Yes. We have major shortages of the rapid response testing and in many states Testing is taking over 7 days to get back. Making it almost pointless.
You really dont see how testing is the key? I’ll give you a break down
We open schools. LIttle johny is going to school and then bad news, Little johnys best friend, who he has had close contact with tests positve for Covid on tuesday evening.
The school does contract tracing and good news! With the restrictions they put in place, only 3 people, including Little Johny, had what was demed close contact! They were close together on monday.
So little johny is told to stay home. So far so good. This is where it gets complicated. 2 senerio. Senerio 1 - No rapid test avaible, testing takes 7 days to get result.
Johnys dad hung out with Johny monday night. Then went to work on Tuesday where he had close contact with 7 co -workers. Since Johny may or may not be positive, and Johnys dad may or may not be positive -they have to assume he is. He tells his co-workers who now need to shut down the office.
All his co-workers now go get tested, but still a 7 day backlog. So they have to wait. Meanwhile, they all feel great. 6 of them stay home but the 7th - well -he feels fine and he didnt have direct contact with anyone that had it -so he says screw it.
One of the co-workers staying home, well monday night that persons son came over for dinner with his wife. The co-worker is staying in, but the son thinks “Well -Im fine, so i can keep doing what im doing. I had no direct close contact with anyone who tested postive or even 2nd hand with anyone who tested postiive, so im good”.
Keep doing this in your head (And they called 2 friends, and they called two friends). Finally - 7 days later -Little johny got his test back. Positive. The dad? positive. 6 of the 7 co -workers -Negaitive! But the 1 that had his son come over with the son wife? Positive. So now that co-worker calls his son and the entire proccess starts again. Its now almost 2 weeks since little johny got covid and from that contact, covid is still spreading in the community. People are missing schools, missing work, or spreading it.
Senerio 2 - A national testing plan has produced 10x as many labs and people working on the testing and rapid tests are retrurning results in under 12 hours. Everyone has access to a rapid test as close as their urgernt care. Little johny gets tested as soon as he finds out along with his parenets. The father tested postive and he found out by wed evening. He called his co-workers who all get tested and get results by Thursday, all their close contacts get tested and have results by friday. The all quarintined for a day, because its only a day. In this senerio -Its now only been 72 hours since little johny found out he was exposed and all infections that happened from that exposure have now been identified, tested, and those that were positve are staying home isolated, and those that arent are returning to their normal life, having only missed maybe 2 days of work.
Yes -Testing is the key to controling this.
