US Lack of Coronavirus Tests and Testing Elsewhere

The problem in US is not that the Coronavirus is out of control, It is that we have no idea because of lack of tests.

The US is rolling out new test kits and will be doing 10,000 tests per week at the end of this and then 20,000 per week at the end of next week.

China tested 320,000 people in Guangdong (population of 113 million people) over a three-week period.

China has mainly relied on a spit test kit. This test DNA sequences the sample for Coronavirus.

Disease trackers in Singapore have used an experimental antibody test for COVID-19 to confirm that a suspected patient was infected with the coronavirus. The patient was one of two people who together formed a missing link between two clusters of cases that each occurred in a Singaporean church.

Researchers around the world are racing to develop antibody tests, also called serological tests, that can confirm whether someone was infected even after their immune system has cleared the virus that causes COVID-19. The group that developed the test, at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.

The new antibody test helped contact tracers at Singapore’s health ministry who have been trying to find the source of a cluster of 23 COVID-19 cases at the Grace Assembly of God church, which has two large houses of worship in the city-state. Health ministry contact tracers had identified the primary case, a 28-year-old man who fell ill on 29 January. But they could not determine how he became infected.

Singapore has not a spike in case numbers seen in many other countries, possibly because of its aggressive contact tracing effort and legal authority to order people into quarantine. As of 26 February, the city had a total of 93 confirmed cases; 2848 close contacts have been quarantined for 2 weeks.

SOURCES- Journal Science, Worldmeters, John Hopkins Real-time Coronavirus tracker
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

38 thoughts on “US Lack of Coronavirus Tests and Testing Elsewhere”

  1. Yes Pumpkin is disgusting. Regarding the US being hit hard, I am with Dicanomi. The lack of universal health care, a slow start in testing, and a general libertarian ethic does not help. Will the US quarantine like the Chinese? Likely, in two year’s time we will look back and see a higher death rate per capita than any other G7 country. I hope that the Administration goes hard in terms of testing, resources, and quarantining from here on in.

  2. US government has outlawed use of any test except the one provided by the US government. Which doesn’t have any stock.

  3. Well on the weekend I cut back to a gently walk of only 5 km or so.

    Or at least this weekend. Last weekend I did do a 27 km bike ride on Sunday.

    But I agree about the vitamins.

  4. Just to let you people know, a test for the Coronavirus costs around 10 EUR in Germany and includes labor cost. How it can cost hundreds of dollar in the US is beyond my understanding.

  5. You are talking serious irreversible damage. I am talking alcohol fatty liver (hepatic steatosis) which normally is not a major problem…however this machine is brutal on the liver…and it will shorten the length of time you can be on the machine. Fatty liver is often reversible.
    Not talking inflamed liver or cirrhosis.

  6. There were positives too. They got the water and air cleaner…but not in time to protect GenXers. We got the most lead. From 1964 to the oil crisis (late 1973 to early 1974) it was particularly high and affects people before birth and the first few years of life the most.
    Boomers were the first generation into health, jogging and such. That sort of self help stuff made them want cleaner air and water.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation
    I remember many of the Boomers were into Sonny & Cher. I think you ad to be a teen to really be into it. So 13 in 1977 (b.1964), I would put as the last of the Boomers. They definitely seemed to have a different mentality. I think Star Wars was more genX.

  7. The whole country was sacrificed for the Boomers…so they could have everything. And not pay for it. Most of the national debt has been incurred to avoid having Boomers pay what the government was spending. Before them people were frugal and very hard working. Boomers wanted fat union wages and sat around, often drinking on the job or doing drugs, unions insuring their jobs. And when the factories went overseas they got that money too in stocks. They lost their war…because they left a trail of cigs and joints everywhere they went. They had no difficulty buying homes, new cars.. I don’t know any Xers who have been able to buy a new cars and a home in San Diego…unless they are a government employees.
    While this may sound like an attack, it is not intended to be. I consider it simply an unfortunate consequence of WW2 and the realities of a Representative Democracy. Any population bulge politicians will pander to, listen to their concerns, and give them what they want. There is no group to blame. They got used to getting what they wanted, because that was the way it always was. Though perhaps Dr. Spock deserves some blame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Common_Sense_Book_of_Baby_and_Child_Care
    They were the NIMBYs obstructing the building of homes for the younger generations. They shutdown Nuclear. They are the NASA people doing squat.
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-depressing-chart-shows-the-jaw-dropping-wealth-gap-between-millennials-and-boomers-2019-12-04

  8. Excellent effort! Probably excessive and hard to maintain. A body needs a break to do repair on sore muscles, or something could really get strained.
    Also, it is a good idea to take vitamin C as that reduces oxidative stress. And vitamin E (the natural form is best) to help with those repairs. Alpha lipoic acid is also good for recharging vitamin E and C.

