Azar just released a delusional, alternative history of Covid testing in the US. I’m mad because our testing failures allowed this outbreak to blow-up. We can’t fix our system if we ignore where it is broken. I suspect @PublicHealth agrees.

My fact-check on remarks @HHSGov 🧵
“It is indisputable that the United States has built the most extensive testing system and strategy of any major country,” says Azar.

False. Several countries have had percent positivity ~1% whereas US has never been below 5% and is >10% today. Refs KCDC & USA @JohnsHopkins
"The federal government got out of the way of test development in safe and sensible ways,” says Azar.

False. In Feb, CDC & FDA blocked labs from testing as the disease spread exponentially. I broke this story👇🏼& wrote more like it as the year wore on. nature.com/articles/d4158…
Azar defends questions about why the CDC refused an early German test vetted & distributed by WHO, by saying it was ‘unapproved’ & beneath us.

False. Top US researchers in my stories vetted several tests as early as Feb,& found that the one recommended by WHO was ideal.
Azar refuses to concede that other countries handled Covid better. He attributes Koreas success to less travel, invasiveness & private sector.

False. Korea's gov't marshaled the private sector & tracing success was largely from hiring tons of tracers. nature.com/articles/d4158…
Here's a nugget of truth. The FDA held back academic labs from testing, and have been unclear. Researchers testing like @srikosuri @UrnovFyodor may be interested in this part of the discussion.
Azar asserts "There is a myth out there that, if only we’d had a superior testing system, we simply could have caught any cases and isolated them."

False (except for it being simple). Any outbreak specialist tells you that early days matter most. That's THE time for containment.
I need to get back to work but the speech goes on. I'll try to return to this later. In the meantime, here's my piece with @jefftollef about testing failures and why they matter so much. nature.com/articles/d4158…
CONTINUED. Azar thanks the private sector for reaching hard-hit communities & not grassroots organizations that have been absolutely essential (eg my piece on @RootsEmpowers 👇🏼). Azar says public sector couldn't do this, further undermining their power. nature.com/articles/d4158…
"The United States needs a federal testing strategy, which we have," Azar says. False.

He then goes on to concede that maybe there could be a "more prescriptive federal role about how testing is used." As in surveillance vs diagnostic. I agree & hope Biden's team does this.
Azar says rapid tests would have been impossible in the early days of the pandemic "because of the technological development that had to happen."

FALSE. We have technology for the quick development of rapid tests. See @sabeti_lab @RanuDhillon or nature.com/articles/d4158…
Ah, and here, 8 paragraphs to the end is a kernel of truth that seems to negate Azar's absurd defense that more testing wouldn't have helped. FIN.

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More from @amymaxmen

14 Jan
First 20 min of this delusional evaluation of the Trump Admin's response to Covid is all about blaming China, with some vitriol for WHO. "If a novel virus like this emerged in a Democratic nation, this epidemic would have never happened," says Azar.

So much for lessons learned.
As Covid spread in March, Azar says the government acted swiftly to control spread (they definitely did not). He says the key driver of the pandemic -- ready for it -- was thousands of Chinese workers flying to Italy.
Azar says it's a myth to say that if we had a better testing and surveillance system we could have curbed the virus in February.

(Why is this session even called 'lessons learned'?)
Read 5 tweets
31 Dec 20
I've reported on the ground from many epidemics, but this is the first one I'm really living through. A 🧵 of memories to follow...

For me, this got real when I met @HelenChuMD in Seattle on March 1 2020 -- Day Zero in the US. nature.com/articles/d4158…
That month, my stories documented my disbelief. How big was the underground US outbreak? nature.com/articles/d4158… Where was contact-tracing? nature.com/articles/d4158… And WTF! Labs had thousands of tests going unused because of a lack of a national strategy. nature.com/articles/d4158…
In contrast to the US, many low income countries were scaling up tests, building isolation centers, & enforcing quarantines BEFORE THEY EVEN HAD A HANDFUL OF CASES.

They don't have the luxury of relying on hospitals to care for floods of patients. nature.com/articles/d4158…
Read 11 tweets
30 Dec 20
Incredible story behind the #Ebola drug "Ebanga" approved today by the FDA. fda.gov/drugs/drug-saf…

In 1995, Congolese Ebola discoverer @MTamfum treated Ebola patients with blood from survivors, despite being told not to by the CDC & WHO. 7 of 8 survived. nature.com/articles/d4158…
The NIH failed to replicate his findings in monkeys, but @MTamfum, "Professor Muyembe", didn't give up. “There should be a truth in here,” Muyembe told me.

He hired one of the survivors in his lab & convinced him to fly to the NIH in 2006, along with his sister & a grad student.
At the NIH, the student & other researchers isolated the survivors' antibodies. These antibodies became the basis for an experimental drug, mAB114, that @MTamfum pushed to test in the 2019 outbreak. It was HARD to conduct this trial. nature.com/articles/d4158…
Read 6 tweets
12 Nov 20
☹️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.
Read 5 tweets
11 Nov 20
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
26 Oct 20
✈️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

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