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The mood in the Biohub was Christmas Eve: never in the unwritten history of nasal swabs had nasal swabs been awaited with such anticipation.
The pattern continued right through the pandemic: the Trump administration would claim with fanfare that supplies were on their way to the states and leave it to the career civil servants whose job was to interact with state officials to reap the humiliation when those supplies failed to arrive. It would happen again with ventilators, with the drug Remdesivir, and, finally, with vaccines. Among other consequences of the White House’s strategy was that it gutted the credibility of the career federal officials.
By 2020 it was not just possible but practical to analyze huge numbers of viral genomes. Back in 2003, Joe had spent a small fortune to sequence a piece of the original SARS virus’s genome. But the cost of genomic sequencing had fallen exponentially. “What cost me ten thousand dollars to do in 2001 now costs a penny,” said Joe.
“The greatest trick the CDC ever pulled was convincing the world containment wasn’t possible,” she said.
“It is not customary for me to write to authors in regard to their books and my reactions to them,” he began, in a private letter to Neustadt, “but, in this case my anticipations of a scholarly work intelligently shedding light on a complex decision-making process were so rudely shattered that I could not resist writing to you to express a personal bitter disappointment.”
Brutal
