@bingst

By "everything done to this point", I assume you mean the grotesquely inadequate and morbidly obstructionist combined actions and omissions of the President and Vice President, alongside the more-competent efforts by others who are sometimes having to try to overcome the damage caused by the errors of the Trump administration.

As I made clear, in and of itself an economic stimulus is not necessarily a bad desperation move, but we should not be rolling over and praising it to the gills as though it is an inspired all-saving policy. It should go hand-in-hand with an 11th hour conversion to a rational comprehensive policy along the lines recommended by the experts, and it (massively) begs the question of how much money taxpayers and the economy could have saved, and still could save, if we had anything resembling a reasonably competent comprehensive policy formulated and executed by people who know what they're doing and who are allowed to do it.

@AnneWimsey, you wrote:
"Testing for this virus, just like testing for STD's, is only good until your next contact. Period."

my response:
Yes, thanks, I get that. You have said it before, if I recall, and I knew it long before you mentioned it.

Perhaps you are trying to say that a snapshot of when a person was or was not positive is not that helpful since they may just get it later on. Do you understand that testing should take place as part of other broader comprehensive measures, and as such, it has a very strong value well beyond the limitations you are trying to emphasize? Are you aware of this, and have you given any thought to it? Your comments do not reflect that you have done so. Do you disagree with the idea that repeated, frequent, ongoing, accessible and widespread testing has strong value as part of a comprehensive solution? If you disagree with it, could you please make a better effort to state why?

I have responded a bit before to try to lay out my own reasoning, mostly by citing experts. Against my better judgment, I'll try again. The experts say it better than I can, but first, in my own words, a few points:

• What if we do succeed in flattening the curve? What if we do get to a point where momentarily the number of cases is reduced? Will we all then just resume our lives? Will we just chalk up the next wave of infections to bad luck when inevitably the resumption of activity means that the virus will start spreading again, even with social distancing and various other measures? If we come down from the first wave and are able to test who might still be a carrier, can we then not take rational measures, including to isolate them from their own loved ones so that entire families do not contract the disease?

• If I have symptoms, but it is unclear if I might or might not have the virus, lack of access to a test might determine whether or not I give this to others. I might make a decision to just risk it, such as by taking some cold medicine, such as if I am in dire financial straits and need to resume work outside the house. Or, it may detract significantly from my ability to provide for myself. A test would help me to make a much better decision and help those around me.

• A test at the doors of a medical clinic would help reduce the risk to all inside.

I suspect I could come up with additional points, but let's hear it from the experts:

<a href="https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---16-march-2020" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="forumlink">[who.int]
WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 16 March 2020
16 March 2020*

"....But we have not seen an urgent enough escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing – which is the backbone of the response...."

"...As I keep saying, all countries must take a comprehensive approach.

But the most effective way to prevent infections and save lives is breaking the chains of transmission. And to do that, you must test and isolate.

You cannot fight a fire blindfolded. And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected.

We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test.

Test every suspected case.

If they test positive, isolate them and find out who they have been in close contact with up to 2 days before they developed symptoms, and test those people too. [NOTE: WHO recommends testing contacts of confirmed cases only if they show symptoms of COVID-19]

Every day, more tests are being produced to meet the global demand.

WHO has shipped almost 1.5 million tests to 120 countries. We’re working with companies to increase the availability of tests for those most in need.

WHO advises that all confirmed cases, even mild cases, should be isolated in health facilities, to prevent transmission and provide adequate care...."

[hbr.org]
Why Is the U.S. Behind on Coronavirus Testing?
by Stefan Thomke
March 30, 2020

"...“Testing is the biggest problem that we’re facing,” Peter Slavin, president of Massachusetts General Hospital, said recently in a roundtable on Covid-19 at Harvard Medical School. While South Korea had tested about 4,000 people per million of its population at the time, the United States had just run five tests per million — despite the fact that they both reported their first cases at essentially the same time (on January 21 and 20). The discrepancy was surprising because the genome of the virus had been available since January and scientists had figured out the diagnostics shortly thereafter, using proven molecular methods first discovered in the 1970s.

The value of a test comes from its so-called specificity and sensitivity: Infected patients should be correctly identified as infected, patients who don’t carry the virus should be diagnosed as such, and people that unknowingly had the infection should be tested for immunity. This helps us understand who is infected, where the infection occurred, and how the virus was transmitted.

Testing is also needed to address the uncertainty in making decisions about patient treatment, resource allocation, policy, and so much more. Answers to questions such as “When should we relax social distancing measures — and for whom?” or “How many ventilators are needed in hospitals?” are vital to our economic recovery and public health outcomes and cannot be answered without reliable test data. To find answers requires organizations in which testing is embraced (in action and orientation) by every employee, from top to bottom. “Test early and often” needs to be an organization’s ethos...."

