“Inside China’s All-Out War on the Coronavirus“

Riveting New York Times interview by Donald G. McNeil Jr. with Dr. Bruce Aylward of the WHO about his experience in China observing the COVID-19 response:

The best hospitals were designated just for Covid, severe and critical. All elective surgeries were postponed. Patients were moved. Other hospitals were designated just for routine care: women still have to give birth, people still suffer trauma and heart attacks. They built two new hospitals, and they rebuilt hospitals...

The real case fatality rate is probably what it is outside Hubei Province, somewhere between 1 and 2 percent...

So saying 80 percent of all cases are mild doesn’t mean what we thought.
“Mild” was a positive test, fever, cough — maybe even pneumonia, but not needing oxygen. “Severe” was breathing rate up and oxygen saturation down, so needing oxygen or a ventilator. “Critical” was respiratory failure or multi-organ failure...I’m Canadian. This is the Wayne Gretzky of viruses — people didn’t think it was big enough or fast enough to have the impact it does...

Journalists also say, “Well, they’re only acting out of fear of the government,” as if it’s some evil fire-breathing regime that eats babies. I talked to lots of people outside the system — in hotels, on trains, in the streets at night. They’re mobilized, like in a war, and it’s fear of the virus that was driving them. They really saw themselves as on the front lines of protecting the rest of China. And the world.

The U.S. is woefully under-prepared by comparison. This will go down as a damning systemic and moral failure of American leadership. I’d also wager that it serves as a canary in the coal mine vis-à-vis our global leadership relative to China. And this will not be the last mass epidemic.