Posted on 03/20/2020 8:36:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Editor's Note: This piece was authored by Brenée Goforth.
The United States’ response to Coronavirus has been slow—potentially fatally so. America’s numbers of confirmed cases have started to skyrocket, not because people are all-of-a-sudden contracting the virus, but because the government’s decisions around screening have held Americans back from receiving proper diagnoses. Of course, this is to be expected in an overly-centralized and overly-bureaucratic system. And future virus mitigation will continue to be unnecessarily hindered until the United States decentralizes its response.
When the first cases of Coronavirus were being reported in the U.S. in late January, doctors were having to mail samples for testing to the CDC in Atlanta, and it was taking a couple of days to get the results back. Eventually, the CDC sent out test kits so doctors could get results without having to mail in samples. But on February 12, we learned many of the test kits the CDC had put out were flawed.
Even so, it wasn’t at that moment that they decided to expedite approvals for somebody else to start testing. It took another 17 days after news of the CDC’s botched tests before it released new rules to help expedite approvals. Independent laboratories across the country had been in contact with the Department of Health and Human Services since mid-January about developing their own tests, but it wasn’t until a month and a half later that the government approved the first independently-developed test. According to the director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at UNC Medical Center, their lab alone could have tested thousands of people significantly sooner if the federal government had approved their COVID-19 screening test based on the WHO guidelines.
What’s more, up until March, doctors weren’t even allowed to test many of their patients who could potentially have had the Coronavirus. Strict guidelines from the CDC only called for COVID-19 tests if the patient both (1) was showing symptoms of respiratory illness and (2) had either recently been to China or close to someone already infected with COVID-19. Doctors did not have the discretion to test patients they suspected might have the virus unless they met the CDC’s requirements. It wasn’t until March 4 that the CDC put out new guidelines allowing doctors to test any patients with relevant symptoms for the virus.
So, to recap: (1) the government was overly restrictive about who could be tested, (2) botched the test kits and (3) failed to expedite the process of approving independently developed screening tests until weeks after its own failure.
Because of the failures of our giant centralized government approval process, thousands of people who could have the virus have not been tested and properly diagnosed. If the government handed over the reins, we could’ve worked to stem the crisis before it got out of hand.
The federal government should’ve gotten out of the driver’s seat, because a pandemic is not the time to drag our feet. It still can take four days to get results back from tests sent to large labs like Labcorp and Quest, but it can take as little as four hours to get results back from independent laboratories. There is no way to make up for this lost time. And unfortunately, it’s unlikely our systems will learn from this mistake. The government has proven it’s reluctant to give up control, even when our private institutions are capable of responding quicker and more efficiently.
The mitigation of pandemics depends entirely on how quickly we can respond in those first few days. But our government entrenches bureaucratic systems that makes us unable to respond with the proper speed. If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that American lives depend on the availability of timely testing. Timely testing that the government alone is evidently not able to provide.
A major investigation into what the CDC was doing with years of multibillion dollar funding is in order.
Could be a good idea, but I don’t think investigations of much of anything will happen in the next six months. There’ll be too much else to do....
Blame Trump for the delay in testing. That is the meme.
Bull chips. Trump was on top of this from the moment he was sworn in. Moving manufacturing back to the U.S., preventing infectious diseases from waltzing across our borders by building a wall, shutting down travel to and from China (then Europe), and getting business involved in providing solutions are all things that no DUmocrat would have ever done.
They will, you can count on it.
Really? 0bummer waited until deaths from H1N1 passed 1000 before doing anything.
Media silent on that...
Really surprised. The guys from Atlanta used to be pretty darn awesome back in the days when CDC was actually focused on fighting serious and deadly disease but it seems things have changed over the years
Time , perhaps, for some serious reform and house cleaning
President Trump has been on top of this right away, You are correct, but others might not have been.
I have several very good reasons to believe the virus was here at least weeks before the official date stated by the government. What is motivating our government to lie to us about this????????
What are your reasons?
Trump responded but bureaucrats in CDC were bottlenecking.
Same thing is happening now withe FDA slow-walking orthoxychloroquine and chloroquine.
I firmly believe my son had the virus beginning a few days before Christmas, same symptoms as COVID-19, and tested negative for the flu. A young lady, about New Years’s, along with husband and daughter, came down with COVID-19 symptoms; they tested negative for flu also. Local medical community had many such instances, as far back as the beginning of December, with COVID-19 symptoms and tested negative for the flu. Many of them think it has been here longer. Also relayed this info on another FR thread yesterday or day before and about 5 or 6 had similar experience themselves or close relatives.
The gov’t spun tale just seems fishy to me, given what I have observed.
This is a load of s#@@it! We are sitting at 14,000 cases with 350,000,000 population. Per capita that is .004% of our population with the disease. Look at the percent in just Spain (46M) and Germany (80M) alone. Their per capita rate of cases is between 500% to 1000% greater than ours!
So maybe we get everybody tested we end up at 30,000 or 40,000 cases, we are still orders of magnitude better off!
You can’t be serious and I suggest you think it over what you wrote, as it is BS
Was he in contact with someone that had been in China? Maybe he got it from that person.
“You can’t be serious and I suggest you think it over what you wrote, as it is BS”
I’m sure you will be more than happy to point out exactly where it is BS — if you can.
Possible, but doubtful. He was working a commercial jobsite installing HVAC duct work above Decatur, AL and about 20 miles west of Huntsville.
Proof, one or the other, of the virus got here earlier theories awaits development of tests measuring antibodies against the virus. Those aren’t here yet; we can only test whether you’re shedding viral RNA now, not whether you had it in the past. That said it’s long been normal in past years “real flu” outbreaks that not everyone with “typical” symptoms tested positive. The “regular flu’s” test’s also aren’t perfect and a variety of other infections sometimes give similar symptoms.
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