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How Israel Screwed Up: Anatomy of Catastrophe
By Shlomo Maital
This is the story of how Israel, and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, totally screwed up how it handled the pandemic. This, after congratulating itself for being a “model for all nations”. It is based on an article in today’s daily Haaretz by Ido Efrati. It will take me only 695 words. And they are almost too painful to write. Because it is my country, and it is unbearable to see what our leaders have done to it.
According to the Israeli government press office: as late as on May 7, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today, participated in a conference of the leaders of the countries at the forefront of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, [whose leaders] sought to learn from the Israeli model for dealing with outbreak zones.” Really??
Ten costly mistakes that cost lives:
- Very few nurses have been assigned to do contact tracing. And they are not well coordinated. A new contact tracing center does not yet operate – it hasn’t yet received the necessary authority. It now takes 6 days or more to trace a patient’s contacts – it has to be 24-48 hours to stop an outbreak.
- PM Netanyahu decided to open all schools fully for all grades in mid-May. He scrapped the previous system of ‘capsules’, and small groups. And days later, the new Health Minister Y. Edelstein scrapped the requirement that kids wear masks. Too hot, he said. So much for getting adults to wear masks. Schools spread the virus and soon hundreds had to close and quarantine teachers and kids.
- It has taken many months for the Health Ministry to increase daily tests to 25,000. Only on May 31 did the Health Minister say that asymptomatic people should be tested, too, if they came in contact with someone infected. Only on June 22 did Dr. Sadetzki (Health Ministry official) order officials to test those quarantined within 48 hours. Result: Many carriers spread the virus widely before they were identified.
- Until a week ago, the Health Ministry used a strategy of declaring ‘red zones’ (local hotspots). But because the virus is now so widespread, this failed utterly. And under pressure, the Ministry backed down.
- Israelis are exhausted, hungry and jobless. After the PM and other leaders made empty promises and false claims, they no longer believe what they are told. Police are trying to enforce mask-wearing, with little success. Moreover, both the President of Israel and the Prime Minister of Israel broke quarantine laws during Jewish religious holydays, inviting relatives against then-strict lockdown rules – and the Press reported it. This infuriated many Israelis and led to widespread defiance. Now, only about a quarter of those who should be in quarantine actually do so, according to the Health Ministry.
- Five months after the pandemic broke out in Israel, critical information is missing. What proportion of Israelis are asymptomatic, with virus? We don’t know. How long does it take to trace patients’ contacts? We don’t know.
- Israel has a well-staffed professional experience organization that can best deal with the pandemic. It is the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front command. It has almost infinite manpower, able to call up trained soldiers for reserve duty. Yet the Prime Minister stubbornly refuses to mobilize the Home Front Command. The reason is transparent. Home Front is under the Defense Ministry, and Netanyahu’s rival Benny Gantz is Defense Minister. What if, heaven forbid, the Home Front succeeded? Gantz would get the credit. No way. It will not happen. As with Trump, Bibi is only, and totally, about Bibi, and not Israel or its wellbeing.
- “Israel’s decision making, from the earliest stages of the crisis, has been influenced by only a handful of professionals. …Many professional associations are furious that they can’t even get a foot in the door to influence decision-making.”
- “The coronavirus crisis has laid bare years of neglect in the public health system, including its diagnostic laboratories.” The country’s 37 diagnostic labs have for months relied on student volunteers to help. There are too few doctors and too few hospital beds.
- And the previous Health Minister, appointed in July 2015, allowed the healthcare infrastructure to degrade – believe it or not, while most civilized nations appoint doctors or veteran healthcare managers to head the Health Ministry, Israel appointed an ultra-Orthodox Hassid who once came to a key pandemic press conference wearing his bear-fur hat in celebration of the Jewish festival Purim. During the pandemic, while in office, he persistently fought against lockdown restrictions on the ultra-Orthodox – and partly as a result, they have suffered disproportionately many cases and deaths.
Mission Accomplished? Uh, Whoops, Not Quite!
By Shlomo Maital
Bush’s Mission Accomplished speech
A small bit of 17-year-old history: In his “Mission Accomplished” speech (named for a banner displayed above the speaker) United States President George W. Bush spoke on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Bush stated it was the end to major combat operations in Iraq. We won. Yay!
