I got excited when I read this headline because I've been wanting UC Health to bust out as a huge public asset in a time of fear and crisis. I thought @UCSF was making test kits and spreading them around CA. Not what @TeresaWatanabe 's piece says lat.ms/2xwl9fB
The most successful #Covid19 responses have been in China and South Korea--China with invasive testing and checking and travel lockdowns, and S Korea with free widespread testing--auto drive-throughs that would be great in California bit.ly/3aYC60y
S Korea so far offers 3 crucial insights into #COVID19. (1) younger people DO get it (but don't die, and can transmit). (2) If your public health system isn't overwhelmed, the #Covid19 death rate is as low as 0.5%. (3) new cases are already going DOWN. bit.ly/2x0MypC
the whole thing depends on testing asymptomatic people for free, all over, conveniently. In the US, we have tested fewer people for #Covid19 since it appeared than S Korea tests every day. We thus are stuck with partial travel blockages and indiscriminate social distancing
I am self-isolating in Santa Barbara until Wed because of contact with one of my "Global HE in 2050" conference guests from Britain. I think she caught a cold in Cambridge from her kids, who are also sick. By my mother is 90 and I can't take a chance--or get tested and cleared.
Americans have come to accept that we're an underdeveloped country infrastructurally-- 3rd rate in broadband compared to S Korea et al, as one known example. But we think our best is best in the world, like UC Health. @ProfGlantz @nickfleisher
so I'd expect UC health to rush to the rescue, figure out a cheap test kit, find a manfacturer to crank it out, and dump it for free in the public domain -- testing for all, like the Salk vaccine did in knocking down polio in the 1950s @DougHenwood @FrankPasquale
In fact, the LAT article says UC is creating tests privately with Stanford and others for in-house use on their own patients, not for the general public. And not for the well people who may carry and must also be tested. @audreywatters
We think of US science as best in the world, but US #Covid19 numbers are junk, and they are junk because we can't test masses of people, and we can't test masses of people because we don't have the public health infrastructure we need. it's #privatization at work @jana_bacevic
Rather than academic scientists identifying the public problem, a UCLA doc confuses everyone by saying they're "leading the charge in California." Next graf clarifies: "@UCSF officials emphasized...that they are using the test for their own, sickest patients, not the public."
maybe the pandemic will get our collective minds around the fact that privatization underdevelops societies--and can kill people. UC Health could start by admitting the limits of its own business model and offering something big to the Covid-haunted CA public. @hiltzikm
