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HENRY KOTULA
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Category Archives: Leadership Political
Top Trump adviser bluntly contradicts president on covid-19 threat, urging all-out response
Posted on November 3, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Credibility, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Election, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, False Hope, False Narrative, Honesty, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Integrity, Leadership Culture, Leadership Decentralized, Leadership Integrity, Leadership Messaging, Leadership Political, Leadership Trust, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth	• Leave a comment
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/02/deborah-birx-covid-trump/
"This is not about lockdowns. … It's about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented," says internal White House report that challenges many of Trump's pronouncements.
A top White House coronavirus adviser sounded alarms Monday about a new and deadly phase in the health crisis, pleading with top administration officials for "much more aggressive action," even as President Trump continues to assure rallygoers that the nation is "rounding the turn" on the pandemic.
"We are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic … leading to increasing mortality," said the Nov. 2 report from Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force. "This is not about lockdowns — it hasn't been about lockdowns since March or April. It's about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented."
Birx's internal report, shared with top White House and agency officials, contradicts Trump on numerous points: While the president holds large campaign events with hundreds of attendees, most without masks, she explicitly warns against them. While the president blames rising cases on more testing, she says testing is "flat or declining" in many areas where cases are rising. And while Trump says the country is "rounding the turn," Birx notes that the country is entering its most dangerous period yet and will see more than 100,000 new cases a day this week.
Through a spokesperson, Birx did not respond to a request for comment.
Other health experts, including Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have warned of record surges in cases and hospitalizations as the United States records more than 9 million cases and 230,000 deaths.
"We're in for a whole lot of hurt," Fauci told The Washington Post late Friday, predicting a long and potentially deadly winter unless there's an "abrupt change" — prompting Trump to suggest that he planned to fire the scientist after the election.
But Birx's daily missives go further, revealing how much the administration's internal reports are in direct conflict with Trump's public pronouncements that downplay the seriousness of the threat and erroneously suggest that few people are dying. They also speak to the increasing desperation of health officials to spotlight the risks of a pandemic that is forecast to take thousands more lives as the weather worsens unless people change their behaviors. Some officials are also concerned about recouping their reputations in a post-Trump era.
The increasingly dire tone of Birx's reports has gotten little traction, according to an administration official who works with her and spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive information. "She feels like she's being ignored," the official said.
Birx's message "has been urgent for weeks," said another administration official, "as has the plea for the administration to ask the American people to use masks, avoid gatherings and socially distance, basically since it became apparent that we were heading into a third surge."
The report hits hard on the worsening situation: "Cases are rapidly rising in nearly 30 percent of all USA counties, the highest number of county hotspots we have seen with this pandemic," it said. "Half of the United States is in the red or orange zone for cases despite flat or declining testing."
Sounding a similar theme to past reports, it calls for "much more aggressive action from messaging, to testing, to surging personnel around the country before the crisis point."
What is "essential at this time point," the report said, is "consistent messaging about uniform use of masks, physical distancing and hand washing with profound limitation on indoor gatherings especially with family and friends."
It adds: "This is about empowerment Americans with the knowledge and data for decision-making to prevent community spread and save lives."
The president appears unpersuaded by such messages, convinced by new medical adviser Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no infectious-disease experience, that allowing healthy people to return to daily activities without restrictions will hasten herd immunity and bolster the economy, say some advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Trump plans to hold a large indoor gathering for 300 to 400 guests at the White House on Tuesday to watch the election returns, only a few weeks after a White House event to announce his Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett became a superspreader event.
White House communications director Alyssa Farah disputed the report's suggestion that the administration's response has been inadequate to the crisis. She said the White House has "significantly increased" the U.S. national stockpile to ensure the country has sufficient personal protective equipment; bought 150 million coronavirus tests and distributed them to the most vulnerable populations, including nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and Native American tribal areas; and sent special teams to states and nursing homes with the most cases.
In addition, she said, the administration continues to work to "safely rush therapeutics" to the sick and develop vaccines. "We are working around-the-clock to safely treat the virus and ultimately defeat it," Farah said.
Birx's report goes to pains to dispute Trump's false claims that coronavirus cases are increasing only because of increases in testing. Monday's report notes that although testing is flat, a rising number of tests are positive, suggesting "community spread is much worse than is evident by current [measurements]."
An earlier, Oct. 17 report sounded the same theme: It cited increasing daily hospital admissions, rising fatalities and emergency room visits, and bluntly stated, "this is not due to increased testing but broad and ever-increasing community spread."
That report added these words highlighted in bold: "There is an absolute necessity of the Administration to use this moment to ask the American people to wear masks, physical distance and avoid gatherings in both public and private spaces." On that day, Trump held two large rallies, according to his public schedule, one in Michigan and one in Wisconsin.
Officials describe Birx as frustrated with Atlas's growing influence. She has challenged his views in task force meetings, suggesting that reopening society without any restrictions would lead to thousands of deaths.
In recent weeks, Birx has crisscrossed the country, traveling to dozens of virus hot spots, where she has urged state and local officials to mandate masks, close bars and restaurants and encourage distancing.
Birx is said to be close to Vice President Pence, but he's been on the road campaigning in recent weeks, taking his attention away from the coronavirus, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal discussions.
Unlike Fauci, a highly regarded civil servant who Trump has criticized as a "Democrat," Birx was chosen by the administration to helm the response and has been lavishly praised in the past by Trump.
Fauci said in his interview Friday that he and Birx lost the president's ear as Trump worried increasingly about a sputtering economy and his reelection prospects.
"They needed to have a medical message that was essentially consistent with what they were saying, and one of the ways to say: 'The outbreak is over. [Mitigation strategies are] really irrelevant because it doesn't make any difference. All you need to do is prevent people from dying and protect people in places like the nursing homes,' " Fauci said.
Experts Slam The White House's 'Herd Immunity' Plan
Posted on October 14, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Credibility, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Ethical Pitfalls, Ethics, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Judgement, Leadership Cares, Leadership Culture, Leadership Intent, Leadership Political, Medical Ethics, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Institute of Health (NIH), National Strategy, Pandemic, Positivity Rate, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Reinfection, Scientists, Social Distancing, Vulnerable Populations, Wishful Thinking	• Leave a comment
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mishagajewski/2020/10/14/experts-slam-the-white-houses-heard-immunity-plan/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=coronavirus&cdlcid=5d2c97df953109375e4d8b68#12a425173e49
The White House is reportedly embracing a herd-immunity approach focused on "protecting the elderly and the vulnerable" but experts are calling the plan dangerous, "unethical", and equivalent to "mass murder".
The news comes following a petition titled The Great Barrington Declaration, which argued against lockdowns and school and business closures and got almost 500,000 signatures – although some of them were fake.
"Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health," the declaration states, adding, "The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection."
Essentially, herd immunity is when enough people are immune to a disease, like Covid-19, that the disease can't be transmitted as easily and thus provides indirect protection.
It's been rumoured that the government has been leaning towards this plan of action for some time now, although this is the first real admission.
In response to today's news, experts around the world have been voicing their concerns.
And this isn't the first time we've heard experts say herd immunity is not a good idea.
For example, the head of the World Health Organization said Monday that allowing the novel coronavirus to spread in an attempt to reach herd immunity was "simply unethical."
Similarly, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins also denounced herd immunity as a viable plan.
"What I worry about with this is it's being presented as if it's a major alternative view that's held by large numbers of experts in the scientific community. That is not true. This is a fringe component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It fits into the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment," he said in an interview.
Not to mention studies continue to show that Sweden's attempts at herd immunity have failed and have resulted in a higher Covid-19 death toll than expected.
As more research comes out, scientists are starting to learn that Covid-19 immunity, even in those who were severely infected, can fade after a few weeks.
This is why we've seen cases of reinfection and why many experts are advising against a herd immunity plan.
