There will be sufficient time in the next few years to analyze the decision processes that occurred during the lead up to and explosive expansion of the COVID-19 infection in this country. The current discussion has led me to look back at my previous posts. Below is my post from February 6, 2020. I did not have access to any inside information, special studies or people; I based my post on the news articles and reports that I had seen over the previous week. I think it is fair to assume that those in the CDC, FDA, NIH as well as the intelligence agencies and cabinet officials had access to that information well in advance of me.
It is difficult to understand how these warnings were missed or ignored.
Here was my analysis and my concern as of February 6 (typos included):
It is time to be worried.
(not about the incumbent!)
Wuhan Coronavirus is a tinderbox about to explode and it isn't science fiction this time.
This is serious health crisis.
- There are now over 3,000 new cases PER DAY!
- The death rate in China is running at around 2%, which in terms of viruses is extremely high.
- We don't know how it is transmitted, but we do know that it is extremely contagious and that it travels from person to person.
-The infection can be communicated a week before any symptoms show.
The WHO is meeting next week to look into how to combat the disease. But, this is not a science fiction movie. Even if a vaccine is possible (and that is something we don't know yet), determining how to grow the virus in culture, how to "attenuate" it (make it non-infectious, but able to draw an immune response), or how to kill it for use in a vaccine are questions that will need to be solved and they won't be solved for at least a number of months, if not years. And after those practical questions are answered, the vaccine will need to be tested in animals for efficacy, then tested in humans for safety and efficacy before it can be produced in quantity and distributed for inoculation.
In the best scenario, a vaccine will not be available for at least a year.
Here are the numbers:
Over 30,000 cases have now been identified.
The death rate is running at 2%
The infection rate is VERY high.
Each infection is generating approximately 4 new infections.
Meantime, based on the current data, millions of people we be diagnosed (we can expect the 3,000 new cases a day to increase exponentially as new infections generate new contagions). It would not be surprising to see literally tens of millions of infections within the next year resulting in hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths.
This is no joke. As most of you know, my research activity centered around infectious disease. I have often minimized the seriousness of viral outbreaks such as SARS, but this looks to be very, very different.
You might be expecting me to give you a positive answer at the end of this post. You would be wrong.
Quarantine will begin to become more common, but that will not be an answer because of the infectiousness of individuals prior to symptoms.
I wish there was a better answer. We have few if any curative treatments for viral infections. You will hear the snake-oil people pushing home remedies, but they won't really work.
We have palliative treatments for symptoms and that will be able to manage patients until they recover, and that will reduce the mortality rate, but it will not solve the problem.
We will begin to see hospitals over-burdened with people with disease. Some of these people will have the Wuhan virus, some will present because they FEAR they have the virus. Our hospitals will be severely challenged to find beds for the presenting victims; isolation and sterile environments prepared to protect the medical staff and other patients, visitors and workers simply don't exist. The costs will be extremely high and put a strain on the already thin healthcare system.
Worst, there is probably nothing that any of us can do to protect ourselves from potential infection.
I pray that I am wrong this time.