Bush’s claim —and the sign itself—became controversial after warfare in Iraq increased during the Iraqi insurgency. The vast majority of casualties, both military and civilian, occurred after the speech.
Fast forward. In the Wall Street Journal, Vice-President Mike Pence declares, just two weeks ago: “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave’. With testing, treatments and vaccine trials ramping up, we are far better off than the media report.” Meanwhile, the US is among world leaders with some 50,000 new cases daily. And President Trump? CNN reports: in mid June, “ when U.S. health officials reported nearly 27,000 new Covid-19 cases, President Trump said in a television interview that the virus was “dying out.” He brushed off concerns about an upcoming rally in Tulsa, Okla., because the number of cases there is “very miniscule,” despite the state’s surging infection rate.”
Mission Accomplished? A victory lap? Not quite. And people are dying as a result.
My country Israel is no exception. We are among world leaders in new cases per 1,000 population. And the numbers are rising. A bloated coalition cabinet is like a carving I once saw, a two headed snake, one head trying to eat the other. This, after our Prime Minister took ‘credit’ for Israel’s astounding success in defeating the coronavirus.
And it is no second wave. It is the continued first wave, of a sneaky wily piece of ribonucleic acid that is humiliating the vaunted brainpower of humans, 86 billion brain cells for each of the 8 billion or so people on earth. Two to zero, in favor of the virus.
No, mission not accomplished. And the arrogance of claiming that it is, is itself criminal.
(Un)Happy Birthday, America – There’s a Hole in your Bucket
By Shlomo Maital
Happy birthday, America; you are 244 years old today. But it’s an unhappy birthday. Here is why.
“New America” is falling behind “Old Europe”. The term Old Europe was used by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in January 2003. It was used in scorn. President Trump continues to mock Europe, and even mock even its brilliant German leader Angela Merkel.
But guess what? Experts believe, as in this New York Times article, that “Europe may bounce back first” (July 3) – long before the US. But why? America spent relatively far more on relief measures – a staggering $2.7 trillion, or 13% of its GDP!, on economic relief to individuals, firms and states. And more will come soon.
What went wrong?
The US spent vast sums on those who did not need it – like big corporations. (Sound Republican to you? Remember the Trump tax cut?). Much money was thrown away through incompetence – thousands of dead people got checks in the mail. A lot of money went toward unemployment payments – companies laid off people so the government could save them money. So expanding unemployment caused layoffs, rather than prevent them. America has a terrible leaky bucket – a near-non-existent social safety net. Just when the pandemic really really needed one with no holes in it.
Europe? Unemployment rose relatively little. The German government reintroduced kurzarbeit– used after the 2008 crisis, in which work hours are shortened and spread around over workers rather than fire or lay off people. Most of Europe simply used its existing safety nets to help those in need, and the safety net expanded nearly automatically. Most people kept their jobs — which means you don’t have to rehire them, something US firms will be hesitant to do.
In the US, with Trump boasting about 11% unemployment (yes, it’s down from 14%), consumers are highly uncertain about their future. And they are just not spending. With consumption at 70% of GDP, no US recovery is possible without consumer confidence. And it is lacking, especially with an election looming on Nov. 3.
America’s bucket is leaky. Somehow it has not managed to create a waterproof bucket for its poor, its ill, its uneducated, its immigrants, etc., in 244 years. So it IS an unhappy birthday. And the specter of that terrible day in 1619, when the first African slaves landed in America, continues to haunt this troubled nation.
Now, a strong US leader could look across the ocean and figure out why Europe, old Europe, crusty old Europe, has done so well, and try to copy its social safety net.
But that would take vision and humility. Those qualities, too, seem to have leaked out of the bucket.
One Terrible Picture – Worth Thousands of Words
By Shlomo Maital
New COVID-19 cases in the United States, daily, from early March
The graph above shows new COVID-19 cases daily, for the United States, up to date. It speaks for itself. (The graph is from the New York Times).
This is what happens to a country with inept criminal leadership, or lack of leadership, and a politicized pandemic where wearing masks is ‘unconstitutional’, where political leaders buckle under popular pressure and open the economy too soon – and then find they can’t close it again. Go back to Memorial Day weekend, Monday May 25 – and the crowds that gathered at beaches and parks – and you can see the second wave 14 days later. And no, President Trump and Vice-President Pence, this is NOT because of increased testing!
