I saw the following post on social media:
A report issued this week by Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics argued that, “to fully remobilize the economy,” the US would by late July need the capacity to conduct 20 million tests a day. As Mother Jones noted, the US is currently on pace to conduct just 530,000 daily tests by then — up from 150,000 today.
Let me do the math…20 million per day until end of June would total 1 billion, 540 million tests.
Fake news?
Is this “fake news?” Not necessarily, but then again, I’m not sure what the poster means by “Fake news?”
Now, let’s look at the issue of testing: how much of it is necessary and how much of it is possible?
Working backwards, well, we don’t know yet exactly what that number is – but we have to start somewhere. If we had all the answers ahead of time we wouldn’t be in this situation, would we? All we really know is what we don’t know. That, and that there are a lot of smart people working tirelessly to come up with answers. The best we can do is let them do their jobs and not second guess them (because there are plenty of smart people working alongside them that are already second and third and fourth guessing them for us).
So, we do know we need testing – lots of it – because we do know that the virus is contagious, that it kills, that it is overwhelming our health system’s ability to treat it, that it is indiscriminate geographically, that it is indiscriminate with regard to most demographics. What I hope we can agree on is that until we know who is carrying the virus, who is sick, and who may be immune, WE are all at risk. Until science gets a better understanding, we are only guessing as to how any individual’s body will respond to exposure.
In the absence of answers, we don’t have many choices. We either accept the inconvenience and the accompanying hardships, or we don’t. We’ve seen that if we do accept lockdowns and social distancing, we’re actually giving the healthcare system a chance to catch up and manage things. And if we don’t, well, that’s no different than running a car without oil: sooner or later you burn out the engine and you are dead on the side of the road.
It would be nice if all the systems (science, medicine, business, etc) could make parallel progress and work in tandem as equals, but that is not realistic. Yes, they should make every effort to do so, but in reality, some things take a higher priority than others. Here, science and medicine take a higher priority than anything else. Neither business, government, economics, religion, nor popular opinion can change the truth of the science behind how this virus is transmitted, how it attacks, how it kills, or how to treat it. And that knowledge is evolving.
Until there are better answers, we really need to do the best we can to support each other by supporting science and medicine rather than undermining each other by rejecting the things that are helping keep infection and death at bay.
Now, as to the question of “How much testing?” I don’t think it is a number. I think it’s a capacity to test as much as necessary in order to maintain a working society. I don’t think it is “a test”, but a number of different types of tests. When we get to a point where we have a reliable, safe, proven vaccine available for everyone who wants it and that medical science has developed a treatment process that is overwhelmingly effective and efficient, we won’t have to be testing everyone all the time. But, without a vaccine and effective treatment, we need to be using whatever means possible to know where the virus is and who has it.
Just for grins, let’s look at some numbers using these assumptions:
- No vaccine and barely adequate treatment capabilities.
- Three basic tests: temperature, mouth/nose swab, and medical grade pulse oximeters (read about pulse oximeters in use).
- There are about to 235,000,000 million Americans either working or in school (K-12 through college). These are people that are pretty much constantly in contact with other people.
- Everyone who can be in contact with other people has to be tested every four days, or seven times a month.
Simple math: 235,000,000 x 7 = 1.64 billion test a month (that is only about 53 million a day). That’s more that 10 times more swabs per day than the Harvard report called for, more than 2000 times more swabs per day than what Mother Jones thinks we’re capable of! Not to mention the sheer number of thermometers and pulse oximeters required.
Well, these numbers are simply ridiculous. As I said at the top, I don’t know what the number is. But, what I do know is this: the actual amount of testing required has got to be enough for a rational, reasonable person to feel confident that they can participate in society without fear of contracting or spreading this terrible virus.
And, without a vaccine or effective treatment, we’ll also need an ironclad means for containing it once someone tests positive…
None of this is easy. It’s not easy to understand or accept. But there is no getting away from the reality that it spreads, it kills, and our healthcare system is not equipped to handle the numbers when it is not being contained.
Be safe. Be smart. Be kind.
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