WHERE ARE THE TESTS?
On March 13, Trump gathered CEOs in the Rose Garden to thank their Great Companies for mobilizing to provide testing. You know all those drive through parking lot tests we now have at Walmart and Target? Yeah, those. He also had the head of Quest Diagnostics.
Quest trades under the ticker symbol DGX, and it had taken a bit of a hit recently. From a high of 115 on March 5, it had dropped to 90. "Stephen Rusckowski, Quest Diagnostics. Great job. Thank you very much," said Trump of a job not yet done. DGX popped back up to 96 that day.
As testing continued to...not happen, DGX slid over the next couple weeks, and on March 25, Rusckowski went on tv to tell ABC News that Quest was processing 25k tests/day. DGX rose from 79 to 88.
This weekend, we got another update: Quest had not been processing 25k tests/day.
Now, I'm not saying that the CEO of Quest Diagnostics is more concerned with his company's share price than its ability to process COVID-19 tests. But I'm also not saying his *not* concerned with his company's share price. And that's a problem during a pandemic.
We pay a lot of money for our government. It should be working for us. We need a real head of @DHSgov, not Acting Secretary Chad. We need a qualified head of @HHSGov, not a former Eli Lilly exec best known for doubling the price of their most popular insulin drug.
We need a functional, fully-staffed @CDCgov and the various pandemic preparedness programs launched by the Obama Administration. OUR TAXES PAID FOR THEM. We shouldn't be relying on private companies like @QuestDX to scale up to solve a national health crisis.
We're trapped in our homes, waiting for thousands of individual businesses and local officials to sort this out. Maybe that works for @joerogan, but I miss a functioning federal government. The one I pay for, that's not traded on the NYSE. /end
You can follow @krudell.
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