Covid
Covid¶
The Ticking Time Bomb¶
Our species has relentlessly expanded into previously wild spaces. Through intensive agriculture, habitat destruction, and rising temperatures, we have uprooted the planet’s animals, forcing them into new and narrower ranges that are on our own doorsteps. Humanity has squeezed the world’s wildlife in a crushing grip—and viruses have come bursting out. 1
No Disaster Preparation¶
- Left seat on WHO’s executive board vacant for two years leading up to the pandemic
- “Since 2017,Trump has pulled more than 30 staffers out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s office in China”
- Last July, he defunded an American epidemiologist embedded within China’s CDC.
- “In 2018, he dismantled an office that had been assembled specifically to prepare for nascent pandemics” despite warnings from the secretary of health and intelligence agencies
- Investment in disease research only usually lasted a few years after previous pandemics like H1N1, MURS, and SARS
China Lied to WHO¶
- Li Wenliang raised alarm in china, the government silenced him
- Then China lied about the possibility of the virus spreading person to person
- When China and CDC finally declared public-health emergency it was Jan 30th and the virus had spread to 10,000 people in 20 countries
Poor early response¶
- CDC developed and distributed it’s own but faulty test
- Very little around building up PPEs, and health infrastructure in February and March where it would have been most critical
- by end of February “tens of thousands of Americans had likely been infected, but only hundreds had been tested”
- January Trump closed travel to China then later Europe
- “genetic evidence shows that the specific viruses that triggered the first big outbreaks, in Washington State, didn’t land until mid-February.”
- On February 26, Trump asserted that cases were “going to be down to close to zero”
Misinformation¶
Misinformation from the government to help preserve limited stocks of PPEs for healthcare workers
- The WHO, CDC, and U.S. Surgeon general urge people not to wear masks
- They down-played the symptoms to that of similar to the flu with little “nuance or acknowledgement of uncertainty”
- AFP lobbied to open up the country while it’s own staff worked remotely for safety
Confusion over hydroxychloroquine¶
- it wasn’t a silver bullet the way Trump hyped it to be
- It wasn’t as dangerous as was reported by the Lancet (relying on data from Surgisphere, and retracted in June)
- caused sortage for people needing it for proven non-covid treatments
The Task Force¶
- Trump put his son-in-law with no medical background in charge of a COVID-19 task force