In January, scientists, public health officials and journalists were warning that the coronavirus was set to explode out of China. Few listened.
though a “monumental” Pete Buttigieg victory would ultimately leave him, still, as the former mayor of South Bend, Ind.
“This is one of the smartest viruses we’ve run across,” Pollack said. “It’s insidious. It gets out there quickly and quietly.” The online chatter from the Pollacks and Branswells and Daszaks spoke with one voice. “All of these people and others were very worried that people were going to underreact and not appreciate what was happening,” said Inglesby, a physician and infectious-disease authority. “You could just feel the slow burn.”
The United States, meanwhile, counted on the Centers for Disease Control. And it sent out test kits with a “faulty chemical.” That meant local labs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities could not do the surveillance testing needed to track down asymptomatic patients, including those unwitting souls who would become “super spreaders” of the disease.
Few were heeding the experts who insisted that the nation, the world, had become one ocean of disease and that its currents might be delayed but would eventually reach every shore. A UC San Francisco doctor posted a paper in mid-February warning that the virus wasn’t just airborne; it might live on some surfaces for up to two days.
At a March 24 town hall on the Fox News network, the president said he wanted the nation “opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” He said he looked forward to seeing churches “packed” on that day. Before a cruel April would begin, a certain madness seemed to descend on some in America and around the world. Wild conspiracy theories about China, or America, releasing the virus gained steam inside the social media hothouse. Daszak had seen an American colleague — who had cloned bat viruses to search for medicines that might contain them — attacked for allegedly releasing SARS-CoV-2 into the world. The blasphemy churned over Twitter.
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