I shouldn't have to spend my time spelling these points out. They were perhaps a bit obscure to some non-experts before the crisis hit, but I think at this point it is not as obscure, particularly if someone has taken the time to try to explain it to you. In any event, I realize that not everybody sees it as I (in my non-expert status) do, or as some of the world's top experts do, but if you respond in disagreement with those experts, could you please express some further thought (beyond citing some clinical point) as to why you disagree.

another point to be made here is I'm going to guess that part of what helped stem the spread of stds, including HIV, was improving access to testing and allowing people to know their status. To be sure, there were other measures that needed to be taken, but if I'm not mistaken, that was one of them.

@kmaz Being able to test - and quick results - made all the difference in turningthe tide of the AIDS epidemic.

It will be much the same with this. We need to know our own status and act accordingly.

@RavenCT

Thank you for commenting. I'm sorry, but sometimes it's as though I'm caught in an intellectual vaccuum on this point.

As a sexually active person, who grew up in the 60's-70's and has had to 100% change awareness, I have to disagree with you. This is actually Much worse than STD, with that you at least know if you have been with a new partner.
But you could test perfectly clean with this virus, then on the way out the door of the lab become infected by walking through a cloud of droplets from somebody who sneezed just before you enter the room. Therefore, you would be a Ticking Time Bomb, going about your business AS IF you were not contagious, when in fact you are Highly contagious. I will not bet my life, just like my sexual health, on a test done "a couple of days ago", and neither should anybody else!

@RavenCT yes, but again, you Know if you had unprotected sex, you cannot see tiny droplets in the air, or on surfaces, which could attach as you walk out of the testing faci,ity, and you are "clean" in your head, but actually Typhoid Mary.

@AnneWimsey Yes that's true. It's a faulty correlation as you never could get AIDS without touching.

The fact that we got rid of our bag tax during this pandemic here in CT tells you where the worry lies... We could actually infect others by reusing bags with the virus on them!

It's frighteningly hardy on hard surfaces too. Several days - which means any canned goods or plastics etc could also hold virus for days after a contagious person coughed on it.

So very different from how AIDS is spread!

I don't truly look forward to my grocery trip today.

@RavenCT I put all the groceries on one part of a table....not used for anything else! Anything that needs fridge gets wiped down with bleach/soap soaked cloth. Everything else just sits on that table for 3 days, then put away. Meanwhile I wash the bags for next time. Saw this on Youtube

@AnneWimsey

you wrote:
"....Therefore, you would be a Ticking Time Bomb, going about your business AS IF you were not contagious, ...."

Why would anyone assume this? The point of testing is not to create a delusion that one is guaranteed immune to the next contact.

@kmaz for the reasons I stated, you could be infected on the way out the door & be under the Illusion you are fine while infecting everyone you contact (even by touching surfaces they touch) how hard is that to understand? Testing helped a lot with AIDS because you no kidding know when you had unprotected sex...this is SO not the same!

@AnneWimsey

• Yes, you could be infected out the door, though it is lower probability than you are insinuating if one follows all rules of social distancing on one's way home, and especially if eventually, the test is done at or near home, and often.

• Again, once someone tests positive, why would someone be as delusional as you say? Why not instruct everyone who tests, no matter what the results, to behave until their next test according to all social distancing rules (which seem to prove effective, to a degree, a fact you are conspicuously not honoring), and, for the sake of their families and others, treat themselves as though they might have the disease and be communicable. Once we get the disease down to zero or near zero, it will be even more unlikely that anyone walking out the door would so quickly pick it up again, and eventually many could carefully go back to work while we wait for vaccines and more effective treatments.

Will some disobey instructions? Yes. However, the early indications from countries that have followed better polices of testing/tracking/isolation than the US have shown promise overall that overall people can cooperate a bit more than you seem to think, under this overall community approach.

• I have to point out that you are directly disagreeing with the experts, but failing to offer sufficient reason for doing so. However, you do have your stated reasons and I'm not as good as they are at explaining the answers as they are. Where you have so far been unreachable from my standpoint, I'm hoping they are able to sound out more effectively-communicated answers and I'm able to pass them along.

I read about some sort of quicker test yesterday, it gave me a little more hope. One thing I'd like to see is farm workers and others more downstream in the food supply chain, including grocery store workers, be given some priority in having access to such a test and to other appropriate medical equipment (though not over medical folks.) We're going to need to safeguard the chain of supplying food.

@AnneWimsey

Maybe another way to put my response is this:

I agree, it is so not the same as HIV. Why assume that post-test human decisions and thinking are the same?

If the disease is totally impossible to defeat, .... if it is as communicable as you seem to think, then ultimately we will all get it, though I suppose there would be value to slowing it down so our health care workers would have a chance to save a higher percentage of people, as they get it. But I think as long as there is some belief that we can stop it from reaching many citizens at all, then testing, when combined with appropriate post-testing behavior and all other measures already discussed, is a critical tool and must be deployed in greater amounts and with emergency levels of urgency.