In a stunning reversal, the CDC Abruptly Changed its Position on Testing.
After weeks of encouraging people to get tested if they may have been exposed to COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly changed course this week and is now telling the public testing might not be necessary.
The Trump administration’s testing coordinator, Adm. Brett Giroir, defended the move as trying to prevent a “false sense of security” that some people have after getting a negative test result.
On a call with reporters Wednesday, Giroir also flatly denied any political involvement in the decision. He said the new testing guidelines came from the CDC with no intervention or direction from President Donald Trump.
“Let me tell you, right up front that the new guidelines are a CDC action,” Giroir said.
Official Denial
No one in their right mind believes this official denial.
False Sense of Security?
What about the false sense of security provided by not testing? The rationale provided makes no sense.
“This is evidence-based decisions that are driven by the scientists and physicians, both within the CDC, within my office in the lab task force, and certainly amongst the task force members,” Giroir continued, as reporters grilled him on the change.
Pressure From Top Down
Please consider CDC was pressured ‘from the top down’ to change coronavirus testing guidance, official says
A sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN, and a key White House coronavirus task force member was not part of the meeting when the new guidelines were discussed.
“It’s coming from the top down,” the official said of the new directive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was in surgery and not part of the discussion during the August 20 task force meeting when updated guidelines were discussed.
“I was under general anesthesia in the operating room and was not part of any discussion or deliberation regarding the new testing recommendations,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
CDC would not comment on questions about its own policy change. A CDC spokesperson referred all questions to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump On Testing
…..Our massive testing capability, rather than being praised, is used by the Lamestream Media and their partner, the Do Nothing Radical Left Democrats, as a point of scorn. This testing, and what we have so quickly done, is used as a Fake News weapon. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2020
Testing Makes Us Look Bad
Our testing is so much bigger and more advanced than any other country (we have done a great job on this!) that it shows more cases. Without testing, or weak testing, we would be showing almost no cases. Testing is a double edged sword – Makes us look bad, but good to have!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2020
“If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,” said Trump at a June 15, White House Roundtable.
He has repeated that lie at least a dozen times since then. Here is one of them.
Cases, Cases, Cases! If we didn’t test so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases. If you test 40,000,000 people, you are going to have many cases that, without the testing (like other countries), would not show up every night on the Fake Evening News…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2020
Deep State Testing
The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives! @SteveFDA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2020
Allegedly the deep state is preventing the very testing we need as well as demanding more testing we don’t need.
Trump Admission
Please recall Trump now says he wasn’t kidding when he told officials to slow down coronavirus testing, contradicting staff
“I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down please.’
[When asked by a reporter Trump responded]
“I don’t kid, let me just tell you, let me make it clear,” Trump told a reporter on Monday, when asked again if he was kidding when he said Saturday he instructed his administration to slow down coronavirus testing.
Giroir’ Claim
Giroir said that the updated CDC guidelines were written by multiple authors, adding that he, Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, worked on the updated guidelines.
Fauci’s Rebuttal
“I was under general anesthesia in the operating room and was not part of any discussion or deliberation regarding the new testing recommendations,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
I am generally leery of unnamed officials. A recap of events to date might help decide whom to believe.
Synopsis
- At a campaign rally in June, Trump said he asked for slower testing.
- Trump’s staff said he was joking.
- When asked, Trump told a reporter “I don’t kid”.
- On August 20, when Dr. Anthony Fauci was in surgery, the CDC abruptly changed the rules.
- The CDC claims it was their own decision.
- An official told CNN “It’s coming from the top down.”
- Giroir claims Fauci worked on the updated guidelines.
- Fauci says he didn’t.
Whom do you believe?
If in doubt about what’s going on, please consider Trump Lies of the Day on Saving the Airlines and China
Mish
I read a while back – though I do not understand it – that the President doesn’t have the power to fire Fauci or people like him in CDC. No idea if this is true, but if so would explain a few things. In any case, this Presidency has clearly revealed the extremely limited authority a President has over the USG Administration.
He DID NOT! Mish has absolutely ZERO journalistic integrity. You should be ashamed of yourself for putting out this garbage just to get ad revenue…
Oh! And masks!
The vast majority of masks worn by the public and by health workers have a saturation point of anywhere between 20min and 40min.
