1. "He Saw ‘No Proof’ Closures Would Curb Virus. Now He Has De Blasio’s Trust.
The head of New York City’s public hospitals pushed to keep the city open in early March. Now the mayor has put him in charge of contact tracing, deepening a rift with the Health Department."
[Read the paras quoted. It's interesting mostly for what the head of the pubic hospital system, on March 10. To me, this shows that nobody really knew what was right at the time, and probably nobody has blood on their hands. Everyone was largely making an educated, or uneducated, guess. Even now, I wonder what parts of the shutdowns and restrictions helped, and what didn't.]
"As Mayor Bill de Blasio was resisting calls in March to cancel large gatherings and slow the spread of the coronavirus in New York City, he found behind-the-scenes support from a trusted voice: the head of his public hospital system, Dr. Mitchell Katz.
There was “no proof that closures will help stop the spread,” Dr. Katz wrote in an email to the mayor’s closest aides. He believed that banning large events would hurt the economy and sow fear. “If it is not safe to go to a conference, why is it safe to go to the hospital or ride in the subway?” he wrote. And, he said, many New Yorkers were going to get infected anyway.
“We have to accept that unless a vaccine is rapidly developed, large numbers of people will get infected,” he wrote. “The good thing is greater than 99 percent will recover without harm. Once people recover they will have immunity. The immunity will protect the herd.”
For Mr. de Blasio, the arguments in Dr. Katz’s March 10 email, obtained by The New York Times, appeared to hold sway over the calls for greater restrictions on daily life from top Health Department officials, who were alarmed by public health surveillance data pointing toward a looming outbreak.
The mayor did not order major closures, including of schools and restaurants, until almost a week after the email — a delay that epidemiologists say allowed the virus to spread.
The mayor last week shocked the Health Department by taking away its authority to oversee contact tracing, giving the job to Health and Hospitals, the agency overseen by Dr. Katz. It is a monumental task: The city must build and run an army of some 2,500 people to track and trace the close contacts of every infected person.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/nyregion/coronavirus-de-blasio-mitchell-katz.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
2. "Scenes From the Class Struggle in Lockdown
Those who are anxious to open up the economy have led harder lives than those holding out for safety."
"I think there’s a growing sense that we have to find a way to live with this thing, manage it the best we can, and muddle through. Covid-19 is not going away anytime soon. Summer may give us a break, late fall probably not. Vaccines are likely far off, new therapies and treatments might help a lot, but keeping things closed up tight until there are enough tests isn’t a viable plan. There will never be enough tests, it was botched from the beginning, if we ever catch up it will probably be at the point tests are no longer urgently needed.
Meantime, we must ease up and manage. We should go forward with a new national commitment to masks, social distancing, hand washing. These simple things have proved the most valuable tools in the tool chest. We have to enter each day armored up. At the same time we can’t allow alertness to become exhaustion. We can’t let an appropriate sense of caution turn into an anxiety formation. We can’t become a nation of agoraphobics. We’ll just have to live, carefully.
Here’s something we should stop. There’s a class element in the public debate. It’s been there the whole time but it’s getting worse, and few in public life are acting as if they’re sensitive to it. Our news professionals the past three months have made plenty of room for medical and professionals warning of the illness. Good, we needed it, it was news. They are not now paying an equal degree of sympathetic attention to those living the economic story
There is a class divide between those who are hard-line on lockdowns and those who are pushing back. We see the professionals on one side—those James Burnham called the managerial elite, and Michael Lind, in “The New Class War,” calls “the overclass”—and regular people on the other. The overclass are highly educated and exert outsize influence as managers and leaders of important institutions—hospitals, companies, statehouses. The normal people aren’t connected through professional or social lines to power structures, and they have regular jobs—service worker, small-business owner.
Since the pandemic began, the overclass has been in charge—scientists, doctors, political figures, consultants—calling the shots for the average people. But personally they have less skin in the game. The National Institutes of Health scientist won’t lose his livelihood over what’s happened. Neither will the midday anchor.
I’ve called this divide the protected versus the unprotected.
I think it’s fair to say citizens of red states have been pushing back harder than those of blue states.
