mpobiz wrote:Lolest! wrote:The anti Testing crowd on wazua, Ghana had by yesterday tested over 50K cases. They have 641 cases with only 8 deaths. So testing positive isn't killing or harming anyone.
Ghana's population is about 30M vs our 47M so it's not that they have higher population. Their first case was on March 12, ours March 13.
Kenya hit the 10K mark for tests today.
Yes I am anti testing because mass testing doesn't achieve anything. Why test then achieve a negative test result? that negative result doesn't guarantee that a person can't turn positive even seconds after testing. Testing should be done on people showing symptoms or people under quarantine on suspicion of having contact with a victim.. The rest is just a waste of resources.
This testing resources should be directed to prevention measures and public awareness. Agree...The hierarchy of actions when resources are scarce:
1. Hygiene
2. Physical distancing
3. Doing everything needed to facilitate 1&2 above (food, water community messaging etc)
4. Aggressively testing health care workers and strengthening their ability to care for patients
5. Testing symptomatic folks
5a. isolating/quarantining and treating those who are positive and are sick
5.b. aggressively following and testing contacts and isolating/quarantining/treating them as needed
6. Mass testing if resources allow then following steps 5a&b
The only time I would skip the order above is if a test to determine who has already had the disease and has immunity is available (AKA determining Seroprevalence). This would be important cuz we can let these people help others including possibly donating their plasma to treat the disease or if they are health care workers they can work with sick folks..
As for Ghana, you test more you get more cases...which may not always translate into more deaths. Our death numbers would be comparable if we had many more cases (tested more)