When Looks Matter More Than Lives

He never understood why testing is important. However, he is very concerned that it will "make ourselves look bad". He has access to all the scientists at the CDC, NIH, FEMA, and whatever government agency he wants, but the only thing he can think of is this:

"But they think they're doing it because it'll hurt me, the longer it takes to — hurt me in the election, the longer it takes to open up"

Have a quick look at the countries that lead the "COVID-19 death chart" - the countries with the most COVID-19 death per million inhabitants:

 All the countries at the top did not understand the importance of testing until it was too late. Several of them (the UK, the Netherlands, and Sweden) tried to mostly ignore COVID-19, and only keep "old and sick" people inside. It failed miserably every single time. Most of the countries in the list had to issue "stay-at-home" orders that were much more severe than those in the US - Spain, for example, had 30,000 road blocks to keep people from driving, and kids were not allowed to leave home at all for many weeks. Here is a graph that shows how COVID-19 "surprised" Spain:

The death curve follows the cases curve with just 2 days delay. In well-managed countries, the time between first symptoms and deaths is about 19 days. Even with allowing a few days for testing, the delay should be at least 2 weeks. Spain got blindsided, and paid a very high price for it. By the time they knew that they had a problem, millions were already infected.

In countries that had testing ready, the death toll was a lot lower. Examples include Germany, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. In many of these countries, the epidemic started to slow down even before the first government measures were taken: when people heard that others were dying, and saw how quickly case numbers rose, they started to be careful, going out less and keeping their distance. When someone had symptoms, they knew that they should stay home so they would not infect others.

No ramping up testing quickly enough is much worse than just covering your eyes and hoping that "it will just disappear". It has cost many lives, and continues to cost many lives. The deaths are noticed whether there are tests or not; without tests, they instill even more fear. Fear keep people at home, away from flights, restaurants, and stores; it kills the economy, even without stay-at-home orders.

The only way out for the US without many hundreds of thousands of deaths, and many months of misery, is a massive ramp up in testing. "Test and track" is important, but tracking COVID-19 infections is extremely challenging because many infections happen before symptoms, or are transmitted by people who never get symptoms. In view of the realities in the US, test and track alone will not allow a "return to normal" - not even together with "6 ft social distancing". But repeated testing on a very large scale would be one thing that might actually work in the US.

It's not about looking good. It's about containment without sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives.