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The problem with talking about per capita testing numbers is that having a bigger population means you need a proportionally larger number of tests to administe
by xienze 6y ago
The problem with talking about per capita testing numbers is that having a bigger population means you need a proportionally larger number of tests to administer to reach the same numbers as smaller countries. The will to test and the money to do so aren’t any issue. The problem is that we can’t just snap our fingers and make tens of millions of tests appear out of thin air. I think this point gets lost on a lot of people when they look at the corona scoreboard (likewise, people fixate on the large number of deaths in the US and ignore that we’re doing better than several European nations on a deaths per million basis).
- munk-a 6y ago> The problem is that we can’t just snap our fingers and make tens of millions of tests appear out of thin air. You are correct - but we (or rather the government) can snap it's fingers and compel some private companies that are well positioned to be able to manufacture tests to do so at a higher priority than other business concerns - or we (again the government) can issue generous contracts for testing supplies that guarantees payment to private companies manufacturing them even if the original quota of tests requested by the government is above the level we end up needing. I think that large countries actually have an advantage here - a small country might not have any internal industry that'd be capable of manufacturing tests without heavy retooling - or that industry might be so small and specialized that scaling it up is infeasible. But even in that sort of a situation they can use market based solutions to bid on tests in a manner that motivates private companies in other countries to feel confident committing to test production - and that's only needed if there isn't any sort of altruistic world-banding-together-to-fight-the-issue effort.
- xienze 6y ago> can snap it's fingers and compel some private companies that are well positioned to be able to manufacture tests to do so at a higher priority than other business concerns And we’ve done that with things like masks and ventilators. But there is a key limiting factor with the tests, the reagant supply. Again, can’t just snap our fingers and make it happen faster. This isn’t AWS, we can’t just spin up more supply in an instant.
- kshacker 6y agoHow long does it take to double the reagent supply? Is there a number? Is it something we have started or not even that?
- xienze 6y ago> Is it something we have started or not even that? I would assume so. Are you under the impression that the US simply doesn’t want to test as many people as possible?
- ceejayoz 6y ago> Are you under the impression that the US simply doesn’t want to test as many people as possible? Absolutely. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-says-too-much-coronavirus-testing-makes-us-look-bad-2020-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-says-too-much-coronavi... > "So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad." https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-on-allowing-grand-princess-cruise-passengers-to-disembark-id-rather-have-them-stay-on-personally-2020-03-07 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-on-allowing-grand-pr... > "They would like to have the people come off. I’d rather have the people stay [on the ship]. But I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault."
- xienze 6y ago> "So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad." He's not wrong though, look at the rest of the quote in context: > "So the media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn't have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad," The correctly identified problem with increased testing is that lots of super geniuses, who apparently can't look past "big number is biggest" w.r.t. corona deaths, try to tie "most deaths" with "worst handling of the situation", completely ignoring, as I pointed out, that the US is doing better on a deaths/million basis than several European countries. Countries that supposedly have superior healthcare systems, healthier populations, and leaders not named Trump. Buuuuttt, no one wants to tie context like that to any of the numbers, so he's absolutely right that increased testing => increased reporting of infection => increased whining about how bad the country is doing. And of course, this is all ignoring that it's not his call to make as far as how many tests are performed, otherwise we wouldn't be leading the world in absolute numbers of tests administered by a staggering degree. No, we'd be content to test nobody at all and brag about how no one is infected.
- qotgalaxy 6y agoBut none of that matters. You have x number of people, you need y number of tests. Just because it's harder to do doesn't mean you need to do it any less.