Scripps EVP Eric Topol: Government thought COVID-19 wouldn’t come to US, not science

Scripps Research executive vice president Eric Topol has said that some of the leading US government officials were in denial that SARS-CoV-2 was going to come to the country.

A nonprofit US medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences, Scripps Research has more than 200 laboratories employing 2,400 scientists, graduate students, technicians and administrative and other staff. It is the largest private, non-profit biomedical research organization in the US and among the largest globally.

Eric Topol, who is also the founder and director of Scripps’ Translational Institute, was talking to CNBC journalist and host Tyler Mathisen at CNBC‘s Healthy Returns summit on Tuesday.

According to the interview’s unofficial transcript that US and Global News received from NBCUniversal, the owners of CNBC, Mathisen had asked Topol why the US has been hit so hard and so much.

“Good to be with you, Tyler and Julie,” responded Topol (Merck chief patient officer Julie Gerberding was also being interviewed by Mathisen).

“I think the main issue is that we were so far behind the outbreak. So, instead of getting the testing in gear even before it arrived in the U.S. with the first patient January 21st, we were basically paralyzed for at least a month and a half; and at the same time, of course, we know South Korea mobilized, they got testing going right away, and they got in front of the outbreak. So if you just look at that and you look at all the other countries in the world that were successful, and there’s over 20 of them, the common theme is that they got testing going early, they had containment, and they wound up with much better outcomes. So we’re at the main, I think, breakdown that led to everything else was just never getting any sense of containment, letting the virus run rampant through the U.S., diffuse spread; and you know, we’re living with that now, unfortunately.”

Mathisen then asked, “So I guess that leads me to a question, Mr. Topol, about science and government working together. And I would love, Julie, to hear your thoughts on this as well. Generally speaking, what you just pointed to would be either a failure of science or a failure of government to react quickly enough, or a failure for the two of them to agree and coalesce around a strategy. So talk to me about that and whether science and government — let’s focus here on the United States — have been working well together. Eric?”

“Well, I guess I would start and say that our government wasn’t working because it was — it knew that we needed the tests, but even though they were failing and they were contaminated, there was no back-up plan and so we were caught flat-footed,” replied Eric Topol.

“And, in fact, other countries started testing randomly, even before there was a patient in their country. Iceland is notable, but several others, as well. So we were totally unprepared. We were in a state of denial; that is, some of our leading government officials, that this wasn’t even going to come to the U.S., which was, you know, remarkably naive. So the science — I mean, any epidemiologist would know that this was going to come, come to the U.S., and we just had no readiness whatsoever. And the inability to test for what really turned out to be a couple of months just let this just go like a wildfire through the country.”

Image credit – Lahtah (CC BY-SA 4.0)