Testing Kills

“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”

Donald J. Trump on 15 June speaking of the number of coronavirus cases.

Really?  Just like if we stopped pregnancy tests there would be no more pregnancies?  Or if there were no cancer tests there would be no more cancer?

I suppose that I should not be surprised at Mr. Trump’s comments by now.  He failed every leadership test that the pandemic threw his way so what would change now?  His plan seems to be to pretend that there is nothing wrong and to resume business as usual.  What else to expect from the Worst President Ever?

Just when you think it cannot get any worse, of course it does.  As we know, Mr. Trump decided that the best way to prevent anyone thinking that we still have a COVID-19 problem is to pretend that we don’t by holding a rally with some 20,000 people in a closed space in a state that is one of the current pandemic hot spots.

Unfortunately, this appears to be the strategy for the entire Trump administration.  Yesterday Vice President Mike Pence authored an article in the Wall Street Journal that said, in part:

“In recent days, the media has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a ‘second wave’ of coronavirus infections.  Such panic is overblown.  Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and the courage and compassion of the American people, our public health system is far stronger than it was four months ago, and we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy.”

Most public health officials agree that we are not in a second wave of the pandemic.  They believe that we are still in the early stages of infections and that the second wave is a few months away.  This of course, is page one of Mr. Trump’s playbook.  When things are not going well, yell “hey everybody, look over there, the nasty media is at it again.  Pay no attention to my incompetence.”  Most preposterously, the Vice President went on the claim that:

The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and these grim predictions of a second wave are no different.  We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives, and we’ve created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future.  That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering.”

“Cause for celebration”?  Shameful.

The man is pandering to one man and one man only.  Mr. Trump.

On March 15 of this year there were roughly 60 deaths known to be a result of the pandemic.  As I write, we have more than 119,000 Americans dead.  Americans dead.  In three months.  And we should celebrate?

By any measure we have failed in this crisis.  Take any metric that you choose; total deaths, total cases, deaths per capita, whatever, and the USA is in on the wrong side of the power curve.  There are 7.94 million known cases in the world.  The US has 2.18 million of them.  Roughly 28% of the world’s cases.  There are 435,000 deaths world wide.  The US has about 119,000 of them.  Roughly 27% of them.  In what is supposed to be the greatest country in the world with the greatest scientists, doctors and public health facilities we are doing very poorly indeed.

But, yeah, go to Oklahoma and celebrate.

Following the administration’s logic as espoused by the President and Vice President, if there were no testing there would be no coronavirus deaths.  Therefore, testing kills.  We should stop testing immediately.