So nations of the world! Look at this closely. If you make the mistakes the US has made, heaven forbid, this is what awaits you.
As I write this, new cases in Israel are exploding. But very little is being done.
How Trump and America Screwed Up and Killed Thousands:
The Blow by Blow Account of Criminal Folly
By Shlomo Maital
This is the shocking story of how President Trump and America screwed up in confronting the pandemic. The result: Thousands and thousands of needless deaths. And today – a new record number of newly infected persons in the US. The account below is by the New York Times’ brilliant team of reporters.
Here is the awful story, blow by blow, almost too painful to put into words. If you can, read these 806 words about criminal folly and blind incompetence by political leaders.
¨ It started small. A man near Seattle had a persistent cough. A woman in Chicago had a fever and shortness of breath. By mid-February, there were only 15 known coronavirus cases in the United States, all with direct links to China. “The 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” President Trump said. The patients were isolated. Their contacts were monitored. Travel from China was restricted.
¨ None of that worked. Only a small part of the picture was visible. Some 2,000 hidden infections were already spreading through major cities. We traced the hidden spread of the epidemic to explain why the United States failed to stop it.At every crucial moment, American officials were weeks or months behind the reality of the outbreak. Those delays likely cost tens of thousands of lives.
¨ HOW THE VIRUS GOT IN: The China travel ban was a partial success: Only a handful of infected travelers from China are estimated to have made it into the country undetected before restrictions were imposed on Feb. 2.But it wasn’t enough. A vast wave of infected travelers — roughly 1,000, one model suggests — came from other countries in Asia, Europe and the rest of the world in February, each a dangerous spark that could set off a wider outbreak. Many of those infections died out. But by mid-February, a few caught fire and became outbreaks, spreading invisibly.
¨ The country was unaware of its own epidemic. Many tests released by the C.D.C. didn’t work, leaving only enough to test people who had visited China or had contact with a handful of known cases.Over the next two weeks, the invisible outbreaks doubled in size, then doubled three more times.
¨ Top federal health experts concluded by late February that the virus was likely to spread widely within the United States and that government officials would soon need to urge the public to embrace social distancing measures, such as avoiding crowds and staying home. But Mr. Trump wanted to avoid disrupting the economy. So some of his health advisers, at Mr. Trump’s urging, told Americans at the end of February to continue to travel domestically and go on with their normal lives. And they did. Millions moved across the country, cellphone data shows. Some unknowingly carried the virus with them.
¨ Researchers with the Seattle Flu Study ignored C.D.C. testing restrictions and uncovered a single case with no travel history in late February. This was the first sign that the outbreak had spun badly out of control.
¨ Over the two weeks that followed, people made about 4.3 million trips from the Seattle area. Thousands were contagious. Genetic samples linked to the Seattle outbreak appeared in at least 14 states, said Trevor Bedford, a professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a leader of the flu study.
¨ Seattle was just the beginning. In New York City, where officials had found only a single case by March 1, roughly 10,000 infections had spread undetected. New Yorkers and visitors continued to travel out of the city. More than 5,000 contagious travelers left in the first two weeks of March, estimates suggest.
¨ “I’m encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives and get out on the town,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on March 2. People leaving New York City made about 2.8 million trips to the Hudson Valley. Some carried the virus with them, and outbreaks there accelerated in mid-March, the likely result of travel from New York, a Times analysis found.
¨ People also made more than 25,000 trips to New Orleans, where genetic data suggests that a large early outbreak stemmed from infections from New York, according to Karthik Gangavarapu, a computational scientist at Scripps Research, and Dr. Bedford.
¨ Tracking signature genetic mutations of the virus allows researchers to estimate the influence of early outbreaks. Early on, variants prominent in Seattle’s outbreak were found more frequently. But later samples showed that a variant found often in New York City’s outbreak had become much more widespread. A new analysis of thousands of mutations also points directly back to New York, Dr. Bedford said. Travel from the city helped to spread that variant across the country.
¨ “New York has acted as a Grand Central Station for this virus,” said David Engelthaler of the Translational Genomics Research Institute. By the time President Trump blocked travel from Europe on March 13, the restrictions were essentially pointless. The outbreak had already been spreading widely in most states for weeks.
