The summer before COVID-19 ravaged the world, infecting millions across the globe and catapulting the U.S. into a nearly nationwide shutdown, epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo led a team tasked with answering a hypothetical, eerily portentous question: What would happen if there was a global outbreak of a high-impact respiratory pathogen?
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo says social distancing wouldn’t have been inevitable if the U.S. had initially responded aggressively.That doesn’t mean that in the future, we can’t be. In fact, our global health—and life as we know it—depends on it.
The governmental missteps—and there were many—should serve as teachable moments for the administration. Swift action is crucial: Nuzzo says social distancing in the U.S. wouldn’t have been inevitable if we had initially responded aggressively, isolating cases and tracing contacts. The country has a national stockpile of medical equipment such as masks, but, Nuzzo says, it was not adequately replenished after the 2009 swine-flu outbreak.
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