4 ms·

One of the huge failures of the government is that we still don't have any push for ubiquitous testing. South Korea's aggressive testing for the virus is a key

One of the huge failures of the government is that we still don't have any push for ubiquitous testing. South Korea's aggressive testing for the virus is a key factor in their success in suppressing the epidemic.

dboreham 7y ago
Assuming you're talking about the US, I think this situation exposes a not well known fact that the federal government doesn't really control the inside of the country. The response has to come at the state and local level, which it is, slowly. e.g. : https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-tests-everyone-tiny-colorado-county/608590/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/coronavi... Here in our county in rural Montana (based on info from the local medical establishment, who I know fairly well), we have been conducting much more testing than you'd expect based on reports from around the country, and we have never had a shortage of tests, and our small hospital lab will shortly have in-house testing deployed.
- cycomanic 7y ago
  Actually that's not true in this case. I believe it was the CDC who said only use our test. I'm not from the States but I believe the CDC is a federal agency isn't it?
  - dboreham 7y ago
    FDA actually, but I'm not addressing the existence of the test but rather decisions on whether to perform widespread testing like SK.
- landryraccoon 7y ago
  > The response has to come at the state and local level, which it is, slowly I don't think this makes sense. If this is actually true then the US is just completely broken. Coronavirus is a global pandemic - are you arguing that each individual local jurisdiction should develop and manage it's own tests? That's horribly inefficient and slow. The initially hit states were depending on the CDC and FDA to provide tests (or at least approve tests): https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-with-coronavirus-testing-in-the-us https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-wit... Unfortunately under the current administration the CDC and FDA are understaffed and being run extremely poorly, which greatly hampered initial testing. If your argument is that local jurisdictions should be responsible for pandemic testing, that makes very little sense to me. It is far more efficient for a single organization to coordinate pandemic response at the national level.
  - dboreham 7y ago
    My comment was responding to parent's "push for testing", not the development of a test. Having a test exist is one thing. Deciding how many people to test is a different thing, and is decided at the local level in the USA.

dboreham 7y ago

Assuming you're talking about the US, I think this situation exposes a not well known fact that the federal government doesn't really control the inside of the country. The response has to come at the state and local level, which it is, slowly. e.g. : https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-tests-everyone-tiny-colorado-county/608590/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/coronavi... Here in our county in rural Montana (based on info from the local medical establishment, who I know fairly well), we have been conducting much more testing than you'd expect based on reports from around the country, and we have never had a shortage of tests, and our small hospital lab will shortly have in-house testing deployed.

cycomanic 7y ago
Actually that's not true in this case. I believe it was the CDC who said only use our test. I'm not from the States but I believe the CDC is a federal agency isn't it?
- dboreham 7y ago
  FDA actually, but I'm not addressing the existence of the test but rather decisions on whether to perform widespread testing like SK.
landryraccoon 7y ago
> The response has to come at the state and local level, which it is, slowly I don't think this makes sense. If this is actually true then the US is just completely broken. Coronavirus is a global pandemic - are you arguing that each individual local jurisdiction should develop and manage it's own tests? That's horribly inefficient and slow. The initially hit states were depending on the CDC and FDA to provide tests (or at least approve tests): https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-with-coronavirus-testing-in-the-us https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-wit... Unfortunately under the current administration the CDC and FDA are understaffed and being run extremely poorly, which greatly hampered initial testing. If your argument is that local jurisdictions should be responsible for pandemic testing, that makes very little sense to me. It is far more efficient for a single organization to coordinate pandemic response at the national level.
- dboreham 7y ago
  My comment was responding to parent's "push for testing", not the development of a test. Having a test exist is one thing. Deciding how many people to test is a different thing, and is decided at the local level in the USA.