Coronavirus Pandemonium

By: Joe Mauricio

 

The early arrival of Coronavirus in the U.S. was a WILD PANDEMONIUM. First, there was the report that the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) developed and distributed a faulty coronavirus test in its quite late start in February.

Independent labs created alternatives, but were mired in bureaucracy from the FDA. In a crucial month when American caseload shot into the tens of thousands, only hundreds of people were tested. That a biomedical powerhouse like America should so thoroughly fail to create a simple diagnostic test was quite unimaginable.

Testing fiasco was the original sin of America’s pandemic failure, the single fl aw that undermined every other counter-measure. If the country could have accurately tracked the spread of the virus, hospitals could have executed their pandemic plans, girding themselves by allotting treatment rooms, ordering extra supplies, tagging in personnel, or assigning specific facilities to deal with COVID-19 cases. None of that happened. Instead, a health care system that already runs close to full capacity and that challenged by a severe fl u season, was suddenly faced with a virus that had been left to spread on communities around the country.

Basic Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), such as masks, gowns, gloves began to run out. Partly, the White House was ill-advised of scientifi c expertise by scientists in its staff, Dr. Fauci and Dr Birx, and likewise by WHO or even China. America was misinformed or disinformed at this stage on what was really going on and what must be done. For one thing, there were reports of the use of ventilators failures to the patients’ lungs.

Shortage of essential coronavirus medications from China due to hoarding, together with masks, gowns, shields, gloves and PPEs. More importantly, specialized training for the frontliners: doctors, nurses, aides, therapists, etc., must be an ongoing preparedness exercise in hospitals and primary health care providers.

This resulted with the US ending up to be one of the worst hit by the COVID-19 pandemic among the industrialized countries of the world (currently with deaths numbering over 80,000–in top spot).

But lessons from past pandemics (such as SARS, Spanish fl u, bubonic plague, etc.) do offer hints of help for the present to the future. While there is no one historical example to follow, humanity has gone through several large epidemics since time immemorial.

Historically, the ways they came to a halt offer guidance to a world looking for ways to restore health and some sense of normalcy. What happens next depends on both the evolution of the pathogens and the human response to it, both biological and social, for now and for the forthcoming generations.