It’s a massive engineering undertaking and logistics undertaking to test 320M. Six months minimum I figure. More likely.
I keep laughing at the privileged people sitting on their couches who keep saying they want no changes until widespread testing is accomplished.
Ok. Sit there until August or September if you please. Whole lot of folks won’t be able to.
And in the meantime the numbers will be inflated toward the early deaths of weaker folk and the testing of only the symptomatic, so that’ll drive the couch sitters to apoplectic levels of more fear...
Stupid scenario clearly eats on itself. The virus getting into all the supply chains and just getting to everybody actually, in a strange way, helps.
When the USPS has now stopped some of our deliveries here... it’s coming.
Of course sadly more symptomatic people who don’t die overall would speed things up also.
That there’s tons in these plants and warehouses that have been tested without symptoms should be a sign of something... same with the prisons that have come down with it.
But widespread testing before fall is a total pipe dream without some amazing heroics. Certainly not inexpensively and accurately.
Even then, you’ll get the next strain after you’ve had this one. Haha.
We aren’t pivoting well to the long game on this. But it’ll pivot us anyway.
Anonymous, at-home testing would help. Get a test with a control number; spit in a cup, swab the snot out of your nose, prick your finger (but not vice-versa), or otherwise collect the required sample; mail it to the lab; and check the results by number over the Interwebs.
The reason I think this would help is that certain unnamed idiot politicians and bureaucrats made speeches that made precautionary quarantines sound like Gestapo raids. Yes, they walked them back, but I think the damage was done. I suspect there are a lot of people who would rather be tested anonymously as a result.
I remember that anonymous HIV tests used to be available. They weren't the preferred option, but they were available for those who insisted. They may still be, for all I know.
The down side of anonymous testing is that there's no guarantee that asymptomatic carriers will do the right thing. Big Brother doesn't have a high degree of confidence in individual responsibility. My feeling, on the other hand, is that at least some -- maybe most -- people would do the right thing. If that weren't their intention, then why would they bother being tested?
So I'd rather roll the dice, hope for the best, and let privacy absolutists be tested anonymously if they insist on it. It's better than their not be tested at all.
For my part, I couldn't care less about being tested on the record. But I live alone and work at home. Quarantine, for me, would mean asking my neighbor across the street to check my PO box for me and tuck any mail under my car's windshield wiper. For a family person who envisions brown-shirts tearing them away from their crying children and dragging them to a quarantine camp reminiscent of Auschwitz as a consequence of a positive test, however, I can understand the reluctance.
So let them be tested anonymously, if they like, and hope they do the right thing. Some won't, but many will; and it's better than not testing them at all.
But I'm a pragmatist. That's not a very popular thing in a world of extremes.
Rich
That would last us years.
