Congress livid over lags in coronavirus testing

a reply to: DanDanDat

At this point, it gives us an idea of the extent of the problem.

Either we're all going to die -or- it's already widespread and not very many people have been dying and this all much ado about nothing.

But so long as the data is non-existent, we can all stay in a state of fear and confusion which serves no one except those who seek to use it their own ends.

originally posted by: shooterbrody
a reply to: underwerks
do you regularly go to the doctor when you have a cold?
or seasonal allergies?

here, where I am, not many people are freaking out
there are still packages of toilet tissue and hand sanitizer at the stores
we are out of n95 face masks, but were able to get some before the run on them

No, I don’t. This isn’t just the “flu”.

Do other countries routinely quarantine themselves because of the yearly cold or flu? Or how about weld their citizens into their apartments in a forced quarantine? No?

I’m in Tennessee. And there isn’t one package of toilet paper left in the Wal-Mart near me. What the public needs more than anything is accurate information. And the current government is doing everything in their power to make sure no one has any. Down to classifying any meeting having to do with the Coronavirus.

Does that sound like something people normally do over the cold or flu?

www.cnn.com...

(CNN)Lawmakers in Congress are expressing outrage and confusion as to why the United States is not testing individuals for the COVID-19 coronavirus at as fast a pace as other countries, following closed-door briefings with administration officials who failed to explain the discrepancy.

Several members emerged from an all-members House briefing Thursday morning saying they were told the government is working around the clock to make tests, but the US system is trying to catch up to other countries like South Korea.
LIVE UPDATES: US coronavirus travel ban hits 26 European countries
Members were exasperated with what they said was a lack of clarity in the officials' answers, as lawmakers struggle to understand how the US has been so far outpaced by other countries grappling with the pandemic.
As he left Thursday's briefing, GOP Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina said there is "a growing frustration among members as a whole to get more definitive answers" from the administration about testing capabilities.
He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "struggled to give a really strong answer" on why the United States hasn't been able to duplicate testing that is being used in places such as South Korea.

This is an absolute disgrace. Taiwan and S. Korea are testing thousands of people a day and their death rate is very low.

Why Have So Few Americans Been Tested for Coronavirus?

Europe is not the problem. The small number of tests performed in the United States is.
The lack of coronavirus tests in the United States is a confusing problem. It’s not as if American scientists needed to invent a new test. Tests already exist — in small numbers in this country and in much larger numbers in South Korea and elsewhere.
So why haven’t American government agencies or companies been able to produce more test kits and why have only about 5,000 Americans been tested so far?
“Labs and states are worried,” Andy Slavitt, a former director of Medicare and Medicaid, wrote yesterday: They “expect next to no availability to continue for weeks.”

www.nytimes.com...
So for WEEKS, there's going to be tests

WEEKS?

In other countries, they're doing thousands of tests a day

This is starting to stink and look very very SINISTER

The short answer is a lack of preparation and poor execution by the federal government. The initial tests developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a technical problem — and federal officials were then too slow to find alternatives.

In his Oval Office address last night, President Trump tried to blame Europe for the spread of the virus in the United States. But Europe isn’t the problem (and the fact that indexes tied to the future of the stock market began falling during his speech suggests investors were unnerved by what Trump was saying). A much bigger problem is the lack of testing in the United States.

The WHO had a test last month why didn't we get that one?

originally posted by: underwerks

originally posted by: shooterbrody
a reply to: underwerks

If people were able to get tested easily

is this an all in test?
or who should actually be tested?

Whoever shows symptoms.

Figuring out who has it versus who has just the regular flu or cold would let Doctors more accurately gauge the spread and severity of it. And that could go either way.

Either they find out it’s worse than they thought so they’re able to take better protective measures (isolating people, preventing further spread of it) or they find out it isn’t as bad in which case people won’t be freaking out and cleaning out stores of toilet paper.

That seems a better idea to me than looking the other way and hoping things don’t get bad.

That argument implies two things.

1) Doctors on the ground are sitting on their hands waiting for official test numbers to decide how to treat their patients. And that because they don't know how bad the virus is (because of lack of testing) they aren't making the proper decisions for the patients they are residing over in real time.

2) That it would be acceptable for ordinary citizens to panick if this virus is worse than it currently appears. When in fact they shouldn't panick no matter how bad it is, because panicking never helps any situation.