2 immediate problems
The germs and viruses that have been caught by the mask as we exhale and inhale, supercharge the material with bacteria and viruses at a concentration many folds what the charge would be by merely sneezing on a surface or in the air. At this stage, once the mask is touched in order to adjust it or, Ye Gods!, remove it, the bacterial and viral charge on your fingers will contaminate any surface you touch subsequently to a degree that is many times superior to that of mere spittle.
The other problem is that once the mask is saturated, air moves in and out through the gaps thereby negating the ostensible utility of a mask.
One final observation is that most individuals will reuse a mask many times thereby increasing the problems as outlined above.
Masks give a false sense of security. As do gloves for the uninitiated.
Ha! And I have been wearing the same couple of masks for months. I recently had to toss one though because the elastic finally snapped.
I’m glad they changed the guidelines. Why should I have to get tested if I don’t have symptoms? If I wear a mask that prevents others from getting it. It’s been utter chaos for us business owners dealing with this quarantine mess. Having to get tested just because you were near someone who has covid even if you both wore masks.
For context, the 1957 and 1968 pandemics in the USA resulted in 120K and 150K fatalities respectively.
This, at a time when the US population was significantly smaller.
As correctly pointed out by an Irish poster on another site, today, we can no longer talk of a pandemic. Rather, this has morphed into a casedemic.
Not the same thing.
A virus does what a virus does and there is little we can do about it.
Blanket confinements were predicated on:
1 – This is a “novel” virus so the entire global population is susceptible
2 – Because of 1, health systems will be overwhelmed
3 – Precautionary Principle. Till we know more, let’s lock it down.
Today we know that 1 and 2 are not true.
3 is no longer valid because of the overwhelming evidence that tells us that lock downs are, at best, not useful if not down right counterproductive.
Either way, confinement does not and cannot eradicated a virus; it may (may!) slow down the spread. But the virus remains and it will carry on doing what viruses do. When the confinement should be lifted, the spread will resume.
Given the information we have today therefore, blanket testing is unnecessary.
Lock downs or no lock downs, the progression of the virus and the percentage of symptomatic infections it engenders is remarkably similar across borders as are the outcomes of infections.
Today we have largely and truly crossed into the realm of social conditioning and crowd control.
I am a resident of one of the countries that has ostensibly managed this “pandemic” more successfully globally; Jordan.
In Jordan, we had a 3 months hard lock down from mid march till early June with remarkably few infections and deaths.
Due to some 20 odd new cases of Corona infections in the past few days (in Jordan a case is forcibly hospitalised whether symptomatic or not), today (Friday), the authorities have opted for a 24hours hard lock down of the capital city.
What good, pray tell, is a 24hours lock down …. of one city?
Blanket individual testing is no longer necessary… if it ever was.
Testing of sewage waters may be more appropriate for research purposes and more indicated at this stage perhaps.
As I’ve said all we need is competence and Trump hasnt met that bar.
Hypocrite Harris should just stop talking… You know that saying, “better to be thought of as a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.”
The wall is crumbling! Lockdowns are going to be ended soon.
New Thinking on Covid Lockdowns: They’re Overly Blunt and Costly
Blanket business shutdowns—which the U.S. never tried before this pandemic—led to a deep recession. Economists and health experts say there may be a better way.
By Greg Ip
Aug. 24, 2020
Why would Trump have problems with a CDC that:
Insisted on being sole developer of the Covid test, forbidding any other organization from working on it, screwing it up for a full month at which point Fauci explains to congress that the CDC doen’t have the capacity.
Insisted on forbidding use of HCQ to patients on their death beds, when it works best early in the infection. Testing only at late stage to “prove” that it doesn’t work while Fauci says wait for the science, when a yet to be peer approved French study (now reviewed and published) showed reduction of virus loads to zero or near zero in every patient that receivved HCQ plus a zpack in the study.
Would I fight them??? I would fire them.
a partial walkback? every action is shambolic
The federal government appears to have backtracked on COVID-19 testing guidance, according to a statement released late Wednesday from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Controversial recommendations posted to the CDC website on Monday suggested people exposed to the coronavirus “do not necessarily need a test” unless they’re having symptoms, are older or are otherwise medically vulnerable.
In the new statement, the CDC’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield, now says that “all close contacts of confirmed or probable COVID-19 patients” may consider testing.
How does one who was bailed out by the Rothchild Bank and one who is dependent on George Soros to fund projects like Chicago’s Trump Tower along the Chicago River where the Sun Times building once sat have the ethos to claim they are a deep state warrior?
