LIfe in a Chinese Covid quarantine camp

I spent 10 days in a secret Chinese Covid detention centre | Financial Times - Thomas Hale:

November 2, 2022 - "The call came from a number I did not recognise. 'You need to quarantine,' a man on the other end of the line said in Mandarin. He was calling from the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 'I’ll come and get you in about four or five hours.' I dashed out of my hotel to stock up on crucial supplies.... Four to five hours later, I received another phone call. This time it was a woman from the hotel’s staff. 'You are a close contact,' she said. 'You can’t go outside.' 'Am I the only close contact in the hotel?' I was, she told me and added 'the hotel is closed', meaning locked down. I went to the door of my room and opened it. A member of staff was standing there. We both jumped....

"The men in hazmat suits arrived a little later. First, they administered a PCR test with the same rushed weariness of the man who had called me earlier. Then, one escorted me down the deserted hallway. We passed the lifts, which were blocked off and guarded, and took the staff elevator. Outside, the entrance was also cordoned off. A hotel with hundreds of rooms had been frozen for me alone. In the empty street, a bus was idling. It was small, a vehicle for school trips or large families, maybe. We drove off.... It is a curious experience, as an adult, to be driven somewhere without having any idea of the destination.... 

"Eventually, we came to a stop on a small road in the middle of a field. The driver was instructed, over walkie-talkie, to keep going. But this was impossible because there were several full-sized coaches in front of us, and small crowds of people wandered around in the darkness. 'I can’t drive, he barked into his handset and proceeded to get out, lock the bus behind him and wander off into the night.... The queue of buses slowly disappeared into what looked like a brightly lit gate at the end of the road.... We waited. None of us — not me, not the other passengers, not our driver — had tested positive for Covid-19.

"Around 2 am, our driver climbed back on board.... We continued deeper inside China’s quarantine apparatus, the kind of place that finds you, rather than the other way around. It is part of a system scarcely conceived of or understood by the outside world, one defined almost in opposition to it. It is a system that seeks to eliminate rather than cohabit with coronavirus, one in which an unknown number of people are detained.... That approach, known as 'zero Covid', is one of maximal suppression of the virus. It employs contact tracing, constant testing, border quarantine and lockdowns in order to stop community transmission of the virus as soon as a case is detected. It is aggressive and could only really exist in the long-run in an autocratic society with the mechanisms for mass surveillance already in place. There is no end in sight to the policy, despite China’s vaccination rate of about 90 per cent.... It is, above all, another kind of bureaucracy, with a vast workforce behind it....

"When the bus finally reached its destination many hours later, we quietly disembarked. Each of us was asked to confirm our presence on the 'name list', [and] ... each assigned a room number.... The facility consisted of neat rows of what might be described as cabins, each one a shipping container-like box, sitting on short stilts above the ground.... It was hard to tell how many cabins there were in all. Fluorescent outdoor lighting flickered above, and a camera was positioned with a view of every door. Neither was ever turned off.... 'There’s no hot water,' someone shouted. Somewhere a woman wailed, and it occurred to me there were no children here.... 

"China’s Omicron nightmare: ‘Quarantine in metal boxes under zero-COVID policy," Hindustan Times, Jan. 13, 2022

"Inside my 196-sq-ft cabin there were two single beds, a kettle, an air-conditioning unit, a desk, a chair, a bowl, two small cloths, one bar of soap, an unopened duvet, a small pillow, a toothbrush, one tube of toothpaste and a roll-up mattress roughly the thickness of an oven glove. The floor was covered in dust and grime. The whole place shook when you walked around, which I soon stopped noticing. The window was barred, though you could still lean out. There was no shower.... 

"The daily rhythm went as follows. Early in the morning, we awoke to a lawnmower-like noise, which was in fact an industrial-grade disinfectant machine spraying our windows and front steps. Meals were provided at 8am, noon and 5pm. Around 9am, two nurses in blue hazmat suits came by to administer PCR tests.... I kept to a strict personal routine ... interspersed with constant cleaning to keep the dust at bay.... Any discomfort was secondary to the psychological impact of uncertainty. Although I was told on arrival my stay would be seven days, it would in fact be 10.... After a while, all my other problems dissolved and I thought only of getting out....

