If we’d only listened to Scott Gottlieb, part I

I don’t get time to read full books anymore, but I devour book reviews. Thus I immediately jumped on a review of “Uncontrolled Spread” by Scott Gottlieb in the Wall Street Journal a week ago. Dr. Gottlieb, until 2019 head of the FDA under Trump, had one of the clearest views of the pandemic of anyone. I’ll discuss that review in my next post.

However, I just reread his Jan. 28, 2020 article in the WSJ (titled “Act now to prevent an American epidemic”), and wanted to cry. Just read what he said the US should do – and then imagine what might have happened if somebody in the White House had cared enough about the country to make sure these things did actually happen:

First, the most important public-health tool for containment is the identification and isolation of cases to break the chain of spread. Public-health authorities and health-care systems are on high alert for potential cases. But authorities can’t act quickly without a test that can diagnose the condition rapidly.

***

If the number of cases increases, experience from the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the 2015 Zika epidemic suggests that the CDC will struggle to keep up with the volume of screening. Government should focus on working with private industry to develop easy-to-use, rapid diagnostic tests that can be made available to providers.

***

Second, focus on the flu. The incidence of flu and other respiratory viral infection cases is high right now in the U.S. It isn’t too late to boost flu vaccination efforts, which would reduce the burden that influenza puts on doctors and hospitals. It could also reduce the number of patients showing up at the emergency room with a respiratory illness that requires testing to rule out the novel coronavirus.

Third, hospitals need to prepare for an influx of patients who will need to be isolated. It isn’t well understood how this virus is transmitted. There are reports of hospital staff in China coming down with the virus despite wearing protective gowns and masks.

***

In addition, many medical supplies that help prevent the spread of infection—gloves, gowns and respirator masks—are produced overseas. More outbreaks will strain global supplies. It is critical to begin limiting needless use of these products and prevent hoarding so that gowns and gloves are available where they’re needed most.

Of course, each one of these recommendations wasn’t followed, at least until it was too little and too late. That’s what happens when you have a guy at the top who doesn’t give a s___ about any of this stuff.

 

In the numbers, note that it does look like new cases are going down now, but deaths are still going up. At other times, it would be easy to say “Don’t worry, deaths will start to go down soon as well.” But the other variable now is that, as the weather gets colder and people are indoors more, there’s no assurance that cases and deaths won’t both turn up again soon. Of course, the big question is whether vaccinations will increase more than they have been lately. And booster shots don’t count for this question – since vaccinated people are very unlikely to be hospitalized or die, even if they catch the coronavirus, the boosters won’t impact deaths much if at all (although I plan to get mine when I’m eligible).

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, September 19.

Month	Deaths reported during month	Avg. deaths per day during period	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
Month of March 2020	4,058	131
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
Month of August	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept.	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct.	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov.	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec.	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan. 2021	98,604	3,181	119%
Month of Feb.	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March	37,945	1,224	55%
Month of April	24,323	811	64%
Month of May	19,843	661	82%
Month of June	10,544	351	53%
Month of July	8,833	287	84%
Month of August	31,160	1,005	351%
Total Pandemic so far	695,676	1,210

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 695,676

Average deaths last seven days: 2,302  

Average deaths previous seven days: 1,906

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 2.4%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 43,042,459

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 1,005,682 (= 143,669/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 1,231,518 (= 175,931/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 2.4%  

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.