Admiral Brett Giroir, who is coordinating the administration’s coronavirus testing efforts, reported at the Sunday White House press conference that the United States has performed more than 894,000 coronavirus tests to date, cheering that the number has “highly significantly increased every single day.”
But my Numbers…I like my numbers…
But my Ratings…My ratings are higher than “The Bachelor”
But my Profits…How can I fleece thee?
OR are the promised Covid-19 tests FAILING per Fauci?
First of all Pence is as bad at numbers as Trump is, and just as good as lying. But even if the test kits where delivered, probably many went to places where they are still playing down the epidemic and don’t want to use them, like Texas, Florida and Alabama where you have to be outright kicking the bucket in order to get a test, because they don’t want their numbers to rise.
We should be talking about a billion or even two billion tests for the US alone. The new rapid POC tests are coming now. For those countries with some installed base like South Korea, Japan, Sweden, Germany and Finland, the cost per test should be under $2 a test. The charge on a central lab PCR in the US is $85-$100! There’s an obstacle right there. And even famous, rich people are having trouble getting timely tested. Home antibody test kits should be distributed free, so families who have been infected, maybe were asymptomatic, can go back to normal life such as it is. It might be worthwhile to have a testing czar as this testing issue will go on for a long time, and the opportunities for egregious price gouging remains.
Because Resident Rump is allergic to the truth?
That started well before his presidential campaign. It’s on his birth certificate, one may surmise.
America knew what it would get: a pathological liar and his ilk.
Trump, Pence Promised Millions Of Tests — So Why Have Less Than 900K Been Used?
Ooh, ooh, I know this one, and so does every other non-cult voter.
NYC and Long Island have test rates comparable to or higher than South Korea’s.
It’s not enough. Not by a long shot.
US metro areas need enough kits to test at least 2,000 per 100,000 population, not 755 [South Korea].
Turns out they were likely buying the defective ones from China…
You know, the Great Dealmaker was on top of things…
It turns out that in order to get a test you have a a proof-of-purchase for a MAGA hat…
The only numbers that Pence is good at is 3:16…
I can answer the headline: “because Dense Pence was full of shit” or “because Dense Pence was lying”
Because we are talking about an administration that simply cannot speak the truth. Even the number of 4 million I’m suspicious of. Sounds like a lot but for a country whose population is over 300 million, would the results of these tests be statistically significant if you are trying to calculate infection rates, fatality rates, incubation periods and so forth. Perhaps, someone with more knowledge and experience with statistics can comment.
Just imagine how fucked we’d be if Trump’s uncle went to a Community College instead of MIT.
Remember that a lot of places have reserved testing for the seriously ill because it takes resources they don’t have to perform the tests safely…
Gotta be Obama’s, Hillary’s or Biden’s fault. All three, just to be safe.
There are no tests. The government will not pay for them. Just as JKushner was dickering with GM over costs to manufacture ventilators.
They keep thinking this is business they can cut deal on.
Upshot is nothing is being done.
Manufacturers must be paid. They cannot do at cost, they need materials & to pay workers. Trump is trying to shakedown companies we desperately need to make gowns, masks, PPE’s gloves.
If they would just pay we would have needed medical supplies.
instead they are willing to let millions die.
From the outset they were not interested in public safety nor human lives. It’s all about making a financial deal & the economy to the.Trump clan.
Grifters with. Mob like business tactics.
…plus all the ‘women are lesser’ verses.
Finland has about 1,500 tests daily, which corresponds to about 100,000 a day if it was the same population as the US. That gives a chance to track down, isolate, and start treatment early. If the US had taken the Finnish approach, which was pretty aggressive and early with the testing, deaths would be at around 800 at this point, not 2,700 and still doubling every three days.
The most charitable interpretation possible is he doesn’t know the difference between a test collection kit (i.e. a sterile nasal swab and specimen container), and the actual test itself. The latter is still performed primarily at laboratories with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines, where genetic material is amplified and the viral signature overlaid on that genome can be detected. This particular form of test is not conducted via a “kit”, and is the primary reason turnaround for a given test is not rapid.
A serological test – an antibody-based test that (at some risk of oversimplifying) functions more akin to a home pregnancy test – is something many labs are working on, and some have begun to be deployed in other countries. This is indeed a kit. These were definitely, positively not distributed in their millions when Pence made the statement above. I’m not clear if any broad distribution of these tests has even begun in America, though I do know countless immunology labs across the US are working on development
Of course by Occam’s Razor, the less charitable interpretation is they were simply lying the whole time.
P.S. an effective, quick and relatively cheap serological test is the only way to achieve rapid testing on a multi-million scale. So in the interest of wrapping this thing up and getting people safely back into society – something that requires reasonable assurance that they’re Cov-19 negative at a minimum, and better yet have existing immunity – this research into serological testing is key.
New York region will need to test 100% of the population by the fall with many people needing multiple tests. Everyone needs to know if they have antibodies indicating that they were a asymptomatic carrier or not.
