ABC was pushing this, but it kind of blew up in their face when the doctor they had on said:
"In normal times, this study would be ignored."
I've thought about that being a possibility, but not sure how it would actually be carried out. If the plot of a movie, maybe there would be a warehouse with the lethal strain, and it gets broken into by the good guys who replace it with something inert. But I have to believe that kind of simplicity can't be what happened here, so how could this have been done?
A reporter just outlined to Mayor de Blasio how impossible it would really be to 'contact trace' the city of New York. His answer was basically that 'we will do it, because we have to.' The mayor is insistent this must be done.