'Short of a supremely effective vaccine, there is no one single thing that will make this go away,' says HelenBranswell
Photo: Marijan Murat/dpa/AFP via Getty Images In the age of coronavirus, everyone is suddenly an expert on virology or epidemiology — or is pretending they are on Twitter. STAT News’ senior writer on infectious diseases, Helen Branswell, is the real thing: A reporter who has been on the beat for 20 years, including covering the SARS outbreak. As early as December 31, Branswell was raising concerns on Twitter about a mysterious new outbreak in China.
We don’t have those kinds of tests yet. They’re being developed. China apparently has a couple. Singapore has developed one. The CDC has developed a couple, but they’re still in the experimental phase. Once those are ready to be used, people can go and look in places like Wuhan or Seattle and say, okay, let’s enroll a couple thousand of people who haven’t been diagnosed as a case, and see if they actually have antibodies for this. That’s really important. The sooner we get it the better.
As someone who’s looking at these primary sources and talking to researchers all the time, how are you figuring out what information to heed? Is it different from how it might normally be? Historically, when scientists or researchers wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal for publication, they couldn’t talk about it publicly except at medical conventions before publication or it wouldn’t get published.
I thought it was pretty obvious even in early January that focusing all the attention on the seafood market was like looking for your keys under the streetlight. It did not tell you that there weren’t cases elsewhere. I think a lot of time was lost as a consequence of that. I had always worked at home from time to time, but we all are now. I’m actively trying to be prudent about the number and nature of contacts I have with people. If you’re sick, you can’t work, and it’s important that I be working right now.I have no idea. None of us have ever been in the place we are now. We don’t know when it resolves and how it resolves. It’s a lot.I like to cycle. Yesterday, in the evening before it got dark, [I went] for a nice long bike ride. That was helpful.
This is not a “weeks” thing. That is clear. A vaccine is going to take a lot longer than the projections are currently estimated.Is that just people being overly optimistic?
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