COVID19 DAY 14 (7.4.2020)

ELABORATING DR. BRILLIANT

I must point out the Dr. Brilliant’s interview was carried by the American news journal ‘Wired’ and taken on phone by Steven Levy on March 19, 2020. A condensed version was reproduced on the website of ‘Seva-Canada’.( https://www.seva.ca/news/doctor-who-helped-defeat-smallpox-explains-whats-coming ).Seva is an organisation that Dr. Brilliant helped form and which helps in fighting pandemics.

There are a couple of points that he made in the interview that needs to be highlighted so that we can make an informed guess about how long this atmosphere of uncertainty lasts and the world finds its feet. The first is on whether lockdown by itself can end the pandemic. Dr. Brilliant’s answer is ‘no’. The lockdown will spread out the disease over time. “By slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine—which we will, because there's nothing in the virology that makes me frightened that we won’t get a vaccine in 12 to 18 months,"feels Dr. Brilliant. Eventually the human species is going to get "herd immunity"from a combination of two two things - a large enough number of people get it and develop immunity and second, the development of a vaccine. So, the time frame at which he is looking is between a year and a year-and-a-half for things to begin to normalise. He sums up the situation with a metaphor, "If this were a tennis match, I would say advantage virus right now." So there has to be increased testing and early detection and early response to eliminate the virus completely.  

The second point that he makes is the potential damage due to the irresponsible comments by the American President. “But did we get good advice from the president of the United States for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax. There are still people today who believe that, to their detriment. Speaking as a public health person, this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime." But he holds out hope, particularly for Americans that they have a man like Dr. Antonio Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Communicable Diseases, in-charge of matters.