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12 Nov, 5 tweets, 1 min read
☹️One of the most upsetting CDC reports yet: Wedding leads to 177 Covid cases & 7 deaths among people who weren’t even there.

Aug 7. Wedding w/55 guests in a Maine town with no corona.

A guest goes to a school meeting. Others go to jobs at a nursing home & jail, with symptoms.
Wedding screened for fever but guests don’t wear masks indoors. Wedding hosts don’t give health dept a list of phone # of guests. So contact tracing isn’t fast enough to stop spread.

After 23 days health dept determines that 30 of 55 guests were positive. By then it’s too late.
Because of the wedding:
-120 staff & residents of a care facility & correctional facility were infected & scared & may have long term health issues.

-27 people not at the wedding +

-2 people who served wedding guests got Covid

-Many mourn the early deaths of 7 loved ones.
The wedding makes me mad. But also, if we pushed for rapid contact tracing & quarantine, these guests would not have spread to congregate settings.

And why are we only seeing this report on an August outbreak in November?!
Ref: cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/6…

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More from @amymaxmen

Amy Maxmen Profile picture
11 Nov
Deeply honored to have won a @AAASKavli Gold Award for my feature @NatureNews

It is a profile of @Tedros & @WHO as they tackled #Ebola in DR Congo. It foreshadowed the COVID crisis in the US.

I’ll explain that here & lessons to learn. (Treat at end!)
go.nature.com/3khm1HT
Lesson 1: Epidemics depend on context. “The outbreak of Ebola is a symptom; the root cause is political instability,” said @Tedros.

Many places are unstable. DRC is very. Since 2017, in Kivu provinces alone, 3860 people have been killed & 5274 abducted. kivusecurity.org
Many governments, including DRC, ignore or fuel conflict & poverty in east DRC. When the president barred eastern cities from voting “due to Ebola” the link between politics& the virus hardened. Next came attacks.

Does politicization of a virus in an election yr sound familiar?
Read 9 tweets
Amy Maxmen Profile picture
26 Oct
✈️NEW flight report on corona transmission on flights:

13 people appear to have been infected on a 7-hr flight to Ireland this summer, leading to 59 cases as passengers visited friends & family. The plane was at 17% capacity & required masks.

eurosurveillance.org/content/10.280…
Why do researchers think infection occured in ✈️?
-5 show symptoms w/in 4 days of flight & have no other exposure; 8 could have gotten it during layover but seat map suggests in-flight
-Sequencing finds that the virus is 99% similar despite travelers coming from diff continents.
Impressive contact tracing made this possible. European CDC has a guidance to alert all flight passengers when there is a positive case on board. Perhaps @CDCgov might consider such a thing given that people will be traveling during the holidays, and staying with loved ones.
Read 4 tweets
Amy Maxmen Profile picture
25 Oct
Psst: It is your civic duty to watch "Totally Under Control." We must hold leaders accountable.

I've interviewed some of the scientists in the film & dozens more this year. Here are my thoughts after viewing @undercontrolmov from @alexgibneyfilm. 🧵

Spot-on portrayal of how the CDC & FDA stood in the way of testing in Feb @undercontrolmov, including @RickABright asking Azar for 10 billion to ramp up testing & drug/vaccine R&D around Jan 20. He’s later told that was an offensive ask.

But...
But the big question remains unanswered: Who at the CDC/FDA/HHS said DON'T push hard on testing?

Tho @RickABright says Kadlec told him there was “no reason for concern” in Jan & @scottjbecker @APHL admits it was hubris to not use the German test vetted & distributed by WHO.
Read 10 tweets
Amy Maxmen Profile picture
25 Aug
💥My latest investigation: Where is #COVID data?

With 5.7 million cases in the US, we should have a good sense of how often people are infected in grocery stores, on planes, at protests, on construction sites.

Some countries post such data. Why don't we?nature.com/articles/d4158…
Data on #Covid transmission is critical as people socialize & schools & businesses open.

eg in #NewZealand, the country's daily dashboard suggests people get tested if they went to locations linked w/current outbreaks. health.govt.nz/our-work/disea… Screenshot from today
The daily dashboard from the @KoreaCDC reveals that 50 people from a 915-person #COVID outbreak at Sarang Jeil Church in Seoul have left for other districts; that 22 venues, listed, have since had transmission that traces back to that outbreak & MUCH MORE
Read 7 tweets
Amy Maxmen Profile picture
4 Aug
🚨Biosecurity experts ran dozens of pandemic war-games to prep for this crisis.

My NEW feature w/@jefftollef asks what went wrong.

They depicted #coronavirus, leaky travel bans, PPE shortages, vaccine scrambles, battles btwn leaders. But not Trump. nature.com/articles/d4158…
We spoke with researchers who ran simulations like Dark Winter, Atlantic Storm, Crimson Contagion, Clade X, Event 201. They foresaw a lot of problems happening now. But most thought we were better than anywhere else because of technological capacity, medical & science excellence.
As a long-time government researcher told me: "You need gas in the engine and the brakes to work, but if the driver doesn't want to use the car, you're not going anywhere." nature.com/articles/d4158…
Read 6 tweets
Amy Maxmen Profile picture
21 Jul
I spent months in SierraLeone during the biggest #Ebola outbreak in history & I've just caught up with doctors I met who are now fighting #coronavirus. Lots of interesting comparisons to that outbreak -- and to the USA -- in my latest piece @NatureNews. nature.com/articles/d4158…
Some African researchers I talked w/were surprised that the CDC—so helpful during #Ebola—seems sorta powerless in the US. “I was shocked to see the US struggling to understand what contact tracing is, to organize a response, to put in place risk communication,” said @NyenswahG.
Another twist is that because many cases are mild or asymptomatic due to the young population in Liberia, SierraLeone & Guinea (3% of people >65), a lot of people might be taking this less seriously than public health authorities wish. (Btw this photo is worth 1000 words.)
Read 5 tweets

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