The COVID-19 death toll continues to grow and increase faster than expected. As of this today, the pandemic has already infected 594,280 and killed 27,250 people globally with the United States having the most number of confirmed cases, 102,338 to be exact, and Italy, the most number of deaths which has reached to 9,134.
With these figures, here comes the question, why the US did not take precautionary measures a couple of months ago to prepare. However, a lot of warnings were already relayed from journalists to doctors, to the 'intel' community.
And, just on March 26, a New York magazine article written by David Wallace-Wells indicated that Eric Feigl-Ding, a Harvard University-associated epidemiologist aggressively sounded the alarm but sadly, his warning alarm was not heeded by the US officials.
Earlier on, specifically on January 20, Feigl-Ding posted on Twitter, a thread warning of how fatal "a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic could become."
More so, the things that served as a warning for Wallace-Wells about the thread have come to pass.
He explained, "We are inarguably" in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and "it took three months" for the infectious disease to reach the number of confirmed cases to 100,000 globally.
Ten more days, the number climbed to 200,000, only four more days, it reached 300,000, and three more, the figure increased to 400,000."
ALSO READ : Chance Missed: Bill Gates Says Businesses in the US Now Need to Remain Closed Due to COVID-19
Prediction Came True
As early as January, COVID-19 was already widespread in Mainland China but had yet to cause thousands of deaths in Iran and Europe or Iran. And, in relation to this, the epidemiologist knew what he was talking about. He even wrote on his Twitter thread that a new coronavirus "was a 3.8."
In science, this means, the said virus was to reach the "thermonuclear pandemic" level. An RO value talks about how fast an infection can spread.
Indeed, Feigl-Ding warned by stating that the pandemic the world is currently experiencing now, "had a 3.8 RO value" and that each person infected with it could transfer it along to nearly four others.
Also in this thread, the scientist forecasted that in China, specifically in Wuhan, COVID-19 would substantially be larger by February 4 and that the infection would be developed in the other cities in China. More so, he predicted that importations to other nations would be more frequent.
Following these predictions, the NBC News reported on February 11 that Mainland China's death toll from COVID-19 had reached over 1,000. Additionally, Feigl-Ding made a comparison between this pandemic and the other coronaviruses.
As a result, he asserted that COVID-19 had a higher "basic reproductive number" compared to the other developing coronaviruses. He also suggested that control or containment of this pathogen may be considerably more difficult.
Total Lockdown of Wuhan Also Predicted
Part of the prediction Feigl-Ding tweeted was that a 99-percent lockdown control of Wuhan would not lessen the spread of the epidemic by even one-third in the next couple of weeks.
He also added on his Twitter post, that the world is potentially faced with probably an unimpeded pandemic that it has not seen since the Spanish Influenza in 1918.
Meanwhile, Wallace-Wells emphasized that the science expert's warning had been publicized widely, probably, the high death tolls specifically in Iran, Spain, and Italy, three of the countries COVID-19 hit the hardest, could have been prevented.
If this epidemiologist, he wrote, or anyone who had the same alarm level had been running response of the pandemic in any of countries mentioned on January 20, each one of them at present, would be infinitely "better off," has commenced, at the very least, similar testing protocols, production of ventilators, personal protective equipment (PPE) and social-distancing measures the whole world is now hoping for and "scrambling to produce."