"It is easier to climb up to heaven than to discern the inner workings of the name lists.... In order to get your name on the one that allows you to leave, you need to be on the so-called double test list a day earlier. If you are, nurses take a sample from your nose and mouth and then do the same for the other nostril. I lobbied extensively to be on this list, but nothing could be confirmed until the day itself. When the nurses came, they also tested the floor, my bag, my mobile phone and the remote control for the air-conditioning unit. All of them, like the dozen or so tests I had taken in the previous two weeks, were negative. Eventually, my code turned green....

"Back in my hotel, the hot water was hot and the mattress soft. The number on the scales in the bathroom was lower. It was the right time for a celebratory meal. But any restaurant would require me to scan my QR code, risking a repeat of the whole affair. I spent some time pacing back and forth in the street, struggling to decide what to do."

Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/77622627-9433-445a-a763-a547b77b58ed

U.S. CDC overhauls Covid-19 guidelines

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control have drastically revised their COVID19 guidelines, dropping quarantine, mass testing, and  "Test to stay" in schools, and no longer discriminating between vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans.

CDC ends recommendations for social distancing and quarantine for Covid-19 control, no longer recommends test-to-stay in school | CNN - Brenda Goodman & Elizabeth Cohen:

August 11, 2022- "The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] says the nation should move away from restrictive measures such as quarantines and social distancing and focus on reducing severe disease from Covid-19. In new guidelines released Thursday, the agency no longer recommends staying at least 6 feet away from other people to reduce the risk of exposure -- a shift from guidance that had been in place since the early days of the pandemic....

"'The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years,' Greta Massetti, who leads the Field Epidemiology and Prevention Branch at the CDC, said Thursday. 'High levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection and the many available tools to protect the general population, and protect people at higher risk, allow us to focus on protecting people from serious illness from Covid-19.'

"The new CDC guidelines say contact tracing, another hallmark during the pandemic, should be limited to hospitals and certain high-risk group-living situations such as nursing homes, and the guidelines de-emphasize the use of regular testing to screen for Covid-19.... The new guidance also does not advise quarantining people who've been exposed to Covid-19 but are not infected.... 

"The changes are an acknowledgment that SARS-CoV-2 may be with us for the long haul. They aim to help people live their lives around Covid-19 with minimal disruptions to work and school. They are also more risk-based, advising people who are at higher risk for severe illness to take more personal precautions than others. 'I think they just overall come into alignment with what people are doing anyway,' says Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California at San Francisco.... He sees it as a move by the CDC to try to regain the public's trust. A recent survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that most Americans (54%) are no longer masking indoors, and about 4 in 10 say they've fully returned to their pre-pandemic routines -- up from 16% in January.... 

"The agency also puts more emphasis on improving ventilation. Aerosol scientists have long complained that the 6-foot social distancing guidance was arbitrary and unhelpful because the virus that causes Covid-19 can float through the air for greater distances.... In addition to vaccination, the CDC urges additional measures for people with suppressed immune function, including the use of Evusheld, a kind of passive immunity that's given before a person gets sick. It's especially helpful for people who can't mount an immune response, and experts say it has been underutilized in this country....

"The agency removed the recommendation that kids in different classrooms avoid mixing, a practice known as cohorting. It also removed advice that kids who are contacts of someone who tested positive for Covid-19 take regular tests – and test negative – to remain in the classroom, which was known as test-to-stay.... Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation's largest teachers unions, said the new guidelines were welcome news for schools."
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/11/health/cdc-covid-guidance-update/index.html

CDC Quietly Ends Differentiation on Covid Vaccination Status | Brownstone Institute - Michael Senger: 

August 12, 2002 - Today, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly ended its policy of differentiating within COVID-19 prevention guidance between those who have received Covid vaccines and those who have not.... As explained by the CDC’s Greta Massetti, lead author of the new guidance: "Both prior infection and vaccination confer some protection against severe illness, and so it really makes the most sense to not differentiate with our guidance or our recommendations based on vaccination status at this time.'"
Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/cdc-quietly-ends-differentiation-on-covid-vaccination-status/

NY judge throws out state's new quarantine rules

Judge rules proposed isolation rules are unconstitutional | Observer Today - John Whittaker, Post-Journal: 

July 9, 2022 - "A state Supreme Court justice has ruled the state’s proposed new isolation and quarantine rules violate the state constitution and merely give “lip service” to constitutional due process. The state Health Department had originally proposed the new rules in late 2021 as part of an administrative rulemaking. In addition to Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mary Bassett, state health commissioner, the state Health Department and the state Public Health and Health Planning Council are named in the lawsuit filed by state Sen. George Borrello, two Republican state Assembly members and NYS United.

