Parson, 65, returned to work Monday after isolating in the Governors Mansion for 10 days. He traveled to Bolivar over the weekend to join the first lady, 67, who isolated at their home in Bolivar.
On Monday, he also resumed campaign strategy meetings as he faces off against Democratic Auditor Nicole Galloway for a full, four-year term on Nov. 3.
In the morning, for example, Parson was at one of his campaign offices in downtown Jefferson City. Among those in attendance were Jones and Parsons chief of staff, Aaron Willard.
As she was leaving the office, the Post-Dispatch asked for a quick interview with the governor. Jones, who later said she was on leave from her taxpayer-paid position while visiting the campaign office, said that would be unlikely.
I doubt it, she said.
In the evening press release, Parson said, Teresa and I are so grateful that we are two of well over 100,000 Missourians that have recovered from this virus. We are glad to be back and want to again thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers. We are humbled every day to be surrounded by such great people across the state.
Parsons plans for the week include several ceremonies in the capitol, St. Joseph and St. Louis, according to a schedule released by his office.
More than 100 inmates test positive for COVID-19 at Western Tidewater Regional Jail - The Virginian-Pilot The Virginian-Pilot
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Coronavirus infections in Westmoreland County jumped by nearly 600 cases over the past month, a statistic that county and state officials said Monday was attributed to a general community spread of the virus.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health disclosed that more than 100 cases were identified in the county over the past three days, including another 45 on Monday which was one less than reported in Allegheny County. Those numbers come as case totals continued to climb in Westmoreland County over the past several weeks and amid an ongoing outbreak at Westmoreland Manor, the 408-bed, county-owned nursing home in Hempfield that since mid-September has seen 86 cases among residents and 28 involving employees.
The county on Monday reported another three residents tested positive for covid-19.
This is a virus that spreads, said Roland Mertz, the countys public safety director. Even taking the Manor out, the numbers in the general population have risen as well.
State health officials Monday listed Westmoreland as among 46 counties with moderate transmission levels for the virus.
Meanwhile, deaths attributed to the virus rose by one Monday, standing now at 57, according the health department.
County officials continue to express concern they havent received additional information about the potential origin of diagnosed cases identified by contact tracing.
Dr. Carol Fox, senior vice president and chief medical officer at Excela Health in Greensburg, said contact tracing among cases diagnosed by the local hospital system determined that most have been related to patients who reported attending gatherings and parties where unmasked people attended. She said eating in public is a significant risk for potential exposures to the virus.
Were seeing more cases as people let their guard down. People need to wear masks because you are at risk when you are around others, Fox said.
Most contact tracing is performed by the state. Maggi Mumma, spokeswoman for the state health department, in an email Monday said the increased caseload in Westmoreland County was not attributed to rising numbers at the Manor, though she identified no other events as a potential spreader for the virus.
Of those new cases, there are 143 from long-term care facilities residents and 20 staff. Therefore, the majority of incoming covid-19 cases are not from long-term care facilities, it is likely community spread, Mumma said.
Commissioner Gina Cerilli said the countys increasing case totals is not unexpected.
If we want to keep our businesses and schools open, we have to continue to wear masks and to be careful. As more businesses continue to open, more cases is something that we have to expect, Cerilli said.
The increased number of cases, Fox said, is in part of function of more testing that is being performed by Excela and others. And even as daily hospitalizations continue to increase, it jumped from just a few several weeks ago to 22 patients now, Fox said the severity of the illness has been far less than what doctors saw over the summer.
Just one patient in the county is on a ventilator to assist with breathing, according to the state.
There is definitely a higher number of cases, but fewer require the most-intensive treatment, Fox said.
Rich Cholodofsky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Rich at 724-830-6293, rcholodofsky@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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Experts are hopeful that a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus will become available sooner rather than later.
Will there be a coronavirus vaccine before the Nov. 3 presidential election? Incumbent US President Donald Trump certainly hopes so. But even if his long-shot prediction were to come true, the realities of producing, distributing and administering one or more COVID-19 vaccines mean it could still take months before most people in the US received one -- and possibly even longer before life returns to some semblance of normal. That hasn't stopped the Trump administration from ratcheting up expectations.
And vaccine manufacturers aren't the only ones responding to pressure from the White House to hurry along the approval of a vaccine, either. The New Yorker reports that some Chinese officials are taking Trump's timeline seriously enough to rush approval of their own vaccines. That revelation comes on the heels of another investigation by the New York Times that details how China has been administering significant numbers of experimental coronavirus vaccines outside the typical testing process. Many worry that a similar disregard for safety protocols could lead to the premature approval of a vaccine in the US.