Currently less than 10% of the population in the U.S. are immune to Covid-19 but for herd immunity to be achieved most experts estimate between 40% to 80% of the population would need to be infected.
To put that into context, that means around 197 million people would need to be infected in America. And assuming that the Covid-19 fatality rate is somewhere between 0.5% and 1%, based on numbers from the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1 million people would die – at minimum.
William Haseltine, Chair and President of ACCESS Health International, told CNN "herd immunity is another word for mass murder. We are looking at two to six million Americans dead – not just this year but every year."
"This is an unmitigated disaster for our country – to have people at the highest levels of our government countermanding our best public health officials. We know this epidemic can be put under control. Other countries have done it. We are doing the opposite."
Mark Twain's Wisdom
Posted on October 13, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Change, Leadership Political, Leadership Transition, Politics, Quotation, Wisdom	• Leave a comment
America's most prestigious medical journal makes a political statement
Posted on October 12, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economic Stimulus, Election, Employee Benefits, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Premiums, High Prices, Job, Job Loss, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Judgement, Leadership Cares, Leadership Culture, Leadership Decentralized, Leadership Intent, Leadership Messaging, Leadership Political, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Partisanship, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing, Supreme Court, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured	• Leave a comment
https://mailchi.mp/45f15de483b9/the-weekly-gist-october-9-2020?e=d1e747d2d8
For its first 208 years, the New England Journal of Medicine has never endorsed a political candidate. But this week the journal published an editorial outlining its political position in the upcoming Presidential election, signed unanimously by all editors who are US citizens.
The editors did not explicitly endorse former Vice President Biden, but rather offered a scathing condemnation of the current administration's performance during the COVID pandemic: "Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates.
But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs." (Formally endorsing Biden last month, Scientific American also made the first political endorsement in its 175-year history.)
Much of the media coverage of the NEJM statement has centered on the question of whether medicine should involve itself in politics, or "live above it".
Medicine has been drawn into political disputes before, but now the nature of the involvement has changed. In the past, debates largely centered around regulation, payment or policy—but now the science itself has become a fundamentally political issue.
The very nature of the coronavirus has become a matter of political belief, not just an indisputable scientific fact.
Public trust in both scientific institutions and the government, and their ability to work together, has been damaged. We fear this will lead to poorer health outcomes regardless of who wins the upcoming election.
Administration claim that only 6% of dead from Covid-19
Posted on September 7, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Comorbidity, Coronavirus, Credibility, Data Interpretation, Death Toll, Honesty, Integrity, Leadership Culture, Leadership Integrity, Leadership Messaging, Leadership Political, Leadership Trust, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, Pandemic, Transparency, Trust, Truth	• Leave a comment
President Donald Trump has repeatedly spread a false claim that COVID-19 is not as deadly as his own public health agencies have reported. That's Pants on Fire! https://bit.ly/3jG7mpJ
INTRODUCING: PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter Minute. A fact-checker's guide to the headlines. For more COVID-19 fact-checks, visit https://politifact.com/coronavirus
U.S. says it won't join WHO-linked effort to develop, distribute coronavirus vaccine
Posted on September 1, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Health Policy, Judgement, Leadership Culture, Leadership Flexibility, Leadership Intent, Leadership Political, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Reliable, Risk, Risk Management, Risk Tolerance, Vaccine, World Health Organization (WHO)	• Leave a comment
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/coronavirus-vaccine-trump/2020/09/01/b44b42be-e965-11ea-bf44-0d31c85838a5_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR31G0QRSO-t6-OnkJxpPFGyIv5d9EW7Zmq4nLVs63OzYf2yR5v1RJ5MtNA
The Trump administration said it will not join a global effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine, in part because the World Health Organization is involved, a decision that could shape the course of the pandemic and the country's role in health diplomacy.
More than 170 countries are in talks to participate in the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) Facility, which aims to speed vaccine development and secure doses for all countries and distribute them to the most high-risk segment of each population.
The plan, which is co-led by the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the vaccine alliance, was of interest to some members of the Trump administration and is backed by traditional U.S. allies, including Japan, Germany and the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.
But the United States will not participate, in part because the White House does not want to work with the WHO, which President Trump has criticized over what he characterized as its "China-centric" response to the pandemic.
"The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China," said Judd Deere, a spokesman for the White House.
The Covax decision, which has not been previously reported, is effectively a doubling down by the administration on its bet that the United States will win the vaccine race. It eliminates the chance to secure doses from a pool of promising vaccine candidates — a potentially risky strategy.
"America is taking a huge gamble by taking a go-it-alone strategy," said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University.
Kendall Hoyt, an assistant professor at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine, said it was akin to opting out of an insurance policy.
The United States could be pursuing bilateral deals with drug companies and simultaneously participating in Covax, she said, increasing its odds of getting some doses of the first safe vaccine. "Just from a simple risk management perspective, this [Covax decision] is shortsighted, she said.
The U.S. move will also shape what happens elsewhere. The idea behind Covax is to discourage hoarding and focus on vaccinating high-risk people in every country first, a strategy that could lead to better health outcomes and lower costs, experts said.
U.S. nonparticipation makes that harder. "When the U.S. says it is not going to participate in any sort of multilateral effort to secure vaccines, it's a real blow," said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
"The behavior of countries when it comes to vaccines in this pandemic will have political repercussions beyond public health," she added. "It's about, are you a reliable partner, or, at the end of the day, are you going to keep all your toys for yourself?"
Some members of the Trump administration were interested in a more cooperative approach but were ultimately overruled.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun had interest in exploring some type of role in Covax, a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision-making.
But there was resistance in some corners of the government and a belief that the United States has enough coronavirus vaccine candidates in advanced clinical trials that it can go it alone, according to the official and a former senior administration official who learned about it in private discussions.
The question of who wins the race for a safe vaccine will largely influence how the administration's "America first" approach to the issue plays out.
An unlikely worst-case scenario, experts said, is that none of the U.S. vaccine candidates are viable, leaving the United States with no option since it has shunned the Covax effort.
Another possibility is that a U.S. vaccine does pan out, but the country hoards doses, vaccinating a large number of Americans, including those at low risk, while leaving other countries without.
Experts in health security see at least two problems with this strategy: The first is that a new vaccine is unlikely to offer complete protection to all people, meaning that a portion of the U.S. population will still be vulnerable to imported cases — especially as tourism and trade resume.
The second, related problem is that a U.S. recovery depends on economic recovery elsewhere. If large parts of the world are still in lockdown, the global economy is smarting and supply chains are disrupted, the United States will not be able to bounce back.
"We will continue to suffer the economic consequences — lost U.S. jobs — if the pandemic rages unabated in allies and trading partners," said Thomas J. Bollyky, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the director of its global health program.
Proponents of a multilateral approach to global public health would like to see all countries coordinate through Covax. Perhaps unsurprisingly, interest is strongest from poor countries, while some larger economies are cutting deals directly with drugmakers.
WHO officials have argued that countries need not choose — they can pursue both strategies by signing bilateral deals and also joining Covax.
"By joining the facility at the same time that you do bilateral deals, you're actually betting on a larger number of vaccine candidates," Mariângela Simao, a WHO assistant director for drug and vaccine access, said at an Aug. 17 briefing.
If nothing else, the United States could pledge surplus vaccine doses to Covax to ensure they are distributed in a rational and equitable way, experts said.
Some cautioned against a focus on "winning" the race. Given the complexity of supply chains, vaccine development will necessarily be a global effort, regardless of whether countries want to cooperate.
The decision to steer clear of Covax comes at a time of tremendous change for health diplomacy.
The United States has long been the biggest donor to the WHO and a major funder of vaccine initiatives.
