Journal of the Virus Year: My experiences with the virus: March 19, 2020

Do you have the Coronavirus COVID-19? Is there someone or some agency you can call to find out and receive a test? Have you or one of your children ever had a strep throat? Did you go or take your child to the doctor to have the test done? When we had our seven children at home, we almost had a standing weekly appointment with our children's' pediatrician. Testing for an infection is and was for us, a routine medical procedure. What is happening with the Coronavirus? Even with all the hand-wringing rhetoric in the news, almost no medical tests for the virus are being done two months into a worldwide pandemic.

This week, one of the people I know quite well is a professional with an advanced degree. I cannot and will not disclose his identity for obvious reasons. He and his family live in the eastern part of the United States where there are multiple reports of the coronavirus infections. Just before the school was closed down, his child came home from school with a fever and all of the symptoms of the Coronavirus COVID-19. He also developed the symptoms. Not just hypochondria, but the symptoms as widely publicized. He tried to work through his employer and the county health department where he and his family are living but was repeatedly told that testing was not available nor did he or his child fall into the category of those who would be tested. They could not show contact with a person who already had the disease.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. But I do read a broad spectrum of news accounts daily. I do not fall into the category of those who read only what they want to hear. I know what Fox News has to say and I know what CNN has to say. I am also an attorney with years of trial experience. I know when crucial evidence is either being ignored or is missing altogether. Do you know how many tests for the Coronavirus have been performed in your state so far? We sort of know how many cases have been detected, but information about the number of tests is missing. If you test ten people and five of them turn out to have the virus, you know you have a serious problem but if a hundred people have the virus and you only test ten, you don't have any information about the seriousness of the problem.

Today, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, Coronavirus Resource Center at about 5:00 am, there are 9,415 people in the United States with the Coronavirus. How many total have been tested? My guess is that the number confirmed is only as accurate as the number tested.

Here is in Utah, we have news reports that say, "Amid coronavirus supplies shortage, Utah is now telling most patients not to seek testing." Here is the quote from the article dated March 18, 2020.

In a news conference last month, not long after the first U.S. coronavirus case was reported, the director of Utah’s health department was optimistic that infections in the state could be isolated. 

“We know that these measures taken — isolation of people who are ill, and quarantining those who have been exposed before they become ill so you can prevent their spreading — this is effective,” Joseph Miner said in early February.

But those measures depend heavily on testing. Amid a shortage of coronavirus testing supplies, Utah health officials are now telling patients not to seek testing unless they are so sick they require extra medical care. 

“We … would like the ability of testing statewide for whomever is showing symptoms, but that’s just not the case right now,” state epidemiologist Angela Dunn said in a news briefing Tuesday.

Congress and the Administration want to spend billions (trillions?) of dollars on fighting the disease but I have yet to hear anything substantial. So you have to wait until you are dying to get tested? How many people around you have the disease? How do you know how serious the situation is in your state? According to the above-cited article, only about 27,000 people in the entire United States have been tested by public laboratories and we know that more than 9,000 have been confirmed infected. Think about it.

In my opinion, the money the government is talking about spending and paying out to people in cash is aimed at the faltering economy, not the Caronavirus at all.