I read about a recent editorial that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that outlines what the U.S. needs to do to defeat the novel coronavirus. It was written by Dr. Harvey Fineberg from the National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats and is also President of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Dr. Fineberg feels we don’t need to “flatten the curve,” we need to “crush the curve.’
In the opEd, he writes:
Rather than stumble through a series of starts and stops and half-measures on both the health and the economic fronts, we should forge a strategy to defeat the coronavirus and open the way to economic revival. If we act immediately, we can make the anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 2020, the day America declares victory over the coronavirus.
Read the piece HERE.
He also summarized his plan in an article in ProPublica.
Why haven’t we done this yet?
The ProPublica article states:
First, we need to have adequate numbers of tests available and distributed for diagnosis. We do not have that in place, and it must be within two weeks. Second, we need to provide protective personal equipment to every health professional who is going to be caring for patients. We would not send soldiers into war without body armor. We should not ask our health professionals and attendants to serve without adequate protection. Third, every citizen in the United States has a part to play. We should all be mobilized. Everyone should be maintaining physical distance. In public, everyone should now be wearing a surgical mask. Surgical masks should be delivered to every American household by the U.S. Postal Service, perhaps also mobilizing and utilizing the Amazons, Walmarts, Costcos, CVS, Walgreens and other major distributors. All should be mobilized to get those surgical masks and hand cleaner in the hands of every American household. The surgical masks do not prevent you from receiving the virus. But if everyone wears them, they will diminish the spread from those who are unknowingly infected to others.
Next, we need to test enough to be able to classify every American as documented infected, suspected infected, exposed or not yet known to be either exposed or infected. Each of those classes of Americans needs to be treated appropriately.
Everyone who is infected or presumed infected — because the test, by the way, is not perfect — should be separated into dedicated clinical facilities. Serious cases and those at highest risk should be hospitalized. Every convention center in every major American city should be converted into an infirmary where presumptive cases and documented cases with mild illness can be cared for and segregated, both from the general community and from other patients with emergent and urgent needs that are not infected.
Everyone who has been exposed to an infected person should be placed in quarantine. All the hotels that are now empty in our cities could be mobilized with the staff retrained on appropriate sanitation procedures to be able to house, in comfort, dignity and appropriate care, those who need to remain in quarantine for a two week period of time, which would allow 99% of those who are going to develop symptoms to already have expressed symptoms.
If we take these steps and we simultaneously work on new treatments, a vaccine — which, by the way, will not come online in 10 weeks but will be available as a further deterrent after the acute victory — we can turn the tide and defeat coronavirus. This is totally different from the response to the 1976 swine flu when no epidemic appeared. But this is the kind of radical approach that actually would bring together intelligent political decision making with expertise that can solve the problem from a scientific and public health point of view.
And by the way, if we do this, it is the best way to get the economy moving again. Because if we eliminate the threat of coronavirus in the space of 10 weeks, the economy can be sparked into action. If we proceed in ways that are half-measures, incomplete approaches, gradual and not effective, we will persist with people falling ill, with people fearful, with workplaces disrupted, with an inability to get the economy humming again.