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump praised both China and the WHO for their handling of the outbreak. But as the crisis intensified in the United States, he turned on the U.N. health agency.
In April, he announced a freeze on new U.S. funding. Not long after, the State Department started stripping references to the WHO from fact sheets and rerouting funds to other programs.
By July, the administration had sent a letter signaling its intent to withdraw from the WHO.
But untangling the United States from the agency it helped found and shape is not simple — and the terms of the separation are still being assessed.
It is not yet clear, for instance, whether a U.S. withdrawal means the United States will just stop its contributions to the WHO or whether it will stop funding any initiative linked to the agency in any way.
For instance, the White House no longer wants to work with the WHO, but the United States is a major supporter of Gavi, which co-leads the Covax project.
Asked to comment on the Covax decision, a State Department spokeswoman pointed to U.S. funding for Gavi, as well as money for such programs as UNICEF and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the White House could still reverse course and join Covax, or at least let the Senate fund through Gavi — a political workaround.
"This just shows how awkward, contradictory and self-defeating all of this," he said. "For the U.S. to terminate its relationship with the WHO in the middle of a pandemic is going to create an endless stream of self-defeating moments."
Administration's new pandemic adviser pushes controversial 'herd immunity' strategy, worrying public health officials
Posted on August 31, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Credibility, Crisis, Crisis Management, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, False Hope, False Narrative, Herd Immunity, Immunity, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Judgement, Leadership Cares, Leadership Culture, Leadership Decentralized, Leadership Integrity, Leadership Intent, Leadership Messaging, Leadership Political, Leadership Trust, Long COVID, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Silencing, Silencing Speech, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth, Wishful Thinking, World Health Organization (WHO)	• Leave a comment
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-scott-atlas-herd-immunity/2020/08/30/925e68fe-e93b-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most
One of President Trump's top medical advisers is urging the White House to embrace a controversial "herd immunity" strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus, while taking steps to protect those in nursing homes and other vulnerable populations, according to five people familiar with the discussions.
The administration has already begun to implement some policies along these lines, according to current and former officials as well as experts, particularly with regard to testing.
The approach's chief proponent is Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist from Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution, who joined the White House earlier this month as a pandemic adviser. He has advocated that the United States adopt the model Sweden has used to respond to the virus outbreak, according to these officials, which relies on lifting restrictions so the healthy can build up immunity to the disease rather than limiting social and business interactions to prevent the virus from spreading.
Sweden's handling of the pandemic has been heavily criticized by public health officials and infectious-disease experts as reckless — the country has among the highest infection and death rates in the world. It also hasn't escaped the deep economic problems resulting from the pandemic.
But Sweden's approach has gained support among some conservatives who argue that social distancing restrictions are crushing the economy and infringing on people's liberties.
That this approach is even being discussed inside the White House is drawing concern from experts inside and outside the government who note that a herd immunity strategy could lead to the country suffering hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lost lives.
"The administration faces some pretty serious hurdles in making this argument. One is a lot of people will die, even if you can protect people in nursing homes," said Paul Romer, a professor at New York University who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2018. "Once it's out in the community, we've seen over and over again, it ends up spreading everywhere."
Atlas, who does not have a background in infectious diseases or epidemiology, has expanded his influence inside the White House by advocating policies that appeal to Trump's desire to move past the pandemic and get the economy going, distressing health officials on the White House coronavirus task force and throughout the administration who worry that their advice is being followed less and less.
Atlas declined several interview requests in recent days. After the publication of this story, he released a statement through the White House: "There is no policy of the President or this administration of achieving herd immunity. There never has been any such policy recommended to the President or to anyone else from me."
White House communications director Alyssa Farah said there is no change in the White House's approach toward combatting the pandemic.
"President Trump is fully focused on defeating the virus through therapeutics and ultimately a vaccine. There is no discussion about changing our strategy," she said in a statement. "We have initiated an unprecedented effort under Operation Warp Speed to safely bring a vaccine to market in record time — ending this virus through medicine is our top focus."
White House officials said Trump has asked questions about herd immunity but has not formally embraced the strategy. The president, however, has made public comments that advocate a similar approach.
"We are aggressively sheltering those at highest risk, especially the elderly, while allowing lower-risk Americans to safely return to work and to school, and we want to see so many of those great states be open," he said during his address to the Republican National Convention Thursday night. "We want them to be open. They have to be open. They have to get back to work."
Atlas has fashioned himself as the "anti-Dr. Fauci," one senior administration official said, referring to Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-disease official, who has repeatedly been at odds with the president over his public comments about the threat posed by the virus. He has clashed with Fauci as well as Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, over the administration's pandemic response.
Atlas has argued both internally and in public that an increased case count will move the nation more quickly to herd immunity and won't lead to more deaths if the vulnerable are protected. But infectious-disease experts strongly dispute that, noting that more than 25,000 people younger than 65 have died of the virus in the United States. In addition, the United States has a higher number of vulnerable people of all ages because of high rates of heart and lung disease and obesity, and millions of vulnerable people live outside nursing homes — many in the same households with children, whom Atlas believes should return to school.
"When younger, healthier people get the disease, they don't have a problem with the disease. I'm not sure why that's so difficult for everyone to acknowledge," Atlas said in an interview with Fox News's Brian Kilmeade in July. "These people getting the infection is not really a problem and in fact, as we said months ago, when you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you're prolonging the problem because you're preventing population immunity. Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem."
Atlas has said that lockdowns and social distancing restrictions during the pandemic have had a health cost as well, noting the problems associated with unemployment and people forgoing health care because they are afraid to visit a doctor.
"From personal communications with neurosurgery colleagues, about half of their patients have not appeared for treatment of disease which, left untreated, risks brain hemorrhage, paralysis or death," he wrote in The Hill newspaper in May
The White House has left many of the day-to-day decisions regarding the pandemic to governors and local officials, many of whom have disregarded Trump's advice, making it unclear how many states would embrace the Swedish model, or elements of it, if Trump begins to aggressively push for it to be adopted.
But two senior administration officials and one former official, as well as medical experts, noted that the administration is already taking steps to move the country in this direction.
The Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, invoked the Defense Production Act earlier this month to expedite the shipment of tests to nursing homes — but the administration has not significantly ramped up spending on testing elsewhere, despite persistent shortages. Trump and top White House aides, including Atlas, have also repeatedly pushed to reopen schools and lift lockdown orders, despite outbreaks in several schools that attempted to resume in-person classes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also updated its testing guidance last week to say that those who are asymptomatic do not necessarily have to be tested. That prompted an outcry from medical groups, infectious-disease experts and local health officials, who said the change meant that asymptomatic people who had contact with an infected person would not be tested. The CDC estimates that about 40 percent of people infected with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, are asymptomatic, and experts said much of the summer surge in infections was due to asymptomatic spread among young, healthy people.
Trump has previously floated "going herd" before being convinced by Fauci and others that it was not a good idea, according to one official.
The discussions come as at least 5.9 million infections have been reported and at least 179,000 have died from the virus this year and as public opinion polls show that Trump's biggest liability with voters in his contest against Democratic nominee Joe Biden is his handling of the pandemic. The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths, with far more casualties and infections than any other developed nation.
The nations that have most successfully managed the coronavirus outbreak imposed stringent lockdown measures that a vast majority of the country abided by, quickly ramped up testing and contact tracing, and imposed mask mandates.
Atlas meets with Trump almost every day, far more than any other health official, and inside the White House is viewed as aligned with the president and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on how to handle the outbreak, according to three senior administration officials.
In meetings, Atlas has argued that metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago and New Orleans have already reached herd immunity, according to two senior administration officials. But Birx and Fauci have disputed that, arguing that even cities that peaked to potential herd immunity levels experience similar levels of infection if they reopen too quickly, the officials said.