Trump Trump Trump … always in the center of attention … and often negatively so.
How about we split this blog to the good-old macro-economics it used to be and Trump/Biden/etc topics?
Again – major elections affect economics very profoundly in this country. The subject is one that should be addressed here.
Testing people without symptoms is a waste of money. Testing has become a scam. Covid 19 is a scam. Trump is correct to limit it to people with symptoms or those with contact with symptomatic people. I am amazed at the number of my coworkers who just go get testing because they can. They say it free. Right, Free.
“Trump is correct to limit it to people with symptoms or those with contact with symptomatic people”
If my interpretation is correct, he is avoiding testing those that have had contact with symptomatic people. That is the crux of the problem.
Free? wher’d ya hear that one? Grinding the test results I believe costs about $150/a shot. You and awc13 above are quite correct. I’ve said to another on this site that I think the test is far too powerful for contact tracing. I think the test catches everything. The test analysis must include the deepest test tube in history!
Facts,
Almost 23% of the US population has been tested.
92% of those tests resulted in a negative.
Of the 8% that tested positive only 3% of those have died.
42% of the total US deaths have been in long term care facilities.
Can you point to the source for the 23%? Thanks.
The Covid tracking project, 74,792,493 test completed/327,000,000 US population
I see – there have been that many tests, but I don’t believe that data set is for one test per individual. Especially in medical fields and other ‘essential workers’ I think there is quite a large amount of duplication of testing per individual – such that one person may get a test per few days or per week. I am not sure whether duplication is a large portion of the testing number – I just don’t know.
Still an interesting metric – 23% (even if a bit high) is starting to be a significant fraction.
The US has been averaging 600,000 to 700,000 test per day for the last 2 months, at the Covid Traking site under the Our Data tab select the Totals for the US report, it will give you daily numbers since January.
I agree there are probably a lot of multiple test on the same person, but even if you subtract 1 million, were still at 22.5%
Powell wants to target higher inflation. If you couldn’t afford to live before you really wont now.
77 NFL players tested positive for Covid. Turned out that none of the 77 players had Covid.
Turned out you just made that up.
Don’t like the context, so you just ignore it to report the one little facet of the story that fits your narrow worldview?
The context of the story was that there were 77 false positives for NFL players because test preparation was contaminated. False positives were reported; lives and choices were altered for some time; and retesting showed that the original testing was wrong.
This could happen for any testing involving chemicals or reagents that need to be kept pure. ANY TESTING – not just the pet test that you don’t like.
Intellectual laziness and dishonesty is the calling card of Trump and his supporters.
False negatives are a bigger problem than false positives. Therefore testing, more than likely, under-reports cases rather than exaggerates.
….False negatives — that is, a test that says you don’t have the virus when you actually do have the virus — may occur. The reported rate of false negatives is as low as 2% and as high as 37%. The reported rate of false positives — that is, a test that says you have the virus when you actually do not — is 5% or lower….
link to health.harvard.edu,from%20throat%20swabs%20or%20saliva.
That was a helpful article.
I’m glad negative stories continue to come out during the RNC. Trump lies people died. Are you better off then you were 4 years ago ?
I’m actually better physically than I was 4 years ago. But then again, I am 4 years closer to my expiration date.
Yes but that wasnt the actual question. Based on a wide variety of statistics I would say most citizens are worse off then 4 years ago.
What does it matter if we have 800k cases a day or 25k. People are going to act the same regardless.
This virus is here to stay. It’s about time we realize this and get on with life. This is life now.
Keep a mask when in public transportation or shops or where you can not socially distance.
Socially distance 2 metres.
Otherwise live your life as normal as possible.
I just got a haircut and the barber had a mask on and I had a mask on and both rubbed disinfectant on our hands before the haircut began.
Going to get a few drinks with friends soon, will wear a mask until were seated at the bar’s table and have ordered our first drinks from the waiter who is wearing a mask all the time and take the mask off to talk and drink a few drinks.
If the waiter brings refills with just a wave and keeps his/her mask on all the time will leave a large tip.
Mask are just life now for a little while. As here immunity starts to help control the spread they will slowly start to fade.
I personally believe most the doom comes from the hatred for Trump. Hate is very good at clouding judgment.
“People are going to act the same regardless.”
This is already demonstrably false. Any conclusions based on this would also obviously be suspect at best.
How are they acting different? Are they breathing less? Do they live underwater now? No. There might be some small changes in consumption and socialization but overall they haven’t changed their behavior.
