Madeline Holcombe, CNN: Not sure what the future holds for the coronavirus? Here is how 3 other infectious outbreaks ended
It has been more than a month since the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern. Since the outbreak began, there have been more than 90,000 cases of the virus worldwide and more than 3,100 deaths from it.
As officials work to stop the virus's spread, it is hard not to wonder what will happen next. When and how will this end? Here's a look back at what happened during other infectious outbreaks.
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WNU Editor: We have learned the following about coronavirus Covid-19. It is highly infectious. You can be infected and passing the disease while showing no signs that you are sick. The 14-day quarantine period may be too short. Some patients came down with it after three weeks. People with a health/medication condition are susceptible to this disease. The impact for some patients with the coronavirus has been severe requiring extensive hospitalization. For others it has been mild with a fever and a feeling of having the flu. The disease can re-emerge in previous patients who were infected with Covid-19 and later cleared of it. Children seem to have some immunity to it. As to how will this outbreak end? Everyone is hoping that it will burn out by May or June. I hope they are right. My big worry right now is for later this year and the possibility that this disease may re-emerge in the fall? The 1918 Spanish flu came in three waves. The first wave was in the spring of 1918. Some died but it then went dormant during the summer. It re-emerged as a second wave in the fall of 1918, and it ravaged the world until the spring of 1919 killing millions. The third wave occurred in the fall of 1919 and it was mild. It had finally burned itself out.
Spanish flu ultimately killed 50 million and did not originate in Spain..Astute readers would know why it is called "Spanish flu."
ReplyDelete“You should never destroy your own credibility. And you don't want to go to war with a president,” Fauci, who has been the country’s top infectious diseases expert through a dozen outbreaks and six presidents, told POLITICO in an interview Friday. “But you got to walk the fine balance of making sure you continue to tell the truth.”
ReplyDeleteAnd the truth about coronavirus? “I don't think that we are going to get out of this completely unscathed,” he said. “I think that this is going to be one of those things we look back on and say boy, that was bad.”
In a sign of growing tension among the Trump administration's health agencies, officials are expressing frustration that a top scientist was initially rebuffed when attempting to visit the CDC in Atlanta last month to help coordinate the government's stalled coronavirus testing, two individuals with knowledge of the episode told POLITICO.
ReplyDeleteTimothy Stenzel, who is the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health, was made to wait overnight on the weekend of Feb. 22 — as senior health department officials negotiated his access in a series of calls — before Centers for Disease Control granted him permission to be on campus. Stenzel's visit had been expected, the individuals said.
The FDA had dispatched Stenzel to the CDC in an effort to expedite the development of lab tests for the novel coronavirus outbreak. Problems with the CDC-developed test delayed the Trump administration's plan to expand screening for weeks, POLITICO first reported on Feb. 20. A senior HHS official confirmed the episode.
Trump's team shifts tone from preventing coronavirus to containing it
ReplyDelete“Now we’re focused on mitigation of the spread, as well as the treatment of the people affected,” Pence said.
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ReplyDeleteCDC blocked FDA official from premises
ReplyDeleteAs Coronavirus Numbers Rise, C.D.C. Testing Comes Under Fire
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1/ The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the first major abortion case to come before the court since Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch took the bench. The case, June Medical Services v. Russo, challenges a 2014 Louisiana law, known as the “Unsafe Abortion Protection Act,” which requires doctors who provide abortions to obtain admitting privileges from a nearby hospital. When the law was signed, one of the state’s six abortion clinics had a physician who was compliant. Today, Louisiana has three abortion clinics and if the Supreme Court finds the law constitutional, all of three of them would stop offering the procedure. Louisiana’s law is identical to one from Texas that the Supreme Court struck down in 2016 when Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was seen as a swing vote on the issue, was still on the bench. A decision in the case is expected by June. (NBC News
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2/ The Trump administration is considering paying hospitals for treating uninsured patients with coronavirus. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is in discussions about using the National Disaster Medical System to reimburse hospitals and medical facilities as concerns rise over the costs of treating some of the 27 million Americans without health coverage. (Wall Street Journal
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Public and private labs say they’re not close to reaching the federal government’s promise to produce one million coronavirus test kits by the end of the week. Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the FDA, said that the CDC was working with a private manufacturer to increase the testing capacity of laboratories across the nation. White House officials, however, said
that the number of tests actually administered could be considerably lower. (New York Times
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The CDC blocked a top scientist from the FDA from helping coordinate the government’s stalled coronavirus testing last month. The FDA had dispatched Timothy Stenzel to the CDC in an effort to expedite the development of lab tests for coronavirus, but the CDC made him wait overnight before granting him permission to the campus. Stenzel found evidence of lab contamination, which he reported to HHS officials. (Politico
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3/ Trump’s secretary of defense warned commanders not to make any decisions related to the coronavirus that might surprise the White House.