Trump asked Birx in a meeting last month whether New York and New Jersey had reached herd immunity, according to a senior administration official. Birx told the president there was not enough data to support that conclusion.
Atlas has supporters who argue that his presence in the White House is a good thing and that he brings a new perspective.
"Epidemiology is not the only discipline that matters for public policy here. That is a fundamentally wrong way to think about this whole situation," said Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank that researches market-based solutions to help low-income Americans. "You have to think about what are the costs of lockdowns, what are the trade-offs, and those are fundamentally subjective judgments policymakers have to make."
It remains unclear how large a percentage of the population must become infected to achieve "herd immunity," which is when enough people become immune to a disease that it slows its spread, even among those who have not been infected. That can occur either through mass vaccination efforts, or when enough people in the population become infected with coronavirus and develop antibodies that protect them against future infection.
Estimates have ranged from 20 percent to 70 percent for how much of a population would need to be infected. Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization's chief scientist, said given the transmissibility of the novel coronavirus, it is likely that about 65 to 70 percent of the population would need to become infected for there to be herd immunity.
With a population of 328 million in the United States, it may require 2.13 million deaths to reach a 65 percent threshold of herd immunity, assuming the virus has a 1 percent fatality rate, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
It also remains unclear whether people who recover from covid-19 have long-term immunity to the virus or can become reinfected, and scientists are still learning who is vulnerable to the disease. From a practical standpoint, it is also nearly impossible to sufficiently isolate people at most risk of dying due to the virus from the younger, healthier population, according to public health experts.
Atlas has argued that the country should only be testing people with symptoms, despite the fact that asymptomatic carriers spread the virus. He has also repeatedly pushed to reopen schools and advocated for college sports to resume. Atlas has said, without evidence, that children do not spread the virus and do not have any real risk from covid-19, arguing that more children die of influenza — an argument he has made in television and radio interviews.
Atlas's appointment comes after Trump earlier this summer encouraged his White House advisers to find a new doctor who would argue an alternative point of view from Birx and Fauci, whom the president has grown increasingly annoyed with for public comments that he believes contradict his own assertions that the threat of the virus is receding. Advisers sought a doctor with Ivy League or top university credentials who could make the case on television that the virus is a receding threat.
Atlas caught Trump's attention with a spate of Fox News appearances in recent months, and the president has found a more simpatico figure in the Stanford doctor for his push to reopen the country so he can focus on his reelection. Atlas now often sits in the briefing room with Trump during his coronavirus news conferences, even as other doctors do not. He has given the president somewhat of a medical imprimatur for his statements and regularly helps draft the administration's coronavirus talking points from his West Wing office as well as the slides that Trump often relies on for his argument of a diminishing threat.
Atlas has also said he is unsure "scientifically" whether masks make sense, despite broad consensus among scientists that they are effective. He has selectively presented research and findings that support his argument for herd immunity and his other ideas, two senior administration officials said.
Fauci and Birx have both said the virus is a threat in every part of the country. They have also put forward policy recommendations that the president views as too draconian, including mask mandates and partial lockdowns in areas experiencing surges of the virus.
Birx has been at odds with Atlas on several occasions, with one disagreement growing so heated at a coronavirus meeting earlier this month that other administration officials grew uncomfortable, according to a senior administration official.
One of the main points of tension between the two is over school reopenings. Atlas has pushed to reopen schools and Birx is more cautious.
"This is really unfortunate to have this fellow Scott Atlas, who was basically recruited to crowd out Tony Fauci and the voice of reason," said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. "Not only do we not embrace the science, but we repudiate the science by our president, and that has extended by bringing in another unreliable misinformation vector."
Top U.S. Officials Told C.D.C. to Soften Coronavirus Testing Guidelines
Posted on August 29, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Coronavirus Treatment, Crisis, Crisis Management, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, False Hope, False Narrative, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Honesty, Hydroxychloroquine, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Integrity, Leadership Culture, Leadership Integrity, Leadership Intent, Leadership Political, Leadership Trust, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Positivity Rate, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth	• Leave a comment
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly changed its recommendations, saying people without Covid-19 symptoms should not get tested.
Trump administration officials on Wednesday defended a new recommendation that people without Covid-19 symptoms abstain from testing, even as scientists warned that the policy could hobble an already weak federal response as schools reopen and a potential autumn wave looms.
The day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the revised guidance, there were conflicting reports on who was responsible. Two federal health officials said the shift came as a directive to the Atlanta-based C.D.C. from higher-ups in Washington at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Adm. Brett P. Giroir, the administration's coronavirus testing czar, called it a "C.D.C. action," written with input from the agency's director, Dr. Robert R. Redfield. But he acknowledged that the revision came after a vigorous debate among members of the White House coronavirus task force — including its newest member, Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a frequent Fox News guest and a special adviser to President Trump.
"We all signed off on it, the docs, before it ever got to a place where the political leadership would have, you know, even seen it, and this document was approved by the task force by consensus," Dr. Giroir said. "There was no weight on the scales by the president or the vice president or Secretary Azar," he added, referring to Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services.
Regardless of who is responsible, the shift is highly significant, running counter to scientific evidence that people without symptoms could be the most prolific spreaders of the coronavirus. And it comes at a very precarious moment. Hundreds of thousands of college and K-12 students are heading back to campus, and broad testing regimens are central to many of their schools' plans. Businesses are reopening, and scientists inside and outside the administration are growing concerned about political interference in scientific decisions.
Democratic governors who were weighing how to keep the virus contained as their economies and schools come to life said limiting testing for asymptomatic citizens would make the task impossible.
"The only plausible rationale," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York told reporters in a conference call from Albany, N.Y., "is that they want fewer people taking tests, because as the president has said, if we don't take tests, you won't know the number of people who are Covid-positive."
Over the weekend, the Food and Drug Administration, under pressure from Mr. Trump, gave emergency approval to expand the use of antibody-rich blood plasma to treat Covid-19 patients. The move came just days after scientists, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, intervened to stop the practice because of lack of evidence that it worked.
The move echoed a decision by the Food and Drug Administration to grant an emergency use waiver for hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug repeatedly sold by Mr. Trump as a treatment for Covid-19. The agency revoked the waiver in June, when clinical trials suggested the drug's risks outweighed any possible benefits.
The testing shift, experts say, was a far more puzzling reversal. Dr. Giroir said the move was "discussed extensively by" members of the White House coronavirus task force, and he named Dr. Redfield, Dr. Atlas, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, the commissioner of food and drugs. Notably, he did not name Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. But he said Dr. Fauci was among those who had "signed off."
In a brief interview, Dr. Fauci said he had seen an early iteration of the guidelines and did not object. But the final debate over the revisions took place at a task force meeting on Thursday, when Dr. Fauci was having surgery under general anesthesia to remove a polyp on his vocal cord. In retrospect, he said, he now had "some concerns" about advising people against getting tested, because the virus could be spread through asymptomatic contact.
"My concern is that it will be misinterpreted," Dr. Fauci said.
The newest version of the C.D.C. guidelines, posted on Monday, amended the agency's guidance to say that people who had been in close contact with an infected individual — typically defined as being within six feet of a person with the coronavirus and for at least 15 minutes — "do not necessarily need a test" if they do not have symptoms.
Exceptions might be made for "vulnerable" individuals, the agency noted, or if health care providers or state or local public health officials recommended testing.
Dr. Giroir said the new recommendation matched existing guidance for hospital workers and others in frontline jobs who have "close exposures" to people infected with the coronavirus. Such workers are advised to take proper precautions, like wearing masks, socially distancing, washing their hands frequently and monitoring themselves for symptoms.
He argued that testing those exposed to the virus was of little utility, because tests capture only a single point in time, and that the results could give people a false sense of security.
"A negative test on Day 2 doesn't mean you're negative. So what is the value of that?" Dr. Giroir asked, adding, "It doesn't mean on Day 4 you can go out and visit Grandma or on Day 6 go out without a mask on in school."