Currently, there are seven vaccine candidates being tested in the US, three of which are nearing the final stages needed for Food and Drug Administration approval. Considering SARS-CoV-2 -- the virus that causes COVID-19 -- was only discovered less than a year ago, the progress is actually happening at a faster clip than ever before in the history of infectious disease (vaccines take, on average,about 10.7 years to develop), despite Trump's claim that vaccine development is being intentionally stifled.
Keep track of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here, we survey the current landscape for a developing coronavirus vaccine. This article updates frequently and is intended to be a general overview and not a source of medical advice. If you're seeking more information about coronavirus testing, here's how to find a testing site near you.
Now playing: Watch this: Prepare for a 'new national surveillance system' in order...
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An effective coronavirus vaccine might be the only way to bring a stop to preventative measures, like social distancing and face masks.
Several acceleration efforts are currently underway, like theWhite House's Operation Warp Speed, which is meant to cut through regulatory red tape to speed up vaccine development and be ready to distribute vaccines as soon as they receive FDA approval. So far, the US government haspledged over $10 billionto several vaccine manufacturers to secure a total of 800 million vaccine doses.
Vaccines typically take about10 to 15 years to developand approve, through four phases that includehuman trials. But with Operation Warp Speed, rather than submitting all sections of the application after all four phases are done, approved vaccine projects can submit data to the FDA bit by bit.
Meanwhile, the program is also financially backing efforts to start manufacturing doses while clinical trials are still ongoing. That means if and when those vaccines do get approved, there will already be a store of doses ready to distribute nationally. "I would hope that by the time we get well into the second half of 2021 that the companies will have delivered the hundreds of millions of doses they have promised," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Forbes in August.
Experts say recent surges in coronavirus cases aren't merely the result of the US doing more testing, as a higher percentage of those tested are coming up positive compared to earlier stages of the pandemic.
Here's a quick look at some of the frontrunners in the race to find a vaccine for COVID-19, including where the vaccines are being developed, where they are on testing them, and when scientists think they might be ready for widespread distribution, if known.
Oxford University/AstraZeneca (UK):AstraZeneca has paused testing of its vaccine, which it had begun on100,000 human volunteers in at least three countriesand was preparing to begin in the US. Lead researcher Dr. Sarah Gilbert had initially said they're aiming for a fall 2020 release, which may now be delayed. However, UK Health Minister Matt Hancock has said such a pause is "not necessarily" a setback.
Moderna (US): An apparent scuffle with government regulatorsdelayed large-scale human testing, butModerna's CEO has told Barron's he still expects the company will know by Thanksgiving if the vaccine is safe and effective and should be able to distribute it in early 2021 if it is.
Pfizer (US): Although its four COVID-19 vaccine candidates are still in early-stage human trials, two of them have been fast-tracked by the FDA. Pfizer's chief business officer told the US Congress the company may be ready to apply for FDA approval by October.
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SinoVac (China): Currently testing its vaccine on about 10,000 human volunteers in China and about 9,000 in Brazil and is set to begin testing on about 1,900 test subjects in Indonesia soon. CEO of BioPharma, SinoVac's Indonesian partner, has said he expects the vaccine to be ready by early 2021.
SinoPharm (China): Currently testing about 15,000 volunteers in the Middle Eastin a trial the state-owned company expects to last three to six months. Early results suggest the drug is safe and at least somewhat effective. SinoPharm recently built a second facility to manufacture the vaccine, doubling its capacity to about 200 million doses per year.
CanSino Biologics (China): Set to begin large-scale human trials this summer, CanSino's vaccine has already been approved for the Chinese military. The vaccine is based on a modified common cold virus, which some experts warn could make it less effective than other vaccine efforts.
Wearing a face mask remains the surest way of preventing transmission of the coronavirus.
We probably won't know until next year, but Fauci has suggested it might requireseveral different vaccinesmade and distributed by different labs to bring an end to the pandemic, in apaper published May 11 in the journal Science. He also has said he foresees different vaccines being given to different patient populations. For example, one vaccine for elderly or other high-risk patients, another for healthy adults, another for children, etc.
