While Dr. Fauci was sleeping
Secretary of State Al Haig declaring “control” of the government as doctors labored to save Ronald Reagan’s life; Attorney General John Ashcroft deferring to Jim Comey rather than authorize mass domestic surveillance from a hospital bed: To these strange moments in debilitated American history we can now add Dr. Anthony Fauci’s laryngoscopy.
As it happens, the most trusted, if gravelly, voice of the nation’s public health apparatus was having his vocal cords operated on when the White House’s coronavirus task force approved dubious new guidelines on testing for the pathogen.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he was “under general anesthesia” last week when the task force agreed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new advice that known close contacts of infected people need not get tested unless they have COVID19 symptoms. His account contradicted that of White House testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir, who said Fauci and other top government “docs” had signed off on the revisions, which also drop the recommendation that those traveling from areas of high coronavirus spread quarantine for 14 days.
Both changes disregard one of the bestknown dangers of the virus: its capacity to be transmitted by people who haven’t developed symptoms and in many cases never will. The nation’s top diseasefighting agency thereby advised us to ignore an essential aspect of a pandemic with which we have six months of contrary experience. No wonder the plot had to be set in motion while Fauci was comatose.
Discouraging exposed Americans from seeking a diagnosis is sadly in keeping with President Trump’s longstanding failure to muster sufficient testing or even consistently acknowledge its importance. Reliable, rapid testing for the virus, along with tracing contacts and isolating infected people, is the only way to safely resume regular economic and social activity in areas where the virus is spreading.
To his credit, Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the revised federal guidance this week as “not the policy in California.” But the state has also struggled to mount an adequate and competent testing regime. Last month, state officials announced that due to supply shortages, some testing capacity would have to be reserved for symptomatic people and specific outbreaks.
Newsom is at least trying to do something about this. He announced this week that a $1.4 billion deal with Massachusetts firm PerkinElmer will allow the state to perform an additional 150,000 tests a day, more than doubling capacity, and reduce turnaround from an average of five to seven business days — long enough to render results of little use in stopping the contagion — to under two days.
While Newsom’s coronavirus megacontracts haven’t always turned out as advertised, such an increase in timely testing would be a boon to the state, particularly after the governor greenlighted a second, slower resumption of economic activity Friday. Ready access to testing remains the only reliable way to catch outbreaks and prevent the sort of surge in infections that accompanied California’s first reopening. The CDC’s proposed retreat from testing isn’t an alternative; it’s a surrender.