The guidelines come amid growing concern that the C.D.C., the agency charged with tracking and fighting outbreaks of infectious disease, is being sidelined by its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House. Under ordinary circumstances, administering public health advice to the nation would fall squarely within the C.D.C.'s portfolio.
Experts have called the revisions alarming and dangerous, noting that the United States needs more testing, not less. And they have expressed deep concern that the C.D.C. is posting guidelines that its own officials did not author. A former C.D.C. director, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, railed against the move on Twitter on Wednesday:
Dr. Tom Frieden
@DrTomFrieden
Two unexplained, inexplicable, probably indefensible changes, likely imposed on CDC's website. * Dammit, if you come from a place with lots of Covid, quarantine for 14 days * If you're a contact, get tested. If +, we can trace your contacts and stop chains of spread. A sad day.
Later, in an interview, Dr. Frieden elaborated. He noted that the C.D.C. had recently dropped its recommendation that people quarantine for 14 days after traveling from an area with a high number of cases to one where the virus was less prevalent. And he reiterated that testing the contacts of those infected was an important means of curbing the spread of the virus.
"We don't know the best protocol for testing of contacts: Should you test all contacts? That's the kind of study that frankly needs to get done," Dr. Frieden said. But absent the answer to that question, he added, "I certainly wouldn't say, 'Don't test contacts.'"
Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and two governors — Mr. Cuomo and Gavin Newsom of California — were outraged by the changes. Mr. Newsom said California would not follow the new guidelines, and Mr. Cuomo blamed Mr. Trump.
Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, a Democrat and the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also chimed in on Twitter: "The Trump Admin has a lot of explaining to do. #COVID19 testing is essential to stopping the spread of the pandemic. I'm concerned that CDC is once again caving to political pressure. This simply cannot stand."
Mr. Trump has suggested that the nation should do less testing, arguing that administering more tests was driving up case numbers and making the United States look bad. But experts say the true measure of the pandemic is not case numbers but test positivity rates — the percentage of tests coming back positive.
As Dr. Giroir denied that politics was involved, he encouraged the continued testing of asymptomatic people for surveillance purposes — to determine the prevalence of the virus in a given community — and said such "baseline surveillance testing" would still be appropriate in schools and on college campuses.
"We're trying to do appropriate testing, not less testing," he said.
Still, the revisions left many public health officials scratching their heads. They might have made sense when the United States was experiencing a shortage of tests, some experts said, but that no longer appears to be the case. Dr. Frieden, however, said it was possible the administration was trying to conserve testing in case of another surge.
"The problem is we have too many cases, so there is basically no way to keep up the testing if you have a huge outbreak," he said.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said she was "not as up in arms about the content of the guidelines" as she was about the idea that the C.D.C.'s own experts did not write them — and that C.D.C. officials were referring all questions about them to the health department in Washington.
"These guidelines are clearly controversial, and many are calling on C.D.C. to explain its rationale for them, but C.D.C. is unable to comment," she said in an email. "This is really dangerous precedent, and I fear it will erode public trust in C.D.C."
The Unique U. S. Failure to Control the Coronavirus
Posted on August 7, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Complacency, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Credibility, Crisis, Crisis Management, Deferred Healthcare, Denial, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, False Hope, False Narrative, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Premiums, High Prices, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Leadership Political, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Out of Control, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Preexisting Conditions, Public Debate, Public Discourse, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Silencing, Silencing Speech, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth, Uncertainty, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured, World Health Organization (WHO)	• Leave a comment
Nearly every country has struggled to contain the coronavirus and made mistakes along the way.
China committed the first major failure, silencing doctors who tried to raise alarms about the virus and allowing it to escape from Wuhan. Much of Europe went next, failing to avoid enormous outbreaks. Today, many countries — Japan, Canada, France, Australia and more — are coping with new increases in cases after reopening parts of society.
Yet even with all of these problems, one country stands alone, as the only affluent nation to have suffered a severe, sustained outbreak for more than four months: the United States.
Over the past month, about 1.9 million Americans have tested positive for the virus.
That's more than five times as many as in all of Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia, combined.
Even though some of these countries saw worrying new outbreaks over the past month, including 50,000 new cases in Spain …
… the outbreaks still pale in comparison to those in the United States. Florida, with a population less than half of Spain, has reported nearly 300,000 cases in the same period.
When it comes to the virus, the United States has come to resemble not the wealthy and powerful countries to which it is often compared but instead far poorer countries, like Brazil, Peru and South Africa, or those with large migrant populations, like Bahrain and Oman.
As in several of those other countries, the toll of the virus in the United States has fallen disproportionately on poorer people and groups that have long suffered discrimination. Black and Latino residents of the United States have contracted the virus at roughly three times as high of a rate as white residents.
How did this happen? The New York Times set out to reconstruct the unique failure of the United States, through numerous interviews with scientists and public health experts around the world. The reporting points to two central themes.
First, the United States faced longstanding challenges in confronting a major pandemic. It is a large country at the nexus of the global economy, with a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions. That tradition is one reason the United States suffers from an unequal health care system that has long produced worse medical outcomes — including higher infant mortality and diabetes rates and lower life expectancy — than in most other rich countries.
"As an American, I think there is a lot of good to be said about our libertarian tradition," Dr. Jared Baeten, an epidemiologist and vice dean at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said. "But this is the consequence — we don't succeed as well as a collective."
The second major theme is one that public health experts often find uncomfortable to discuss because many try to steer clear of partisan politics. But many agree that the poor results in the United States stem in substantial measure from the performance of the Trump administration.
In no other high-income country — and in only a few countries, period — have political leaders departed from expert advice as frequently and significantly as the Trump administration. President Trump has said the virus was not serious; predicted it would disappear; spent weeks questioning the need for masks; encouraged states to reopen even with large and growing caseloads; and promoted medical disinformation.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has continued the theme, offering a torrent of misleading statistics in his public appearances that make the situation sound less dire than it is.
Some Republican governors have followed his lead and also played down the virus, while others have largely followed the science. Democratic governors have more reliably heeded scientific advice, but their performance in containing the virus has been uneven.
"In many of the countries that have been very successful they had a much crisper strategic direction and really had a vision," said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who wrote a guide to reopening safely for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group. "I'm not sure we ever really had a plan or a strategy — or at least it wasn't public."
Together, the national skepticism toward collective action and the Trump administration's scattered response to the virus have contributed to several specific failures and missed opportunities, Times reporting shows:
a lack of effective travel restrictions;
repeated breakdowns in testing;
confusing advice about masks;
a misunderstanding of the relationship between the virus and the economy;
and inconsistent messages from public officials.
Already, the American death toll is of a different order of magnitude than in most other countries. With only 4 percent of the world's population, the United States has accounted for 22 percent of coronavirus deaths. Canada, a rich country that neighbors the United States, has a per capita death rate about half as large. And these gaps may worsen in coming weeks, given the lag between new cases and deaths.
For many Americans who survive the virus or do not contract it, the future will bring other problems. Many schools will struggle to open. And the normal activities of life — family visits, social gatherings, restaurant meals, sporting events — may be more difficult in the United States than in any other affluent country.
A travel policy that fell short
In retrospect, one of Mr. Trump's first policy responses to the virus appears to have been one of his most promising.
On Jan. 31, his administration announced that it was restricting entry to the United States from China: Many foreign nationals — be they citizens of China or other countries — would not be allowed into the United States if they had been to China in the previous two weeks.
It was still early in the spread of the virus. The first cases in Wuhan, China, had been diagnosed about a month before, and the first announced case in the United States had come on Jan. 21. In announcing the new travel policy, Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, declared that the virus posed "a public health emergency." Mr. Trump described the policy as his "China ban."
