Dr. Helen Y. Chu, an infectious disease expert in Seattle, knew that the United States did not have much time.
In late January, the first confirmed American case of the coronavirus had landed in her area. Critical questions needed answers: Had the man infected anyone else? Was the deadly virus already lurking in other communities and spreading?
As luck would have it, Chu had a way to monitor the region. For months, as part of a research project into the flu, she and a team of researchers had been collecting nasal swabs from residents experiencing symptoms throughout the Puget Sound region.
To repurpose the tests for monitoring the coronavirus, they would need the support of state and federal officials. But nearly everywhere Chu turned, officials repeatedly rejected the idea, interviews and emails show, even as weeks crawled by and outbreaks emerged in countries outside of China, where the infection began.
By Feb. 25, Chu and her colleagues could not bear to wait any longer. They began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval.
What came back confirmed their worst fear. They quickly had a positive test from a local teenager with no recent travel history. The coronavirus had already established itself on U.S. soil without anybody realizing it.
“It must have been here this entire time,” Chu recalled thinking with dread. “It’s just everywhere already.”
In fact, officials would later discover through testing, the virus had already contributed to the deaths of two people, and it would go on to kill 20 more in the Seattle region over the following days.
Federal and state officials said the flu study could not be repurposed because it did not have explicit permission from research subjects; the labs were also not certified for clinical work. While acknowledging the ethical questions, Chu and others argued there should be more flexibility in an emergency during which so many lives could be lost. On Monday night, state regulators told them to stop testing altogether.
The failure to tap into the flu study, detailed here for the first time, was just one in a series of missed chances by the federal government to ensure more widespread testing during the early days of the outbreak, when containment would have been easier.
And how did COVID-19 escape containment procedures and make it to Washington state some six weeks ago?
Because the Trump regime blew it.
An analysis of the novel coronavirus’ spread inside the United States suggests that thousands of Americans are already infected, dimming the prospects for stomping out the outbreak in its earliest stages.
Researchers estimate that by March 1, the virus had already infected about 1,000 to 10,000 people who have not yet been accounted for. At the start of this month, about 80 U.S. cases had been confirmed and officials were still expressing confidence they could contain the new virus.
Quarantines, contact tracing and other public health measures have likely tamped down the COVID-19 outbreak here, the researchers said. But from the start, a group of infected travelers just big enough to fill an elevator likely has been expanding the virus’ reach, largely undetected.
Released into a country of about 330 million, each of these travelers was assumed to have passed the virus to 2 to 2.5 people, each of whom in turn infected another 2 to 2.5 people, and so on. Tote up the nodes on this rapidly branching network of contacts and the number of victims balloons quickly, the researchers wrote.
As I said last week, preparing for a national epidemic as the new reality is something you should have already begun making preparations for. The Trump regime will be of no help. Individual states are scrambling to catch up, but at this point it's increasingly more drastic isolation. It will be clear by the end of the month that even these efforts at larger-scale amelioration will have failed.
The Trump regime and the GOP know exactly how awful this will get.
Last week, Republican members of Congress heard a sober warning in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill: There’s a good chance most people in the United States will eventually be exposed to the novel coronavirus, according to one former official.
The assessment, from a former White House public-health official who now works in the pharmaceutical industry, did not suggest that most people will become infected or ill—rather, just that most will encounter the virus, which has killed at least two dozen Americans and infected hundreds more.
Not all public-health experts share that view. And not everyone exposed to the virus will become infected. Still, the briefing highlighted the potential gravity of the growing crisis.
Two sources–a member of Congress who attended the briefing and a second person with knowledge of it–described the remarks, made last week, to The Daily Beast. They were delivered by Rajeev Venkayya, the president of the Global Vaccine Business Unit at Tokyo-based pharmaceutical giant Takeda. The member of Congress said the comment was “sobering,” while the second person noted it came during a discussion about how to manage the costs of medical care related to the coronavirus. Venkayya pointed out that widespread access to medical care will be vital, given the likely breadth of the exposure, that source said.
Venkayya confirmed to The Daily Beast through a spokesperson that he made the remark about the broad scope of likely exposure, and did not provide further comment on the briefing. He was previously director of vaccine delivery for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program, according to his bio on Takeda’s website. Before that, he worked in the George W. Bush White House as special assistant to the president for biodefense, where he led efforts to develop and implement the national strategy for pandemic influenza.
The remarks came in a briefing to House Republicans. Executives from multiple pharmaceutical companies spoke to the members, as did Vice President Mike Pence. The comment on most Americans’ likely potential exposure to the virus came after Pence left the briefing, the sources noted. Spokespersons for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment on this story. Neither did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Republicans know tax cuts aren't going to fix anything, but they figure they can use it as an excuse later to cut things like epidemic preparedness in the future, you know?
Meanwhile, the Trump regime is already shifting responsibility and blame to the states.
As U.S. authorities on Wednesday sought ways to deal with a growing outbreak of coronavirus, the Trump administration is considering cutting taxes, Democratic presidential candidates are canceling events and the governor of New York state is saying the federal government had “fallen down on the job.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the administration was looking into taking steps that could put hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy to shield it from a slowdown brought on by the disruption from coronavirus.
Health Secretary Alex Azar said federal leaders were working with local officials in the hardest hit states, including Washington, California, New York, Massachusetts, and Florida, saying “strong mitigation steps” could help buy valuable time.
The governor of New York, however, said federal officials had left states scrambling to act on their own, including ramping up testing for the highly contagious - and sometimes fatal - respiratory illness.
Make no mistake here, when it becomes clear just how bad this will be, the Trump regime will aggresively blame states, particularly blue states, for allowing "real America" to be infected. It won't be Trump's fault, it'll be Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom's heads who the FOX News State TV will be calling for in the next few weeks.
It's only a matter of whether spread of COVID-19 can be slowed enough to allow hospitals and other health care facilities to handle the crush of patients. Very soon we're going to reach a point where parts of the country will simply have no additional resources to use, and that's when the game shifts from containment to triage:
saving who can be saved.
And that will not be everyone. Clusters of casualties will mount very quickly as local and regional hospitals are overwhelmed.
What's happening in New Rochelle, New York right now will be repeated in dozens, if not
thousands, of towns and neighborhoods. Knock-on effects from shortages, supply chain interruptions, and resulting cascade failures will start harming people who are healthy but otherwise have no resources to fall back on and no way to get them.
Look at it this way, in a natural disaster like a hurricane, heat wave, tornado, blizzard, wildfire, etc. the first thing that emergency personnel do is to go check on the elderly.
Doing so in a COVID-19 scenario may be a lethal mistake.
Again, it's going to be bad, folks. There will be casualties, and there will be otherwise preventable casualties among people who don't have the virus at all. It's like dying in a horror movie not to the killer, but to a panic-stricken car accident while trying to escape.
Be careful out there, all of you. Be smart.
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