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From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX,

0:25

this is Reveal. I'm Al Letzen.

0:28

It's 2008 and Jessica

0:30

Malade Rivera's friends all

0:32

think she's a spy or some kind of secret

0:35

agent.

0:36

I was not a spy. I kept trying

0:38

to say like guys I'm just a nerd that

0:40

works at a university on a really really

0:42

dorky

0:42

but important project. She's

0:44

living in DC. She leaves

0:47

early every morning and comes home

0:49

late at night. She speaks multiple

0:51

languages, Arabic, Spanish, English

0:54

and some Portuguese and she can't talk

0:56

about what she does during the day. Jessica's

0:59

working on something called Project Argus.

1:02

Project Argus was named after Argus,

1:04

the 100 eyed giant in Greek mythology,

1:07

the one who can see all things.

1:08

Project Argus is

1:10

at Georgetown University and

1:13

its main clients are the intelligence community

1:15

and the Department of Defense. Our

1:17

job at Project Argus was to track

1:20

and identify these early warnings

1:22

of emerging infectious disease outbreaks and

1:25

my colleagues and I covered about 50 different

1:27

languages and every morning we would read

1:30

new sources from all over the world

1:32

looking for keywords like overwhelmed

1:34

hospitals or mass hysteria.

1:37

They're trying to stop

1:39

the next epidemic from happening. In 2009

1:42

they began noticing strange

1:44

activity on a pig farm in Mexico

1:47

and reports of an influenza like

1:49

illness among the farmers there.

1:51

And it escalated quite quickly.

1:53

There were a number of animals,

1:55

you know sick pigs on a farm and

1:58

farmers that were sick too.

1:59

And by piecing these kinds of clues together,

2:02

we alerted them that something was happening

2:05

in central Mexico. That something

2:07

turns out to be swine flu, also

2:10

known as H1N1. They

2:12

move faster than the World Health Organization,

2:16

identifying the first cases of swine

2:18

flu in 42 countries.

2:20

We begin with swine flu, now

2:22

widespread in 46- This is ground zero in

2:24

the swine flu outbreak. La Gloria,

2:26

a remote Mexican farming village at the world-

2:28

spread to the US with more than 13,000 cases and

2:32

more than 25 deaths. The bad news is that in

2:34

five months, it's become the world's dominant

2:36

flu strain. Infections have been reported in Canada,

2:39

the United States, Mexico, Israel,

2:41

Spain- Jessica and the Project

2:43

Argus team help alert the world to

2:46

the dangers of swine flu, and the

2:48

early warning helps slow its spread.

2:51

But then, in 2013, the federal government pulls

2:55

the funding for Project Argus. Jessica

2:57

and her colleagues feel like the country

2:59

is more vulnerable as a result.

3:02

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter

3:04

of when. It was like a matter of time

3:06

for the next global pandemic. If

3:08

you're not being Argus with 100 eyes, looking

3:12

all over for emerging threats, you're

3:14

not gonna see it until it hits you in the face.

3:18

COVID-19 has spread to more than two

3:20

dozen countries. We're deeply concerned,

3:23

both by the alarming levels of

3:25

spread and severity, and

3:28

by the alarming levels

3:31

of inaction.

3:32

Anyone who shows symptoms of the illness will

3:35

not be allowed on the plane. We can't slow

3:37

down the numbers. The trajectory is continuing

3:39

to go up. The breaking news stay at home.

3:42

That is the order tonight from four state governors

3:44

as the coronavirus pandemic spreads. New

3:47

York, California, Illinois, and Connecticut

3:49

all ordering non-essential employees to

3:51

stay home. It's

3:56

been three years.

3:58

Since the pandemic

4:01

shut the country down, more than

4:03

a million people have died from COVID

4:05

in the US alone. If you just

4:07

slow down to think about that

4:10

number,

4:11

it's devastating.

4:13

And the thing is, it didn't

4:15

have to be this bad. If

4:17

we had real, accurate public health

4:19

data,

4:20

we could have saved lives. The

4:23

US accounts for just 4% of

4:26

the world's population, but 16%

4:29

of the world's known COVID deaths. Our

4:31

growing frustration this morning over the shortage

4:34

of coronavirus tests in the United States.

4:36

Not enough test kits are available

4:38

to local medical centers.

4:40

There is clearly

4:42

a lack of information. The

4:45

fight against pandemics is won

4:47

and lost with data because in the simplest

4:49

terms, if you know who's sick, you

4:52

can isolate them and treat them. With

4:54

so few tests here and elsewhere, knowing

4:57

the actual number of infected people,

4:59

not just the people who have died, but the actual number of people

5:01

who are infected, that's impossible right now because

5:03

there's just not enough tests, not enough people have been tested.

5:07

And as the pandemic spiraled out of control,

5:09

Jessica kept waiting for the federal government

5:12

to step in.

5:13

I just kept thinking, where is the

5:15

CDC? They weren't releasing numbers

5:17

about how many people were sick or hospitalized

5:20

or dead from the virus. And I finally

5:22

got to the point where I was like, if they're not

5:24

gonna provide the information, then who is?

5:26

Jessica was looking

5:29

for answers and she wasn't alone. That's

5:31

how she linked up with a group of scrappy volunteers

5:34

who banded together to collect COVID-19

5:37

data on their own. They called

5:39

themselves the COVID Tracking Project.

5:42

They built unlikely alliances

5:44

with government insiders and became

5:46

the nation's trusted COVID data resource

5:48

relied upon by the White House, the Biden

5:51

campaign and newsrooms across the US.

5:54

We partnered with members of the COVID Tracking

5:56

Project

5:56

to investigate the federal government's response

5:59

to COVID. and to understand America's

6:01

ability to combat the next

6:03

pandemic. Epidemiologist

6:06

Jessica Malady Rivera will be our

6:08

guide throughout this series.

6:14

It's late February, 2020. Rob

6:17

Meyer and Alexis Madrigal are working

6:19

as reporters at The Atlantic. They're

6:21

following the news about COVID coming out of China,

6:24

and they both have this sinking feeling that it's

6:26

worse than the Trump administration is letting on.

6:29

So Rob and Alexis start texting articles

6:32

to each other constantly. The

6:34

real moment that I remember being like, oh,

6:37

like this is coming for us. Rob must have

6:39

sent it to me, or I came upon a guy named Trevor

6:41

Bedford, a genomic epidemiologist.

6:44

Alexis texts Rob immediately. I

6:46

was just like texting with Alexis about this thread.

6:48

I remember where I was when I read that blog post. I had just

6:51

done some yoga, and

6:53

I was lying on my yoga mat. I was

6:55

getting the shower. I pay my phone, I see it,

6:58

I read it. The shower was running, and

7:00

I was about to get in the shower. And I

7:02

was just like, oh.

7:07

Alexis and Rob are frozen in place,

7:10

reading the thread. So Trevor Bedford,

7:12

he tweeted, the team

7:15

at the Seattle Flu Study has sequenced the genome.

7:17

The

7:17

COVID-19 community case reported yesterday

7:20

from Shinomish County, Washington, and have posted the

7:22

sequence publicly. Here's the gist of what they found

7:24

so terrifying. The tweet said

7:26

that the first case of COVID in the US

7:28

was reported in Seattle on January 19th.

7:32

It was a person who had just come back from China. Six

7:35

weeks later, another person in Shinomish

7:37

County, just outside of Seattle, tests

7:40

positive. There are some enormous implications

7:42

here. Rob's reading from Bedford's tweets. This

7:44

case, WA2, is on a branch in

7:46

the evolutionary tree. They want to know, are these

7:48

two cases linked? The first reported case

7:51

in the USA, which is sampled January 19th.

7:53

They discovered that the recent case is

7:55

genetically related to the first one in

7:57

January. He said this strongly suggests

7:59

there has been... transmission in

8:01

Washington state for the past six weeks. Which

8:04

means that COVID has likely been spreading

8:06

in the US for six weeks, undetected.

8:09

And basically what he showed was that

8:13

SARS-CoV-2 was like everywhere. It

8:15

was not just that the CDC was

8:18

a few days late

8:19

setting up big testing sites in Seattle.

8:22

It was that the CDC was six

8:24

weeks late understanding the entire

8:26

spread of the pandemic in the United States. And

8:28

we had no idea how many people were infected. There

8:30

were just undoubtedly tens of thousands

8:33

of more people who were already infected and we were just

8:35

waiting to find out.

8:42

Alexis's first thought is to warn his

8:44

family and friends that the virus is here

8:46

and it's deadly. That was probably the hardest

8:49

time for me, I would say. Like that was

8:51

kind of the only time during all this when I was like crying

8:54

on a regular basis. In

8:57

part because I couldn't get

8:59

people to listen to me.

9:02

Like my parents were still like

9:04

my dad was still going to work, he was still going to the club

9:06

and I was like, dad, stop,

9:08

you know. And I finally, it was the only

9:10

time I ever yelled at my parents too, it was just like, stop,

9:14

you gotta stop, you don't know where this

9:16

is going to hit. It's

9:20

a Monday morning in early March and everything

9:23

feels heavier. Rob walks

9:25

to work through Northwest D.C. taking his

9:27

usual route to the Watergate building where the Atlantic's

9:29

office is. He's not even

9:31

sure he should be going in anymore. He

9:34

sits down at his desk and sends a message to Alexis.

9:37

So I slacked him on March 2nd, 2020 and

9:40

was like, dude, we should really write some

9:42

big sweeping corona takes. People

9:45

do not get it

9:47

with not in all caps. And he was like,

9:49

I spent all weekend off about this.

9:52

And I actually first proposed to Alexis that we just look

9:54

at the public reporting and say,

9:56

this is a huge emergency. The

9:59

Trump administration is completely blowing this and

10:01

the Atlantic's response

10:04

was, you

10:06

can't write that. It's not just about

10:09

attacking the Trump position you need to publish new reporting.

10:12

They're both frustrated. Alexis

10:14

needs to vent. So he types up a message.

10:17

And I

10:21

said, meaning to DM

10:23

Rob, that I felt

10:26

like the Atlantic editors

10:28

were not

10:30

seeing the gravity of the situation,

10:34

possibly with slightly cruder language

10:37

all throughout.

10:38

It's the kind of venting you do with your friends, but

10:40

definitely not your bosses. He

10:43

means to send the message privately to Rob

10:45

on the Atlantic Slack. But Alexis

10:47

accidentally sends it to everyone at

10:50

the Atlantic Newsroom. I mean,

10:52

when I hit Enter and realized what

10:54

had happened, I

10:58

was pretty

11:01

bad. At that point, I

11:03

just was like, well, I guess I gotta double

11:05

down. It's not like I kinda raced and pretended it didn't happen.

11:07

So I doubled down and said, listen, I

11:10

didn't mean to post that here. And I didn't

11:13

mean to put it in quite these terms. But we're

11:16

not responding to this as the crisis

11:18

that it is.

11:19

So my feeling was if the Atlantic

11:21

wasn't gonna let us write a

11:23

piece about how bad things were, we

11:25

needed to do our best to find a piece of information

11:27

that would let people understand how

11:30

bad it actually was.

11:32

The next day, they cycle through every

11:34

tweet and web page from the Centers for Disease Control

11:37

and Prevention. They listen to press conferences

11:39

and webinars about public health. And they

11:41

can't find anything that might sway their editors

11:44

about the urgency of the COVID situation. Then,

11:47

Alexis notices something strange

11:49

on the CDC website.

11:50

Alexis Slack, he's like, the

11:52

CDC has really changed how they're reporting the statistics.

11:56

They'll add some numbers, then they'll drop

11:58

them.

11:59

went to having the minimum amount of information.

12:03

Rob decides to tune into a CDC

12:05

press conference to see if they say anything

12:07

about why the government keeps making changes

12:10

to how it tracks COVID data.

12:11

Hello, and thank you all for joining

12:14

us today for this briefing to update you on

12:16

CDC's COVID-19 response.

12:19

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of

12:21

CDC's National Center for Immunization

12:23

and Respiratory Diseases, is running the press

12:25

conference. The mood is serious.

12:28

Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining

12:30

us. She had been in the news over the last week

12:33

for speaking up at a previous presser about her

12:35

fears about COVID. In that media

12:37

call, she surprised her colleagues at the CDC

12:39

and Trump by saying she thought COVID would

12:42

change daily life. Trump was

12:44

furious. The stock market dipped

12:46

immediately after. So at this press

12:48

conference, Rob wonders what she might say.

