Hospital Chiefs Join Ganim For Town Hall Chat

Accountability for failure to track testing capacity, results and movement towards adequacy of Covid-19 control??

Preparing for a Virus? Distraction from a stockpile?

Halloween night in my neighborhood, a popular place for kids to “trick or treat” with masks, some costumes and large bags to haul home lots of candy from well lit homes until the 150-200 sugary treats are exhausted and lights are shut off. Homeowners knew how much candy was distributed in past years and purchased equal or more as their stockpile for the first youngsters who rang the bell. Got the picture? No social distancing in view.
January 2020 is no longer Halloween 2019 when word about a new virus was known to public health professionals around the world and worried the epidemiologists among them. The name of the new virus became Covid-19 and the number of testing kits under control of Federal agencies, State agencies, pharma firms, the military, hospitals and universities may have been known, or not known. But it could have been determined, even if by estimate, until its amount was shown to be inadequate for a newly labeled worldwide “pandemic” with rapid attention to the need for more new test kits to be produced.
An inadequate initial supply, not really a stockpile, compromised the ability to provide a test if requested as the limits were being stretched even for use to screen those with likely symptoms. And such limited test kit capacity has prevented “surveillance testing” for the past two months that might inform the American public more fully as to the extent of those in our population already infected and the behavior of the virus in the US.
The public which has been asked to limit public place activities, wash their hands well and frequently, and now to wear masks, so as to restrict personal viral output to others if I have already become “sick”, does not know and cannot even guess at how sick our population is such is our “blind and secret” condition. Today I saw a presentation that divided the public into three groups: Pre-symptomatic, symptomatic and asymptomatic. The last condition means the virus has infected you but caused no symptoms yet. Will it ever do so? Are you infectious if asymptomatic or if symptomatic, or both? And does the potential for “infection shedding” precede by several days any Test results other outward sign?
What is our only certainty? Test results, if the professional tests are of quality design, manufacture, administration and processing. Taking a test and looking for the response? How often do you need such a test? President Trump, the leader of the “early hoax” narrative, this week, had his second negative response. Can he project how many test kits will be manufactured and delivered to testing sites this week and all weeks into the future until Covid-19 retreats into the pages of history? What part does his neglecting his Defense Power Act potential and declaring himself not responsible for providing public safety and healing play in the delay?
Another Trump trick? How soon to have tests for all? How soon a proven treatment that works? When will the lights go on and reveal our stockpile situation? Time will tell.
John Marshall Lee (4-4-20)