves and others. Add to that scurrilous characters who will politicize anything, cheered on by the leaders they put into power and others who put the economy over lives, and you have a toxic recipe for handling a deadly outbreak.
This has put on exclamation point on something many already knew: The truth cannot be chosen, but many think it can.

9. On strength and coming together

We often can’t rely on politicians to bail us out (not like corporate America can). Some leaders may jet off to Utah or Cancun when calamity strikes or dither over relief checks while people are getting sicker, getting hungrier or the power bill’s due, but in many ways, we can rely on our fellow Americans.
Amid the headlines chronicling bad behavior were stories of selflessness and triumph: restaurateurs feeding the hungry, doctors treating the poor, musicians offering respite from the chaos, volunteers aiding ex-convicts or addicts, among so many others.
It raises an important question about how we, as a country, define strength: Is it clinging to our freedom, consequences be damned, or reaching out and sacrificing — even enduring a cumbersome mask — to ensure the safety of our fellow Americans?

10. On lessons

There’s an old saying about history repeating itself, and there’s no reason to believe it won’t apply in post-pandemic life.
If we engage in denial or fail to heed the lessons handed us, we could do this all over again — and maybe sooner than we’d like.

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World

Compulsory romance lessons among proposals at China’s political conference | China

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“Romance and marriage lessons” in schools, using the social credit system to penalise people who abandon their pets, and ending compulsory English lessons are among the proposals made on the sidelines of China’s most important political conference.

The proposals were made by delegates at the Chinese people’s political consultative conference (CPPCC), one of two major political meetings happening in Beijing this week under the banner of lianghui, or two sessions. While much of the focus is on high-level geopolitical and national announcements, the suggestions for social policies have caught Chinese people’s attention online.

China’s government is facing a crisis of an ageing population, declining birth and marriage rates and rising divorce rates, which it is aiming to address with population targets and a raised retirement age. This week, the CPPCC delegate Yu Xinwei also proposed compulsory lessons in colleges to strengthen “emotional education” in relationships.

“Most college students’ understanding of emotions and sex stays at the physiological sexual health knowledge,” Yu said. “When facing emotional or romantic setbacks they are prone to be rabid, get out of control, even commit crime.”

The proposal drew support on China’s social media, with some suggesting it be taught earlier, in high school. A related hashtag has been viewed almost half a billion times, and reposted 22,000 times.

A separate proposal to link pet ownership to China’s controversial social credit system also grabbed attention. Dai Junfeng, the secretary general of the Islamic Association of Yunnan province, told the meeting there were major issues with controlling strays, and abandoned domesticated animals were a contributing factor. Dai called for microchipping of animals to identify owners.

“At the same time this can connect to the citizen credit system and include the act of abandoning domestic animals in their personal bad credit records,” he said.

A Weibo hashtag related to the animal control proposal was viewed almost 100m times, with many in favour, although some were worried it took the system too far.

“This can be dealt with by administrative means, don’t overuse the social credit system,” said one.

Social credit systems are in place across provinces, municipalities and districts in China, using technology and surveillance data to give citizens personalised scores based on their actions, and apply punishments – such as travel blacklisting – for “discredited” people.

The varying systems individually interpret general national guidances and opinions, meaning there is a geography-dependent range of offences that can lead to putting someone on a blacklist, which is then shared with the national administration to publish.

The system has attracted concern from rights groups and international observers, but has a level of support within China. A 2019 ethnographic study by the University College London researcher Xinyuan Wang found many people regarded the system as “a national project to boost public morality through fighting fraud and crime and combatting what is currently seen as a nationwide crisis of trust”.

Séverine Arsène, a researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said some administrations “go really far” with their interpretations of national guidance, but that Dai’s hypothetical proposal was not that far out.

She said: “Many municipal credit systems have that kind of behaviour in their criteria. It’s very much about respecting rules and regulations on a very daily life level basis.”

Among other proposals, Xu Jin, a member of political group the Jiusan Society, told the CPCC he wanted more school time dedicated to subjects including Chinese and mathematics, and an end to compulsory English lessons. Xu argued such lessons were “only useful for the minority” given improvements in translation devices.

Six delegates also called for stronger supervision of facial recognition technology, to prevent abuses of people’s privacy.

A proposal to the parallel rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, to give teachers a tax break was viewed more than 130m times on Weibo, and a call for gender neutral parental leave was also popular.

