A lack of test kits for the new COVID-19 coronavirus is still obscuring the extent of the outbreak in the U.S., but for a critical period in February, there were no functional federal tests and "local officials across the country were left to work blindly as the crisis grew undetected and exponentially," The New York Times reports. The coronavirus has now infected more than 1,000 people in 36 states and Washington, D.C., according to Johns Hopkins University's count.
The first U.S. outbreak was in Washington state, where authorities confirmed the first patient — suffering from respiratory problems after visiting Wuhan, China — only after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made an exception to strict testing criteria. In Seattle, Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious disease expert who was part of an ongoing flu-monitoring effort, the Seattle Flu Study, asked permission to test their trove of collected flu swabs for coronavirus.
State health officials joined Chu in asking the CDC and Food and Drug Administration to waive privacy rules and allow clinical tests in a research lab, citing the threat of significant loss of life. The CDC and FDA said no. "We felt like we were sitting, waiting for the pandemic to emerge," Chu told the Times. "We could help. We couldn't do anything."
They held off for a couple of weeks, but on Feb. 25, Chu and her colleagues "began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval," the Times reports. They found a positive case pretty quickly, and after discussing the ethics, they told state health officials, who confirmed the next day that a teenager who hadn't traveled abroad had COVID-19 — and the virus had likely been spreading undetected throughout the Seattle area for weeks. Later that day, the CDC and FDA told Chu and her colleagues to stop testing, then partially relented, and the lab found several more cases. On Monday night, they were ordered to stop testing again.
"In the days since the teenager's test, the Seattle region has spun into crisis, with dozens of people testing positive and at least 22 dying," the Times notes. "The scientists said they believe that they will find evidence that the virus was infecting people even earlier, and that they could have alerted authorities sooner if they had been allowed to test." Read more about the red tape at The New York Times. Peter Weber
Evangeline Lilly has some regrets about those coronavirus comments.
The Ant-Man and Lost star came under fire last week after revealing she was refusing to self-quarantine during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, dismissing concerns over what she claimed was just "a respiratory flu" after sharing that she "just dropped my kids off at gymnastics camp." When users called her out in the comments, she wrote that "some people value freedom over their lives."
Lilly on Thursday issued a "sincere and heartfelt apology" for her "insensitivity," saying she has been practicing social distancing ever since it "was instituted in the small community where I am currently living" not long after her original post, although she still expressed "intense trepidation over the socioeconomic and political repercussions of this course of action."
But Lilly acknowledged that she has "sent a dismissive" and "arrogant" message about the coronavirus crisis.
"My direct and special apologies to those most affected by this pandemic," Lilly said. "I never meant to hurt you. When I wrote that post 10 days ago, I thought I was infusing calm into the hysteria. I can see now that I was projecting my own fears into an already fearful and traumatic situation."
Among those who had called Lilly out was Maggie Grace, who played Shannon on Lost. Grace commented on Lilly's Instagram post, "Sure, it's a free country, but how about choosing to exercise some of that wonderful freedom to have some compassion, trust the extensive science here and not overwhelm [the] health system." Grace also wrote that their Lost co-star Daniel Dae Kim, who tested positive for COVID-19, is doing better, telling Lilly, "Maybe you guys wanna chat?" Brendan Morrow
While reportedly setting up video equipment in Delaware over four days, former Vice President Joe Biden was apparently mulling over possible running mates.
Biden told former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) is one of his "top three" choices should he win the Democratic presidential nomination, Mediaite reported Thursday.
Reid, who was also a longtime senator representing Nevada, is reportedly nudging Biden toward choosing Cortez Masto as his VP, and Biden's campaign apparently feels she would be a strong choice and could help expand Biden's popularity among Latinx voters. Biden publicly committed to choosing a woman as his vice president if nominated over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), sparking endless speculation over who that woman might be. CNBC says Biden's "business allies" are hoping for Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) or Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), two former presidential candidates themselves. The Washington Post, meanwhile, said Biden's shortlist probably included Cortez Masto, but also named more well-known Democrats like former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Biden's campaign declined to dispute Mediaite's reporting, simply saying he would vigorously vet candidates.
New York magazine wrote that Biden is spending his "coronavirus bunker" time "thinking a lot" about a potential VP, and taking lots of calls from supporters and Democratic strategists who are pushing Biden to pick their candidate of choice. None of those calls, however, resulted in much reported information on whether Biden had narrowed his list.
Biden told The View on Tuesday his "short" list was between "12 and 15" names, but if his reported statement to Reid is to be believed, he's done a lot of whittling in the past few days. Read more at Mediaite and New York. Summer Meza
Opening Day's delay is health care workers' home run.
MLB teams were supposed to step onto the field Thursday for the first games of the 2020 season, but like every other sport out there, the new coronavirus postponed their season. So instead of fashioning fabric into new uniforms, uniform maker Fanatics has repurposed it to address a nationwide shortage of masks and hospital gowns, The New York Times reports.
Fanatics manufactures the Nike uniforms for the MLB in its Easton, Pennsylvania, factory, and recently shifted to start fulfilling medical needs instead of T-shirt orders. "We've got tremendous amounts of fabric, which is exactly what the players wear," said Michael Rubin, the founder and executive chairman of Fanatics. "We're just taking it and making the masks and gowns that can be used by the people who are working to save lives every day."
So far, Fanatics has only made prototypes of the gowns and mask, recognizably using the New York Yankees' and Philadelphia Phillies' pinstripes. Read more — and see pictures of the gown and mask ensembles— at The New York Times. Kathryn Krawczyk
Americans are increasingly underemployed as coronavirus spreads, a Thursday report from Pew Research Center shows.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shut down businesses and left millions of people unemployed, at least until their workplaces reopen. A fifth of Americans say they or someone in their household has lost their job due to the new coronavirus spread, while more than a quarter say someone in their household has had to take a pay cut, Pew reports in its survey. In all, that's a full third of Americans who say they or someone in their household has had their job affected by the outbreak.
That devastating statistic was echoed in Thursday's Labor Department report that showed unemployment claims had surged from 282,000 to a record high of 3.3 million. Many of those job losses are supposed to be temporary, but some will undoubtedly end up permanent. And those numbers don't even include contract and gig workers or those who've been out of work for months, all of whom are ineligible for unemployment benefits.
Pew surveyed 11,537 U.S. adults on its American Trends Panel throughout March 2020. The online survey had a margin of error of 1.5 percent. Kathryn Krawczyk