“Joe Biden’s top priority entering the White House is fighting both the immediate coronavirus crisis and its complex long-term aftermath by embracing science, pushing mask-wearing as a patriotic act and leaning on Congress to pass a massive stimulus package.
It’s a strategy that would toss out the Trump administration’s patchwork response that put the burden on states and install a top-down national framework for testing, contact tracing and targeted business closures. Biden’s also promised a national mask mandate, calling it “a patriotic duty.” And public health experts rather than politicians will update the public once Biden is sworn in — meaning sober assessments and realistic timelines will replace Trump’s declarations that the pandemic is all but over and the virus will “disappear” with or without a vaccine.
“You’ll immediately see a change of tone, a change in communication,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy and bioethics expert advising Biden. “People can roll their eyes at that, but this is the stuff of real leadership: telling the truth, modeling the right behaviors like wearing a mask, only having small crowds, putting the scientists out there.”
The shift, however, won’t be immediate. A defeated Trump stays in office until Jan. 20, and public health experts expect the coronavirus to keep spreading throughout the country during the transition, adding thousands to a death toll that’s already crossed 230,000. In addition, even the most thoughtful Biden plans won’t be able to wipe out much of the country’s deep cultural divide and skepticism about the virus and antagonism toward the public health steps needed to combat it. Red states and MAGA world will strongly resist Biden’s approach, having embraced Trump’s rosy assessments and his portrayals of masks and business closures as a form of tyranny. New restrictions could also rattle millions of less partisan but crisis-weary Americans who face looming evictions or the expiration of unemployment benefits. For those reasons, the makeup of the next Congress will play a big part determining if Biden can make his plan stick, or whether it will get mired in more rancor.
One of Biden’s first actions, his campaign told POLITICO, would be to press Congress to get a sweeping stimulus bill to his desk by late January that guarantees paid sick leave to all workers, covers the cost of Covid-19 testing and treatment for the uninsured and under-insured and gives states and public health workers the resources they need to slow the spread of the virus and distribute a vaccine if and when one is approved…
Biden will have to do it all while recruiting people to fill out a hollowed out federal workforce that’s been a frequent target of Trump attacks — and restore morale at federal health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where career scientists were repeatedly undercut by the White House.” (A)
“With President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force sidelined, Joe Biden is planning to create his own task force to help grapple with the country’s surge in cases should he win tonight’s election, according to plans obtained by POLITICO.
The task force would include former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler, New York University’s Dr. Celine Gounder, Yale’s Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, former Obama White House aide Dr. Zeke Emanuel and former Chicago Health Commissioner Dr. Julie Morita, who is now an executive vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In line with Biden’s repeated campaign pledges to “listen to the scientists” if elected, the team features well-respected, veteran public health experts, some of whom ran agencies under the Obama and Clinton administrations.
The team is expected to advise transition officials on managing the latest spike of Covid-19 cases, ensuring vaccines are safe, and protecting at risk populations, according to an official close to the Biden team with knowledge of the plans, which are still evolving
Many of the members have already been working with the Biden campaign and transition for months. Starting in the pandemic’s earliest days, Murthy and Kessler have led briefings for Biden as often as four times a week, pulling in other former officials and experts in public health, infectious diseases and epidemiology to update the former vice president on the virus’s spread and the ongoing development of a vaccine. Biden’s campaign has featured these briefings in its closing advertisements as part of his argument that he is better prepared than Trump to confront Covid-19…
The transition team has also discussed contingency plans for the possibility that the Trump administration would refuse to cooperate and share information during a transition, according to another source close to Biden…
Mr. Biden’s policy advisers have been developing plans that would go into effect as soon as he took office, including ramping up testing, ensuring a steady supply of protective equipment, distributing a vaccine and securing money from Congress for schools and hospitals….
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview that given the state of the pandemic, the task force’s creation is “good news.”
“We are still 11 weeks away from the inauguration — that’s a potentially dangerous and damaging time for the American public with the virus still raging,” she said. “So hopefully this can give the American public some confidence that they’re not on their own, that the pandemic isn’t a Democratic plot, that the numbers are very real and that we have choices.” (B)
“President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. plans to announce a Covid-19 task force as early as Monday, a source familiar with the plans of the Biden transition team said Saturday.
Mr. Biden, who made President Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign, is expected to name three co-chairs of the 12-member panel: Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon general; David Kessler, the former commissioner of the F.D.A.; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale University professor.
The announcement of the task force is part of a weeklong focus that Mr. Biden intends to place on health care and the pandemic as he begins the process of building his administration, a person close to the transition said.
“We’re not waiting to get the work done,” Mr. Biden said in a speech on Friday night.
During the campaign, Mr. Biden repeatedly assailed Mr. Trump for mishandling the virus, refusing to wear a mask and playing down the threat from the pandemic, which has spread across the country.
In the last several days, the number of new cases of the virus has soared to record levels, with more than 130,000 new cases reported in a single day on Friday. So far, nearly 250,000 people have died since the pandemic arrived in the United States.
Mr. Murthy has been a key adviser to Mr. Biden and his campaign for months and aides to the president-elect say they expect him to serve as the public face of the new, Democratic administration when it comes to public health issues and the virus.
Mr. Biden’s aides have assembled an internal group of roughly two dozen health policy and technology experts to look at the development and delivery of a vaccine, improving health data and securing supply chains, among other issues.
Mr. Trump will keep control of the nation’s health apparatus and the bully pulpit that comes with the Oval Office until Jan. 20 — a crucial period for the country’s outbreak, given that infections already have hit new highs and colder weather is driving more interactions indoors.