The CPPCC is comprised of mainly party delegates and representatives from approved political parties, and is a largely ceremonial advisory body.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

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Health

Lessons From the U.K. About a More-Contagious Covid-19 Variant

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LONDON—The U.K. has become a testing ground for how a more-contagious and possibly deadlier coronavirus variant spreads through communities, displacing its less-transmissible ancestors and complicating vaccine rollouts and the lifting of lockdowns.

The variant has now been identified in more than 70 countries and 40 U.S. states, and its advance in Britain could help scientists understand its likely trajectory in the U.S. These charts show the spread of the variant around the U.K. and what British scientists are learning about it—including its higher transmissibility and lethality.

“Increasingly, since this version of the virus was discovered we’ve really been running two separate pandemics,” said

Jason Leitch,

national clinical director for Scotland. “That is a warning to other countries.”

Seven–day rolling rate of new Covid-19 cases in U.K.LondonLondonBirminghamBirminghamSheffieldSheffieldBelfastBelfastEdinburghEdinburghCardiffCardiff

Seven–day rolling rate of new cases

Per 100,000 population

100175250325

U.K. variant share of new cases in England

Sep. 3Oct. 1Nov. 5Dec.31Feb. 4050100%

Source: Public Health England (map); Second Generation Surveillance System (chart)

British scientists detected the new variant in November, and in early December traced its first appearance in the U.K. to the southern English county of Kent, in September. The country was in lockdown in November to suppress a deadly wave of infection that had been building since the fall. British public health officials were mystified by the virus’s ongoing spread in southern England despite those restrictions.

When scientists examined the variant’s genome, they found an unusually large number of mutations, some of which pointed to the possibility the new variant could spread more rapidly than pre-existing versions. Further sequencing—and a testing quirk that served as a reliable proxy for the variant’s presence—revealed how quickly the variant rose to dominance.

Total number of

contacts that

became cases

Percentage of all contacts that became cases, by region

Total number of

contacts that

became cases

Percentage of all contacts that became cases, by region

Total number of

contacts that

became cases

Percentage of all contacts that became cases, by region

Percentage of all contacts that became

cases, by region

Total number of

contacts that

became cases

When lockdown lifted in early December, the new variant went national. The overall case rate per 100,000 people increased fivefold in London, and the new variant was soon detected in almost every corner of the U.K. Another, stricter nationwide lockdown was imposed Jan. 4 to arrest its spread. Caseloads have since fallen back and the government has published plans for a staged reopening in the coming months.

Public-health officials began probing the contact patterns of people known to be infected with the new variant, now widely known as B.1.1.7. They found evidence that people infected with the variant went on to infect more people than those infected with the previously dominant strain. That finding reinforced the genetic analysis pointing to a more transmissible version of the pathogen.

“We haven’t seen anything quite like the U.K. variant in terms of its growth rate, in terms of its transmissibility,” said

Nick Loman,

a professor of microbial genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Birmingham.

More worrying still, when public-health officials and teams at U.K. universities began examining clinical data on those known to have been infected with B.1.1.7, they detected signs the variant might be associated with a higher risk of death.

Findings from various studies about the increased or decreased likelihood of dying from Covid-19 if

infected with the U.K. variant vs. previous variant

Findings from various studies about the increased or decreased likelihood of dying from

Covid-19 if infected with the U.K. variant vs. previous variant

Findings from various studies about the increased or decreased likelihood of

dying from Covid-19 if infected with the U.K. variant vs. previous variant

Findings from various studies about the

increased or decreased likelihood of dying

from Covid-19 if infected with the U.K.

variant vs. previous variant

One preliminary analysis, from Scotland, suggested infection with the variant could be 65% more likely to result in hospitalization and 37% more likely to end in death than contracting the older version of the virus. Scientists say these findings aren’t definitive, and some studies suggested the link with higher mortality was weak or the variant may even be associated with a lower risk of dying.

Still, the evidence was sufficient for a panel of scientists advising the U.K. government to say this month that it is likely B.1.1.7 carries a greater risk both of hospitalization and death than established versions.

Surveys of patients conducted by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics between November and January made another finding: Infection with the B.1.1.7 can result in slightly different symptoms, which may help doctors spot possible cases.

