First, let me be clear. The Trump administration response to Covid-19 was the proverbial unmitigated disaster -- unmitigated by American expertise and unmitigated by American resources. The entirety of the 2020 American pandemic coping was a clown act to protect perceptions of the American economy.
My concern with the first week of the Biden administration was that most of the task force briefings were focusing on the logistics and minutia of vaccine deployment rather than the big questions. The national media focus wasn't on context but on being thrilled to get real answers to questions, something that had been lacking for the first year of the pandemic. The American media seemed blithely ignorant of virus concerns being raised by other countries.
Things, however, changed this last week as both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Osterholm stepped up and said what had to be said. Fauci explained that the South African variant was more transmissible and, more importantly, that having had a different variety of Covid-19 promised very little protection from the South African variant. Fauci referred to mutant strains as "wild cards" in an MSNBC interview, and said that if they became the dominant strains, we would see another surge. What he didn't explicitly state was that these mutant strains will almost certainly become the dominant strains, and that any surge will be on top of the current surge, which will be dire.
Osterholm's comments were more direct than Fauci's. Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious disease icon, has been deadly accurate with virtually all of his pandemic predictions. Early on, nobody believed his projections and warnings. As reality unfolded, however, it became clear that Osterholm has a grasp not only on Covid-19, but on how Americans respond with flawed, undisciplined behaviors. Osterholm said that he expects the mutant variants to surge in six to 14 weeks. His comment regarding the "capitalism uber all" attitude the U.S. has taken, " As fast as we're opening restaurants, we're likely going to be closing them." He likened the coming surge to a tsunami out of sight over the horizon.
All we can ask for is the best American science has to offer and the truth. I was concerned that the opening week under Biden had soft pedaled what international experts felt was coming. Fortunately, Fauci and Osterholm began beating the drums to warn us.
To put this in an overall context, some countries are now testing every infected individual to identify the strains of the virus. Obviously, doing this should be a priority. The U.S. has tested less than half a percent. This means that the U.S. is flying blind as to the prevalence of the mutant strains around the country, and it almost assuredly means that community spread of the variants has already occurred on a large scale. Thus, mutant surges on top of the current surges are almost inevitable.
If this happens, Osterholm stated on Meet the Press, "We are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country."
Bob Dietz
February 5, 2021