Coronaviruses are a large class of viruses andso far there are no vaccinesfor any of them. While there are promising early results, there's no guarantee of a vaccine by 2021. Statistically, only about 6% of vaccine candidates ever make it through to market,according to a Reuters special report.
Early evidencesuggests that the coronavirus doesn't appear to mutateas quickly or often as the flu, and it's thought that thevirus has not yet mutated significantly enoughto disrupt vaccine development -- although our knowledge could change.
Most experts expect a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, by 2021.
The longer we go without a vaccine, the more likely focus will shift toward treatments, such as theexperimental antiviral drug remdesivir, which has reportedly shown promising results, and dexamethasone, a steroid that doctors say increases survival rates among the most serious cases. With effective therapeutic treatments, many viruses that used to be fatal are no longer death sentences. Patients with HIV, for example, can now expect to enjoythe same life expectancyas non-HIV-positive individuals, thanks to tremendous advances in treatment.
Eventually, the global population may reach the 60% to 70% rate required forherd immunityto protect those who aren't immune, which is, ultimately, the goal of a vaccine.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar on Friday said that data that could allow for emergency authorization of experimental COVID-19 therapeutics could be available in a matter of weeks.
Azar made the comments during a congressional hearing conducted by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis when Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) asked about promising preliminary results from trials on an experimental Regeneron drug that is being developed to treat less severe cases of COVID-19.
"We could be literally many weeks to a month or two away from having data to support emergency authorizations of these if the data proves they are safe as well as effective," Azar said.
Luetkemeyer said he was trying to highlight that there are also therapeutics in the drug development pipeline, not just vaccines.
Early data showed that Regeneron's antibody cocktail, dubbed REGN-COV2, appeared to reduce the time it took for patients' symptoms to alleviate compared with trial participants who received placebos.
The Regeneron drug and a competing Eli Lilly drug are combinations of monoclonal antibodies, meaning that the drugs are supposed to act as synthetic substitutes for antibodies. Eli Lilly's Phase 2 trials on LY-CoV555, which showed mixed results, were conducted on nonhospitalized patients.
Azar's testimony came just hours after President Donald Trump announced he had tested positive for COVID-19. Trump's doctor on Friday said the president received a dose of Regeneron's antibody cocktail.
Trump has often touted the accelerated timeline for vaccine approval on the campaign trail. In the first presidential debate Tuesday, he teased that a COVID-19 vaccine could be "weeks away," and contradicted the opinions of some of his top public health experts who have projected vaccines will be widely available by mid-2021.
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U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin speaks before Vice President Mike Pence at a campaign appearance at the Dairyland Power Cooperative Frank Linder Service Center in La Crosse on Monday.(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said Saturday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 and will be isolating at his home in Oshkosh.
"I feel fine, I feel completely normal," Johnson said during a conference call with reporters.
Johnson is the thirdRepublican U.S. senator to test positive for the novel coronavirus within the last 24 hours.
Mike Lee of Utah and Thom Tillis of North Carolina also announced positive tests Friday.
On Saturday, U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said he'll go into a quarantine until Oct. 14 as a result of Johnson's positive test, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Peters isthe ranking member of the Johnson-ledHomeland Security Committee. Peters said he underwent a COVID-19 test Saturday and the result was negative.
Johnson disclosed his diagnosis a day after speaking to the Ozaukee County Republican Party Oktoberfest Dinner at the River Club of Mequon on Friday night.
Johnson said after hearing that Lee had come down with the virus earlier Friday, he stopped in for a COVID-19 test while traveling to the dinner.
He said he had been tested numerous times over the past few months, with negative results, but learned he had tested positive late Friday night after his dinner appearance.
Johnson said he had his staff notify the GOP organizers before Friday's event that he would be taking precautions to ensure he's healthy and ready to vote on Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I would not come early. I would not stick around. I would not take photographs. I would maintain social distancing. And I would just come in and speak and I would leave. And that's exactly what happened," Johnson said they were told.
Johnson had recently been in a 14-day quarantine after his chief of staff, Tony Blando,had been diagnosed with the virus. Blando has since recovered, Johnson said.
He said his physician believes he most likely contracted it through his chief of staff.
"I do a really good job with social distancing," he said.
Johnson did not attend the Sept. 26 White House ceremony announcing Barrett's nomination, an event that has drawn attention as a potential source of an outbreak in Washington, D.C.
Lee and Tillis wereamong several prominent people including President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump whoattended the Rose Garden ceremony andhave since tested positive for the coronavirus. Many in attendance did not wear masks, and photographs and videos taken afterward showed many of them shaking hands and embracing one another.