The president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language, insisting that the country must fully reopen and repeatedly telling voters that the country is “rounding the corner” in the fight against the virus, which has claimed nearly a quarter of a million lives in the country…
Mr. Biden, who made President Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign, is expected to name three co-chairs of the 12-member panel: Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon general; David Kessler, the former commissioner of the F.D.A.; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale University professor.
The announcement of the task force is part of a weeklong focus that Mr. Biden intends to place on health care and the pandemic as he begins the process of building his administration, a person close to the transition said.
“We’re not waiting to get the work done,” Mr. Biden said in a speech on Friday night.
During the campaign, Mr. Biden repeatedly assailed Mr. Trump for mishandling the virus, refusing to wear a mask and playing down the threat from the pandemic, which has spread across the country.
In the last several days, the number of new cases of the virus has soared to record levels, with more than 130,000 new cases reported in a single day on Friday. So far, nearly 250,000 people have died since the pandemic arrived in the United States.
Mr. Murthy has been a key adviser to Mr. Biden and his campaign for months and aides to the president-elect say they expect him to serve as the public face of the new, Democratic administration when it comes to public health issues and the virus.
Mr. Biden’s aides have assembled an internal group of roughly two dozen health policy and technology experts to look at the development and delivery of a vaccine, improving health data and securing supply chains, among other issues.
Mr. Trump will keep control of the nation’s health apparatus and the bully pulpit that comes with the Oval Office until Jan. 20 — a crucial period for the country’s outbreak, given that infections already have hit new highs and colder weather is driving more interactions indoors.
The president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language, insisting that the country must fully reopen and repeatedly telling voters that the country is “rounding the corner” in the fight against the virus, which has claimed nearly a quarter of a million lives in the country.
Mr. Biden’s policy advisers have been developing plans that would go into effect as soon as he took office, including ramping up testing, ensuring a steady supply of protective equipment, distributing a vaccine and securing money from Congress for schools and hospitals.” (C)
“Here are the key ways he plans to get US coronavirus cases under control.
Make tests widely available…
Biden has pledged to make testing more widely available through a government-backed test-development program. He also intends to increase the production of rapid, at-home diagnostic tests and establish at least 10 drive-through testing sites per state…
Expand mask requirements
Biden has said he would consider a national mask mandate, though legal experts say he may only have the authority to enforce mask-wearing on federal property or in federal facilities.
At the very least, Biden plans to work with governors to implement mask requirements…
Tailor lockdowns to local hotspots
It seems unlikely that Biden would impose a nationwide shutdown, based on his comments leading up to Election Day. But the president-elect has repeatedly said he would follow the recommendations of scientific officials…
Restore the CDC’s authority
The Trump administration’s approach has come into conflict with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) several times. CDC scientists have said some of their advice about lockdowns and testing was ignored by the federal administration….
Rejoin the World Health Organization
Trump halted all funding to the WHO, which is helping coordinate the global response to the pandemic, in April. Then in July, the US officially withdrew from the WHO, though the decision wouldn’t be finalized until July 2021.
Biden has said he will rejoin the WHO on his first day in office….
Enlist at least 100,000 contact tracers
As of October, the US had 50,000 contact tracers, according to a joint survey from NPR and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. That means the vast majority of states don’t have enough contact tracers to investigate their coronavirus cases, according to NPR’s analysis.
Distribute more ventilators and PPE to hospitals
Biden has promised to lean more heavily on the Defense Production Act, which allows the president to require businesses to prioritize the federal government’s supply-chain needs. Trump has invoked the act, too, but Biden hopes to using it more aggressively to alleviate supply-chain issues with PPE, ventilators, and other resources needed by hospitals.
Ensure free COVID-19 treatment for all Americans
At the moment, COVID-19 treatments — of which there are still very few — may be free depending on the state you live in, your insurer, or your employer. Biden has promised to eliminate co-pays, deductibles, and surprise bills for insured Americans who receive these therapies. He has also pledged to reimburse healthcare providers for COVID-19 treatments for uninsured patients.
Ensure a vaccine is safe and free
The Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed program is currently manufacturing vaccine doses in large quantities while clinical trials are ongoing. It’s also funding the research and development of promising candidates. Congress has directed nearly $10 billion in CARES Act funding to Operation Warp Speed.” (D)
“Much of the work has already begun. In interviews with STAT, several Biden health advisers described a forthcoming effort to court skeptical mayors and governors, select and vet leaders for key public health agencies, and set a new tone for the nation’s pandemic response, even in the 10 weeks before he takes office. Many in the president-elect’s brain trust spoke on the condition that the conversations remain private until Biden was declared the winner.
“There are some things he’s going to do right off the bat,” said Nicole Lurie, a Biden campaign adviser who served as the Obama administration’s top pandemic-preparedness official. “He will reach out to Tony Fauci. He will declare his intent to be an active participant in the WHO and in the world. And I believe that in very short order, he’ll be in touch with governors and mayors around the country, listening to what it is that they’ll need to pivot this response.”” (E)
“President-elect Joe Biden’s victory signals a turning point in the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, as he promises a newly aggressive federal effort to contain a virus that is spiking nationwide in contrast to a president who has consistently downplayed the outbreak’s dangers and promised it would disappear….
Biden released a plan to combat the coronavirus that says its aim is to restore trust, create a cohesive national strategy, make treatments affordable, provide economic relief to those impacted by the virus and work with other countries to combat the spread.
