WASHINGTON — The House voted unanimously Friday to declassify U. S. intelligence. The U. S. Department of Health is a radical demonstration of bipartisanship as today marks the third anniversary of the day the World Health Organization first declared the outbreak a pandemic.
The international death toll is reaching 7 million.
Friday’s 419-0 vote in the House was the bill’s final passage through Congress, sending it to President Joe Biden’s office. It’s unclear whether the president will sign the measure into law, and the White House said the matter is under review.
“I haven’t made that resolution yet,” Biden said Friday when asked if he would pass the bill.
The debate in the House has been brief and direct: Americans are wondering how the deadly virus began and what can be done to prevent long-term outbreaks.
“The American public deserves answers to all facets of the covid-19 pandemic,” said Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
This includes, he said, “how this virus was created and, more specifically, whether it is an herbal event or the result of a laboratory-related event. “
The declassification order focused on intelligence similar to the Chinese Institute of Virology in Wuhan, which brought up “potential links” between what took place there and the outbreak of covid-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
U. S. intelligence agencies are not allowed to do so. U. S. officials are divided over whether a lab leak or animal spill is the most likely source of the fatal virus.
Experts say the true origin of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than a million Americans, may not be known for many years, if at all.
“Transparency is the cornerstone of our democracy,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the most sensible Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said at the debate.
The Republican-led approach to the origins of the virus comes as the House introduced a committee with a hearing earlier in the week to delve deeper into theories about the start of the pandemic.
It provides a rare moment of bipartisanship despite passionate rhetoric about the origins of the coronavirus and questions about the reaction to the virus through U. S. fitness officials. Adding former senior fitness adviser Anthony Fauci.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. ‘s legislation has already passed the Senate. Hawley suggested Biden point to the bill.
“The other American people deserve to know the truth,” he said in a statement.
If enacted, the measure would require within 90 days the declassification of “any data related to possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the coronavirus disease. “
This includes data about studies and other activities in the laboratory and whether the researchers are sick.
DECISIONS IN ARKANSAS
At the beginning of the pandemic, then governor. Asa Hutchinson issued final orders for schools and businesses such as casinos, bars, gyms, movie theaters and beauty salons and banned indoor dining.
The State Health Department under Hutchinson also issued a directive on March 26, 2020, banning indoor gatherings of more than 10 people. The directive applied to places of worship and other places, such as factories and government agencies.
“I insisted on the absence of restrictions on churches or places of worship and in the fall of 2020 I made it clear that we would keep our schools open for classroom instruction. As a result, Arkansas ranked among all states in the ranking of school training days. pandemic,” Hutchinson said in reaction to questions from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. of our citizens. “
The March 26, 2020, directive gave the Secretary of State for Health discretion to exercise his authority even over those options if he felt the public’s health was at risk. However, Hutchinson noted Friday that restrictions in Arkansas did not go as far as those implemented in many other states.
“A manufacturer at a non-essential company recently thanked me for resisting tension and not ‘sheltering in place’ as most states have done,” Hutchinson said. “He said his business tripled because other northeastern states shut down their competitors. Not giving in to national pressure on the end business, one of the most productive decisions I’ve ever made. “
Most other people have resumed their normal lives, thanks to a wall of immunity built from infections and vaccines. The virus is here to stay, as is the risk of more damaging editing sweeping the planet.
“New variants emerging anywhere threaten us everywhere,” said virus researcher Thomas Friedrich of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Maybe other people perceive how connected we are. “
The United Nations fitness organization says it is not yet in a position to say the emergency is over.
While the pandemic is still killing between 900 and 1,000 people per day worldwide, the stealth virus behind covid-19 has not lost its strength. It spreads seamlessly from user to user, mounting respiratory droplets in the air, killing some patients but allowing maximum bounce. back without much damage.
“Whatever the virus does today, look to find another winning path,” said Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Research Institute in California.
Topol said the country was insensitive to the number of daily deaths but deserves to be considered too high. Consider that in the United States, daily hospitalizations and deaths, although at the worst peaks, have yet to succeed in the low grades. INED in the summer of 2021 before the Delta variant wave.
At any time, the virus may simply replace more transmissible, more capable of bypassing the immune system or more deadly. Topol said the world was not in a position to do so.
SCIENTIFIC LEGACY
Trust has eroded in public fitness agencies, leading to an exodus of public fitness workers. Resistance to stay-at-home orders and vaccination mandates is likely to be a legacy of the pandemic.
“I wish we would unite in opposition to the enemy, the virus, than in opposition to each other,” Topol said.
