What have we learned in the 100+ days of the coronavirus pandemic? Mistake 1: Thinking the coronavirus was similar to the flu Mistake 2: Telling people not to wear masks Mistake 3: Touting hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment
It’s been 100 days since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. Several important red flags were missed, so what can we learn from those mistakes?
“COVID-19 rapidly spread from a single city to the entire country in just 30 days,” a Feb. 24 paper on the fatality rates of the disease in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA found. “The sheer speed of both the geographical expansion and the sudden increase in numbers of cases surprised and quickly overwhelmed health and public-health services in China.
2. Don’t wear a mask! Everyone should wear masks! After two months of obfuscation over the efficacy of face masks and New York City becoming the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., the Trump administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the WHO and Cuomo, a Democrat, finally agreed on one thing: All Americans should, after all, wear face coverings in public settings. That happened more than a month after the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.
Previous studies have concluded that face masks have helped reduce contagion by reducing droplets being sprayed into the air during flu season. It may be that they work in a small amount of cases and/or just wearing them helps to promote healthy behaviors. Some health experts say that was an unnecessary distraction that wasted valuable time. On Monday, the FDA said that it had withdrawn the EUA granted to hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine during the COVID-19 pandemic.
4. It’s time to have fun and go to the beach, right? Wrong! Florida, Alabama, Arizona, California, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas have all seen a surge in cases over the last week as businesses reopen and people relax their social-distancing policies, CNN reported this week. In fact, some analysts say that Florida could be the next epicenter of the virus as New York continues to flatten the curve of new cases.
Trump said in April that he had “ultimate authority” on when to open the economy: “Tell the Democrat Governors that ‘Mutiny On The Bounty’ was one of my all time favorite movies.” Cuomo shot back, invoking the words of founding father Alexander Hamilton.
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