Why Do We Need Testing?

Widespread testing is the ONLY way to effective stop the COVID-19 virus. This is because waiting until symptoms appear, allows each infected person to infect others for at least 14 days.

We know that ONLY the infected persons need to be isolated in order to stop the spread of the virus. So, just lock everyone down just to be safe. This approach simply won't work because there need to be exception for essential services, etc. That will devastate our economy and those persons who are exempted could easily carry the virus without any symptoms.

So how do we detect and isolate the infected persons without isolating everyone else with them? Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and others have shown us how -- they've done massive testing to identify those with the virus before they show any symptoms. Then, they did comprehensive contact tracing to identify all those with whome they might have made contact.

In the USA we are not doing that. Essentially, the only people who are being tested here are those who present symptoms and then possibly others who they have contacted. This approach simply does not work. Consider the numbers...

Consider only one person who doesn't show symptoms and makes contact with 5 others every day for 14 days. And, assume that on each day one of the contacts became infected. But, also assume the newly infected persons also meet 5 others and infect only one of them. At the end of the first day, the original person would have infected one other. At the send of the second day, each of the infected people would infect one more giving a total of 4. One the third day, the 4 would double the num,ber again so that by the end of 14 days a total of 8192 people would have een infected and most of them would show no symptoms.

Being much more conservative, let's assume that the ratio of infection is less than 1:1 per day. How about if the rate of infection was only 1 every three days. Then the original person would only be responsible for infecting a total of 16 others. But when multiplied by something like 10,000 undetected original cases, total or the entire population could look like 160,000 undetected infections. And this in only 14 days.

Looking at the numbers, it makes it absolutely clear that to keep our economy stable and to stop the virus from spreading, massive testing is mandatory for controlling the spread of this virus. 

Several members of Predient Trump's task force have recommended massive testing. Most notable of these are Anthony Fauci MD, NIAID Director and Robert R. Redfield MD, CDC Director. Why have teeir recommendations not been implemented? Who or what is stopping the testing? It is imperative that we identify those who are infected but symptom free before they spread the virus any further.