Health experts cite steps to stop coronavirus
First word
SEVERAL readers wrote to express concurrence with my questioning of the pronouncements of WHO officials on the lockdown strategy of various countries in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
Erlando Leyva sent me this comment:
“My take on what the WHO is doing amid this pandemic is that you cannot really lend it veracity and reliability unless we change the person who heads the agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Right in the middle of the onslaught of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), he made a statement that the virus was not transmitted from person to person. I think he made the pandemic worse than what it already was. I'm not sure if he is a medical person. I think he is carrying water for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).”
Another reader, Michael T, commented:
“The WHO has not really been a good source of information on this problem. I have far more confidence in watching the health care teams of the governments of the United States and the Philippines. WHO seems a bit behind the curve, if not completely off-base. What seems to really matter now are the actions that the government takes based on its assessment of the problem. Clearly, the Philippines lacks the medical and research infrastructure of the US. However, the Philippines’ health leadership seems to be on top of the problem and capable of providing needed direction to the nation. We just need to understand that the virus is a big unknown and no nation, rich or poor, can respond to this problem without mistakes. What is key is a good team of health professionals who are monitoring what we are doing and making adjustments to the strategy as needed.”
These gentlemen are spot-on in their perception of the situation and of WHO’s capabilities.
Following some checking, I have discovered that Tedros Ghebreyesus is not a medical doctor. He is rather a politician who once served as health minister of the government of Ethiopia.
Tedros was elected as directorgeneral of the WHO on May 23, 2017. He became the first WHO director-general who is not a medical doctor or doctor of medicine.
Thus, the public face of WHO in the coronavirus pandemic is not a medical professional. What credence or trust then should the world give WHO’s scary statements and prescriptions?
NYT on stopping Covid-19
To quickly surmount this dispiriting discovery, I want to discuss the highly professional and positive article in the New York Times of March 24, “Harsh steps can stop the coronavirus – health experts say.” It was written by Donald G. McNeil Jr.
I will freely quote here from his report, which for reasons of space I could only abridge. Mcneil wrote:
“Terrifying though the coronavirus may be, it can be turned back. China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan have demonstrated that, with furious efforts, the contagion can be brought to heel.
“Whether they can keep it suppressed remains to be seen. But for the US to repeat their successes will take extraordinary levels of coordination and money from the country’s leaders, and extraordinary levels of trust and cooperation from citizens.
Contagion has a weakness
”There is a chance to stop the coronavirus. This contagion has a weakness.
“Although there are incidents of rampant spread, as happened on the cruise ship Diamond Princess, the coronavirus more often infects clusters of family members, friends and work colleagues, said Dr. David L. Heymann, who [heads] an expert panel on emergencies.
”No one is certain why the virus travels in this way, but experts see an opening nonetheless. ‘You can contain clusters,’ Heymann said. ‘You need to identify and stop discrete outbreaks, and then do it.’
Leading experts on epidemics
“In interviews with a dozen of the world’s leading experts on fighting epidemics, there was wide agreement on the steps that must be taken immediately. Those experts included international public health officials; scientists and epidemiologists; and former health officials in both Republican and Democratic [US] administrations.
“Americans must be persuaded to stay home, they said, and a system put in place to isolate the infected and care for them outside the home. Travel restrictions should be extended, they said; productions of masks and ventilators must be accelerated, and testing problems must be resolved.”
What follows are the recommendations offered by the experts interviewed by the New York Times:
Scientists must be heard. The experts were united in the opinion that politicians must step aside and let scientists both lead the effort to contain the virus and explain to Americans what must be done.
Above all, the experts said, briefings should focus on saving lives and making sure that average wage earners survive the coming hard times… There is no time left to point fingers and assign blame.
“We need to focus on the enemy, and that’s the virus.” Stop transmission between cities. The next priority, experts said, is extreme social distancing. If it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all Americans freeze in place for 14 days while sitting 6 feet apart, epidemiologists say, the whole epidemic would sputter to a halt.
Within cities, there are dangerous hot spots: One restaurant, one gym, one hospital, even one taxi may be more contaminated than many identical others nearby because someone had a coughing fit inside.
The weaker the freeze, the more people die in overburdened hospitals — and the longer it ultimately takes for the economy to restart.
Fix the testing mess. Testing must be done in a coordinated and safe way, experts said. The seriously ill must go first, and the testers must be protected.
Isolate the infected. Instead of a policy that advises the infected to remain at home, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now does, experts said cities should establish facilities where the mildly and moderately ill can recuperate.
Find the fevers, trace the contacts. Finding and testing all the contacts of every positive case is essential, experts said. At the peak of its epidemic, Wuhan had 18,000 people tracking down individuals who had come in contact with the infected.
Make masks ubiquitous. There is very little data showing that flat surgical masks protect healthy individuals from disease. Nonetheless, Asian countries generally make it mandatory that people wear them. The Asian approach is less about data than it is about crowd psychology, experts explained.
All experts agree that the sick must wear masks to keep in their coughs. But if a mask indicates that the wearer is sick, many people will be reluctant to wear one. If everyone is required to wear masks, the sick automatically have one on and there is no stigma attached.
Preserve vital services. Government intervention is necessary for some vital aspects of life during a pandemic. Only the national government can enforce interstate commerce laws to ensure that food, water, electricity, gas, phone lines and other basic needs keep flowing. Only the government can prioritize the making of ventilators, masks and other needed goods
High-level decisions like these must be made quickly, experts said.
Decide when to close schools. Schools in 45 US states were closed entirely, but that is a decision that divided experts.
“Closing all schools may not make sense unless there is documented widespread community transmission, which we’re not seeing in most of the country,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former CDC director under President Barack Obama.
It is unclear how much children spread coronavirus. They very seldom get sick enough to be hospitalized. Current testing cannot tell whether most do not even become infected.
Find a vaccine. The ultimate hope is to have a vaccine that will protect everyone, and many companies and governments have already rushed the design of candidate vaccines.
The process will take at least a year, even if nothing goes wrong.
PH puts in place the needed policies
The point of the Times article is that the coronavirus can be beaten back, contained, and finally vanquished. It is clearly misguided for WHO officials to dismiss social distancing and other restrictive measures. These measures have demonstrably started to work in various countries.
In the Philippines, it is notable that our government has been alert to the challenge; it quickly ordered a lockdown and passed all measures necessary to keep the virus at bay.
The people, starting with Metro Manila residents, are visibly adjusting to the emergency. When volunteers are needed to win this fight, many Filipinos will most likely enlist.