Percentage of Covid-19 patients in England reporting each symptom, based on which variant they are

infected with

Percentage of Covid-19 patients in England reporting each symptom, based on which

variant they are infected with

Percentage of Covid-19 patients in England reporting each symptom, based on

which variant they are infected with

Percentage of Covid-19 patients in England

reporting each symptom, based on which

variant they are infected with

The classic symptoms of Covid-19—fever, cough and shortness of breath—were slightly more common among those with the new variant than the old. Patients reporting a loss of taste or smell were less common. And gastrointestinal complaints were more frequent in the case of the new variant.

One cold comfort for the U.K., according to public-health officials, is that the new variant is now so dominant and so transmissible that other variants of concern to epidemiologists, such as those identified in South Africa and Brazil, haven’t gained much traction. Another reason for optimism is that lab tests and some clinical studies—as well as real-world vaccination in the U.K.—suggest the variant can be neutralized by the current range of vaccines.

As highly transmissible coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand why these new versions of the virus are spreading faster, and what this could mean for vaccine efforts. New research says the key may be the spike protein, which gives the coronavirus its unmistakable shape. Illustration: Nick Collingwood/WSJ

Dr.

Philip Dormitzer,

Pfizer Inc.’s

chief scientific officer of viral vaccines, told U.K. lawmakers on Wednesday that the company was seeing protection against the U.K. variant in real-world data from Israel and from the U.K. “equivalent to the protection we saw in controlled trials before that variant was circulating.”

Still, the variant’s rapid advance and unusual characteristics mean it remains a worry, say disease experts, especially if vaccine rollouts don’t keep pace.

Cumulative number of U.S. Covid-19 samples testing positive for the U.K. variant

Cumulative number of U.S. Covid-19 samples testing positive for the U.K. variant

Cumulative number of U.S. Covid-19 samples testing positive for the U.K. variant

Cumulative number of U.S. Covid-19 samples

testing positive for the U.K. variant

“It’s a new beast,” said

Eric Topol,

professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in California. He said he didn’t think it was widely appreciated that the new variant could create a new pandemic, one “driven by a tougher virus to combat.”

—Jason French, Andrew Levinson, Max Rust, Josh Ulick, Dov Friedman, and Randy Yeip contributed to this article.

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Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com and Joanna Sugden at joanna.sugden@wsj.com

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Health

Hit TV show It’s A Sin exposes failure to learn the lessons of the past

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But this isn’t a sequence in a news report from an overwhelmed Covid ward. The year is 1985 and this is a scene from “It’s a Sin,” a searing British television miniseries that explores the AIDS crisis over a ten-year period through the lens of those that lived it.

The parallels between the devastation wreaked by AIDS and the tragedy of Covid-19 today are clear. Thousands of lives lost, people dying alone in hospital, denied the opportunity to say goodbye to loved ones, with only medical staff to offer comfort in their final moments. Funerals devoid of crowds of mourners, misinformation and confusion over the surging crisis spread rapidly across the globe.

But — when it comes to the public health response — have governments and politicians learned the lessons of the past?

Marc Thompson, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1986 at the age of 17 and now works promoting public health in underserved communities in the UK, doesn’t think so. “I have yet to speak to a government minister working on the Covid response who has asked the question as to what we have learned from the HIV and AIDS crisis,” says Thompson.

Even if the comparisons are obvious, the context is different. At the peak of the AIDS crisis, many victims died alone, not because of contamination fears — though those certainly existed — but, as writer Russell T. Davies’ series makes clear, because of shame.

Funerals for Covid-19 victims are so sparsely attended because coronavirus thrives at social gatherings, regardless of whether their purpose is to commemorate or celebrate. Many AIDS victims were buried alone simply because of the stigma attached to those who contracted the disease.

When one of the gay characters in Davies’ show dies of complications from AIDS, their family gathers to burn clothes, photographs, books and memories, as a way of excising them — and the shame that was so commonly associated with the condition — from their lives.

There are striking contrasts between the crises, too.

“Only when the UK government woke up to the fact that the straight population would be at risk [from AIDS] did they actually finally speed up their response to the threat of the crisis,” says Lisa Power, a co-founder of Britain’s foremost LGBT lobby group, Stonewall, and an adviser on “It’s A Sin.”

“One of the reasons there has been such an immediate response to Covid is because it affects the general population. It is far more random than HIV in who it infects,” she says. “Everyone has a grandmother. But not everyone had a gay friend back then, and not everyone has a gay friend now.”