Life is returning back to normal where I am. It will return back to normal everywhere the government hasn’t destroyed the economies. The virus is here to stay everywhere civil liberties are important.
Might want to be less doomish. Everything will end up being alright.
The fact a major policy decision was made without Dr. Fauci’s presence is all you really have to know. If you want a specific outcome; then don’t invite those who will oppose your view. This is an application of the Hastert Principle: Don’t bring legislation up for vote unless you know what the outcome will be.
As an engineer, I’ve held design reviews safety critical products where policy requires me to invite people who have little to no technical training, such as purchasing. Unless ALL attend the meeting, the meeting doesn’t take place. This is to ensure nothing is missed.
Fauci has been a cheerleader for Remdesivir that has NO BENEFIT in death rates for Covid and just shortens the hospital stay by a few days for people who would have gotten better anyway.
At the same time Fauci has repeatedly DISSED Hydroxychloroquine despite it dropping death rates over -50% according to Henry Ford Hospitals study.
Fauci has blood of 80k dead Americans on his hands (together with Democrats and media) and will most likely join Remdesivir maker Gilead Sciences after leaving his current position since Gilead is making 3000+ dollars per dose of Remdesivir despite NO BENEFIT in death rates while off-patent Hydroxychloroquine would cost only 10 dollars and drop death rates over -50% if given to people immediately after admission to hospital.
The researchers’ findings suggest that asymptomatic coronavirus patients “don’t look any different from the symptomatic population” in terms of the viral load they carry, Marta Gaglia, a virologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the study, said. As a result, “[t]here’s no actual reason to believe a priori that they would transmit [the virus] any differently,” Gaglia explained.
Benjamin Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved in the study, added that the results “confirm what we’ve suspected for a long time—that asymptomatic cases can transmit infection.” However, Cowling said, because asymptomatic people don’t cough or sneeze, they might not be as efficient at spreading the virus as symptomatic people.
On the other hand, symptomatic patients often stay home to recover from Covid-19, while asymptomatic patients who could be unaware they’re carrying the virus may continue with their everyday routines, potentially infecting others, Gaglia said.
Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba who was not involved with the study, said many viruses can spread from asymptomatic people, but usually in very small amounts, which doesn’t appear to be the case for the novel coronavirus. He added that it’s still not clear whether the new coronavirus spreads at large levels from asymptomatic people because of the scale of the pandemic, or because the virus is unique in that respect.
“There are all these small nuances about this virus that are coming to light each day,” he said (Mandavilli, New York Times, 8/6; Modern Healthcare, 8/6).
Viral loads say next to nothing about actual infectiousness, and PCR tests are not an accurate way to measure viral loads. The fact is that we have virtually no evidence about the relative weight that needs to be assigned to various transmission routes (aerosol, fecal plume, droplets, fomites). There is still a lot of controversy about the relative importance of aerosol transmission. A PCR test says nothing about the real-life infectiousness of a person, and there is every reason to think that some people are far more infectious than are others.
Masking is based on the premise that suppressing droplets will suppress transmission, but there is no empirical evidence that masking even works in operating theaters. We have no accurate means to assess how many people in the population are not susceptible (any more).
The fact is that there is very little evidence to base any measures on.
As for “second” waves and “mutations”, that is based on films and other examples. There are cases of outbreaks of corona virus at research stations in Antarctica after 17 weeks of perfect isolation. Why the black plague hit in some years and not in others? We really don’t know a lot about “waves” of epidemics, except that flu prevalence correlates exactly and inversely to absolute humidity. Corona does not seem to fit that mold, taking off in the south when absolute humidity values are high.
Denninger has written on the issue and thinks fecal transmission is the biggest route and toilets are the big transmission factor.
Many people still do NOT wash their hands with soap properly when going to the toilet and 80%+ of these are immigrants at least where I am right now.
When I told a guy to use soap after he had taken a dump and was just waving his hands in water under the faucet he called me a racist.
Picture someone with the virus in their lungs, throat and nose–they go to a bar and talk loudly over the music to their friends, yell their drink order to the bartender, then go to church on Sunday morning and say Amen at the top of their lungs and sing Amazing Grace loudly (and out of tune).
Seems to me their exhalations must carry virus. There is no magic glue that sticks the virus to them–it comes out just like someone sneezing, coughing and hacking. Breath coming from the inner recesses of the body.
