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The world is full of nasty diseases. Are we going to go through this all over again next year when H1N1, Corona and whatever else comes back?
Every afternoon..
We are all Dawg fans first, so I like to start with a mutual respect and keep this more of a familial debate. From the sources I have read, this will kill 60+ thousand in the USA DESPITE social distancing and other methods of reducing spread. The 64k for the Flu is on the high end (range starts at 12k/year in recent times), but very real. All of the other diseases/conditions that are listed with high death rates are not communicable, so the comparison is invalid. We spend a lot of money and time trying to cure cancer, diabetes and solve mental health issues. If social distancing helped those, we probably would have done it.
Apolitically (maybe futile), we had to do something to slow this down or risk overwhelming our healthcare system. It seems like those moves are helping to some extent. Were there things we could have/should have done better as the greatest country in the world? Probably. Easy to second guess. Something to be hashed out during the next election.
This social distancing strategy was never intended to make Covid go away. It was a strategy to slow it down so our healthcare professionals could provide the best care, our micro-biologists could come up with drugs to help us treat and eventually cure and our scientists could come up with effective testing to help mitigate future infections and allow us to confidently go back to work.
This pandemic seems like a warning shot to me. We will hopefully learn from it so we are much more prepared for the next one and have less uncertainty on what works and is effective to save lives and keep our economy strong. It seems argumentative to try to downplay how serious this is and will be for some time to win political points. It is serious. We have responded. We will learn from it.
I'm not much of the pollyanna type, but I wonder if we'll have a few good outcomes.
One, will this fast track antiviral medicines? We've previously only nibbled around the edges on that capability.
Two, will rediscovering quarantines and physical barriers better prepare us for a time when antibiotics are no longer effective?
Pgjackson, I"ll take this on and try to answer what our failed response is, which is what you asked. Please know that I am doing my absolute best to make this apolitical. Deep down, I personally don't see Covid-19 as a left vs right thing. I see it as a professional vs unprofessional thing.
First, some pre US response context:
December 6, 2019 - first case of Covid19 identified in China
December 21, 2019 - China sees a group of similar cases that it calls pneumonia like
December 30, 2019 - Dr. Li Wenliang issues warning to other doctors of a SARS like virus
January 1, 2020 - China forces Dr. Li Wenliang to say he misled people and was wrong
January 23, 2020 China finally quarantines Wuhan under quarantine and admits human to human transmission
March 19, 2020 China reports no new Covid19 cases
April 6, 2020 China reports no the first day of no deaths from Covid19
I think China placed pride and politics over full disclosure. I think China reacted late, but starting in late January they acted aggressively to contain and address Covid-19. I don't trust China to do the right thing and no American should. From December 1st to December 30th, I give China a pass as no one knew what the heck was going on. But when Dr. Wenliang issued his warning and was silenced through the end of January, China did not prioritize solving the outbreak over its national pride. As a planet, we lost about 20-30 days due to China doing this. But, by the end of January, every epidemioligist and every official who listened to epidemiologists knew this was serious. So up until late January I put the delay blame on China. After that, everyone had enough warning and a strong or slow response is based on how each country responded.
Now let's turn to the US response
As context, John Hopkins rated the USA as the second most prepared country to deal with a pandemic and rated 1st in 5 of 6 categories (19th in the 6th). With this level of ability, we should have been able to have the 2nd best response on a per capita basis of any country. If we believe the US is great and the president sites this study of how ready we are, we should be able to back this up if we execute properly.
January 3, 2020 - China notifies US about Covid19
January 6, 2020 - the New York Times writes its first article about Covid19 saying there are 59 cases in China
January 17, 2020 - the US has customs and border patrol do screening tests for all travelers coming from Wuhan province. This is a very important thing to consider. I think this was a very aggressive and early action. This was the US doing the right thing early. It wasn't effective for many reasons, but we had no way of knowing back then and I don't fault leaders for trying something that was based on science and seemed like a good measure. Now we know about assymptomatic spread and the delay in symptoms showing, but on January 17th, this was a strong and science based action to take by screening people. The point is that officials in the US including HHS Secretary Alex Azar took this seriously and took action. This should be evidence to all of us that those in the know realized how serious Covid19 was early on. I cannot overstate how important the information was that caused this action to be taken and how this information if acted upon more widely, would have been amazing. In hindsight, I think Alex Azar's leadership was incredible and I'm surprised he had the foresight to guide this on January 17th (from my research it was Alex Azar who guided this policy, but I could be wrong - regardless, this was bold leadership).
January 18, 2020 - Alex Azar provides the first briefing to Trump about Covid-19. Trump interupts the briefing to ask when flavored vaping products would be back on the market.
