That bad bet left us scientifically unprepared for the current crisis.
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Christine Dolan is a former Political Director for CNN and is now an Investigative Journalist, for a site called Just the News.
One of her latest reports provides some important context for this year’s response to the coronavirus.
Dolan’s story starts way back, circa 2003…
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To set the stage…
It’s apparent that scientists are still scrambling to:
- Understand the covid-19 coronavirus
- Deploy fast and accurate diagnostic tests
- Calibrate the virus’ susceptibility, potency and magnitude
- Establish effective treatment protocols
- Speed development of therapeutic drugs and vaccines.
According to Dolan’s reporting, it didn’t have to be this way.
Government and private scientists could have taken the lessons and promising indicators gathered from prior coronavirus outbreaks dating to 2002.
After 2002-03 eruption in China of SARS, a coronavirus sister to today’s pathogen, the Chinese Ministry of Health invited scientists, researchers, and doctors to participate in reflective discussions about coronaviruses and what could be done to thwart future coronavirus pandemics.
But instead, the scientific world bet that the next big pandemic would emanate from a more traditional flu and not a coronavirus like Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
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Dolan says: “That bet proved wrong in 2020.”
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Next up: Why the bad bet?
The Homa Files 
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