Biden administration turned down public health expert plan in late October that called for manufacturing and sending over 700 million rapid COVID-19 tests to Americans ahead of holidays, per Vanity Fair report

Business Insider ^ | December 24, 2021 | Aiming Haroun

[John W]

President Joe Biden's administration turned down a plan in late October laid out by COVID-19 testing experts to manufacture and send over 700 million rapid COVID-19 at-home tests to Americans ahead of the holidays, according to Vanity Fair.IU

On October 25, according to the report, public health experts from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, the COVID Collaborative, and the Rockefeller Foundation presented the 10-page plan on a ZOOM call with White House officials. The plan was calling for a "Testing Surge to Prevent Holiday COVID Surge."

In order to accomplish that, the experts told the White House that at least 732 million rapid at-home COVID-19 antigen tests needed to be produced per month and to be sent to American citizens ahead of the holiday season, Vanity Fair reported.

"We did not have capacity to manufacture over-the-counter tests at that scale," a Biden official who was present for the presentation told Vanity Fair, citing FDA approval processes.

Biden said in a speech on Monday that his administration would provide 500 million free at-home COVID test kits for Americans affected by the Omicron variant surge.

On Thursday, President Biden told ABC News, that, "I wish I had thought about ordering" the 500 million tests, "two months ago."

[Baldwin77]

whoopsie !

[foxfield]

Biden said in a speech on Monday that his administration would provide 500 million free at-home COVID test kits for Americans affected by the Omicron variant surge.

The 500M home test kits are from China via a small Chinese-funded privately held Silicon Valley company on a no-bid contract. See https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4023311/posts.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Go figure

[catnipman]

i’ve been saying all along that there was no way that dementia joe was gonna get 500 million home test kits manufactured anytime in the next few months, if ever ...

manufacturers currently can’t keep up with retail demand ...

also, the FDA has made it quite clear that validity of test results is in complete chaos due to the various variant:

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/sars-cov-2-viral-mutations-impact-covid-19-tests

[Chode]

for ~330MM people... two for everybody???

and how many will end up in piles on abandoned lots all across the country where tens of thousands of fake mailin ballots were addressed to?

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

If you don’t have serious symptoms, what good do tests do? I don’t think the tests they are providing will show what variant you have. If what you have is omicron, that might be a good thing.

[eyeamok]

why would you test people that are NOT sick??

[matt04]

Yep. For them to throw him under the bis like this means something is going on.

[hsmomx3]

There’s such a shortage on tests that can be purchased and used at home. I know of people in my area who were looking and the stores were totally out.

[ronnie raygun]

A##hats more than happy to ruin your holiday, or try to. Those who were exposed we moved the celebration up, those who have are celebrating with those who have, and those exposed are celebrating with others who were exposed, so there a## holes, we found a way and the celebration has been extended!

[pas]

“laid out by COVID-19 testing experts” Yeah no conflict of interest there.