
Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response - shalmanese
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html
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ipython
The dichotomy in how we handle privacy is glaring. It grates my nerves that a
group of research scientists are told _not_ to do vital testing on swabs _they
already have_ to determine the spread of what would become, in a few weeks, a
global pandemic. Yet, private companies such as Exactis, tech companies such
as Google, stores and banks across the country, can freely collect, exchange,
and _profit from_ our personal information without consequence!

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James_Henry
Google wouldn't be able to do this testing just like Prof Chu. FDA apply to
tech companies, too. Are you trying to say that the dichotomy between PHI or
lab testing data and regulation and, say, personal location data is glaring?

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shadowgovt
Headline kind of buries the lede a bit: clinics had patient samples and tools
to test those samples because Seattle was doing an unrelated flu study, but
because the samples had only been collected for flu tracking purposes, medical
privacy laws forbade testing the kits for the COVID-19 that would also have
been present in the samples.

Samples were discovered to be COVID-19 positive only because some doctors in
the study chose to break protocol and run the test, and when the CDC caught
wind of what they'd done they told the researchers in no uncertain terms to
stop doing that test.

The story is a bit of a litmus test for the tradeoff between personal medical
privacy and collective medical necessity.

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gdubs
The past several weeks have been a critical time in US, and the lack of
testing — I believe — will be a scandal when the dust settles. People are
bringing light to the issue, but we’re also living in the moment and trying to
gear up for the storm that’s brewing.

Was containment really never an option? Or are we now just going to live with
this thing because the response was completely botched?

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AnimalMuppet
If I understand correctly (and information is both sketchy and politicized, so
I may well not), the US had defective kits (kits that were giving incorrect
results). Kits that worked were only available in very limited numbers, if at
all.

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SirLotsaLocks
One of the USA's biggest failures in this crisis is how they somehow managed
to make the pandemic a poltical problem. Now they have divided their nation so
that now half of the population believes its a hoax

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James_Henry
What's interesting to me is that while the divide may be somewhat along
pro/anti Trump lines, I've met people on both sides of the Trump issue who
believe that current social distancing measures for Covid-19 are much to
extreme given the economic costs.