With three Republican U.S. senators sidelined by COVID-19, it raises questions about the Senate's ability to act quickly on Barrett's judicial nomination. Lee and Tillis are on the Senate Judiciary Committee that will firstconsider the nomination, while Johnson is not.
Johnson said he has been adjusting his schedule and taking precautions so he can take the vote on Barrett, "even if I got quarantined for two weeks or developed symptoms or whatever."
"I think we're catching this early enough, and hopefully everybody else will take the measures I was doing," he said.
Johnson's positive test also comes at a time when Wisconsin has emerged as one of the nation's coronavirus hot spots, including Johnson's home area in the northeast part of the state.
Despite the recent surge in cases,Wisconsin Republican lawmakers on Friday urged a judge to strike down the state's mask mandate. The GOP lawmakershave offered no plan to contain the virus.
Johnson advocates for wearing masks but said, "I'm not in favor of mask mandates. I think it's up to individuals to be responsible."
Earlier this year, Johnson raised some eyebrows with statements on the coronavirus.
In an interview in March with the Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief Craig Gilbert, Johnson said:Im not denying what a nasty disease COVID-19 can be, and how its obviously devastating to somewhere between 1% and 3.4% of the population."
But that means 97 to 99 percent will get through this and develop immunities and will be able to move beyond this. But we dont shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. Its a risk we accept so we can move about. We dont shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu, Johnson said.
Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pushed back at Johnson's comments, saying it was a "false equivalency to compare traffic accidents" to the coronavirus.
In a pair of tweets Saturday, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said that"given the outbreak in the Senate," she received a COVID-19 test Friday and it wasnegative.
"I am sorry to hear that a number of my colleagues have tested positive for COVID-19, including Senator Johnson," Baldwin said. "I wish them all a healthy recovery as they quarantine to protect others and get better."
At a voter registration event at Fiserv Forum Saturday, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, said she offered "thoughts and prayers" to Johnson and others who have the virus.
This is a treacherous disease, and not only does it cause premature death but sometimes a debilitating impact afterwards, she said.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat, alsosaid he hopes Johnson, Trump and others infected with the virus recover quickly.
I wish Sen. Johnson, I wish President Trump and the First Lady and all Americans that have been infected with this disease, a full and speedy recovery, Barrett said. My prayers are with them and their families, and I know this is a difficult time for literally millions of Americans.
Journal Sentinel reporter Ricardo Torres contributed to this article.
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Dr. Sean Dooley briefs reporters at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. on Saturday. Trump was admitted to the hospital after contracting the coronavirus. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption
Dr. Sean Dooley briefs reporters at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. on Saturday. Trump was admitted to the hospital after contracting the coronavirus.
President Trump, hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, is being treated with remdesivir, an antiviral drug made by Gilead Sciences. While the drug hasn't been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it was authorized for emergency use in May for treating hospitalized patients with the coronavirus.
Trump received his first IV infusion of remdesivir on Friday night, and doctors say he'll undergo a five-day treatment course of the drug.
How does remdesivir work? By making it harder for the virus to replicate. Typically, when SARS-CoV-2 invades a cell, it releases a strand of RNA containing its genome essentially, a genetic blueprint for replicating itself.
In order for the virus to make copies, its RNA needs to latch onto a cell's ribosome. That's a tiny cellular machine that lives in human cells and helps replicate proteins. A single cell can contain million of ribosomes, which, when things are working normally, help create the normal cells of the human body. But the coronavirus hijacks the ribosome, directing it to make copies of itself and then copies of those copies.
As anyone who has used a Xerox machine knows, when you make copies of a copy, the new copies can get harder to read. A similar phenomenon takes place within the cell, and so normally, new copies of a virus can contain mutations.
One reason coronaviruses are so good at proliferating throughout the body is because they carry a special "proofreading" protein that catches the errors, helping the virus replicate itself correctly. Each compromised cell can create thousands of copies of the virus, which then infect nearby cells, where replication begins again.
That's where remdesivir comes in. It helps control the coronavirus by disrupting its proofreading process. To the coronavirus, remdesivir looks like a natural part of the human cell. But when remdesivir gets stitched into the new replicated virus, it gums up the works.
"Now the virus is making a lot of rotten genomes that poison the viral replication process," geneticist Judith Frydman explained this summer to Stanford Medicine.
