Rapid COVID Testing for Veterans

SFC Chuck Martinez - Of course there is blood on his hands. Under Trumps leadership the US which has 4% of the world's population but has 20% of the COVID cases and deaths. He lied about the pandemic threat for weeks which prevented the federal government to start early planning and execution of the National Response Plan which is the plan the federal government uses for national disaster preparations, planning, and mitigation. He waited until mid March to call national emergency. By that time COVID was too rampant to slow down in the US. FEMA and DHS were told to start planning in late March.

It was incumbent on the federal government to plan and execute early which they did not. Controlling passengers on flights is absolutely not indicative of robust actions taken by Trump. Robust actions which should be done early entails DHS to provide Task Force leadership to all the Cabinets, Agencies, and DOD. Robust and early actions means standing up a national testing plan, providing PPEs to states, starting contact tracing, and support states and hospitals might need. Trump and his administration started this process in late March. By that time the pandemic was too large to manage. In the grand scheme of things the US went weeks into the pandemic without a requisite and comprehensive plan for weeks. It was such an utter failure that doctors and nurses had to wash PPEs for weeks because the the administration did not plan on supplying them early to hospitals.

Now I will expound on a country that had early robust planning and execution. South Korea with a population of 52 million planned and executed a country-wide testing program and contact tracing in February. It has 722 deaths to date. If you adjust that figure to the US population it would be 4,600 deaths, but we have 300,000 + deaths. Like I said, the US essentially did not start planning until late March. If South Korea has the same population as the US, we would have 295,400 more deaths than they do at this point in time. That delta is huge and horrific.

Ken, I will have to have a chat with my Genie to reply to your post. if I can find the bottle of Vodka I put her in!! :>)

SFC Chuck Martinez - I quit drinking. Probably the best thing I have done.

We could take a lesson from this about contact tracing. At the school I teach at while we were in the classroom we had a contact tracing program. A student came down with the virus administration came to the classroom with a measuring tape. Anyone sitting with six feet for fifteen minutes was put on immediate quarantine.