Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now
The lack of testing and testing capacity in the US is deeply alarming. They’ve only run 500 tests so far and criteria still require the patient to have recently traveled from Hubei! By comparison South Korea is running thousands of tests per day, which is why it is picking up so many cases. Absolutely unforgivable complacency and lack of transparency from CDC.<p>There is almost certainly community spreading in the US that is going undetected.<p>Once local cases finally start getting reported and tested in the US, there will be panic and a lot of the same irrational hoarding behavior and shortages observed elsewhere. It would be better if the CDC mentally prepared and educated the public for what is to come. Normalcy bias is very real, and people here are still culturally not ready for this reality..<p>Edit: Some background for the above comments:<p>Epidemiologist at Harvard&#x2F; Brigham and Women’s responsible for virology testing there: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;michaelmina_lab&#x2F;status&#x2F;1231503805159813121" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;michaelmina_lab&#x2F;status&#x2F;12315038051598131...</a><p>“Reminder: As of today (Feb 23), the US remains extremely limited in #COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs have @CDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it.”<p>“Now &gt;10 days since CDC recalled kits w still no explanation for failure. Failure to share what went wrong hinders progress by all labs nationwide. Expeditious sharing of information is a must during epidemics. We say this to China and CDC should practice as well.”<p>“Without more information, public health labs &amp; well resourced hospital labs setting up CDC published assay in-house are held at complete standstill, unable to prepare for what will inevitably be concern for local transmission.”<p>“Without rapid diagnostics ready to go, healthcare infrastructure may become rapidly inundated, even if cases turn out all negative - an abundance of caution will require quarantines until test rules out a case. Any backlog can quickly hamper hospitals.”<p>“Additionally, recommendations for testing continue to tie in to recent travel to China or some contact. With cases in at least 28 countries, and local transmission increasing, testing and surveillance nationally must move forward”<p>“We cannot know if there is coronavirus here in US if we are not testing. We must get the US up to speed for diagnostics and we need expeditious information sharing from @CDC to the lab testing community here and abroad.”