Advertising
Supported by
The answers to fight coronavirus are no mystery. It’s time to get it right.
By the Editorial Committee
The editorial board is an organization of opinion hounds whose reviews are reported through experience, research, debate and long-standing safe values. It’s separated from the newsroom.
Six to eight weeks. This is the time that some of the country’s leading public fitness experts say it would, in spite of all, take control of the coronavirus epidemic in the United States. If the country took appropriate action, thousands more could be saved from the ravages of Covid-19. The economy can, however, begin to fix itself, and Americans can start enjoying something more like a life in general.
Six to eight weeks. As proof, take a look at Germany. Or Thailand. Or France. Or almost any country in the world.
In the United States, after a brief era of flattening the multistate curve, the number of instances and deaths is expanding in so many places that Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the Trump administration’s coronavirus reaction, described collective construction as a growing “new phase” of the pandemic. Rural communities are as troubled as urban communities, and even transparent victories over the virus, in places like New York and Massachusetts, feel unsafe.
At the same time, Americans are tired of spending months in semi-closing. Bars and restaurants are reopening in some places, for internal service, and there are ongoing debates about whether, when and how to do the same for schools, even when the virus continues to spread unchecked. Prolonged control times have an accepted standard: it can still take up to two weeks to get effects in some places. While the national death toll exceeds 160,000, masked dresses are not yet universal.
It’s no mystery how The United States came here. The Trump administration’s reaction has been disre confused and contradictory, distant from science, imbued with politics and willing to hand over duty to heads of state. Among states, the reaction has also been incredibly uneven.
It’s not a wonder for the country either. Unless something changes rapidly, millions more people will get sick through the virus and more than a million could die from it. The economy will contract more as additional viral spreads overwhelm hospitals, cause additional closures, and increase suffering, mainly in low-income and combined communities.
The path to these effects is as transparent as the mistakes of recent months.
Scientists have learned a lot about this coronavirus since the first cases were reported in the United States before this year. For example, they now know that airborne transmission is a much greater threat than infected surfaces, that the virus spreads when singing and screaming as much as coughing, and that even if inflammation is a possible vector, the occasions spread, as in retirement. Meat-packing plants, churches and bars are the main drivers of the pandemic. According to maximum estimates, only 10 to 20% of coronavirus infections account for 80% of transmissions.
Transcription
Experts have also learned a lot about what it takes to get a coronavirus outbreak under control. Most of the necessary steps are the same ones public health experts have been urging for months.
The fact that the United States has largely failed to comply with these steps so far does not mean that it cannot make a difference. The country can do better. It was delivered to him.
President Trump and his closest advisers have contradicted clinical evidence, and even themselves, about the severity of the pandemic and the most productive way to respond to it. They have sown confusion about the importance of dressing in a mask, the risks of giant meetings, the possibility of unproven treatments, the availability of evidence and the basic question of who is in rate of what in the pandemic reaction.
This confusion turns out to have led to a national apathy – and harmful partisanship about public fitness measures – that will be difficult to undo. But leaders in all grades can solve the scenario by coordinating their messages: masks are essential and will be needed in all public places. Social estrangement is a civic responsibility. The virus may not go away soon, but we can temporarily control it if we work together.
That message works when it comes from the summit, but heads of state and locals don’t have to wait for federal leaders to mobilize.
As Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noted: the United States has an excess of knowledge and a lack of information.
Data on other people who are sick and who are not used to consultant interventions, and very important figures such as check results times and proportion of new cases detected through tactile search are not routinely or systematically reported. If scientists had greater access to these numbers, they may use them to expect Covid-19 situations in the same way they expect the weather: warn when a particular outbreak is spreading and advise others to adjust their plans accordingly. Heads of state and locals can make public all their knowledge, and the C.D.C. deserve to help them put this knowledge in a usable way.
In places like Melbourne, Australia and Harris County, Texas, fitness officials have created color-coded digital risk tests that tell officials and citizens exactly what to do, according to the extent of the spread of coronavirus in their communities. Alert grades require complete shelter on site, while lower ones require careful monitoring of high-risk institutions.
It would belong to the C.D.C. Create a scale and similar, evidence-based paintings with heads of state and premises for use in individual communities. In places where the virus still prevails, this would mean much more competitive stops than in the past. (The United States has not had a genuine national blockade, final in only one part of the country, compared to 90% in other countries where the epidemic is most effective).)
Smarter closures can also mean final indoor bars and restaurants in many places so schools can reopen more safely; Close meat processing plants until greater protections are established and close state boundaries in a practical and practical manner.
The maximum consistent mantra of experts looking towards the coronavirus pandemic is that the country wants much larger testing, tracking, isolation and quarantine protocols. Despite examples around the world about how to achieve all four, the United States has largely failed on these fronts. Test delays make contact location, not to mention isolation and quarantine, unlikely to work.
To resolve the crisis, federal officials will need to requisition the intellectual assets of corporations that have developed effective immediate diagnoses and use the Defense Production Act to present and distribute as much of that evidence as possible. As the evidence is updated, officials will also need to expand tactile and quarantine search systems so that once epidemics are under control, states are in a position to keep them under control.
The reasons for the failure of the wonderful U.S. pandemic. They are profound, exacerbated by countless long-standing challenges, from weak public fitness infrastructure to institutional racism and systemic inequality in physical care, housing and employment. If the pandemic forces the country to face one of these challenges significantly, then perhaps all this suffering will not have been in vain. But these paintings cannot begin until the Americans have solved the challenge before them, with the team already at their disposal.
The Times has pledged to publish some letters to the editor. We would like to know what you think of this article or one of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Review segment on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Advertising