Federal government must step up in fight against COVID-19, says infectious disease expert

Northwestern University infectious disease expert Dr. Robert Murphy says the entire country must use the same tactics to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, or our efforts will fail.

Murphy’s comments came in a March 24 COVID-19 webinar hosted by Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs in which he outlined what we can and should be doing to combat the pandemic. He used predictive modeling to provide estimated timelines for how long the pandemic could last. 

Centralized action from the federal government – similar to Japan’s interventions – is imperative to fight the outbreak in the United States, Murphy said in the webinar. Statewide interventions will not be enough.

“If the whole country doesn’t act the same, it’s not going to work,” said Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. 

After the webinar, Murphy weighed in on President Donald Trump’s recent statements that the U.S. should lift social distancing restrictions by Easter Sunday.

“Before we lift any restriction on travel and social distancing, we need to see a significant decrease in the numbers of new infections, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths,” Murphy said. “This must be done in the context of a highly aggressive COVID-19 screening program. We are going in the right direction, but the numbers will tell the story. No one should be surprised if this takes several cycles of shelter-in-place directives.”

Murphy is not available for media interviews but media are welcome to watch a recording of the webinar, which is available on Buffett’s YouTube page. Additionally, some quotes from the Q&A session of his webinar are below. 

Quotes from Dr. Murphy: 

Expected length of time for social distancing:

Q: If we follow best practices of social distancing, how long would this be necessary to get us through the epidemic? 

Murphy: “That’s the question of the hour. It’s definitely not 15 days. … If we stop most of the interventions or leave it up just to the states (to enact interventions), I think we’re in a lot of trouble and this thing’s going to last for 12 to 24 months. If we all get on the same page, I think we could start seeing a decline in the early to middle summer.”

Centralized action from the government is imperative: 

Q: By ‘getting on the same page,’ you mean at the national level, not at the state level, is that right? 

Murphy: “Yes, at the national level. With open borders between the states, you can’t have one state have a lockdown and the other states not locking down. We don’t have a central plan. There is nobody leading this charge. The people that are making some of the very fundamental public health decisions are not public health experts. … If that continues, we’re in big trouble.

“It’s basically a war without a general. We need all these pieces to be working together. The governors don’t have the ability to martial the industrial forces that a president would have. So the governors have their hands basically tied. They’re out there basically just competing with each other.” 

Q: Why have Japan’s death rates been so much lower than in other regions, such as Italy?

Murphy: “The thing in Italy is … the lack of central control in the whole intervention efforts. The Japanese are more attuned to taking central direction and everyone operating on the same page. Italy has really demonstrated the opposite. You have shelter-in-place rules and quarantines going on and then a group will have a giant dinner together celebrating that they have a decrease in the number of infections, and then the whole thing starts over again. The data are really quite stunning. To their credit, I think they’ve finally put some teeth in their rules. If the whole country doesn’t act the same, it’s not going to work.”