Coronavirus is about to change your life for a little while
Health officials say Americans everywhere need to change the way they behave. Right now.
(CNN)If you thought coronavirus was no big deal or if you thought it was going to go away, wake up.
Your life is about to change.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
issued a disturbing warning during a White House briefing Tuesday: Americans everywhere need to change the way they live their lives. Right now.
"We would like the country to realize that as a nation, we can't be doing the kinds of things we were doing a few months ago. It doesn't matter if you're in a state that has no cases or one case," Fauci said, referring Americans to the new federal
Coronavirus.gov website for details on precautions to take at home, at work and out in the world.
"If and when the infections will come -- and they will come, sorry to say, sad to say -- when you're dealing with an infectious disease... we want to be where the infection is going to be, as well as where it is," Fauci said.
"Everybody should say, 'All hands on deck,'" he added.
He's not alone in saying that this is the moment to contain coronavirus. We are at an inflection point, according to Thomas Bossert, a former homeland security adviser to President Donald Trump, writing in The Washington Post.
It's worth reading his entire piece, but the key point is this:
"Officials must pull the trigger on aggressive interventions. Time matters. Two weeks of delay can mean the difference between success and failure. Public health experts learned this in 1918 when the Spanish flu killed 50 million to 100 million people around the globe. If we fail to take action, we will watch our health-care system be overwhelmed."
He compared the lax early actions in Italy, which is now under national lockdown, with the more strict and invasive early actions in Singapore and Hong Kong.
(Read this for a taste of what the first day of containment was like in Italy.)
Bossert also said Americans have to prepare to be out of their daily rhythms for weeks:
"How long? Epidemiologists suggest eight weeks might be needed to arrest this outbreak. Administrators, students, teachers and parents need to get busy figuring out how to continue the education of our children while contributing to this community-wide public health effort."
States of emergency -- The suburb of
New Rochelle, New York, is under containment, with National Guard called in to help deliver food to residents. At least 18 governors had declared states of emergency as of Tuesday evening. I wrote about what a "state of emergency" actually means.
Read it.
School closures -- At the White House briefing, Fauci said a nationwide school ban isn't appropriate at this point. This is a massive country. Rather, we need to look where the outbreak is going and pre-emptively target closures there.
Government help -- Vice President Mike Pence assured Americans the President would put the full weight of the government behind fighting the outbreak. Pence said people who feel sick shouldn't feel like they have to work or risk their paychecks.
Administration officials are also pushing a
payroll tax holiday to put more money in people's pockets. That's assuming they keep their jobs.
But after Trump made a rare trip to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with Senate Republicans, it's clear they're a long way from striking a deal on a
package. CNN's congressional team reports the state of play here:
more...