Wealth Inequality: A Bleak Picture
By Shlomo Maital
source: McKinsey Global
Shocking episodes of police violence against African-Americans have again brought the ugly fact of racism in the United States to the fore.
Underlying it, reflecting it, is the equally shocking chronic inequality of median family wealth between white and black. The graph above, from McKinsey, a global consulting company, shows that since 1992, the median white family has wealth from six to ten times greater than the median black family. The graph ends in 2016 – the wealth inequality has doubtless grown under Trump, because of the massive gift of wealth his tax cut gave, to already-wealthy whites.
African-Americans are equally intelligent, equally hard-working (or more so), equally creative. So why can they not accumulate wealth? Is it because they lack opportunities, in schooling, education, employment and political voice? And why are they dying in large numbers, from COVID-19, well beyond their proportion (12-13%) in the population?
The bitter irony between right-wing US cries of Make America Greater (was it ever, since the end of slavery?), and the terrible injustice of inequality, Make America Fairer, is registering, belatedly, on many Americans, as protests continue. Let’s hope enough of them remember this in 140 days exactly, on Tuesday November 3 – the presidential election.
Good-bye America ?
By Shlomo Maital
A terrible leaky social safety net, social and economic inequality, poor schools, a broken divisive political system, a worse-than-awful President (worst in history) – and a pandemic. It has finally caught up to America. All its problems seem to be converging, at one point in time. Here is how Bloomberg News sums it up:
¨ In the three months since isolation measures were first imposed in a belated effort to slow the spread of Covid-19, the world’s largest economy has become a basket case. One quarter of small businesses and two-fifths of restaurants have closed. Some 1 in 4 American workers is out of a job.
¨ At least 40 million people have filed for unemployment. And while the virus has devastated almost every economy it’s touched, individual Americans entered the crisis in an especially vulnerable position. The planet’s wealthiest country is renowned for having one of the weakest social safety nets among developed nations. It is home to more than two-fifths of all millionaires but has the highest poverty rate and the widest wealth gap among its peers.
¨ Despite a booming stock market (increasingly disconnected from the reality of everyday people) and robust job growth (largely low-paying service jobs) in recent years, more than 38 million Americans scrape by. The causes of U.S. inequality are well known, but they have jumped to the fore now that the nation is transfixed by disease, recession and outrage. —Josh Petri
¨ Racial repression is built into the American economy, Peter Coy writes in Bloomberg Businessweek. Almost two centuries after the U.S. defeated the slave states, the color of money is still white.
¨ Over the past four decades, the cost of policing in the U.S. has almost tripled, from $42.3 billion in 1977 to $114.5 billion in 2017, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data conducted by the Urban Institute on behalf of Bloomberg Businessweek. That budget is 10 times greater than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (which led the Trump administration’s botched response to the pandemic) and 12 times greater than the Environmental Protection Agency ( which has been dismantling environmental protections). Crime, however, has been trending downward since the early 1990s. As protests over police killings of unarmed black people continue, this disconnect is leading to calls to defund law enforcement agencies and instead fund mental health and social services.
¨ Trump’s performance during national upheaval and the pandemic appears to be having a disastrous effect on his reelection bid. Polls show him performing poorly in 2020 battleground states, and one of his campaign’s most recent ads, entitled “Make Space Great Again” violates NASA guidelines.
¨ Americans filed almost 2 million applications for unemployment benefits last week, reflecting a slowing of the torrent of job losses. Trump administration officials say they expect to spend up to $1 trillion in the next round of economic stimulus, though of course that’s up to Congress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said Democratic-leaning states crushed by the virus shouldn’t get financial help (despite being the biggest source of those federal dollars), said any new bailout wouldn’t occur until after July 20.
Kerala and KK Shailaja Show the Way!
By Shlomo Maital
KK Shailaja, Kerala Health Minister
On Jan. 21: The first case of the coronavirus is confirmed in the United States, in Seattle.
On Jan. 22: Trump makes his first comments about the coronavirus, saying he is not concerned about a pandemic: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. … It’s going to be just fine.”
Contrast this with the Health Minister of Kerala, K.K. Shailaja, a former teacher. (She is known affectionately as Shailaja Teacher). Kerala is a state in southwest India, with some 35 million people, and its population is quite highly educated; its politics are socialist and, let’s say it, Communist.
