Thread: Why did the United States fail to contain COVID-19?

Many reasons.

My new paper with Dr. Armin Nowroozpoor and Professor Esther Choo @nowroozpoor @choo_ek goes into a few specific reasons. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/emp2.12155 in @JACEPOpen

Let's go through them briefly

1. Because SARS, MERS, and Ebola didn't happen to us, we thought we would again be safe.

Bad logic.

Global society.

Contagious disease.

New reality.

2. We did not believe the data coming out of China.

Granted, a lot of that data was inaccurate (the basic reproduction number is FAR higher, albeit the case fatality rate is FAR lower);

They told us enough to know we needed to prepare.

Such as: to amp up testing.

We did not.

We also got hung up on this terrible, terrible, idea of comparing COVID-19 to flu.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/01/24/coronavirus-versus-flu-influenza-deadlier-than-wuhan-china-disease/4564133002/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/there-s-another-virus-stalking-the-u-s-and-it-s-called-the-flu

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/the-flu-has-already-killed-10000-across-us-as-world-frets-over-coronavirus.html

(see my takedown of these errors in @JAMAInternalMed with @CarlosdelRio7) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2766121

3. The fact the COVID-19 has a very high mortality rate for the elderly, and a pretty low one for young/most adults meant that we failed to realize the roll that the young would play in spreading this thing.

We didn't PROTECT the vulnerable.

Like nursing homes. @ml_barnett

4. Economic fears.

Many wrongly thought that a public robust response by leaders might spook the market.

We needed to realize (still need to realize) that the way to minimize the economic effect of COVID-19 is NOT to just re-open.

It is to *control* COVID-19. @LHSummers

Sure...hindsight is 2020 (pun intended).

But if we fail to learn these lessons now and apply them to future outbreaks, we will have no excuse.

We must learn in real time.

This will decrease covid-19 deaths and deaths from future outbreaks.

Thanks to @nowroozpoor for leading @choo_ek and I in working through this.

Please take a look in @JACEPOpen https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/emp2.12155

/fin