Biden said he would restore the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which the Trump administration had folded into another office at the NSC.
He also plans to provide a daily public White House report on how many tests have been conducted, expand surveillance programs by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, instruct federal agencies to take action to expand America’s hospital capacity and expand tele-health capabilities across the country.
The plan also says federal health agencies will collaborate on vaccine development, establish a public health corps to assist with testing and contract tracing, and fully fund and expand authority for the National Disaster Medical System to reimburse providers for Covid-19 treatment costs that are not directly covered by health insurance.” (F)
“Biden gave a speech on his COVID-19 plan on Oct. 23, and he and running mate Senator Kamala Harris have circulated a seven-point plan for “beat[ing] COVID-19 and get[ting] our country back on track.” It is, experts say, what they’ve asked for since the pandemic began—but “the real devil’s in the details,” says Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Everything comes down to execution and specifics. And on that front, it’s too early to say how things would go if Biden is elected.” (G)
PART 1. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.”
PART 2. January 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If it’s not contained shortly, I think we are looking at a pandemic..”….. “With isolated cases of the dangerous new coronavirus cropping up in a number of states, public health officials say it is only a matter of time before the virus appears in New York City.”
PART3. February 3, 2020. “The Wuhan coronavirus spreading from China is now likely to become a pandemic that circles the globe…”..Trump appeared to downplay concerns about the flu-like virus …We’re gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down..” (D)
PART 4. February 9, 2020. Coronavirus. “A study published Friday in JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.….
PART 5. February 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “In short, shoe-leather public health and basic medical care—not miracle drugs—are generally what stop outbreaks of emerging infections..”
POST 6. February 18, 2020. Coronovirus. “Amid assurances that the (ocean liner) Westerdam was disease free, hundreds of people disembarked in Cambodia…” “ One was later found to be infected”…. “Over 1,000… passengers were in…transit home”…. “This could be a turning point””
PART 7. February 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. With SARS preparedness underway in NJ LibertyHealth/ Jersey City Medical Center, where I was President, proposed that our 100 bed community hospital with all single-bedded rooms, be immediately transformed into an EMERGENCY SARS ISOLATION Hospital.
PART 8. February 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…every country’s top priority should be to protect its health care workers. This is partly to ensure that hospitals themselves do not become sites where the coronavirus is spread more than it is contained.”
PART 9. February 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Responding to a question about the likelihood of a U.S. outbreak, President Trump said, “I don’t think it’s inevitable…”It probably will. It possibly will,” he continued. “It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level.”
Part 10. March 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Stop Surprise Medical Bills for Coronavirus care. (&) Lessons Learned (or not) In California and Washington State from community acquired cases.
PART 11. March 5, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo… would require employers to pay workers and protect their jobs if they are quarantined because of the coronavirus.”
Part 12. March 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s former homeland security advisor…(said) that due to the coronavirus outbreak, “We are 10 days from the hospitals getting creamed.”
Part 13.. March 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If I’m buying real estate in New York, I’ll listen to the President….If I’m asking about infectious diseases, I’m going to listen to Tony Fauci,”
PART 14. March 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ “Most physicians have never seen this level of angst and anxiety in their careers”…. One said “I am sort of a pariah in my family.”
PART 15. March 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration….in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.
PART 16. March 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. I am not a clinician or a medical ethicist but articles on Coronavirus patient triage started me Googling………to learn about FUTILE TREATMENT
PART 17. April 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Florida allows churches to continue holding services. Gun stores deemed “essential.” “New York’s private and public hospitals unite to manage patient load and share resources.
PART 18. April 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The federal government’s emergency stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) is depleted, and states will not be receiving any more shipments, administration staff told a House panel.
PART 19. April 13, 2020 CORONOAVIRUS. “…overlooked in the United States’ halting mobilization against the novel coronavirus: the personal aides, hospice attendants, nurses and occupational or physical therapists who deliver medical or support services to patients in their homes.”
POST 22. April 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ..the “ACS released a list of 10 issues that should be addressed before a healthcare organization resumes elective surgeries[JM1] ….”
POST 23. May 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. … what Dr. Fauci really wants,…”is just to go to a baseball game. That will have to wait. The level of testing for the virus is not adequate enough to allow for such mass gatherings.’ (K)
POST 24. May 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said: “there are going to be deaths no matter what”… but that people needed to get back to work.
POST 25. May 10, 2020, CORONAVIRUS. “It is scary to go to work,” said Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to the president. “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”
POST 26. May 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS, “Deep cleaning is not a scientific concept”….”there is no universal protocol for a “deep clean” to eradicate the coronavirus”
POST 27. May 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Hospital…executives…are taking pay cuts…to help offset the financial fallout from COVID-19.” As “front line” layoffs and furloughs accelerate…
POST 28. May 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ““You’ve got to be kidding me,”..”How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.” CDC conflates viral and antibody tests numbers.
PART 29. May 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The economy did not close down. It closed down for people who, frankly, had the luxury of staying home,” (Governor Cuomo). But not so for frontline workers!
POST 30. June 3,202. CORONAVIRUS. “The wave of mass protests across the United States will almost certainly set off new chains of infection for the novel coronavirus, experts say….
Post 32. June 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Could the Trump administration be pursuing herd immunity by “inaction”? “ If Fauci didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.”
POST 34. June 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director Redfield… “the number of coronavirus infections…could be 10 times higher than the confirmed case count — a total of more than 20 million.” As Florida, Texas and Arizona become eipicenters!
