Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, PhD, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today, to discuss why the United States accounts for 25% of the world’s COVID-19 cases (the U.S. population is only approximately 4.5% of the world’s total). He had been preceded on the program by Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf. Wolf’s reply was the neo-con/Pompeo story that the United States reached this level because the Chinese had withheld information about the virus from the United States, but that we were now doing a good job of controlling it. When asked, he could not explain why other nations had apparently done a much better job.
Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) of the University of Minnesota, pointed out that “we don’t have a national plan...it’s disjointed.” He said that the problem is that “opening up” is proceeding even though new cases are now 70% of what they were at the peak level reached in April. “We can’t just say we’re done with it…. This virus is going to do what it’s going to do.” He said that, in his view, the flu model of an epidemic occurring in waves of ebb and flow does not seem to be holding. “This is more like a forest fire,” he said, “Wherever there is wood to burn, it will burn.” Wolf had said earlier that the administration was doing a good job because the CDC and the Coronavirus Task Force had presented guidelines to the nation, even though those guidelines are clearly not being followed.
