About those COVID Tests

[_Dr Exiled]

I think if we are going to stay sheltered in place, or continue to have a shutdown of the economy, some sort of UBI is needed yesterday. People need to eat. People out of work also need medical expenses covered as well as other expenses. My guess is that protests will only increase as the money runs out. Trump may be blamed but Biden may be blamed as well if the democrats don't come up with a UBI solution.

[_EAllusion]

I think it's perfectly fine to blame Biden if Democrats don't pass a UBI for the duration of the crisis. Democrats hold a lot of negotiating leverage with their veto power over legislation and Republicans' need to prevent to economy from cratering to save their hides. The progressive part of the Democratic caucus has been repeatedly making UBI proposals that are being shot down by the Pelosi leadership. Biden could use his figurehead of the party status to pressure Pelosi to adopt those plans, but he's choosing not to. If Warren was the nominee instead, that's exactly what would be happening. So, that's on him.

Trump has even more power on this front, so this isn't a reason to prefer Trump to Biden, but you don't need to flat-out praise Biden for sucking less than Trump.

[_EAllusion]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EV1B3YkXQAI ... name=small

So, also not great. It's almost like fascism is bad or something.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I don’t really see them facing a lot of resistance. I’m too comfy to fight on the side of the Deep State.

- Doc

[Guest]

So yesterday Trump lays out a plan for certain states that qualify for the "Gate" to enter into "Phase One" which is one of three phases for reducing social restrictions. Today he's tweeting to his armed followers to "Liberate" states. These are all states that don't meet the qualification outlined in his own plan. I wonder how many people he's going to get killed within the next few weeks.

And why the F are these people carrying assault rifles when the resistance is staying at home because they have brains?

[_EAllusion]

Almost all states have stay-at-home orders. He singled out 3 swing states with Democratic governors experiencing protests from people armed to the teeth for people concerned about the "2nd Amendment" to "liberate."

[_Res Ipsa]

Speaking of testing, our local health district says that the one drive-through testing center that we had in the county will close after today. It was federally funded, but funding was ended. It has very limited testing capacity because of a shortage of swabs and transfer medium. The district's testing will be limited to long-term care facilities.

All other tests will be done through the private health care system.

[_Icarus]

Speaking of testing, our local health district says that the one drive-through testing center that we had in the county will close after today. It was federally funded, but funding was ended. It has very limited testing capacity because of a shortage of swabs and transfer medium. The district's testing will be limited to long-term care facilities.

All other tests will be done through the private health care system.

Funding ended over a week ago apparently. How does this even make sense?

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... ocPY1lJz3k

[_Dr Exiled]

How about transferring some of those funds designated for wall street bailouts over to funding testing? It seems that testing should be an integral part of opening up the economy again, one would think.

[_Res Ipsa]

Speaking of testing, our local health district says that the one drive-through testing center that we had in the county will close after today. It was federally funded, but funding was ended. It has very limited testing capacity because of a shortage of swabs and transfer medium. The district's testing will be limited to long-term care facilities.

All other tests will be done through the private health care system.

Funding ended over a week ago apparently. How does this even make sense?

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... ocPY1lJz3k

You're right about the funding ending last week. Our local Health District ran it two more days this week while it looked for ways to keep it going.

My clinic has a couple of drive up testing spots for COVID-19, by appointment only and with approval of a doctor via telehealth. But I can't find any online resource that tells me which clinics in the area are doing testing. The hospitals in my healthcare system are now testing all new patients, regardless of symptoms. But I have no idea what other providers in the area are doing. It's impossible to tell who were are actually testing, other than not everyone with symptoms. The state department of health website also says we have a shortage of swabs and transfer media and that we expect a large order to arrive in the next few weeks. There is no way we are even close to being able to do the amount of testing needed to start easing up on distancing measures.

Nothing about it makes sense.

Hope you and your family are well.