We Should Not Still Be Here

The United States should be at a completely different phase of the pandemic right now

Andy Slavitt
Medium Coronavirus Blog

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Credit: the_burtons / Getty Images

There’s no reason we should still be experiencing this crisis in the United States. Six months in, we should still not be here. The crisis should not be going on this long. This doesn’t mean we should have eradicated the virus by now, but it does mean we should have contained it.

Before summarizing what I heard from experts, think on these questions. If I told you in March that we would be low on PPE, would still lack testing supplies, and that it would take 10 days to get a test result, would you have wondered what we had done the last three months?

If I told you in March that we would still be spreading the virus when there are proven methods not to spread the virus — proven — would you have believed it?

If I told you in March that countries from Italy to China (to most of Europe and Asia) would have very low case counts and that the U.S. would be spreading out of control, would you have believed it?

I asked Larry Brilliant, MD, if he believed Covid-19 would be under control by now. Larry led the eradication or small pox and polio. He told me a story of a bug the USSR was building that combined the lethality of the most dangerous bug and the…

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