This week, the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 100,000 in US. As people reflect on this somber number, various emotions are felt by Americans from disbelief to resentment and anger to numbness for survival sake. As America continues its “re-opening” efforts, we all must find courage to see the coronavirus for what it is. Like a “war”, we cannot be disheartened by the casualties nor lost sight of the battles won. By reflecting on what has happened in a reasonable and sensible manner, we could remain resolute to win the “war” and honor those lost by building a strong and great America again, together as one nation.
Coronavirus Not Our Doing
The deaths caused by COVID-19 was not our doing. COVID-19 is a new virus that is still wreaking havoc on the entire world. The “shut-down” of America was deemed necessary by the scientific experts to slow down the spread of the virus so our healthcare system would not be overwhelmed. The resultant economic fall-outs from this “shut-down” came out of a collective decision to protect America from the virus. The deaths and resultant “shut-down” devastations from COVID-19 was from the virus that arrived on our shores, not of our doing!
Critical, Decisive Responses
The first critical, decisive response by our government was the travel restriction placed on China, source of COVID-19, on January 31. This was done in spite of opposition from the WHO and before the first reported death from COVID-19 in February. This decision reduced significantly the number of potential carriers of the virus at the start of the outbreak. Another travel restriction was placed on European countries on March 13 after the occurrence of significant outbreaks such as the one in Italy. These difficult decisions were made, in spite of geo-political uneasiness, to protect American lives and they did save lives. Since the start of the outbreak, there were many criticisms on virus testing and medical supplies. There was a “fumble” on the first test put forth by the CDC. However, our government did not panicked. Instead, they look at the testing requirements from a very strategic viewpoint and understood the testing “solution” for America has to be scalable in rapid order! The strategic partnerships forged among the government and the leading companies (LabCorp, Quest, Thermo Fisher, Abbott, etc.) in the testing/diagnostic market was the key to providing high-quality testing to as many Americans as possible in as short a time as possible using the existing testing infrastructure. We all need to understand that there was zero COVID-19 test over three months ago and now we are doing over 350,000 tests per day as of mid-May. This is no small feat! In the same breath, there were a lot of clamoring over lack of ventilators and ICU beds. Again, using a very strategic approach, our government used a “floating” ventilator stockpile nationally and moved supplies where the need was the greatest. In parallel, the Defense Production Act was invoked to produce more ventilators. The Army Corp of Engineers were mobilized to build temporary hospitals out of convention centers and two Navy medical hospital ships were deployed for additional hospital capacity. Under very trying circumstances, our government did what was critically and strategically needed. We were never in short supply of ventilators and ICU beds in the hardest hit cities; we never exceeded hospital capacity. Similar to the great mobilization on testing and medical supplies, our government worked with the FDA to implement emergency guidelines on the use of drugs for COVID-19 taking a pragmatic “risk vs. benefit” approach. There was not enough time to wait for completion of clinical trials to save lives. By implementing these guidelines, physicians could use hydroxychloroquine with greater flexibility based on their discretion. This decision did save lives from the testimonies of patients who received such treatment as well as physicians who prescribed those treatment.
The Quantitative Report Card
We live in a world that loves numbers. We cannot avoid the comparison to other countries in the handling of the coronavirus outbreak. So let’s look at number that matters the most—death rate (deaths/100,000 in population)—that takes into account population size and compare US not to a single country, but to a “contiguous” geographic area of similar socio-economic size (population and GDP). This is the apple-to-apple comparison.
US has a population of 330 million people with GDP in excess of 20.5 trillion USD. “Western Europe” (United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, and Luxembourg) has a population of 390 million people with GDP in excess of 16.7 trillion USD. US has a death rate of 30 per 100,000 population and “Western Europe” has a death rate of 40 per 100,000 population. “Western Europe” has one-third higher death rate compared with US.
The data and the facts speak for themselves. We lost many lives to the virus from abroad. We made the hard decisions on travel restrictions and “shut-down” to protect American lives. We blunted the curve. We built up our testing capacity and stockpiled our medical supplies for the continual combat with COVID-19. We have done well. We salute all the Americans who worked around-the-clock to get us to where we are today and made tremendous sacrifices along the way. To honor those who died and these many sacrifices, let’s build a strong and great America again!