Covid-19 Virus Outbreak About to get Worse

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A physician who heads a national research group says the effort of the Trump administration to initially downplay the significance of the now ongoing coronavirus pandemic already has had disastrous results and things are likely to get worse.
Dr. Michael A. Carome, director of the health research group at Public Citizen, said the efforts to downplay the outbreak led to a lack of planning and resulted in a failure to deploy test materials in advance of the virus' arrival in the United States.
"The response has been disastrous," Carome said in an interview. "The failure to deploy testing materials early has left us blindsided. People are going untested."
He said the United States should have followed the example of South Korea where testing materials were immediately available giving the healthcare system time to respond.
Calling the current crisis "one of the greatest public health debacles in the history of the country, Carome cited current Covid-19 hot-spots in New York, California and Washington.
"We have a health care system that is about to be overwhelmed," Carome said adding that the situation is only going to get worse as supply problems with such items as masks just magnify.
Stating that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's first attempt at a diagnostic test failed, Carome said that helps "explain why we've reached this state so soon ... and it's going to get worse."
He said the CDC made matters worse by declining to accept diagnostic tests offered by other countries.
He said health care providers in the United States may soon face the dilemma now being faced by their counterparts in Spain; taking ventilators away from the elderly and giving them to younger pandemic victims deemed more likely to survive.
He said his organization has joined with other advocacy groups in calling for accelerated efforts to find a Covid-19 vaccine. They also have called on the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to set an emergency standard for proper safety equipment for health care workers.
The organization has also called for paid sick leave for victims of the pandemic.
As for how long the current pandemic will last, Carome said while there has been speculation that warmer weather will bring relief "we just don't know."
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