No mater how deadly the virus is Doctors and hospitals should be assuming a reasonable worse case and treating their patients accordingly; not waiting for test results to tell them its the worse case and than acting. And the rest of us should be following the simply advised we have been given for over a month now even if testing tells us this is just like the flue.

Increased numbers of people being tested with backfire on Congress by showing how mild this virus is.

They would get a little mileage out of the increased hysteria from so many people testing positive but when they look at the number of people dying they would realize that the mortality rate is extremely low.

www.worldometers.info...

We are fortunate that Congress is leaving for a 10-day vacation today.

a reply to: infolurker

Even in China, the death toll was only .7% outside of Wuhan.

Another issue may be the number of people in a given area who require medical care — having a lot of severely ill people in a single region could potentially overwhelm the medical system, Gordon said. She noted that this was likely the case in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus outbreak began and which saw the majority of COVID-19 cases in China. A recent report from WHO found that the fatality rate was 5.8% in Wuhan, compared with 0.7% in the rest of the country, Live Science previously reported.

Finally, the country may not be catching many of the mild cases of COVID-19. Often, as testing expands within a community, more mild cases are found, which lowers the overall death rate, Gordon said. This was the case in South Korea, which conducted more than 140,000 tests and found a fatality rate of 0.6%, according to Business Insider.

So unless this thing overwhelms, it is not a terrible killer ... not even in the most at risk populations.

Here's who's most at risk.

This is a statistical breakdown of data. This really is a killer of the old and sick. Most everyone else will come through it. Our most important job is to protect our elders.

a reply to: underwerks

No, I don’t.

So how do you propose to get others to?

This isn’t just the “flu”.

Correct, but many have had it and don't even know. Or so I have been lead to believe.

Do other countries routinely quarantine themselves because of the yearly cold or flu?

really?
the ole' if everybody jumps off a cliff will you?
we are CLEARLY not every other country

Or how about weld their citizens into their apartments in a forced quarantine?

see the above answers about every other country....

I’m in Tennessee. And there isn’t one package of toilet paper left in the Wal-Mart near me. What the public needs more than anything is accurate information.

really
so what exactly is "accurate information" right now?
you actually believe the chinese?

And the current government is doing everything in their power to make sure no one has any.

nope
that is your pink hat talking
we are accustomed to the blaming everything on the potus, you have no power here

Down to classifying any meeting having to do with the Coronavirus.

until it is contained, is it not an actual national security matter?
those are classified you understand?

Does that sound like something people normally do over the cold or flu?

I would submit most people struggle with the cold or flu alone, as we are a mostly self sufficient people. It is one of the reasons we reject socialism.

originally posted by: toolgal462
Yah, they so pissed they are gonna go on another tax payer paid vacation

10 days worth of taxpayer-funded vacation to be exact.

What’s weird is where not getting any information from the government on WHY are they still so behind in testing

a reply to: underwerks

There's no doubt this virus is deadly to the elderly- just as any virus is.
Italy has a very high death toll- with most being in their 80's and 90's.
Since we haven't been testing people in the US that don't have strong covid possibilities,there is no way to tell how wide spread it's been here, or for how long. If people who suspect they have a common cold, it could completely change our perspective, and eliminate this fear factor.
Shutting down business and trade is an extreme step that feeds the panic and makes the problem worse.
Mass testing could totally change the face of this 'crisis', yet the CDC seems to have got out of their way to make sure that doesn't happen.
I don't think we'll know what is happening until we can view it in hindsight. It's sure looking like we're being played on many,many levels right now.

Wag The Dog

a reply to: shooterbrody

A typical overreaction is what's happening with the NBA. Suspending the season because two players have Corona flu. If they had regular flu they would be told that they have to stay home and the season would continue.

Americans are going to be very pissed off when they realize how they were inconvenienced over such a minor virus.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: DanDanDat

At this point, it gives us an idea of the extent of the problem.

Either we're all going to die -or- it's already widespread and not very many people have been dying and this all much ado about nothing.

But so long as the data is non-existent, we can all stay in a state of fear and confusion which serves no one except those who seek to use it their own ends.

I don't buy it;

Under no circumstances should we be in a state of fear; even if it turns out we are all going to die tomorrow. That state of fear accomplishes nothing no matter what situation we are in.