It’s not that those in red states don’t think there’s a pandemic. They’ve heard all about it! They realize it will continue, they know they may get sick themselves. But they also figure this way: Hundreds of thousands could die and the American economy taken down, which would mean millions of other casualties, economic ones. Or, hundreds of thousands could die and the American economy is damaged but still stands, in which case there will be fewer economic casualties—fewer bankruptcies and foreclosures, fewer unemployed and ruined.
They’ll take the latter. It’s a loss either way but one loss is worse than the other.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/scenes-from-the-class-struggle-in-lockdown-11589498276?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
3. "The Coronavirus Crisis Shows Experts Aren’t Enough
As the pandemic shows, there are no purely technical solutions for problems that demand political leadership."
"The U.S. government’s response to Covid-19 has forced us to ask what role scientific and technical experts should play in making policy. We have become used to the spectacle of President Trump standing before reporters surrounded by a gaggle of doctors and scientific advisers—sometimes deferring to them, sometimes questioning them, sometimes berating them.
But the costs and burdens of the pandemic response have driven some Americans to criticize the power of the public health professionals who designed it. Skepticism of experts and resentment of their claims to authority have grown. There have been calls to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been a prominent counselor to the president. And Dr. Deborah Birx, who leads the White House pandemic task force, has become, in the words of one New York Times report, “a partisan Rorschach test.”
The debate falls too easily into a familiar pattern. The struggle between technocratic champions of expert rule and populist defenders of the common man is an old story in the U.S.
To govern, at least at the level of the presidency, is to make hard choices among competing options with incomplete information. Easier problems are resolved before they ever reach the Oval Office. Neither scientific data nor public sentiments can properly answer the questions that face elected officials. Both are important and must be integrated into the judgments that political leaders make. But neither can substitute for that crucial act of judgment.
The world’s leading epidemiologists at first underestimated the potential of the novel coronavirus to give rise to a catastrophe. Early this winter, Dr. Fauci himself could be heard offering assurances that it was unlikely the pandemic would spread across the globe. At the end of January, Dr. Wang Linfa, a Duke researcher who was a member of the team that discovered SARS, told the medical journalism website STAT that the new virus didn’t seem distinctly dangerous. “It’s too early to say if a SARS-like event will happen,” Dr. Wang said. “But I have a gut feeling it won’t.”
Technocratic government by experts and populist government by public whim are both impossible fantasies. Our elected officials need expert advice when dealing with complex scientific, economic and social challenges. But that advice does not resolve those problems for them. We empower them to judge, to choose and to act in an uncertain world. Expertise informs the work of republican self-government, but it cannot replace it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/experts-arent-enough-11589465220?mod=hp_featst_pos2
4. "After quelling the virus, Asia is facing painful second waves
An elderly woman with no travel history. An unexpected flare-up in a nightclub. A swelling cluster in towns near international borders with no discernible source."
"After containing their outbreaks through measures from strict lockdowns to rapid testing regimes, the Asian economies that have seen some of the most success quelling the coronavirus -- Hong Kong, South Korea and China -- are now facing resurgences that underscore how it may be nearly impossible to eradicate it.
It’s a painful reminder that as countries open up again and people resume normal life, untraceable flare-ups are likely -- even after an extended lull in cases. Scientists have warned that the disease may never go away, because it lurks in some people without causing any outward signs of sickness.
China Seals Off Cities Near North Korea as New Clusters Grow
There’s also suspicion that the cluster could stem from North Korea given the area’s proximity to China’s border with the reclusive nation. North Korea has yet to confirm any Covid-19 infections, but the U.S. military said it suspects there are cases, and Kim Jong Un’s regime has accepted help from other nations to fight the virus.
Bloomberg: https://apple.news/A6S9uD5D2SS2mIUst3pUnbg
5. "Rural America Risks Letting Down Its Guard Just as Coronavirus Is About to Hit
[May 5 Time article.]
"But as the country’s leaders talk of reopening the shuttered economy, it is precisely these regions of the U.S. that are among the most at risk. A TIME analysis of county-level COVID-19 cases shows that the virus is only just now arriving in much of rural America. That means some of these sparsely populated areas could be letting down their guard just as the disease is about to hit."