After the Trump administration acted, several other countries quickly announced their own restrictions on travel from China, including Japan, Vietnam and Australia.
But it quickly became clear that the United States' policy was full of holes. It did not apply to immediate family members of American citizens and permanent residents returning from China, for example. In the two months after the policy went into place, almost 40,000 people arrived in the United States on direct flights from China.
Even more important, the policy failed to take into account that the virus had spread well beyond China by early February. Later data would show that many infected people arriving in the United States came from Europe. (The Trump administration did not restrict travel from Europe until March and exempted Britain from that ban despite a high infection rate there.)
The administration's policy also did little to create quarantines for people who entered the United States and may have had the virus.
Authorities in some other places took a far more rigorous approach to travel restrictions.
South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan largely restricted entry to residents returning home. Those residents then had to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival, with the government keeping close tabs to ensure they did not leave their home or hotel. South Korea and Hong Kong also tested for the virus at the airport and transferred anyone who was positive to a government facility.
Australia offers a telling comparison. Like the United States, it is separated from China by an ocean and is run by a conservative leader — Scott Morrison, the prime minister. Unlike the United States, it put travel restrictions at the center of its virus response.
Australian officials noticed in March that the travel restrictions they had announced on Feb. 1 were not preventing the virus from spreading. So they went further.
On March 27, Mr. Morrison announced that Australia would no longer trust travelers to isolate themselves voluntarily. The country would instead mandate that everyone arriving from overseas, including Australian citizens, spend two weeks quarantined in a hotel.
The protocols were strict. As people arrived at an airport, the authorities transported them directly to hotels nearby. People were not even allowed to leave their hotel to exercise. The Australian military helped enforce the rules.
Around the same time, several Australian states with minor outbreaks shut their own borders to keep out Australians from regions with higher rates of infection. That hardening of internal boundaries had not happened since the 1918 flu pandemic, said Ian Mackay, a virologist in Queensland, one of the first states to block entry from other areas.
The United States, by comparison, imposed few travel restrictions, either for foreigners or American citizens. Individual states did little to enforce the rules they did impose.
"People need a bit more than a suggestion to look after their own health," said Dr. Mackay, who has been working with Australian officials on their pandemic response. "They need guidelines, they need rules — and they need to be enforced."
Travel restrictions and quarantines were central to the success in controlling the virus in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia, as well as New Zealand, many epidemiologists believe. In Australia, the number of new cases per day fell more than 90 percent in April. It remained near zero through May and early June, even as the virus surged across much of the United States.
In the past six weeks, Australia has begun to have a resurgence — which itself points to the importance of travel rules. The latest outbreak stems in large part from problems with the quarantine in the city of Melbourne. Compared with other parts of Australia, Melbourne relied more on private security contractors who employed temporary workers — some of whom lacked training and failed to follow guidelines — to enforce quarantines at local hotels. Officials have responded by banning out-of-state travel again and imposing new lockdowns.
Still, the tolls in Australia and the United States remain vastly different. Fewer than 300 Australians have died of complications from Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus. If the United States had the same per capita death rate, about 3,300 Americans would have died, rather than 158,000.
Enacting tough travel restrictions in the United States would not have been easy. It is more integrated into the global economy than Australia is, has a tradition of local policy decisions and borders two other large countries. But there is a good chance that a different version of Mr. Trump's restrictions — one with fewer holes and stronger quarantines — would have meaningfully slowed the virus's spread.
Traditionally, public health experts had not seen travel restrictions as central to fighting a pandemic, given their economic costs and the availability of other options, like testing, quarantining and contact tracing, Dr. Baeten, the University of Washington epidemiologist, said. But he added that travel restrictions had been successful enough in fighting the coronavirus around the world that those views may need to be revisited.
"Travel," he said, "is the hallmark of the spread of this virus around the world."
The double testing failure
On Jan. 16, nearly a week before the first announced case of the coronavirus in the United States, a German hospital made an announcement. Its researchers had developed a test for the virus, which they described as the world's first.
The researchers posted the formula for the test online and said they expected that countries with strong public health systems would soon be able to produce their own tests. "We're more concerned about labs in countries where it's not that easy to transport samples, or staff aren't trained that thoroughly, or if there is a large number of patients who have to be tested," Dr. Christian Drosten, the director of the Institute for Virology at the hospital, known as Charité, in Berlin.
It turned out, however, that the testing problems would not be limited to less-developed countries.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed their own test four days after the German lab did. C.D.C. officials claimed that the American test would be more accurate than the German one, by using three genetic sequences to detect the virus rather than two. The federal government quickly began distributing the American test to state officials.
But the test had a flaw. The third genetic sequence produced inconclusive results, so the C.D.C. told state labs to pause their work. In meetings of the White House's coronavirus task force, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director, played down the problem and said it would soon be solved.
Instead, it took weeks to fix. During that time, the United States had to restrict testing to people who had clear reason to think they had the virus. All the while, the virus was quietly spreading.
By early March, with the testing delays still unresolved, the New York region became a global center of the virus — without people realizing it until weeks later. More widespread testing could have made a major difference, experts said, leading to earlier lockdowns and social distancing and ultimately less sickness and death.
"You can't stop it if you can't see it," Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to the director general at the World Health Organization, said.
While the C.D.C. was struggling to solve its testing flaws, Germany was rapidly building up its ability to test. Chancellor Angela Merkel, a chemist by training, and other political leaders were watching the virus sweep across northern Italy, not far from southern Germany, and pushed for a big expansion of testing.
By the time the virus became a problem in Germany, labs around the country had thousands of test kits ready to use. From the beginning, the government covered the cost of the tests. American laboratories often charge patients about $100 for a test.
Without free tests, Dr. Hendrik Streeck, director of the Institute of Virology at the University Hospital Bonn, said at the time, "a young person with no health insurance and an itchy throat is unlikely to go to the doctor and therefore risks infecting more people."
Germany was soon far ahead of other countries in testing. It was able to diagnose asymptomatic cases, trace the contacts of new patients and isolate people before they could spread the virus. The country has still suffered a significant outbreak. But it has had many fewer cases per capita than Italy, Spain, France, Britain or Canada — and about one-fifth the rate of the United States.
The United States eventually made up ground on tests. In recent weeks, it has been conducting more per capita than any other country, according to Johns Hopkins researchers.
But now there is a new problem: The virus has grown even more rapidly than testing capacity. In recent weeks, Americans have often had to wait in long lines, sometimes in scorching heat, to be tested.
One measure of the continuing troubles with testing is the percentage of tests that come back positive. In a country that has the virus under control, fewer than 5 percent of tests come back positive, according to World Health Organization guidelines. Many countries have reached that benchmark. The United States, even with the large recent volume of tests, has not.
"We do have a lot of testing," Ms. Rivers, the Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, said. "The problem is we also have a lot of cases."
The huge demand for tests has overwhelmed medical laboratories, and many need days — or even up to two weeks — to produce results. "That really is not useful for public health and medical management," Ms. Rivers added. While people are waiting for their results, many are also spreading the virus.
In Belgium recently, test results have typically come back in 48 to 72 hours. In Germany and Greece, it is two days. In France, the wait is often 24 hours.
The double mask failure
For the first few months of the pandemic, public health experts could not agree on a consistent message about masks. Some said masks reduced the spread of the virus. Many experts, however, discouraged the use of masks, saying — somewhat contradictorily — that their benefits were modest and that they should be reserved for medical workers.
"We don't generally recommend the wearing of masks in public by otherwise well individuals because it has not been up to now associated with any particular benefit," Dr. Michael Ryan, a World Health Organization official, said at a March 30 news conference.
His colleague Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove explained that it was important to "prioritize the use of masks for those who need them most."
