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CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

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Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#51

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

mbreese wrote: post #42
jude- wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to come out of a lock-down without also causing the number of cases to spike again, we'll need to implement a widespread test-and-trace protocol similar to South Korea's. This requires _lots and lots_ of testing.

If you want to come out of lock-down, you really need a different test... you need a serological antibody test to tell if you've been exposed to the novel coronavirus (and thus have immunity from re-infection [0]). The current test can only tell you if you have an active infection. But before we can really open things up again, we'll need to know who is still at risk, and that requires the antibody test. There has be…

I mean, you're not wrong, if we can test for anti-bodies we can get a better handle on this whole thing in 3 months, especially given the reportedly high occurrence of mild or asymptomatic individuals. That'll give a sense of where we are in total. But no way are we waiting for herd immunity before the restrictions start to loosen.

We very much still need to be able to test for people that currently have it - we're kind of starting from zero every time people come out of lock-down, so we need to test for outbreaks before they happen.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#52

Post by merpnderp »

h2odragon wrote: post #47

Where was the media in this? Lots of scare stories about potential pandemics back to January, in the US media, but I dont recall much if any "the CDC is fucking up / not testing" coverage. Of course that kind of thing was probably being said in the froth of the fringe and conspiracy theorists, but thats all "fake news" and unmentionable now.

Because in the initial days, the CDC had a valid point. The W.H.O/Chinese test wasn't that reliable (at the time) and it wasn't unreasonable for the US to make their own. It wasn't until week after week went by, with the CDC straight up lying to the FDA/HHS, that the real failure became apparent.

The second the CDC realized it wasn't up to the job, it should have begged the FDA to allow labs/companies to make their own tests. Instead they lied for weeks, wasting the most critical time in the US's portion of the pandemic getting nothing done. It wasn't until UC Davis broke the law and tested a patient and the governor of California dared the FDA to do anything about it, that Trump put Pence in charge and things started to move forward and responsibility for testing was moved away from the CDC.

I don't know if Dr. Redfeild of the CDC made these calls, but either way, he should have been replaced immediately, because he'll make the history books for the amount of lives this will cost.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#53

Post by wool_gather »

rocky1138 wrote: post #18
Leary wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC produced 160,000 tests that were defective. Meanwhile, the FDA did not allow anyone other than the CDC to test for coronavirus. That is the reason why the US was weeks behind on testing.

I don't doubt you, but I'd love it if you posted links to sources for the defective tests and the fact that the FDA didn't allow anyone but the CDC to test.

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-americas-coronavirus-testing...

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#54

Post by catalogia »

ghostpepper wrote: post #49
PaulHoule wrote: post #8

When they tried testing in NYC they got sick people to stand in line with people who just think they might be sick, which causes the not sick people to be sick.

The smart countries are using drive-through testing.

In NYC more than half of the population doesn't own a car.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#55

Post by majormajor »

h2odragon wrote: post #47

Where was the media in this? Lots of scare stories about potential pandemics back to January, in the US media, but I dont recall much if any "the CDC is fucking up / not testing" coverage. Of course that kind of thing was probably being said in the froth of the fringe and conspiracy theorists, but thats all "fake news" and unmentionable now.

I don't remember the exact start date when people started noticing we had severely fucked this up, but it's been a common refrain in the media for the last month at least. If you're still asking "where was the media" NOW then you need to seriously reevaluate what media you're paying attention to, because the ones you're looking at are doing you a big disservice.

Here's one from a month ago: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-02-28/corona...

Ten days before that, people were becoming aware of asymptomatic carriers which should've triggered a huge testing effort to try to prevent community spread: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-02-18/report-show...

Less awareness of it in late January: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-26/coronavi...

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#56

Post by merpnderp »

tunesmith wrote: post #2

This whole line of analysis has confused me. The CDC tests, while flawed, were never very numerous, right? Is the contention that if these early tests had worked, they actually would have been sufficient to protect the entire nation? It's seemed to me the problem has more been that we haven't stockpiled supplies over the past few years like South Korea did.