"Oral arguments were held in May in the courtroom of state Supreme Court Justice Ronald Ploetz in Cattaraugus County. Ploetz issued his decision late Friday, ruling the proposed rules as violating the state constitution until the state Legislature acts to change the law.

"Among the changes being fought is a new section of the state health law spelling out new isolation and quarantine procedures. Isolation and quarantine orders would include home isolation or other residential or temporary housing location that the public health authority issuing the order deems appropriate, including a hospital if necessary but including apartments, hotels or motels.... Also spelled out is authority for public health bodies to monitor people to make sure they are complying with an isolation or quarantine order.... Any person who violates a public health order shall be subject to all civil and criminal penalties as provided for by law. For purposes of civil penalties, each day the order is violated is a separate violation.

"Borrello and his fellow plaintiffs had argued the Health Department’s proposed rules violated due process rights for those being involuntarily confined, particularly when compared to existing state Public Health Law used throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, and Assemblyman Joe Giglio, R-Gowanda, laid out similar concerns in an amicus curie, or friends of the court, brief that the state’s attorneys tried to have withheld.... Much of the legal reasoning Ploetz relied upon for his decision came from the brief filed by Goodell and Giglio.

"Deciding whether an administrative agency is overstepping its legal authority is based upon the New York court case Boreali v. Axelrod, which lays out a four-point test for judges to use to weigh administrative rules. The state, in the view of Ploetz, failed three of the four Boreali tests.... Ploetz ruled [that] the proposed administrative rules disregarded any balance of individual rights against the needs of public safety rules, that the Health Department had not just filled in details of a broad legislative policy but used a blank slate to write its own rules, and that the Health Department had not used any special expertise or competence in the field to develop its proposed rules.... 'Respondents offered no scientific data or expert testimony why Rule 2.13 was a necessary response to combat Covid-19,but instead contend only that it would provide a quick and nimble approach to combatting the pandemic,' Ploetz wrote.... 

"Chief among the complaints raised in Borrello’s lawsuit and Goodell’s amicus brief was lack of due process considerations given to those who would be involuntarily confined due to an infectious disease.... Existing law allowing involuntary detention or hospitalization triggers the right to counsel and a hearing before an independent magistrate before an involuntary isolation order is granted. The state’s proposed rules gave the state Health Commissioner broad discretion to issue a quarantine or isolation, even if there was no evidence a person was infected or a carrier of disease, and allowed the commissioner to set the length, terms and location of detention, not an independent magistrate as required in Section 2120 of the state Public Health Law. And the state’s proposed rules also extended enforcement to local law enforcement, something not included in current law and a point debated early during the COVID-19 pandemic among local police officials when former Gov. Andrew Cuomo said local law enforcement had such authority.

The Health Department rules say those who would be quarantined involuntarily would have due process, but Ploetz was not convinced.

"'Involuntary detention is a severe deprivation of individual liberty, ... Ploetz wrote. 'Involuntary quarantine may have far reaching consequences such as loss of income (or employment) and isolation from family. While Rule 2.13 provides that isolation and quarantine must be done "consistent with due process of law” and the detainee has the right to seek a judicial review and the right to counsel, these protections are after-the-fact, and would force the detainee to exercise these rights at a time when he or she is already detained, possibly isolated from home and family, and in a situation where it might be difficult to obtain legal counsel in a timely manner. Rule 2.13 merely gives "lip service" to Constitutional due process.'"

Read more: https://www.observertoday.com/news/local-region/2022/07/judge-rules-proposed-isolation-rules-are-unconstitutional/

Inside an Australian Covid internment camp

Inside Australia’s Covid internment camp | UnHerd News:

December 2, 2021 - "Hayley Hodgson, 26, moved to Darwin from Melbourne to escape the never-ending lockdowns — only to find herself locked up in a Covid Internment Camp without even having the virus. She’s just returned from a 14-day detention at Howard Springs, the 2000-capacity Covid camp outside Darwin to which regional Covid cases are transported by the authorities. In an exclusive interview with Freddie Sayers, she recounted her experiences.

