What we learned since the first U.S. case was confirmed

Exactly one year ago today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first case on U.S. soil of a new coronavirus scientists were then calling 2019-nCoV.

Since then, the country has recorded more than 24 million cases and more than 400,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, and a new president takes office amid warnings that the pandemic will get worse before it improves.

But public health experts, doctors, scientists and leaders from industry and government say the past year has taught us a lot about the virus — and how those lessons can be applied to try to slow the pandemic now.

Their takeaways ranged from findings about the virus itself, and how it spreads — remember when we were all Clorox-wiping our groceries? — to reflections on our own behavior, and how it’s condemned us to ever-increasing infection rates.

Some, from former National Security Council member Dr. Luciana Borio and Operation Warp Speed chief Moncef Slaoui, emphasize the importance of partnering early with industry. Others say the past year proves the promise of our biomedical technologies can be realized quickly – if only they’re well-enough funded.

Here are their thoughts.

Predictions in the spring about the virus’s course warned it could resemble the patterns of the 1918 influenza pandemic: a milder first wave, followed by a much deadlier second one in the fall.

The autumn of 2020 did ultimately bring with it a feared larger wave of coronavirus cases, but it wasn’t after a uniform trough through the summer as originally expected. Mid-July saw a peak at about 76,000 cases as the virus swept across Florida, Texas and Arizona.

By that time scientists already had a handle on what makes this virus so damaging, experts said, as learnings developed rapidly in the first few months.

“In early January of last year, we were told there wasn’t human-to-human transmission,” said Brown University’s Dr. Megan Ranney. “Once we realized it did spread [person-to-person], we thought it spread like flu… we thought we had to be worried about droplets and fomites.”

That all changed, Ranney said, “by the time we got through that first horrible Northeastern wave.”

The fact that transmission is “more airborne than we originally thought, less surface than we originally thought” has important “implications for prevention recommendations,” said Emory University’s Dr. Carlos del Rio. Hence: masks and avoiding large gatherings indoors.

But scientists also learned this virus is trickier than others; the fact that it strikes some fatally while silently infecting…