Newell: Tough week for scientists as Trump battles CDC head
Kanter #Kanter
Louisiana’s Assistant State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter joined Newell for his recurring weekly segment Thursday morning to discuss the latest developments in the battle against COVID-19, preventative measures, and the search for effective treatments or even a vaccine. This week the conversation touched on Louisiana’s progress in keeping infection rates down and the mixed messages coming from the White House.
“That was a big announcement last week from the Governor,” Newell began. “You could tell it was difficult to make the decision to move to Phase Three. What have we learned since then?”
“It was a challenging call – the data is not black and white but somewhere in the middle,” Kanter said. “He made a tough call, but he was very clear that there’s still a ton of risk… this is not the Phase Three we had envisioned. We had assumed early on that by the time we were moving into Phase Three, there’d be a lot less COVID around and we’d feel a lot more comfortable. That’s not where we are now. There is still a lot of risk, and this is a very tenuous Phase Three. Just because we’re in Phase Three, schools and colleges are open… it’s still going to be touch-and-go for the next few weeks.”
“When you see what’s happening in Spain, France, and Italy where they’ve had this resurgence after suppressing it early on, they’re facing a number of challenges all over again!” Newell continued.
“Absolutely, and we’re still watching what they’re going to do and how aggressive they’re going to be,” Kanter said. “This outbreak is humbling for medical professionals. To see a country that had been hit hard, was quite successful at combating that and made a lot of sacrifices in doing so, and then have these recurrences speaks to how tenacious the virus is. You can’t be in a lockdown forever, you have to make tough calls. Until you have a widespread vaccine, this is just what it’s going to be, a whack-a-mole game with sporadic outbreaks. We’re going to have to find the best balance in responding, and that’s hard.”
“There’s a lot of confusion about a vaccine,” Newell said. “CDC Director Robert Redfield said yesterday in Congress that we might have a vaccine by the end of the year but won’t get it into the supply chain in a meaningful way until Q3 of 2021. President Trump comes out immediately and says he’s wrong… none of this is helping the overall dialogue around this issue.”
“It was a depressing day, the politicization of vaccines increased yesterday,” Kanter replied. “In addition to Redfield’s testimony, the CDC pushed out a detailed playbook of how they’d like states and localities to partner in preparing for distribution. The timeline Redfield alluded to is elaborated in the playbook, and it’s very clear, there will be different phases to the vaccine rollout, and the first phase is not mass distribution, it’s getting it to healthcare workers, first responders, the elderly. That will happen for a few months, and then a later phase is the general public, high volume distribution, and that’s what Redfield was alluding to. Oftentimes when Trump talks about it, he says he could have something announced by November 2nd. But having it announced is just the first step. We’re really worried that every time this happens, it’s going to make it harder to have the vaccine do what we need it to do.”