06 March 2020

Doomed from the Start

Last night, Time magazine published a really excellent piece (link here) titled "Doomed from the Start. Experts Say the Trump Administration’s Coronavirus Response Was Never Going to Work."

An excerpt: "Since January, epidemiologists, former U.S. public health officials and experts have been warning, publicly and privately, that the administration’s insistence that containment was—and should remain—the primary way to confront an emerging infectious disease was a grave mistake."

"The administration was using all its resources to blockade the doors, they warned, but the enemy was likely already in the house."

"When it finally became indisputable that an outbreak was underway in Washington state, the administration were slow to catch up. There were not enough COVID-19 testing kits, hotlines were overwhelmed, and hospitals and public health departments were hobbled by a lack of reliable statistics on the spread of the disease. Experts say the U.S. response is now likely weeks—if not months—behind schedule."

Countries like South Korea and even Italy, where people began to sicken weeks earlier than in America, have a much better handle on the coronovirus than the United States. We're about four to six weeks behind them in contamination spread, but it's now moving quite rapidly because people can be carriers for up to a week before they sicken.

In the last week, however, the number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. has increased five-fold and keeps spiking. Two weeks ago, only one or two new cases a day were reported and some days not at all. Now, the daily rate is climbing past fifty.

Trump is urging a medieval response to the crisis and then spreading ridiculous misinformation and lies. It's curious how he publicly panicked about ebola during the Obama administration when he was a private citizen, but now that he's President, he downplays a far more deadly and more contagious virus.

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