According to a fine article in The Guardian by Laura Spinney:
“On 20 January, KK Shailaja phoned one of her medically trained deputies. She had read online about a dangerous new virus spreading in China. “Will it come to us?” she asked. “Definitely, Madam,” he replied. And so the health minister of the Indian state of Kerala began her preparations. Four months later, Kerala has reported only 524 cases of Covid-19, four deaths and – according to Shailaja – no community transmission. The state has a population of about 35 million and a GDP per capita of only £2,200. By contrast, the UK (double the population, GDP per capita of £33,100) has reported more than 40,000 deaths, while the US (10 times the population, GDP per capita of £51,000) has reported more than 82,000 deaths; both countries have rampant community transmission.
What does Shailaja Teacher and Kerala understand, that President Trump does not?
The Guardian continues: “Three days after reading about the new virus in China, and before Kerala had its first case of Covid-19, Shailaja held the first meeting of her rapid response team. The next day, 24 January, the team set up a control room and instructed the medical officers in Kerala’s 14 districts to do the same at their level. By the time the first case arrived, on 27 January, via a plane from Wuhan, the state had already adopted the World Health Organization’s protocol of test, trace, isolate and support. As the passengers filed off the Chinese flight, they had their temperatures checked. Three who were found to be running a fever were isolated in a nearby hospital. The remaining passengers were placed in home quarantine – sent there with information pamphlets about Covid-19 that had already been printed in the local language, Malayalam. The hospitalised patients tested positive for Covid-19, but the disease had been contained. “The first part was a victory,” says Shailaja. “But the virus continued to spread beyond China and soon it was everywhere.” In late February, encountering one of Shailaja’s surveillance teams at the airport, a Malayali family returning from Venice was evasive about its travel history and went home without submitting to the now-standard controls. By the time medical personnel detected a case of Covid-19 and traced it back to them, their contacts were in the hundreds. Contact tracers tracked them all down, with the help of advertisements and social media, and they were placed in quarantine. Six developed Covid-19.”
Spinney observes: “ The Communist Party of India (Marxist), of which she is a member, has been prominent in Kerala’s governments since 1957, the year after her birth. (It was part of the Communist Party of India until 1964, when it broke away.) Born into a family of activists and freedom fighters – her grandmother campaigned against untouchability – she watched the so-called “Kerala model” be assembled from the ground up; when we speak, this is what she wants to talk about.”
Trump vilifies socialism without understanding what it is, calls the Democrats ‘socialists’, and his sycophants caution against becoming “like Denmark” (a society and economy far more equitable, healthy and unified than the US). Imagine what Trump would say about Kerala, if he knew where India was on the map or what Shailaja Teacher had done.
How many people died, because Trump leads the US and not Communist Shailaja? How many lives could have been saved, had Trump acted weeks or even days sooner?
And will voters rightly fix the blame on his shoulders, on November 3, in the US?
Postscript: One of the world’s leading medical journals is The Lancet. Read The Lancet’s unprecedented Editorial, showing how Trump gutted the Center for Disease Control (CDC), politicized it, and made it unable to deal properly with the COVID-19 crisis. No-one can remember the last time when a scientific journal like the Lancet has editorialized so fiercely.
[Special thanks to Pramod Arikal, my former student, for drawing my attention to this important story].
Leadership: Give the Keys to Young Educated Women
By Shlomo Maital
Of some 200 countries in the world – which have had leaders most competent and successful in leading responses to the pandemic?
Let’s begin with the losers. Aging autocratic poorly-educated men, in denial, who missed the boat. The ‘orange haired narcissist’, as NYT columnist Roger Cohen calls him, Donald J. Trump. The whacko Brazilian president Jair Bolsinaro, possibly facing impeachment (like his mentor Trump). “So what?” was his response, when asked about Brazil’s death toll, highest in South America. Vladimir Putin, who cowardly shelters and lets others take the blame. Erdugan, who despite the crisis pursues his foes with paranoid insanity.
And now for the winners. Young educated women. 39-year-old Jacinda Ardern, who saw what was happening and shut down New Zealand with only 53 proven cases. Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin, 34, one of the youngest political leaders in the world. Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg. (She’s 59, tough, “Iron Erna”, and young in spirit). And never forget German Chancellor Angela Merkel – not young, like the others, but educated, a scientist, and quietly compassionate and competent. In Iceland, Katrin Jacobsdottir, 44, who organized free COVID-19 testing for all! And don’t forget Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen, 64.
