21–30 of 67 posts
Here on nearby Long Island cases are popping up all over the place with no known links to other diagnosed cases, including 2 school bus drivers. Despite this, barely anyone is being tested, even those who are symptomatic. This crisis is being terribly mishandled. https://www.fox5ny.com/news/two-long-island-bus-drivers-diag...
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I've not been keeping up; what's the obstacle to getting tested? Insurance companies not covering? Hospitals not willing? Patients not going in?
This board doesn't like politics but frankly it is the administration. They fired the CDC's pandemic response teams a couple years ago because they didn't want to fund it. They don't like admitting there's a crisis because it looks bad for them, they want to sweep the whole thing under the rug. That has translated into the administration stopping the CDC from doing their jobs, whether implicitly ("if you make this in…
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I don't know if this is still true but according to an article I read a few days ago, the US has the lowest testing rate of any affected country. Experiences of other countries seem to suggest that high testing rate may mitigate the need for measures like lockdowns.
By an order of magnitude: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-testing-covid-19...
"Earlier on Tuesday, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he couldn’t provide the figure. “We don’t know exactly how many because hundreds of thousands of our tests have gone out to private labs and hospitals that currently do not report in to CDC,” he said in a CNN appearance."
https://news.yahoo.com/only-5000-americans-have-been-tested-...
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This board doesn't like politics but frankly it is the administration. They fired the CDC's pandemic response teams a couple years ago because they didn't want to fund it. They don't like admitting there's a crisis because it looks bad for them, they want to sweep the whole thing under the rug. That has translated into the administration stopping the CDC from doing their jobs, whether implicitly ("if you make this in…
I think at this point it’s more helpful to think about what individuals and private organizations can do rather than look to a central government organization to solve all of our problems. See Gates Foundation decision(s) over past few days. I also know plenty of people in state orgs and can say I have a lot of confidence in them as well as the many healthcare orgs. I’m not downvoting this despite the obvious politic…
Reality is there's effectively no containing it at this point, we're well past that stage of things. Get a vaccine going ASAP, sure, but it's already sweeping through the population. Official numbers are low because we don't have any meaningful quantity of testing in place. Wherever you test, you find that it's already there.
I'm not saying that to be hysterical, it's just a statement of fact. Just like my statements about how the administration has neglected and in some cases actively worsened the crisis.
It just is what it is.
You maybe could have significantly reduced it six or eight weeks ago, but back then we were in the "coronavirus is fake news by deep-state CDC to tank the economy" stage of things. Now, I guess you have mass quarantine, which Trump will also not do because that would tank the economy for real. People won't do it willingly because they need that money to pay rent and buy food, and you need to formulate a strategy for that too. Maybe Bill Gates can pay everyone's rent and grocery bills for a few months?
Best thing at this point is to do everything you can on a personal basis to prevent spread (wash your hands), protect specific vulnerable individuals (seniors, basically) from getting infected, and hope that vaccine comes real quick.
It just is what it is.
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I've not been keeping up; what's the obstacle to getting tested? Insurance companies not covering? Hospitals not willing? Patients not going in?
The CDC was restricting who could get tested up until a few days ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This board doesn't like politics but frankly it is the administration. They fired the CDC's pandemic response teams a couple years ago because they didn't want to fund it. They don't like admitting there's a crisis because it looks bad for them, they want to sweep the whole thing under the rug. That has translated into the administration stopping the CDC from doing their jobs, whether implicitly ("if you make this in…
This is all correct, and it's going to be downvoted because tribalism is more important than not getting a potentially fatal disease.
We need to start practicing on what's coming, and right now, China's looking like the most successful model.
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The CDC completely dropped the ball on providing test kits, so all the individual states and localities have had to source them themselves. Which, entirely predictably, they are not doing a great job at. It didn't help matters either that those test kits the CDC did provide early on turned out to have flaws that caused inaccurate readings (see https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/after-missteps-cd... ).
From my understanding, state and local labs HAVE been able to source them. The CDC has been refusing to authorize them for testing. Univ. of Washington seems to be an outlier as they were able to get approval under an existing research study they have.
This is new to me. Link?
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By an order of magnitude: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-testing-covid-19...
That's misleading. The Feds state that they've sent several hundred thousand tests to private labs and hospitals which do not report their figures directly to CDC. They don't know how many have been used at this point (which is bad, but not as bad as them not sending out hundreds of thousands of tests). "Earlier on Tuesday, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he couldn’t provide the figur…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CDC completely dropped the ball on providing test kits, so all the individual states and localities have had to source them themselves. Which, entirely predictably, they are not doing a great job at. It didn't help matters either that those test kits the CDC did provide early on turned out to have flaws that caused inaccurate readings (see https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/after-missteps-cd... ).
From my understanding, state and local labs HAVE been able to source them. The CDC has been refusing to authorize them for testing. Univ. of Washington seems to be an outlier as they were able to get approval under an existing research study they have.