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There's, frankly, probably not enough reagents and consumables on the planet for the US to achieve 500k tests a day. As far as I know no country anywhere has ma

by makomk 7y ago

There's, frankly, probably not enough reagents and consumables on the planet for the US to achieve 500k tests a day. As far as I know no country anywhere has managed this level of testing. Germany - who've been doing the best at testing lately - have been stuck at about 50,000 tests a day for a few weeks now, maybe even decreasing slightly. If you take into account the difference in population, that's only the equivalent of the US doing 200,000 tests a day - and of course scaling up to a larger population is harder. That doesn't stop the American press making it sound like not achieving those 500,000 tests a day is the result of some uniquely American political failing though.

ahartmetz 7y ago
There are even plans to increase testing to 4,5 million(!) tests per week in Germany, or ~650k per day. Currently there is unused testing capacity, so it looks like the old restrictive conditions for testing (basically: symptoms and (contact to infected person or stay in high risk area)) are still in place and should be updated ASAP.
polygotdomain 7y ago
100% there is a shortage of reagents and kits. There are certain countries that are not letting reagents and kits ship out, and we are in no position to call them out on that. >That doesn't stop the American press making it sound like not achieving those 500,000 tests a day is the result of some uniquely American political failing though. I don't think we're unique in where we are in comparison with other countries as far as testing, but we are in a unique position in regards to being able to put some strong leverage on getting other countries to work together to respond to this pandemic. We're not doing that and as a result, other countries are having to "roll their own" response to this pandemic just like we are. The lack of coordination within our country is putting us at a unique disadvantage, even if we had better coordination world wide. This pandemic is a exceptional global crisis in a way we've never seen before, and thus should've led to a addressing it at a global scale in a way we had never seen before. Instead the global response has been crippled in numerous ways at various different points in time. The American political failing is in not being the true world leaders, and the world is, IMHO, worse off for it.

by makomk 7y ago

ahartmetz 7y ago

There are even plans to increase testing to 4,5 million(!) tests per week in Germany, or ~650k per day. Currently there is unused testing capacity, so it looks like the old restrictive conditions for testing (basically: symptoms and (contact to infected person or stay in high risk area)) are still in place and should be updated ASAP.

polygotdomain 7y ago

100% there is a shortage of reagents and kits. There are certain countries that are not letting reagents and kits ship out, and we are in no position to call them out on that. >That doesn't stop the American press making it sound like not achieving those 500,000 tests a day is the result of some uniquely American political failing though. I don't think we're unique in where we are in comparison with other countries as far as testing, but we are in a unique position in regards to being able to put some strong leverage on getting other countries to work together to respond to this pandemic. We're not doing that and as a result, other countries are having to "roll their own" response to this pandemic just like we are. The lack of coordination within our country is putting us at a unique disadvantage, even if we had better coordination world wide. This pandemic is a exceptional global crisis in a way we've never seen before, and thus should've led to a addressing it at a global scale in a way we had never seen before. Instead the global response has been crippled in numerous ways at various different points in time. The American political failing is in not being the true world leaders, and the world is, IMHO, worse off for it.