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The U. S. Struggle The U. S. Department of Homeland Security to respond to the virus has highlighted the importance of communicating with the public, sharing data and stockpiling important supplies.
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By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Noah Weiland
Many things have gone wrong with the coronavirus pandemic, as the virus has pushed aside a polarized country and fitness leaders, lawmakers and elected officials have struggled to respond.
The chronic lack of investment in public fitness at the federal, state, and local levels has only made things worse. In total, more than 1. 1 million people have died from covid-19 in the United States, and more than 1,000 continue to die every week. .
More than 3 years after the Trump administration declared the virus a public fitness emergency in January 2020, the government’s reaction to the pandemic is now a new phase. On Thursday, Biden’s administration will let the emergency declaration expire, providing a time to take stock. of how the country has responded to the worst crisis of public fitness in a century.
Here are some classes of the country’s fight against the virus.
Fitness experts say that when it comes to an infectious disease outbreak, communication is one component of the response. That’s the answer.
The coronavirus pandemic has shown that confusing messages can worsen the spread of the disease and erode acceptance as truth in public fitness institutions. But messaging during a pandemic is a complicated matter. “To mask or not to mask?” will have to change as well, which can create confusion and lack of acceptance as true with.
According to experts, the key is for public fitness officials to take their audience with them explaining that the recommendation they give today is likely to replace it tomorrow, and then acknowledging that what they said would possibly have been wrong.
“When you’re in a daily verbal exchange with the audience, you can acknowledge those mistakes, what you’ve learned from them,” said Dr. Richard E. Besser, former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Obama presidency. administration. ” You can own them. “
The C. D. C. se has crippled the pandemic through replaced knowledge systems and inconsistent knowledge sharing between federal, state, and fitness health care providers. And unlike Britain and Israel, which have national fitness systems, the U. S. and personal providers.
Responding to an evolving virus that poses other dangers to other populations demands bigger and faster data, Mavens said.
“We were in the awkward position of having to call the UK and Israel or South Africa to find out what was going on — how many other people were inflamed with this new infection, what the variant was,” Dr. Anthony S said. Fauci, who helped lead the response to the pandemic under the Trump and Biden administrations. “How many other people were vaccinated and what was the effect of that information?We literally had to wait months instead of receiving it in real time.
Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, cited the closures as an example where real-time knowledge would have helped.
Some variants of the coronavirus were more deadly to children than others, he said, adding that if officials had had access to timely information about the effects of the virus on children, they could have adapted school closures when students were most at risk.
“We want instant knowledge to know what’s going on,” said Dr. Osterholm, who pleaded with President Biden’s transition team. “And as situations change, we want to change. “
School closures have been a moot point, but many experts now agree that some schools have been closed for too long and that the abrupt withdrawal of millions of young people from American classrooms has affected their emotional and intellectual health.
Dr. Fauci and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and fitness policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the pandemic has shown that officials want to think conscientiously about closing schools and restrict it as much as possible. Both said indoor airflow may just be one way to keep schools open safely.
“One of the things we’ve learned is that we’ve closed schools much longer than in other countries, and we’ve had a terrible effect on educational attainment and we’ve noticed that control effects are passed on,” Dr. Brown said. Emanuel, who also pleaded with Mr. Transition’s transition team. Biden.
Dr. Fauci said that at the beginning of the pandemic, “at a time when hospitals were literally a day or two away from being overrun,” final public places like restaurants, bars and schools are vital to keeping fitness systems running by slowing the spread. of the virus.
“But once you put the brakes on acceleration,” he said, “then you have to look at how we keep kids in school safely. “
In the early months of the pandemic, frontline fitness faced severe supply shortages, forcing them to reuse face masks, wear private protective appliances that didn’t fit well, or go without those devices altogether.
Since then, the government has especially expanded its stockpile of pandemic supplies, giving it a head start in responding to a devastating coronavirus wave or viral outbreak that would require similar resources.
Prior to the pandemic, procurement of the strategic national inventory was largely focused on protective agents opposed to bioterrorists such as anthrax. In March 2020, the inventory amounted to thirteen million N95 masks. During the same period, the number of ventilators increased from 12,700 to about 150,000.
As a style for responding to long-term pandemics, experts cite Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s coronavirus vaccine progression program. The initiative brought effective vaccines to Americans in record time, in part, Dr. Fauci said, because the federal government had spent years making an investment in fundamental clinical research.
The Federal Warp Speed program made massive bulk purchases of plans that were still in development. The federal government funded or supported clinical trials conducted through Moderna and Pfizer, the makers of the two widely used coronavirus injections. And he lent his expertise to clinically organized trial specialists, epidemiologists and budget experts.
Early remedies for the virus, such as hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma, were approved by the Food and Drug Administration without solid knowledge of large randomized controlled trials — the golden evidence used by regulators to authorize drugs and vaccines.
Treatment trials have stalled due to lack of investment or participants. Scientists, doctors and federal regulators have relied on foreign data, such as a British dexamethasone, a steroid used to treat covid-19.
“Britain has set up giant randomised trials with very flexible access criteria, thousands of patients,” Dr Emanuel said. “Within 30 to 60 days, we learned that steroids stored other people who were hospitalized or very sick. “
Dr. Walid F. Gellad, a drug protection expert at the University of Pittsburgh, pointed to an ongoing trial by British researchers that he said would soon provide effects on the effectiveness of Paxlovid, Pfizer’s widely used antiviral drug for covid-19. in the United States.
“We didn’t have the infrastructure to gather the knowledge we needed to make decisions,” he said of the U. S. reaction to the pandemic.
Vaccines have proven to be the most effective bulwark against COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. But attention to vaccination has overshadowed efforts to expand and supply treatments, public fitness experts said. legal for use through the FDA, and experts say more antiviral drugs are needed.
Biden’s management has largely focused on implementing recalls, which have had fewer and fewer interested parties since a first circular became legal in the fall of 2021. But other methods to prevent the spread of the virus, such as improving indoor air quality, have gained modest attention.
“The nearsighted ones focus only on vaccines and exclude other spaces that are on hand for a much higher reaction, that’s like saying you’re going to build a space with a wall or no roof,” said Dr. Brown. Luciana. Borio, former acting scientific lead of the FDA, who pleaded with Mr. Biden’s transition team.
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