POST 35. June 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pence: “We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives..” While Dr. Fauci “warned that outbreaks in the South and West could engulf the country…”
POST 36. July 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “There’s just a handful of interventions proven to curb the spread of the coronavirus. One of them is contact tracing, and “it’s not going well,” (Dr. Anthony Fauci)..
POST 37. June 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. When “crews arrive at a hospital with a patient suspected of having COVID-19, the hospital may have a physical bed open for them, but not enough nurses or doctors to staff it.”
POST 38. July 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Some Lessons Learned, or not. AdventHealth CEO Terry Shaw: I wouldn’t hesitate to go to Disney as a healthcare CEO — based on the fact that they’re working extremely hard to keep people safe,” (M)
POST 39. July, 23,2020. CORONAVIRUS. A Tale of Two Cities. Seattle becomes New York (rolls back reopening) while New York becomes Seattle (moves to partial phase 4 reopening)
POST 40. July 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” One canon of medical practice is that you order a test only if you can act on the result. And with a turnaround time of a week or two, you cannot. What we have now is often not testing — it’s testing theater.”
POST 41. August 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Whenever a vaccine for the coronavirus becomes available, one thing is virtually certain: There won’t be enough to go around. That means there will be rationing.”
POST 44. September 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC…modified its coronavirus testing guidelines…to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19.” (While Dr. Fauci was undergoing surgery.) A White House official said: “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually..”
POST 45. September 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Trump on Fauci. ‘You inherit a lot of people, and you have some you love, some you don’t. I like him. I don’t agree with him that often but I like him.’
POST 46. September 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Bill Gates used to think of the US Food and Drug Administration as the world’s premier public-health authority. Not anymore. And he doesn’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Protection either….”
POST 47. September 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University…called New York City’s 35 percent rate for eliciting contacts “very bad.” “For each person, you should be in touch with 75 percent of their contacts within a day,” he said”
POST 48. October 1, 2020. “…you can actually control the outbreak if you do the nonpharmaceutical interventions (social distancing and masks). In the United States we haven’t done them. We haven’t adhered to them; we’ve played with them.” (A)
POST 49. October 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. RAPID RESPONSE. “The possibility that the president and his White House entourage were traveling superspreaders is a nightmare scenario for officials in Minnesota, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania…”
POST 50. October 6, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Monday October 5th will go down as one of the most fraught chapters in the history of American public Health (and national security).
POST 51. October 12, 2020. Rather than a hodge-podge of Emergency Use Authorizations, off-label “experimentation”, right-to-try arguments, and “politicized” compassionate use approvals maybe we need to designate REGIONAL EMERGING VIRUSES REFERRAL CENTERS (REVRCs).
POST 52. October 18, 2020. ZIKA/ EBOLA/ CANDIDA AURIS/ SEVERE FLU/ Tracking. “… if there was a severe flu pandemic, more than 33 million people could be killed across the world in 250 days… Boy, do we not have our act together.” —”- Bill Gates. July 1, 2018
POST 54. October 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. POST 54A. New Jersey’s Coronavirus response, led by Governor Murphy and Commissioner of Health Persichilli started with accelerated A+ traditional, evidence-based Public Health practices, developed over years of experience with seasonal flu, swine flu, Zika, and Ebola.
POST 55. October 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The Testing Conundrum: “ It’s thus very possible to be antigen negative but P.C.R. positive, while still harboring the virus in the body..”
POST 57. November 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Deborah Birx: the US is entering its “most deadly phase” yet, one that requires “much more aggressive action,”
POST 58. November 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language…”
POST 59. November 5, 2020. Coronavirus. “The United States on Wednesday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began..
POST 61. November 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Joe Biden’s top priority entering the White House is fighting both the immediate coronavirus crisis and its complex long-term aftermath…” “Here are the key ways he plans to get US coronavirus cases under control.”
“Meadows was last seen by reporters on election night, when Trump gave a defiant speech to supporters packed into the East Room of the White House. Meadows walked into the room ahead of Trump’s adult children just ahead of his remarks….
Meadows, who infrequently wore face masks, traveled extensively with Trump in the late stages of his campaign as he raced across swing states. He was seen in close quarters with most of Trump’s senior staff as well as with Vice President Mike Pence. He also joined Trump for an Election Day visit to Trump’s campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va..
Trump has long undermined guidance even from his own administration regarding pandemic protocols, including social distancing and mask-wearing. The president continued to hold massive campaign rallies where most supporters packed close together and did not wear masks.” (B)
“During the pandemic, Mr. Meadows has encouraged Mr. Trump’s desire to minimize the threat of the virus and focus instead on the economy. He was dismissive of mask-wearing in the White House, and wore one only very sporadically as he traveled with the president or during events in the Oval Office.
Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Meadows often mocked reporters who wore masks around him, saying the face coverings muffled their voices. A video clip of Mr. Meadows refusing to give a statement to reporters at the Capitol because they asked him to wear his mask was widely shared across social media.
He has also been among the West Wing officials who have favored minimizing the public appearances of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who has issued far more dire warnings about the threat of the virus than Mr. Trump has wanted to have publicly declared.
In the waning days of the presidential campaign, Mr. Meadows made unwanted headlines when he acknowledged during a television interview that the government would not be able “control” the pandemic. Critics and Mr. Trump’s political rivals seized on the comment as evidence that the administration had given up on fighting the virus.
