Warnings that worst is yet to come
With more than 80,000 Americans lost and the economy in shambles, it’s hard to believe that we may not have seen the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic. And yet a succession of experts have issued dire warnings this week about just such a frightening prospect.
The latest is Rick Bright, a vaccine expert and Health and Human Services official demoted after criticizing the administration’s promotion of unproven treatments for the virus. Ousted last month as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a small agency created in the wake of 9/11 to prepare for bioterrorism, pandemics and similar threats, Bright told a House subcommittee Thursday that “this virus will overcome us in significant ways” in the fall without a more coordinated and effective national response. “Without better planning,” he said, “2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.”
Bright’s testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, chaired by Rep. Anna Eshoo, DPalo Alto, followed parallel predictions from Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who told a Senate committee this week that the country is “not out of the woods.”
History lends weight to these warnings: The last comparable pandemic, the 1918 Spanish flu, saw a fall resurgence that was deadlier than the first wave, and Bright and other experts have warned that a second coronavirus outbreak could be complicated by coincidence with seasonal influenza.
Increasing the risk is a national rush to reopen the economy led by President Trump. Even Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who imposed some of the earliest shelterinplace orders, have begun to loosen restrictions. Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s health officer and a driving force behind the regionwide stayathome orders issued in March, told the county’s Board of Supervisors this week that it’s too soon to ease the restrictions without “a brisk return of cases, of hospitalizations, and a brisk return of deaths, to be quite blunt.”
Bright also called for caution in reopening the economy as well as a national strategy for testing, tracing contacts, producing and distributing needed equipment, and informing and educating the public. But he testified that his early warnings about the need to ramp up production of crucial supplies and other pandemic preparations had been “met with indifference.”
Bright has sought reinstatement to his position on the grounds that he was removed for resisting the administration’s reckless touting of malaria drugs as a miracle cure, spearheaded by Trump. Both an internal watchdog and a ranking Republican lawmaker have described his complaint as credible. But the president’s response to his testimony, which was to disparage Bright as “a really disgruntled, unhappy person,” left little cause for hope that his warning would be heeded.