  9. Normal drinking doesn’t damage the liver. That requires heavy drinking on a long term basis.
    Where heavy is usually defined as something like at least 15 standard drinks/week for a male. (And I suspect that figure is calculated for some minimum figure like say the 25th percentile male in terms of body mass.)

  10. Doing 90 minutes exercise per day myself. And not light exercise, but stuff that pushes me hard enough to increase lung function. If there’s a germ around that takes away most of your lung function, I figure it’s best to start with as much as possible.

    But then I’ve previously lost most of my lung function for a couple of months, needing O2 to survive. So I’m probably more paranoid about this.

  11. OK, further investigation reveals that
    — It is the FDA that has banned all other tests. On the grounds that a test is a “medical device” that needs to pass all the standard “medical device” licensing. Only the CDC has done the certification for their test.
    — This is one government agency giving a monopoly to another government agency, so of course it’s being spun as private industry profiteering from suffering, and offered as proof that more power should be given to government agencies. ???

  12. Oh come on – that’s unfair. Why would you expect a great band like The Who to have any competency regarding pandemics?

  13. OMG just take the L on how China handled this virus.

    The only organization more incompetent than the CDC is the WHO.

  14. So is the problem fear, or people not being afraid enough to do the precautions you urge?

    Or do you suggest that YOU take the precautions, but everyone else should harden up and keep society running?

  15. For those following along at home:

    Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), also known as extracorporeal life support (ECLS), is an extracorporeal technique of providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life.
    TL;DS The take your blood out of one vein, run it through an artificial lung to add oxygen and remove CO2, put it back into your veins.

  16. It might also be a good idea to stop drinking. These ECMO machines that oxygenate your blood when your lungs fail cause liver damage. Don’t know why. But this puts a time limit on you. If you can’t fight it off by the time your liver is kaput…that is how you typically die of this thing. That is another good reason to loose some fat weight…if you are overweight. When you are obese or overweight you are likely to have fatty liver. That interferes with proper liver function. Loosing the fat helps restore liver function.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4788876/
    https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fatty-liver
    Though you might die if they just run out of machines.

  17. I hear a lot of anti panic buying rhetoric. As long as you are buying things you will need and not at exorbitant prices, I see this as a positive. The more buying done before the virus arrives, the less shopping you are doing when the virus is everywhere. That means less spread. And saved lives. This is not hording…the bridge is not washed out. They can get more from the warehouse or have more made and brought in.
    This is not the typical natural disaster. There is no reason to think the power will go off, or the water or gas. So buy what is rational. Dry foods, can goods, frozen, if you have a decent sized freezer. Some fresh stuff that keeps OK is good too like butternut squash and cabbage. Have to refrigerate the cabbage, but any winter squash will keep well. Don’t buy 50 lb of fresh vegetables that spoil rapidly like berries, tomatoes, summer squash and leafy greens and just throw them in the fridge. You have to do something to improve their preservation. Juicing and freezing the greens perhaps. Better to just buy canned or dried tomatoes. Or grow your own. Cherry tomatoes grow pretty fast. Herbs grow fast. And you can sprout lots of things. There are lots of videos on sprouts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJRuQp3CH_k
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-e87xKofPs

  18. Now where did I put my chicken cannon? Gotta be here somewhere. These guys certainly need the bird.

  19. Sick yes, but essentially right. Remove the Baby Boomers and the economy in the US would be crazy good. Housing market would explode, jobs would open up, and the give me generation would stop leaching, since they created a bunch of useless jobs to accommodate themselves that included fat pensions that ended up being at the taxpayers expense at roughly a 20 trillion tab with the Baby Boomers in charge. Then again its their children that pay it, not them, they got theirs. So screw their children, with all the Boomer sex abuse they are good at it.

  20. Probably for the best. Leaves you with a lean, healthy populace without the fascist leanings of the older generations.

  21. Make no mistake the US will get hit hard. Just look at the demographics (Baby Boomer and diabetes) and add in a healthcare system that encourages you not to use it.

