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Let's be clear: what @MarkMeadows @SWAtlasHoover @PeterNavarro45 @HHS_ASH have done has NO support from those with expertise in infectious diseases, such as the Infectious Diseases Society of America--the group representing infectious disease physicians across the country. 1/
The nation's physicians, here the American Medical Association, are saying the same thing. None of this has any scientific justification. 2/
. @SWAtlasHoover someone without any infectious disease or epidemiological training has taken the wrong lessons from Sweden and its grim experiment: sequestering the elderly and letting everyone else go about their business did not work. 3/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html
Testing asymptomatics is crucial to stopping the pandemic. As @michaelmina_lab has suggested this could be done with inexpensive, rapid antigen tests, while saving PCR assays for clinical diagnosis. 4/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/how-to-test-every-american-for-covid-19-every-day/615217/
We could also triage our testing by targeting congregate settings, like nursing homes, prisons, meatpacking plants and warehouses or labor sectors that are low-work-from-home, frequent-contact professions as @Simon_Mongey has described. 5/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/characteristics-of-workers-in-low-work-from-home-and-high-personal-proximity-occupations/
We've also pioneered some more sophisticated algorithms for HIV, which might work here too. 6/ https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-018-1129-0
But as @jbkrell from @PrEP4AllNow will explain later today, @BARDA & @PHEgov made a conscious, deliberate decision NOT to scale-up testing in the US. Look at the numbers James will provide later today. Follow the money and see the empty pot at the end of the rainbow. 7/
What they have done is ordered antigen tests for nursing homes. This is a clear sign that they are going Swedish on steroids. 8/ https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/08/20/trump-administration-uses-defense-production-act-to-aid-our-most-vulnerable.html
If asymptomatic, community spread means nothing to @WhiteHouse, then we need only to ensure that hospitals, nursing homes have the bare minimum they require, other settings should not be able to procure any protective equipment. It's happening. 9/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/08/25/cities-states-fear-they-may-lose-critical-fema-dollars-coronavirus-response/?
If community spread means nothing to @realDonaldTrump then @SeemaCMS, Mike Pence's crony from Indiana, will ensure that Medicaid continues to refuse payment for screening for #SARSCOV2. 10/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/usc-brookings-schaeffer-on-health-policy/2020/07/13/the-laws-governing-covid-19-test-payment-and-how-to-improve-them/
