I’ve been grappling all week with how to cover the COVID-19 testing debacle in a smart way. It has become the focal point of much of the public concern, and I suspect it’s what elected officials are hearing the most about because everyone wants to be tested. But people clamoring for tests and politicians responding to the clamor doesn’t necessarily align with what makes the most sense from a public health standpoint.
You saw Trump’s remarks yesterday where he falsely claimed that the United States has a “tremendous testing set up” for those entering the country. In contrast, we have had a number of accounts from readers arriving back in the United States in recent days who have been concerned that not only are they not being tested, but they’re not even being screened for symptoms or possible exposure on their trips.
Here’s an example from TPM Reader AG who emailed overnight with about her arrival in the United States from Italy earlier this week.
Testing in the United States remains drastically behind testing in other countries, even before figuring in the scale of US population with dwarfs all but a few countries in the world. But it is ramping up. Here is a quick and dirty chart I just compiled with the data from the COVID-19 Tracking Project. This is the cumulative number of the number of people tested in the United States as updated each day.
(Click the chart to get a zoomed in version of the image for easier reading.)
Let me mention an important public debate unfolding across the country: school closings. I know this debate in New York City because I’m a resident and I have children in the public schools. We have a particular issue here because we have active spread in the city and a nearby suburb (New Rochelle) is one of the biggest hotspots around the country. Still, the basic question applies in most parts and perhaps every part of the country. I’ve gradually and very reluctantly come to the conclusion that the city government and Board of Education are making a mistake in how they’re approaching the issue.
Let me try to explain carefully why I think that’s the case. And let me be clear that I’m speaking as a resident and a parent and applying my journalistic skills but in no way an expert in public health or medicine.
The President’s usual nonsense has graver implications during a pandemic crisis. Here he is from a few moments ago claiming that all people returning from Europe are being tested for Coronavirus and being quarantined if they are positive. Obviously this is completely false. To the best of my knowledge people are not even being questioned or having their temperatures taken, let alone being tested. The country doesn’t have remotely the testing capacity to do that even if we wanted to.
Trump claims (falsely) all Americans returning to country are being tested:"We have heavily tested. If an American coming back or anybody coming back, we have a tremendous testing set up where people coming in have to be tested … if it shows positive … We have to quarantine." pic.twitter.com/ndGlKmSFJh
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 12, 2020
We’ve been told to expect something presidential.
JoinWe’re starting to see herd behavior around social distancing measures, and it’s pretty powerful. The more people do it, the easier it for everyone to do it. But TPM Reader JA has a good point that it starts at the top*:
Kudos to TPM for keeping folks out of the office. I am thinking this morning about why leadership from on high is so important relative to COVID-19 and social distancing, and that’s because half measures aren’t good enough in themselves, and because for me half measures lead to quarter measures.
You have to find good news where you can at the moment.
There is at least good evidence that testing is starting to pick up. Terribly, terribly below where it needs to be, but here are some numbers. According to imperfect but best available statistics, by March 10th 4,889 people had been tested. By yesterday it was 7,617. As of this morning it’s 8,900. It seems likely to go well over 10,000 today.
We are all coming up to speed with phrases like social distancing, containment and mitigation, disease curves and more. From everything I have heard – and I’ve been listening very closely – a blanket ban on travel to and from Europe is largely irrelevant to the current situation. There is probably a logic to barring travel to and from northern Italy. Screenings at airports make sense. But the virus is here, apparently seeded at multiple locations in the United States and on a growth curve that looks very similar to those of countries that were two or three weeks ahead of us. If I heard him correctly that was the only substantial new policy the President announced other than still quite vague stimulus efforts, which focused on ‘liquidity’, even though liquidity isn’t the core of the economic dimension of the crisis.
One persistent dimension of this crisis is the federal government being slow or silent and seeing, over time, states, cities, private corporations and educational institutions step into the void. The White House’s communications operation at least is significantly improved from late February, which is of course not saying much. But the real information, the big decisions are mostly coming from elsewhere.