12:51

I just want to mention

12:51

that we are no longer reporting

12:54

the number of PUIs or patients

12:56

under investigation, nor those who

12:58

have tested negative. With

13:00

more and more testing done at states,

13:03

these numbers would not be representative

13:05

of the testing being done nationally. States

13:09

are reporting results quickly, and in the

13:11

event of a discrepancy between CDC

13:13

and state case counts, the state

13:15

case counts should always be considered

13:18

more up to date.

13:19

Like, we don't think we have the up-to-date numbers anymore.

13:21

You should go to the states for these numbers. And

13:24

it was framed as very much like, the

13:27

states are in charge, like we've given

13:29

the test to the states.

13:31

Rob feels like this is the key detail.

13:34

The CDC appears to be taking no responsibility

13:36

for telling the public what's happening with COVID

13:39

testing. The states have the data,

13:42

not the CDC.

13:48

Alexis is at home in Oakland, California. He's

13:50

with his family in the kitchen, making

13:52

dinner for his kids. He's just finished

13:54

the workday.

13:55

So it's March 4. My phone rings.

13:57

It's Rob. And he basically says,

14:00

He says, like, dude,

14:02

like, imagine that we're reporters

14:06

on the Army Corps of Engineer beat, and

14:08

it's like three days before Katrina. Like what

14:10

the are we doing? This is insane.

14:13

Why are we not doing more? Because

14:16

we're both so frustrated and angry

14:18

and scared at that point.

14:20

I said to Alexis, like, we're really staring down

14:22

something catastrophic.

14:24

And so what can you do

14:27

in that situation?

14:28

What possible information do you try

14:31

to get?

14:31

Rob and Alexis know it's coming. Infection

14:35

rates are about to surge, and people will

14:37

die.

14:37

So I finished making dinner for the kids, and I go outside,

14:40

and I'm like, it's tough. Like I've

14:42

got the kids already. I already know that I'm

14:45

going to pull them from school. And I'm

14:47

just thinking like, oh, man, like, I'm

14:49

just trying to figure out the logistics of life right

14:52

now.

14:53

I was like, all right, Rob, what do you want to do?

15:00

My proposal to him when I called him was like, we

15:02

need to start asking state public health agencies how many

15:04

have been tested and printing the Refuel to comment if

15:06

they don't tell us. He's like, this is

15:08

the most important number for the

15:10

country, for the world, maybe. We

15:13

know there's only at the time, there are only a handful of cases

15:15

that have been confirmed in the United States. But

15:18

what does that number mean? Does it mean there's only

15:20

a handful of cases? Or does it mean we haven't

15:22

tested anybody so we haven't been able to confirm

15:24

that people have COVID? If we try to get numbers

15:26

from states like the CDC has told us

15:29

to do,

15:29

they will obviously be incomplete. And

15:32

then this will force the Trump administration to

15:34

release them. Let's split up the states

15:37

and then just email 25 each. And

15:39

so we start doing it that night. We can write

15:41

a form email. It will be very fast.

15:44

We broke up the states, made a spreadsheet.

15:47

We'll have a little Google Doc where we keep track

15:49

of this. Let's see, so let me check here real quick. Most

15:51

of them will refuse to respond. And that's

15:53

fine. We'll do form email.

15:56

The email that we wound up sending to states was,

15:59

I'm Alexis Madrigal.

15:59

I'm Robinson Meyer, a staff writer at The Atlantic.

16:02

We've been tracking the coronavirus outbreak very

16:04

closely and have some questions about testing. We

16:07

have three factual questions that we're asking state

16:10

public health officials across the nation. One,

16:12

how many people have been tested in

16:14

your state, total? Two, how

16:16

many people have tested positive? Three,

16:19

how many people can your state test per day? Thank

16:22

you. My deadline is Thursday at 10 a.m. Thursday

16:24

at 10 a.m. Thank you so much. Last edit was made

16:27

on March 4th, 2020 by Robinson Meyer.

16:31

I think the morning of a March 5th, I was even

16:34

like, well, that was a lark. I

16:37

sent out all those emails last night. I'm

16:39

not going to get any back. But Alexis started

16:41

getting responses almost immediately. Good

16:44

morning, Alexis. Good morning, Rob, in answer to your questions.

16:47

At this time, there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19

16:50

in South Carolina. Please see the... How many people have been

16:52

tested in Iowa, total? Eight. We

16:54

currently have the capacity to perform 80 to 100 tests

16:56

per day. Florida, positive

16:58

cases of COVID-19. There were nine.

17:01

Pennsylvania, at this time, the state lab can

17:03

test 20 to 25 specimens per day. Arkansas,

17:06

how many people can your state test per day? Four

17:08

to five people. Utah. Michigan has 86

17:10

people. Massachusetts. Delaware has tested

17:13

nine people. And we started to get enough responses

17:15

back where it was like, wow, you know, we

17:17

can start to say that

17:20

America's testing capacity is really

17:22

low. We put it together. The number

17:24

was tiny. We basically moved in the

17:26

course of an hour from, well,

17:29

maybe there's probably nothing there to like, oh

17:31

my gosh, we're sitting on national news. I need to publish

17:33

immediately. So then around 6 15 p.m.,

17:36

we showed up in our editor's slacks like,

17:40

hi, guys, you didn't know this, but for

17:42

the past 24 hours, we've emailed every state

17:44

in the country. And now we're sitting on national news and

17:46

we need you to help us publish the story immediately

17:49

to which our editors

17:50

were like, what? And

17:53

of course, we were like, we

17:56

need to publish. And on March 6th,

17:58

we published this story, which is like.

18:00

We can only confirm that fewer than 2,000

18:03

people have been tested for COVID in the United States.

18:07

Okay, so today, these two

18:09

great reports of the Atlantic did a lot of like shoe-leather

18:12

reporting, but they reported the following. We

18:14

can only verify that 1,895 people have been tested

18:16

for the coronavirus in the United States. The

18:20

Atlantic Magazine is reporting that... An investigation

18:23

by the Atlantic... ...published by the Atlantic on Friday...