“We are not going to control the pandemic,” Mr. Meadows told Jake Tapper, the host of “State of the Union” on CNN. “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas.”… (C)
“Meadows reportedly informed several advisers of his COVID-19 diagnosis after Election Day. Meadows was in the White House on Tuesday night with Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and others, and attended a party there that had hundreds in attendance…
Meadows, who was a Republican congressman from North Carolina before becoming chief of staff in March, remained physically close with Trump through the president’s own case of COVID-19 last month, often working in the same room with Trump while he was being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. During that time, Meadows defended speaking with reporters without a mask despite having been in the room with Trump.
In June, Meadows teased reporters for wearing masks on Capitol Hill. He has repeatedly refused to wear one, going against the advice of the nation’s top health officials.” (D)
PART 1. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.”
PART 2. January 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If it’s not contained shortly, I think we are looking at a pandemic..”….. “With isolated cases of the dangerous new coronavirus cropping up in a number of states, public health officials say it is only a matter of time before the virus appears in New York City.”
PART3. February 3, 2020. “The Wuhan coronavirus spreading from China is now likely to become a pandemic that circles the globe…”..Trump appeared to downplay concerns about the flu-like virus …We’re gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down..” (D)
PART 4. February 9, 2020. Coronavirus. “A study published Friday in JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.….
PART 5. February 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “In short, shoe-leather public health and basic medical care—not miracle drugs—are generally what stop outbreaks of emerging infections..”
POST 6. February 18, 2020. Coronovirus. “Amid assurances that the (ocean liner) Westerdam was disease free, hundreds of people disembarked in Cambodia…” “ One was later found to be infected”…. “Over 1,000… passengers were in…transit home”…. “This could be a turning point””
PART 7. February 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. With SARS preparedness underway in NJ LibertyHealth/ Jersey City Medical Center, where I was President, proposed that our 100 bed community hospital with all single-bedded rooms, be immediately transformed into an EMERGENCY SARS ISOLATION Hospital.
PART 8. February 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…every country’s top priority should be to protect its health care workers. This is partly to ensure that hospitals themselves do not become sites where the coronavirus is spread more than it is contained.”
PART 9. February 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Responding to a question about the likelihood of a U.S. outbreak, President Trump said, “I don’t think it’s inevitable…”It probably will. It possibly will,” he continued. “It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level.”
Part 10. March 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Stop Surprise Medical Bills for Coronavirus care. (&) Lessons Learned (or not) In California and Washington State from community acquired cases.
PART 11. March 5, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo… would require employers to pay workers and protect their jobs if they are quarantined because of the coronavirus.”
Part 12. March 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s former homeland security advisor…(said) that due to the coronavirus outbreak, “We are 10 days from the hospitals getting creamed.”
Part 13.. March 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If I’m buying real estate in New York, I’ll listen to the President….If I’m asking about infectious diseases, I’m going to listen to Tony Fauci,”
PART 14. March 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ “Most physicians have never seen this level of angst and anxiety in their careers”…. One said “I am sort of a pariah in my family.”
PART 15. March 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration….in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.
PART 16. March 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. I am not a clinician or a medical ethicist but articles on Coronavirus patient triage started me Googling………to learn about FUTILE TREATMENT
PART 17. April 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Florida allows churches to continue holding services. Gun stores deemed “essential.” “New York’s private and public hospitals unite to manage patient load and share resources.
PART 18. April 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The federal government’s emergency stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) is depleted, and states will not be receiving any more shipments, administration staff told a House panel.
PART 19. April 13, 2020 CORONOAVIRUS. “…overlooked in the United States’ halting mobilization against the novel coronavirus: the personal aides, hospice attendants, nurses and occupational or physical therapists who deliver medical or support services to patients in their homes.”
POST 22. April 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ..the “ACS released a list of 10 issues that should be addressed before a healthcare organization resumes elective surgeries[JM1] ….”
POST 23. May 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. … what Dr. Fauci really wants,…”is just to go to a baseball game. That will have to wait. The level of testing for the virus is not adequate enough to allow for such mass gatherings.’ (K)
POST 24. May 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said: “there are going to be deaths no matter what”… but that people needed to get back to work.
POST 25. May 10, 2020, CORONAVIRUS. “It is scary to go to work,” said Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to the president. “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”
POST 26. May 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS, “Deep cleaning is not a scientific concept”….”there is no universal protocol for a “deep clean” to eradicate the coronavirus”
POST 27. May 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Hospital…executives…are taking pay cuts…to help offset the financial fallout from COVID-19.” As “front line” layoffs and furloughs accelerate…
POST 28. May 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ““You’ve got to be kidding me,”..”How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.” CDC conflates viral and antibody tests numbers.
PART 29. May 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The economy did not close down. It closed down for people who, frankly, had the luxury of staying home,” (Governor Cuomo). But not so for frontline workers!
POST 30. June 3,202. CORONAVIRUS. “The wave of mass protests across the United States will almost certainly set off new chains of infection for the novel coronavirus, experts say….
Post 32. June 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Could the Trump administration be pursuing herd immunity by “inaction”? “ If Fauci didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.”
POST 34. June 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director Redfield… “the number of coronavirus infections…could be 10 times higher than the confirmed case count — a total of more than 20 million.” As Florida, Texas and Arizona become eipicenters!
POST 35. June 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pence: “We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives..” While Dr. Fauci “warned that outbreaks in the South and West could engulf the country…”
POST 36. July 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “There’s just a handful of interventions proven to curb the spread of the coronavirus. One of them is contact tracing, and “it’s not going well,” (Dr. Anthony Fauci)..