Now, a Yiddish saying goes, “for instance is not a proof”. But a spate of terrific female Prime Ministers who have led their country with bravery courage and excellence – this is not an accident, in the face of aging despot men who have utterly failed.
So suppose the world was a locked house, with a set of keys. Who should get the keys? Smart competent women, who have fought their way up the political ladder against all the odds. Educated women, who speak well, do their homework, listen to experts, and win the trust of their people. Compassionate women, who understand human suffering and communicate this compassion.
And the despotic men? As Trump loves to say, “lock ‘em up”. Fast. Before it’s too late. Figuratively, of course – at the ballot box. Tuesday Nov. 3, 2020, a crucial date for the US and the world. Bye bye, orange-haired narcissist. Hello, Democrat female educated courageous well-spoken Vice President. And future President.
Best-Practice Virus Management: Look to Germany
By Shlomo Maital
Angela Merkel
Sometimes, something happens and – we know exactly why we were put on this earth. Take Angela Merkel. Americans would call her a ‘lame duck’ chancellor, as she has indicated she will not run for re-election as head of her party, and a successor was already chosen (and then, resigned, and a new successor emerged). But meanwhile, she is still Chancellor, leading Germany at a critical time – and guess what – she gets it. [She obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989]. Listening to an ignorant, spiteful, uneducated draft-dodging American President who does NOT get, focused solely on his rapidly-decreasing chances for re-election, it is very painful, after hearing Merkel.
In part because of Merkel’s leadership, and in part because Germany is a very well-run organized country strong in science and technology, Germany today is best-practice in emerging from the coronavirus lockdown. New York Times’ Berlin bureau chief Katrin Bennhold explains why:
“….3,000 households [were] chosen at random in Munich for an ambitious study whose central aim is to understand how many people — even those with no symptoms — have already had the virus, a key variable to make decisions about public life in a pandemic. The study is part of an aggressive approach to combat the virus in a comprehensive way that has made Germany a leader among Western nations figuring out how to control the contagion while returning to something resembling normal life.”
Bennhold continues: “Other nations, including the United States, are still struggling to test for infections. But Germany is doing that and more. It is aiming to sample the entire population for antibodies in coming months, hoping to gain valuable insight into how deeply the virus has penetrated the society at large, how deadly it really is, and whether immunity might be developing The government hopes to use the findings to unravel a riddle that will allow Germany to move securely into the next phase of the pandemic: Which of the far-reaching social and economic restrictions that have slowed the virus are most effective and which can be safely. The same questions are being asked around the world. Other countries like Iceland and South Korea have tested broadly for infections, or combined testing with digital tracking to undercut the spread of the virus.
“Germany, which produces most of its own high-quality test kits, is already testing on a greater scale than most — 120,000 a day and growing in a nation of 83 million. Chancellor Angela Merkel, a trained scientist, said this week that the aim was nothing less than tracing “every infection chain.” That high level of testing has helped her country slow the spread of the virus and keep the number of deaths relatively low. More people in Germany now recover from the virus every day than are infected by it. Every 10 people infected with the virus now pass it to seven others — a sharp decline in the infection rate for a virus that has spread exponentially.”
“Nationally, the Robert Koch Institute, the government’s central scientific institution in the field of biomedicine, is testing 5,000 samples from blood banks across the country every two weeks and 2,000 people in four hot spots who are farther along in the cycle of the disease. Its most ambitious project, aiming to test a nationwide random sample of 15,000 people across the country, is scheduled to begin next month.”
“In the free world, Germany is the first country looking into the future,” said Prof. Michael Hoelscher, who heads up the Munich study, noting that a number of countries had already asked him for the protocol to be able to replicate it. “We are leading the thinking of what to do next.” Mr. Hoelscher was co-author of what has become a widely influential research paper about how the virus can be transmitted before someone develops symptoms. “There’s no doubt after reading this paper that asymptomatic transmission is occurring,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States, told CNN on Feb. 1, three days after the paper was published. “This study lays the question to rest. Asymptomatic transmission is what has made containment so difficult because a large number of infections are not detected.”
TIMnovate 