January 21, 2020 - the first known US case of Covid19 is confirmed
January 29, 2020 - Peter Navarro wrote a memo saying the worst case scenario of an epidemic should "not be overlooked"
January 31, 2020 - the US bars entry for foreign nationals who had traveled to China in the past 14 days. This was the first big mistake created by a bias in policy and this was a huge mistake because it inadvertently opened the US up to Covid19. Democrats make left bias mistakes and Republicans make right bias mistakes and this was a right bias mistake. Not for implementing the travel ban - I fully, fully supported a travel restriction/quarantine. The problem is as I posted on Facebook on January 31, "the virus doesn't look at passports or nationalities, it treats all humans the same. We don't need a travel ban based on nationality, we need to quarantine all humans coming into the US from China. If we quarantine everyone coming in whether they show symptoms or not for 14 days, we will protect our nation The current travel ban based on nationality is about blaming others, not stopping the virus."
Also, I would add that if there were already cases in the US, we neeed to start putting out information about Covid19 being serious and implementing domestic containment strategies recommended by epidemiologists.
Part II
February 2, 2020 - Trump tweets, "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It's going to be fine."
February 5, 2020 - The CDC starts sending out the tests it developed instead of using the WHO tests. The tests suffered from a technical flaw and did not produce reliable results. Of note, Biden said Trump "rejected" the WHO tests. This is not correct. Trump said internally to his staff that only American tests were to be used as the White House directed agencies that only a test that was FDA approved could be used and there was no inquiry/effort made to get FDA approval of the WHO test. So it wasn't quite a rejection, but there was no attempt to get or use the WHO tests and instead the CDC developed one. It was a risk and not a prudent one to spurn (not reject, but spurn) the use of a perfectly good test. The impact of this can be seen by the number of tests the US conducts in the first 50 days of Covid 19 vs the first 30 days of H1N1 in 2009 (see below).
February 10, 2020 - At a briefing, Trump says, "“Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now."
February 13, 2020 - Senator Richard Burr sold $1.5M in stocks (and I don't fault him at all for seeing the writing on the wall - we sold all of our stocks in February too, and I don't buy the attacks on Burr from the left).
February 19, 2020 - Trump said, “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.”
February 23, 2020 - Peter Navarrow writes his second memo about Covid19 saying Covid19 could infect 100 million Americans and kill 1.2 million Americans.
Februrary 23, 2020 Trump says to reporters “We have it very much under control in this country.”
February 24, 2020 - Trump tweets, "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA...Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"
February 26, 2020 - Trump tweets, "The 15 cases within a couple days is going to be down close to zero." and later that day "We're going very substantially down, not up." That means in the 3 days that even his economic advisor Navarro, in addition to Azar and Fauci and others were saying how deadly serious Covid19 was, the president was putting out wrong information that contradicted everything being told to him by experts. We may have been the second most prepared country to respond to an outbreak, but if we ignore warnings and expert advice, it does not matter how prepared we are. We might have a house full of guns, but if a burglar comes to our house and we say it's not a burglar, don't worry, the guns do no good.
February 27, 2020 - Trump says, “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
February 29, 2020 - the first recorded Covid19 death in the USA
March 4, 2020 - House passes $8.3B bipartisan Covid19 package
March 6, 2020 - Trump visits the CDC and says, "Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is." (This was the week I tried to get tested for Covid19 and couldn't)
March 10, 2020 - Trump tweets, "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."
March 11, 2020 - the NBA suspends all basketball games. There were a lot of folks at this time saying this whole Covid19 thing was a liberal conspiracy to get Trump. I heard it said here on the forum. My response was "the NBA wouldn't cancel their season due to a liberal conspiracy." I got several downvotes.
March 11, 2020 - Trump announces travel ban to Europe aside from the UK and Ireland. I posted on facebook how upset I was because again the virus doesn't care about someone's passport. I was especially upset because I needed to go to Croatia, which at the time had 1/2 the cases per capita that the UK had but Croatia travel was shut down while UK travel was not.
March 12, 2020 - The NHL suspends the rest of its season, the NCAA cancels rest of its basketball season
March 12, 2020 - 50 days from the first US Covid19 case and less than 10,000 people had been tested in the US. In comparison, over 1,000,000 people were tested for H1N1 Swine flu in the first 30 days because at that time the Obama administration used available test kits rather than taking the time to make a test. The early availability of testing was one of the critical mistakes made in the US response to Covid19. The limited early Covid19 testing set back our understanding, containment and the seriousness with which we addressed Covid19.
March 13, 2020 - Trump implements a National Emergency Declaration freeing up billions in federal aid to states. He also urged every state to set up emergency operation centers "effective immediately" and asking "every hospital in the country to activate its emergency preparedness plan." In my opinion, this was the first time Trump took a serious and presidential approach to Covid19. From March 13th on, I would say he generally has done what needed to be done.
March 15, 2020 - Travel ban to Europe expanded to UK and Ireland (why was this not done on the 13th and why added now? The science didn't change in two days).
