COVID-19 by Dylan Howard

Author:Dylan Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510765344
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2020-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

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The first COVID-19 case in the United States was identified on January 20, 2020, in an American citizen returning from Wuhan to his home in Washington State. Eight days later, Dr. Carter Mecher, a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, sent an email to a group of public health experts, including government officials.

“Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” he wrote. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe…. You guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools. Now I’m screaming, close the colleges and universities.”

The following day, according to the New York Times, President Trump was told of a memo by trade adviser Peter Navarro that the virus could cause as many as half a million American deaths. The newspaper also reported that a day after that, Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), warned the president about the “possibility of a pandemic.” Mr. Azar was told in return that he was being “alarmist.”

Six days later, following a specially convened briefing on Capitol Hill, Connecticut senator Christopher S. Murphy tweeted: “Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren’t taking this seriously enough.”

The apparent unwillingness of the president to “take this seriously enough” continued throughout February. The New York Times reported a February 14 memo from Dr. Robert Kadlec, disaster response official at HHS, detailing the kind of drastic measures the government’s own public health experts warned would be necessary to curtail the spread of the virus. They included “significantly limiting public gatherings and cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings that cannot be convened by phone. Consider school closures. Widespread ‘stay at home’ directives from public and private organizations with nearly 100 percent telework for some.”

It was not acted upon. President Trump would wait until March 16 before announcing meaningful social distancing guidelines—by which time nearly 1,000 new cases were being reported each day as the virus spread across the United States all but unopposed. A week earlier, with the Dow Jones having plummeted over 5,000 points from the beginning of the year, the president had tweeted: “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power … to inflame the CoronaVirus situation.”

The following day, with no apparent irony, he claimed, “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

The president had done too little, too late—something that had become clear even to the White House. And the consequences soon began to be felt. Not only had the virus been given time to spread and grow during February and early March, but during that same period, little had been done to prepare for the inevitable onslaught of cases.

As had happened in the UK, hospitals across the US were left scrambling for vital supplies of PPE and other essentials. A survey conducted over five days by the HHS Office of Inspector General found that many were critically low on such basics as toilet paper, face masks, and even disinfectant.

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