18:25

The Atlantic could only verify that 1,895

18:27

people... ...have

18:30

been tested for the coronavirus in the United States. ...have been

18:32

tested for the coronavirus in the United States. ...have been tested

18:34

for the virus nationwide. And it

18:36

was basically,

18:38

as we were publishing the story,

18:40

all hell started to break loose in America, and

18:42

people started to realize what was really happening,

18:45

which was that there were tons

18:47

of infected people. You started to

18:49

get these stories of like people getting sick with

18:52

COVID-like symptoms, just whole

18:55

groups of people starting to get really, really sick,

18:57

particularly in New York.

19:02

The

19:03

virus starts taking hold in

19:05

big cities and nursing homes, but

19:07

public health officials still don't know

19:09

how many people have it or where

19:11

it's headed next.

19:12

We need to have testing. I mean, we

19:14

need to have testing available everywhere.

19:17

After the break, Dr. Deborah Birx,

19:19

White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator,

19:22

takes the fight for testing data to Washington.

19:25

So I wore my most

19:27

military-looking outfit that I

19:29

could find in my highest heels and

19:32

went to work. You're

19:34

listening to Reveal.

19:45

This series was funded in part by Tableau

19:47

from Salesforce. As the world's leading

19:50

analytics platform, Tableau helps you

19:52

connect the dots between data, insights,

19:54

and better business outcomes to make decisions

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at the speed of change. Salesforce,

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the global- CRM leader empowers

20:01

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20:04

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more at Salesforce.com.

20:14

I know, I know it's hard. You wait all

20:16

week for this podcast and then it's

20:18

over and you find yourself wanting more.

20:21

Let me make a recommendation.

20:24

The reveal newsletter. It goes behind

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20:41

From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX,

20:44

this is Reveal. I'm Al Letzen

20:47

and I remember when the first cases

20:49

of COVID started appearing in the US.

20:52

I was scared for my loved ones,

20:54

for me, for the world. And

20:56

I had so many questions like how

20:59

do we protect ourselves? Does masking

21:01

help? Where are the outbreaks? How

21:03

many people are sick? How many have

21:06

died? Early

21:08

in the pandemic, the federal government

21:10

found itself unable to answer many

21:12

of those basic questions. Public

21:15

health scientists like Jessica Molotti Rivera

21:18

were watching this unfold knowing

21:20

that accurate information, especially

21:22

testing data, was crucial.

21:24

Here's Jessica. Before

21:28

COVID, the US was ranked the world's

21:30

best prepared nation to confront a pandemic.

21:33

During previous outbreaks like Ebola or Zika,

21:36

you'd go to the CDC website for the most up-to-date

21:39

information.

21:40

But this time, it was different.

21:43

It begged the question, why were journalists

21:45

the first to compile accurate nationwide

21:48

COVID testing data? And why

21:50

were they doing what the CDC or the White

21:52

House Coronavirus Task Force should be doing?

21:55

That's what COVID Tracking Project producers Artis

21:57

Turiskis and Kara Oler wanted to know. Great.

22:00

Okay, this is where I'm supposed to go, right? Yep. Okay.

22:03

Up the hill? Up the hill and to the right. Good.

22:06

So on a hot day in June 2022, they

22:09

drive to the home of Dr. Deborah Burks in Washington,

22:11

D.C.

22:12

And this is her house in the

22:14

corner. Is that her den? Yes. Oh,

22:16

so many flowers! Dr. Burks

22:18

was the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus

22:21

Task Force during the Trump administration. She

22:23

was on the news most days early in the pandemic.

22:26

She was even spoofed on Saturday Night Live. Hello,

22:29

I'm Dr. Deborah Burks, Coronavirus

22:31

Response Coordinator. There's one

22:33

sketch where a cast member playing Dr. Burks

22:36

talks about her decades of experience in

22:38

infectious diseases and HIV research,

22:41

and how the media mainly focuses on her vast

22:43

collection of scarves. I'm on the front

22:45

lines of this pandemic, synthesizing

22:48

critical, dense information so

22:50

that the public can digest it. And

22:52

your takeaway is, wow,

22:55

that lady sure has

22:56

a lot of scarves. Or

22:58

you might remember Dr. Burks from an infamous press

23:00

conference, the one in April 2020, where President

23:03

Trump suggests that disinfectant might be a cure

23:06

for COVID. And I think you said you're going to test

23:08

that too. It isn't. Right, and then I see the

23:10

disinfectant where it knocks

23:12

it out in a minute, one

23:14

minute. And is there a way we can do something

23:16

like that by

23:19

injection inside or

23:23

almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets on the lungs

23:25

and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.

23:27

So it'd be interesting to check that so that you're going

23:29

to have to use medical doctors with. But

23:32

it sounds interesting to me.

23:34

Dr. Burks is sitting to the right of the president, hands

23:37

clenched together in front of her with a stoic look.

23:40

The camera is zoomed in on her face. As

23:43

he continues to speak, she stares straight

23:45

ahead, looking very uncomfortable. She

23:48

takes some deep breaths.

23:49

A person that has

23:51

a good, you know what, Deborah, have

23:53

you ever heard of her? And when he turns to her and

23:56

asks if she's heard of heat and light

23:58

as a treatment, she says, not

24:01

as a treatment. But

24:04

no one remembers that part. Dr.

24:13

Brooks's home is in a quiet neighborhood in DC. The

24:16

front garden is lush with violet hydrangeas.

24:19

Hi! Hi, Kara. Hi,

24:22

Kara. Artists. Artists. Great to

24:24

meet both of you. Thank you. Your garden is beautiful. Dr.

24:27

Brooks brings Kara and artists inside and walks

24:30

them to a wood-paneled room with bookshelves full

24:32

of presidential memoirs and scientific

24:34

literature about infectious diseases. She

24:36

tells them she has every COVID book that's been published.

24:39

And in case you're wondering, she's not wearing one

24:41

of her signature scarves.

24:42

Should we stay this far apart?

24:45

Is it okay to be closer with the mic? This

24:47

is pandemic journalism. Everyone stays

24:50

six feet apart. Dr. Brooks

24:52

is wearing a pink KN95 mask. No

24:54

one in this household has gotten COVID, so we take

24:56

all of our precautions seriously. Thank

24:59

you so much for having us here today. Yeah, yeah, no, I

25:01

tested this morning too, so I'm like a

25:03

tester. In January 2020,

25:06

Dr. Brooks is in Johannesburg, South Africa.

