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I don't think there's any need for a deliberate conspiracy here; hard capping the number of tests at exactly the daily capacity would require quite complicated
by makomk 6y ago
I don't think there's any need for a deliberate conspiracy here; hard capping the number of tests at exactly the daily capacity would require quite complicated real-time feedback between the multiple sites taking samples and the labs processing them, and would be worse in that it couldn't prioritize cases which need test results most urgently. This problem isn't unique to the US either; back when the press in other countries was pointing to Germany's testing program as proof their country was falling behind, I even had a conversation with a German on here who was convinced their testing was the failure because of similar delays.
- maxerickson 6y agoPeople would be mad about it, but it would be reasonably straightforward to discard samples that were not urgent (so that testing for urgent samples remained prompt and available). There also seem to be some utilization problems. Some folks I know got tested after 1 person had enough symptoms. The person with symptoms got sampled several days before 3 other people and got their result last, probably because of which lab was used.
- sneak 6y agoIt wouldn't need to be hard-capped, just something less than the runaway "collect as many samples as there are test subject arrivals" now.