POST 37. June 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. When “crews arrive at a hospital with a patient suspected of having COVID-19, the hospital may have a physical bed open for them, but not enough nurses or doctors to staff it.”
POST 38. July 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Some Lessons Learned, or not. AdventHealth CEO Terry Shaw: I wouldn’t hesitate to go to Disney as a healthcare CEO — based on the fact that they’re working extremely hard to keep people safe,” (M)
POST 39. July, 23,2020. CORONAVIRUS. A Tale of Two Cities. Seattle becomes New York (rolls back reopening) while New York becomes Seattle (moves to partial phase 4 reopening)
POST 40. July 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” One canon of medical practice is that you order a test only if you can act on the result. And with a turnaround time of a week or two, you cannot. What we have now is often not testing — it’s testing theater.”
POST 41. August 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Whenever a vaccine for the coronavirus becomes available, one thing is virtually certain: There won’t be enough to go around. That means there will be rationing.”
POST 44. September 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC…modified its coronavirus testing guidelines…to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19.” (While Dr. Fauci was undergoing surgery.) A White House official said: “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually..”
POST 45. September 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Trump on Fauci. ‘You inherit a lot of people, and you have some you love, some you don’t. I like him. I don’t agree with him that often but I like him.’
POST 46. September 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Bill Gates used to think of the US Food and Drug Administration as the world’s premier public-health authority. Not anymore. And he doesn’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Protection either….”
POST 47. September 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University…called New York City’s 35 percent rate for eliciting contacts “very bad.” “For each person, you should be in touch with 75 percent of their contacts within a day,” he said”
POST 48. October 1, 2020. “…you can actually control the outbreak if you do the nonpharmaceutical interventions (social distancing and masks). In the United States we haven’t done them. We haven’t adhered to them; we’ve played with them.” (A)
POST 49. October 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. RAPID RESPONSE. “The possibility that the president and his White House entourage were traveling superspreaders is a nightmare scenario for officials in Minnesota, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania…”
POST 50. October 6, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Monday October 5th will go down as one of the most fraught chapters in the history of American public Health (and national security).
POST 51. October 12, 2020. Rather than a hodge-podge of Emergency Use Authorizations, off-label “experimentation”, right-to-try arguments, and “politicized” compassionate use approvals maybe we need to designate REGIONAL EMERGING VIRUSES REFERRAL CENTERS (REVRCs).
POST 52. October 18, 2020. ZIKA/ EBOLA/ CANDIDA AURIS/ SEVERE FLU/ Tracking. “… if there was a severe flu pandemic, more than 33 million people could be killed across the world in 250 days… Boy, do we not have our act together.” —”- Bill Gates. July 1, 2018
POST 54. October 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. POST 54A. New Jersey’s Coronavirus response, led by Governor Murphy and Commissioner of Health Persichilli started with accelerated A+ traditional, evidence-based Public Health practices, developed over years of experience with seasonal flu, swine flu, Zika, and Ebola.
POST 55. October 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The Testing Conundrum: “ It’s thus very possible to be antigen negative but P.C.R. positive, while still harboring the virus in the body..”
POST 57. November 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Deborah Birx: the US is entering its “most deadly phase” yet, one that requires “much more aggressive action,”
POST 58. November 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language…”
POST 59. November 5, 2020. Coronavirus. “The United States on Wednesday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began..
“One of the first states to receive rapid, low-cost coronavirus tests from the U.S. government is cautioning against their use in asymptomatic people, a group that were hoped to benefit most from the technology.”
How Johns Hopkins tracks Coronavirus cases: “ systems engineering, a modernized approach to civil engineering for the complex, interconnected world.”
“The United States on Wednesday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began, bursting past a grim threshold even as the wave of infections engulfing the country shows no sign of receding.
The total count of new infections on Wednesday was more than 107,800, according to a New York Times database. Twenty-three states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch.
Five states — Maine, Minnesota, Indiana, Nebraska and Colorado — set single-day case records. Cases were also mounting in the Mountain West and even in the Northeast, which over the summer seemed to be getting the virus under control.
North and South Dakota and Wisconsin have led the country for weeks in the number of new cases relative to their population. But other states have seen steep recent increases in the last 14 days.
Daily case reports in Minnesota, on average, have increased 102 percent over that time, while those in Indiana have risen 73 percent. For months, Maine had among the lowest levels of transmission anywhere in the country, but new cases there have more than tripled. In Wyoming, new cases are up 73 percent, while in Iowa they have more than doubled.
Deaths related to the coronavirus, which lag behind case reports, have increased 21 percent across the country in the last two weeks.
Hospitals in some areas are feeling the strain of surging caseloads. More than 50,000 people are currently hospitalized with Covid-19 across the country, according to the Covid Tracking Project, an increase of roughly 64 percent since the beginning of October.” (A)
“One of the first states to receive rapid, low-cost coronavirus tests from the U.S. government is cautioning against their use in asymptomatic people, a group that were hoped to benefit most from the technology.
Antigen tests like one from Abbott Laboratories that look for telltale viral proteins may miss some infections that can be picked up by costlier gold-standard assays, and can incorrectly return positive results. The rapid tests aren’t recommended for people without symptoms who haven’t been exposed to a Covid-19 patient, and those who undergo one should be informed of the limitations, the Louisiana Department of Health said in guidance issued last week.
The recommendations highlight issues with tests like Abbott’s $5 BinaxNOW that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is spending $750 million on and were used in the White House. State health officials are increasingly concerned that people without symptoms should be screened with more costly but more reliable polymerase chain reaction assays because of worries about the rapid tests’ performance, according to Jeff Engel, a senior adviser at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.
