Fauci: Neither Trump nor CDC to blame for testing delay

The Hill ^ | 03 17 2020 | John Bowden

[JayGalt]

Simplicity has it’s attractions but oversimplification is a knee jerk response that serves no one well.
Just because one takes the oath of office one is not immediately responsible for all one’s predecessors actions. Nor is one responsible for immediately fixing all the problems in Government. That is absurd.

One is responsible for one’s decisions. The President is responsible to take action on issues that emerge. Since he is not able to change Nature, change the nature of mankind nor see into men’s hearts he can only keep doing the best he can. There are no supermen. Falling on one’s sword while satisfying in Opera is not really helpful.

So you can certainly take an extreme position, unhelpful and illogical as it is. That course has the recommendation that it is easy and has been evoked inappropriately and misused for centuries.

Or you can appreciate the nuances and measure people by what is possible & what others in their position have done. If the problem is being addressed & the Nation will be the better for the exercise blame is only important as a tool to uncover the flaws that should teach what to avoid.

[JayGalt]

97-99% of the testing being done is negative. It would take 10’s of millions of tests to effect the calculation of the death rate.
According to the experts death rate is only an estimate at the best. There was a theory that there was a pool of infected mildly sick but the testing here & in other countries is not bearing that out.

[patriotspride]

Cake and eat it too defense from an Obama holdover...

[Bratch]

Dr. Fauci’s Mysterious Math – The Quantifying Today Reflects Where We Were A Week Ago – Today Cannot Be Quantified Until Next Week…

Posted on March 17, 2020 by sundance

Let me say up front, there’s something very sketchy about the wordy explanations provided by CDC Director Dr. Fauci.  Listen/watch or read what he says below.

Encapsulating Dr. Fauci’s position:  Data on the coronavirus assembled today doesn’t reflect what is actually taking place today, but rather reflects where we were several days ago…. OK, that part makes sense (there’s a lag).

He then goes on to say what is actually happening today will not be included in data until we arrive at a place a few days from now when today’s reality is quantified.  Again, that reasonably makes sense…  However….

The media is/are reporting on coronavirus impacts in real time.  There is no delay in what the media are reporting from various places around the nation.  The media reporting reflects what is taking place today; right now… and what the media is reporting today is not worse than the data Fauci is explaining.

Meaning if Dr. Fauci was correct, and if the coronavirus data (the reports of spread) was behind by several days from the reality of today; then what the media would be reporting (the on the ground reality of the spread today) would be significantly worse (higher incidents) than Fauci’s data, which he claims is lagging several days behind….

The problem with that supposition – The media ground reports do not reflect a higher incidence of coronavirus spread than Fauci’s data today.

The concept of “flattening” the virus curve; the presumptive reason for social distancing; is based on a theory to extend the spread of COVID-19 to a lesser incident rate over a longer duration, thereby lessening the burden on the U.S. healthcare system.  Hence, ‘flatten’ the spike in infections.

Put another way: “Flattening” means the same number of people eventually contract the virus, only they do so over a longer period of time, and the healthcare system can treat everyone because the numbers do not rise to level where the system is overloaded.  In theory that seems to make sense.

However, no-one is asking: what is the current stress level on the healthcare system right now?  Where are we in that capacity?… and what is normal capacity level during a high-level flu outbreak?… and Where are we when compared against that baseline?

The premise to extend the virus duration in an effort to lower the infection rate and spread the virus over a longer period of time needs to measured against: (a) where the healthcare system is at any given moment; and (b) under traditional high-flu seasons where are we during those historic events.

♦ STRESS LEVEL – The healthcare ‘system’ per se, is expending an awful lot of time on mitigation efforts.  As Dr. Brix noted: the current negative test rate for coronavirus among those showing symptoms who are tested is 98 to 99 percent.  That means of all the people taking coronavirus tests, 98/99 out of 100 are symptomatic (they are sick) but they are not infected with coronavirus.  They are normal flu cases.

Our healthcare “system” is expending an incredible amount of resources on a mitigation effort.  According to Dr. Brix and the test results 99 percent of those mitigation efforts are not engaging with coronavirus.  They are dealing with regular flu (perhaps a strong flu).