The conflicting advice, echoed by the C.D.C. and others, led to relatively little mask wearing in many countries early in the pandemic. But several Asian countries were exceptions, partly because they had a tradition of mask wearing to avoid sickness or minimize the effects of pollution.
By January, mask wearing in Japan was widespread, as it often had been during a typical flu season. Masks also quickly became the norm in much of South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan and China.
In the following months, scientists around the world began to report two strands of evidence that both pointed to the importance of masks: Research showed that the virus could be transmitted through droplets that hang in the air, and several studies found that the virus spread less frequently in places where people were wearing masks.
On one cruise ship that gave passengers masks after somebody got sick, for example, many fewer people became ill than on a different cruise where people did not wear masks.
Consistent with that evidence was Asia's success in holding down the number of cases (after China's initial failure to do so). In South Korea, the per capita death rate is about one-eightieth as large as in the United States; Japan, despite being slow to enact social distancing, has a death rate about one-sixtieth as large.
"We should have told people to wear cloth masks right off the bat," Dr. George Rutherford of the University of California, San Francisco, said.
In many countries, officials reacted to the emerging evidence with a clear message: Wear a mask.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada began wearing one in May. During a visit to an elementary school, President Emmanuel Macron of France wore a French-made blue mask that complemented his suit and tie. Zuzana Caputova, the president of Slovakia, created a social media sensation by wearing a fuchsia-colored mask that matched her dress.
In the United States, however, masks did not become a fashion symbol. They became a political symbol.
Mr. Trump avoided wearing one in public for months. He poked fun at a reporter who wore one to a news conference, asking the reporter to take it off and saying that wearing one was "politically correct." He described former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s decision to wear one outdoors as "very unusual."
Many other Republicans and conservative news outlets, like Fox News, echoed his position. Mask wearing, as a result, became yet another partisan divide in a highly polarized country.
Throughout much of the Northeast and the West Coast, more than 80 percent of people wore masks when within six feet of someone else. In more conservative areas, like the Southeast, the share was closer to 50 percent.
A March survey found that partisanship was the biggest predictor of whether Americans regularly wore masks — bigger than their age or whether they lived in a region with a high number of virus cases. In many of the places where people adopted a hostile view of masks, including Texas and the Southeast, the number of virus cases began to soar this spring.
The first rule of virus economics
Throughout March and April, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and staff members held long meetings inside a conference room at the State Capitol in Atlanta. They ordered takeout lunches from local restaurants like the Varsity and held two daily conference calls with the public health department, the National Guard and other officials.
One of the main subjects of the meetings was when to end Georgia's lockdown and reopen the state's economy. By late April, Mr. Kemp decided that it was time.
Georgia had not met the reopening criteria laid out by the Trump administration (and many outside health experts considered those criteria too lax). The state was reporting about 700 new cases a day, more than when it shut down on April 3.
Nonetheless, Mr. Kemp went ahead. He said that Georgia's economy could not wait any longer, and it became one of the first states to reopen.
"I don't give a damn about politics right now," he said at an April 20 news conference announcing the reopening. He went on to describe business owners with employees at home who were "going broke, worried about whether they can feed their children, make the mortgage payment."
Four days later, across Georgia, barbers returned to their chairs, wearing face masks and latex gloves. Gyms and bowling alleys were allowed to reopen, followed by restaurants on April 27. The stay-at-home order expired at 11:59 p.m. on April 30.
Mr. Kemp's decision was part of a pattern: Across the United States, caseloads were typically much higher when the economy reopened than in other countries.
As the United States endured weeks of closed stores and rising unemployment this spring, many politicians — particularly Republicans, like Mr. Kemp — argued that there was an unavoidable trade-off between public health and economic health. And if crushing the virus meant ruining the economy, maybe the side effects of the treatment were worse than the disease.
Dan Patrick, the Republican lieutenant governor of Texas, put the case most bluntly, and became an object of scorn, especially from the political left, for doing so. "There are more important things than living," Mr. Patrick said in a television interview the same week that Mr. Kemp reopened Georgia.
It may have been an inartful line, but Mr. Patrick's full argument was not wholly dismissive of human life. He was instead suggesting that the human costs of shutting down the economy — the losses of jobs and income and the associated damages to living standards and people's health — were greater than the costs of a virus that kills only a small percentage of people who get it.
"We are crushing the economy," he said, citing the damage to his own children and grandchildren. "We've got to take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running."
The trouble with the argument, epidemiologists and economists agree, was that public health and the economy's health were not really in conflict.
Early in the pandemic, Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist and former Obama administration official, proposed what he called the first rule of virus economics: "The best way to fix the economy is to get control of the virus," he said. Until the virus was under control, many people would be afraid to resume normal life and the economy would not function normally.
The events of the last few months have borne out Mr. Goolsbee's prediction. Even before states announced shutdown orders in the spring, many families began sharply reducing their spending. They were responding to their own worries about the virus, not any official government policy.
And the end of lockdowns, like Georgia's, did not fix the economy's problems. It instead led to a brief increase in spending and hiring that soon faded.
In the weeks after states reopened, the virus began surging. Those that opened earliest tended to have worse outbreaks, according to a Times analysis. The Southeast fared especially badly.
In June and July, Georgia reported more than 125,000 new virus cases, turning it into one of the globe's new hot spots. That was more new cases than Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Australia combined during that time frame.
Americans, frightened by the virus's resurgence, responded by visiting restaurants and stores less often. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits has stopped falling. The economy's brief recovery in April and May seems to have petered out in June and July.
In large parts of the United States, officials chose to reopen before medical experts thought it wise, in an attempt to put people back to work and spark the economy. Instead, the United States sparked a huge new virus outbreak — and the economy did not seem to benefit.
"Politicians are not in control," Mr. Goolsbee said. "They got all the illness and still didn't fix their economies."
The situation is different in the European Union and other regions that have had more success reducing new virus cases. Their economies have begun showing some promising signs, albeit tentative ones. In Germany, retail sales and industrial production have risen, and the most recent unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. In the United States, it was 11.1 percent.
The message is the response
The United States has not performed uniquely poorly on every measure of the virus response.
Mask wearing is more common than throughout much of Scandinavia and Australia, according to surveys by YouGov and Imperial College London. The total death rate is still higher in Spain, Italy and Britain.
But there is one way — in addition to the scale of the continuing outbreaks and deaths — that the United States stands apart: In no other high-income country have the messages from political leaders been nearly so mixed and confusing.
These messages, in turn, have been amplified by television stations and websites friendly to the Republican Party, especially Fox News and the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which operates almost 200 local stations. To anybody listening to the country's politicians or watching these television stations, it would have been difficult to know how to respond to the virus.
Mr. Trump's comments, in particular, have regularly contradicted the views of scientists and medical experts.
The day after the first American case was diagnosed, he said, "We have it totally under control." In late February, he said: "It's going to disappear. One day — it's like a miracle — it will disappear." Later, he incorrectly stated that any American who wanted a test could get one. On July 28, he falsely proclaimed that "large portions of our country" were "corona-free."
He has also promoted medical misinformation about the virus. In March, Mr. Trump called it "very mild" and suggested it was less deadly than the common flu. He has encouraged Americans to treat it with the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, despite a lack of evidence about its effectiveness and concerns about its safety. At one White House briefing, he mused aloud about injecting people with disinfectant to treat the virus.
These comments have helped create a large partisan divide in the country, with Republican-leaning voters less willing to wear masks or remain socially distant. Some Democratic-leaning voters and less political Americans, in turn, have decided that if everybody is not taking the virus seriously, they will not either. State leaders from both parties have sometimes created so many exceptions about which workplaces can continue operating normally that their stay-at-home orders have had only modest effects.
"It doesn't seem we have had the same unity of purpose that I would have expected," Ms. Rivers, the Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, said. "You need everyone to come together to accomplish something big."