25:09

She's running PEPFAR, a program coordinating

25:11

the response to HIV AIDS in Africa.

25:14

She was nominated for the job by President Obama.

25:17

When news about COVID starts

25:20

to spread, Dr. Brooks is doing what she can

25:22

to help leaders prepare. So

25:24

she invites two former colleagues to speak with

25:26

African ambassadors. Those

25:28

colleagues are now well-known to most Americans,

25:31

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who she calls Tony,

25:34

and Dr. Robert Redfield, then director

25:36

of the CDC.

25:37

She calls him Bob. I had

25:39

Tony and Bob come because

25:42

I thought, I mean, I was sure

25:44

that we were doing what we were doing was right domestically,

25:47

and I wanted them to talk about it. Tony

25:49

talked about where we were with working

25:53

on therapeutics and working on vaccines,

25:55

and Bob talked about tests. So

25:57

I'm thinking

25:59

everything is covered. I'm thinking they've

26:01

got this. But then she wonders,

26:03

do they have this? The US

26:05

response is less thorough than she expects.

26:08

She's seeing news about temperature screenings at

26:11

airports. You know the ones that they point

26:13

at your forehead? And I'm like,

26:15

oh, that's gonna do nothing.

26:17

Nothing. I mean, that's not gonna work. They

26:20

should be testing at airports.

26:22

Dr. Burks worries that without testing, public

26:24

health officials will miss the asymptomatic cases,

26:27

meaning people who have COVID but

26:29

don't have obvious symptoms, like a fever.

26:32

And then she sees news out of Japan about

26:34

a COVID outbreak on a cruise ship.

26:36

Hold an update now on the coronavirus

26:39

outbreak. And then I see

26:41

the Diamond Princess. Ten people on the

26:44

Diamond Princess cruise ship have

26:46

tested positive for coronavirus. The 3,700

26:50

passengers and crew are now under

26:52

mandatory quarantine for two

26:55

weeks.

26:55

And they isolated all

26:57

of the passengers, but obviously not the

26:59

crew. Yet the virus, you

27:01

could see it spreading. Protective

27:03

isolation was extended only to

27:06

Diamond Princess passengers. Its crew

27:08

continued going door to door.

27:10

And I'm like, oh my God, they're not testing

27:12

the crew. And the crew, being younger,

27:15

are the asymptomatic

27:17

spreaders. This is right at

27:19

the beginning of February 2020. Case

27:21

numbers continue to rise on the ship, even

27:23

though passengers are isolated. And

27:25

so I'm thinking

27:28

that this is the evidence base for

27:30

asymptomatic spread, really clearly

27:32

documented. I'm writing Bob about getting

27:34

people off the ship. Because I'm like, oh

27:37

my God, everybody's going to get infected.

27:39

Dr. Brooks is sure that the crew is spreading

27:41

the virus. But the only way to really know

27:44

is by testing. And in those

27:46

early days, we didn't diagnose anybody,

27:49

really. That was asymptomatic because

27:53

there weren't enough tests. She figures

27:55

the CDC is planning to launch a massive

27:58

U.S.-wide testing program.

27:59

But then, right before Valentine's Day,

28:02

some bad news hits about tests. And

28:04

now to another story we continue

28:07

to follow tonight, the deadly coronavirus.

28:09

A slight setback when it comes to bracing

28:11

for the deadly coronavirus here in the U.S.

28:13

The CDC is remaking part of its coronavirus

28:16

test kits.

28:16

The CDC is redoing part, remaking

28:19

part, reformulating portions of test

28:21

kits that were flawed.

28:23

When the testing issue

28:26

developed in the CDC, everybody

28:29

was focused on the contamination.

28:30

The CDC says that some of the test

28:33

kits sent out to labs in states were

28:35

defective. The agency says many of the kits

28:37

have produced inconclusive... Inconclusive... Inconclusive

28:40

results. But I wasn't focused

28:43

on that. I was focused

28:45

on the fact that they were only shipping these

28:47

tests to public health labs. And

28:49

my siren went off.

28:51

State labs will have to wait until

28:53

replacement components are shipped out

28:56

by the CDC. And that's when

28:58

I was like, oh my God, they're

29:00

using the flu model. And then I

29:02

kept hearing all these references to flu

29:05

on the national news. And I'm like, oh,

29:07

this is really, we're in so much

29:09

trouble right now.

29:14

Flu tests are run by public health labs

29:16

around the country. Most states have

29:18

one of these labs, just one. In

29:21

Dr. Brooks' mind, using the flu model

29:23

for COVID-19 means testing a small

29:25

percentage of people and using estimates

29:27

to represent the spread of the virus throughout entire

29:30

states

29:31

and even the country. Also,

29:33

flu tests are for people who are sick. Dr.

29:36

Brooks thinks we should be giving COVID tests to people

29:38

without symptoms too.

29:40

She knows that we need real case data, not

29:42

estimates.

29:43

We don't know precisely how

29:46

and when and where this virus is going to

29:48

spread first. And you're isolating our

29:51

eyes. We don't have eyes on this virus.

29:53

You've created holes in

29:56

our surveillance system.

29:58

She thinks the CDC should work with private. private

30:00

labs to create millions of tests. Busing

30:03

only public health labs makes it impossible

30:05

to fully know who has the virus. The

30:07

state labs only cover a small fraction.

30:09

Diagnostic kits are going out to about 100 regional

30:12

centers now. They're getting help from public health labs

30:14

that are part of a flu monitoring system nationwide

30:17

to serve as an early warning if the coronavirus

30:20

does show up. Public health labs across

30:22

the country will soon begin testing people. Public

30:24

health labs across the U.S. Public health labs across

30:27

the country that meet CDC standards.

30:29

I would be screaming at the television

30:32

in South Africa saying, oh

30:34

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't test just

30:36

through the public health laboratories because

30:39

they don't have high throughput platforms. I

30:42

mean, they're made for really small scale

30:44

outbreaks.

30:47

What we really needed was for testing to be available

30:50

everywhere.

