5 years after the beginning of the COVID disaster – is the U.S. extra ready to deal with one other pandemic?
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Monday marks 5 years because the U.S. recorded its first case of COVID-19. Nicely over 1,000,000 People died over the following few years. The virus continues to be with us, in fact, and there are new pandemic threats, together with chicken flu. NPR’s Will Stone joins us. Will, thanks for being with us.
WILL STONE, HOST:
Certain factor, Scott.
SIMON: You had been in Seattle when that first COVID case, January 2020, within the U.S., was confirmed, weren’t you?
STONE: I used to be. This was a person in his 30s who’d come again from Wuhan, China. And on the time, the message from public well being was that the chance of human-to-human unfold was low. It wasn’t really till the following month that it turned clear the virus was spreading locally right here in Seattle and elsewhere within the nation.
SIMON: And 5 years later, how nicely ready is the U.S. for one more disaster like COVID?
STONE: It is a blended image. Definitely, there’s loads of disillusionment in public well being and drugs. You’d hope that after a giant pandemic, the nation could be higher off. However Dr. Andrew Pavia on the College of Utah instructed me it simply would not look that method to him.
ANDREW PAVIA: We have not executed a very good job of fixing the issues that must be modified. There’s a lot fatigue. There’s a lot trauma from the COVID pandemic.
STONE: The medical career noticed an exodus of nurses and medical doctors. The identical pattern is true within the public well being workforce. In the meantime, belief in public well being and authorities companies has fallen – misinformation, fights over masking, college closures. A lot of issues might have performed a task. And a latest survey from Harvard discovered belief in medical doctors and hospitals dipped from 70% in 2020 to lower than 50% as of early 2024.
SIMON: And what might among the penalties of that be?
STONE: Yeah. It is onerous to overstate the implication, Scott. I spoke to Lauren Sauer about this. She’s an professional on pandemic preparedness on the College of Nebraska Medical Heart.
LAUREN SAUER: Individuals should take part in public well being, proper? The general public is an important half. Except we actually spend loads of time constructing the belief in public well being again, we might construct all of the programs on this planet, they usually will not work.
STONE: And together with that, funding is beneath menace. There was an infusion of cash throughout COVID, however there have been proposals from Home Republicans to slash funding for public well being applications, together with the CDC. And it is attainable that it’s going to acquire momentum when President-elect Trump is sworn in on Monday.
SIMON: Are there some notes of hope on the subject of pandemic preparedness?
STONE: Sure, there are some advances. Our potential to do wastewater surveillance to trace the unfold of illness. That is one instance introduced up by Caitlin Rivers. She’s at Johns Hopkins and not too long ago authored a guide on combating outbreaks known as “Disaster Averted.”
CAITLIN RIVERS: Expertise actually stands out as a realm the place we have seen some nice successes. I believe there’s loads of emphasis proper now on diagnostic testing and in addition round vaccination. The MRNA platform has been very profitable, provides us a brand new instrument to develop vaccines rapidly for the following pandemic pathogen.
STONE: And public well being specialists say having vaccines able to go will likely be key for chicken flu. That is why the federal government is stockpiling current vaccines and creating new MRNA pictures in case the outbreak escalates.
SIMON: And what has the incoming administration stated about chicken flu?
STONE: Nicely, it is largely been silent. Definitely, Trump has the expertise of Operation Warp Velocity that produced the COVID vaccine. However scientists like Andrew Pavia on the College of Utah are involved based mostly on the monitor report of a few of Trump’s well being picks. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could lead on the Division of Well being and Human Providers. For years, Kennedy led an advocacy group that is a giant participant within the anti-vaccine motion.
And Scott, yesterday, we discovered that within the spring of 2021, Kennedy filed a citizen’s petition on behalf of that advocacy group to the FDA. And in it, he requested the company revoke the authorizations for the COVID vaccine for all demographic teams. In fact, the FDA denied this request, however Kennedy has an intensive historical past of creating inaccurate and deceptive statements on vaccines, and he has already made feedback undermining belief within the current chicken flu vaccines. We reached out to the transition workforce for remark about their plans however didn’t hear again.
SIMON: NPR well being correspondent Will Stone. Thanks a lot.
STONE: Thanks.
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