Dr. Anthony Fauci is weighing in on India’s record-breaking Covid-19 surge, however a few of his recommendation sounds very like the early 2020 prescription that failed to forestall the US from posting the world’s highest virus demise toll.
“You possibly can shut down briefly to place an finish to the cycle of transmission,” Washington’s coronavirus guru mentioned on Friday in an interview with The Indian Categorical. “So one of many issues to be thought of is to briefly shut down. Actually, lock down so that you simply wind up having much less unfold.”
Nobody likes to lock down the nation. Effectively, that is an issue once you do it for six months. However when you do it only for just a few weeks, you could possibly have a major impression on the dynamics of the outbreak.
That recommendation from Fauci, at present chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, sounds eerily acquainted to the counsel that he supplied to then-President Donald Trump, because the White Home’s Covid-19 czar, in March 2020. That is when Trump introduced his administration’s marketing campaign of “15 days to sluggish the unfold,” urging Individuals to remain residence for nearly two weeks to comprise the coronavirus outbreak.
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The thought was temporary lockdown would dramatically change the trajectory of Covid-19 infections and assist squash the pandemic’s unfold – very like the recommendation Fauci is giving to India now. “With a number of weeks of centered motion, we will flip the tide and switch it shortly,” Trump mentioned optimistically again then.
On the time, the US had reported nearly four,000 Covid-19 instances. A yr later, Trump was out of workplace, almost 30 million Individuals had contracted Covid-19, and 535,000 folks had reportedly died from the virus within the US.
Though Trump paid a political worth for Covid-19’s US toll, after following Fauci’s coverage recommendation, the physician got here via unscathed. In actual fact, Fauci was made a hero of the pandemic by mainstream media retailers and was given a number of awards, together with the $ 1 million Israeli prize for “talking reality to energy.”
Quick-forward to immediately, and India is struggling the worst of the pandemic. The nation reported greater than 400,000 new Covid-19 instances on Saturday, a single-day document for any nation, and greater than three,500 deaths. The precise numbers could also be even greater, as many instances and deaths allegedly go unreported amid shortages of testing kits, medical oxygen and hospital beds.
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Fauci known as on different nations to affix the US in serving to India by offering oxygen, antiviral drugs and different wanted provides. He mentioned India ought to shortly construct discipline hospitals and contain its navy as wanted to assist deal with the sick, likening the outbreak to a wartime emergency.
Fauci additionally beneficial that India strike offers with a number of vaccine makers so it will possibly produce jabs domestically and ramp up urgently wanted provides. Like a number of of his suggestions, the vaccine suggestion appeared to mirror ignorance of the state of affairs on the bottom within the nation with a inhabitants of over 1.36 billion.
“It simply appears to me that, proper now, India is in a really troublesome and determined state of affairs. I simply obtained off, in preparation for this interview, I watched a clip from CNN,” Fauci famous at one level.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has labored for months to get mental property rights for Covid-19 vaccines waived. He reportedly urged Biden in a phone dialog earlier this week to assist “guarantee clean and open provide chains of uncooked supplies and inputs required for the manufacture of vaccines, medicines, and therapeutics.”
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