I appreciate your excellent work in maintaining the discourse, but there just isn't any serious interpretation of that quote which could have been more charitable. You'd really have to stretch to get away from the clear implication that SA's work has been essential to the COVID-19 response.

I also appreciate Eric's polite clarification in this thread, but as of now the original text remains on his site. It's a legitimate point of discussion for reasons that others in this thread have explained.