March 15, 2020 - CDC releases guidelines saying for the next 8 weeks there should be no in-person groups of 50 or more people
March 16, 2020 - San Francisco and 6 nearby counties implements the nation's first shelter-in place. In my opinion, sheltering in place and social distancing are required to stop the spread of the disease. Canceling sports seasons is good, putting out advice about gatherings is good. But, until we all work together to stop spread, the sporadic cancelling of events and guidelines don't matter. I don't know why San Francisco was the first city when other places like the state of Washington and New York had more cases.
March 16, 2020 - Trump puts out guidelines to avoid gatherings of 10 or more people, to avoid going to bars and restaurants and to halt discretionary travel.
March 16/17, 2020 - Republican governors DeWine (Ohio) and Logan (Maryland) became the first to cancel primaries.
March 17, 2020 - Trump said that the WHO test "was a bad test." There is zero evidence of this. The WHO tests did not have any significant level of false positives (about .2%) or false negatives
March 18, 2020 - US and Canada agree to close their border
March 19, 2020 - Democratic Governor Newsom orders a shelter-in-place for all of California.
March 20, 2020 - Democratic Governor Cuomo orders a shelter-in-place for all of New York
(I highlighted the party for the first four real strong responses from governors to show it was even between Democrats and Republicans. My strong belief is that strong response to a crisis is not partisan)
March 22, 2020 - Governor DeWine (Ohio) and Governor John Bel Edwards (Louisiana) order a shelter in place for their states
March 23, 2020 - Governors Inslee (Washington), Whitmer (Michigan) Justice (West Virginia) and Baker (Massachusetts) order a shelter-in-place
March 24, 2020 - Covid19 cases hit 50,000 in US and 637 deaths
Part III
March 25, 2020 - US Senate passes the $2trillion dollar stimulus package. Personally, a two trillion dollar stimulus package angers me. IF we had taken Covid19 seriously in February, we wouldn't need to burn a hole in our children's future. This stimulus proves the old adage, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
March 26, 2020 - the US became the country with the most Covid19 cases in the world
March 28, 2020 - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of a new, rapid coronavirus test that could give patients results in less than 15 minutes.
March 29, 2020 - President Trump extended his administration's guidelines on social distancing until April 30.
April 2, 2020 - The U.S. Department of Labor released new figures that showed a record 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits the previous week
April 2, 2020 - Covid19 deaths in the U.S. topped 5,000, as confirmed cases nationwide rose to 232,837.
So, if you look back on this timeline, there is a very clear difference in our national response from our president before March 13th and from March 13th on. I think the dismissal of Covid19 by Trump and others as not worse than the flu and something that will go away and something we are managing great set our nation up to fail. We were not preparing for the epidemic or trying to contain it until after it had spread. From March 13th on, I think Trump took Covid19 more seriously. I would even say that his leadership has been good since March 13th. By this point in time however, we were already behind and the recovery costs us at least $2 trillion and millions of unemployed Americans. And, delaying to March13th is not pinning blame unfairly - all of his experts were advising beginning in January to take this very, very seriously.
I think the governors like Newsome, Cuomo, DeWine Logan and others, despite having less access to health care experts and epidemiology experts, provided the best leadership and always took Covid19 seriously. I think Alex Azar and Peter Navarro took it seriously early on as did Dr. Fauci. But the dismissiveness in February by Trump caused many Americans on the right to take Covid19 less seriously and because of this, it took awhile for our whole nation to take Covid19 seriously. This 6-7 week delay in seriousness is very costly and deadly.
I want to emphasize that I would have given this same analysis regardless of whether it was a Democratc or Republican who was president. The facts aren't left and right. Politicians and increasingly our media sadly. are slanted left and right Responding well to a crisis is not Democratic or Republican. It is leadership.
I also want to emphasize that in the future, all of us should respect the writing on the wall before the problem catches up to us. I'm not saying that about any particular issue because I am not trying to turn this to other issues. I just want us all to be willing to see problems as they develop and not when it is too late and take action when an ounce of prevention is still an option. We didn't do this on Covid19 and I hope, I hope, I hope we use this as a lesson to apply ounces of prevention rather than pounds of cure to future problems.
So that is a very long winded post because I feel attacks aren't helpful. I think facts and analysis are. I don't want this post or any to be left or right. I tried to just see things for what they were and report what was said and done. I think once you put all the analysis together without any spin or sensationalism, it creates a clear picture.
See Germany and South Korea that had tests ready to go as soon as the first case hit there. The "Playbook" developed by the Pandemic team that was disbanded 2018 details the need to invoke the DPA to immediately begin mass production of PPE for front-line workers as well as basic equipment. Germany and SK also began stockpile such materials. Health workers did not need to die at the rate that they are.
