Counting, as Nature does, from 31 December 2019, when “Chinese authorities notify WHO of an outbreak of ‘pneumonia of unknown causes’ in Wuhan City, Hubei”:
Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC: The U.S. has ‘way too much virus’ to control pandemic as cases surge across country. She says the pandemic is on par w/ the devastating 1918 global pandemic, which was a transformational global experience https://t.co/Mqwr6NPn5Q
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) June 30, 2020
The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.
The U.S. has set records for daily new infections in recent days as outbreaks surge mostly across the South and West. The recent spike in new cases has outpaced daily infections in April when the virus rocked Washington state and the northeast, and when public officials thought the outbreak was hitting its peak in the U.S.
“We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control,” she said in an interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association’s Dr. Howard Bauchner. “We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging.”…
“This is really the beginning,” Schuchat said of the U.S.’s recent surge in new cases. “I think there was a lot of wishful thinking around the country that, hey it’s summer. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re over this and we are not even beginning to be over this. There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so.”
The coronavirus has proven to be the kind of virus that Schuchat and her colleagues always feared would emerge, she said. She added that it spreads easily, no one appears to have immunity to it and it’s in fact “stealthier than we were expecting.”
“While you plan for it, you think about it, you have that human denial that it’s really going to happen on your watch, but it’s happening,” she said. “As much as we’ve studied [the 1918 flu pandemic], I think what we’re experiencing as a global community is really bad and it’s similar to that 1918 transformational experience.”…
The current outbreak in the U.S. looks like nothing in any other rich country: https://t.co/R849s69HzX pic.twitter.com/CEy8GTZsAX
— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) June 29, 2020
… Most other high-income countries are dealing with modest numbers of new cases — often an inevitable consequence of reopening — and the countries are responding aggressively. Many are following the advice of public health experts, ordering social distancing, mask-wearing and partial lockdowns and doing their best to track people who came in contact with new patients.
The United States is not. President Trump and many governors continue to flout scientific advice and send mixed messages about the seriousness of the virus.
The federal government, as The Washington Post explained in a helpful reconstruction, has failed to offer “the kind of clear and consistent messaging experts say is necessary to mount a successful public health response.”…
Timeline: How the global coronavirus pandemic unfolded https://t.co/1HuepUFdVL pic.twitter.com/E7bKDp7Zys
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 29, 2020
COVID-19 Research in Brief: December, 2019 to June, 2020 https://t.co/pygjU8JIYW
— Soumya Swaminathan (@doctorsoumya) June 29, 2020
The Pandemic’s Six-Month Anniversary: Some Longer ReadsPost + Comments (54)