Meanwhile, the US still has very little testing capacity, with no signs of if and when that will change.
One problem with the death of journalism is that no one is even reporting on this.
One problem with the death of journalism is that no one is even reporting on this.
I'm especially looking for reporting on why it's so slow, what the bottlenecks are, and who's responsible.
Even if there is some good reporting out there, I think this should me one of the main news items in a healthy society.
I have seen reporting on the bungling of the initial testing rollout, like this one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/contamination-...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/...
That is better than I've seen.
I'm still missing anything beyond summarizing what officials have said.
The Ohio Governor blaming FDA regulations is the closest to an analysis in there.
This is unequivocally not why some states are preparing to relax the so-called "safer at home" orders. Waiting until "it's all over" was not the goal of safer-at-home. Flattening the curve in order to prevent an immediately overwhelmed healthcare system was the goal. In multiple US states, the curve is acceptably flattened (or is expected to be in the next few weeks), and hospitals have plenty of available capacity. Those states are going to continue encouraging physical distancing, good hygiene, etc. while allowing closed non-essential businesses to resume limited operations.
Someone should tell that to the Italian authorities. At least until recently, some public statements seemed to inch in that direction ("zero new infections"), although more recently they realized that this is hardly possible at this point (especially if the estimates of the actual vs effective cases are true - talking about at least one order of magnitude).
I guess we'll have to see what happens. Personally, although I'm very aware of the risks and will prepare accordingly, I'll be glad if I can finally get out of this isolation.
IMO loosening restrictions without really aggressive testing and case tracing is going to undo lots of good work by other states by allowing the virus to spread, but time will tell.
Shows the following stats:
Country--------Date-----Tests-------Positive----%-------Tests/mil ppl----Positive/mil ppl
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
United States--18 Apr---3,700,388---720,747-----19.5----11,273-----------2,196
Russia---------19 Apr---1,949,813---42,853------2.2-----13,287-----------292
Germany--------15 Apr---1,728,357---132,766-----7.7-----20,786-----------1,597
Italy----------19 Apr---1,356,541---178,972-----13.2----22,474-----------2,965
Spain----------13 Apr---930,230-----169,496-----18.2----19,905-----------3,627I am hoping for the best for the US, but I am quite offended by how the US is scrambling to undo its own mistakes by steamrolling everybody else.
The US dropped many balls and started late with ramping testing in particular, but now the ramping is happening and just takes time. There was also no way the US could test enough people using the original set of tests that simply took too long. New technology had to be developed.
A large country has a lot of people to test, but also a lot of people to manufacture and perform the tests. So that argument doesn't work for me. Especially when we're talking about the richest country in the world.
Now, if the test making and executing is done by a single centralized organization, it does make some sense. Which is why that way of doing things is an anti-pattern.
For all of MSNBC's faults, their anchors have been repeating testing like a broken record. They even mention how much they sound like a broken record but that testing is simply the most important thing in reopening, and that the US is doing very little of it.