COVID V. Capitalism
10th April 2020
Someone who had specific information that the CDC did not was Dr. Helen Y. Chu, an expert in infectious diseases in Seattle. In an excellent New York Times news story on March 10, reporters Sheri Fink and Mike Baker tell the tragic tale. As a result of her months-long research in the flu, Dr. Chu and her colleagues had a collection of nasal swabs from people experiencing symptoms. She spent weeks trying to get permission from state and federal officials to test the swabs for the coronavirus. They turned her down. The CDC told her on February 16 that if she wanted to use her test as a screening tool, she would need permission from the Food and Drug Administration. But because of regulations put in place by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the FDA could not approve. Finally on February 25, in desperation, she and her colleagues did the tests without approval. And bingo: she found a positive test for a teenager who had not recently traveled. But for the regulation, she could have known this weeks earlier. And did the FDA see the error of its ways and give her credit? No. Dr. Scott Lindquist, Washington state’s epidemiologist for communicable diseases, says, “What they [the CDC and the FDA] said on that phone call very clearly was cease and desist to Helen Chu. Stop testing.”
As often happens, government is the problem, not the solution; the people we hired to fix such problems just make them worse.