[image_credit]University of Minnesota[/image_credit][image_caption]Michael Osterholm: “Many of us have waited for the day when we can say OK there’s only six weeks left and we’re done. We can get through this. I wake up now and wonder to myself sometimes ‘are we still in the third inning?’ And that’s a challenge.”[/image_caption]
In the weeks that followed, Minnesotans watched reports of lockdowns, deaths and overwhelmed hospitals from afar as the virus wrought tragedy, first on the other side of the world, then closer and closer.
“I have no doubt it will travel across the world, including the United States,” Michael Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) told MinnPost in a story published a year ago Sunday, a time when there were six documented cases of the virus in the U.S. and it was becoming evident that there was little Minnesota could do to stop the virus from coming here. “It’s kind of like controlling the wind. You can’t.”
A year later, Minnesota has seen more than 24,000 hospitalized and more than 6,000 dead due to COVID-19. We caught up with Osterholm again to talk about what we’ve learned — and haven’t learned — over the past year. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MinnPost: As soon as we started hearing about coronavirus, the most obvious thing to do was start comparing it to other pandemics, as well as other viruses that turned out not to be pandemics. So I guess my first question for you is how did COVID-19 end up being like, or unlike, other viruses we’ve seen before?
Michael Osterholm: In the first three weeks, there was enough information to make us very concerned [but] I came into it with a built-in bias of, if it’s not influenza, that’s a good thing, because that’s the worst. Having worked on SARS and having worked on MERS [both coronaviruses that caused outbreaks originating in Asia and the Arabian peninsula, respectively], I understood [it to be a] good thing [that it was a coronavirus], because people wouldn’t get infectious until the fifth or sixth day of their illness. We could stop that.
But then, we were getting information that people were transmitting early — long before they got clinically ill, let alone in the earliest days of clinical illness — that began to tell us, wow, there’s something different here. And then as we talked to more people on the ground in Wuhan, it was clear that there was tremendous transmission in the community, it had showed up in Hong Kong, it showed up in Singapore and we knew this is now an infectious agent that’s going to be impossible to contain. This is going to cause the next pandemic.
MP: When we talked about COVID-19 earlier in January of last year, you said you wouldn’t refer to a coronavirus as a pandemic agent. What about this virus made it different from other coronaviruses?
MO: The key thing was the evidence of transmission before you became clinically ill. And that there was widespread transmission that way. You have a viral load in your throat that increases very quickly. As you’re breathing, you breathe out the virus [before you’re feeling symptoms].
MP: Another thing you were really concerned about in late January last year was preparation: you were saying we need to prepare right now. How did we do in hindsight?
MO: When [President Donald Trump] held up that summary from Johns Hopkins saying we’re the best-prepared country in the world for a pandemic, I cringed because I knew how ill-prepared we were, and yet that’s what people thought; that we would be prepared.
I knew that there would be challenges, and I mean, even to the extent in the earliest days, I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on Feb. 24 saying this is a pandemic, wake up. In the United States, there were so many people who kept wanting to say the flu is much worse.
I heard that so many times. So it was hard in that we couldn’t get people to really respond in a manner that would really support active, proactive preparation. When you deny it’s going to be a problem, you don’t have to prepare. I think that was one of the real challenges.
MP: Were there other communication missteps that stick out to you? The mask thing has gotten pretty complicated.
MO: I surely advocate for them, but at the same time, the impact that masks have in reducing transmission depends on what you call a mask. N95 respirators are very different than surgical masks are very different than cloth face coverings are very different from gaiters. And what we’ve done is lumped them all into one category. That really isn’t helpful because in fact, N95 respirators are the gold standard, they really do have a tremendous impact on transmission, both in terms of the person who might be infected, breathing out, or the person who is breathing in the virus. We see much less protection, for example, in certain loose-fitting cloth coverings that have a material that allows air to pass right through.
