Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
“It’s the first time, to our knowledge, that a wild animal has gotten sick from COVID-19 from a person.”
— Paul Calle, D.V.M., Chief Veterinarian, Bronx Zoo, New York City, N. Y., April 5, 2020Click for report.
“There’s no way to confirm any of China’s numbers. There’s lots of public reporting on whether the numbers are too low.”
— Robert C. O’Brien, U. S. National Security Adviser, Washington, D. C., April 3, 2020, NYT
“What we now know about the outbreak in China is largely because of the work of Chinese journalists and netizens who refused to be silenced. Over 41 investigative reports by journalists have been deleted and banned.”
— Bradley Thayer, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, University of Texas-San Antonio, April 3, 2020Click for report.
“Please don’t take hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) plus Azithromychin for COVID-19 UNLESS your doctor prescribes it. Both drugs affect the QT interval of your heart and can lead to arrhythmias and sudden death, especially if you are taking other meds or have a heart condition.”
— Edsel Salvana, Ph.D., Infection Diseases Physician and Molecular Biologist, Republic of Philippines, Tweet on March 21, 2020
“We’re making a faithful replica of the virus packaging that holds everything together. The idea is to figure out what makes this virus fall apart, what makes it tick, what makes it die.”
— Michael Vershinin, Ph.D, Physicist, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
“It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus. … the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone (not manmade).”
— Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., Assoc. Prof. and Dir. of Infectious Disease Genomics, Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology, Scripps Research, La Jolla, Calif.
“It’s not a matter of if, but when, we will deal with an asteroid collision threat on Earth.”
— Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator, NASA’s Science Mission DirectorateClick for report.
“The magnitude of this crisis is extraordinary and federal-state-local government coordination will be more critical than ever before.”
— Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, March 19, 2020
“Tonight our responsibility is to save as many lives and flatten that COVID-19 curve. This is an act of love.”
— Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles, California, March 19, 2020
“States should not provide numeric values (of rapidly increasing unemployment claims) to the public.”
— Gay Gilbert, Administrator, Labor Dept. Office of Employment Insurance, Washington, D. C.Click for report.
“When you look at the number of people that are projected that may need ventilators, 2,000 doesn’t really put much of a dent into it. The key thing is the private sector, the manufacturing side, whoever makes medical machines of this type. How do you prime that pump to get production up? Because we are simply not going to be able to meet the demand if the demand fits some of the profiles as we’ve seen in the CDC brief.”
— Mark Esper, U. S. Secretary of Defense, The Pentagon, March 17, 2020
If Iranians fail to follow stricter government guidance now, “it could collapse Iran’s already-strained medical system and cause 4 million coronavirus cases and 3.5 million deaths.”
— Afruz Eslami, M. D., Iranian State Television, March 17, 2020Click for report.
“Several tests of remdesivir in lab animals infected with the MERS coronavirus have researchers still hopeful when it comes to the new coronavirus. In studies in both rhesus macaques and mice, remdesivir protected animals from lung damage whether the drug was given before or after infection. … It may also have utility for related coronaviruses such as the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV” that emerged from Wuhan, China.
— Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 13, 2020Click for report.
“I am officially declaring a national emergency, two very big words. I’m urging every state to set up emergency operations centers effective immediately.”
— Donald Trump, President of the United States, March 13, 2020Click for report.