Covid-19 Pandemic Timeline
Floor Speech
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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank Dr. Roe for his service. Congress will miss him next year. We will miss his expertise especially in this time of crisis in the Nation.
But I am going to make my remarks very brief to remind the American people who are watching what we were talking about back in spring about the possibilities of how this pandemic comes to an end. The possibilities really were, well, the virus weakens on its own, but we haven't seen that at all, or a vaccine is developed.
I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, because I have had NIH grants, an NIH grant is usually written for a 3-year period with a renewal because that is usually how long it takes to even begin to make a discovery. With vaccines it is typically 5 to 10 years.
What we are talking about now, because of what this administration has done, is to have a vaccine being administered, being declared safe by the FDA potentially within 10 months of conceptualizing a vaccine.
As Dr. Roe knows, I sit on the Health Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and foundations for Operation Warp Speed were laid by this administration years ago when they increased funding to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority which we call BARDA. One of the things they did is decide to heavily invest in vaccine technology and vaccine production, because it is one thing to discover the vaccine and to prove it is safe, it is another thing to make hundreds of millions of doses. Think about it, Mr. Speaker, you actually have to make the glass vials and you have to have the facility that can produce that. That is exactly what this administration has done through BARDA over the last few years, have those facilities in the United States.
This isn't like some of the PPE that we have to outsource overseas. We have the ability in this country to create hundreds of millions of vaccines, and we likely will by next year. Again, this is very, very unusual.
Mr. Speaker, as you will hear from a lot of the doctors tonight, it is very unusual to be able to do this within months, to be able to tell the American people that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that we see the end of this pandemic because, again, as the American people know, your own local school board may have said: We really can't go back to school full-time until there is a vaccine.
Well, Mr. Speaker, we are going to have that vaccine because this administration has cut through the red tape with Operation Warp Speed, ensuring a safe and effective vaccine that can be produced for hundreds of millions of people. That is really phenomenal. Because once we take care of the United States, then we can actually take care of the world health and this pandemic. That will be truly a wonderful thing.
I want to thank Dr. Roe for leading this tonight and for giving me the opportunity to remind the American people that from the very beginning we said the vaccine was the solution, and this administration is delivering that solution.
Mr. DAVID P. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I would like to say to Dr. Harris before he leaves, let's have a little discussion. The Doctors Caucus can get down in the weeds sometimes, and I realize that we do. But let's explain to people what herd immunity is.
What does it actually mean? You heard about this, and you hear all these folks get on TV and the talking heads start talking about it.
What does that actually mean?
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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, if you think about it, the herd is h-e-r-d, just like a herd of critters. In this case we talk about humans.
If you think about it, Mr. Speaker, your chance of contracting, in this case, a respiratory virus is proportional to the number of people you come in contact with who could spread it to you.
Conventional wisdom is that if 60 or 70 percent of the people have had the virus or are immune to the virus, either naturally by having the virus or by having a vaccine, then your chance of contracting it goes way down because your chance of coming in contact with someone who has that virus or is not immune to it has gone way down. You achieve functionally what is called herd immunity; that is, your chance of developing that virus is much, much lower. So it means that you can begin to do some of the things, to draw back on some of those restrictions that we have now that people are so upset with.
That is what a vaccine promises to deliver because certainly a percent of the population now has immunity by having had the virus, but a much larger percent will have immunity because they are vaccinated and therefore can't get it nor can spread it to someone else. It is a very important public health concept.
It looks like if these vaccines are approved by year end or early next year, by next summer--I tell this to people in my district--we could actually have a normal summer.
Wouldn't that be nice?
We could actually have a normal summer.
Mr. DAVID P. ROE of Tennessee. Actually, we had a normal summer at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park this year. We had 1.7 million people come in July which was a record, I understand.
One of the things I want to also mention briefly while Dr. Dunn comes up is: Should you wear a mask, or should you not wear a mask?
A mask is an inconvenience. I am standing here way away from anybody, 20 feet away from anybody, but the way a mask probably works is this-- these are not good enough to keep a virus from getting in. But if you walk through a room with coronavirus and you walk through a room filled with people, Mr. Speaker, you potentially will infect 2\1/2\ of those people.
Why?
Because it is probably spread by droplets. So if I have this mask on it prevents--if I sneeze or cough or whatever--a droplet from getting out or certainly not spreading very far. That is why if you touch a surface you want to wash your hands and cleanse the surface.
To give an example of how infectious measles is, if I have the measles and I walk through that same room, I probably can infect as many as 15 to 18 people. So it is aerosolized. It is like a pollen in the air. That is how it is spread as opposed to just a droplet spread, which means that the coronavirus is not spread nearly as easily as some other viruses are.
I wore a mask for over 30 years in the operating room. If it turns out it doesn't help all that much, then you have been inconvenienced. If it helps, then you maybe have saved a life.
Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Dunn. My friend is a U.S. Army veteran. I served with Dr. Dunn on the Veterans' Affairs Committee. He is extremely active on that committee. It has been a real pleasure to serve with Dr. Dunn in the U.S. Congress.
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