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Korea is doing drive-through testing with results available in three days. [1] That the US is still at the level of doing testing in a private and haphazard fas

Korea is doing drive-through testing with results available in three days. [1] That the US is still at the level of doing testing in a private and haphazard fashion is effectively criminal and seems likely to have a serious impact fairly soon. The US had a difficult time even testing all the workers at the nursing home in Washington where 11 people died.[2] [1] https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-south-korea-uses-drive-thru-stations-to-test-for-covid-19-11950955 https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-south-korea-uses-driv... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/coronavirus-nursing-home.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/coronavirus-nursing-ho...

wintorez 7y ago
I think this epidemic will expose a lot of weaknesses in public health sector globally. Hopefully, we will learn valuable lessons, but I wished we didn't have to learn them at the cost of losing numerous lives.
- officialjunk 7y ago
  what is scary to me is that the average american seems to be ignoring this and are more scared of lice and bedbugs, which are not lethal. telling folks to treat this as worse than lice and bedbugs, has worked in waking up some of my acquaintances. i think because it triggers more of an emotional response, though just a guess.
- hnick 7y ago
  And its interaction with social safety nets in general. Staying alone for 14 days in self imposed quarantine is a potential death sentence anyway for many in our JIT hand-to-mouth sectors of society.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  In the USA maybe we can bring back the pandemic response command chain in the executive branch of the federal government who were all summarily fired in 2018 because the president and his national security advisor didn’t want to keep “people who sit around doing nothing most of the time” (paraphrased) on payroll. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
  - HenryKissinger 7y ago
    Sounds like the old IT joke. No pandemic: What the hell do we pay you for. Pandemic: What the hell do we pay you for.
  - pandaman 7y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/04/no-trump-didnt-shut-down-37-47-global-anti-pandemic-programs/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/04/no-trump-...
    - jacobolus 7y ago
      That is about a different claim, related to efforts by the US to help developing countries respond to pandemics. He absolutely did dump everyone in the pandemic command chain in NSC/DHS, and then not replace them. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ When recently asked about this and his proposals to defund the CDC by the press, he said in response “I’m a businessperson. I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
      - pandaman 7y ago
        Luckily, we have an entire agency dedicated to pandemics - CDC and the article I linked assures that CDC has not been defunded.
partiallypro 7y ago
Everyone keeps pointing to the lack of availability of kits in the US without mentioning the reason. The reason is that the CDC created its own kits instead of using the WHO kits. Why did they do that? Because the WHO kits were inaccurate. Accurate diagnoses happened only ~60% of the time, basically a coin flip. In China the tests were becoming such a problem, now they basically just count anyone with symptoms. That's one of the reasons why numbers jumped drastically. Sometimes it takes up to 8 times to get a hit. Which when you think about it is completely ridiculous. That is with people with full blown symptoms. The original CDC batch became tainted but were more accurate...unfortunately the CDC version was also giving false positives and didn't meet QC. To make matters worse CDC rules required very stringent guidelines for approval from third parties and states. Most of that has been lifted (I think this is what Trump was referring to when he said he was lifting something from the Obama admin, though I don't think it started with him. But who knows because Trump is often full of bluster.) Here are a few articles about it. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-testing-kits-flawed.html https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-testing-kits-flawed.... https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51491763 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51491763 https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc-coronavirus-covid-19-test https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc-coronavirus-covid-19-... I wish people would stop pointing to South Korea and China as the paradigm of how this should be treated. It's entirely possible that the "drive thru" model with relatively inaccurate kits could make things worse. There isn't much point in producing millions of tests if they are no more accurate than a coin flip and can take up to 8 times to properly diagnose someone. Not to say the US hasn't bungled this and wasted some precious time. The one thing, I'm pretty confused about at this point is how this has spread so quickly in Italy.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- fspeech 7y ago
  "Coin flip" would imply half of the people who don't have the disease will test positive. There is no evidence for that. It is a super inept analogy. The infection is at the lung while the swabs are done to the upper respiratory tract. There will be misses no matter how good the kits are.
djsumdog 7y ago
I think part of it may be intentional. No matter what, and the end, you will get accurate numbers for death, and there's not much that can be done for viral infections, other than cancelling large events and other means of transmission. Some can't be avoided though (elections are happening in the US). Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly. This is the only logical explanation at this point. Or you can replace "avoid panic" with "avoid bad press for Trump".
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    "A US government agency massively dropped the ball" should always be a possibility to consider. Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
    - nerdponx 7y ago
      Both things are likely true here. Also recall that incompetence in the CDC likely stems from politically-motivated firings and funding cuts in 2018.
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        The 2018 funding cuts to the CDC weren't really "cuts" as much as they were the expiry of a 5-year emergency grant to fight Ebola. If it was meant to continue forever, perhaps it shouldn't have been passed as emergency funding... I don't think you're wrong about the firings though.
- 7y ago

wintorez 7y ago

I think this epidemic will expose a lot of weaknesses in public health sector globally. Hopefully, we will learn valuable lessons, but I wished we didn't have to learn them at the cost of losing numerous lives.

