So since everyone on Twitter would be able to better handle coronavirus than everyone around the world let's try and set what we know about corona virus and potential policy responses under actual knowledge and constraints shall we rather than your fantasy world. Let's go 1/n
Back on February 4th, more than a month ago, the FDA fast tracked coronavirus testing issuing an emergency decree allowing public health labs around the country to assist in detection wired.com/story/the-us-f…
Problem solved right? Wrong. Why? Tests for reasons that are still unclear, and this has proven true in other countries but seems to be improving, proved to be very inaccurate typically less than a coin flip bbc.com/news/health-51…
This isn't merely hypothetical, key disease people reportedly do not trust the tests accuracy propublica.org/article/cdc-co…
The CDC on its own webpage on Corona talks about its ongoing work to develop better more accurate testing in the shadow of this very real uncertainty cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…
But wait it gets better, did you know Chinese doctors are now claiming that there are TWO unique strains of corona with one being more deadly than the other? This is more recent and no info on how that would impact testing but important to note newscientist.com/article/223654…
But it gets better, we don't even know when exactly someone is infectious. The general guideline is up to 14 days but there are wide spread reports of patients up to nearly a month pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/coronavir…
Even the CDC says on its website "The onset and duration of viral shedding and period of infectiousness for COVID-19 are not yet known." cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…
Overall point: I am not defending the Trump administration or criticizing the Chinese government. As I have said from the beginning there are enormous and wide ranging unknowns. Even if you look at the data, numbers like mortality rates seem to vary widely by country and
There could be very run of the mill data problems, data fudging, or simple standard of care changes. There is simply too many unknowns really have a depth of understanding much less to make the screeching declarations that are currently made. Lots of unknowns. Wide variance. Done
