#214 — August 13, 2020

Once the virus [SARS-CoV-2] was in the United States, there was no test for the virus for about 40 days. So, there was no FDA-approved test for the virus for 40 full days ... It is inconceivable that that would happen.

The case fatality rate for COVID-19, which is the number of people who die upon getting infected, has really hovered across the world around 0.7%.

There are several genetic clues that clearly suggest that the [COVID-19] infection in New York, at least, was primarily seated by European travel and not by travel from Asia. The infection in Europe was seated, in turn, from Asian air travelers who came into Italy and Spain, but the infection in New York—we have genetic evidence to suggest that it was from people who came in from Europe.

The ineptitudes started right from day zero in Wuhan, China. We should have known about this virus [SARS-CoV-2] long before we actually did as a global community.

Once it [COVID-19] hit New York, and New York became fairly similar to Lombardy, you still saw a country that was incredibly slow to respond with some exceptions—California responded pretty quickly. But even the places that responded—even California, who went through a significant lockdown—it still was a fairly piecemeal effort and all the while undermined by our basic failure to get any of these necessary ingredients of a response to scale. Testing tracing, [and] PPE took a long time—I don't even know if PPE is in danger of running out now.