What we were trying to do all along is to nuance this to be able to say we fully support this, but I want people to understand that the most important thing you can do to protect yourself is the distancing issue. So people say what do you use to go to the grocery store? Well I’m fortunate because I’m in the health care area to have an N95, but you know what the most important thing is that I do? I go to the grocery store at five in the morning as does my partner and there’s no one there. So that’s one of the things we’ve had to help try to teach people. And most people, that’s not something they want to hear.
MP: What are the big questions you still have about the virus?
MO: First of all, the whole variant issue, the issue around variants to me is very concerning and we don’t quite know where that’s taking us. I think it’s fair to say we’re not sure what that’s going to mean.
There are three categories of the ones that concern us: one, do they cause more transmission? Two, do they cause more severe illness? Three, do they evade immune protection from either vaccines or from natural infection? The B117, the British one, is surely in those first two categories, more infections and more severe infections [scientists are mixed on whether B117 causes more severe infections but the question is being studied]. Then you get into P1 [the Brazilian variant] and you get into the South African one and at that point you really have all three categories. And God knows how many more are coming down the pike.
[Also] human immunity. I think we have major challenges trying to understand human immunity and how it relates to coronaviruses. I mean, a good example is the vaccine. I’m going to keep putting forward we should consider a single-dose approach right now with Moderna and Pfizer and that’s not popular, but when you look at the immunology of this virus and you look at vaccines, we have shown over and over again that the most robust protection from the vaccine occurs when the boosters are typically months afterwards, not two weeks, because it takes that time to mature the immune response cells from the first vaccine dose.
Even in the Johnson & Johnson study, they had much better results after 49 days than they did before. It got better. So one of the issues would be to protect more people at least partially if not quite a bit with one dose and then catch up with a second dose later.
MP: What lessons should we be taking from the last year as we face these new variants — if we learned anything in the last year at all?
MO: Many of us have waited for the day when we can say OK there’s only six weeks left and we’re done. We can get through this. I wake up now and wonder to myself sometimes “are we still in the third inning?” And that’s a challenge. It’s a challenge for all of us, everyone.
For many of us, the lives we’ve lived over the last year have been challenging. Before this, I used to fly 150,000 miles a year, with all my international travel for work. I haven’t been on a plane since March. I would occasionally use Zoom or something like that before. Now I spend 150,000 hours on Zoom instead of flying 150,000 miles.
Some scientists think pandemics will become more common due to factors like urbanization and globalization. Should we be prepared to do this again in two years? Five years? Twenty years?
I think another influenza pandemic is going to happen. When it takes place, I don’t know, but it’s going to happen. And now we have to consider maybe additional new coronaviruses are going to emerge. This one really took us by surprise as a pandemic agent.
What? No pie in the sky? No “We’ll have it under control by next Tuesday – or a month from now at the latest?”
I came to Minnesota to be a hands-on, engaged grandfather to children I’ve now not seen in months except via Zoom, which is better than nothing, but only that. At age 76, with multiple underlying conditions, I’d be happy to get a single vaccine dose, but the distribution system, such as it is, seems inept at best, a disaster at worst. I’ve gotten one generic notice from my health care provider that a vaccine was available, but of course the web link was swamped and not functioning by the time I could click on it. My doctor said, “They haven’t told us anything.”
So I wait – inside the house – reading, cooking, puttering, and do my best to do the daily constitutional at a time when I’m unlikely to encounter other people. I haven’t matched Dr. Osterholm’s 5 AM grocery shopping (my local CUB often has multiple bare shelves at that hour, so there’s not much point in going that early), but I still go early, on a weekday, when traffic in the store is light.
These are, as they say, “interesting times.” My hope is that, by mid-summer, the situation will have improved significantly, but I’m not holding my breath while I wait for that improvement to happen. Too many of my fellow citizens have already demonstrated that they’re not going to tolerate even a mild inconvenience like a mask, or distancing, and that my life is unimportant. After all, I’m old.
