Looking back on Covid

Looking back on Covid exposes a series of mistakes that cost many lives. When it first hit in early 2020 the CDC and Trump said it was not that serious. Trump said it was no worse than the flu and would be over by Easter. On January 31, 2020 Trump shut down travel from China. By late February the CDC announced that Covid would disrupt the economy. Trump was not ready to shut down the economy so he started holding daily briefings and the CDC was sidelined. The CDC developed a test for Covid but the test was flawed and this resulted in damaging delays. On March 13, 2020 Trump shut down the economy. Meanwhile the FDA was slow to approve drugs to combat the virus and a delay of a few weeks was deadly since this virus moved so quickly. Trump became increasingly upset with the slow movement of the FDA so that on April 30, 2020 he set up a program to fast track the development of a vaccine. The goal was to have 300 million doses of vaccine by the end of the year. On December 14, 2020 the first vaccines were distributed and 2.8 million people had been vaccinated by the end of the year. President Biden said the country would be past the problem by July 4th but cases continued to increase. In the early months of the outbreak the CDC and WHO stated that face masks were not needed for the general public unless a person was experiencing severe symptoms. In April the CDC recommended cloth face masks and WHO followed in June. Even after that Trump refused to wear a mask in public and he felt they were not necessary. Health officials felt the virus was spread by direct contact and so they emphasized hand washing and cleaning surfaces. Thus the argument about masks continued. People of color died at a disproportionate rate and this introduced race into the already confusing equation. A disagreement between federal and state authority caused further confusion. Although everyone was well aware that the virus would hurt the old and sick first no plans were laid out to protect this group. As it turns out, the reality-based, science-friendly communities and information sources many of us depend on also largely failed. We had time to prepare for this pandemic at the state, local, and household level, even if the government was terribly lagging but we didn't. To further complicate matters the issue of masks got political and remains so today. The result was many who wore the mask did not do so properly and used the same mask over many days. The latest calls into question the efficacy of cloth mask and the CDC recommends the N95.