[ExI] Virus testing

[John Clark]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 12:47 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> New York, Chicago, and LA are the charnel houses. The flyover states you
> mention aren't even rounding errors compared to them.*
>

Not now, not per capita. And right now the virus action is in states like
Florida Texas and Arizona; the number of people sick with the disease has
already beaten New York at its peak, true the number of deaths has not done
the same yet, but death is always a lagging indicator.

> What would they have done differently with a federal administration that
> was /more/ aligned to their disastrous, arguably murderous, decision making
> processes?
>

Well let's see, right off the top of my head ...

1) Start testing and contact tracing for the virus in January as South
Korea did before it became so large as to be unstoppable.  And if the
American test at the time didn't work worth a damn, and it did not, then
swallow your pride and use a test made in another country that did work.

2) Encourage the use of a facemask from day one and, most certainly, do
*NOT* make mask wearing part of the cultural wars! Then the Governor of
Georgia wouldn't stop the Mayor of Atlanta from doing the right thing and
issuing a mandate that all residents of her city wear a face mask when in
public.

3)  Aggressive use of the Defense Production Act. If that was done then
today more than 6 months after the pandemic started something as simple as
virus masks would STILL not be in short supply and Hospital workers would
STILL not be forced to reuse virus masks that were never meant to be reused.

4) Do not encourage states to shut things down far later than scientists
said they should, and don't encourage states to re-open things up again
long before scientists said it was safe to do so.

5) Don't force children to go back to school before scientists say it's
safe to do so.

6 ) Do not have the President of the United States pedal ridiculous quack
cures (clorox, hydroxychloroquine, UV light) on national television.

7) Do not go to the supreme court to try to remove health coverage for tens
of millions of Americans in the middle of a pandemic.

8) Stop lying to the American people, stop engaging in happy talk and tell
the truth about what science knows about the virus.

 John K Clark



>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200723/0c43ccf9/attachment.htm>