(Uh oh)?

Hmm. Fixed it:

"Ireland's heroic medical scientists propelled Ireland to being the 4th most tested country in the world*, having tested an incredible 5.3% of the entire population in 11 weeks, for a complex new disease and saved tons of Irish lives in the process". https://twitter.com/newschambers/status/1260258046418313219

The scale of testing 5.3% of 5 million people is essentially a war-time-logistical-effort.

And our starting point was a small, underpaid, underappreciated medical scientist community, who most people viewed as 'geeky nerds in a lab.'

Those nerds saved thousands of lives.

Not that you'd know it from the way media reports it.

Plenty of "Slow turnaround time" pieces on TV and jack-diddly-squat highlighting how incredibly hard this very small group of people worked to keep us safe.

Some of them are on the verge of breakdowns from exhaustion.

So yeah, no fucking shit the turnaround is slow at times. They're attempting and *achieving* something Herculean.

Turnaround time in UK, US, Australia, Canada also ranges from 1-7 days on their official websites - and they've tested far, far less. https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/coronavirus-covid-19-seeing-a-doctor-getting-tested-faqs

*136 comparable 3 million+ countries.

Only 3 above us on WHO-approved-PCR testing - Portugal, Israel, Denmark - also have 1-5 day turnarounds!!! (UAE & Spain above but they include non-WHO-approved rapid serological tests in #'s)

Denmark turnaround: https://www.coronaprover.dk/lib/coronainformation-2020-05-06.pdf

European headlines in March:

"Portugal becomes first EU country to open drive-thru testing".

Good for them.

100% 'Fake News'. Croke Park opened 6 days beforehand.

Ireland was the first, which Europeans might know if our media wrote that in headlines. https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2020/03/23/portugal-becomes-first-eu-country-to-open-covid-19-drive-thru-test-center-as-the-state-of-emergency-looks-set-to-be-extended/

Ireland only big country in world to test every nursing home resident. As a result, we found more cases & deaths - because we looked for them - as opposed to not looking or finding, which is a handy way to keep death numbers low.

Another point abjectly missed by media.

Most people have no clue that other countries who opened up did so *despite* slow turnaround times. They would understand if media reported it.

Denmark don't even test close-contacts until **Day 6 of isolation** in order to eliminate false-negatives in the incubation period.

Ireland have gone with a more cautious approach and are waiting until turnaround times are quicker, which they clearly will be as the R0 of the virus is incredibly low, and there'll be far fewer people to test.

But the idea others reopened due to quick turnarounds is false.

There should be no reason the Irish public aren't fully aware of just how superhuman the efforts of our medical scientists have been and how phenomenally they stack up worldwide.

World class nerds we should be tremendously proud of

Put that in a headline.