A few of us, notably myself, early on, stressed the importance of testing, and testing everyone, not just those with symptoms, as a containment measure for Covid-19. This is based of the principle that to control a pandemic you must control the rate of infection. This requires awareness, masks for everyone, not just medical personnel, and near universal testing. In a pandemic where there are many asymptomatic but infectious people walking around, it is just as important to test the asymptomatic as it is those with symptoms. Initially, in the U.S., because of insufficient testing capability and turn around time, only the symptomatic were tested. Also, a drastically insufficient inventory of masks was on hand, so citizens were advised not to wear masks to preserve the existing inventory for medical personnel. U.S. Citizens were being misinformed when they were told that Masks were not helpful. The U.S. slept while other countries were ramping up testing and mask inventory. When the virus hit the U.S., the nation was woefully unprepared, even though epidemiologists had issued more than ample warning. "'The quick fielding of a widely available test gave South Korea a key advantage in fighting the spread of the disease', said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “They used the WHO test, so they had a test that was validated early on. Then, they made a simple decision: Test as many people as possible. They organized themselves to get specimens and then made sure they had a very high throughput in the labs.” -- see link below for further details. Here is how South Korea was able to ramp up its testing capabilities and successfully contain the virus despite being at high risk. https://www.propublica.org/article/...-testing-while-the-us-fell-dangerously-behind
That is exactly the same what Chinese pandemic experts told Italy when they were sharing from their experience (let's not debate Chinese numbers as it's irrelevant for the sake of this point). It is of utmost importance to test everyone, not just those showing symptoms. If sufficient number tests are not available then the next best thing is strict isolation and distancing with proper face mask protection when going out to buy supplies.
Lack of reagents, swabs, other lab supplies. Plus limited output at testing labs......The beauty of just in time inventory. Structural problems, lack of coordination between CDC and state health agencies. I think the federal government is ill-equiped, incapable (at least with the current administration) of dealing with major health crisis....Each state will have to revamp their health systems.
There are not enough test kits to test everyone. A huge number of test kits made by China are also, defective giving negative results for those already positive. Over 1,000,000 Americans have now been tested. That is the case with Italy. US experts wisely, ran tests to make sure the test kits actually, worked. Liberal media lies were blaming the US federal government for not buying the defective test kits? People are just dumb as hell and do not even use their heads. Anything to score cheap political points which do not help anyone. For what it is worth, the US has among the lowest death rates compared to the European Union countries. Only Germany has a lower death rate than the US. Inspite of the US supposed late response and lack of action, it is Europe who is suffering the most number of deaths as a percentage of the actual infected people. The only real and true numbers you can rely on. So called models predicting millions of dead people, if these hacks get their way, if millions of Americans die in the worst case scenario, millions more Europeans will die as well. Double or triple US deaths. That is the reality of it. Atleast, the US is doing all it can to avoid that scenario. Europe not so much.
they instituted martial law based on a playbook they developed having gotten blasted by MERS in 2015 and vowed to never let happen again.
There is no mention of this in the article I posted a link to. This may or may not be true. In South Korea it would seem quite unlikely, however, as it wouldn't be necessary considering their rapid, coordinated and comprehensive response to the Covid-19 challenge.
Except that the government ignorantly kept their border to China open in a clear subservient manner and hence invited the initial explosion in infections in Korea. The general population strongly protested that move but Mr. Business thought he knew better.