And the only reason IMO that this is worse than seasonal flu is that we don't have a vaccine to protect the must vulnerable people. THAT is why it is 10x more lethal than influenza. With a vaccine this would only be moderately more severe than seasonal flu assuming some idiots still refused to get vaccinated. In my experience, mammalian Corona virus vaccines are much more effective than influenza vaccines.
Read the NY Times article on why testing was limited. It wasn't some Presidential decree. It was entrenched policy and bureaucrats at the CDC and FDA. Our bureaucracy moves slowly.
I don't believe that the CDC had any hint that this was going to be a problem before Christmas. There was no way to predict this at that point IMO. From what I've read we were trying in early January to get information from China and they were refusing to share anything and were denying there was a problem.
I do not believe for one minute that there was anything any government could have done to prevent this from happening. Maybe we could have slowed it down IF we had completely shut down cruise and airline traffic in January, but it was here almost as soon as it became a problem in Wuhan. It was just a matter of time before it reached a critical mass of infections. Now the question is what can we do to try to slow it down to buy us time to maybe keep enough healthcare professionals healthy to care for the sick. A vaccine appears to be a pipe dream at this point but hopefully we get one by fall.
But a Presidential decree, along with quick action by the Congress, would have sped up this process.
To prevent it? No. But taking it as a possibility of becoming a serious problem we did not do.
It would have BUT they didn't know it was a problem. Even the Democrats weren't screaming about the testing lag until it was already in the process of being addressed. Face it, this caught the CDC with their pants down. They're too worried about tetracyclene causing antibiotic resistance in humans via cooked meat.
What could you do with the information we had? Hell most people that I talk to are still in denial and ignoring the threat. I know WAY too many 80 year olds who are going on as if nothing has changed.
Death rates from disease in the U.S are not the same as in China. Selfishly, my immediate risk is of highest concern to me.
Oldest population so far to be hit. In fact the 2nd oldest population in the world. The data has been clear...if you are older than 70 you have a 10-15% chance to die regardless of treatment, but you take a long time to die and need intubation, anesthesia, constant monitoring of lungs and oxygen levels. The federal government should be scrambling right now to stockpile and produce as many respirators as possible...help states come up with quarantine and treatment plans that get people out of the ICU at hospitals and create a set of protocols to follow for each a patient that has ARDS. Being able to move equipment around to the hotspots will save lives as this thing won't hit everywhere at once. I mean Nebraska was hit 6 months after the east coast during the Spanish flu.
We have an analog in China and South Korea. South Korea is a culturally similar nation, with similar freedoms and a very similar economy and they are going to squash this thing just as it gets bad here. They had drive up testing as we were just mailing tests to doctors. The doctors at the hotspots couldn't test everyone for two weeks. I actually could not in my wildest dreams imagine how a president who has disdain for the scientific method, medicine, and science overall could actually lead an appropriate response. President Trump has certain qualities that work well in the oval office...but he is going to be a disaster dealing with any crisis that involves science and medicine. It isn't his fault but all of us who allowed him to become supreme leader. Republicans and Democrats are all responsible.
I don't know if any thing would be different if the head honcho was someone else. However, I am sure that:
And that is why we staff professionals in the key govt agencies. If anything positive comes from this ordeal, it will be that experienced hands are valuable and not to be chased from agencies. Spoke with a friend from GWU last night who has done a fair bit of field work in China over the years. He said there are other viruses stacked up over there waiting for a break out. So maybe we should get our shit together.
