RE: Back to the USA26 Jul 2020 08:16
What's the backup plan if there's no COVID-19 vaccine?
If there’s a Plan B, it’s not clear what it is at the moment. The White House and its allies in Congress are struggling to negotiate even the next temporary relief bill, and Trump has repeatedly speculated that the U.S. will soon find a vaccine or cure, or that the virus will “disappear” on its own.
That has some people nervous. Ken Frazier, CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Merck, recently warned that anyone hyping a medical breakthrough before 2021 was doing a “grave disservice to the public” given the inherent challenges of developing and administering a vaccine.
“The reality of the world is that this time next year very well may look like what we're experiencing now,” Frazier said in an interview with Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley. "I think when we do tell people that a vaccine's coming right away, we allow politicians to actually tell the public not to do the things that the public needs to do, like wear the damn masks,” he added.
Many expert suggestions involve redoubling current efforts to confront the virus.
Improving testing availability and turnaround times, which the White House has been reluctant to put more federal dollars into, could help detect outbreaks before they get out of hand. Hiring and training more contact tracers, and maybe even experimenting with apps to assist them, could help track the spread of the virus. Finding effective treatments that speed up recovery and increase survivability could make the pandemic easier to manage as a day-to-day threat. Former Obama health official Andy Slavitt has called for a national push to produce high-quality N95 masks for daily public use, rather than the more common cotton masks.
Any struggles on the vaccine front could affect the economic response as well. The longer the crisis persists, the more that temporary shifts like virtual offices or increased e-commerce sales could become entrenched habits. That could make aid programs like Paycheck Protection that are built on maintaining existing businesses, which may no longer be viable in a world ravaged by coronavirus, harder to sustain. As it stands, many businesses are already closing their doors permanently.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/what-s-backup-plan-if-there-s-no-covid-19-n1234742
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