COVID-19’s arrival in rural America threatens a particularly vulnerable group of people. Many of these regions have an older, poorer population, and fewer hospital facilities and medical staff. Overall, 18 million people live in counties that have hospitals but no ICU, and about a quarter of those people are over the age of 60. In Nebraska, for example, 81 counties don’t have a single ICU bed and quarantining even a few nurses or doctors could quickly leave hospitals and clinics with no medical professionals at all. A recent analysis mapping out the nationwide burden of COVID-19 by scientists at Princeton University concluded that the “per capita disease burden and relative healthcare system demand may be highest away from major population centers.”
Ultimately, the main infection route for rural America is coming from cities, even smaller ones with fewer cases, "
https://time.com/5831319/coronavirus-rural-america/
6. "The focus is shifting from trying to eliminate coronavirus to reducing the risks, a doctor says
The US appears to be changing its strategy from trying to completely eliminate coronavirus to reducing infection risks as the nation reopens, a health expert says."
"In all, 28 states have seen a downward trend, including several that took steps toward reopening relatively early, like Georgia, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Colorado.
A notable exception is Texas, where case numbers are up between 20% and 30% since the state began lifting stay-home restrictions on May 1. Thursday was particularly grim as the Lone Star State recorded 58 new deaths -- the state's highest one-day increase in coronavirus fatalities since the pandemic began.
In all, seven states are still experiencing upward trends in case numbers, while numbers appear to be holding steady in 15 others.
A word of caution: It will take weeks to learn the full health effects of states reopening.
With nearly all states easing social distancing, the nation has now shifted to harm reduction -- which focuses on ways to reduce the risk if it cannot be removed entirely
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released "decision trees" to help workplaces, communities, schools, day cares, camps and mass transit decide when it's safe to reopen.
The six documents posted on its website Thursday provide step-by-step guidance advising employers to encourage social distancing, hand washing and intensified cleaning.
They do not provide any detailed advice on when it would be safe for schools or business to open -- only questions to ask before making any decisions."
CNN: https://apple.news/AJYbuFJodQW2QWBdIrUNIXg
7. "Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling — and where they're not
Coronavirus hospitalizations have declined in many states — another indication that social distancing has been effective at curbing the virus' spread.
[Take quick skim at state hospitalization chart. Interesting. MT is best. 20 states going down; 7 going up.]
Axios: https://apple.news/A0ZYtFGqbQ5OaQpTbmtEJ4A
8. "Coronavirus prompts Boeing to launch 'Confident Travel' initiative to encourage passengers to get back on planes
As coronavirus restrictions begin to ease across the country, Boeing is encouraging airline passengers to get back on planes with its Confident Travel Initiative."
"As coronavirus restrictions begin to ease across the country, Boeing is encouraging airline passengers to get back on planes with its Confident Travel Initiative. The initiative, led by Boeing's vice president of Digital Transformation, Mike Delaney, will "develop new solutions to help minimize air travel health risks" during the coronavirus pandemic and "drive awareness of health safeguards already in place."
The team will advocate for the use of facial coverings, temperature checks and enhanced cleaning procedures on all Boeing airplanes. It will also promote the use of High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filtration systems which, according to the company, are "99.9+% effective at removing particulates such as viruses, bacteria and fungi before air is recirculated back to the cabin."
"If I survey all of our customers and I start here in the U.S., and of course we do...most are trying to dial in a return of about 30 [percent] to 50 percent by the end of this year," Calhoun told "Mornings with Maria". "A lot's going to depend on how the public responds to the safety of airline cabins, etc."
According to preliminary data filed with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. airlines carried just 7 million passengers in March as the coronavirus pandemic spread to the United States, a 51 percent decrease compared to more than 79 million passengers at the same time last year. [I assume April numbers will be much worse.]
Fox News: https://apple.news/AGUw7GMGDQPGyD_bR1tWxBA
9. "Coronavirus contact tracers' nemeses: People who don't answer their phones
Experts say the outreach effort has to be massive, but the public must help."
"Massachusetts, praised by public health officials for being one of the first states to set up a coronavirus contact tracing program, is running into a problem: people aren’t picking up their phones.
