📑 The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming

Bookmarked The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming (Wired)

Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who warned of pandemic in 2006, says we can beat the novel coronavirus—but first, we need lots more testing.

Steven Levy speaks with Larry Brilliant about responding to the coronavirus. He talks about hope for an antiviral for Covid-19 that is curative, but in addition is prophylactic. Brilliant explains what is required for the world to look normal again:

The world is not going to begin to look normal until three things have happened. One, we figure out whether the distribution of this virus looks like an iceberg, which is one-seventh above the water, or a pyramid, where we see everything. If we’re only seeing right now one-seventh of the actual disease because we’re not testing enough, and we’re just blind to it, then we’re in a world of hurt. Two, we have a treatment that works, a vaccine or antiviral. And three, maybe most important, we begin to see large numbers of people—in particular nurses, home health care providers, doctors, policemen, firemen, and teachers who have had the disease—are immune, and we have tested them to know that they are not infectious any longer. And we have a system that identifies them, either a concert wristband or a card with their photograph and some kind of a stamp on it. Then we can be comfortable sending our children back to school, because we know the teacher is not infectious.

via John Naughton

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