HHS “made this purchase without any studies on the novel use in which they’re deploying these tests,” Engel said. “I think that’s careless.”
HHS is providing antigen tests for use in symptomatic and asymptomatic people, said Mia Heck, an agency spokeswoman, in an email. Widespread, affordable rapid antigen testing helps slow the virus’s spread, and tests like BinaxNOW, when used as intended, can detect those most likely to be infectious, Abbott said in an email. Its shares gained 3.6% at 12:51 p.m. in New York.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also issued an alert on antigen tests, warning on Tuesday that they can produce incorrect positive results. Problems are more likely in populations with low virus prevalence, or when the test is improperly performed, the FDA said in a statement.” (B)
“Less than a month into 2020, Ensheng Dong heard the news. A new viral contagion, SARS-CoV-2, had begun to spread in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei Province. Dong, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was thousands of miles away from the outbreak’s epicenter, but he had studied epidemics and knew how fast they can spread.
Taiyuan, another provincial capital and Dong’s hometown, is 600 miles from Wuhan. That’s not exactly next door—it’s the same distance that separates New York City and Detroit—but Dong felt concerned for his family’s safety.
On January 20, the first case of COVID-19 in the United States was confirmed in Washington state. Suddenly, the coronavirus—for Dong—seemed that much closer.
The following day, Dong met with his faculty adviser, Lauren Gardner, co-director of the school’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering. They discussed the emerging epidemic and decided it was worth a closer look.
Gardner suggested that Dong use a geographic information system (GIS) to construct an online dashboard, a visualization tool that uses maps and data to monitor unfolding events.
Dong nodded. “That’s my plan.”
Dong, 30, studies systems engineering, a modernized approach to civil engineering for the complex, interconnected world.”
“The emphasis is on civilization engineering,” Dong said. “It’s basically about the interaction of people with the built environment.” For Dong, the discipline allows him to explore ways to combine the objectivity of numeric data with the subjectivity of data visualization.” (C)
PART 1. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.”
PART 2. January 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If it’s not contained shortly, I think we are looking at a pandemic..”….. “With isolated cases of the dangerous new coronavirus cropping up in a number of states, public health officials say it is only a matter of time before the virus appears in New York City.”
PART3. February 3, 2020. “The Wuhan coronavirus spreading from China is now likely to become a pandemic that circles the globe…”..Trump appeared to downplay concerns about the flu-like virus …We’re gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down..” (D)
PART 4. February 9, 2020. Coronavirus. “A study published Friday in JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.….
PART 5. February 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “In short, shoe-leather public health and basic medical care—not miracle drugs—are generally what stop outbreaks of emerging infections..”
POST 6. February 18, 2020. Coronovirus. “Amid assurances that the (ocean liner) Westerdam was disease free, hundreds of people disembarked in Cambodia…” “ One was later found to be infected”…. “Over 1,000… passengers were in…transit home”…. “This could be a turning point””
PART 7. February 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. With SARS preparedness underway in NJ LibertyHealth/ Jersey City Medical Center, where I was President, proposed that our 100 bed community hospital with all single-bedded rooms, be immediately transformed into an EMERGENCY SARS ISOLATION Hospital.
PART 8. February 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…every country’s top priority should be to protect its health care workers. This is partly to ensure that hospitals themselves do not become sites where the coronavirus is spread more than it is contained.”
PART 9. February 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Responding to a question about the likelihood of a U.S. outbreak, President Trump said, “I don’t think it’s inevitable…”It probably will. It possibly will,” he continued. “It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level.”
Part 10. March 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Stop Surprise Medical Bills for Coronavirus care. (&) Lessons Learned (or not) In California and Washington State from community acquired cases.
PART 11. March 5, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo… would require employers to pay workers and protect their jobs if they are quarantined because of the coronavirus.”
Part 12. March 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s former homeland security advisor…(said) that due to the coronavirus outbreak, “We are 10 days from the hospitals getting creamed.”
Part 13.. March 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If I’m buying real estate in New York, I’ll listen to the President….If I’m asking about infectious diseases, I’m going to listen to Tony Fauci,”
PART 14. March 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ “Most physicians have never seen this level of angst and anxiety in their careers”…. One said “I am sort of a pariah in my family.”
PART 15. March 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration….in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.
PART 16. March 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. I am not a clinician or a medical ethicist but articles on Coronavirus patient triage started me Googling………to learn about FUTILE TREATMENT
PART 17. April 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Florida allows churches to continue holding services. Gun stores deemed “essential.” “New York’s private and public hospitals unite to manage patient load and share resources.
PART 18. April 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The federal government’s emergency stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) is depleted, and states will not be receiving any more shipments, administration staff told a House panel.
PART 19. April 13, 2020 CORONOAVIRUS. “…overlooked in the United States’ halting mobilization against the novel coronavirus: the personal aides, hospice attendants, nurses and occupational or physical therapists who deliver medical or support services to patients in their homes.”
POST 22. April 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ..the “ACS released a list of 10 issues that should be addressed before a healthcare organization resumes elective surgeries[JM1] ….”
POST 23. May 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. … what Dr. Fauci really wants,…”is just to go to a baseball game. That will have to wait. The level of testing for the virus is not adequate enough to allow for such mass gatherings.’ (K)
POST 24. May 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said: “there are going to be deaths no matter what”… but that people needed to get back to work.
