Health experts sound the alarm on coronovirus reponse

President Trump’s governing strategy is on a collision course with a novel foe. Can alternative facts stop a pandemic?

Some of the nation’s leading public-health experts assembled before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning with some worrisome warnings: The dangerous Wuhan novel coronavirus is probably already in the United States in greater numbers than we know and should show itself in clusters in the coming weeks. There’s reason to doubt its spread will die down when the weather warms. And it could ultimately affect hundreds of thousands of Americans.

But Trump has never been one to embrace expert opinion, whether on climate change or on windmill cancer.

“By the way, the virus,” Trump told supporters at a political rally this week. “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

He told a meeting of governors that he “had a long talk with President Xi” of China. “He feels very confident. And he feels that, again, as I mentioned, by April or during the month of April, the heat, generally speaking, kills this kind of virus. So that would be a good thing. But we’re in great shape in our country. We have 11, and the 11 are getting better. Okay?” Okay!

Maybe he’s right. We should all pray that he is. But the experts have a rather different take.

Luciana Borio, the former director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, said the number of actual cases is “much, much higher” than reported and “very concerning for a pandemic.” She said it is “sufficiently lethal to stress severely the health care system” and “we need to brace ourselves for difficult weeks or months to come.”

Julie Gerberding, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she is “very concerned about the prospects for long-term containment” and warned that “we simply don’t have the surge capacity” to handle a widespread outbreak.

And Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said there are “certainly cases we don’t know about” in the United States, and he called for expanded testing because we’re “capturing 25% of cases at best.” Gottlieb predicted: “We’re going to see those outbreaks start to emerge in the next two to four weeks.”

Trump this week proposed cutting U.S. funding for the World Health Organization in half. He has also proposed a nearly 16% cut to the CDC and a nearly 8% cut to the National Institutes of Health, though officials say they won’t cut from infectious-disease work.

Trump administration officials were asked to participate in the Senate hearing; they refused, instead cooperating in a closed briefing later with senators.

Had they come, they would have heard the experts knock down Trump’s claims that we’re in great shape, that there are only 11 cases here and that China has handled the outbreak well.

Gottlieb warned that even if the fatality rate drops from the current 2% to 0.2%, that could still “be quite devastating.”

As for the virus receding in warm weather, Gottlieb pointed out that there’s been some spread in Singapore, where it’s 90 degrees.

They also cautioned that they can’t be sure that current antiviral drug trials will be successful or that a vaccine will be available in a year. And many raw materials for drugs come from China — a gaping vulnerability.

In one of the few bright points, Gottlieb (who is on Pfizer’s board) said that “we probably could do this quickly if we wanted to” and avoid China’s “critical choke-point in supply.”

Alternatively, we can wait for the virus “miraculously” to disappear.