Midpack
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Anyone else really tired of the nonstop non-specific reporting on testing - we have enough versus not enough - without anyone saying anything about what IS enough! What does more of that accomplish? Most of the reports I’ve seen on testing have been useless, only spurring confusion (and partisanship).
And I’ve yet to see anything specific on contact tracing, how many people have any idea what it entails, and who’s going to to do it?
After reading many useless reports, I found this - but when will journalists actually quantify what’s needed and how to work toward it? Stop wasting time with vague information.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ond-historic-failure-of-leadership-from-trump
And I’ve yet to see anything specific on contact tracing, how many people have any idea what it entails, and who’s going to to do it?
After reading many useless reports, I found this - but when will journalists actually quantify what’s needed and how to work toward it? Stop wasting time with vague information.
The US has so far tested about 3.3m people, about 1% of its population. Per capita, that is small compared with several countries including Germany and South Korea. Iceland has tested people at 10 times the US rate.
Daily testing has flattened out and is now hovering around 150,000 tests a day – vastly below the level that would be needed to detect localized pockets of disease as the economy reopens. Most alarmingly, the number of tests carried out by commercial labs has actually plummeted in recent days due to shortages in test samples, leaving the labs sitting idle.
Estimates vary on how much testing will be needed, but they are all substantially greater than present provision. Even at the lower end, as posited by the former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb, some 2m to 3m tests a day are recommended – up to three times the current level.
Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics argues that is too few. It calls for tens of millions of tests every day, way beyond existing capacity.
As the Johns Hopkins plan makes clear, diagnostic testing is only the start. It must be combined with relentless detective work, called “contact tracing”, to track down anyone who has come into contact with an infected person and who might need quarantining to stop the virus spreading again.
The Johns Hopkins plan envisages a nationwide army of 100,000 contact tracers. “That might sound eye-popping, but it’s reasonable and may be a low estimate,” Cicero said, pointing out that in Wuhan, China, the authorities employed a workforce three times the size per capita.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ond-historic-failure-of-leadership-from-trump
Last edited: