Posted on 01/05/2022 10:14:45 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo issued new guidance for COVID-19 tests on Jan. 4 in a bid to reduce the strain on the state’s testing centers.
So many people are using the centers the availability of tests is under pressure.
“We are going to scale back,” Ladapo told reporters at a press conference.
“We’re coming back to something sensible.”
People have been flooding Florida testing sites, leading to long lines, he said.
Instead of restricting testing, however, Ladapo said he would place a new emphasis on “high-value” testing against those of “low-value” in order to give priority to tests that would “likely change outcomes” based on a positive or negative result.
For example, someone who is elderly with pre-existing medical conditions and is having symptoms he regards as high value.
Someone who is otherwise healthy with no pre-existing medical issues and with no symptoms is low value, he explained.
Ladapo said people need to get back to a “sense of normalcy” in society.
“We need to unwind this sort of planning and living one’s life around testing,” Ladapo said.
“It’s really time for people to be living; to make the decisions they want regarding vaccination; to enjoy the fact that many people have natural immunity; and to unwind this preoccupation with only COVID as determining the boundaries and constraints and possibilities of life.
“And we’re going to start that in Florida.”
Ladapo said Omicron is “on the rise” in Florida and cases are “vertically climbing,” but people are being “whipped into a frenzy” over it and there is no need because the variant is “much less violent” than other variants that have spawned from the COVID-19 virus.
“What you’re seeing in cases is actually just a fraction of what’s happening in the community,” he said. “For example, the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] estimates that only one in four cases of COVID are diagnosed, that may be an even bigger ratio with Omicron.”
He said that Florida has seen a rapid increase in cases and hospitalizations, but added it is not comparable to the case rise.
“A substantial share, based on the data we have from some of our hospitals of the patients in hospitals with COVID, are there in the hospital with COVID rather than for COVID.”
In other words, people who go to the hospital are there for other reasons and then test positive for COVID-19 because hospitals test everyone who comes for treatment, Ladapo said.
A health care worker use a nasal swab to test Marcelino Soto for COVID-19 at a pop up testing site at the Koinonia Worship Center and Village in Pembroke Park, Fla., on July 22, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The surgeon general said that federal leadership had “created a monster” in public health.
“What’s happened in the country is that people have forgotten, or abandoned basic public health principles,” he said.
“Instead, they have opted for things that are anti-public health.”
He said anti-public health is “taking away people’s options” and “ability to choose.”
“Anti-health tends to be mandates,” he continued. “Anti-public health is losing touch with sensibility.”
The Surgeon General’s office wants to educate and provide people with the ability to make “better decisions.”
“That’s what public health used to be,” Ladapo said.
“The federal approach has been to mandate and to create division and strife and really politicize this pandemic.”
Getting back to basic principles of public health is important, he said and part of that is prevention such as weight loss, exercise, and vitamin intake.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was present at the press conference and said COVID-19 tests have turned into “a testing industrial company” and are a “cash cow” for people.
“There’s people making huge amounts of money,” he said of the COVID-19 testing companies.
DeSantis urged everyone to live their lives like they did before the pandemic.
17. There is very little evidence supporting the alleged danger of “asymptomatic transmission”. In June 2020, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said:
From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,”
A meta-analysis of Covid studies, published by Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in December 2020, found that asymptomatic carriers had a less than 1% chance of infecting people within their household. Another study, done on influenza in 2009, found:
…limited evidence to suggest the importance of [asymptomatic] transmission. The role of asymptomatic or presymptomatic influenza-infected individuals in disease transmission may have been overestimated…”
https://off-guardian.org/2021/09/22/30-facts-you-need-to-know-your-covid-cribsheet/
The flooding of the hospitals by asymptomatic/mildly sick people is real, and it's happening because of the panic about Covid that's been promoted by the left for a year and a half.
You reap what you sow.
Tell Whoopie, Joseph.
People are driven by the media panic porn
Why in the world would you want a nose swab if you don’t have symptoms?
It seems that the narrative pushed is to take the test regardless. And doing so gives a false sense of security.
All that a negative test tells you is that at the moment the sample is taken, you are negative. A moment later, you could be exposed and infected.
Yet governments are pushing testing, testing, testing.
Some one is getting rich selling this false security.
people can’t travel/cruise without a negative test, and they need a negative test to start work or return to work after a sick absence, or testing in lieu of vaccination, so limiting testing doesn’t solve a problem, it just creates another one
Yup, panic porn. Covidasturbation.
“Yet governments are pushing testing, testing, testing.”
How did Obama do away with the H1N1 virus early in his presidency? Did away with testing. No more testing. No fuel for the media fire.
Too bad! Too late! We now have no choice in the matter. If we’re not going to take the devil jab, we have to go and get tested every single week, regardless of whether we have had the disease or not, regardless of whether we have any symptoms or not. Federally mandated. OSHA won. Do not expect the Supreme Court to protect us. They want exactly what the rest of the government wants, what the World Economic Forum wants: the destruction of individual rights. You will own nothing and get tested weekly or take the jab. I hate this world.
Holy Smokes a rational, well reasoned, and sane article on covid today.
I can’t believe people are saying that DeSantis had a bad case of covid, just because he can’t breathe in a press conference. That could happen for any number of reasons. He could have serious asthma, or a lung disorder of some other kind. Could be anything.
What's wrong with this guy? < /s>
If I don’t get tested how the heck will I know I’m ASYMPTOMATIC?................
I’ve never been tested... I suspect most people being tested repeatedly are democrat hysterics...
Meanwhile, NYS has been counting asymptomatics, probables, and repeat positives of the same patient as new cases all along...
BINGO!
Had to get tested before my foot surgery back in September....that’s it....
Lots of valid reasons to get tested... very few valid reasons to be tested 40 or 50 times...
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