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Testing Is Critical to Ending the Pandemic
Why President Donald Trump’s testing comments are so off base
President Donald Trump was widely criticized over the weekend for his comments about the coronavirus pandemic during his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Specifically, Trump described testing as a “double-edged sword.”
“Here’s the bad part,” he said. “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people: ‘Slow the testing down, please.’”
A White House official said the comment was meant to be “tongue in cheek,” but many health professionals, political leaders, and others expressed dismay.
“Testing, tracing, treatment, [and] social distancing are the only tools we have to stop the spread of the coronavirus,” shared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday. “The president’s efforts to slow down testing to hide the true extent of the virus means more Americans will lose their lives.”
Testing is a critical part of most Covid-19 containment strategies. Some places, like New York City, are recommending that every person get a Covid-19 test regardless of whether they have symptoms or known exposures. Testing will, of course, find more cases, and that is the point. If there’s not widespread testing, then health experts do not know how and where the virus is spreading. Individual people need to know their status so they can isolate and stop spreading the virus to loved ones, friends, and strangers.
The inability of the United States to conduct widespread testing is also considered a failure and one of the reasons why the virus has spread so widely and killed so many people (more than any other country so far). Most countries that were able to flatten the curve did widespread testing and contact tracing.
The bottom line is testing works. No joke.
