Lost in the Kenosha bull-shit is the media narrative that Trump has "directed" the CDC to recommend local public health authorities decrease testing because Trump thinks that increased testing is making the US look bad, adding that Fauci didn't sign off on this. Oooooh.
Here are some facts:
Of course, once you ID a case, you have to be able to track it (one of the reasons you can't just make these available like picking-up a home pregnancy test at your local pharmacy). I can only speak for FL and granularly in the S. FL tri-county region. There has been a concerted effort to involve all sorts of available human resources to carry out the trace and track function. It's working. FL's % positive rates have been hovering around 7% for 2w. S. FL is doing really well with Palm Beach County under 5% for 2w and moving to Phase II reopenings.
This is the kind of nitty gritty stuff that is important. Does it get reported? Nope. See the upthread discussion about how hard it is to get both sides or complete coverage of important shit out of the media.
Here are some facts:
- Fauci was in minor surgery yesterday to remove polyps from his vocal cords. At least that's been reported, not the details but the reason he didn't "sign-off on this directive" is because he wasn't there. LOL
- I've explained at length here why the RT-PCR (cotton swab down your nasopharynx), molecular tests are terrible for screening and surveillance. They are fine for diagnosing when you need certainty of a COVID infection as in a hospital setting.
- It makes sense to stop using these things as screening and surveillance tools and start using COVID tests that are better at that. They're out there but not in wide use presently due to the FDAs approval process, a good thing BTW.
- Enter Abbot's COVID antigen detecting cassette that will give results in15 minutes with 97% sensitivity that received EUA yesterday. Abbot also has the capacity to manufacture a shit-ton of them.
- That's why Abbot got EUA ahead of some of the smaller guys that I talked about last week. There are other large pharmaceutical companies that are in on this mostly because they can mass produce them at scale and have said they can do that by mid-October.
- We'll see more of what is truly rapid, point of care testing going forward and testing is just as important, maybe more so, when a vaccine is introduced to the general population.
Of course, once you ID a case, you have to be able to track it (one of the reasons you can't just make these available like picking-up a home pregnancy test at your local pharmacy). I can only speak for FL and granularly in the S. FL tri-county region. There has been a concerted effort to involve all sorts of available human resources to carry out the trace and track function. It's working. FL's % positive rates have been hovering around 7% for 2w. S. FL is doing really well with Palm Beach County under 5% for 2w and moving to Phase II reopenings.
This is the kind of nitty gritty stuff that is important. Does it get reported? Nope. See the upthread discussion about how hard it is to get both sides or complete coverage of important shit out of the media.
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