Ray, are you a veteran? If you are, and given your age and co-morbidities, call the VA Medical Service here; they’ll set you up with weekend appointments for a two-shot series.
I am rather curious why nobody is really talking about natural immunity by those already having had the virus. Current estimates are that 80-110 Million people in the US have actually been infected, certainly much higher than the people who have tested positive. Using that math makes it a much shorter hurdle to herd immunity. I know you can say it hasn’t been proven, but the very minute number of people who have had the virus 2x has already proven something out. All the so called experts and media keep reporting the people who have tested positive, when the true number is 3-6x that number. I suspect we are only 2-3 months away from herd immunity and not the 6-8 months many are predicting.
There are two separate processes here:
First, there is being infected twice and showing symptoms.
The second is being infected once but retaining the virus in your system (“long haul”). These people may be contagious even if they don’yt show obvious symptoms — the science is not settled yet.
Because that’s nonsense. The “so-called” experts are actually experts are relying on science. Sadly, there are a lot of frauds on the internet who are not.
The ‘so called experts’ who haven’t gotten much right in the last year. A dart toss at the wall could do better than that. You are seeing predictions that we won’t reach herd immunity until next November. Or maybe not ever? Or the ‘so called experts’ who put the Minnesota Covid Model together? That thing fell like a deck of cards. Wow, we have a virus, and people get sick. Then they have immunity. How much? Well some. Likely better than a vaccine. Like virtually every other virus out there.
This comment is a textbook example of what happens when people ignore the experts. And not just experts – ignoring facts.
Remember when the virus first appeared, and it was named the novel covid virus? The key word is novel (it means new), and since science hadn’t seen it before, there were many lessons learned on the fly, cause you know, it was new, and nobody really understood (they still don’t fully) what the virus could do.
Your dismissal of one of the worlds foremost epidemiologists as so called shows a certain lack of knowledge, but a fine grasp of throwing poo about something you don’t understand.
Actually Mr. Weir asks an interesting question:
“I am rather curious why nobody is really talking about natural immunity by those already having had the virus. ”
You’ll be happy to know Mr. Weir that epidemiologists ARE talking about it, you’re just not part of that conversation because YOU’RE not an epidemiologist- this just one of the problems with being an internet “expert” instead of “so-called expert”.
Here’s what you would hear if you were and “expert”, or just someone who pays attention to what experts are talking about:
1) Without the vaccine “natural” immunization (i.e. un-assisted herd immunity) would take 2-3 years. Sure, we can assume that cases we’ve documented undercount infection rates (although not by 3-6x as you suggest). We could assume that without the vaccine maybe a million and half Minnesotans have actually been infected, and may have some immunity due to those infections. Well, do the math, it took a year to reach that level of “immunization” and we have 6 million people in this state.
2) Aside from the unnecessarily long duration of the crises, critical strain on health care, and death that “natural” immunization imposes, it dramatically increases the risk or likelihood of break-out variants that are more deadly or more contagious. This is a problem with the herd immunity “Plan” that has rarely been discussed. New variants emerge as a function of infection rates, it’s not a function of “time”. Genetic mutations occur every time a virus replicates, and the more replications the more mutations, hence the greater likelihood of significant mutations with high infection rates.
This is one reason why containing transmission is so important, the odds of a major new variant arising from 1 billion infections is less than that of 3 billion infections. Remember, there are millions of replications in every body that get infected, so you the math, a trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking about serious mutation risks, which is exactly what’s happening with these new variants, and why it’s happening. So if you “open” everything up and let the infection burn through the population, not only will you see a catastrophic death rates and strain on the health care system that will kill and injure people who don’t even have COVID 19; you multiply the possibility of a new variation that breaks out of the immunity the herd has acquired. You could also simply end up with a variant that hit’s remaining naive immune systems with much more severe or deadly effect.