officialjunk 7y ago
what is scary to me is that the average american seems to be ignoring this and are more scared of lice and bedbugs, which are not lethal. telling folks to treat this as worse than lice and bedbugs, has worked in waking up some of my acquaintances. i think because it triggers more of an emotional response, though just a guess.
hnick 7y ago
And its interaction with social safety nets in general. Staying alone for 14 days in self imposed quarantine is a potential death sentence anyway for many in our JIT hand-to-mouth sectors of society.
jacobolus 7y ago
In the USA maybe we can bring back the pandemic response command chain in the executive branch of the federal government who were all summarily fired in 2018 because the president and his national security advisor didn’t want to keep “people who sit around doing nothing most of the time” (paraphrased) on payroll. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
- HenryKissinger 7y ago
  Sounds like the old IT joke. No pandemic: What the hell do we pay you for. Pandemic: What the hell do we pay you for.
- pandaman 7y ago
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/04/no-trump-didnt-shut-down-37-47-global-anti-pandemic-programs/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/04/no-trump-...
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    That is about a different claim, related to efforts by the US to help developing countries respond to pandemics. He absolutely did dump everyone in the pandemic command chain in NSC/DHS, and then not replace them. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ When recently asked about this and his proposals to defund the CDC by the press, he said in response “I’m a businessperson. I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
    - pandaman 7y ago
      Luckily, we have an entire agency dedicated to pandemics - CDC and the article I linked assures that CDC has not been defunded.

partiallypro 7y ago

Everyone keeps pointing to the lack of availability of kits in the US without mentioning the reason. The reason is that the CDC created its own kits instead of using the WHO kits. Why did they do that? Because the WHO kits were inaccurate. Accurate diagnoses happened only ~60% of the time, basically a coin flip. In China the tests were becoming such a problem, now they basically just count anyone with symptoms. That's one of the reasons why numbers jumped drastically. Sometimes it takes up to 8 times to get a hit. Which when you think about it is completely ridiculous. That is with people with full blown symptoms. The original CDC batch became tainted but were more accurate...unfortunately the CDC version was also giving false positives and didn't meet QC. To make matters worse CDC rules required very stringent guidelines for approval from third parties and states. Most of that has been lifted (I think this is what Trump was referring to when he said he was lifting something from the Obama admin, though I don't think it started with him. But who knows because Trump is often full of bluster.) Here are a few articles about it. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-testing-kits-flawed.html https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-testing-kits-flawed.... https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51491763 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51491763 https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc-coronavirus-covid-19-test https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc-coronavirus-covid-19-... I wish people would stop pointing to South Korea and China as the paradigm of how this should be treated. It's entirely possible that the "drive thru" model with relatively inaccurate kits could make things worse. There isn't much point in producing millions of tests if they are no more accurate than a coin flip and can take up to 8 times to properly diagnose someone. Not to say the US hasn't bungled this and wasted some precious time. The one thing, I'm pretty confused about at this point is how this has spread so quickly in Italy.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fspeech 7y ago
"Coin flip" would imply half of the people who don't have the disease will test positive. There is no evidence for that. It is a super inept analogy. The infection is at the lung while the swabs are done to the upper respiratory tract. There will be misses no matter how good the kits are.

djsumdog 7y ago

I think part of it may be intentional. No matter what, and the end, you will get accurate numbers for death, and there's not much that can be done for viral infections, other than cancelling large events and other means of transmission. Some can't be avoided though (elections are happening in the US). Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly.

nerdponx 7y ago
Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly. This is the only logical explanation at this point. Or you can replace "avoid panic" with "avoid bad press for Trump".
- DuskStar 7y ago
  "A US government agency massively dropped the ball" should always be a possibility to consider. Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    Both things are likely true here. Also recall that incompetence in the CDC likely stems from politically-motivated firings and funding cuts in 2018.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      The 2018 funding cuts to the CDC weren't really "cuts" as much as they were the expiry of a 5-year emergency grant to fight Ebola. If it was meant to continue forever, perhaps it shouldn't have been passed as emergency funding... I don't think you're wrong about the firings though.
7y ago