"It all began when a friend of hers tested positive. She recounts how investigators came to her home shortly afterwards, having run the numberplate of her scooter to identify her as a ‘close contact’. They asked if she had done a Covid test, and in the moment she lied and said she had, when she in fact had not yet. This set in train an extraordinary series of events.

"'So then the police officers blocked my driveway,' she says. 'I walked out and I said, “what’s going on, are you guys testing me for COVID? What’s happening?” They said, “no, you’re getting taken away. And you have no choice..… I just said, “I don’t consent to this. I don’t understand why I can’t just self-isolate at home, like a lot of other people are doing.” And they just said, “we’ve just been told from higher up where to take you. And that’s all that there is.”'

"She was ordered to pack a bag and was told that she could be released once she tested negative. Collected in the back of a rented van, she was then transported to Howard Springs. On arrival, she was told that she would have to stay there for the full 14 days.... She was tested three times during the 14 days, and on each occasion tested negative.

"At one stage she was disciplined for leaving the confines of her cabin without a mask and was threatened with a $5000 AUD fine. On another occasion, she told how she was offered Valium to calm her down.

You feel like you’re in prison. You feel like you’ve done something wrong, it’s inhumane what they’re doing. You are so small, they just overpower you. And you’re literally nothing. It’s like ‘you do what we say, or you’re in trouble, we’ll lock you up for longer’. Yeah, they were even threatening me that if I was to do this again, 'we will extend your time in here'.... 

"What Hayley is still not certain about is whether her sentence at Howard Springs was punitive and related to her original mistake about the test — that is the impression she got from one call with the Australian Centre for Disease Control. She has since lost her job at a store, which was on a casual basis. At no stage was she reminded of her rights or put in contact with a lawyer.

"This has all taken place in a state that has recorded a total of 290 cases and no deaths ... but ... has not shied away from highly draconian measures. Just last month, Katherine Town in the state went into a snap lockdown after three cases were reported. The state’s Howard Springs centre has ... served as a model for quarantine camps elsewhere in the country, with the Australian Government partnering with state governments to deliver ‘Centres for National Resilience’ in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. These are all expected to be completed in the next 6 months."

Read more: https://unherd.com/thepost/inside-australias-covid-internment-camp/

"Chaos" at Canadian quarantine hotels

February 27, 2021 - In the first weekend following the Canadian government's rollout of its controversial hotel quarantines for people flying into Canada, Canadian media were awash with reports of a system in "chaos." Travellers are reporting: 

• having to wait for hours, and often being disconnected, when trying to book hotel rooms through the Public Health Agency phone lines (mandatory for re-entering the country); 
• having to wait for hours in hotel lobbies surrounded by other travellers (all suspected of being contagious) before getting a room;
• being deprived of food, in some cases for more than 24 hours; 
• themselves and other travellers (again, all suspected of being contagious) leaving their rooms,  due to the above problems.

Lockdowns and libertarianism (1)

by George J. Dance

In October, just as in March, a wave of coronavirus swept through Europe, followed predictably by a new wave of media and public panic leading to lockdowns. One by one, like dominoes, democratic governments in Europe – Ireland, Czechia, Spain, Poland, Italy, France, Germany, and finally the UK –fell to the latter wave, with only a few  (notably Norway and Sweden)  managing to resist being swept under by it. 

Unlike March, though, when the voice of panic was all that one heard, this time some dissenting voices managed to make themselves heard as well. This time, even the mainstream media has had to take note of: 

an increasingly heated [public] debate between two unlikely groupings of scientists, columnists, campaigners and politicians.
On one side there are the lockdowners. They think the only hope of triumphing over Covid-19 is shutdowns to bring numbers of cases back under control. Pubs and restaurants may have to close and households once again may be told not to mix.
On the other are the libertarians. They say we cannot return to those days because it would trigger an economic collapse and allow thousands of untreated cases of cancer, heart ailments and other diseases to mount. Tens of thousands might die, they say. (stress added).

"Each side points to different nations that have had greater success than Britain in fighting Covid-19, albeit with very different policies," the news story continues. "Each has attracted its own set of cheerleaders, politicians and journalists, as well as scientists who have also adopted strong contrasting stances." Some of the scientists have even produced duelling manifestos: for the libertarians, the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), which advocates for "allow[ing] those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally;" for the lockdowners the John Snow Memorandum, which calls that very idea "a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence." 

Some people dislike those terms. On the lockdowner side, for instance, economist Tyler Cowen insists that "the emphasis on lockdowns is a strawman," on the grounds that current U.S. lockdowns "are not severe," with relatively few activities on the prohibited list (though he quickly adds that "that list should be expanded"). On the libertarian side, epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta (a co-author of GBD) objects that her politics are Left-leaning, and that she disagrees with libertarians "about the distribution of wealth, about the importance of the Welfare State, about the need for publicly owned utilities and government investment in nationalised industries." 

Since Prof. Gupta has been vilified as a "right wing libertarian extremist" (and even a minion of Charles Koch), one must emphasize the point she is making. Many if not most lockdown opponents are not  libertarians on other issues, and philosophically many are not libertarians at all. (Perhaps 'Covid libertarians' would be a better term.) Still, the key recommendation of GBD – "Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal" while "People who are more at risk may participate if they wish" – is the libertarian position on lockdowns, and its supporters (like it or not) are libertarians on this particular issue. 

Libertarians believe in individual human rights, which limit what any person or group (including a government) may do to a person. Though 'liberty' gets most of the attention, those human rights include rights to life, liberty, and property. Calling those 'rights' simply means that harming another's life (by killing, maiming, or raping), liberty (by enslaving or confining) or property (by taking or vandalizing) is a wrongful act that should be prohibited. 

Lockdowns involve various measures to restrict people's movements and actions: by preventing them crossing a city or state boundary, or travelling only a few miles, or even leaving their own homes; from using the public streets or sidewalks; from working or shopping, by closing businesses; and from meeting with small groups of people (in the extreme case, from meeting with any people). All of those measures are compulsory mandates, enforced by coercion  – by the police power. They violate rights to property (ask the bankrupt businessmen) and liberty (our normal rights to work, travel, shop, dine out, visit friends)  – and, as GBD emphasizes, they do not respect our right to life, either. Lockdowns kill.

Libertarians cannot reject lockdowns merely because they are coercive, though, because libertarians do not reject coercion per se. Almost all libertarians (pacifists being the major exception) would allow coercion to prevent people from violating others' rights; which justifies some use of police power in a pandemic. As libertarian philosophy professor Jeffrey Huemer (quoted by Amitai Etzioni in the National Interest) puts it, "“Preventing the spread of infectious disease is within the legitimate functions of the minimal state, which most libertarians accept.” 

Some libertarians try to argue in good faith from that position to lockdowns. A typical argument goes like something like this: 

1. Governments may use coercion to stop any person from violating another person's rights.
2. For person A to give another person B a potentially deadly disease is a violation of person B's right to life. 
3. Therefore, a government may use coercion to prevent person A from giving Covid-19 to person B.

The argument is sound. But it is not an argument for lockdowns. It is an argument for quarantining someone who is known to be (or at least can be reasonably suspected of) giving others Covid; that is, for quarantining the contagious. Quarantine is a power that can be misused; but as per the above argument a libertarian can accept that there is a police power to quarantine. Like all government powers, it should be used as a last resort, if consent cannot be procured, and the quarantined person should have full procedural rights (to testing and a medical examination, for instance). 

The argument's conclusion, though, cannot be stretched into an argument for 'quarantining' the entire 'non-essential' population, because most of that population is not contagious. As many as 90% of Americans have never had Covid-19. 60% of those who have had the disease no longer have it. And 90% of those who do test positive for it play virtually no role in spreading it. None of these people poses a danger to anyone's right to life. The comparative few who do pose a danger, on the other hand, can just as easily be among the 'essential,' still active in the community, as among the segregated 'non-essential.' As uses of the police power to quarantine, lockdowns are both overly broad – as they are used to coerce contagious and non-contagious, innocent and culpable, alike – and also not broad enough, as they fail to quarantine all the culpable. 

Another libertarian philosophy professor quoted by Etzioni, Dan Moller, argues that "What's weird about a pandemic is that our everyday behavior suddenly puts others at risk  – just showing up to work can have huge negative externalities. So libertarians see restrictions on individual liberty in a pandemic as akin to restrictions on pollution." It is instructive to examine the analogy. Governments can and will restrict a known polluter, if they have clear evidence that the company is polluting, and that the pollution is harming someone's health (and therefore violating that person's right to life). They have never claimed the power to shut down all the 'non-essential' businesses, on the grounds that some of them are polluting and they cannot tell which ones are and which ones are not. Yet that is the power being claimed to justify lockdowns.    