This why you don’t see “experts” celebrating high infection rates and saying: “Woo-hoo look at all the herd immunity!”. The whole idea is to slow down infection rates and buy time to develop and distribute a vaccine. Transmission is NOT our ally. Everyone who understands the scenario is holding their breath right now hoping that we can get these vaccines out to enough people before a new variant breaks out. We don’t want to be the next England or even California.
3) Finally it’s hard to factor for “naturally” acquired immunity from infections because no one knows how that immunity compares to vaccine immunity. You can’t just assume its the same, better, or worse. Some studies have shown that some post infection immunity last’s 3 months, some longer, but you can’t assume that people who’ve had COVID 19 are just as protected as those who get the vaccine. Nor can you assume that those who’ve been infected are immune to the new variants. There have been a few cases of COVID 19 re-infection, they’re rare, but there’s no guarantee that a new variant couldn’t change that. Meanwhile we know that all of our current vaccines offer significant protection against the new variants that we know about. This is why it’s recommended that you get the vaccine even if you’ve already had COVID 19.
The so called experts I am referring to, is our news media. Every day is a new emerging variant, the sky is falling. We may never have herd immunity. Millions will die. We will live with this forever. When does it end?? We are always days or weeks away from dropping off a cliff. Never a bit of good news. The nationwide numbers are drastically lower, hospitalizations are down, people are getting vaccinated. What new emergency is the media putting out today? And the talking head science experts are just an extension of the media empire, unless you haven’t noticed.
I am a data analyst. We need to look at the data, not the individual infection mechanics. The data is trending down, virtually everywhere. I don’t buy the prognosis that we start wearing masks and the infection numbers take a severe nose dive. The data curve is way to perfect for that.
You’re looking at the bulk data and making generalized arguments about curves. Spend some time with the timelines, infection data, and public policy, then let’s talk. It turns out that masks and social distancing actually do work wonders, which makes sense because viruses don’t just go crawling through gaps under doors and stalking unwary prey over vast plains, like tiny ninjas or lions. The “perfect” curve you mention isn’t actually all that perfect. There are all kinds of variations–some are artifacts and some are real. The artifacts look like patterns, while the real stuff doesn’t. So, nice curves mean very little other than that we’ve reached yet another peak in infection (remember that time when we hit the peak…and then December happened, then January… don’t get complacent).
Mr. Weir, you can pretend that we don’t have any common definition of “expert” if you wish, but most us define expertise as those who know what their talking about and have a greater understanding of the subject matter than ordinary people. You understand the difference between critiquing the “media” and trying to understand the pandemic right?
We all have complaints about the media, but that has little to do with the reliable information that IS available.
I don’t know what kind of data you normally analyze but we’re talking about a scientific discipline here that isn’t just about data and math. There are many scientific disciplines involved here besides epidemiology and epidemiology is NOT simply a matter of data analysis. You’re swinging out of your ballpark here and your getting it wrong.
The “trends” your observing are not universal and they do not emerge for no particular reason. If you look at the “data” in Wisconsin, where twice as many new infections AND deaths were recorded yesterday compared to Minnesota, and conclude that restrictions have no effect on transmission, your analysis is garbage. Not only do restrictions reduce transmission, but the how’s and why’s of that effect are long since documented facts. The suggestion that the mechanics of transmission are irrelevant is simply daft. Understanding what happens when an asymptomatic infected person without a mask walks into a room full of people who aren’t wearing masks is critical to preventing transmission, and THAT understanding is reflected in the data when proper restrictions are applied. You can look at data all day long but if you don’t do something to bend the curves all you’ll be doing is documenting deaths, you don’t even need a data analyst to do that.
I think the numbers belie your folksy expertise here. While it is more than likely that WAY more people than have been counted have actually contracted the disease, the fact remains that the number of infections detected and the number of deaths only just recently peaked, despite the large number of previously exposed individuals and the beginnings of vaccination. There is still a large pool of people who not only get sick, but die. We also have no idea how many people have built immunity but showed no symptoms, let alone who. Finally, while the death rate has gone down, probably thanks both to changing demographics and treatment discoveries (it turns out that this isn’t a respiratory disease, it’s an inflammatory disease, so steroids work), long term disease (even in those who initially showed no symptoms) are going to be costly to both the patients and society, as are lost wages and hospitalization costs for those who got sick and recovered either at home or with medical care. That is to say, it’s not without rather high cost that people survive COVID-19, and since the data shows that we still have a significant pool of people who are still susceptible, and maybe another pool of people who are losing immunity over time, there is still a huge risk for going out into the world willy nilly.
I don’t know whether you’re positing that the 80-110 million is low, but assuming it is correct, then 25-34% of the American population has already been infected. Also assuming, as you appear to be, that it’s a one and done situation, that would mean that 25-34% of the entire American population is immune without the need for an injection. However, that leaves, at best 66% of the population susceptible. And if death rates remain at current levels, about 1.8% of confirmed cases, and confirmed cases represent let’s say 1/6 of total cases (best case scenario), that also means that we should expect around another 650,000 Americans to die in the absence of a vaccine. I think that, given this is the best case scenario, we can expect many thousands more Americans to die regardless of a vaccination program, and many more to experience severe physical and financial hardship, in the coming months.
The claim that the experts have been mostly wrong is also bunk (and selective memory, to put it charitably). And even if they’ve been mostly wrong, they’ve still been way more right than any non-experts. So, put on a mask and stay at least 6 feet away for the sake of your fellow Americans.
Hang in there Ray…I haven’t seen my grandkids much either, including a shiny new 3 month old in NE Minneapolis…waiting for the day as I am sure you are.
What a depressing article! It felt there was optimism just a month ago that things would be better if just a few months. Now here is Osterholm saying we’re still in the 3rd inning. Then when this over we get to do it all over again in 2-5 years. Think I am done with the internet for today.
THANK YOU for this informative article. I’ve read a lot about this, and this article gave more info. I like knowing the facts.
He and his partner go to the grocery store when there’s “no one there.” There *is* someone there: the essential workers who work there, who also breathe in and out and are exposed to all the other customers the rest of the day.
You can distance from other people, but there’s also air exchange and other aspects of the air in a building. Distance is not everything, which I’m sure (or I hope) he knows.
Also, if everyone followed his advice and went at 5am, then there would be “no one there” for not much longer!
To myself, I think what have we learned? In a year there still seems to be a lot more that we don’t know that what we do know. Every day we hear about a new strain, or spiking numbers, etc. We don’t ever hear about any good news. We are seeing numbers coming down now, and people getting vaccinated, but no good news anywhere in the media?? We are always a day, a week, or a month from the apocalypse.
We always hear follow the science. Well how about some??
“We don’t ever hear about any good news. We are seeing numbers coming down now, and people getting vaccinated, but no good news anywhere in the media??”
A simple search of Google News will lead you to what you are looking for.
Maybe happy talk isn’t what we need right now. Maybe the depressing news is what we need, to shock us out of complacency and remember to take this seriously.
We can learn some things from the past. Mayo Clinic per a documentary invited doctors and scientists from other countries to improve their understanding of the best ways to help people. I know there are travel restrictions but smarter people than I am can communicate via the computer.
This was a great article. There was more positiveness in it than we have received prior to 2021 when the airways were filled with denials, false claims, and out right lies.
Suck it up people! You are getting facts and real projections; not the same lies and garbage talk that we received throughout the first two-thirds of 2020.
As bad as this pandemic has been, thankfully it hasn’t been worse. Consider what a virus with a CFR of 5%.
Hopefully we will take the lessons to heart.
It is a small world, what happens a world away today is here tomorrow, we need to be vigilant, competency matters.
What is with “Brazilian” variant and “South African” variant? I thought that it was racist to call diseases by such names. Pretty soon people will be calling COVID 19 the “Chinese” or “Wuhan” virus.
