(04-23-2020, 02:11 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(04-23-2020, 11:37 AM)taylortbb Wrote: I don't think we need to be testing everyone. However, if we aren't even testing people that we identify through contact tracing, and who DO meet our test criteria, how are we in a position to re-open anything? Pretty much everyone agrees contact tracing is going to be a key part of re-opening things, to keep cases reasonable. But right now my experience has told me contact tracing stops at the regional border. My close contact works in Hamilton so her case is managed by Hamilton public health, their ability to contact trace is limited to Hamilton residents only. Because I'm in Waterloo Region I'm totally excluded for any testing/follow up/etc. That's not going to cut it for reopening anything.
We aren't in a position to re-open anything. It wouldn't matter if we were swabbing the entire population three times a day right now. Contact tracing is the key, but we can't even contact trace everyone who has it, testing isn't the limitation there.
Nobody--besides nutjob americans (yes, the POTUS and Governors) are saying things should be reopened now.
Basically being worried that we won't be able to reopen things whenever it becomes possible...certainly not now...because we aren't doing enough testing right now...doesn't make any more sense than a month ago arguing that we shouldn't be worried because there weren't that many cases then. The world is dynamic, these things will change.
I agree we're not in a position to open anything. But I think things should be moving in that direction, and I'm concerned they're not.
In any case, my 48 hour saga with public health wasn't about convincing them to test me. Every call started with them going down the testing criteria, and concluding that I met multiple criteria for priority testing, and that I should be tested. It was a crazy 48 hour wild goose chase going from public health telling me "you should be tested" to finally navigating the bureaucracy enough that I was in touch with someone who actually had the authority to authorize the test public health said I needed. Surely you agree that's not how it's supposed to work? We should be testing the people that meet the criteria, not giving them bureaucratic gauntlets to discourage it.