Yes, but we know from actual contact histories that some people spread it to way more people than do others under similar circumstances. The amount of viral RNA found does not necessarily correlate to viable virions being shed (as opposed to viral debris or even anti-body sterilized virions). It is very hard to establish the actual infection route once somebody has it (hand, nose, length of contact, aerosol, droplet). In many respects authorities have fallen back on experience with flu viruses. Many of the models are based on a 100% homogeneously susceptible and communicable agents, but we know that that there are coefficients of variability that are hard to capture. Herd immunity is calculated on the basis of a theoretical number you would need for vaccination purposes, not on any actual dynamics which may bring those numbers down (e.g., some people are not susceptible, some people have cross-immunity, human immune systems are very differentiated, etcetc). Experiments trying to measure the amount of virions in the air in a room with a covid patient (both droplet & aerosol & contamination of surfaces) had trouble showing convincing numbers of viable virions.
Science means actually proving things, which many times turns up surprising results, no matter how plausible what we presume to be the case.
“Science means actually proving things, which many times turns up surprising results, no matter how plausible what we presume to be the case.”
It also means drawing logical conclusions and testing possible hypotheses based on current knowledge. That doesn’t mean you don’t act on current knowledge until it’s ‘proven’ — you act on the best knowledge you have and test to improve it.
Right now, there is ample evidence that there are many people with infections that don’t display symptoms. Assuming that those people are not infectious doesn’t really track with reality – especially with the knowledge that many of them have viral particle loads on par with symptomatic individuals. They may not be ‘as infectious’ as symptomatic people – but assuming that everyone is safe because they are asymptomatic is just wishful thinking — until that is proven, of course.
And Dark Matter/Energy are real also. Even though no one has ever seen these things or directly measured them. You are free to believe whatever gets you out of bed in the morning. Just don’t try and push your personal beliefs and conclusions on myself or others.
Regarding asymptomatic transmission–it’s a real thing….
….For the retrospective study, published Thursday in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed samples from 303 patients between the ages of 22 and 36 who tested positive for the novel coronavirus at a community treatment center in Cheonan, South Korea.
Of the 303 patients, 110 were asymptomatic before they began self-isolating. However, 21 of those individuals, or 19%, turned out to be pre-symptomatic and developed symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, between 13 and 20 days after beginning isolation.
The remaining 89 of the 110 asymptomatic patients did not develop symptoms over the course of a 20- to 26-day follow-up timeframe, according to the researchers. However, they found that the asymptomatic patients had as large of a viral load in their noses, throats, and lungs as patients who were infected with the coronavirus and developed symptoms of Covid-19.
Further, the researchers found that asymptomatic patients carried the virus nearly as long as symptomatic patients. Almost 34% of the asymptomatic patients tested negative for the novel coronavirus after 14 days, and that percentage grew to 75% after 21 days. In comparison, 29.6% of the symptomatic patients tested negative after 14 days, and just under 70% tested negative after 21 days…..
Sounds like they were all pre-symptomatic, not asymptomatic. Asymptomatic doesn’t go away. It is with you forever. It doesn’t graduate to giving you symptoms. If it did, that would make you pre-symptomatic.
It would not be difficult for someone, somewhere in the world to have tried this out with mice in a controlled lab and proved it one way or the other. But I guess they can’t find any truly asymptomatic mice?
This just exposes how corrupt the CDC really is.
They are no longer a science based organization.
Any credible organization is not pressured by a president to do his bidding.
They have become part of Trumps criminal activities.
The CDC along with Fauci and Trump have murdered 175,000+ Americans.
Disgusting,repulsive and sick in the mind…all of them.
And while we’re at it,…
Congress goes on vacation as Americans are without jobs,…no income to feed a starving family,… and not prospects for any future changes.
This is why we need to totally throw out all of the old compromised politicians. They serve no one but themselves and the corporation(s).
Putin/Trump’s criminal tentacles are in all the federal and now state governments, they are like the vines in my azaleas, I cannot rip them out by the roots without killing the azaleas as well. They are going to have to be made less viable by changing the pH and by pulling up selected shoots, poisoning leaves that appear without getting any on the flowers, and by simply blocking their access to sunlight with mulch. I still will not have gotten rid of them all and that will takes years.