30:56

Dr. Birx, who was still in Johannesburg,

30:59

writes to Matt Pottinger. He's Trump's

31:01

deputy national security adviser. Matt

31:04

is concerned too. They begin texting

31:06

back and forth. She says things like,

31:08

hey, I'm not seeing movement on testing.

31:11

What is going on? Where are you getting

31:13

the data? You know, I'm talking to Matt

31:16

about the testing issue and getting people

31:18

off the Diamond Princess. And he keeps calling

31:21

me and saying, they're not listening to me.

31:24

I'm not an MD. I'm not a public

31:26

health expert saying you

31:28

just have to come. You just have to come. And I was

31:30

like, I don't want to come. She

31:33

thinks that if she joins the Trump administration, it

31:35

might end her career. She might never

31:38

work in public health again. I mean, I

31:40

knew what it meant to go into

31:41

that particular White House, but I also

31:43

knew how bad this was going to get. But

31:46

Matt keeps asking. Matt's

31:48

wife, Ing, is also a close friend. They

31:50

had worked together back when Dr. Brooks was at the CDC.

31:53

She gets in touch too.

31:54

Ing wrote me and said, as

31:57

a mom, you know the threat to our family.

32:00

families and the country is our

32:02

family and our patient

32:04

at this time and you've got to come back. Matt

32:06

doubles down and calls Dr. Brooks again.

32:09

I tell Matt, fine, add

32:11

my

32:11

name to the list. For what?

32:14

I don't even know what it is. It's

32:16

volunteering to come

32:19

back and help them with the COVID response

32:21

at the federal level. I had no idea what it was. No

32:24

idea. I mean, there was no,

32:26

nothing beyond show up Monday morning.

32:31

While Kara and artists are interviewing Dr. Brooks,

32:33

she has to pause to take a Zoom call. Thank

32:37

you, thank you. So they have a chance to

32:39

catch up with her husband, Paige Reef, in

32:41

the kitchen. Paige worked for

32:43

President Clinton. He and Dr. Brooks

32:46

got married right before the first COVID case

32:48

emerged. They

32:49

were newlyweds when all this was happening. Paige

32:51

remembers the moment she decided to join the COVID response.

32:55

She called him. She was in South

32:57

Africa. She wasn't here. And

32:59

she called to say, listen, I

33:02

got a call. And

33:04

she said he said basically the one thing

33:06

that he knew would make me say yes.

33:10

He said, I was a Marine. You were in the army.

33:14

Your country needs you. And

33:16

that's when she said, Matt, we both understand that this

33:19

is a terminal event in my career. Your

33:21

country needs you. And

33:23

then she flew home and basically went into

33:25

full mode. She

33:27

got on a plane from South Africa. She got home on Sunday morning.

33:30

She was at the White House on Monday morning. And

33:32

then her lives changed forever.

33:43

Good afternoon. We just

33:45

finished the Monday meeting of the White House Coronavirus

33:49

Task Force.

33:49

Then I go back and look at all

33:52

our pandemic preparedness plans.

33:54

So I'm reading the whole 24 hours

33:57

coming back on the plane. And

33:59

the plan does.

33:59

doesn't really have space

34:03

for dramatic expansion

34:05

of tests or data. Dr.

34:08

Deborah Birx will be on our

34:10

team and even on her first day

34:12

she's already been contributing significantly.

34:15

I knew when I flew back that day

34:17

I had to say to myself it doesn't

34:19

matter what they say about you. Dr. Birx serves

34:21

as the U.S. government's leader today for combating

34:23

HIV AIDS globally. Nobody

34:26

else on the task force except for Tony

34:28

is a political, I mean

34:30

I knew I was going to

34:32

be in a very deep hole. Thank

34:35

you Mr. Vice President, it's a pleasure to be here.

34:37

I just arrived from South Africa last night. So

34:41

I wore my most military

34:43

looking outfit that I could find

34:45

in my highest heels and

34:47

went to work.

34:48

I'm trying

34:50

to get up to speed as fast as possible and I

34:52

look forward to the days I've had really working

34:54

together to end this epidemic. Thank

34:57

you. I

34:59

assumed that there was data. I mean I

35:01

thought okay well when I get there I'll

35:04

meet with Bob and I'll see all the data.

35:07

I just believed that there had to

35:09

be real U.S. data and

35:12

I go to that

35:13

first task force meeting Monday morning

35:15

and out comes a double-sided

35:17

excel sheet with

35:21

cases on it. That's what the

35:23

CDC produced and I was like what?

35:26

So I meet with Bob afterwards and said well

35:29

okay that's what you presented at task force. Where's

35:31

the rest of the data? Where is the data

35:33

down to the county level, the

35:36

community level?

35:38

They didn't have that data. What

35:41

did you say back to him? Well

35:44

I looked at him and just said

35:45

Bob we have data

35:48

on every single person who is

35:50

tested, their test results, their

35:52

referrals. In Sub-Saharan

35:55

Africa are you telling me we don't have this

35:57

here?

36:00

Dr. Brooks and her team have a system

36:02

for knowing every single person who has been

36:05

tested for HIV on the entire continent

36:07

of Africa.

36:08

And she's shocked that the CDC isn't doing something

36:10

similar for COVID. And

36:13

so that whole week, I'm

36:16

really worried because now I realize we

36:18

not only have to create tests and a communication

36:21

plan and an action plan, a full response

36:24

plan, but now I have to

36:26

create data streams.

36:34

Where is the COVID data? That

36:36

same question was nagging at Alexis

36:38

and Rob, the Atlantic reporters who

36:40

we heard from earlier. Coming

36:43

up, they take it upon themselves

36:45

to track testing and infections

36:47

across the entire country, pulling together

36:49

COVID data with help from an army of

36:52

volunteers. If we hadn't thought the

36:54

world was ending, you know, it was like, it would have been a really cool

36:56

thing to watch. That's next

36:58

on Reveal.

37:17

Hello, listener. My name is

37:19

Najee Bhamini and I am a producer

37:22

here at Reveal. Reveal

37:24

is a nonprofit news organization

37:26

and we depend on support from our listeners,

37:29

listeners like you. Donate

37:31

today at RevealNews.org slash

37:34

donate. It helps fund the stories

37:36

that

37:37

we tell and helps me

37:39

feed my cat. So thank you.