Etzioni also quotes the old libertarian chestnut, "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins," variants of which he tells us were famously said by Abraham Lincoln, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (The above quote is Lincoln's version.) That is indeed a good libertarian statement, which draws the boundary between competing rights quite well. But, once again, it is not a statement that justifies lockdowns. The latter would be something like: 

In order to save noses, everyone must be handcuffed in the back so they cannot swing their fists (except, of course, when we think it is essential that you be allowed to swing your fist). What, you don't want to wear the handcuffs? Why do you want to give your Granny a bloody nose?

Now, that sounds like what a lockdowner would say. As for me, though, I'll stick with how Lincoln and Mill put it. 

Also read: Lockdowns and libertarianism (2)

How Iceland beat the coronavirus (for now)

 How Iceland Beat the Coronavirus | The New Yorker - Elizabeth Kolbert:

June 1, 2020 - "On the morning of Friday, February 28th, Ævar Pálmi Pálmason, a detective with the Reykjavík police department, was summoned by his boss. Iceland did not yet have a confirmed case of covid-19, but the country’s Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management wanted to be prepared....'We were just talking' ... Pálmason recalled. 'And then, two hours later, we got the call.' A man who’d recently been skiing in the Dolomites had become the country’s first known coronavirus patient....

"Anyone who’d spent more than fifteen minutes near the man in the days before he’d experienced his first symptoms was considered potentially infected. ('Near' was defined as within a radius of two metres, or just over six feet.) [Pálmason's] team came up with a list of fifty-six names. By midnight, all fifty-six contacts had been located and ordered to quarantine themselves for fourteen days.

"The first case was followed by three more cases, then by six, and then by an onslaught. By mid-March, confirmed covid cases in Iceland were increasing at a rate of sixty, seventy, even a hundred a day. As a proportion of the country’s population, this was far faster than the rate at which cases in the United States were growing. The number of people the tracing team was tracking down, meanwhile, was rising even more quickly.... All were sent into quarantine.... If you were returning to Iceland from overseas, you also got a call: put yourself in quarantine. At the same time, the country was aggressively testing for the virus — on a per-capita basis, at the highest rate in the world.

"Iceland never imposed a lockdown. Only a few types of businesses — night clubs and hair salons, for example — were ever ordered closed. Hardly anyone in Reykjavík wears a mask. And yet, by mid-May, when I went to talk to Pálmason, the tracing team had almost no one left to track. During the previous week, in all of Iceland, only two new coronavirus cases had been confirmed. The country hadn’t just managed to flatten the curve; it had, it seemed, virtually eliminated it....

"Iceland, which has three hundred and sixty-five thousand residents — about half the population of Denver — is a famously tight-knit country. Almost everyone, quite literally, is related to everyone else, and if two people want to know how exactly their families are intertwined they can consult a genealogy database run by an Icelandic biotech firm called deCODE Genetics. Iceland was able to test so many people because, at the height of the outbreak, deCODE turned its state-of-the-art facilities over to screening for the virus.... Iceland’s university hospital was already testing people who had symptoms of covid-19. But by testing people who had no symptoms, or only very mild ones, deCODE picked up many cases that otherwise would have been missed. These cases, too, were referred to the tracing team. By May 17th, Iceland had tested 15.5 per cent of its population for the virus. In the U.S., the figure was 3.4 per cent.

"Meanwhile, deCODE was also sequencing the virus from every Icelander whose test had come back positive. As the virus is passed from person to person, it picks up random mutations. By analyzing these, geneticists can map the disease’s spread.... By sequencing the virus from every person infected, researchers at deCODE could also make inferences about how it had spread. 'One of the very interesting things is that, in all our data, there are only two examples where a child infected a parent,' [deCODE head Kári] Stefánsson told me. 'But there are lots of examples where parents infected children.'

"[W]hen I asked Stefánsson about the Icelandic government’s response to covid-19, he had only kind words. 'This was done in an extremely balanced way,' he said at one point. 'And I think the authorities did pretty much everything right.' At another point, he told me, 'The remarkable thing in this whole affair is that in Iceland it has been run entirely by the public-health authorities. They came up with the plan, and they just instituted it. And we were fortunate that our politicians managed to control themselves.'"

Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/how-iceland-beat-the-coronavirus