Just before 1 a.m. yesterday the undersigned wrote,
States are reopening too soon. The curve has not flattened. The U.S. has not, at any fucking time, had anything close to fourteen straight days of declining new cases. It's too soon and the blood on Trump's hands will continue to be accumulate, and to drip off his short, stubby fingers.
Trump has never cared about anyone but himself. His narcissism is playing out in this context as only his reelection matters. The lives of Americans, not. This today from The Guardian:
A broad coalition of US health systems has mobilized to ramp up coronavirus testing in a national effort on a scale not seen since the second world war. But declarations of false victory by the Trump administration and a vacuum of federal leadership have undermined the endeavor, leading experts to warn that reopening the US could result in a disaster.
...
But analysts say that without centralized governance and coordination, the national effort remains a competing coalition of state and local outfits hampered by duplicated work, competition for supplies, siloed pursuits of non-transferable solutions and red tape that leaves some labs with testing backlogs and others with excess capacity.
All of which leaves the US without a unified, coherent strategy for testing and contact tracing...
Without it, the imminent experiment of reopening the country could be catastrophic, warned Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina in a conference call with reporters this week.
“My concern is that we’ll end up right where we have been, with major cities having healthcare systems that get overrun quickly because of major outbreaks,” Mina said.
Meanwhile, as states begin to relax social distancing measures, the Trump administration is spreading dangerous misinformation, denying persistent supply shortages, underestimating the number of Covid-19 cases and exaggerating the margin of safety conferred by the current volume of testing and contact-tracing, experts say.
...
...at current testing levels, with only rudimentary plans for contact tracing for new cases, the US will be flying virtually blind as it reopens, said Glen Weyl, a technologist who co-authored a report issued by Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics that calls for 5m tests a day by early June.
“We’ve done more than 200,000 tests in a single day,” Mike Pence said at a taskforce briefing this week...
“No, definitely not, you can’t open up with that number,” Weyl said of Pence’s announcement. “It’s not even remotely in the right ballpark. It’s off by a factor of 10.”
...
There are multiple categories of tests...Each test has a different degree of reliability, with different amounts of time and labor required...
“We have too many [brands of] tests, and now there are a lot of people who are committed to their tests and they run their tests on their platforms,” said Paul Reider, a renowned research chemist in the pharmaceuticals industry who teaches at Princeton University.
“If we had an effective administration – this is where the federal government comes in – they could essentially turn around and say, ‘What we would like to do is, we want one test, maybe two, that are fast, that are accurate, that are scalable and transferable, .
“You want a gold-standard test.”
...
“We don’t have a system that’s ever been built for... wide-scale testing for people who aren’t presenting to the hospital or the clinic,” said Mina. “The demand is just so much larger than our system was built for.”
The Trump administration’s response to this complicated thicket has been to declare the federal government a “supplier of last resort” and wish the states luck. “It’s pretty simple,” Trump has said. “They have tremendous capacity..."
...
To celebrate America’s reopening, Trump appears to be preparing to hit the road, with plans to visit warehouses and factory sites to advertise the economic comeback he has promised.
...
Top epidemiologists believe it’s possible that the US could get some kind of reprieve from the virus in the warmer months ahead.
...
“I hope that over the course of the next few weeks to two months, we’re going to actually see a substantial reduction in transmission,” [Michael] Osterholm [ Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota] said. “And if it does, it shouldn’t be interpreted that we won, or that somehow we’re in control.
“I hope that the case numbers continue to decrease over time, but I’m also very, very aware that they’re coming back, and we just have to remember that.”
States are reopening too soon. The curve has not flattened. The U.S. has not, at any fucking time, had anything close to fourteen straight days of declining new cases. It's too soon and the blood on Trump's hands will continue to be accumulate, and to drip off his short, stubby fingers.
Trump has never cared about anyone but himself. His narcissism is playing out in this context as only his reelection matters. The lives of Americans, not. This today from The Guardian:
A broad coalition of US health systems has mobilized to ramp up coronavirus testing in a national effort on a scale not seen since the second world war. But declarations of false victory by the Trump administration and a vacuum of federal leadership have undermined the endeavor, leading experts to warn that reopening the US could result in a disaster.
...
But analysts say that without centralized governance and coordination, the national effort remains a competing coalition of state and local outfits hampered by duplicated work, competition for supplies, siloed pursuits of non-transferable solutions and red tape that leaves some labs with testing backlogs and others with excess capacity.
All of which leaves the US without a unified, coherent strategy for testing and contact tracing...
Without it, the imminent experiment of reopening the country could be catastrophic, warned Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina in a conference call with reporters this week.
“My concern is that we’ll end up right where we have been, with major cities having healthcare systems that get overrun quickly because of major outbreaks,” Mina said.
Meanwhile, as states begin to relax social distancing measures, the Trump administration is spreading dangerous misinformation, denying persistent supply shortages, underestimating the number of Covid-19 cases and exaggerating the margin of safety conferred by the current volume of testing and contact-tracing, experts say.
...
...at current testing levels, with only rudimentary plans for contact tracing for new cases, the US will be flying virtually blind as it reopens, said Glen Weyl, a technologist who co-authored a report issued by Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics that calls for 5m tests a day by early June.
“We’ve done more than 200,000 tests in a single day,” Mike Pence said at a taskforce briefing this week...
“No, definitely not, you can’t open up with that number,” Weyl said of Pence’s announcement. “It’s not even remotely in the right ballpark. It’s off by a factor of 10.”
...
There are multiple categories of tests...Each test has a different degree of reliability, with different amounts of time and labor required...
“We have too many [brands of] tests, and now there are a lot of people who are committed to their tests and they run their tests on their platforms,” said Paul Reider, a renowned research chemist in the pharmaceuticals industry who teaches at Princeton University.
“If we had an effective administration – this is where the federal government comes in – they could essentially turn around and say, ‘What we would like to do is, we want one test, maybe two, that are fast, that are accurate, that are scalable and transferable, .
“You want a gold-standard test.”
...
“We don’t have a system that’s ever been built for... wide-scale testing for people who aren’t presenting to the hospital or the clinic,” said Mina. “The demand is just so much larger than our system was built for.”
The Trump administration’s response to this complicated thicket has been to declare the federal government a “supplier of last resort” and wish the states luck. “It’s pretty simple,” Trump has said. “They have tremendous capacity..."
...
To celebrate America’s reopening, Trump appears to be preparing to hit the road, with plans to visit warehouses and factory sites to advertise the economic comeback he has promised.
...
Top epidemiologists believe it’s possible that the US could get some kind of reprieve from the virus in the warmer months ahead.
...
“I hope that over the course of the next few weeks to two months, we’re going to actually see a substantial reduction in transmission,” [Michael] Osterholm [ Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota] said. “And if it does, it shouldn’t be interpreted that we won, or that somehow we’re in control.
“I hope that the case numbers continue to decrease over time, but I’m also very, very aware that they’re coming back, and we just have to remember that.”