Across much of Europe and Asia, as well as in Canada, Australia and elsewhere, leaders have delivered a consistent message: The world is facing a deadly virus, and only careful, consistent action will protect people.
Many of those leaders have then pursued aggressive action. Mr. Trump and his top aides, by contrast, persuaded themselves in April that the virus was fading. They have also declined to design a national strategy for testing or other virus responses, leading to a chaotic mix of state policies.
"If you had to summarize our approach, it's really poor federal leadership — disorganization and denial," said Andy Slavitt, who ran Medicare and Medicaid from 2015 to 2017. "Watch Angela Merkel. Watch how she communicates with the public. Watch how Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand does it. They're very clear. They're very consistent about what the most important priorities are."
New York — both the city and the state — offers a useful case study. Like much of Europe, New York responded too slowly to the first wave of the virus. As late as March 15, Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged people to go to their neighborhood bar.
Soon, the city and state were overwhelmed. Ambulances wailed day and night. Hospitals filled to the breaking point. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — a Democrat, like Mr. de Blasio — was slow to protect nursing home residents, and thousands died. Earlier action in New York could have saved a significant number of lives, epidemiologists say.
By late March, however, New York's leaders understood the threat, and they reversed course.
They insisted that people stay home. They repeated the message every day, often on television. When other states began reopening, New York did not. "You look at the states that opened fast without metrics, without guardrails, it's a boomerang," Mr. Cuomo said on June 4.
The lockdowns and the consistent messages had a big effect. By June, New York and surrounding states had some of the lowest rates of virus spread in the country. Across much of the Southeast, Southwest and West Coast, on the other hand, the pandemic was raging.
Many experts now say that the most disappointing part of the country's failure is that the outcome was avoidable.
What may not have been avoidable was the initial surge of the virus: The world's success in containing previous viruses, like SARS, had lulled many people into thinking a devastating pandemic was unlikely. That complacency helps explains China's early mistakes, as well as the terrible death tolls in the New York region, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Britain and other parts of Europe.
But these countries and dozens more — as well as New York — have since shown that keeping the virus in check is feasible.
For all of the continuing uncertainty about how this new coronavirus is transmitted and how it affects the human body, much has become clear. It often spreads indoors, with close human contact. Talking, singing, sneezing and coughing play a major role in transmission. Masks reduce the risk. Restarting normal activity almost always leads to new cases that require quick action — testing, tracing of patients and quarantining — to keep the virus in check.
When countries and cities have heeded these lessons, they have rapidly reduced the spread of the virus and been able to move back, gingerly, toward normal life. In South Korea, fans have been able to attend baseball games in recent weeks. In Denmark, Italy and other parts of Europe, children have returned to school.
In the United States, the virus continues to overwhelm daily life.
"This isn't actually rocket science," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who ran the New York City health department and the C.D.C. for a combined 15 years. "We know what to do, and we're not doing it."
The Fed's independence helped it save the US economy in 2008 – the CDC needs the same authority today
Posted on August 7, 2020 by henrykotula	• Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Communication, Confidence, Conflicts of Interest, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Credibility, Crisis, Crisis Management, Data, Data Analytics, Data Control, Data Integrity, Data Interpretation, Data Management, Data Ownership, Decision Making, Decision Making Authority, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, Federal Reserve, Honesty, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Integrity, Judgement, Leadership Messaging, Leadership Political, Leadership Trust, Mission, Mission Critical, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Public Funding, Public Good, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Public Welfare, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth	• Leave a comment
https://theconversation.com/the-feds-independence-helped-it-save-the-us-economy-in-2008-the-cdc-needs-the-same-authority-today-142593
The image of scientists standing beside governors, mayors or the president has become common during the pandemic. Even the most cynical politician knows this public health emergency cannot be properly addressed without relying on the scientific knowledge possessed by these experts.
Yet, ultimately, U.S. government health experts have limited power. They work at the discretion of the White House, leaving their guidance subject to the whims of politicians and them less able to take urgent action to contain the pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines only to later revise them after the White House intervened. The administration has also undermined its top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, over his blunt warnings that the pandemic is getting worse – a view that contradicts White House talking points.
And most recently, the White House stripped the CDC of control of coronavirus data, alarming health experts who fear it will be politicized or withheld.
In the realm of monetary policy, however, there is an agency with experts trusted to make decisions on their own in the best interests of the U.S. economy: the Federal Reserve. As I describe in my recent book, "Stewards of the Market," the Fed's independence allowed it to take politically risky actions that helped rescue the economy during the financial crisis of 2008.
That's why I believe we should give the CDC the same type of authority as the Fed so that it can effectively guide the public through health emergencies without fear of running afoul of politicians.
The paradox of expertise
There is a paradox inherent in the relationship between political leaders and technical experts in government.
Experts have the training and skill to apply scientific knowledge in complex biological and economic systems, yet democratically elected political leaders may overrule or ignore their advice for ill or good.
This happened in May when the CDC, the federal agency charged with controlling the spread of disease, removed advice regarding the dangers of singing in church choirs from its website. It did not do so because of new evidence. Rather, it was because of political pressure from the White House to water down the guidance for religious groups.
Similarly, the White House undermined the CDC's guidance on school reopenings and has pressured it to revise them. So far, it seems the CDC has rebuffed the request.
The ability of elected leaders to ignore scientists – or the scientists' acquiescence to policies they believe are detrimental to public welfare – is facilitated by many politicians' penchant for confident assertion of knowledge and the scientist's trained reluctance to do so.
Compare Fauci's repeated comment that "there is much we don't know about the virus" with President Donald Trump's confident assertion that "we have it totally under control."
Experts with independence
Given these constraints on technical expertise, the performance of the Fed in the financial crisis of 2008 offers an informative example that may be usefully applied to the CDC today.
The Federal Reserve is not an executive agency under the president, though it is chartered and overseen by Congress. It was created in 1913 to provide economic stability, and its powers have expanded to guard against both depression and crippling inflation.
At its founding, the structure of the Fed was a political compromise designed make it independent within the government in order to de-politicize its economic policy decisions. Today its decisions are made by a seven-member board of governors and a 12-member Federal Open Market Committee. The members, almost all Ph.D. economists, have had careers in academia, business and government. They come together to analyze economic data, develop a common understanding of what they believe is happening and create policy that matches their shared analysis. This group policymaking is optimal when circumstances are highly uncertain, such as in 2008 when the global financial system was melting down.
The Fed was the lead actor in preventing the system's collapse and spent several trillion dollars buying risky financial assets and lending to foreign central banks – decisions that were pivotal in calming financial markets but would have been much harder or may not have happened at all without its independent authority.
The Fed's independence is sufficiently ingrained in our political culture that its chair can have a running disagreement with the president yet keep his job and authority.
Putting experts at the wheel
A health crisis needs trusted experts to guide decision-making no less than an economic one does. This suggests the CDC or some re-imagined version of it should be made into an independent agency.
Like the Fed, the CDC is run by technical experts who are often among the best minds in their fields. Like the Fed, the CDC is responsible for both analysis and crisis response. Like the Fed, the domain of the CDC is prone to politicization that may interfere with rational response. And like the Fed, the CDC is responsible for decisions that affect fundamental aspects of the quality of life in the United States.
Were the CDC independent right now, we would likely see a centralized crisis management effort that relies on the best science, as opposed to the current patchwork approach that has failed to contain the outbreak nationally. We would also likely see stronger and consistent recommendations on masks, social distancing and the safest way to reopen the economy and schools.
Independence will not eliminate the paradox of technical expertise in government. The Fed itself has at times succumbed to political pressure. And Trump would likely try to undermine an independent CDC's legitimacy if its policies conflicted with his political agenda – as he has tried to do with the central bank.
But independence provides a strong shield that would make it much more likely that when political calculations are at odds with science, science wins.
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