When investigators reached out to infected residents and those with whom they came into close contact, more than half of their calls were being ignored, health officials revealed in recent a press briefing with Gov. Charlie Baker.
“If you get a call or a text from your local board of health or the COVID Team, it’s vital you take that call,” Baker said at the May 7 news conference, though state officials said the numbers have since improved.
Starting with people who test positive for COVID-19, tracers, with a series of carefully worded questions, figure out who a person was in contact with a few days before their symptoms started – skillfully reconstructing their schedules from sometimes hazy memories to map out a detailed chain of potential COVID-19 transmission.
They then follow up with that person's close contacts, alerting those who may have been exposed to COVID-19, all without ever revealing the identity of patient zero.
But across the country, the growing number of coronavirus contact tracers are struggling to reach some residents who may have been exposed and, therefore, could be spreading the disease, public health officials in several states told ABC News.
A consequence of endless robocalls
At a time when Americans are bombarded with more than 58 billion robocalls a year, and fraudsters are using the coronavirus to target potential victims in phone calls and text messages, many people are reluctant to field unexpected calls from unknown numbers.
But even if the recipient recognizes a legitimate government entity, sometimes that's a problem too. In some communities, contact-tracing response rates also appear to reflect larger concerns about what health authorities could do with the information they're given.
“Many of the groups that are being hardest hit -- black Americans, Latinos, Native Americans -- have had poor experiences with government officials and many have had poor experience with public health,” said Besser, who also previously served as chief health and medical editor for ABC News.
In some parts of the country, local public health officials are using technology to reach residents who favor other forms of communication over phone calls.
In Chicago, the city launched Chi COVID Coach to allow the health department to communicate directly with Chicago residents via text message, and provide them with resources on testing and symptoms.
“Let’s not make the choice between tech and people, we need both,” Raed Mansour, Director of Innovation at the Chicago Department of Public Health, told ABC News. “In contact tracing, you need to meet people where they are.”
In many places, that has included text messaging for those who are less likely to answer calls."
ABC News: https://apple.news/AtOiWvytcQimDogUIAObG1w
10. "Reopening businesses face a legal minefield of coronavirus claims
Businesses fearing lawsuits from employees, customers and vendors who get ill may be reluctant to open their doors any time soon"
"Unfortunately, if you’re running a small business, lawsuits from reopening could come in many forms. Just by trying to do the right thing, like collecting employee health data, requiring temperature checks or regular testing can expose you to violations of privacy regulations. Not keeping up with every new piece of advice, rule or guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or even your state and local authorities could open the door for claims. And it’s not just your employees that should worry you: as Bradley warns above, it’s also your customers, your suppliers, your vendors – pretty much anyone who walks into your place of business and later tests positive for Covid-19.
What about insurance? According to law firm Ropes & Gray, the coverage may not be there because many general liability insurance policies contain exclusions for liabilities related to infectious diseases. “Even claims may have ‘strike’ value, be persuasive to juries, and could be expensive to defend,” the firm warns.
[T]hree litigation attorneys from the US arm of law firm Womble Bond Dickinson advised assigning someone in your company to be the point person for this issue and getting quickly up to speed on all the rules issued frequently by Osha, the CDC, the World Health Organization and local authorities. This would include taking steps like creating safety protocols, limiting activities where close contact occurs, regularly sanitizing the workplace and closing or limiting access to break rooms and other common areas. The attorneys also advised business owners to closely watch what other companies in their industry are doing and to “over-communicate” their actions to their employees.
Unfortunately, every attorney I’ve asked has admitted that there is only so much a business can do to protect itself without federal help and that the exposure to a lawsuit – frivolous or not – is still significant and potentially expensive to defend. "
The Guardian: https://apple.news/ARLqkPT-2S5-NHp2EmSlgNQ
11. "New York barber who 'illicitly' cut hair for [3] weeks has coronavirus
A New York barber who cut hair over the past few weeks amid the state's coronavirus restrictions has tested positive for the virus, according to health officials on Wednesday."
The barber or barbershop wasn't identified, although Smith said they were operating a shop on Broadway in the city of Kingston -- located about 90 miles north of New York City."