@CaliforniaDawg Great documentation of the FACTS, I would add that also on January 31st Azar pushed for restrictions on travel from Europe where the virus was already starting to spread. This did not happen until MARCH! Even then UK and Ireland were initially exempt for no apparent health reason, The delay in addressing this was critical as many flights from Europe come in through the NE (JFK, Newark etc.). It is no surprise that NY would be the first to be hit followed by the main business air routes (hourly shuttles to Boston, Chicago etc.).
Dawgnation intellectuals literally called this a media/liberal hoax.
All's still well for me out in Germany. Someone within one of the units I support held a house party and the German Police showed up. 25,000 Euro fine for breaking social distancing rules.That's a little over $27k at today's exchange rate. The Germans are not playing around with this at all and I don't think its a bad thing. Its not spreading very much in the area around me and examples like the one above are a big reason why. Stay safe everybody and just follow the rules. Its not worth getting a fine or getting the virus regardless of how you personally feel about the pandemic.
Dang...
If anything, that was thorough, Cali...
Incredible summary, and I agree with most of your conclusions. Hard not to, because - ON THIS SIDE OF IT - everything looks very clear and obvious.
There are a lot of moving parts. We know about 2% of what we will eventually know about this virus and this situation.
I will argue that making any conclusions about what was right and what was wrong RIGHT NOW is premature, and making those conclusions LOOKING BACK is very "Monday morning QBing" even though they seem sound.
That is what frustrates me, and I say that apolitically. The talking heads sound like self-righteous d-bags - on both sides. A week - just one week - before we shut school down, I would have thought that idea was insane. Looking back, it seems to have been a no-brainer.
Our society, our perspective, our thought processes, have been forever changed. What is obvious now wasn't even an option not long ago.
Concur. Very nice job by @CaliforniaDawg g on the time line. I don't agree with all of his assessments, but it was certainly a thorough job of bringing information together. Also agree with @Canedawg2140 that it's pretty easy to look back and see where things should have been done differently...but that goes with any difficult situation. There is a military saying "no plan survives first contact". Doesn't matter how well you game-plan...once the action starts, you will have to change the plan. The entire world was caught off guard. China was not honest at the beginning and everyone was left to their own devices to figure out a plan. Like you say, six months from now what we think we know today will be completely obsolete.
The good news is that it appears we have flattened the curve. Nobody is predicting millions of deaths any more. The honest, tough decision we are going to have to make in the near future is how much risk Are we willing to take? We can't have the country on lock-down much longer. The long term social and economic impact would likely be worse than whatever damage this virus will do.
I agree monday morning qb'ing is easier. I did try to include thoughts i had in the moment to try to avoid that. I also am quick to give benefit of the doubt to understandable confusion, such as the airport screening. It didnt work, but we only know that with the benefit of hindsight. Thus its not fair to criticize it looking back. I think we have to rationally separate out things thst couldn't have been known at the time from things that should have been known at the time. I tried my best to do that.
The reality is.....although the virus doesn't care about a person's political views, religion, race or whatever......
It's next to impossible for people to keep politics out of it.
It's amazing to me that people blame our governments response time. I personally believe our government has done a phenomenal job. Just because certain "experts" advised that things be shut down sooner.....doesn't mean it was a realistic call.
Sometimes things have to happen before people or governments react. We weren't prepared.....but honestly.....how in the heck could we have been.
Moving forward I'm confident we'll be more prepared. Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton.....name the administration......would not have been prepared. It's a reality.
And regardless if people want to acknowledge it or not......@pgjackson is correct that this country will have to get back to some normalcy sooner rather than later......because the ramifications could be catastrophic. Far worse than the virus.
But I also don't understand how anyone could take the list of other causes of death and somehow compare it to this pandemic.
There is actually a chance that once everything is said and done.....that the regular flu will have caused more deaths in 2018 than Covid 19 will in 2020.
But the country doesn't shut down because of the flu. 65000 - 85000 deaths in the country is awful and would be awful if/when that occurs because of this virus. If everyone knew that covid 19 wouldn't kill more than that....the reality is that the country wouldn't be shut down.
But the problem with Covid 19.....if these drastic measures weren't put in place......there is no telling how many deaths it would have caused. It's possible it could have far surpassed what cancer causes per year.
So if the death count actually stays around 65000 as could possibly be the case..... trying to suggest that it was no worse than the seasonal flu is simply ridiculous.
This virus is an evil.....nondiscriminating.....bad ass.....the likes that no one currently living has ever seen.
Covid19 has killed over 15k in the US in around 6 to 8 weeks. The flu has killed more people at this point but it was over a longer period of time. It scares me to think of how many Covid19 would kill during the same amount of time that the flu did if we hadn't taken the measures that we have taken. It's hopefully taught a lot more people to wash their freakin hands.
Really, really looking forward to the day we can retire this thread.
please don't ever compare this to the flu any more