POST 25. May 10, 2020, CORONAVIRUS. “It is scary to go to work,” said Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to the president. “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”
POST 26. May 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS, “Deep cleaning is not a scientific concept”….”there is no universal protocol for a “deep clean” to eradicate the coronavirus”
POST 27. May 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Hospital…executives…are taking pay cuts…to help offset the financial fallout from COVID-19.” As “front line” layoffs and furloughs accelerate…
POST 28. May 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ““You’ve got to be kidding me,”..”How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.” CDC conflates viral and antibody tests numbers.
PART 29. May 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The economy did not close down. It closed down for people who, frankly, had the luxury of staying home,” (Governor Cuomo). But not so for frontline workers!
POST 30. June 3,202. CORONAVIRUS. “The wave of mass protests across the United States will almost certainly set off new chains of infection for the novel coronavirus, experts say….
Post 32. June 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Could the Trump administration be pursuing herd immunity by “inaction”? “ If Fauci didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.”
POST 34. June 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director Redfield… “the number of coronavirus infections…could be 10 times higher than the confirmed case count — a total of more than 20 million.” As Florida, Texas and Arizona become eipicenters!
POST 35. June 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pence: “We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives..” While Dr. Fauci “warned that outbreaks in the South and West could engulf the country…”
POST 36. July 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “There’s just a handful of interventions proven to curb the spread of the coronavirus. One of them is contact tracing, and “it’s not going well,” (Dr. Anthony Fauci)..
POST 37. June 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. When “crews arrive at a hospital with a patient suspected of having COVID-19, the hospital may have a physical bed open for them, but not enough nurses or doctors to staff it.”
POST 38. July 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Some Lessons Learned, or not. AdventHealth CEO Terry Shaw: I wouldn’t hesitate to go to Disney as a healthcare CEO — based on the fact that they’re working extremely hard to keep people safe,” (M)
POST 39. July, 23,2020. CORONAVIRUS. A Tale of Two Cities. Seattle becomes New York (rolls back reopening) while New York becomes Seattle (moves to partial phase 4 reopening)
POST 40. July 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” One canon of medical practice is that you order a test only if you can act on the result. And with a turnaround time of a week or two, you cannot. What we have now is often not testing — it’s testing theater.”
POST 41. August 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Whenever a vaccine for the coronavirus becomes available, one thing is virtually certain: There won’t be enough to go around. That means there will be rationing.”
POST 44. September 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC…modified its coronavirus testing guidelines…to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19.” (While Dr. Fauci was undergoing surgery.) A White House official said: “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually..”
POST 45. September 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Trump on Fauci. ‘You inherit a lot of people, and you have some you love, some you don’t. I like him. I don’t agree with him that often but I like him.’
POST 46. September 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Bill Gates used to think of the US Food and Drug Administration as the world’s premier public-health authority. Not anymore. And he doesn’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Protection either….”
POST 47. September 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University…called New York City’s 35 percent rate for eliciting contacts “very bad.” “For each person, you should be in touch with 75 percent of their contacts within a day,” he said”
POST 48. October 1, 2020. “…you can actually control the outbreak if you do the nonpharmaceutical interventions (social distancing and masks). In the United States we haven’t done them. We haven’t adhered to them; we’ve played with them.” (A)
POST 49. October 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. RAPID RESPONSE. “The possibility that the president and his White House entourage were traveling superspreaders is a nightmare scenario for officials in Minnesota, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania…”
POST 50. October 6, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Monday October 5th will go down as one of the most fraught chapters in the history of American public Health (and national security).
POST 51. October 12, 2020. Rather than a hodge-podge of Emergency Use Authorizations, off-label “experimentation”, right-to-try arguments, and “politicized” compassionate use approvals maybe we need to designate REGIONAL EMERGING VIRUSES REFERRAL CENTERS (REVRCs).
POST 52. October 18, 2020. ZIKA/ EBOLA/ CANDIDA AURIS/ SEVERE FLU/ Tracking. “… if there was a severe flu pandemic, more than 33 million people could be killed across the world in 250 days… Boy, do we not have our act together.” —”- Bill Gates. July 1, 2018
POST 54. October 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. POST 54A. New Jersey’s Coronavirus response, led by Governor Murphy and Commissioner of Health Persichilli started with accelerated A+ traditional, evidence-based Public Health practices, developed over years of experience with seasonal flu, swine flu, Zika, and Ebola.
POST 55. October 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The Testing Conundrum: “ It’s thus very possible to be antigen negative but P.C.R. positive, while still harboring the virus in the body..”
POST 57. November 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Deborah Birx: the US is entering its “most deadly phase” yet, one that requires “much more aggressive action,”
POST 58. November 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language…”
Mr. Trump will still have control of the nation’s health apparatus and the bully pulpit that comes with the Oval Office until Jan. 20, as infections approach 100,000 a day and death rates begin to rise as hospitals are strained to their breaking points.
But the president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language, telling voters that the country is “rounding the corner” in the fight against the virus that has claimed nearly a quarter of a million lives.
He has stopped listening to Alex M. Azar II, his health secretary; Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; and Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general. On Monday, the president lashed out at Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease specialist, hinting that he may fire Dr. Fauci after the election — though it would be extremely difficult for him to do so…
The adviser Mr. Trump does listen to is Dr. Scott Atlas, a former Stanford neuroradiologist and late addition to the coronavirus task force who has dismissed the efficacy of mask wearing, suggested that the pandemic should be left largely to run its course — and last week parroted the president’s views on RT, the Russian television network forced to register as a foreign agent.” (A)
