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Sorry, Dear Leader... Yesterday's negative test is meaningless

OK, hang on to your hats… or whatever you think you need to hold onto for this… I’m going to start with a statement that our Dear Leader makes often that is actually TRUE:

The USA has tested more people than any other country.

Here’s the proof of that, courtesy of the current data at WorldOMeters.info: 

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TotalTests.jpg
Fig. 1: Total Tests By Country

Wow! He’s right… kinda like the battery-powered clock I put up at the end of the pool on our back deck so my wife could time her swimming… after the battery went dead, and it’s only correct twice a day.

So his next claim was this: (paraphrased)

Some people tell me that we’ve tested more than everybody else put together.

Well…. we’ve tested more than Russia and Germany put together, but just throwing Italy into the sum makes that a false statement — I think that’s called a LIE — and that’s not even counting the other 182 countries that have tested for Covid-19.

BTW, if the graphics aren’t good enough to read, go to WorldOMeters.info — it’s a great site and you can sort and filter the lists easily.

Now, let’s sort the list by a better metric — Test per 1 million population:

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TestsPer1.jpg
Fig. 2: Testing by Country per 1 million population

Let’s see… Iceland… Faeroe Islands (halfway between Norway and Iceland, in case you didn’t know… I didn’t either!), UAE, Malta…. scan down, no USA…. OK, next chunk:

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TestsPer2.jpg
Fig. 3: Testing by Country per 1 million population… screen 2

Italy… Ireland (went there last summer, what a beautiful country), Germany, Spain, Hong Kong, Denmark.. actually got married there, in 1986), Chechia…...dammit! OK, let’s keep going:

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TestsPer3.jpg
Fig. 4: Testing by Country per 1 million population… screen 3

Singapore, OH CANADA!, Russia, OH, thanks goodness, there we are, solidly in 43rd place. Behind Russia — Vlad will like that... Right ahead of New Caledonia…. umm, let me go take a look, because I think they’re somewhere in the south Pacific… OK, there they are, about 500 miles east of Brisbane, Australia… uh, oh, does anybody know where Brisbane is in Australia?

BTW, the only infected country that has completely eradicated Covid-19 is….. Greenland! It’s on the last graphic, Fig. 3, and that’s what the green highlight means. Looks like New Caledonia only needs to resolve its one active case and it will go GREEN as well…. looks like this dastardly invisible enemy is VANQUISHED!

I’m sure glad we’re ahead of Venezuela, aren’t you? Cayman Islands, not so much. (been there for scuba diving, nice place)

Alright, that was my meander (I drink very rarely, but tonight I had a couple glasses of wine… does it show?)… so what about my headline?

Yesterday’s negative test is meaningless

Try thinking of that statement this way:

Let’s say I took an HIV/AIDS test because I was worried I might have a problem, and it came back negative. I’d be sitting in front of my doctor, and he’d say something like: “You’re good to go, and you know full well what behavior you need to avoid so that you don’t get infected. Just stay safe and be smart.”

Contrast that to taking a Covid-19 PCR test (the one that tells you whether you’re infected, not if you got infected and recovered, that’s the antibody test). 

What is the ‘behavior you need to avoid so that you don’t get infected’ with the Covid-19? 

Ummm…. daily life? So unless you go into self-quarantine immediately after you take the test, you have no idea if you’ve been infected starting the first time you get closer than social distance from another person. And your negative test result is only valid as long as you stay in self-quarantine.

And keep in mind that as we go forward, into the ‘Phase 1’ re-opening of the country, the purpose of testing is to enable us to get back to ‘daily life’.

But how does a negative test do that? If you take a Covid-19 test and it comes back negative, does that make you confident enough to go back to work? To go to the grocery store? To go to the bowling alley or tattoo parlor?

This is just one more example of why we can’t test our way out of this mess. 

Masks, masks, masks, fever testing, fever testing, fever testing, contact tracing, contact tracing, contract tracing. 

That’s how China beat down this virus, and that’s how South Korea did it.

We’re obviously WAY too BIGLY SMART to get duped into doing that kind of stuff…. which is why I just can’t figure out how this mess has a happy ending… but that’s another diary.

Cheers.


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