South Korea didn't do well just because they had supplies. They were able to test mind boggling number of people nearly from day one, which meant they could do contact tracing as fast as humanly possible and stop new cess as they were spread. And yes, the initial CDC test production we were promised would have been on par with South Korea's initial response. We had a chance to slow this down and the CDC blew it, then lied about it for weeks.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#57

Post by gdulli »

watertom wrote: post #37

When China announced they had a mystery virus, travel from China should have been stopped. When China locked down their country, travel from China should have been stopped. When community spread was detected in Washington state, the U.S. should have been locked down. Testing wasn't the problem.

That's a very good illustration of the danger of demagoguery. If someone not already in the habit of looking for any reason to keep foreigners out proposed it, maybe it would have been taken more seriously.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#58

Post by BoiledCabbage »

roenxi wrote: post #43
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, the FDA did not allow anyone other than the CDC to test for coronavirus. true > there were multiple, compounding layers of fuck-ups. also true All of it is completely true. And the issue is that both of these were blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention to the situation. The CDC was struggling to develop the test, and the FDA regulates who can create tests under normal circumstances. The larger ques…

> Everyone saw the CDC couldn't scale up in time. Everyone knew the FDA regulation... No way that is possibly true. People realised they didn't have tests. A bunch of people of a liberterian bent or systems thinkers would have picked the FDA as the problem very quickly. But for most people diagnosing and rectifying that sort of snarl in a complex bureaucratic process would have taken about as long as it did. This hap…

> No way that is possibly true. People realised they didn't have tests. A bunch of people of a liberterian bent or systems thinkers would have picked the FDA as the problem very quickly.

You didn't need a "libertarian bent" or special"systems thinking" to figure that out. The CDC was testing at most 50 people a day IIRC. Can 50 tests across an entire country get you detailed info? No. You need labs to run tests, CDC has limited lab space for testing. South Korea was capable of doing thousands of tests per day. No rational person though 50 was sufficient. They simply sat and waited for the CDC doing nothing.

Who has labs? Universities, sure start there? Who does the testing for the population in general? Quest & LabCorp, have them run the test.

> It wasn't going to work unless the executive happened by amazing luck of have an infectious disease specialist in a key role

It doesn't require having "amazing luck" to see what was happening. Everyone on the internet looking at it did. Like the task force they killed? This is utter incompetence by the executive branch. In January, how do you see 700 million people on some form of lock down in China and not immediately spin up a task force to evaluate risks to the US? It's astounding levels of negligence.

The administration let the country down enormously. And a lot of people are going to suffer because of it.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#59

Post by paulmd »

tunesmith wrote: post #2

This whole line of analysis has confused me. The CDC tests, while flawed, were never very numerous, right? Is the contention that if these early tests had worked, they actually would have been sufficient to protect the entire nation? It's seemed to me the problem has more been that we haven't stockpiled supplies over the past few years like South Korea did.

The problem is that the CDC didn't use the tests WHO had developed, and stonewalled states and private labs from developing their own testing, while they fucked around developing their own tests.

OK, fine, if the CDC wants their own tests, whatever. The WHO tests were not the be-all end-all of testing. There was clearly room for improvement on test speed for example. I have seen this called out as something that specifically needed to be improved with the WHO tests, they are not "10 minute" type tests.

But leaving us with no testing for two months is unacceptable. Preventing anyone else from taking a turn at the brass ring is also unacceptable. That's the problem with the CDC's "testing decision" here. If they wanted to develop their own test, they could work on it in parallel while deploying the tests that we had.

IMO this was likely a top-down decision to try and "keep our numbers low" as it were. The President has been obsessed with not spooking the stock market with scary numbers going up, and the "fix" for that is not to do any testing at all. So he stalled the CDC from deploying testing and sent them off on a wild goose chase.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#60

Post by pwinnski »

panarky wrote: post #5

Does anyone know actual facts about testing in the US? Yes, the CDC's tests were flawed, but ... 1) Other countries don't have a problem testing millions of people, so why doesn't the US use the same tests they do? 2) 3.5 weeks ago the Trump admin promised 1 million tests that week with many more to follow soon thereafter. After all this time they still haven't materialized, so what happened to the million tests? 3)…

1) The FDA requires the CDC to produce tests. The CDC chose to make their own.

2) The Trump admin lies. A lot.

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