Tuesday, July 21, 2020

More testing less results?


While the governor of Florida is talking about speeding up testing, no one seems to be paying any attention to getting the results back quickly, to effectively stem the increase in coronavirus.

For the long time it takes to get results in Florida, make them totally useless.

In my case, I did my corvid test on the 10th of July but up to the 21st,  no results had come back so I resolved never to check for them again.

I needed a negative test result to be able to travel to Jamaica and it could not be no older than 7 days, so they would have no use to me now anyhow.

In fact, in the period of only a few days between getting the appointment to do the test and the actual testing, the wait time for results had theoretically increased from 4-6 days to 7-10 days.  But even on the 21st of July, when the 7-10 day wait had passed, I could not get any results. 

My experience is not unique for I have actually seen people on local television saying they have been waiting two weeks for results. A NBC  news report dated July 21, not only confirmed that 7-10 days or longer, was now the norm, but it went further, stating; "Demand in testing has caused shortages in swabs, chemical reagents, and equipment.

Florida, one of the worst-hit states in the country right now had a record number of hospitalizations Tuesday. Hospitals took in an additional 517 patients since Monday. The death count was recorded at 134 and the state reported 9,440 new cases. The positivity rate among new cases in the state is now over 13 percent, though in Miami-Dade County it’s averaging about 20 percent."

So clearly, in Florida, everything is going in the wrong direction, 

What purpose can results that take so long serve? During the interim, one could be without symptoms but pass the virus to dozens of people. Worse there is no track and trace in Florida, so if your results come back positive in even 5 days, those who contracted it from the silent carriers who did not even know they have it,  are not quarantined so quickly pass it on to others.

That's what happens when incompetent politicians are the ones who are in charge of things they know nothing about and are too arrogant to take advice from qualified scientists.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, even other states in the USA are wary when people travel from Florida as are international destinations like the Bahamas next door. These islands were once the playground of Americans but effective July 20, 2020, all Americans are banned from those islands.

Maybe when the entire world puts up signs saying "Americans not welcome, " Trump and his incompetent minions will take this deadly pandemic seriously.


2 comments:

  1. It's all so shameful. There are people whose jobs are on the line from waiting on results that are taking way too long. Delays are also causing mental stress.

    Total system failure. Gross incompetence from the top down.

    ReplyDelete