AIDS response hindered by homophobia

Thompson says that the lack of urgency in responding to the AIDS crisis occurred largely because “the bodies that were the most affected were the bodies that weren’t valued.”

HIV and AIDS campaigners in the UK say that the fact the response to coronavirus has been significantly more timely than the reaction to AIDS comes down to widespread homophobia and a societal and political disregard for marginalized groups.

“ACT UP and Larry Kramer used to refer to AIDS as a genocide by neglect,” says Ben Weil, an activist and PHD researcher on the exclusion of gay men from blood donation programs at UCL’s department of science and technology in London. “Covid is a genocide of the clinically vulnerable and disabled by neglect.”
Power says the press in the 1980s and 1990s fostered a culture of shame around HIV and AIDS, while the (mistaken) belief that heterosexuals were not at risk encouraged a lackluster reaction on the part of the UK and US governments, led at the time by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.

“The press, and the tabloid newspapers in particular, were essentially saying that this disease would only affect gay people and ‘junkies’ [intravenous drug addicts] and it wasn’t something to worry about because they don’t matter,” Power says.

Weil agrees that the media — on both sides of the Atlantic — has played a key role in influencing the seriousness and speed with which the two diseases were approached. “When 100,000 people died of Covid in the US, it was the front page of The New York Times, but it took a number of years and many AIDS-related deaths for them to make the AIDS crisis a leading story,” Weil says.
He argues that the fundamental difference between the responses to AIDS and to Covid-19 has turned on who society in general, and particularly those in power, believe deserve protection. “All risk is political,” says Weil. In the early stages of the AIDS crisis, gay people were seen as not worthy of priority. In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, many nations were slow to respond to the threat at residential facilities for the elderly, with devastating consequences.

For those who have lived through both crises — particularly those who remain part of the battle against the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS, the huge contrast in responses, highlighted by “It’s a Sin,” is telling — but it is the similarities, and the repetition of past grave mistakes, that worry them most.

It is a strange time to watch “It’s a Sin,” says Thompson. It is simultaneously an “emotional, occasionally triggering watch and a fun one,” he says. The series — met with wildly enthusiastic reviews in the UK since its launch in January — will stream on HBO Max in the US from February 18. (CNN and HBO share the same parent company, WarnerMedia.)

Throughout the series, there is exuberance and euphoria shared between members of the LGBTQ+ community as they navigate their late teens and early twenties at raucous house parties and what Thompson describes as “grimy little pubs where the dancefloor lay next to the bar.”

Yet where there is unabashed pleasure and delight to be found in “It’s a Sin,” there is also grief as the shadow of AIDS that hangs over the first episode gradually envelops the characters.

The series has prompted one positive and perhaps unexpected public health benefit: Activists in the UK have used its success as a launchpad for new campaigns around the importance of HIV testing and the efficacy of treatment. The show’s enthusiastic cast of young gay actors have rammed home that message in TV interviews and social media posts.

Still, much like AIDS, Covid-19 has robbed us of collective joy and suddenly forced us to confront trauma and death on a daily basis — and as the parallels between the two epidemics don’t stop there, with some key lessons of the past remaining unlearned, HIV and AIDS activists are experiencing a sense of déjà vu.



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World

One Case, Total Lockdown: Australia’s Lessons for a Pandemic World

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SYDNEY, Australia — One case. One young security guard at a quarantine hotel who tested positive for the coronavirus and experienced minor symptoms.

That was all it took for Perth, Australia’s fourth-largest city, to snap into a complete lockdown on Sunday. One case and now two million people are staying home for at least the next five days. One case and now the top state leader, Mark McGowan, who is facing an election next month, is calling on his constituents to sacrifice for each other and the nation.

“This is a very serious situation,” he said on Sunday as he reported the case, the first one the state of Western Australia had found outside quarantine in almost 10 months. “Each and every one of us has to do everything we personally can to stop the spread in the community.”

The speed and severity of the response may be unthinkable to people in the United States or Europe, where far larger outbreaks have often been met with half measures. But to Australians, it looked familiar.

The lockdown in Perth and the surrounding area followed similar efforts in Brisbane and Sydney, where a handful of infections led to steep ramp-ups in restrictions, a subdued virus and a rapid return to near normalcy. Ask Australians about the approach, and they might just shrug. Instead of loneliness and grief or outcries over impingements on their freedom, they’ve gotten used to a Covid routine of short-term pain for collective gain.