Remdesivir isn't a perfect copy-blocking machine, but it works well enough to slow the release of the virus and help give the body's immune system a better chance at fighting the invaders. For those who need hospitalization, a 5- to 10-day course of remdesivir has been shown to improve results and reduce hospital stays by a few days.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patients receiving remdesivir recovered in 11 days, compared with 15 days for those who received a placebo. However, that study found the medication to be most effective for hospitalized patients with severe disease requiring supplemental oxygen.
The president's doctors said Saturday that he was not on supplemental oxygen "right now," but declined to say whether he had been previously.
Along with remdesivir, Trump is also taking an experimental "antibody cocktail" by the drugmaker Regeneron. In an ongoing trial, the drug known as REGN-COV2 has been shown to reduce viral load in the body, as well as the duration of symptoms. Patients given a placebo generally took 13 days to see their symptoms reduced, while those given the cocktail saw results in about half the time. That trial has not examined the interplay between the cocktail and remdesivir.
Doctors said that the president is doing well, with no difficulty breathing. "I feel like I could walk out of here today," Trump told the staff, according to Dr. Sean Dooley, the president's physician. However, a source familiar with the president's health later told White House reporters that "the president's vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning."
"The next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care," the source said. "We're still not on a clear path to a full recovery."
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
By Jon CohenOct. 3, 2020 , 1:05 PM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.
On 23 September at 8 p.m., Anthony Fauci was standing in his living room in Washington, D.C., still in his suit and tie, chatting on his cell phone with an assistant, exasperated that his day was far from over. It had begun at 6 a.m. and included testifying at a three-hour-long Senate hearing on COVID-19. In the early evening, he spoke with actor Alan Alda about the pandemic on a live-streamed event. Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a key scientist on the White Houses Coronavirus Task Force, still had to read and reply to more than 200 e-mails in his inbox. Im going to be up until 3 a.m., he said.
Fauci, who that week appeared on the cover of Time magazines issue 100 most influential people of 2020, went upstairs and changed into jeans and sweatshirt. When he came down, his wife, Christine Gradya bioethicist at the Clinical Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) --brought him an IPA beer and salmon sliders, out on their backyard deck where he sat down for an hourlong, socially distanced interview with Science. Fauci discussed everything from his relationship with President Donald Trump and the White House staff to the COVID-19 vaccines being tested by the governments Operation Warp Speed, the Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and his confrontation at that days hearing with Sen. Rand Paul (R-PA), who has a history of needling the NIAID director.
The 79-year-old Fauci, who has led NIAID since 1984 and established a reputation as a world renowned HIV/AIDS researcher, had no regrets about tangling with Paul. I said to myself, you know, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna disrespect him, I'm not gonna be aggressive, but I'm not gonna let him get away with saying things that are cherry picked data.
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Why aren't you afraid of speaking your mind at the White House?
A: I'm walking a fine line of being someone who is not hesitant to tell the President and the Vice President what they may not want to hear. There are some people in the White House, who, even when I first started telling it like it was in the Task Force meetings, they were like, Oh my goodness. Thats when I got that nickname the skunk at the picnic. When they would strike an optimistic note, I would say, No, wait a minute.
I used my experience with the activists during the early years of the AIDS pandemic to say, If you really want to know what's going on, you have got to talk to the people in the trenches. So when people were saying, Testing is fine, everybody who wants to test can have a test, Id get on the phone at night and talk to the individual people who are either the assistant Health Commissioner, the Health Commissioner, or somebody who's running an ICU, from New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Seattle, and LA . Id do that regularly, and what they were seeing in the trenches was not always what was happening in the discussions. So I bring this perspective to the Task Force and I say, Im sorry, I'm not trying to undermine the president. But there is something that's called reality.
When you have 70,000 [COVID-19] infections a day and that plateaus at 44,000, that's really not very good news. Some might say, Well, you know, we should be positive since there are parts of the country that are doing well. I do not disagree: Yes, there are parts of the country that are doing well, where the test positivity is 1% or less. But other areas are not doing well, and this country is a big forest, and when you have fires in some parts of the forest, the entire forest is at risk.
Q: It's not rocket science Tony.
A: The point that I sometimes make is the analogy of crew racing. I never knew anything about crew, until my daughter became one of the captains of the Stanford varsity team a few years ago. And then I decided I'd learned about the subtleties of it. Unless every one of those eight people, the ninth person being the coxswain, is doing it exactly the way you should be doing it, you will never win the race. You need one person, sometimes two, God forbid, who are out of sync and you are done. You've lost the race. Everyone has got to work together.And that is a concept that I try very hard to get across.
