I probably have it. You probably do too. Or maybe we already had it and never knew. 

My point here is that no one knows shit. 

My take is the number of cases in the US is most likely 20x of what is being reported. I wrote a few weeks ago that my biggest concern with this virus is that it will be worse due to lack of trust in our government reporting, and cue the “I told you so.” Cue incompetance. AHHHHH.

A week ago I started writing about my disbelief in the numbers. How in the world could the President and others say that it is “contained?” How do they even know what we are dealing with to make such a statement? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that there was no testing happening. I live at hospitals. No testing there!

I couldn’t find my local testing center, could you? 

London below. No need to even get out of your car.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked “Would you like fries with that?” as they leave. 

Here’s South Korea

And I’m just honestly left with disbelief. I mean I knew the United States was having its problems, but this is just embarrassing. How could we not get the first step right?  The United States didn’t even go FIRST. We had countries go before us. We had lessons to learn, best practices to use. But yet we seemed hell-bent on doing it “our way.” Developing our own kits. Making our own rules, assuming we know best. 

And here we are.

In South Korea, they swab daily 10,000 people. We probably haven’t swabbed 10,000 people in total since the first confirmed case (that was in January). So when our government reports that there are 1,000 cases…how can they know that?!

They don’t.

Today is the first day that Sloan has the test.  The first day it can test individuals to protect their immunity compromised patients. And before you go defending anyone, you should know that this test is NOT hard to administer nor difficult to get. Your pediatrician could accurately do this test. Heck Benno could do it. The test is actually very simple to manufacture (its the strep test basically with a different reacting agent mixed in), but the government, wanted only their sanction tests used, which has taken until today to get right. 

And I’m even more confused because kits exist from other countries. But the CDC has put in place oversite rules which normally would make sense to control quality, but their tests are LATE, very late. They have also limited who and where they can be administered. No drive-in with fries in this country. For example, testing can only happen at CLIA labs. Not all hospitals are even CLIA certified.  

So we have lost time. Lots of time. Time to be informed. Time to save lives of those with compromised immunity.