7 ms·

Whenever I read such extreme action verbs as "slam", "bash" etc. in a headline, I have to assume the underlying article is a populist piece of garbage.

OneGuy123 6y ago
"Populism is what we call democracy when we don't like the outcome"
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  And if we really don’t like it, we send our NATO troops to cancel the outcome.
- makomk 6y ago
  Populism does seem to get used as a bit of an insult, but there is a definite tendency towards the idea that big, complicated problems have simple solutions that the evil government is just refusing to use for malicious reasons that fits the term and this seems like a good example. For example, Gates insists that people should be able to get test results within 24 hours no matter what and that it is unbelievable and inexplicable that the US isn't encouraging people without symptoms to get tested. There's an inherent trade-off between those two things - push people without symptoms to get tested and it overloads the testing capacity, impeding access to testing and contact tracing for everyone - which can't easily be fixed by expanding testing. There's an extremely limited global supply of everything needed to carry out testing, the US already has pretty much the biggest testing program out there excluding a handful of really small countries, and the availability of further supplies is not being helped by the fact that Europe is having major outbreaks right now and is trying to expand testing there up to US levels. You wouldn't know this from the article, which just makes it sound like the big bad government is doing these things to make this worse because they're big and bad. (There also seem to be some pretty fundamental limitations as to how useful testing potentially-exposed people without symptoms can even be in the first place. Test them too early and it'll likely give a false negative. Test them too late and you'll only find out they're positive after they've been contagious for some time, plus they may also test negative too. I've also seem it claimed that the optimal time to test people is about 3 days after the peak in infectiousness, which probably doesn't help - though without symptoms it's not like there's really any way to tell when the optimal time is anyway. This really fundamental reason why what he's calling for wouldn't work as described is just ignored, even though the CDC's literal stated reason for discouraging it is that it would lead to false negatives which would cause people to think they're in the clear and go out and spread the virus.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lumberingjack 6y ago
this whole place is turned into Reddit man there's people up top in this comment section complaining that there's not enough testing while they're frolicking around the countryside. Complaining that they want free testing. Imagine a virus so bad you have to get tested to know if you have it or not
- EForEndeavour 6y ago
  What do you mean when you say this place has "turned into reddit"? Are you referring to the generally lower standard of comment quality there? If so, that's ironic. Imagine a virus so unpredictable that you might take anywhere from 0 to 14 days to become infectious, and you could end up anyhwere from unknowingly and asymptomatically shedding the virus to dead from it. Imagine that.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  > Imagine a virus so bad you have to get tested to know if you have it or not You mean like HIV?

OneGuy123 6y ago

"Populism is what we call democracy when we don't like the outcome"

mensetmanusman 6y ago
And if we really don’t like it, we send our NATO troops to cancel the outcome.
makomk 6y ago
Populism does seem to get used as a bit of an insult, but there is a definite tendency towards the idea that big, complicated problems have simple solutions that the evil government is just refusing to use for malicious reasons that fits the term and this seems like a good example. For example, Gates insists that people should be able to get test results within 24 hours no matter what and that it is unbelievable and inexplicable that the US isn't encouraging people without symptoms to get tested. There's an inherent trade-off between those two things - push people without symptoms to get tested and it overloads the testing capacity, impeding access to testing and contact tracing for everyone - which can't easily be fixed by expanding testing. There's an extremely limited global supply of everything needed to carry out testing, the US already has pretty much the biggest testing program out there excluding a handful of really small countries, and the availability of further supplies is not being helped by the fact that Europe is having major outbreaks right now and is trying to expand testing there up to US levels. You wouldn't know this from the article, which just makes it sound like the big bad government is doing these things to make this worse because they're big and bad. (There also seem to be some pretty fundamental limitations as to how useful testing potentially-exposed people without symptoms can even be in the first place. Test them too early and it'll likely give a false negative. Test them too late and you'll only find out they're positive after they've been contagious for some time, plus they may also test negative too. I've also seem it claimed that the optimal time to test people is about 3 days after the peak in infectiousness, which probably doesn't help - though without symptoms it's not like there's really any way to tell when the optimal time is anyway. This really fundamental reason why what he's calling for wouldn't work as described is just ignored, even though the CDC's literal stated reason for discouraging it is that it would lead to false negatives which would cause people to think they're in the clear and go out and spread the virus.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lumberingjack 6y ago

this whole place is turned into Reddit man there's people up top in this comment section complaining that there's not enough testing while they're frolicking around the countryside. Complaining that they want free testing. Imagine a virus so bad you have to get tested to know if you have it or not

EForEndeavour 6y ago
What do you mean when you say this place has "turned into reddit"? Are you referring to the generally lower standard of comment quality there? If so, that's ironic. Imagine a virus so unpredictable that you might take anywhere from 0 to 14 days to become infectious, and you could end up anyhwere from unknowingly and asymptomatically shedding the virus to dead from it. Imagine that.
CarelessExpert 6y ago
> Imagine a virus so bad you have to get tested to know if you have it or not You mean like HIV?