NYC throws in the towel on "Testing, Testing, Testing!"
After multiple articles claiming widespread testing was an easy way to conquer the virus and giving hope to millions that drive-thru testing was some kind of panacea, the Washington Post grapples with explaining what happened.
As I tried to explain on this thread, testing was always going to be more problematic than most people seemed to realize. Many of the points I made last week are now being made by one of the instigators of this false meme, WAPO. The virus was always going to move too fast for testing to be meaningful unless every single person could be tested every single day. A person could test negative one day and then positive the next. Widespread testing with this virus was always going to be behind the curve, making it a waste of manpower and possibly giving false hope to people.
That's not to say that very soon it might be a good idea to choose a location in the country and test everyone in a specific section at the same time and then repeat it with the same people at certain time intervals.
The goal would be to determine how many never get infected, how many get infected but get well while remaining asymptomatic, how many get infected and experience symptoms, and how many die. This is the kind of data needed for policy-making. The public would need to understand that it's not going to be used for quarantining, etc., thus no confusion or false hopes.
Cuomo got it last week, as evidenced in some of this remarks. Today the Post gets it.....partly. Perhaps Biden and Pelosi will soon get it, too and the MSM will stop dumbing the public down. In their drive to knock Trump off, the MSM missed the life-saving opportunity to early on get the public to practice self-distancing and at least some self-isolation--staying home more--as well as the importance of masks and gloves.
washingtonpost.com |