Quite correct. Because it’s not as if any hostile and polemical political motivations behind the nomenclature should matter!
I’m looking at some of these comments complaining about the all the unhappy news and I think we can make a few notes.
Some of us have long since embraced a meta-narrative that one of our biggest liabilities as a nation and society is the domination of consumer mentalities. We’ve cultivated a civilization of consumers rather than responsible citizens and adults.
We’ve seen this mentality manifest itself recently in the pages of comments here on Minnpost wherein one commenter after another complains about some aspect or another of the pandemic as-if it’s a customer relations problem. The State tries to make a few more vaccines available because people are complaining, and 200k people expect to get their jab simply because they got on the phone or the internet and tried to schedule one; despite the fact that there was only 8k doses available. That’s a consumer mentality that assumes one is entitled to something simply because they want or need it, the customer is always right after all eh? The “customer” expects satisfaction and when they don’t get it, they blame whoever was supposed to provide it.
Likewise we’ve seen the consumer mentality increasingly sabotage our efforts to function as a society and democracy. Democracy depends on a sufficient number of people sharing a connection to the reality of their circumstances. Consumerism is about shopping for the reality that suits you best… because the only responsibility a consumer has is the pursuit of satisfaction. When we try to understand how it is that so many people have managed to spin off into an alternate reality riddled with falsehoods and ignorance, ultimately the consumer approach to “news” and information provides the core explanation. This is what happens when people evolve into consumers who lose the ability to connect with reality and recognize the difference between reliable news, and news they enjoy or prefer to consume.
You get a polarized population because consumer mentalities facilitate ideological divisions by catering to extremist demands for “information” that confirms their beliefs and provides satisfaction. Someone meets the consumer demand to tell them what they want to hear, and so now we have Jewish space lasers blasting California forests. Trump won the election. The pandemic is hoax. Masks are an assault on our “liberties”. And so it goes.
So here we have demands for “happier” news. Will someone please sugar-coat this pandemic and spoon-feed us more “positivity”? Trump met that demand, the guy was so “optimistic” it ridiculous. But is that what we need as citizens and adults who trying to cope with a crises? Isn’t reality malleable enough to bend into something we can be more “comfortable” with? Isn’t that what alternate facts are all about?
Look, the news that some of our transmission numbers, and death and positivity rates have declined IS being reported. Experts ARE predicting that so long as a new variant doesn’t break out we can expect to see the pandemic wind down by Fall or even late summer of this year, that’s good news, isn’t that happy enough news for you?
Meanwhile we’re still experiencing alarmingly high infection rates and fatalities although they’ve started to drop. Experts are warning us that time if of the essence because with each multi-trillion a day COVID virus replication the odds of a new variant breaking out increases. That’s not “unhappy” news manufactured to make people feel bad, it’s what we in the real world colloquially call the “truth”. It’s how we make responsible decisions, it’s how some of us have managed to go 12 months WITHOUT getting COVID 19.
When I want to look at happy stuff that makes me smile and feel good, I don’t expect someone to sugar coat the pandemic, I go look at “Woof Woof” videos of puppies and dogs doing unbelievably cute things. The pandemic sucks, deal with it.
Well put. Told too long that we are all entitled to everything we want. Remember whining to my World War 2 veteran father about life not being easy or fair. He said the men of his generation were “snatched up” the week they graduated from high school and sent to boot camp to deal with World War 2. I really don’t anticipate getting a vaccine anytime soon and know from my private sector jobs, and government job, that the younger people are simply overwhelmed with calls asking to schedule a vaccine. No one saw this coming. Scientists and doctors all over the world are struggling with this virus and its mutations. The only advantage to old age that I can think of is – well none. ( other than we’ve endured less than pleasing circumstances before and have to use common sense like wearing masks and social distancing and hope the scientists and doctors will get this virus and it’s mutations under control so people can go back to work, socialize, and generate incomes). However, the elderly can shelter in place but many of the younger people can’t. Admire them for going out there and engaging in necessary essential work like food processing and stocking shelves in grocery stores and of course the health care workers. Before the virus, the younger people had problems – tuition payments, loss of living wage jobs – now this.
