I’m on day 4 of a consistent low-grade fever. I feel ok and am self-isolating, but figured it was time to ask about a test. No dice — test results still take 7-9 days in DC, so you only get tested if you can’t breathe and need to be admitted. 1/5

From a clinical standpoint ok. Treatment - Tylenol and liquids - is the same whether I have covid or not. But from a public health & public policy standpoint, this is crazy! Good policy decisions, especially on public health, require good data; we are flying completely blind. 2/5

We have no clear picture of what percentage of the population has been exposed. That means we have no ability to leverage the population with antibodies to give life-saving plasma, work essential jobs that risk exposure, or help the economy get back on track generally. 3/5

It also means we’re making policy decisions now on (at best) incomplete info. Decisions on when/how to open back up will be based on guesswork instead of data on how many people have antibodies, how close we are to herd immunity, etc. These things are knowable — with testing. 4/5

Yet the federal government wanted to defund testing starting today. Insufficient testing is why we have the worst epidemic in the world, and we aren’t even close to solving the problem. Widespread testing isn’t sufficient, but it is necessary to get us out of this mess. 5/5