If you extract the mitigation effort from the overall effort, the current stress level on the healthcare system doesn’t seem to be overwhelming.  What is stressing the system is a coronavirus mitigation effort with a rate of 99 percent testing negative.

♦ Dr. Fauci’s theory is self-fulfilling.

If the viral spread never exceeds the capacity of the healthcare system to deal with it, he can claim success.  Look, our flattened curve worked.

However, when contrast against flu outbreaks, no-one knows what the COVID-19 capacity threshold is within the healthcare system.  There’s no way to disprove Fauci’s theory.

Given the nature of the baseline for overall U.S. sanitation and hygiene, which is significantly higher than Italy, S-Korea and China; and given the higher standards of food safety (U.S. is the world leader); again significantly higher than Italy, S-Korea and China; and given the nature of the U.S. healthcare system (more capacity per person); is it really a fair comparison to overlay a COVID-19 outbreak, without also overlaying a traditional flu outbreak?

Any theory that cannot be scientifically tested; and is simultaneously self-fulfilling; is, by its nature, a false theory.

This is not to say that Dr. Anthony Fauci is intentionally misleading anyone; however, it is absolutely true that no-one will be able to quantify if trillions of dollars of economic wealth lost; and trillions more in economic activity lost; and trillions more in deficit spending; and that might all be done just to follow the fantastical whims of a doctor who is directing the mitigation of an ordinary flu-virus/season, and appears to be quite full of his own sense of self-importance.

98/99% negative test rate should alarm everyone.  We’ve shut down the biggest economic system in the world for a virus that is not appearing in 99% of the people who are sick.

DR. BIRX: Yeah. No, thank you, Mr. Vice President, for mentioning that because, as I told you, in South Korea there are 250,000-plus tests. About 96-plus percent were negative. So — and that was with symptoms.

So we’re working very hard integrating everything they have learned about symptoms and screening, and that is going into the development of this website. So it’s not just a simple checkbox website. It’s actually going to go through critical symptoms. And that’s why we’re giving ourselves the weekend to get it put up.

So far, in the United States, from LabCorp and Quest, they’re running about a 99 to 98 percent negativity. This always worries me because I’ve worked in public health a long time. When you tell someone they’re negative, yes, it’s reassuring, but the last thing we want is them so reassured that they stopped practicing these critical practices that are going to protect all of us.

This epidemic will be stopped at the community level. Those are the individuals — it’s Americans and their response that will get us over this hump. And that’s why, yes, we’ll have testing available. We’ll have to know that many of them are going to be negative, and you’re going to have to help us carry that message that that means, just at that moment, you’re negative, you need to continue to do all of your protection and protection of others to ensure you remain there. (read more)

♦ FACT: 98 to 99% of the American people tested, who have symptoms (similar to flu), test negative for the Wuhan novel coronavirus (COVID-19).  We are spending hundreds of billions, and disrupting all facets of life and liberty, to avoid a virus almost no-one carries.

Here’s SKETCHY Dr. Fauci’s explanation:

DR. FAUCI: Thank you very much, Dr. Birx. So just to connect with what I mentioned to you in previous discussions in this room — and Dr. Birx said it very well — that in order to be able to contain and curtail this epidemic to not reach its maximum capability, we have a two-pillar approach, one of which I believe has been very effective in preventing the substantial seeding, and namely the travel restrictions that we’ve discussed many times in this room.

The other, equally, if not more important, is when you have infection in your own country, which we do. And you know I could read the numbers, but they’re really, essentially, what we’ve seen yesterday: incremental increases, both globally as well as in the United States, with the curve doing that.

So therefore, the kinds of things that we do are containment and mitigation.

This — what we’re mentioning now — the guidelines, when you look at them carefully, I believe if the people in the United States take them seriously, because they were based on some rather serious consideration back and forth, some may look at them and say they’re going to be really inconvenient for people.

Some will look and say, well, maybe we’ve gone a little bit too far. They were well thought out.

And the thing that I want to reemphasize, and I’ll say it over and over again:

• When you’re dealing with an emerging infectious diseases outbreak, you are always behind where you think you are if you think that today reflects where you really are. That’s not word speak.

