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US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

bbc.com

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Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#61

Post by ajross »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #40
ajross wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point does it become OK to point out that the "orange man" is, in fact, bad? Fox news and republican leaders spent weeks (weeks that we can't get back) trying to tell people that this wasn't a problem, that they shouldn't prepare, and that this was all a partisan argument against the president. And that was all wrong. It's real, it's happening, and we've lost critical time. That's bad, right? And it's bad in…

Orange man is bad, but a stopped clock is right twice a day, and falling over themselves to deny whenever that happens has led the media to say all manner of braindead things.

Or maybe... (to strain the metaphor a bit) the clock has been working the whole time, but you didn't care because you didn't need to know the time?

I mean... the topic at hand in this subthread is the executive branch's ability to coordinate a single message, to tell the truth, and to ensure that public policy matches official pronouncements. And this has been a serious problem for the Trump administration since inauguration. The president will say things that are wrong, he'll mistate positions of others, he'll promise things that aren't borne out by policy, he'll contradict existing white house messaging, and the rest of the executive branch is constantly running around writing up explainers for how all of this is supposed to fit together.

And the media reported on that. But to you, maybe it just seemed like the president was speaking extemporaneously and that the media coverage was being excessively "nitpicky". What other people would call "lies" or "mistruths" seemed to you like just mistakes or irrelevancies. So to you, the media wasn't being fair.

Well, now the world is falling apart and the president's words matter. And the lies seem more like lies to most people. That's not because the media is treating them any different.

Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#62

Post by doubleunplussed »

ajross wrote: post #61
doubleunplussed wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orange man is bad, but a stopped clock is right twice a day, and falling over themselves to deny whenever that happens has led the media to say all manner of braindead things.

Or maybe... (to strain the metaphor a bit) the clock has been working the whole time, but you didn't care because you didn't need to know the time? I mean... the topic at hand in this subthread is the executive branch's ability to coordinate a single message, to tell the truth, and to ensure that public policy matches official pronouncements. And this has been a serious problem for the Trump administration since inau…

I don't think trump has said a single sensible thing about the pandemic, I'm not on his side. Im talking in general.

Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#63

Post by Lewton »

bluGill wrote: post #53
Lewton wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to test for this scales linearly with number of people...

Not when you run out of raw materials to make the tests. I could leave my job and create them, but that would take months to train me (and maybe years if I have to create my own equipment - it takes time to become a certified welder as just one task that doesn't scale quickly)

.... The raw materials for doing these tests scale linearly with population too.

It's just RNA sequencing, it can be done at any university using standard equipment and materials

Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#64

Post by yongjik »

rstupek wrote: post #50
stevenwoo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy and South Korea managed to scale up widespread testing and their economies are proportionately much smaller than the USA for their population.

Italy is geographically half the size of Texas and South Korea is 1/7 the size of Texas. It's considerably easier to do widespread testing when everyone practically lives next to everyone else.

This is the weirdest "US is special" argument. You can pack a hundred samples (blood/swab/whatever) in a box and send it to whatever lab in a major US city, in a matter of hours.

Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#65

Post by yread »

rstupek wrote: post #50
stevenwoo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy and South Korea managed to scale up widespread testing and their economies are proportionately much smaller than the USA for their population.

Italy is geographically half the size of Texas and South Korea is 1/7 the size of Texas. It's considerably easier to do widespread testing when everyone practically lives next to everyone else.

What? It's not like people have to walk to a PCR machine!

Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#66

Post by makomk »

snapetom wrote: post #25

I have a hard time faulting the CDC for the response overall, but I just don't understand why they decided to make their own test at the beginning. Was it bravado? Did they think the 70% accuracy of the WHO test wasn't good enough? If they didn't make their own test, they wouldn't have fubarred the manufacturing, which would have given us more tests. One of the CDC's main goals, if not the main goal in this, is to sp…

As far as I can tell, the answer is quite simple: there was no WHO test at the beginning. The CDC's test was developed and rolled out pretty much in parallel with the German one the WHO has been using. They deployed it to state testing labs at pretty much exactly the same time as WHO Europe was rolling theirs out to one lab per European state. They also had a very aggressive plan to start testing flu surveillance samples in mid-February, much sooner than other countries. I'm not convinced they could pull off such an aggressive rollout without manufacturing their own tests.

Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#67

Post by [deleted] »

Ir738urbb wrote: post #43
ajross wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point does it become OK to point out that the "orange man" is, in fact, bad? Fox news and republican leaders spent weeks (weeks that we can't get back) trying to tell people that this wasn't a problem, that they shouldn't prepare, and that this was all a partisan argument against the president. And that was all wrong. It's real, it's happening, and we've lost critical time. That's bad, right? And it's bad in…

Guess what? They're all bad! Incompetence, perverse incentives, misinformation, exploitation: we're surrounded by it. On Hacker News I expect a technical discussion and shared files how to build PCR kits at home to test for the virus. I want to see people sharing biohacks. Not this meaningless useless byllshit.

[deleted]

Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#68

Post by chrisco255 »

ajross wrote: post #37
chrisco255 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone want guess at how difficult it is to ramp up testing to a population of 320 million for a disease that didn't exist 4 months ago?

Very difficult, which is why work should have started, ahem, four months ago. Now we are, indeed, hopelessly behind.

They did start working on it 4 months ago. The CDC has been on the case since then. Mind you, China was not cooperating with us and wouldn't allow our experts into the country while it was getting bad there. They are ramping up rapidly and we'll see that over the next few days.

Re: US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci

#69

Post by makomk »

Lewton wrote: post #48
drevil-v2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not false because I went through this myself yesterday. Was told over the phone “don’t come in, its probably a common cold, stay at home and if symptoms worsen called the health hotline” Community forums are full others reporting similar stories https://apple.news/ASvoRONOWS9ijWX4RrGmiTQ “Currently we are not testing everyone, and whilst this may change in the future, at the moment this isn’t feasible. The press…

if you have the symptoms for the cold, and don't have the symptoms for covid-19, then why would they test you?

There is no clear-cut distinction between the symptoms of the two - it's more an "if you hear hooves, think horse not zebra" thing. The New York Times article in the grandparent post literally points to the fact that Tom Hanks could get tested for coronavirus based on symtoms that were just like a cold as proof it's much easier to get tested in Australia than the US.

Except that if you read the ABC article, Australia only tests people who both have symptoms consistent with the disease AND either have travelled to an affected country or had contact with a confirmed case. Also, the US press has managed to convince a large (or at least vocal) chunk of the American public that if they can't get a Covid-19 test based on their cold-like symptoms it's somehow proof their healthcare system is falling behind the rest of the world in testing as part of a Trump cover-up, and it's leaking to the rest of the English speaking world. It's all over social media.

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