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> 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 mak

• Symmetry 7y ago
  The CDC test was mostly pretty good. My impression from This Week In Virology was that some aspects were too clever which is why it took so long to come out but the parts of it that involved the detection of SARS-Covid-2 worked just fine. The problem was that there were some bad reagents in the part of the test that looked for other respiratory illnesses so the third part of the test that wasn't directly concerned with the Coronavirus didn't work. And it would be illegal to run a test that didn't conform to protocol - simply skipping the relatively useless part of the test that didn't work. The CDC deserves some blame for taking 3 weeks to produce a gold-plated test that had a part that didn't work but I think we ought to blame the FDA more for preventing any of the qualified labs from doing any tests until the CDC finished taking its sweet time to make a test and then that test didn't work to FDA standards. There are tons of competent hospitals, universities, and companies that could have made a test to WHO standards in under a week and gotten us testing early. Well, the FDA managed to prevent most testing but Dr. Helen Chu was willing to break the law and alerted us to the Seattle outbreak. She saved countless lives and I hope she doesn't go to jail for it.