Humans unlocked the genetic code of the virus and temporarily developed vaccines that work remarkably well. Mathematical models have been built to prepare for worst-case scenarios. Surveillance continues on the evolution of the virus in wastewater.
“The pandemic has catalyzed amazing science,” Friedrich said.
The gains go up to a new general where covid-19 “doesn’t want to be at the forefront of people’s minds,” said Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at Emory University. “That, at least, is a victory. “
Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins, said the existing omicron variants have about a hundred genetic differences from the original strain of coronavirus. This means that approximately 1% of the virus’ genome is different from its point of origin.
Many of those adjustments made it more contagious, but the worst is over thanks to the immunity of the population.
Matthew Binnicker, an expert on viral infections at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. , said the world today is in “a very different situation than it was three years ago, where there’s basically no immunity to the original virus. “”
This excessive vulnerability forced measures to be taken to “flatten the curve”. Businesses and schools were closed, weddings and funerals postponed. Masks and “social distancing” were then given to the presentation of evidence of vaccination. However, such precautions are rare.
“We probably wouldn’t go back to where we were because there are so many viruses that our immune formula can recognize,” Ray said. Our immunity protects us “from the worst of what we’ve ever noticed before. “
LACK OF REAL-TIME DATA
Johns Hopkins made its most recent update Friday to its loose coronavirus dashboard and hotspot map, and the death toll rose to more than 6. 8 million worldwide. Its resources for real-time counts had decreased significantly.
In the United States, only New York, Arkansas and Puerto Rico still publish the number of cases and deaths on a basis.
“We rely a lot on public knowledge and it just doesn’t exist,” said Beth Blauer, the project’s knowledge manager.
The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionThe U. S. Department of Health and Drug Administration collects a variety of data from states, hospitals, and testing labs, adding cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and detected coronavirus strains. It has been less timely.
“People are waiting to get information from us that we will no longer be able to produce,” said CDC Director Dr. Anna S. Simpson. Rochelle Walensky.
In the 3 years since Arkansas’ first case was recorded, the state has totaled 1,007,200 cases and 13,027 deaths, according to the Department of Health.
Among the state’s 75 counties, Pulaski County recorded the most deaths: 1323. According to the Department of Health’s dashboard, 2551 of Arkansas’ covid deaths occurred in nursing homes and 62 in correctional facilities.
The most recent update from the Department of Health reported 2,746 in the state that were active Friday.
At the international level, WHO’s COVID-19 monitoring is based on reports from all countries. Global fitness officials have expressed fear that their numbers seriously underestimate what’s happening and that they don’t have an accurate picture of the outbreak.
For more than a year, the CDC has shied away from the number of cases and test results, in part because of the backlog of unreported at-home testing. The company focuses on hospitalizations, which are still reported daily. That would possibly change. Reports of deaths continue, becoming less dependent on daily reports and more dependent on the death certificate, which can take days or weeks to arrive.
U. S. officials say they are adapting to the cases and are looking to transfer to a follow-up formula similar to how the CDC monitors for flu.
THEN AND NOW
On March 11, 2020, Arkansas recorded its first case of covid-19 in a Pine Bluff patient. The state’s peak of new cases didn’t come until Jan. 15, 2022, with an average of 8968, according to New York Times data.
“We were already ready for the first case, although we knew very little about the virus,” Hutchinson said Friday. “At the time, I appreciated my expertise in crisis management in the post-September 11 risk environment when I was at the U. S. Department of Homeland Security. U. S. I am so grateful to the medical professionals who have served other Arkansans with such courage and dedication. “
Kelly Forrester, 52, of Shakopee, Minnesota, lost her father to the disease in May 2020, survived hers in December and blames incorrect information for ruining a longtime friendship.
“Hopefully we can get through again before Covid,” he said. I hate this. Actually, I hate it. “
The disease is random to him. ” You don’t know who will survive, who will have a long covid or a mild cold. And then other people, they will end up in the hospital dying. “
Forrester’s father, Virgil Michlitsch, 80, a retired meatpacker, delivery man and elementary school caretaker, died in a nursing home with his wife, daughters and granddaughters watching from outside the construction on lawn chairs.
Not being by his side “was the hardest thing,” Forrester said.
Inspired by the toll of the pandemic, her 24-year-old daughter is now earning a master’s degree in public health.
“My dad would have been very proud of her,” Forrester said. “I’m so glad she believed in that, that she sought to do this and make things better for people. “
This article data provided by Lisa Mascaro, Seung Min Kim, Carla K. Johnson, Laura Ungar and Mike Stobbe of The Associated Press and Daniel McFadin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.