Fox News: https://apple.news/A8BaEMLFfRg6lZaz0TFgEqA
12. "American Airlines Shows Off New Cleaning and Safety Procedures
Seeking to reassure passengers that flying is safe, American Airlines will keep at least 50% of middle seats empty to allow more social distancing and has been deep-cleaning planes after every flight."
"Seeking to reassure passengers that flying is safe, American Airlines will keep at least 50% of middle seats empty to allow more social distancing and has been deep-cleaning planes after every flight.
As passengers enter the airport, they’ll notice extra workers wiping down everything, including chairs, counters and ticket kiosks.
Airline workers wear masks and their temperatures are taken as they arrive.
New plexiglass shields have been installed at ticket counters.
The interior of planes are being sprayed with an aerosol chemical-grade disinfectant in addition to normal cleaning.
“We do our enhanced cleaning with more focus and emphasis on the high-touch-point areas for our customers, which wasn’t done before,” said American Airlines airport services manager Martha Gonzales said. “This is done on every aircraft on arrival.”
While employees must have their temperature checked, the airline does not check passengers.
And while masks must be worn to board, passengers who take them off after taking their seats won’t be challenged if they give a reason for not wearing one, a spokeswoman said.
NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth: https://apple.news/AV4I28eMZQaun4SdPF2-5qg
13. "Job losses have now hit 40% of low-income homes
Thirteen percent of all U.S. adults, or 20 percent of people who were employed in February, were laid off or furloughed."
"One in five American workers lost their jobs in March, including almost 40 percent of those in lower-income households, according to a Federal Reserve survey, underscoring the staggering impact of the coronavirus crisis.
Another 6 percent of all adults worked reduced hours or went on leave without pay,
For those who lost their job or were working fewer hours, only 64 percent expected to be able to pay off all their bills, compared to 85 percent of Americans who didn’t see their employment situation change.
Yet in a sign that Americans are maintaining their optimism, 91 percent of people who lost their jobs or were furloughed said they expected to return to the same employer eventually, suggesting that government efforts to keep workers tied to their current jobs might be working. Five percent in that group had already returned to work by the time of the survey.
Still, the numbers paint a grim picture: 39 percent of employed people in households making less than $40,000 lost their job or were furloughed in March. That compares to 19 percent of individuals in households making between $40,000 and $100,000, and 13 percent of people in households with an income above $100,000, a Fed official told reporters."
POLITICO: https://apple.news/AmmV0r7IpR7Wko6pQDPWFCQ
14. "Sex should be avoided for 30 days after coronavirus recovery: study says
Not so fast, lovers."
New York Post: https://apple.news/AsBt5OVzkRmuroRNvy8-qJQ
15. "Coronavirus deaths top 300K worldwide, but show signs of slowing
The worldwide death toll due to coronavirus topped 300,000 on Tuesday, but the uptick has slowed over the past month, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University."
Fox News: https://apple.news/ARhqL3Wb6SdOhViqKyZznmw
16. "The coronavirus travel crisis shuttered these three US airlines. Will more go under as well?
Regional airlines, which serve smaller communities that are less profitable to airlines than larger cities, were vulnerable before coronavirus."
"Trans States Airlines, a United Express carrier, suspended operations in April. It was followed by Compass Airlines, which flew as American Eagle and Delta Connection. Both are owned by Trans States Holdings.
The third airline ceasing operations is RavnAir Group, based in Anchorage, Alaska, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization last month after 90% of its passenger revenue dried up. Between its three separate brands, RavnAir Alaska, PenAir, and RavnAir Connect, the company provided passenger, mail and freight service to more than 100 Alaskan communities, including remote villages."
USA TODAY: https://apple.news/AjHg6xEVZTP2qLKUHpwT1Nw
17. "3 Oil Stocks That Might Go Bankrupt In 2020
Coronavirus downturn and low oil prices could well be the end of the road for three U.S. energy companies."
