Covid response is a failure in the US

I just wanted to add a few things to the discussion.
You posted...

As of yesterday (5/2/2020) the US has tested just over 2% of the population. The problem with this testing, and I think it would 'fit' into your 'delusional' characterization, is that they are only using the RNA test, which doesn't give a complete picture. Although, at 2%, that is good enough for a political poll I would like more data.

Take a look at the 2009 testing in regards to the Swine Flu also known as H1N1.
blog.nomorefakenews.com...

Back to the Swine Flu pandemic. In the summer of 2009, the CDC was claiming there were thousands of cases in the US. But behind these statistics lay an unnerving secret. A crime, considering the CDC’s mandate to report the truth to the American people:

Secretly, the CDC had stopped counting cases of Swine Flu.

What? Why?

And then there is this from CBS.

www.cbsnews.com...

In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases. The rationale given for the CDC guidance to forego testing and tracking individual cases was: why waste resources testing for H1N1 flu when the government has already confirmed there's an epidemic?

In August 2009, CBS News made a simple request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for public documents, e-mails and other materials CDC used to communicate to states the decision to stop testing individual cases of Novel H1N1, or "swine flu."When the public affairs folks at CDC refused to produce the documents and quit responding to my queries altogether, I filed a formal Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the materials. Members of the news media are entitled to expedited access, which I requested, since this was for a pending news report and on an issue of public health and interest.
The Obama administration made a commitment to a "new era of open government," as stated in a presidential memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). On March 19, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder issued new FOIA guidelines to "restore the public's ability to access information in a timely manner."

Two months after my FOI request, the CDC has yet to produce any of these easily retrievable materials. Sadly, this is of little surprise. This has become standard operating procedure in Washington.

Just take a look at how our government, the CDC handled the last outbreak.
The testing was...stopped and there was no accountability as to why. Now all we are hearing is how testing is so important.
Can you imagine this happening with Trump?
Our current CDC?
Why no reference to our last outbreak and do a side by side comparison of how they both have been handled?
That seems like step one to me.

I just thought the way we handled the last outbreak would be something we would all agree would be helpful in understanding the current handling of this outbreak.
Did you look into the CDC testing of the H1N1(swine Flu) from 2009?
Maybe we should add this to the discussion too....
Sharyl Attkisson is/was the CBS reporter in the referenced news link above.

originally posted by: Jimy718

originally posted by: tanstaafl

originally posted by: Willtell
Virginia Gov. Northam: Trump Admin "Delusional" To Claim U.S. Has Enough Coronavirus Testing Capacity

Delusional is believing that you need the testing capacity to test everyone in the country, or even in your state.
Testing is meaningless. It is a bean counter thing. It doesn't do anything to solve the problem.

While testing everyone isn't required, testing of a good cross-section of America would provide a lot of very useful data. Like a good estimation of the actual infection rate.

Now, it does depend quite a lot on the kind of test we're talking about. If we use the usual RNA test all we get is those currently infected, IF we use the antibody test, we find out how many have been infected, and either have recovered, or had little to no symptoms.

As of yesterday (5/2/2020) the US has tested just over 2% of the population. The problem with this testing, and I think it would 'fit' into your 'delusional' characterization, is that they are only using the RNA test, which doesn't give a complete picture. Although, at 2%, that is good enough for a political poll

I would like more data.

However, the data shows that the vast majority of people tested DID NOT have Covid-19...it is currently running about 85% negative, and 15% positive.

So, testing is far from meaningless, through proper testing we can get a better idea of the extent, and consequences of this virus...and it will be ONLY through testing that we can obtain this necessary data.

why do people keep comparing our numbers to south korea when pointing out how bad we handled this? first of all, south korea has far fewer population centers to deal with and shorter distances to cover and is far more developed plus they already have experience with a situation like this, south korea did better than most other nations and there's no way we would do as good even if we followed everything they did exactly.

even then comparing a nation the size of a landmass to individual countries in Europe is a bit unfair, if you compare all of the European union and the Uk, which is still half the size of the US to the whole US you'll see Europe did far worse than we did with twice as many deaths and a few hundreds of thousands more cases.

the US actually has done far better than most people seem to be willing to recognize...

a reply to: namehere

Keep on thinking this was not the fault of the current administration. Time for a new president.