The only alternative is radical and unacceptable, to rip out the azaleas with the vines and start from scratch with a different set of flowering shrubs like hydrangeas. The politicaal landscape is an apt analogy. Because the previous owner (president/guy in charge) was lazy and never lifted a finger to do any maintenence the yard is in deep trouble, the grass almost gone, weeds choke the lot, vines sucking the water and life out of the good plants, strangling them and stealing their light.
I want to return it to health so it is self sustaining with just a little work on my part. But the work it will take to get back to that health is monumental, and not cheap.
You really embarrass yourself by repeating the Putin conspiracy and Russian collusion hoax when even CNN and MSNBC have given up on it.
Because you disagree with the CDC’s latest guidance, FROM AN ORG FULL OF EPIDEMIOLOGISTS, MD’S and so forth, you call them corrupt. Don’t you think that most of the employees would walk off the job if they thought that the politicians were strong arming them to do their bidding?
Testing, as performed in the USA is unreliable anyway. In Florida, there is no random testing. And without randomness, there is no way to determine what portion of the population is actually infected. The folks getting tested are people who feel ill or just want to see if they are asymptomatic, maybe because they are a caregiver to their parent. This will show a higher rate of infection than than exists in reality.
In Florida the the published rate of infection has fallen by half over the last month, but so has the level of testing. Realizing that testing and infection data is largely unusable, I ran my own numbers, using new hospitalizations as a proxy for the disease. That data, a 2 week moving average of new hospitalizations, shows that Florida went from about 100/day in early June when the data started to be reported up to 500/day over the last few weeks, where it has remained.
That indicates that the infection rate has continued to grow even as the published number of infections has declined, though overall it appears to have leveled in August.
Testing for testing’s sake is foolish.
Sweden only tests people who are seriously and clearly ill.
USA has tested more than the whole world combined…
USA ramping up testing and testing even people with no symptoms is massive waste and intentional bilking of taxpayers by the testing companies.
Testing must be at a level where all who have symptoms are tested but the results are back in 1 day max so something useful can be made with the result like ordering their contacts to self-isolate for 7 days.
So basically Sweden only tests people as they report to an ER at the point of collapse? What is the point of that? Why bother testing when you can SEE they are very sick with Covid?
Because asymptomatic transfer doesn’t exist. So what is the point of testing people?
It’s amazing! Try to go to a hospital and tell them you want to get a test, cholesterol, lung scan something and you will be told to get an MD order. So you go to the MD and say I want this test. And the MD says, I don’t think you need the test, so I am not going to approve it.
But here, because people have become indoctrinated to the rare to unlikely possibility of asymptomatic CV19 or transmission, well, let’s test everyone, just in case. Whew.
this is dead wrong. Which respected infectious disease expert says this?
Well there are statistics. I live in a European country which is said to have successfully suppressed Corona. Tests per capita are orders of magnitude lower than in the States. Suppression measures have been extraordinarily lax compared to most US jurisdictions. Nobody is masking outside public transit.
“…which is said to have successfully suppressed Corona. Tests per capita are orders of magnitude lower…”
Haven’t you just answered the question as to why the US should be testing more?
If the virus is actually controlled in an area – your testing requirement goes way down because you are after only areas that ‘flare’. Some random testing is probably going to be done, but that is low probability ‘needle in a haystack’ type testing compared to testing those that actually present as sick or that are in high risk positions/organizations. This would almost certainly lower per capita test numbers.
In the US, the virus is not controlled — testing is required to just get a picture of how widely the transmission is progressing.
Testing everyone is stupid because false positive rates can be up to 50% and are regularly around 20%.
Sweden only tests people have have SEVERAL CLEAR symptoms of Covid.
“Is there testing for Covid-19?
Testing is not very widespread here. Only people ill enough to be hospitalised are currently tested. There are research projects conducting tests for both Covid-19 and antibodies with randomly selected members of the public”
Sorry, but I highly doubt anyone is going to take the ‘Irish Times’ as a definitive source for anything other than interesting anecdotes (especially as this appears to be an interview with a ‘Irish man in the street’ living in Sweden). Put enough anecdotes together and you’ll have data, but this doesn’t appear to represent that yet.
Don’t complain about the delivery vehicle. Analyze and complain about what is actually delivered.
Yes. and the Irish along w/other hard lockdown Europeans will shortly discover, to their chagrin, what a mistake they have made.. Sweden’s Viking neighbors have now discovered same and they are not happy about it. Fact is, I’m a bit surprised Sweden hasn’t shut traffic from their neighbors!
