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Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
@JeremyKonyndyk
Dec 29, 2023 • 12 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Haven't weighed in on COVID much lately but I'm seeing this video in my feed quite a bit today and I'm rankled. So for old time's sake:

This is a careless and misinformed reply by Collins that buys into the lazy "closed vs open" binary framing preferred by the Barrington crowd.
Did "public health" shut down rural Minnesota to save urban NYC? No.

Early on when virtually nothing was known about a disease that was massively flooding ERs (& morgues) around the world, US states implemented stay-at-home guidance for a few months to protect their hospitals.
Governors made those decisions, and they did weigh econ & other factors alongside.

Turns out it's not good economics for a hospital system to collapse!

And there was no reason to assume that what was hitting big cities wouldn't ultimately hit rural areas too.
BTW rural communities in 2020 had similar COVID death rates to urban metros.

Lower than huge cities, higher than other metro areas, and higher than the overall national average.

So applying precautions to rural areas was wise. cdc.gov/nchs/products/…
Image
By early May 2020, the CDC (public health!) had prepared detailed guidance for risk-based, phased re-opening of schools, business, day cares, etc. Not a simple open/closed binary.

The White House spiked it. Trump wanted a full re-opening.
apnews.com/article/virus-…
This led to total incoherence between state and federal levels amidst a 2x+ summer surge in infections.

So as schools had to make decisions about opening for fall, cases were exploding. In December, they were 3x+ higher. Hard choice for parents/teachers.
There was plenty of debate at the time about trade-offs. CDC actually did issue guidance on safely re-opening schools - which Trump then trashed publicly.

Rather than attempt to support and resource safe re-opening, he just pushed a return to normal ops.
cnn.com/2020/07/08/pol…
The choice didn't have to be open vs closed: it could have been to invest in safely reopening schools (more testing, enhanced support to schools, etc etc). I wrote about this at the time:




Not going to further relitigate the schools debate here but the essential point is: these were not binary options.

Public health guidance sought to manage risk in order to reopen in a safe & incremental way.

Trump rejected that, and pushed a false binary choice.
So Collins gets the history wrong and the public health wrong. It was not "public health" pushing the choice between open vs closed, it was Trump.

"Public health" was trying to reconcile COVID precautions with restarting schools, biz, etc - and that guidance was shot down.
It's easy to second-guess hard decisions made in the fog-of-crisis period when stakes are high and good info is scarce. And plenty we should learn.

But don't rewrite history in the process...
There is a concerted disinfo effort on the right to undermine "public health" by blaming it for all COVID-related grievances and airbrushing what Trump and other pols actually did.

Collins' answer naively plays into that. Unfortunate.

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More from @JeremyKonyndyk

Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Nov 12
Today we @RefugeesIntl joined 7 other humanitarian agencies to publish a scorecard on Israel's compliance with US demands on humanitarian access.

Across the board, the Israeli govt has failed to comply with US & intl law on relief in Gaza. It is past time to halt arms xfers. Image
Last month, Secretaries Blinken and Austin wrote to the Israeli defense minister outlining a detailed series of demands for humanitarian progress in Gaza.

The letter reminded Israel that under US law, countries that block US aid are ineligible for security assistance.
The letter set a 30-day deadline for Israel to comply. That expired today.

Our joint report assesses Israel's compliance across every metric we could measure.

Unsurprisingly, given the pattern of willful obstruction over the past year, Netanyahu's govt fully complied with NONE. Image
Image
Read 7 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Sep 21
Blockbuster report on widening UAE support for the genocidal RSF militia in Sudan.

Also confirms what @RefugeesIntl has called out for a year: UAE is using Red Crescent (@emiratesrc) as humanitarian cover for military ops.

As UNGA convenes in NYC, this demands urgent action.🧵
What's at stake here? Quite literally genocide.

The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed militias that committed genocide in Darfur 20 years ago.

Now rebranded, the same forces are resorting to the same tactics. We documented some of their atrocities last fall. refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs…

Image
Image
The RSF's systematic atrocities across Darfur are fueled by direct support & involvement of the UAE.

As the article (and several previous reports) make clear, the UAE has sent huge volumes of arms to the RSF since last year. And has now branched out to providing drone support.
Read 11 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Sep 12
New from us at @RefugeesIntl on famine in Gaza. Key takeaways:

- Parts of Gaza saw famine-like conditions in Feb/March
- Israeli concessions on aid access after ICJ order & WCK strike moved Gaza tenuously back below famine threshold
- Hunger worsening again since Rafah offensive
Since spring there has been a concerted pushback by the Israeli government seeking to cast doubt on the official famine analysis by @theIPCinfo.

Basic argument is that spring famine projections were overblown and therefore risks of future famine should be discounted.
Untangling the reality is important.

A lot of lives are at stake in a sustained famine in Gaza.

And that has major diplomatic and legal implications. The question of responsibility for the humanitarian crisis is key to ICJ & ICC cases, and the UK's recent halt to arms xfers.
Read 17 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Aug 12
Striking wording in this carefully-worded statement.

An "embargo" generally means a total ban on arms transfers. Opposing an "arms embargo" leaves the door pretty open to restrictions short of a full embargo.
The main thrust of advocacy on arms transfers Israel has not been a full embargo - it has focused on restricting things like 2000lb bombs and 155mm shells that are causing enormous civilian harm in Gaza.
So in effect this says she's opposed to a totally maximalist position - which could be read to suggest she's open to restrictions that fall short of that.
Read 5 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Jul 12
The pier was an expensive, shiny-object solution to a fundamentally political problem: Bibi was restricting aid access and Biden wouldn't deploy real leverage to change that.

The pier was a way to signal action on aid while avoiding the real obstacle.

🧵
This chart shows UN-verified aid & commercial inflows since October. The pier ("JLOTS") barely registers - just small slivers in May and July.
ochaopt.org/content/report…
Image
Vastly more impactful than the pier was the opening of the Erez West crossing into northern Gaza.

Netanyahu only agreed to this under intense US pressure following the World Central Kitchen attack...validating the premise that pressure delivers, while shiny objects don't. Image
Read 15 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Jun 17
Just back from a Gaza-focused trip to Egypt/Jordan/Israel.

Key takeaways 🧵:
- Aid push in March/April made progress against famine
- Rafah offensive then wiped out much of that progress
- Huge obstacles remain on access & last-mile distro
- Little progress on aid worker safety
.@JesCMarks and I conducted hours upon hours of extensive interviews with Palestinians who had fled Gaza and (remotely) with others still inside; with staff of aid agencies working in Gaza; with Israeli & Jordanian govts; and with USG humanitarian & diplomatic officials.
We heard credible firsthand accounts consistent with famine conditions in March/April.

But also that the uptick in food deliveries from late March thru April - following the @theIPCinfo famine analysis and ICJ order - then blunted the descent toward famine in the north.
Read 19 tweets

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