  22. Definitely stay healthy. Always, always, ALWAYS. Although, more than anything else, right now what I fear most is fear. Especially herd fear and panic buying. That said, there is definitely a lot said for even a subconscious self-quarantine. I’ve actually always been like that, myself.

    When H1N1 was going around hard, I barely left the house but for work. And I worked at Starbucks, so I had to work extra hard to limit interaction with people. Washed my hands a lot, didn’t touch my face. Still, I don’t see a breakdown of society over this. unless people get dumber than they already are.

    During the bubonic plague, I just stayed inside until it totally burnt itself out. I only went out to feed when absolutely necessary. 😉

  23. HIIT exercise (high intensity interval training) renews and multiplies your mitochondria. Levels of healthy mitochondria fall off dramatically with age, but HIIT exercise can restore them. Nothing else comes close. And as age is a major factor, anything to make your body like it is young might help with survival. Resistance training is probably also beneficial. And exercises to strengthen your core. Singing or playing wind instruments might also be good as it can strengthen the diaphragm, which might make breathing easier, when it is not so easy.
    I also have a suspicion that higher iodine levels help prevent or shorten the duration of a viral infection. Asians typically get more iodine from eating seaweed.

  24. So, the reports I’m seeing is that the US CDC has banned anyone except them from testing for the virus, as a result it’s too expensive for anyone to do unless they’re covered by insurance, (or have enough money to buy good insurance anyway).

    Despite claims that many other organisations, companies, and large hospitals have the facilities and tech to do the tests.

    So if true this looks like deliberate sabotage to me. Fill in the motivation based on your own head canon.

  25. I saw one guy in USA had to pay 1400 USD to get tested.
    I heard in Thailand the cost is 500 USD at a private hospital
    How much is the real cost ?

  26. No. The Chinese tests worked just fine, which is one reason their campaign was so successful that The WHO said, ” In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile, and aggressive disease containment effort in history…China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic.”

  27. More concisely, cut on fast sugars, get a lot of sleep, fix your gut, get 30 min sunshine daily when UV light is moderate, moderate exercise like 30 min walking a day and you are very likely to dodge the covid 19 as well as other types of flu and cold.

  28. From what I recall, the Chinese testing was basically useless. A ton of false positives and false negatives. Declaring victory because you just did more testing is not the correct way to look at it. The CDC seems to have fallen down on this one, but they may not be willing to do useless tests for the sake of testing, like China.

  29. We should be advising people over 40 to get in better shape before this thing gets here in force. If they are overweight, loose 10% of their body fat (without the unbalanced diets). Eat vegetables and fruit. Eat lean meats. Do HIIT and aerobic exercise. Cut sodas, bacon, butter/margarine/cream cheese, fried foods, grilled foods, most processed foods, pies, cakes, cookies, chips, crackers. Skip the frozen meals, frozen corn dogs, chips, cheese puffs, pork rinds, pretzels. Canned soup is ok, ground turkey/chicken are fine. Avoid toasted oils and coconut oil.
    Get any needed dentistry that needs done, done, before it hits. If you are planning to get your hair done a manicures, pedicures, hair removal, etc., get’er done. You want no pressing need to go places. Need the car smogged, oil changed, balding tires replaced? Get’er done. You have cats or dogs? Stock up on their food as well as your own. Got pest control stuff that needs done like termites, hornets, rats, mice? Get’er done. Plumbing situation getting worse? Get it fixed now. You don’t want to have to call someone when this thing is going around. You do not want sick people in your home.
    Possibly start a garden now if is not cold out, so you will have fresh produce, and won’t have to go to the grocery or have it delivered. But don’t plant right next to the house or right next to a fence if your home was made earlier than 1978. Even if the fence is not wood or has no paint, a previous fence may have had lead paint.

  30. Obviously, we need the tests and aggressive efforts to isolate people and communities. But we also need a lot of ECMO machines. I hope Congress is allocating money to buy these machines. Without them, if there is an explosion in cases, we could be looking at closer to 4% death rates rather than the 2% stuff.

  31. Covid 19 will be eradicated mostly by better and faster pointing who to test and being able to test faster, cheaper and in bigger quantities.
    Vaccination will arrive only late into the game again, albeit not too late, and may help in the long term stage of total eradication.
    Instead of closing borders, countries should build a mechanism of exchanging information of people who need to be tested when they cross borders.

Comments are closed.