The news about a new strain of Covid was enough to spook the stock market, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffering its largest one-day decline this year on Friday. The concerns hit energy, travel and hospitality stocks especially hard, and for good reason: If political leaders react as they have in the past. travels will be restricted, meaning less gasoline, diesel and aviation gas will be purchased; on-premise establishments will be shut down or told to slash the number of people they serve and there will be fewer passengers on airlines and trains.
So we watched with interest an extremely good interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor and the head of the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases. He acknowledged he and other public health experts blew it early on in the pandemic. They thought it was another influenza-like virus, and so they were telling people to follow the normal prevent-the-flu precautions they normally recommend.
But the Covid virus is something entirely different: 40% of those who have Covid display no symptoms but are major carriers and sources for spreading the disease. With the flu and other similar diseases this is not the case, he said. If you’re sick, you and everyone else knows it.
That means, he acknowledged, that what was needed then is needed now: Massive testing, with contact tracing for all positive cases. Unfortunately, that wasn’t done then, and isn’t being done now. We will never control the spread of the disease if we cannot identify and isolate those who are positive