COVID-19

The USA was completely unprepared for COVID-19. And, we were late in recognizing the threat.

Didn't our government learn anything from the SARS and MERS epidemics? Didn't they think something like that could happen again? Why were they not prepared for this pandemic. Now COVID-19 is here and we have been caught totally unprepared. We still haven't really come to grasp our situation. And, to be sure, there will be other pandemics in the future. It is not a question of whether another pandemic will occur, but when.

When COVID-19 emerged, China, Korea and other countries were very quick to react. They rapidly quarantined infected areas. The people immediately started to wear masks. And massive testing and contact tracing was imposed. We waited too long. By the time our government reacted, the virus had already spread to many locations across the country. The "genie was already out of the bottle". By the time we reacted, the virus was already out of control and had spread far and wide.

To keep the virus from spreading further, "social distancing" is being used in an attempt to keep the virus from spreading further. But, social distancing isn't comlete isolation and therefore isn't totally effective. However, in a democracy, locking everyone down would be totalitarian and is completely out of the question. And, as we can easily see, even social distancing has had a devastating effect on our jobs, our economy and the availability of essential services. Obvbiously, by isolating everyone we would surely kill our economy?

Infected people need to be isolated and their illness cared for. At the same time, people need to have jobs, provide services and keep the economy going. The simple fact is that the ONLY people who really need to be isolated are those who are actually infected. And that includes those who have the virus but show no symptoms. So, the problem comes down to finding those who are infected so they can be isolated and treated. The rest of the porulation could then go about their business and keep the economy from collapsing.

Identifying those who are infected requires testing. But, testing is a huge problem by itself. You simply can't test everyone! To test the entire population would require more than 300 million tests. And, to catch new infections on those who tested OK previously, those tests would need to be repeated frequently for at least the estimated time for the virus to incubate and probably longer. So, massive testing of the population is impossible.

If we can't identify those who are infected, a complete locakdown would be needed to stop the spread of the virus. But as we previously said, to do so would destroy our economy. Besides, we are a democracy. We don't want a totalitarian solution. We can't do a total lockdown without killing our economy. We can't test the entire population and we can't do a total lockdown. And once we have knocked down the number of infections, how do we prevent a flareup again until a vaccine becomes available. Somehow, we need to identify infected people and also get the uninfected people back to work. And, we have to do it without destroying our democracy.

So, how can we make certain when people are allowed to go back to work, that infected people are identified, isolated and treated.  I believe that testing is the key. One way to find infected people would be to test them as they return to work. Many employers now require drug screening and background checks before offering work. Why not do virus screening as well. If you want a job, you get tested for the virus. Such a program could easily idenify infected workers and would certainly be more effective that massive testing or massive quarantines. It could actually save our economy.

Such a testing program would be much cheaper and more effective than a massive testing program. It would also prevent the collapse of our economy. But, it would need to be free because thare are many people who don't have insurance or are living paycheck to paycheck.
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Statistics show that self-testing can yield just as good results as having professionals administer the tests. Self-testing would reduce the need for professional staff and their protective gear (which in short supply). Professional staff could then focus on caring for those patients who are already known to be sick.

Tbis leaves me with the following unanswered questions:
  1. Why did our government not plan for an inevitable pandemic?
  2. Why did they wait until the virus had already spread befor reacting?
  3. Why are they advocating massive (totalitarian) isolation and destroying the economy?
  4. Why don't they focus on better testing to find those who are infected?
  5. Why don't they have a plan to save our economy?