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by kshacker 2233 days ago
How long does it take to double the reagent supply? Is there a number? Is it something we have started or not even that?
1 comments

> Is it something we have started or not even that?

I would assume so. Are you under the impression that the US simply doesn’t want to test as many people as possible?

> Are you under the impression that the US simply doesn’t want to test as many people as possible?

Absolutely.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-says-too-much-coronavi...

> "So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad."

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-on-allowing-grand-pr...

> "They would like to have the people come off. I’d rather have the people stay [on the ship]. But I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault."

> "So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad."

He's not wrong though, look at the rest of the quote in context:

> "So the media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn't have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad,"

The correctly identified problem with increased testing is that lots of super geniuses, who apparently can't look past "big number is biggest" w.r.t. corona deaths, try to tie "most deaths" with "worst handling of the situation", completely ignoring, as I pointed out, that the US is doing better on a deaths/million basis than several European countries. Countries that supposedly have superior healthcare systems, healthier populations, and leaders not named Trump. Buuuuttt, no one wants to tie context like that to any of the numbers, so he's absolutely right that increased testing => increased reporting of infection => increased whining about how bad the country is doing.

And of course, this is all ignoring that it's not his call to make as far as how many tests are performed, otherwise we wouldn't be leading the world in absolute numbers of tests administered by a staggering degree. No, we'd be content to test nobody at all and brag about how no one is infected.