[Occidental, Callon, and Chesapeake Energy]
Forbes: https://apple.news/A25Y_Ryk5SO2l1MXD8dvEoQ
18. "Alarming video shows how quickly coronavirus can spread at a restaurant
An alarming video from Japan that used a black light demonstrates how quickly the coronavirus can spread aboard a cruise ship or in a restaurant when just one person is infected. In an experiment conducted by public broadcaster NHK in collaboration with infectious disease experts, 10 people were asked to serve themselves as usual at a buffet, according to Forbes. Invisible fluorescent paint — visible only under a black light — was applied to the palm of one of the subjects, who was tapped as the as the “infected” person and coughed into his hand. The paint represented the deadly pathogen.
All the participants were allowed to enjoy the buffet for half an hour.
The diners are seen touching various utensils to grab food as they interact with each other and the “sick” individual in their midst.
At the end of the feasting, the room goes dark and ultraviolet light is emitted to show how the invisible paint spread almost everywhere, including silverware, dishes, glassware, clothes and cellphones."
[Video in 2d link. I think I may have had this one in yesterday's report.]
New York Post: https://apple.news/Ag_IncwXUQ3y4xazt0OahkQ
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/black-light-experiment-shows-quickly-203232507.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tL3NlYXJjaD9laT11dGYtOCZmcj1hYXBsdyZwPWJsYWNrK3ZpZGVvK29mK3NwcmVhZCtpbityZXN0YXVyYW50&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKjokNOOyfAoTkBUrKARV_hmMZ2Rt31nvrolhU7EDoVaCZRrrSHCPI
19. "Sweden Stayed Open. A Deadly Month Shows the Risks.
Sweden’s outbreak has been far deadlier than those of its neighbors, but it’s still better off than many countries that enforced strict lockdowns."
[This headline is a bit misleading, as Sweden compares well to most European countries, but not as well to Norway, Denmark and Finland.]
"How Sweden compares
More than Sweden
Less than Sweden
COUNTRY PCT ABOVE
NORMAL EXCESS
DEATHS TIME PERIOD
United Kingdom
+67% 53,300 Mar. 14 - May 1
Spain
+60% 31,500 Mar. 16 - May 3
Belgium
+50% 5,300 Mar. 16 - Apr. 19
Netherlands
+50% 8,700 Mar. 16 - Apr. 26
Italy
+49% 24,600 March
France
+44% 28,500 Mar. 16 - Apr. 26
Sweden
+27% 3,300 Mar. 16 - May 3
Switzerland
+24% 2,000 Mar. 16 - May 3
Portugal
+15% 1,300 Mar. 16 - Apr. 12
Austria
+11% 1,000 Mar. 16 - Apr. 26
Germany
+6% 4,100 Mar. 16 - Apr. 12
Denmark
+5% 300 Mar. 16 - May 3
Norway
+0% <100 Mar. 16 - Apr. 26
Finland
+0% <100 Mar. 16 Apr.26"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/15/world/europe/sweden-coronavirus-deaths.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
20. "Why Are Women-Led Nations Doing Better With Covid-19?
A new leadership style offers promise for a new era of global threats."
"Germany, led by Angela Merkel, has had a far lower death rate than Britain, France, Italy or Spain. Finland, where Prime minister Sanna Marin, 34, governs with a coalition of four female-led parties, has had fewer than 10 percent as many deaths as nearby Sweden. And Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, has presided over one of the most successful efforts in the world at containing the virus, using testing, contact tracing and isolation measures to control infections without a full national lockdown."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/coronavirus-women-leaders.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
21. "New Coronavirus Vaccine Czar Says Finding One by January Is a ‘Credible’ Goal
Moncef Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive the White House chose to lead a crash development program, acknowledged that the 12-18 month timeline cited by Dr. Anthony Fauci was already “very aggressive.”
"The former pharmaceutical executive picked this week to lead a crash program to develop a coronavirus vaccine said Thursday that developing and mass-producing a successful vaccine by January 2021 is a “credible objective,” but acknowledged it would be difficult.
Moncef Slaoui, a former chairman of vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline, who is heading the program, conceded in an interview that even the time frame repeatedly cited by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci as necessary for developing the vaccine, which President Trump has rejected, would still outpace what many scientists believe is possible."
“Frankly, 12-18 months is already a very aggressive timeline,” Mr. Slaoui said. “I don’t think Dr. Fauci was wrong.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-timeline.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
