Testing, testing

Another good Powerline analysis picks apart some of the wilder attempts to filter every controlavirus theory through the filter of "which factors might help or hurt the situation while enabling us to link them to something CheetoMan did more or less than other countries."  Germany has a surprisingly low case fatality rate.  Is it because Germany has universal care?  Then why is its rate more like ours and less like that of, say, Italy or the UK?  Is it because Germany tests a lot?  That's a tempting theory, because Trump inexplicably failed to keep the CDC and FDA from bollixing that one up by the numbers.  Anything good a bureaucrat does is courageous Resistance; anything bad is Trump's dereliction of duty.

Powerline makes the interesting suggestion that testing can work pretty well in the special case where the outbreak happens in a young healthy population, in this case returning skiers, and robust testing and contact tracing keeps infections from exploding in older, more vulnerable populations.

Testing's nice, but I'd rather see attention to treatment and vaccine development, along with new distancing protocols that are tailored carefully to protecting vulnerable populations while allowing others to get back to work.

3 comments:

ymarsakar said...

I was never worried about some supposed pandemic. The economic and martial law crashes, as well as human reactions, were a lot more important.

ymarsakar said...

Wait until people realize that "test kits" are partially what is causing the ramp up in fatalities or corona.

ymarsakar said...

Anything good a bureaucrat does is courageous Resistance; anything bad is Trump's dereliction of duty.


They are doing their job properly. When Baghdad Bob talked about propaganda events, he always made sure to paint their side as good to raise morale and to lambast the enemies (USA) with ridicule and threats.

This is why during 2007, when I realized that there was a TREASON problem in the highest echelons of American command and politics... everything made sense from a strategic point of view. Body armor? That was never the issue. Demoralization and sabotage and psychological operations are more important than body armor or even casualties.

Counter A: US law prevents military from running psych war ops on American civilians.

Y: That was the case... before Hussein Obola, a certain US President, used an executive order to repeal or counter that law.

Y: But it is a good thing too in some ways, as Trum or Q Anon can now use it to wake people up.