Africa-Press Ethiopia
My daughter, my wife and I were sitting in the airport of Frankfurt, Germany on Feb. 1 on a layover between Ethiopia and flying home to Boston. We were completely puzzled by what we were seeing: The airport was full of Chinese people who were carrying cases of surgical masks onto their planes returning to China. We had been in Ethiopia more than two weeks and were not following world news. The outbreak of a new virus in China was not on our minds.
About four hours into the flight back to Boston, I was called for a medical emergency. An 80-year-old man who had serious heart disease was extremely sick. He was very hot to the touch, was severely short of breath, and I could feel with my hands the rattling in his lungs. Even with the crew administering oxygen, his blood oxygen level was dangerously low. I sat with him and did what I could for the remainder of the flight until we got him on an ambulance on arrival in Boston. He went off to Massachusetts General Hospital, in retrospect a ticking biological bomb.
About 10 days later, my wife got sick and was ill for about five weeks. We thought she picked up a tropical disease from Africa as COVID was not yet on anybody’s mind. We sought consultation from an infectious disease specialist who thought instead that she had some kind of a virus. Weeks later, she tested positive for COVID-19. Two of my staff members became ill around the same time as my wife, one of whom lost her sense of smell and taste for about a week. I never had symptoms.
The first reported cases of an unusual pneumonia in Wuhan were on Dec. 31, 2019. The government of China quarantined Wuhan and locked down internal flights in that country on Jan. 23, though international carriers were urged to maintain their regular schedules.
I have harbored suspicions that the Chinese government was either negligent or intentional in allowing international flights out of China when they had locked down internal flights to control the virus spread within China. However, I have found documentation that international flights out of Wuhan were also shut down by the Chinese on Jan. 23. My guess now is that the Chinese had hoped they had bottled up the disease in Wuhan and that they were as unprepared for this as was everybody else.
By early February, virtually all international airlines had canceled flights in and out of China. On Jan. 31, President Trump announced his total travel ban with China, though American nationals were still allowed to fly in from China afterwards to 11 American airports. These arrivals were screened at each of these airports and then for 14 days.
Recent studies have found COVID-positive blood samples from mid-December in California, Oregon and Washington. There are similar positive blood tests from January from Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. The first reported case in the U.S. was in Washington on Jan. 19. It seems as if the virus was here earlier than previously believed and that the horse was out of the barn well before anyone saw it coming.
We are now in a spike of coronavirus cases. As of this writing, total American cases are 16,519,668 with a total mortality of about 302,992. Two vaccines are approaching availability. The rapidity of this science is astounding. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are similar. Both have been shown to be 95% effective (which is impressive given that influenza vaccines are 40 to 50% effective). Both require two vaccinations separated by three to four weeks, and each company is expected to have 50 million doses available by the end of December.
In their clinical trials, both vaccines have been found to be safe, with patients followed for two months after the second vaccination. There are minor side effects associated with both vaccines. Fatigue was the most common. Other side effects noted include muscle pains and headaches. Side effects were short-lived and happened more frequently after the second dose.
I’m frequently asked in the office by my patients if I will take the vaccine. My arm is already out, and my sleeve is rolled up. And I hate needles.