People like being scared these day. They consume fear porn daily and if the number go down and the narrative gets harder to keep going.
Well, then I guess the US is really exceptional then—too much testing, too many restrictions and too many deaths.
I’m curious what your explanation is?
The USA is the 3rd most populous country in the world. So we have a lot of people. And the deaths aren’t that high, relatively speaking. It’s just been a bad case of the flu.
Mish, Jabba the Trump has nothing left to lose on the pandemic, it has been so mishandled even republicans agree on that. And America is just going to have to suffer along till he is out. Not that there are not quite a few QAnon types out there who will vote for the fat ass NO MATTER WHAT! But, I see them as a positive sign, it is their desperation that is driving them to ever wilder conspiracy theories and absurd claims. If they were quietly confident THAT would have me worried.
It’s a pattern , Trump also pressured the FDA to change its view on plasma therapy increasing availability despite NIH questions over its effectiveness. FDA head Hahn overstates effectiveness but the apologizes. All this done during and immediately before the convention. Trump knows he’s vulnerable on his handling of Covid-19 but rather than fix the problem he’s attempting to white wash it and rewrite history.
Democrats and media have KILLED 80k+ Americans by claiming Hydroxychloroquine is dangerous and kills you and by several Democrat governors forbidding Hydroxychloroquine in their states and FDA removing the emergency use authorization of Hydroxychloroquine after Lancet published that BS study with madeup sources that was later debunked and withdrawn.
Henry Ford Hospitals study shows that Hydroxychloroquine lowers death rates over -50% if it is given immediately after admission to a hospital.
80k Americans have been needlessly killed by Democrats and Media because they have kept attacking Hydroxychloroquine since Trump recommended it in the spring.
I don’t agree with the content of the post but I would not call it spam.
Trump is killing us, literally.yea but no difference between the candidates
This isn’t hypberbole. Testing is what alerts us to the pandemic spreading. It’s how we control infections.
Sechel, Biden is certainly not my first choice of democrats for president, not even third, but now that it is down to him and Jabba the Trump, the fat orange russian spy, I think it is wrong to say there is NO DIFFERENCE between the two. There is a great deal of difference and if you seriously think otherwise then you have been the victim of russian propaganda efforts. I believe Biden is not as mentally acute as he used to be, not that he was ever a great thinker, but a president is a manager of thinkers, not necessarily a great mind of their own. But to be a decent president requires some open mindedness, requires some empathy, some honesty, some respect for the people and the law. Trumpsky has none of those things.
You sy that Trump is literally killing us, but there is no difference between them, which means you expect Biden to kill us as well, and what possible evidence can you have for that position?
I will tell you this much, if Trump cheats his way into another term the US will not survive till 2024, if he is kicked out and jailed we at least have a shot at it, but he will end the US if he is allowed to remain.
You are an unhinged Democrat troll.
It has been proven that the whole Russian collusion fervor from Democrats and media was just a HOAX and Obama era officials that Trump STUPIDLY allowed to stay on were conspiring against Trump including lying to FISA court to continue to wire tap Trump through NSA’s two hop rule even after Trump was president elect and even after Trump became president.
Whole thing was manufactured based on Steele Dossier full of Russian disinfo that was ordered and paid for by Hillary Clinton who together with Obama allowed US uranium to be sold to Russia.
Now you have lost any credibility you may have had. As a new poster here that was not all that much anyway.
The Seante investigation into the russian tampering and which hasa the stamp of approval of both parties shows that russian meddling and Trump’s collusion were actually WORSE than prviously thought, and I am pretty sure that if ew were not a mere couple weeks away from the start of voting the house would have to use the information in the senate report to consider another impeachment, because the findings of the senate were that bad!
Of course you and the russian troll farm do not expect anyone here to actually have looked into the report right? We are not all that ignorant and sloppy about our civic duties.
“Whether one describes this activity as collusion or not, there’s a lot of it: The report describes hundreds of actions by Trump, his campaign, and his associates in the run-up to the 2016 election that involve some degree of participation by Trump or his associates in Russian activity.”
The GOP plan to hold up a report for a full four years sort of worked, hardly anyone is interested even thought it DOCUMENTS illegal and hundreds of Trump russia collusions. Because jusdgement day for Trump is little more than two months away anyway.