37:46

From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX,

37:49

this is Reveal. I'm Al Ledson.

37:53

Today, we're taking you back to the beginning

37:55

of the pandemic when information

37:58

was scarce. data

38:00

about infection rates, hospitalizations,

38:02

and deaths was critical to controlling

38:05

the spread of COVID-19. But

38:07

the CDC wasn't releasing it. We're

38:10

trying to figure out why. Epidemiologist

38:13

Jessica Malati Rivera of the COVID Tracking

38:15

Project brings us back to the moment

38:18

when reporters from the Atlantic broke the first

38:20

big story about the lack of testing

38:22

data in the US.

38:29

Rob Meyer and Alexis Magical, the journalists

38:32

you heard from earlier in the show, published

38:34

their article about the lack of testing in the US

38:36

on March 6, 2020.

38:39

Right after the story goes live, Alexis

38:41

gets a message. We hit publish on

38:43

the story. Me? I don't know. 10, 20 minutes

38:46

later, I check my email, and I have an email

38:48

from a guy named Jeff Hammerbacher.

38:50

So Jeff Hammerbacher was like an old,

38:52

old friend of mine. He was kind of like one of these

38:55

funny guys who was like a super jacked baseball

38:57

player, but low key was

39:00

actually a massive aunt. Just super

39:03

brainy dude. But anyway, he

39:06

sent me this email that was basically like,

39:08

hey, man,

39:09

so glad you published this. Did you use

39:12

my spreadsheet to help report

39:14

this out? So I clicked on the link and

39:17

realized that Jeff Hammerbacher,

39:19

my friend since I was 18 years old, had

39:22

been doing the exact same thing that Rob

39:24

and I had just done.

39:25

Jeff has also been looking at every

39:28

state website and writing down the numbers in

39:30

a spreadsheet, tracking the spread of the virus.

39:33

Jeff is a figure things out numbers

39:35

person. He's one of the people credited with founding

39:37

the field of data science. He was

39:40

an early hire at Facebook and designed

39:42

its data systems.

39:44

When COVID hits, he's worried about his family

39:46

and their safety. They're planning a trip

39:48

to China in April, so he goes

39:51

to the CDC website and one day there's

39:53

COVID testing data for the entire US

39:55

and the next. It's gone.

39:57

And someone was asking on Twitter, like where

39:59

this? to go. That's Jeff.

40:02

After COVID data vanishes from the CDC website,

40:05

he sees a Twitter thread about it. There's

40:07

a reply from someone at the Association of Public

40:09

Health Labs, and it says, if you

40:11

want case data, you have to go to the states.

40:14

Well, this is how it's supposed to work. There

40:17

wasn't supposed to be a federal dashboard.

40:19

It's a state-level problem,

40:22

so states are going to report the data. And

40:25

I just thought to myself, this is bonkers.

40:28

Why would that be how we do this? So

40:31

I just went looking for

40:34

public health websites for every state.

40:37

Jeff takes it upon himself to publicly

40:39

share whatever he finds. So I just started

40:41

tweeting every day at 5 p.m. like

40:44

the data. He publishes the sheet

40:46

on March 4th. Thousands of people

40:48

start viewing it. Two days later, Alexis

40:51

and Rob publish their story, showing how

40:53

few people have been tested.

40:55

Less than 2,000 in the entire country.

40:58

And I read it and I was like, wow, are

41:01

they using my data? This looks exactly

41:03

like what I've been working on. That's

41:06

funny. And I thought, well, maybe

41:08

Alexis just saw it. So I sent him an

41:10

email just to say, hey, man, did you

41:12

all use this data for your project? So

41:15

I sent him back a message like seven minutes

41:17

later saying, holy shit, I wish we had.

41:20

Were his exact words. We made this

41:22

one, which is a hell of a lot messier and includes media

41:24

reports and conversations with health officials. Tell

41:27

me more about your spreadsheet. We got to talking and

41:29

I was kind of like,

41:31

you know, do you want to figure out a way to keep working

41:33

on this together? Alexis

41:35

talks to Rob and they all decide to team up

41:38

together. They assume it's temporary,

41:40

but they're only going to do it until the CDC

41:42

starts publishing the data itself. Maybe

41:45

a few days. Until then,

41:47

they plan to gather the testing data from states

41:49

every day and publish it in their spreadsheet.

41:52

And it's a lot of data collection. So

41:54

they create a sign up form to recruit volunteers.

41:57

The form is called state testing

41:59

tracking.

43:59

There are a lot of folks hitting the spreadsheet, so it's unavailable,

44:02

which isn't great because this is one of the only sources

44:05

of COVID testing data in the United States.

44:07

It's crazy to think about how fast this is all happening.

44:09

The CDC is unfortunately not taking

44:11

responsibility for aggregating and sharing

44:14

these numbers. We hope they do soon.

44:17

And

44:17

I say, is there anyone within Google that

44:19

can assist? And it ultimately

44:21

got escalated up the chain at Google's to the

44:24

point where I got an email from Sundar Pichai,

44:26

the CEO. The fucking CEO

44:28

of Google was like, put some guys on it.

44:30

I got some people that I'm going to send you away. We're

44:32

going to

44:34

help. Within a few hours of Sundar's email, Google

44:37

engineers start to work on the problem. They

44:39

bring the spreadsheet back online by the end of the weekend.

44:42

And that was my first day

44:45

as a volunteer on the COVID tracking project.

44:47

Alexis

44:49

and Jeff start organizing volunteers to do data

44:51

shifts, while Rob is focused on reporting about

44:53

the data. He spends most of his time

44:56

calling public health departments and doctors. And

44:59

every time Rob pops back into the COVID tracking

45:01

project Slack,

45:02

it's grown like crazy. And so then

45:04

I'd go in the Slack and every

45:06

time it was like, there's

45:08

this scene in one of the Star Trek movies,

45:10

where basically

45:13

like a plant like evolves all the geological

45:16

and biological complexity of life in

45:19

two minutes on screen. There's

45:21

like a device called the Genesis device.

45:27

And it was like every time

45:29

that I came into the CDP Slack for

45:31

the next week, it was like a

45:34

higher order of life had evolved

45:37

in the Slack.

