Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: All K-12 schools in Pennsylvania shut down for 2 weeks amid coronavirus outbreak [View all]BumRushDaShow
(129,084 posts)I provided a series of articles starting from March until near the end of April, that were talking "nationally". There was a nationwide shortage of the reagents, swabs, transport media - even for places like Quest and Labcorp, to do the number of tests that are being called for in order to contain this.
Again - the "drive-through" testing, many sites of which were set up by FEMA, were specifically designated for "symptomatic" people, of a certain age, and for healthcare workers/first responders. That's ALL they had enough testing materials/detection instruments, to do. They weren't even accepting "symptomatic younger people" (those under 65) and many in that younger age group DIED after being turned away.
The problem is that people with an agenda are trying to confuse the numbers of who is more at risk of "dying" vs who is more at risk of actually getting infected and spreading the virus (whether they get physically sick or not). Most of the spread is happening due to exposure to asymptomatic people (in other words "community spread" ).
Those, mostly elderly, who are most negatively-impacted and who may eventually die, are rarely the ones out and about in the community. They are often in facilities - hospitals, nursing homes, rehab facilities, assisted living facilities, etc. It's the healthcare workers, the other facility support/maintenance staff, and friends and family "from outside of the facility" who brought it into those facilities, and except for the healthworkers and EMTs, no one else was being tested because they did not fit the criteria.
I have an 85-year old aunt who is in an assisted living facility in GA and my cousin is freaking and trying to make sure that her nurse has the proper PPE. My 77 year old uncle who has been really getting impacted by the sarcoidosis that he's had much of his adult life, was able to get out of a rehab in MN just in time at the start of this mess (he was there because he had a bad fall in his house). I have a 62 yo BIL who is on dialysis 3x a week, and 2 sisters, one whose immune system is shot after chemo/radiation from uterine cancer, and another who has had RA for the past 20 years and gets infusions every 6 weeks - ALL of them are at extreme risk of contracting this and being impacted, so this is no game for me.
This thing about "well we are not being impacted here" - all you need to do is go look at what is happening in Texas and rural areas in other states that are now seeing spikes.