One thing is clear, once his ass is kicked to the curb he will be indicted, and will likely either spend the rest of his life in jail or fighting to stay out of jail. The history books are also going to be far less than kind, he will go down as a man so corrupt and venal that the laws of the nation will be changed to prevent anything remotely like him ever occupying the WH again!
Open your eyes you Trumptard moron. This guy’s a criminal, bully, and incompetent dolt, period. Literally anyone would be better than this guy. The fact is if he’s re-elected the US WILL be over as the world’s leader. It may already be anyway. Trump is destroying the dollar and the futures of the US, period. If you can’t see that then please do everyone a favor and do not vote in Nov.
Russian propaganda?
Please point to a concrete media expression exemplifying this, along with attribution to the government of Russia.
SERIOUSLY? There is zero ABSOLUTELY no disagreement that the russians have engaged in propaganda and using American web platforms to disseminate lies, conspiracy theories that only idiots and partisans would fall for, as well as other types of disinformation and all with two goals, increase polarization and domestic violence and racism, and to aid Trump to victory.
There are thousands and THOUSANDS of great analysis and articles you could read for yourself but will not because you are either too lazy or too partisan. So, I do no tcare if you refuse to do your civic duty and educate yourself about what Trump and the russians are doing that is YOUR business, but do not then come here and claim there were no such attempts by the russians to interfer with our elections because aside from making you look like an ass and ignorant, you are helping them (as far as I know you are a troll farm worker for the FSB in russia).
Every click on every link at every domain on the entire web is tracked. We know who the site are and the web addresses assigned to russia and used for the purposes of all sorts of things like frauds, crime, phishing, hacking, and troll farm activity. You cannot pretend that such data does not exist.
There are HUNDREDS of examples of russian meddling in this report.
How Russian Trolls Used Meme Warfare to Divide America
A new report for the Senate exposes how the IRA used every major social media platform to target voters before and after the 2016 election.
SEE THAT? EVERY SINGLE MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM WAS USED and it is proven that the russians were the culprits and that they were doing it to help Trump, and Trump was aware of it while it was happening!
THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of information filled reports and work that YOU cannot deny. Just try, you will be laughed at by the adults in the room because they are the truth.
I am happy to see all the health officials and talking head MD’s on TV up in arms about this! Even our Gov. Newsom has declared that he does not believe this order from our own CDC and therefore will not be following it in California link to prepaidcardstatus.net
link to prepaidcardstatus.net
Flagged
the fda, which is an hhs agency under trump’s control, just approved an abbott 5 min test, so we’re going get 50 million tests per month by october, so this new guidance is moot.
Better not to count your eggs before they hatch!
20 Aug 2020 | 18:05 GMT
Rapid, Affordable, High Quality COVID Tests Still Scant
Independent evaluations of 41 rapid COVID-19 tests shows only one passes muster
I believe you are getting political instead of good financial discussions.
He is busy these days. He has been mailing it in for awhile.
Funny…
The only time I see messages about posts being too political is when they hurt someone’s ‘wittle feewhings’ with respect to their political views. Considering this is a major election year and our elections have very pointed and pronounced effects on our economic lives, I don’t see why the discussion would not be at home here.
Unless reality isn’t conforming to the parameters laid out for your safe space — then of course we all understand.
Your belief is wrong. Now go punch yourself in the face.
Or perhaps they are ready to admit that asymptomatic contagion/transmission has not been lab proven and therefore probably doesn’t exist? As for Trump or any of his stooges actually ordering that such a change be made, I’d need to see some actual proof on that.
Meanwhile, I am happy to see all the health officials and talking head MD’s on TV up in arms about this! Even our Gov. Newsom has declared that he does not believe this order from our own CDC and therefore will not be following it in California. Yet when those of us who say we don’t believe in consumer masks as a virus shield and don’t want to wear them, we are told tough luck. Huh? I guess Governor’s are demigods.
Asymptomatic transmission
An asymptomatic laboratory-confirmed case is a person infected with COVID-19 who does not develop symptoms.
There are few reports of laboratory-confirmed cases who are truly asymptomatic, and to date, there has been no documented asymptomatic transmission. This does not exclude the possibility that it may occur. Asymptomatic cases have been reported as part of contact tracing efforts in some countries.
link to who.int.
Ttrumps politicized cdcIts not our own cdc; it’s
Sould be It’s not pown own CDC; OIt’s Trumps politicized CDC
Do you really think the stooges would make this kind of decision on their own and risk the wrath of the Donald if he is not on board? This absolutely was the result of political pressure.