45:38

You

45:42

come in, you know, the first time it was like 20 people

45:44

and we were just like slacking about COVID data.

45:47

Then

45:48

I'd log in like six hours later, 50 people

45:51

in the Slack and there were seven different rooms

45:54

and like, you know, vertebrates

45:56

had evolved. Like

45:58

they were bony fishes, you know.

45:59

And then I'd log in the next day and there'd be a hundred

46:02

people in the slack. Hundreds of volunteers.

46:04

All these people who felt the same way

46:06

that I did. Really trying to help. And

46:09

it was like, there's flowering plants. So

46:11

many people gathered together.

46:13

The fishes have crawled up on the land, you

46:15

know?

46:18

All of these volunteers start showing up,

46:21

and suddenly there are hundreds of them from all

46:23

over the country. So many different

46:25

people, from scientists and public health professionals

46:28

to high school kids, from academic researchers

46:31

to boutique cannabis cultivators.

46:33

Some have lost family members to the virus, and

46:35

others just want to help out any way they can. I

46:38

was absolutely blown away. I'm a scientist,

46:40

I'm glad to help in any way I can. I'm here. I

46:42

work

46:42

in healthcare. I snowboard a lot. High school

46:44

senior. I'm a tech person. Teaching ballroom

46:47

dance is what I do. My kids are triplets.

46:50

It's crazy, crazy life.

46:51

Every day, the whole

46:53

slack was like building

46:56

out. It was overwhelming. It

46:58

was jargon and lingo. I had never used

47:00

slack before. I'm like, what is a thread? And

47:03

then channel.

47:03

Assembling new appendages, like

47:05

in an alien life form. I just wanted

47:07

to do something useful and wanted to help in some

47:09

way. If we hadn't thought the world was ending,

47:11

you know, it was like, it would have been a really cool thing to watch.

47:17

Not long after it started, I joined the

47:19

COVID tracking project. I messaged

47:21

Alexis. He added me to the slack,

47:24

and I started volunteering.

47:26

I wanted to help. With

47:28

my background in tracking outbreaks, I felt

47:30

I had something to contribute. And

47:33

I immediately realized we were all

47:35

asking the same questions. Where

47:38

is the CDC? Is the Trump

47:40

administration silencing them? And

47:43

where is the data? Honestly,

47:45

I figured it would be a short gig. Maybe

47:48

a couple of months of volunteering while the CDC

47:50

got it together and sorted their systems out.

47:53

We had no idea. It would take more than

47:55

a year.

48:00

Next episode, we'll hear from the

48:02

volunteers who became the de facto

48:05

source of COVID data for the country. When

48:07

we actually looked inside the federal government

48:10

response around data, you were just

48:12

sort of like, aren't there any people in here? Like

48:14

we're building data services

48:17

out of like sunflower seeds and big

48:19

league chew. Like where are the people?

48:22

COVID tracking project volunteers kept

48:25

track of every reported infection

48:27

and death. The pressure they're under

48:29

keeps ratcheting up. You begin

48:31

to realize that you really are tracking

48:35

deaths and people

48:37

on ventilators and things like that. I actually

48:39

always choke up when I talk about this, when I

48:41

start to realize it. This

48:43

is not just a data project. This is a project about

48:45

human data. And some of it

48:47

can be a little difficult.

48:48

Watching the numbers go up and up is a little difficult

48:51

for sure. With emergency

48:53

rooms overflowing and death tolls

48:55

starting to spike, getting a hold

48:57

of good data would become more important

49:00

than ever.

49:00

A refrigerated truck has now been

49:02

brought in here, a makeshift morgue.

49:05

Refrigerated trucks and tents have been stationed outside

49:08

of some hospitals to hold the bodies of the

49:10

dead. I need every city. I need every

49:12

county. I need every state.

49:15

And I need cases and

49:18

test positivity and hospitalizations.

49:21

And I was like, wow, aren't you getting that from the

49:23

CDC? And she's like, well, I haven't been

49:25

able to get it yet, but maybe you can figure it out.

49:28

There is no U.S. data that I could rely

49:30

on. The U.S. was the

49:32

top rated country in the world for pandemic

49:35

preparedness. So why was the government

49:37

relying on a bunch of volunteers?

49:39

I think the term is moral injury.

49:43

It's really hard to deal

49:46

with a sort of systemic

49:49

betrayal by the organizations

49:52

whose job it is to keep everyone safe.

49:56

That's coming up next week on part two

49:58

of our series, the COVID. Our lead

50:00

producers

50:00

for this week's show are artists, Turiscus

50:03

and Kara Oler. Michael

50:05

O'Shiller edited the show. Jessica

50:08

Malati Rivera is the series host. Thanks to production

50:10

assistants, Max Maldonado, Corey Suzuki

50:12

and Arushi Sahajpal. Thanks

50:15

also to the COVID tracking project at the

50:17

Atlantic where it all began and the oral history team

50:19

there. This series was funded

50:21

in part by Talley, the director of the American

50:23

film and the director of the American film and

50:26

the director of the American film. This series

50:28

was funded in part by Tableau from Salesforce.

50:32

Nikki Frick is our fact checker. Victoria

50:34

Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production

50:36

manager is Steven Rascone. Score

50:38

and sound designed by the dynamic duo,

50:41

Jay Breezy. Mr. Jim Briggs and Fernando

50:43

Mamayo Arruda. Our post-production

50:46

team is the Justice League and this weekend

50:48

includes Catherine Steyer Martinez. Our

50:50

digital producer is Sarah Merck. Our CEO

50:53

is Robert Rosenthal. Our COO

50:55

is Maria Feldman. Our interim executive

50:57

producers are Brett Myers and Taki Telenides.

51:00

Artists and Kara co-executive produced and

51:02

reported the series. Our theme music is by

51:04

Camarado, Lightning. Support

51:10

for Reveal is provided by the Riva and David Logan

51:12

Foundation. The Ford Foundation, the

51:15

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The

51:17

Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. The

51:19

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Park

51:21

Foundation. And the Hellman Foundation.

51:24

Reveal is a co-production of the Center for Investigative

51:27

Reporting and PRX. I'm

51:29

Al Ledson. And remember, there is always

51:31

more to the story.