Good article, in that it makes sense to me ..... too bad.

"Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box"

-Edie Brickell & New Bohemians

No, my alternative is to follow the CDC playbook which calls for something on the order of 4-5 million test per month, not 20-40 million tests per day.

First, though, you've got to re-engage the scientific community that you've ignored and dismantled, and identify and distribute to scale a test that's highly sensitive, accurate, and reproducible. Because if that's going to be your basis for making return-to-work decisions, you'd better be right.

Most of the stuff the FDA has let into emergency use without any vetting isn't up to it.

So the solution to not having enough cotton swabs is to shut down the entire economy? Instead of, maybe, hiring people to make more cotton swabs?

This will continue to be the case until there is a vaccine. Are you advocating that the US remain shut down until there is a vaccine (12-18 months by all estimates)? If so, explain how that will work. The federal government has already pumped in some 2-6 trillion dollars into the economy to try and stave of a calamity. The net result has been 10MM+ jobs lost. What do you think things will look like if businesses are shut down for 3 more months instead of the 6 weeks so far, never mind 12 months from now?

Agreed. The highest-risk people are going to have to social distance until there is a vaccine, or other effective treatment. That is a small percentage of the population, though.

Huh?? What is real actual testing? As has been explained by the CDC spokespeople, diagnostic testing is used as a control tool only. You determine if someone has the virus. If they do you quarantine them and contact trace. If they don't then the test is basically useless going forward since there is no way to know if they will become infected 5 minutes later.

The antibody testing "could" prove more useful, but as has also been explained by the CDC... its hard to do well and isn't' reliable. Not to mention the fact they don't know enough about the virus yet to determine how long antibody tests, even if they could be done well and made reliable, would be valid for. People who are counting on these antibody tests (and I was among them a week ago) are really barking up the wrong tree if we're to believe the scientists at the CDC.

So gain, I ask, what is this "real" testing you and many others are clamoring for? The CDC says the US has enough capacity to perform the minimum testing they need to do over the next month in order to begin opening up regions in the country. And they continue to work on testing capacity so that will remain the case throughout the re-opening process. People who are clamoring for significant increases in testing capacity are either A) looking for random reasons not to re-open or B) are ignorant of what the CDC has stated, both in their pronouncements, and in their actual re-opening plan with regard to testing requirements.

The CDC/FDA and any and all related agencies, plus private companies, have all significantly ramped up testing capacity in the US over the last 6 weeks. With the exception of some materials procurement hurdles that will likely get ironed out pretty quickly, considering the speed we've seen in other logistical areas, I don't see any problem with the federal part of the testing at this point. But regardless, the goal is not to get it to the point where "testing is available for anyone who wants". That would not be possible, nor at all useful for the reasons I mentioned above. Tests are ordered by doctors to diagnose sick people and/or epidemiologists to manage outbreaks. They are not done so people "feel safe" to get back to work when they can theoretically contract the virus at any time just by breathing.

By the time that happens, it won't matter since we will all have killed each other.

Luckily that's not going to be the basis for return-to-work, at least not as prescribed by the CDC. They have laid out the ground rules. It doesn't involve the sort of massive testing people keep using as excuses or talking points. Its hard enough "getting it right" with the massive amounts of testing they already plan on doing. As I mentioned in another post, the CDC is planning on as many tests over the next month as they do to fight the AIDS epidemic in a whole year.

Agreed. Ding, ding, ding! This, in addition to being virtually useless as an outbreak mitigation tool, is why the idea of trying to ramp up testing to these unseen (and unwanted by the people who track disease for a living) levels so quickly is wrong-headed.

No, their solution is to have the economy reopen in phases, each of which is supposed to be monitored on a region basis with a fallback to quarantine when infection rates rise above a threshold, which unfortunately will likely include having to monitor hospital admission rates.

A functional vaccine appears unlikely, in spite of reports about initial success. The path forward will likely be treatment, including drugs such as remdesivir which may prove effective in significantly reducing mortality rates.

WSOP postponed in Las Vegas because of coronavirus pandemic

"The 51st running of the WSOP had been set for May 26 to July 15 at the Rio Convention Center. The WSOP said in a release Monday that it hoped to hold the event in the fall, but no dates had been set."

"We are committed to running the World Series of Poker this year, but need additional time to proceed on our traditional scale while prioritizing guest and staff well-being,” WSOP executive director Ty Stewart said in a statement."

https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports...rus%20pandemic

The answer to the OP appears to be "yes"

Yeah, I pretty much tune out talk of vaccines. In a situation with as much uncertainty as there is with COVID-19, that has the least certainty.

Free at last! The folks who feel like they have been held hostage can now make their non-summer plans to their hearts content

Right, gradually reopening after shutting down completely for two months, without ever actually knowing the true prevalence of the virus or comparative fatality rates?

Again, how is this better than hiring people to make more testing supplies? If we could test everyone, we could reopen everything a week later.

WSOP postponed https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports...demic-2010554/

https://www.wsop.com/news/2020/Apr/1...POSTPONED.html

4000+ posts and I guess we can now /thread lol.

Groups including evengelicals in the rural south to Haisidic Jews in central Brookyn, NY to Muslims and whoever else anywhere there is a funeral seem to be insisting they be allowed to infect their entire community even though it is clear this is a devastating illness that is close to breaking our health care system. Until these groups stop sourcing their information from MSM headlines and talk radio, they will continue to refuse to act in a manner that will contain the corona epidemic to manageable levels.

I'm not trying to be politcal here, rather, trying to demonstrate that this is going to be around for a long time. Rippng off the bandaid won't just hurt, it will tear off all your skin and leave you completely exposed to the whims of your dna, health care plan, and the exact genotype of the virus you caught.

Records are not being kept. Patients are being left to lie on gurneys for hours. There is no one to help. If people are being deceived it is not by the media, but by placing too much stock in the fact that they live in an area that hasn't been hit yet.

It's not. Testing has been ramping up the past few months. The idea isn't new - it's already being executed.

To someone who is "not aware of too many things."

Yes

Except that’s not true. Testing was ramping up a month ago. But it has completely stalled out over the past two weeks.

Rescheduling to Fall still seems optimistic to me. Would I attend? Would be nice but hard to see myself wanting to enter the US anytime soon.......not to mention my country (Australia) still has a ban on overseas travel for the rest of the year.

Ramping up production capacity of a complex product is not a linear distribution like filling up a bathtub of water. Gains come from things like new test design approvals, new manufacturing lines, new manufacturing sites, etc. Those don't come online every day or week in a linear progression.

Testing is done on sick people. There are fewer people presenting with symptoms compared to a couple weeks ago.

"Coronavirus antibody testing shows LA County outbreak is up to 55 times bigger than reported cases"

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/20/coro...ted-cases.html

These results along with a similar study recently done in Northern CA indicate the mortality rate of COVID-19 is significantly lower than what has been commonly reported, at least on a population-wide (blended) basis. High-risk groups still have higher mortality rates but the same is true for influenza as well. The difference for COVID-19 is a higher overall infection rate per unit of time vs influenza, which leads to a higher absolute number of fatalities but with similar mortality rates.