The contrast with the United States and Europe — sharp at the start of the pandemic — has become even more marked with time. Fewer Australians have died in total (909) than the average number of deaths every day now in Britain and the United States.

“We have a way to save lives, open up our economies and avoid all this fear and hassle,” said Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland who developed a multilayered, or “Swiss cheese,” model of pandemic defense that has been widely circulated. “Everyone can learn from us, but not all are willing to learn.”

Australia is just one of several success stories in the Asia-Pacific. The region’s middle powers, including New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, are essentially getting better at managing the virus while the great powers of the World War II era are getting worse.

The center of confidence, if not gravity, continues to shift east, especially as China roars back to life. With successful public health, some argue, comes not just wealth and more stable economies but also national pride and the practical expertise that mutating viruses demand.

“I’m not sure we’re being looked at with enough interest,” Dr. Mackay said.

Australia’s geographic isolation offers it one great advantage. Still, it has taken a number of decisive steps. Australia has strictly limited interstate travel while mandating hotel quarantine for international arrivals since last March. Britain and the United States are only now seeking to make quarantine mandatory for people coming from Covid hot spots.

Australia has also maintained a strong system of contact tracing, even as other countries have essentially given up. In the Perth case, contact tracers had already tested the man’s housemates (negative so far) by the time the lockdown was announced and placed them under 14-day quarantine at a state-run facility. The authorities also listed more than a dozen locations where the security guard might have touched or breathed on someone.

Australia’s fight against the coronavirus has not been flawless. The case in Perth illustrates a persistent soft spot — a number of outbreaks have been linked to hotel quarantine, including one in Melbourne late last year that led to a 111-day lockdown. The strict border rules have caused hardship for many people, including thousands of Australians stranded overseas.

But the evidence of the country’s success has been building for months, and it’s been shaped since December less by a complete absence of the virus than by a series of rapid responses that have quashed small outbreaks.

Before Christmas, it was Sydney’s northern beaches, which were locked down as a few, then a few dozen, cases emerged. Holiday plans were ruined, as anyone from greater Sydney was barred from traveling to other states. Testing surged. There were few complaints, and it worked: The city of five million has gone two weeks without a case of community transmission.

Brisbane followed suit in early January with a brief lockdown after a cleaner in its hotel quarantine system became infected with a highly contagious variant of the virus first identified in Britain. It was the mutation’s first known appearance in the community in Australia, and officials moved quickly. Annastacia Palaszczuk, the top official in Queensland, which includes Brisbane, announced the lockdown 16 hours after the positive test.

“Doing three days now could avoid doing 30 days in the future,” she said.

Brisbane is now back to Covid-normal, like all of Australia beyond Perth. Across the country, offices and restaurants are open, with rules mandating physical spacing. Masks are recommended but not required. And large gatherings are in the works: The Australian Open, after facing a series of challenges from infected arrivals, expects to seat 30,000 tennis fans a day when it begins on Feb. 8.

Dr. Mackay, who has worked closely with Australian government officials, called it “the hammer and the dance.”

“The lockdowns give everyone in contact tracing and public health a chance to catch their breath, to make sure they interview everyone, that no one forgets then remembers something — and that lets them really stop transmission,” he said.

Europe and the United States seem to prefer, in his words, “the half-baked lockdown.” He said that they put too much faith in the vaccines, failing to recognize that their impact on transmission would be glacial, not instant.

Much of Europe in particular points to fatigue, then failure. An analysis of 98 countries’ responses to the pandemic by the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, found that many European nations topped the Covid performance rankings a few months ago. Britain, France and a few others are now closer to the bottom, along with the United States.

“They didn’t go far enough,” said Hervé Lemahieu, a Lowy research fellow originally from Belgium who led the study with Alyssa Leng. “When they did make gains, they relaxed too soon.”

As of Monday afternoon, no other infections had been found in Western Australia. Inside the shuttered area, residents quickly adapted. Masks purchased months ago were put to use. Workers in nursing homes called the families of every resident to go over protocols.

Allan Thompson, an investment banker in Perth, said he was one of many racing back to their houses on Sunday to do their part.

“You know that John Prine song — ‘It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown,’” he said. “To paraphrase that, we’re only in a half inch of water, and we don’t think we’re going to drown. We think we’re going to get on top of this. We know that good comes from doing the right things for the right amount of time.”

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