About those COVID Tests

[_Icarus]

So if you pay close attention to the steep dips after five days on the orange graph representing daily testing, you realize this is due to fewer centers processing on the weekends. The dip in reported new cases on April 5th corresponds to this as well. Overall we're seeing a positive result for COVID 20% of the time, so it stands to reason that we're seeing a "leveling off" in new cases simply because we're not ramping up testing beyond what it's been the past couple of weeks. For the past 15 days we've averaged roughly 30,000 new cases daily. So I'm confused as to why Dr. Birx and the task force believes we've leveled off and are now ready to implement a plan to phase out current mitigation measures when for all we know, if we doubled our testing abilities to 300,000/day we'd be seeing 20% or 60,000 new cases daily. Or am I missing something?

[_Jersey Girl]

You're missing what Dr. Fauci said.

[_Icarus]

What did he say? I didn't see him speak today.

[_Icarus]

I suspect there are people opting to stay home if their symptoms are mild, but my concern is that we know the vast majority of people who have COVID have not been tested but we're acting like we know the case rate is dropping. Why? We know the mortality rate is only around 1% or lower, which means there are at least 3.4 million Americans with the virus if there are 34,000 now dead. So who are they, and what are they doing? If asymptomatic, they're capable of spreading it. So why are we discussing "Opening America Again" this early on?

[_Jersey Girl]

Neither Fauci nor Dr. Birx said we're ready to implement a plan to phase out mitigation. I have no idea where you got that idea from. Watch today's briefing.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Help me out with the math:

https://www.google.com/search?q=us+coro ... e&ie=UTF-8

If confirmed and recovered is ~730k, and the fatalities are ~34k wouldn’t that be a death rate of ~4.5%? I’m terrible with math, so what am I missing?

- Doc

[_Icarus]

Neither Fauci nor Dr. Birx said we're ready to implement a plan to phase out mitigation. I have no idea where you got that idea from. Watch today's briefing.

I wasn't able to watch more than ten minutes, but I did catch Trump saying they were about to implement a three phase plan to "Open America Up Again" and he said he had coordinated with many governors who were on board with it. I'm sure it will be a gradual process but I was surprised that they're even talking about it at this point.

[_Jersey Girl]

Neither Fauci nor Dr. Birx said we're ready to implement a plan to phase out mitigation. I have no idea where you got that idea from. Watch today's briefing.

I wasn't able to watch more than ten minutes, but I did catch Trump saying they were about to implement a three phase plan to "Open America Up Again" and he said he had coordinated with many governors who were on board with it. I'm sure it will be a gradual process but I was surprised that they're even talking about it at this point.

It's on freaking youtube.

[_Icarus]

Help me out with the math:

https://www.google.com/search?q=us+coro ... e&ie=UTF-8

If confirmed and recovered is ~730k, and the fatalities are ~34k wouldn’t that be a death rate of ~4.5%? I’m terrible with math, so what am I missing?

- Doc

Simply put, we haven't tested enough people. There is no reason why the mortality rate is twice as high in the UK as it is in the USA, or why its just one tenth the rate in Greece as it is here. I mean we're all humans and this is the same virus right? So what explains the varying mortality numbers? It has to be the number of tests being performed.

[_Icarus]

Trump begins saying "experts say the curve has flattened." Really?

Trump says "nearly 30% of the country has reported no new cases in the last seven days." This is demonstrably false as every state has reported new cases every day.

Trump said no person in need of a ventilator was denied a ventilator. Maybe not yet, but thousands have been denied testing, myself included. And yesterday we learn that a woman had her son's body autopsied because she suspected he died of corona. The autopsy report confirmed that to be the case, but he was denied a test before hand because we lack testing even for the sick.