Re-analyzing: Different actions to be taken during the COVID- 19 Pandemic
Jaspreet Kaur Sra
Professor Roger Deo
Thought Paper
Controlling the emergence of any infectious disease begins with a useful skill of acute vigilance (Schneider, 2017) This skill should be used to look for signs of outbreaks or rapidly increasing presence. Around December 2020, China began to report and emphasize an unknown disease that had rapidly been spreading throughout the city of Wuhan. It was slowly qualifying as an epidemic. “At this time, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control contended many dimensions- the need for social distancing, human-to-human infections, lack of vaccine or cure, and many such issues, were unknown, and the precautionary measures taken then were routinely delivered” (Allam, 2020). Soon after, the first COVID-19 case appeared in the states on January 21st and human transmission was confirmed by the Chinese officials. Yet, the guidelines mentioned in December were not followed. On February 25th, CDC stated that COVID-19 was headed towards a pandemic state. Even with this information, no precautionary guidelines were set in place in the United States.
Massive information was being revealed, but yet no serious and aggressives actions were being taken with the information. During this time, President Trump repeatedly stated that the virus was under control. However, it was secretly spreading throughout the country and was soon going to lead to drastic changes that no one expected. COVID-19, a virus that became a pandemic within a few months could have been prevented if appropriate measures were taken. The prevention of death for millions of lives would require us to use skills with epidemiology and studying the history of previous pandemics. Faster testing, nationwide lockdown and a mask mandate could have prevented the loss of millions of lives.
Slowed testing and lack of PPE
The laxity of restrictions prior to the virus entering the states, created a goal of containing the disease. In other words, it was too late to prevent the disease in the US. CDC states that in order to contain a disease “rapid identification and implementing appropriate infection control measures” is imperative (2019). This reiterates the importance of testing kits and PPE, which the United States lacked. In early January, a German developed prototype kit and it was published by the WHO for public use. The United States decided not to use this prototype and create their own. The CDC test turned out to be flawed which caused deadly delays. Due to the lack of tests, the criteria to even get a test was very strict. In order to get a test, the patient “had to have been hospitalized with severe symptoms and had recently traveled to a “high-risk area” (Lewis, 2021). This allowed the discharge of many patients that were likely cases of COVID-19 hence, the secret spreading of the virus. It prevented contact tracing and isolation. In order to control the virus “WHO recommends a combination of measures: rapid diagnosis and immediate isolation of cases, rigorous tracking and precautionary self-isolation of close contacts” (Salathé M, 2020). Since, the first step of rapid diagnosis was not achieved aggressively, the containment of the virus was very difficult to achieve.
Along with lack of testing kits in the beginning, the lack of PPE also prevented the containment of the virus. A very large demand of PPE which was “triggered by acute need in healthcare and panicked marketplace behavior” (Cohen, J, 2020). This depleted PPE inventories. The problem was further amplified due to no action from the federal government. Health care workers with a lack of PPE increased the transmission of the virus vastly. “PPE for healthcare workers is a key component of infection prevention and control; ensuring that healthcare workers are protected means more effective containment for all” (Cohen, J, 2020). The lack of PPE, caused more health care workers to get sick. Along with becoming ill and spreading the virus a lack of care for other patients also came about. It was known in January 2020 that a virus was spreading, yet measures were not taken to create tests and to stock up on PPE for healthcare workers. If these actions were taken perhaps the spread of the virus could have slowed down.
National Lockdown
Although several aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic were negligent, a very important one was not locking down the nation earlier and having a full lockdown rather than state by state lockdown. On January 30th, WHO stated that COVID-19 is a global health emergency. Although President Trump locked down flights from Wuhan the following day he failed to lock down flights from other countries which led to the trickle of the COVID-19 into the United States. The virus was already making its way through several households, therefore the next step to contain the virus was a national lockdown. Even though research was not explicit, by then human to human transmission was confirmed. Therefore, social restrictions such as a national “ lockdown could have significantly reduced the spread of the virus” (Atalan, 2020). There are several countries with successful lockdowns. For instance, the nationwide lockdown of New Zealand allowed their country to be COVID-19 free at one point.
In the US the responsibility of any lockdown was placed on states itself. Several state governors and specifically Governor Cuomo stated that states “do not have the capacity or power to make up for the federal government” and that the federal government has “been behind from day one on this crisis” (Berkeley, 2020). He finally issued an executive order on March 16th decreasing the amount of workers that could work from the office. Within 4 days, cases increased at such an alarming number, from 950 to 8300, that all non -essential businesses were ordered to close down. Not placing a nationwide lockdown, allowed some states to operate as they normally would with limited restrictions versus others with strict lockdowns. The rate of growth of cases is very intense. On March 16th, the United States had about 4000 cases and April 16th there were over 600,000 cases in the States. Perhaps, if the federal government took action earlier and a nationwide lockdown, the spread of this disease may have been mitigated.
Mask Mandate
“Public health measures to control the spread of disease are aimed at interrupting the chain of infection at whichever links are most vulnerable.” (Schneider, 2017) In order to control a virus from spreading, the first step is to break the chain of infection. Masks helped break this chain. Wearing masks has been proven to limit spread of viruses, especially where there is human to human transmission. For instance, in 2013 during the SARS outbreak in China, the widespread use of masks limited its spread which is why they adopted the use of masks quickly during COVID-19. This “played a role in their ability to control the transmission of Covid-19: (Pike, 2020) Although the data was not extensive on COVID-19 itself, other countries adopted the mask mandate and were able to control the spread.
On the other hand in the US, CDC recommendations to wear masks were delayed and fluctuated. The rapid rate of growth of this virus has been discussed. However, CDC did not recommend that masks prevent the transmission of the infection until April 3, 2020. Even though many states prior to this began to enforce the rule of mask wearing, a mandate was not issued until April 17th for New York and June 18th in California. Understandably, issuing a mandate of mask wearing was difficult as “western societies appear reluctant to wear face masks”(Howard, 2020). Enforcing an action on society, comes across a breach of liberty and loss of rights. If the president of the United States was not wearing a mask throughout the majority of the course of the pandemic, why would the country’s citizens want to? The responsibility of having power is the influence you pass on to society. If there was consistency with leaders, government officials and appropriate education on the importance of masks a mask mandate may not have come across as a breach of liberty. It may have simply influenced many other residents to actually wear a mask. The hesitation of mask wearing cost the US thousands of lives (Pike, 2020).
Learning from history is imperative to prevent unwanted outcomes in the future. The US along with several other countries failed to prevent this deadly pandemic. Over 4 million lives have left the face of earth, that probably would have been alive today. The steps and actions that were taken to prevent this should be commended. However, the steps and action that were not taken to curtail the spread of this disease should be noted. This includes the rapid testing, increased supply of PPE, national lockdown, mask mandates and many more that were not discussed. If history repeats, being prepared better is essential and this can only be done by critiquing and analyzing the prior steps taken.
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