Debbie [Birx, a scientist on the Task Force] is constantly out in the field now and shes absolutely seeing that in spades: When you get an increase in test positivity, it predicts there is going to be a surge of infections. And then the surge gets under control when people start implementing public health measures. It's almost like whack a mole. And that doesn't work in the long run.
Q: Operation Warp Speed wanted vaccines that could be mass produced quickly. But what do you think of its portfolio? The obvious missing component is the inactivated virus vaccine. Thats moved very far with China-made vaccines and now Europe is investing big time in it.
A: In a perfect world, you would want to get all those platforms going. A decision was made regarding the broad effort. I wasn't the primary person in making that decision. I was and am responsible only for the NIH component of that multi-faceted effort. We do the research, and we say, these are the things we need to do. A decision was made that they were going to have an overarching process involving multiple agencies of the federal government. It wasn't completely in my hands. The one thing that I'm glad happened, because we were pushing for that, was to get a broader portfolio, a wide range of vaccine platforms including the more traditional one of recombinant proteins with an adjuvant.
Q: Most COVID-19 vaccines being tested in the United States only contain versions of the viral surface protein, spike. The inactivated virus vaccines have all the viral proteins. What do you think about broadening to include more viral components?
A: You know, it's an interesting psychodynamic, saying we are in this catastrophic outbreak and we've got to move as quickly as we possibly can. Were relying on the companies that come forth and say, we're willing to make an investment in this approach. There was an emphasis on needing to do something about it right now, right away, because that's the only thing you have, as opposed to approaches with other diseases where there was less of an emergency nature to the process. Other antigens besides the spike likely will be pursued in the second generation of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.
Q: The EUA situation raises an interesting problem. The way convalescent plasma was approved for an EUA combined with the EUA of hydroxychloroquine is tied together with confidence in the vaccine dropping.
A: I understand the need for and importance of EUAs, but I have long been of the opinion that the gold standard of determining conclusively if an intervention is safe and effective is conducting a randomized controlled clinical trial. An EUA is based on the principle that the benefit outweighs the risk in a situation where there is a reason to believe that the intervention may be effective. I am all for that--this can get life-saving interventions out quickly for people who need it. But this should only be done in a situation that doesnt interfere with the process of ultimately proving whether that intervention is truly safe and effective. For convalescent plasma, an EUA was issued, and I hope that when the clinical trials are completed, we get a definitive answer.
Q: Convalescent plasma didn't work in Ebola.
A: Yes, exactly. And Cliff [Lane, a deputy director of NIAID] did a study in Southeast Asia, and convalescent plasma didn't work in influenza.
Q: And the data for convalescent plasma against COVID-19 are really soft.
A: One of the things that I learned, and that's the fun of continuing to learn as you get older and older, is the sophistication of modern-day statistics. When you examine something in a post hoc analysis of a non-pre-determined endpoint, boy, can you be led down the garden path. We used to kid around saying if you torture the data enough, it's going to ultimately tell you what you want it to tell you.
Q: I know it's late for you in a very long day. And you also had a wonderful interchange with Senator Rand. [Fauci mistakenly said Senator Rand at the hearing.] You feel good about it?
A: I do. I was born and raised on the streets of New York, but I'm a creature of Washington, and I have a great deal of respect for government institutions. Just like I have a great deal of respect for the Presidency, I have a great deal of respect for the Senate. And in that regard, I have a great deal of respect for senators. But I am not going to let Senator Paul get away with saying things that are cherry picked data. And he compared us to Sweden, and said, Sweden let everybody get infected and they have much lower death rate than us. And I say, sir, with all due respect, you're comparing apples and oranges, you should not be comparing Sweden with the United States, you should be comparing Sweden with a demographically similar populations, like the Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Denmark. And Sweden has done much less well, particularly regarding deaths compared to the other countries.
Many of the people making those jokes dont believe that history really has an Author. But I do. And the aspects of our circumstances that seem ridiculously scripted to the atheist are, for religious believers, a reason to meditate on what is being revealed, how were being tested and what lessons and examples we can draw from watching tragedies unfold.