No mater what the final numbers turn out to be; we ought to be living our lives expecting the best and preparing for the reasonable worst. We don't need an official number to tell us what to do.

Without a doubt, there is some kind of conspiracy of either massive incompetence or some kind of pharmacy-related conspiracy to get some financial gain out of the fact that these tests in the most powerful country in the world, is lacking as if this is a primitive country.

a reply to: carewemust

There is a valid danger from it. Wuhan, Italy, and Iran show that. If you get enough infections in one place that the severe cases can overwhelm the medical infrastructure, it will spike your death toll considerably and cause lots of problems.

We need to avoid that.

But we also need to not be lied to and kept in the dark to generate massive panic for political purposes like they're doing now.

originally posted by: HalWesten
Put the blame where it belongs - the media, especially social media, has been whipping people into frenzies with each potential disaster and here we are.

If millions of people were given CAT scans and MRIs, the media would scream that cancer and heart disease is running rampant in America.

The same hysteria will occur when a million Americans are tested for Coronavirus.

a reply to: nugget1

If massive testing was done and it showed the virus is far more wide spread than we're being led to believe, it might show the number of deaths for the average population to be far lower than the flu. That would be letting a good crisis go to waste. I'm appalled that congress is still going on break. How would they react if all medical personal went on vacation right now?
I keep praying people will wake up and vote out every single lawyer and career politician they can.

a reply to: DanDanDat


Look at it this way:

You have 100 people. If they all get sick with it, 20 of them will need medical intervention while 80 of them will develop very mild illness and get well on their own. Some will know they're sick; others won't even notice they had anything.

Put them in a population of 1,000.

Those 20 who land in the hospital cause a splash. They have the new disease because they get tested. And maybe 10 of them get very, very ill with 6 or 7 of them going on to die.

Now the community is in a state of fear. They don't know that 80 of them are also ill with the same thing. Those people are never tested. What they see is a disease that makes everyone who gets it so sick they go into the hospital and that kills a high percentage of those who have it.

So long as the testing is restricted, the rest of the populace can be told over and over that some of them will have mild symptoms, even most of them, but they don't see the data because those people aren't tested and so they never know.

TextAmerica’s shamefully slow coronavirus testing threatens all of us

The US lags just about every developed country on testing for Covid-19 disease.

link

In late February, Julie Eaker, a physician's assistant and supervisor at a small, rural, tribal community health clinic in Siskiyou County, California, had a patient who had a possible exposure to Covid-19. It wasn’t direct: They had been exposed to a person, and that person had been in direct contact with a confirmed Covid-19 case. Eaker’s patient was developing an upper respiratory infection too, and she wanted to ease their peace of mind — and protect the community — by getting them tested for Covid-19.

To this day, the patient still hasn’t been tested for the illness. And it’s not because Eaker didn’t try. The story she describes is Kafkaesque.

First, Eaker called her local health department and was told her patient didn’t qualify for testing since they hadn’t traveled to China, per the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time. After the CDC relaxed its testing criteria, the patient was still sick, so Eaker called again. “I didn’t receive a phone call back,” she says.

The patient thought they had pneumonia and asked to be tested for peace of mind. Finally, last week, after Eaker ordered some test kits herself from a private lab, she got a call back. “The health department told me I was not allowed to use those test kits — that I ordered — without their permission!”

I see everyone's point about testing but then why are we closing all these events down and cancelling athletic activities? To prevent spread and possible contamination. So to me it doesn't make sense to test unless the test can be done at home.

We do not need every sick person traveling to their local hospital or clinic to get tested when they might have this virus. To me it seems like we want to isolate and keep the "sick" people away from those that are more vulnerable which would be the individuals at the doctors offices and hospitals. To me if you are sick it makes the most sense to stay home and take care of yourself the best way possible and if you get into the situation where you are not getting better and cannot deal with it to get advanced care. What is a positive test result going to do to help you get better since there is no cure or vaccine? It will be used as a tool for some guy sitting at a desk to spin the data in the way he wants to.

a reply to: Willtell

It's the CDC playing politics with this for some reason.

At every turn, you get stopped there.

The CDC stopped them in Washington.

They were able to test the Utah Jazz player in a single day in Oklahoma, not one of the approved testing states.

This lady was stopped by the CDC through the health dapartment.

They don't want people to know.

It's not like PCR is cutting edge.