It means:

• If you think you’re here, you’re really here because you’re only getting the results; therefore, it will always seem that the best way to address it were to be doing something that looks like it might be an overreaction. It isn’t an overreaction. It’s a reaction that we feel is commensurate, which is actually going on in reality.

So take a look at the guidelines. Read them carefully. And we hope that the people of the United States will take them very seriously, because they will fail if people don’t adhere to them. We have to have, as a whole country, cooperate and collaborate to make sure these get done.

Thank you.

If the coronavirus spread never exceeds the capacity of the healthcare system to deal with it, he can claim success.  Look, our flattened curve worked.  However, we’ve also destroyed the U.S. economy to do so, and we’ve wiped out tens of trillions in U.S. wealth.

If Dr. Fauci’s magic theories are correct, then by THIS Friday there should be tens of thousands of people testing positive for Coronavirus.  If not….

Here’s the new Fauci recommendations:

 

[DoodleDawg]

Nobody’s to blame for anything anymore.

[dead]

Once again, the left defines the narrative that only those on the left listen to.

They keep perpetuating myths and false narratives about Trump and his administration, but they just keep re-convincing the same 40% of the country that they are right to completely and totally hate Trump.

The rest of the country either despises them and their lies (conservatives), or have clearly identified them as partisans and not an impartial source of reliable information (independents).

[1Old Pro]

The media cannot report this.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

The “tests” don’t mean one GD thing. Unless you had a system to track the spread of positives and forcibly quarantine people like SK, the testing is worthless. And for this, it’s only good at numbers that such a system can handle. So, smaller hi-tech homogenous countries with a compliant citizenry MAY have achieved better initial control than the US using very expensive tests. So what? We’re trying to get some control now, voluntarily, and look at the results.

This “tests” garbage is just MSM “Russia Collusion” talk. The problem Trump has, is that he addressed such talk efficiently with flippancy, for the “Russia Collusion”. He can’t use flippancy with this virus. I have watched him patiently answer for the umpteenth time, the same venomous, disingenuous so-called “question” from a so-called “reporter” to no avail. They are wasting his time and grinding him down, and they know it.

[SunkenCiv]

The Shills at the Hill.

[grey_whiskers]

At least you're thinking, that's a start.

The point is, you can't do the tracking and quarantine, when you don't have enough tests.

So lack of tests == sillent (since people are infectious through casual contact via aerosolization of the virus, even before symptoms) community spread --> two or three weeks later, OMG it's out of control, DRUMP's FAULT!

There are other FR threads showing Trump had to overrule the health "experts" to forbid US-flag flights from China. The index case in the nursing home in Washington State, was a 35-year old who had just visited Wuhan.

This was meant to be a "take out the US" epidemic; I don't know whether the Dems openly colluded with China yet, but they certainly springboarded to what China would have wanted, very quickly.

The virus was bioengineered. By China. Whether based on work they originally did here, or just the base vector stolen from here/Canada and then developed in Wuhan, I don't yet know.

But I think Trump has done just enough to prevent China's and the Dems plans for him and the US, from coming to fruition...provided we continue strong voluntary quarantine.

[rdcbn]

Having a test would have been very helpful in giving insight as to the extent that the virus has spread, but it would not have changed a thing regarding the outcome.

The viral transmission rates are far too high to use community spread protocols and contact tracking and isolation do much good to check or even slow rate of spread. The system would just be overwhelmed .

We are really only 5-6 weeks into this thing and you simply cannot turn things around much faster. Original tests gave > 50% false negatives. This bug is sneaky and harder to identify - same things that make this virus hard for immune system to detect make it difficult for reliable test.

Reality is aggressive social distance is only solution at this point. All testing would have done is confirm that fact. In fact, if we did have tests, natural response would be to wait until results came in - that indecisive waiting period could have proven highly damaging if things things are going badly in a big way

Personal opinion based trends is that we caught it early here and have a good shot at moderating spread to minimize ultimate damage

Tests will be very useful tools going forward but no way we could have developed and deployed enough reliable test kits to make a difference in 4-5 weeks

[MurrietaMadman]

The left has won the narrative and they have made it about testing not about whether it is real or not or whether the virus was artificially released on purpose as a bioweapon etc. They have simply made it about testing and whether there are enough test or not.

