Americans are almost certainly dying of covid-19 but being left out of the official count
Source: Washington Post
Coronavirus death toll: Americans are almost certainly dying of covid-19 but being left out of the official count
The fast-spreading novel coronavirus is almost certainly killing Americans who are not included in the nation’s growing death toll, according to public health experts and government officials involved in the tally.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.
A widespread lack of access to testing in the early weeks of the U.S. outbreak means people with respiratory illnesses died without being counted, epidemiologists say. Even now, some people who die at home or in overburdened nursing homes are not being tested, according to funeral directors, medical examiners and nursing home representatives.
Postmortem testing by medical examiners varies widely across the country, and some officials say testing the dead is a misuse of scarce resources that could be used on the living. In addition, some people who have the virus test negative, experts say.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/coronavirus-death-toll-americans-are-almost-certainly-dying-of-covid-19-but-being-left-out-of-the-official-count/2020/04/05/71d67982-747e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html
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No, no and fucking NO! Doing this gathers information and that is the ammunition vital to stopping or slowing down a pandemic! The data on what is actually happening in the real world is of utmost importance. Create, produce, beg, borrow and steal every test available to determine..... Who has the virus....How did they likely acquire it....Who else have they possibly infected. Do that early, isolate the chains of infection and you squash the pandemic. Don't....and it's the ultimate case of pay me now or pay me a whole hell of a lot later. Why that's so fucking hard for humans to understand, I'll never know.
When this is over, the American response to CvD-19 will be the primary case study on WHAT NOT TO FUCKING DO to respond to a pandemic. For all our wealth and scientific muscle, outside of notable exceptions in NY state and a few other places, we're a collection of fucking idiots!