It is kind of weird when you look at this and see people who are presumably the “optimists” in the room reading THIS article and finding pessimism? I mean, what kind of optimists are you if you need to be fed “happy” news in order to be an optimistic? I don’t come away from this article feeling any worse than when before I read it, and no one’s ever accused me of being an optimist.
For those who want some happy news, here is some:
The spread of Covid can be significantly reduced if everyone wears masks and practices social distancing.
There is an easy fix!
Quit trying to destroy my freedom Pat!
MO did state early on that a cornavirus wasn’t a pandemic agent. He admits he was wrong
A lesson to be learned is we need to overreact when presented with the next potential wildfire.
We need to act strongly, enacting policies that are needed, even if it steps on a few toes or looks “xenophobic “.
Well, I don’t think we need to engage in gratuitous xenophobia ala Trump, but I absolutely agree with the main sentiment here. What the disastrous Trump Pandemic has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is that infectious pandemics are far and away the greatest danger to our national security in the 21st Century. In a little over a year, we will have added at least $4 TRILLION[!] to the national debt to combat the health and economic effects of Covid 19, an expenditure greater than any financial calamity or imagined human enemy, by far. Three quarters of a million excess deaths, the economy in shambles (with more losses to come), society transformed, and a nation that will never look the same again. And that’s just a preliminary analysis.
Osterholm says that he knew as Trump blathered lies and nonsense about Covid 19 that we were actually woefully unprepared for combating this virus, and when one adds this institutional unpreparedness to Trumpian/”conservative” executive incompetence you get the (far-and-away) worse “response” by any nation on earth to the pandemic, for a myriad of reasons.
We must ensure that pandemic response and early warning triggers are never again so underfunded and lacking. And every cent of what is needed for actual preparedness needs to come out of the bloated “defense” budget, currently being poured down the Pentagon rat-hole, for no real benefit whatever.
Not sure how Italy was affected by the Trump pandemic.
The military is like pandemic prep. would you like to be as unprepared for a country with the next trump ad We were for Covid
So, the good news is, Osterholm’s predictions never come true. He’s the guy who prompted the state to invest in a $5 million auxiliary morgue because he predicted we were looking at 50,000 dead Minnesotans. So I take his words with a boulder of salt.
Well, that’s a creative interpretation.
Well, the good news is that the absolute worse case scenario didn’t emerge, probably because we developed safety protocols (many of which Osterholm long since recommended). The lock downs and restrictions worked, that IS a good thing. But many other predictions such as the second and third wave of infections actually happened.
It’s always a good thing when the worse that could happen doesn’t happen, but you still need to be prepared for the worse.
Yes indeed. The only thing for which we as a nation should over-prepare is military attack or invasion by….someone!
The predictions don’t come true if we act to prevent them from happening. Look I get it – Republicans want to kill jobs and destroy businesses and keep the pandemic going as long as possible. But some of us want to end it and move on with our lives.
The key point here is that viruses cannot reproduce unless they are inside a living host organism.
If an infected person can keep from transmitting the viruses until he or she either dies or has recovered, that’s one bunch of viruses that can’t infect anyone else.
When a virus can’t find hosts, it dies. However, if it is able to find hosts, it will keep multiplying and mutating.
The sooner the majority of viruses are denied new hosts, the sooner the pandemic will end. Hence the masks, which are pretty effective as long as both parties are wear them, keep their distance from others outside their household, and maintain good hygiene in general.
Ms. Sandness: “The key point here is that viruses cannot reproduce unless they are inside a living host organism.”
Sure, NOW you tell us… oh wait…