Quinn Norton:
The unspoken problem with engaging with a testing regime is why do it when you can’t get treatment, or afford it if you could get it? Why go to the doctor when that risks destroying your family’s future?
The way we get out is not immunity passports or herd immunity, it’s not test test test, it’s a whole system of health that cares for the whole population. ...Not just testing, tracing, isolating, but the most important part of public health: treatment. https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/05/17/its-the-inequality-stupid-why-test-trace-isolate-wont-stop-covid-19-in-america/
I'm not sure what Quinn's logistic proposals are, but we can't actually put a pandemic "on hold" while we create an entirely new and different health-care system that will address it better.
This is like deciding you really SHOULD get your brakes checked a fifth of a second before you smack into the back of a semi at sixty miles an hour.
@mcfate Yeah she's not offering a proposal. Just pointing out the weakness(es) of testing in our context. I have said similar things about contact tracing in the USA. I don't have a proposal either other than continued caution and vigilance until there's a vaccine. And probably after.
But that's a silly criticism. If you don't test, you don't even know who's contagious, and then EVERYBODY winds up sick.
Quinn is smarter than this. Used to be, anyway.
I mean, we don't even HAVE reliable and readily-available tests, so the situation that's unsatisfactory to her doesn't even actually EXIST so far.
@mcfate And yet much stock and ink is being put on testing as the route to "re-opening"
Wait, what?
No, we can't reopen until we have a way of confirming who's sick, who's never caught it, and who might already be immune to it.
This is completely orthogonal to Quinn's non-argument.
I honestly haven't got a clue where you imagine you're heading with this.
@mcfate I agreed with you, "we don't have ready and reliable tests" Yes we of course need them, but we need better ones, and better means both effective and equitably available. And then I think Quinn's point is beyond that, incentives for the most vulnerable because they may well choose to avoid testing
My patience with people who want to make the perfect the enemy of the good was always pretty limited, and it's been whittled down to practical non-existence at this point.
We've got a pandemic TODAY.
@mcfate I won't belabor it, just meant to share a perspective.
And I shared mine.
@b4cks4w
All I see is Quinn telling people that getting tested is bad and we need a whole different health care system instead.
You're layering a lot of interpretation on that, and as I said, if she needs her utterances to be "decoded", she should work on her communication skills.