Ten Things About COVID-19: Number Four

4.) Testing: one, two, 40 million…

“Test, trace, quarantine.” That has been the recipe for success for all the nations of the world which have got the upper hand on the pandemic and are attempting to, and mostly succeeding at, restarting their economies after the virus clubbed them almost to death.  We’ve known this formula for months.  It’s no secret.

But testing has been a nightmare in the US from the beginning.  Five months in, it’s STILL a nightmare.  I'll go out on a limb and posit that America’s miserable for-profit health system coupled with our obscene-profit-driven pharmaceutical culture have multiplied by a factor of 1000 the logistical challenges of manufacturing, distributing and administering tests to Joe Average Citizen.  Because for decades, these forces have reduced health care in the US to “Who’s going to spend money on it? (Not me!  Not me!  Not me!)” vs “Who’s going to make money on it? (Me!  Me!  Mememememememememeeeeee!)  Obviously, this “system” does not work as a method for providing medical care for all who need it.  In fact, it’s not designed to provide medical care to those who NEED it.  Only to those who can afford it.  And afford to pay the “middle man” on top of that; the one who makes life and death decisions based on the financial bottom line rather than the best interest of the patient. 

So of course, when something like a pandemic comes along where the medical/pharmaceutical culture needs to put public health over profits, we have a system that is set up to fail.  Miserably.  And so it has.

After five months, there STILL aren’t enough tests.  Some reports say the tests we do have result in up to a 30% false negative rate.  And yet, those shitty tests are still reporting exponential spread of the virus in states—mainly in the south and west—that attempted to “re-open” before coming close to having the virus under control.  Or even possessing the tools to determine control. 

And here’s where the Toddler-in-Chief comes in.  COVID is hurting his reelection bid. First, it was because the virus was causing the market to crash.  Now, it’s because his dismal failure to step up and lead the nation through the crisis (rather than trying to lie, bully and minimize it into submission) has actually peeled the scales from the eyes of some of his less brainwashed supporters. 

Trump repeatedly claims, out loud, in front of the cameras, that the reason we have so many cases is because we’re doing too much testing.  Less testing, less cases.  He honestly believes this.  Like, if I don’t take a pregnancy test, I can’t be pregnant. 

He’s admitted that he asked states to slow down testing.  That didn’t go over too well.  So, now, he’s decided to discredit his own medical experts and the CDC, bypass them and have all COVID statistics from hospitals across the nation sent to the White House instead of the CDC.  If he can’t convince them to slow testing, then by god he’ll just withhold or monkey with the numbers.  It never enters his or his accomplices' minds that the “cases” he fails to reveal will be dying alone in the hallways of overwhelmed hospitals, their mortal remains shuttled to refrigerated truck containers as funeral homes are engulfed in or unwilling to handle contaminated bodies, possibly buried in mass graves without ceremony or loved ones present.  

Or perhaps it does enter their minds…they just don’t care.  Collateral damage of the Trump Reelection Campaign.  No price too high, as long it’s not Mango Mussolini suffering or dying. 

It boggles the mind, really.

Test, trace, quarantine.  We can't even get the first step right.