<p>President Trump held a press conference Wednesday evening following a disturbing announcement from the CDC: the coronavirus is coming to the United States.</p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Live updates confirm more than 81,000 cases worldwide, but reports suggest the outbreak in China may be <strong>up to 10 times worse</strong> than officials are reporting.</span></p>
<p>On Tuesday, officials from the CDC warned parents to anticipate school closures and other <span class="s1">“significant disruptions&#8221; to everyday life. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Dr. Nancy Messonier, head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease, urged businesses to anticipate using telephone or video conferences instead of in-person meetings and said that hospitals might consider adding more Telehealth services. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more, but a question of when this will happen,” said Messonier. “Now is the time for businesses, hospitals, communities, schools, and everyday people to begin preparing.”</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The CDC’s grim warning coincided with the Democratic primary debate in South Carolina, during which several candidates criticized the Trump Administration’s response to COVID-19.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">President Trump said his Administration was “doing a great job” and predicted the Democrats would call his Administration “incompetent” even if the virus “disappeared tomorrow.”</span></p>
<p class="p1"><strong><span class="s1">In the meantime, experts at the National Institutes of Health are preparing to conduct clinical trials for a vaccine. </span></strong></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">“We need to be able to think about how we will respond to a pandemic outbreak,” says Dr. Fauci, an infectious disease specialist at the NIH. “It’s very clear. If we have a global pandemic, no country is going to be without impact.” </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">A clinical trial does not mean you have a vaccine, added Fauci. “In order to get a vaccine that’s practically deployable for people to use…it’s going to be a year to a year and a half at best.”</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The term “pandemic” refers to a disease that continues to spread from person to person in multiple areas of the world simultaneously.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely, it has,” says WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet.”</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Author’s Note: </b>Everyone expected China to lie about this and we were impressed when they appeared to come clean about COVID-19 in January. </span><span class="s1">Now that we know China was lying, doctors throughout the world will need to adjust their strategies and gather additional resources to prevent a pandemic. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">And let’s not forget that Wuhan &#8211; the center of the outbreak &#8211; is home to two major bioweapons laboratories. These are the same labs now leading research and prevention efforts. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><strong><span class="s1">If it turns out COVID-19 escaped from one of these labs, all hell will break loose.</span></strong></p>