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A few weeks ago, federal officials were struggling with how to defend America against the threat of coronavirus.
The president created a coronavirus task force team and tried to figure how they could get Americans out of Wuhan.
It led to a ban on Chinese travelers and safely getting Americans off infected cruise trips.
But as the virus started to spread worldwide from late January into early March. A large-scale of testing for people who may have become infected by the virus did not happen.
There was a lack of leadership on multiple levels, technical flaws, and business-as-usual bureaucracies.
The New York Times spoke with more than 50 current and former public health officials, administration officials, senior scientists and company executives to get a better understanding of where things went wrong.
This lack of test resulted in America experiencing in a lost month. In a country filled with some of the best trained scientists and infectious disease specialists, there was not enough done early on that could've prevented guidelines getting worse.
America is looking at more than 100,000 coronavirus cases and has become the epic center of the world. The President of the United States has warned Americans that we must prepare for the worst to come in the next couple of weeks. Cities are shut down, the economy is falling apart and everyday life has been halted.
Over three million Americans have filed for unemployment and more are filing daily.
Despite this all and the extension of social distancing guidelines, Americans who have been made sick by the virus are still unable to get tested.
And that is where the real issue occurs.
“You want to know whether or not you have it,” Dr. Aylward said. “You want to know whether the people around you have it. Because you know what? Then you could stop it.”
“You can’t stop it,” he warned, “if you can’t see it.”
Symptoms can take days to arise and people are potentially exposing others to the virus without knowing it. Hospitals are only admitting or testing people with severe symptoms leaving Americans with mild symptoms with recommendations to self-isolate.
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