COVID Testing and Politics

 

Partisan Politics May Be Killing Us

There are three main reasons why we don't have easily accessible rapid testing.  

The first is out of abundant caution. The second and third have nothing to do with caution. They are about ideology. That ideology is putting all of us at risk.  Of course, the Trump administration is focused on overturning a free and fair election, instead of the health and well-being of Americans.

Why isn’t the U.S. doing more testing? There are three reasons.

1. The F.D.A. has been slow to grant approval for new tests. 
2. The Trump administration has been slow to spend the money that Congress has allocated for testing. 
3. And Congress may need to allocate more money; mass testing could cost a few billion dollars a month — still a small fraction of the cost of recent proposed virus bills.

-NYTimes

Three Observations

1. The Trump administration is focused on subverting a free and fair election, instead of the health and well-being of Americans.
2. Conservatives are more concerned about the bottom line than people's lives. 
3. A Little leadership would be nice. Set the ideology aside and do what is best.

Follow the Science

Testing will remain important going forward, Yes, we are on the verge of several vaccines, but we are months away from getting anything close to full coverage.

Dr. Fauci has spoken several times about the importance of testing. 

Importance of testing: 

Testing is the first step for contact tracing -- a tried and true public health approach that involves identifying cases quickly, isolating and treating those people, identifying their contacts and testing them to see if they need to be isolated or quarantined.

“But deep down perhaps I should have been much more vocal about saying we have really, absolutely, got to do that,’” Fauci said. “I saw that it went nowhere and maybe I should have kept pushing the envelope on that.”

Testing is important because otherwise cases spread silently, Fauci noted. “What is going on now that you don’t recognize becomes a case a few weeks later,” he said.

“That becomes a hospitalization a few weeks later. That becomes intensive care a few days later. That becomes death a few weeks later.”

Fauci said he was hesitant to talk about his regrets for fear his statements would be taken out of context as sound-bites. - Associated Press

There were over 218,000 new cases in the US on December 9th, and over 3,000 deaths according to Johns Hopkins University, 

Political Leanings and Media

You are who you listen to

The Pew Research Journalism Project released a report about the media habits of liberals and conservatives. There is no middle ground.

These are Consistent Liberals and Consistent Conservatives. Their views consistently lean left or right. They represent about 20% of the population, and they do not leave room for other points of view. They are the most partisan. They have one thing in common. They tend to lead political discussions.

One Source v. Many
Consistent Conservatives rely primarily on one news source, Fox News. Consistent Liberals rely on several including the BBC, PBS, NPR and the New York Times. Another way of looking at this? Liberals are willing to look at the news from a variety of perspectives. When I worked in public media, those who listened would comment they liked the various perspectives offered in our coverage. Another way to think about it - the liberal sources are known for their journalism. Fox News is known for pundits.

Here's a graphic from Pew that puts this in perspective....