Coronavirus testing chief says 'no way on Earth' US can test 5 million a day, despite what Trump say

[UpInArms]

Source: CNBC

President Donald Trump said he thinks the U.S. will "very soon" be able to test 5 million people for coronavirus a day – but there's "no way on Earth" the country can reach that goal, according to the government's top testing official.

"There is absolutely no way on Earth, on this planet or any other planet, that we can do 20 million tests a day, or even five million tests a day," Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health who is in charge of the government's testing response, told TIME in an interview he gave Tuesday morning that was published later in the evening. The interview took place before Trump's remarks about testing.

The U.S. will be able to test 8 million per month by May, Giroir told Time.

Giroir was responding to a new study's findings. A Harvard University study published last week said the U.S. would need to ramp up testing capacity to at least 5 million tests a day by early June, and 20 million per day by late July, in order to reopen the economy. Giroir told TIME the assessment is "an Ivory Tower, unreasonable benchmark," adding that it's not needed based on current modelling.

Trump, when asked at a news briefing about the 5 million figure later Tuesday, said, "we're going to be there very soon."

The U.S. has run just 5.7 million total Covid-19 tests since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project. The most tests the nation has run on a single day was 314,182 on April 22, according to the volunteer project designed to track testing data launched last month by The Atlantic.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/29/coronavirus-testing-chief-says-no-way-on-earth-us-can-test-5-million-a-day.html

[Botany]

1. Trump lied?

Rick I'm shocked.

[UpInArms]

2. Were his lips moving?

Does a bear sh*t in the woods?

[beachbumbob]

3. don;t have lab capacity for starters or people to process the swabs/samples

trump keeps proving his level of stupidity

[rocktivity]

4. "States, not the Federal Government, should be doing the testing," he said?

Then why is the Federal government seizing and stockpiling supplies and equipment, then trying to auctioning it off to the states?


rocktivity

[matt819]

5. Arithmetic

5 million a day is 150 million per month, thus testing the entire US population in 2.5 months.

8 million a month would test the entire US population in 3.3 years.

Details, details.

As for testing at the moment, it's ramping up in my state, though you need a referral from your doctor.

Does that mean you have to risk your life by going to the hospital to meet with your doctor? And be charged for that risk?

Or is a phone call sufficient?

And what if you're not a health care worker, an essential worker, or someone with symptoms? No test? That is beyond moronic given the possibility that you might be asymptomatic. Plus, you don't have complete data, so scientists are still working in the dark regarding epidemiology, etc.

And what about testing for antibodies, for those people who might in fact have had the virus before it became widespread and recovered, but didn't know it at the time, and still don't know it.

Everything that can be done wrong has been done wrong and continues to be done wrong. And I am beyond pissed off at the apparent belief that these monsters believe that saying something makes it so, or, more accurately, will make their cult followers believe it is so.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. Maybe Trump counts exposure as testing

you know, Darwin testing

[mike_c]

7. and Mexico will pay for it!