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[OPINION] Coronavirus: Is Rick Bright's apocalyptic warning correct?

2020-05-14T22:38:01.856Z


He was raising the alarm bell about the coronavirus earlier this year and for resisting pressure from the Trump administration to promote an "unproven drug, hydroxychloroqui ...


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Editor's Note: Peter Bergen is a CNN National Security Analyst, Vice President of New America and Professor of Practice at Arizona State University. He is editor of the Coronavirus Daily Brief and author of the new book "Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos". The opinions expressed here are those of the author. Read more opinion at CNNe.com/opinion.

(CNN) - In testimony prepared for his appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Health and Commerce subcommittee on Thursday, Rick Bright said he was removed as director of the Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) because It was sounding the alarm bell about the coronavirus earlier this year and for resisting pressure from the Trump administration to promote an "unproven drug, hydroxychloroquine, to the American people, without transparent information about possible health risks." .

Leaving aside the question of why exactly Bright was removed from his BARDA position, he has certainly proven to be right about the antimalarial drug that President Donald Trump constantly promoted as "revolutionary" and which was also promoted by the hosts of Fox News. and close allies of Trump, like Rudy Giuliani.

A study of more than 1,400 covid-19 patients in New York was published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the largest analysis to date, that found that hydroxychloroquine did not provide benefits to patients with covid-19 and, in contrast, significantly increased your risk of cardiac arrest.

Monday's JAMA study followed a New England Journal of Medicine study published last week, which concluded that hydroxychloroquine did not help or harm 1,376 patients who were admitted to the University of New York-Presbyterian Columbia Medical Center between the March 7 and April 8.

As a result of these studies, Dr. William Schaffner, an expert in infectious diseases, said: "The nail has practically been placed in the coffin of hydroxychloroquine."

In the anticipated version of his testimony on Thursday, Bright also made some dire predictions about what awaits the United States, and testified that, "If we don't develop a science-based, coordinated national response, I'm afraid the pandemic will get much worse. and it will drag on, causing unprecedented illness and death… Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that other experts and I have outlined, 2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history. ”

That's a very bleak prediction, as it seems to suggest that more Americans could die from covid-19 than the 675,000 who died during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Is Bright right? Maybe. A leading infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, Michael Osterholm, estimates that there could be as many as 800,000 covid-19 deaths in the United States in the next 18 months.

There are many reasons to believe that such a high death toll is a huge possibility, including the likelihood that the United States will experience a "second wave" of covid later in the year.

The US Coronavirus Test it's also far from where it should be. Almost 10 million tests have been conducted in the United States so far, but that's only for about 3% of the population.

A Harvard study co-authored by New America's chief executive, my colleague Anne-Marie Slaughter, suggests that we need 20 million tests a day in mid-summer to really open up the United States and re-mobilize the American economy.

Meanwhile, the United States has an anemic effort to search for contacts unlike South Korea, which has only had 260 deaths.

The United States has a population more than six times greater than South Korea, so, adjusted for population size, if the United States had a plan like South Korea's, we could have around 1,700 deaths from covid-19. Instead, the United States has had more than 84,000 deaths, the most in the world.

Also, most states that are now opening do not adhere to federal guidelines on when it is reasonable to do so.

And, so far, there is no effective treatment for covid-19, except remdesivir, which shortened recovery times by four days for seriously ill patients in a clinical trial, compared to those who received a placebo, but the drug it is scarce.

Meanwhile, accurate antibody testing is still far off and developing a widely available vaccine could take years.

Bright is making some dire predictions, but in his prepared testimony he says he was right when he warned earlier this year that the coronavirus would likely be a big problem and, unless we have a consistent national response, he may be right again about the winter of discontent that we can enter at the end of this year.

coronavirus Hydroxychloroquine

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2020-05-14

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