Congratulations everyone! We beat coronavirus! At least, that’s what I would assume since the federal government will no longer offer support and funding for coronavirus testing sites after June 30th.
Half the country is experiencing spikes in COVID-19 infections after reopening earlier than any scientist would recommend. We’re not on the precipice of a second wave because we never hit a valley after the first wave. If you don’t live in NYC/the Northeast, Seattle, or California, your area saw a steep increase in coronavirus infections followed by a slower increase, but that’s it. There was no downward trend in the United States at all, and the only reason the US graphs show any semblance of a decrease is because half of the initial infections were in NYC and NYC did a better-than-average job of flattening the curve, so our results brought brought down the rest of the country.
Now we have a President (and his braindead supporters in every comment section all over the internet) saying we should be doing less testing because more tests equal more infections.
Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 23, 2020
So, great news for potential teenage moms everywhere: if we sell fewer pregnancy tests, there will be fewer babies!
As we’ve seen the past four years, nobody in government will stand up to the idiocy of this barely sentient sack of pepperoni juice, so now areas of the country will see even less testing when they desperately need more.
The federal government will stop providing money and support for 13 sites across five states which were originally set up in the first months of the pandemic to speed up testing at the local level.
Local officials and public health experts expressed a mixture of frustration, resignation, and horror at the decision to let federal support lapse.
Texas will be particularly hard hit by the decision. The federal government gives much-needed testing kits and laboratory access to seven testing sites around Texas. But in the state, which is seeing new peaks in cases, people still face long lines for testing that continues to fail to meet overwhelming demand.
(cont. TPM)
I was talking about “social bubbles” on Facebook with some of my friends earlier this morning, and I hadn’t realized how parts of the country are in such different places with regard to testing. She lives in Northern Michigan. I live in NYC. My social bubble probably has about 10 people in it, because both of my roommates have partners and we have a few other people we hang out with. I feel safe with that, because testing is so readily available here. It’s free, the lines are short (if there’s any line at all), and the NYC website encourages everyone to get tested, and to get re-tested if you think you might have been exposed:
And there are testing sites everywhere. Everybody is in walking or biking distance to a site (and the subway is empty and clean, which means the train is perfectly safe), so we get tested a few days before hanging out or a few days after a protest, and it’s peace of mind to go along with our usual social distancing protocol.
That’s a far cry from the situation in Michigan.
There should be a federal program for widespread, free, and fast coronavirus testing. We should all be able to drive up to a window, have someone collect a sample, and get a text later that day that says positive or negative. When someone has a positive test result, we should be able to trace the origin of that infection, and we should be able to isolate that person away from the public. We should have access to all of this without insurance.
Instead, we have a President who thinks the numbers make him look bad so he wants less people to get tested.
Wear your masks. Wash your hands. We have a long road ahead of us.
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