Our president does not, to put it mildly, resemble the tragic heroes familiar from Aeschylus or Shakespeare. But he has a little more in common with some of the flawed, arrogant, appetitive figures from the Hebrew Bible figures who are given opportunities to do something important in spite of their flaws, who are placed at crucial turning points in history notwithstanding their weaknesses and sins and who have the capacity to achieve things that amaze the wise and powerful.
In Trumps arc in 2020, its possible to see a more tragic version of these kind of biblical narratives, in which Providence grants a flawed old sinner a unique chance at heroism, even greatness and he chooses badly, and lets it pass him by.
The presidents coronavirus diagnosis bends that tragic arc a little further. The idea that an illness and speedy recovery might help him win re-election on a wave of sympathy seems well, lets just call it unlikely. Rather, his illness just seems to emphasize that were inside the falling action of the play, the working out of choices and themes that were established months ago.
You cant pray to a writers room, but you can pray to God. And so we should pray for the presidents swift recovery, that all those infected around him recover soon as well, and that the falling action of 2020s drama would spare as many lives as possible.
But to pray is also inherently to behave as though life isnt just one accident after another, as though narrative lines in history actually exist, as though our choices are woven into patterns and not just left to unspool randomly. And the presidents affliction, in this sense, is woven intimately into the larger story of 2020 and his administrations rendezvous with pestilence a story whose might-have-beens could have redeemed his vices, but whose realities have sealed his presidencys transformation from a dark farce into a tragedy.
Trump will now be forced to quarantine for two weeks, taking him off the campaign trail and likely forcing the rescheduling -- if not outright cancellation of, at least, the second presidential debate, which was set for October 15 in Miami, Florida. (The lone vice presidential debate is on the schedule for next Wednesday in Salt Lake City; Vice President Mike Pence tested negative for Covid-19 on Friday morning, according to his office.)That, in and of itself, is a major blow to a President who is a) trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in national and swing-state polling and b) views his campaign rallies -- large, raucous affairs -- as the lifeblood of not just his campaign but his presidency. Despite the ongoing virus threat, Trump had increased the frequency of his campaign travel over the last few months as he sought to reassure the country that fight against the virus was being won and that the time had come to move on to other issues -- most notably, according to Trump from the podium, the violent protests happening in cities around the country.
Trump has also actively flouted best practices when it comes to slowing the spread of the virus. Despite guidance from the CDC -- beginning in April -- that mask-wearing is one of the only (and best) ways to combat Covid-19's infectiousness, the President has not only expressed skepticism about the need to wear masks but has also mocked Biden for doing so.
Wallace: President Trump, you have begun to increasingly question the effectiveness of masks as a disease preventer. And in fact, recently you have cited the issue of -- of waiters touching their masks and touching plates. Are you questioning the efficacy of masks?
Trump: No, I think that masks are OK. You have to understand, if you look -- I mean, I have a mask right here. I put a mask on, you know, when I think I need it.
Tonight, as an example, everybody's had a test and you've had social distancing and all of the things that you have to, but --
Biden: Just like your rallies.
Trump: -- I wear masks when needed. When needed, I wear masks.
Wallace: OK, let me ask --
Trump: I don't have -- I don't wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from them and he shows up with the biggest mask I've ever seen.
The practical impacts of Trump's diagnosis are serious. But the less-tangible impacts may be even more costly to a President who has banked his reelection on the idea that things are getting much, much better and doing so very, very quickly.
While Trump's behavior -- steady travel, lack of mask-wearing, exposure to lots and lots of people -- always made him more likely than the average person to contract the disease, the fact that he now has it will force a recalibration for many people. And that recalibration will center around this question: If the President of the United States can get Covid-19, what does that mean for my chances of getting it?
That uncertainty -- and the anxiety it causes -- is powerful. The virus, which has now been with us for the better part of six months, feels more real and more threatening for many Americans today than it has in many months. It's managed to sicken the most powerful and well-protected person in the country. How people react to the new-found freshness of the threat -- even if the threat remains roughly the same as it did prior to Trump's diagnosis -- is an X factor in the election, particularly given that we are less than five weeks away from the actual vote.
What we do know is that Trump's attempt to make these final weeks of the election about something other than the coronavirus failed the second he got his positive test back. Cable news will cover his illness -- and the people he came into contact with and whether they are also sick -- wall to wall for weeks. While Covid-19 was the lead story for most news outlets on most days for the last few months, it is likely to become the ONLY story for the foreseeable future.
In short: Everything Trump tried to avoid in the stretch run of the 2020 race is now coming to pass. And it's all because of him (and his positive test).