I don't really give a crap about who won a false narrative.

Democrat governors are restricting citizens, democrat mayors are following suit denying the Constitution on a phony premise of health concerns being supported by globalist minded bureaucrats.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm Eddie Fisher could be announcing their flu claims for all the immediacy they express over flu death estimates. Now we're being ordered around by criminaly stupid politicians who forgot their place a long time ago?

Viruses come and go every year. When Liberty departs don't expect it to return in the Spring.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

I’m glad you think I’m thinking, I am trying to.

See, my take is that the US could NEVER do tracking and quarantine like SK did, so the testing didn’t matter.

I also think that the virus was already spread and incubating here, while the Chinese sat on all of this. So, again testing now is worthless for national control, and only helps the actually infected.

FWW my take on the “bioengineering” of this, at this point, is that this disease is a SARS-MERS new combination created by Chinese traveling back and forth between Italy and China. The disease was probably recognized in people early last year and isolated and purified in that lab in Wuhan. It could have been selectively bread for virulence.

China is crazed and desperate. Too much bad blood from Mao. They should have seen Trump as a setback to their plans and decided to lay low for 8 years, but I think that Satan has commanded that they “Dance!” and so they are. Whatever the reason, they are certainly trying to take the US, as you say, or at least Trump out with this virus, now.

[grey_whiskers]

One of the researchers in the BL-4 lab in Wuhan had been publishing studies on genetic tinkering with “addition of function” to bat coronaviruses in Nature back in 2015.
The Wuhan lab was advertising in Nov 2019 for postdocs to study how coronaviruses hide from the immune system.

This coronavirus has a cleavage center on the spike, which reacts with furin enzymes on human cells. The enzyme cuts open the spike, allowing the virus and human cell membrane to merge, so the virus can get into the cell.

This cleavage site is NOT found in the closely-related bat coronaviruses.
Nor in MERS.

Guess where it *is* found? Ebola and AIDS among others.

[CincyRichieRich]

The left has won the narrative and they have made it about testing not about whether it is real or not or whether the virus was artificially released on purpose as a bioweapon etc. They have simply made it about testing and whether there are enough test or not.

I don’t really give a crap about who won a false narrative.

Democrat governors are restricting citizens, democrat mayors are following suit denying the Constitution on a phony premise of health concerns being supported by globalist minded bureaucrats.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm Eddie Fisher could be announcing their flu claims for all the immediacy they express over flu death estimates. Now we’re being ordered around by criminaly stupid politicians who forgot their place a long time ago?

Viruses come and go every year. When Liberty departs don’t expect it to return in the Spring.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
We’re saying the same thing; I was also pointing out we are not winning the narrative, which allows THE POLITICIANS TO STEAL OUR FREEDOM

[Empire_of_Liberty]

I’ll admit up-front that I know nothing about virology or the state of viral engineering.

All of the actions of China, however, are positively SCREAMING that they are responsible for this viral outbreak. I don’t have any way to know the origins of the virus, itself. I only hope that our government does.

[dfwgator]

We pretty much could glean those insights from the Korean testing. If anything I would have taken the approach of pouring resources into Korean knowing they would be the center point for testing to gain insight. Why reinvent the wheel?

[rdcbn]

Yeah, at the end of the day everyone come to the same conclusion - social distance and isolation

Anyone who has ridden Asian mass transportation or has experienced Asian population densities knows that if they can do it there, we can do it much better here.

Remain cautiously optimistic that we get through this relatively lightly, at least on public health side. Economically, well, thats another issue entirely

[Capt. Tom]

A “glitch” may be in a system or in programming or in hardware, but it’s still somebodies fault, even if it’s a design problem. In the private sector, you don’t get to say ‘sorry, it was just a “glitch” and it was nobodies fault’. If it costs money or safeties, someone’s ass is going to be on the line.M

Well said.

Other much lesser countries did not have glitches, and had testing available well ahead of our country.

No doubt we fumbled the ball on test equipment availability.

Somebody is responsible. -Tom

[dfwgator]

I think if we come out relatively unscathed we’ll see something like at the end of WWII, opportunities for US Manufacturing to return and help rebuild the other parts of the world that were even more decimated by this.