Today's Brian

When 45* blusters about how great all the COVID-19 testing is going, there's an element of truth to it - surprise!

But, as usual, the element of truth is at the surface, and you don't even have to drill down to get to a look at just how FUBAR this "response" is right now.

I'm sure they told President Stoopid that ya gotta get the testing in place so we can see where we are, and to map out how to get where we need to go.

And we've done well in ramping up the number of tests conducted. But there are glitches - because this is Cult45 and there are always fucking glitches.

First, get thru Brian's thing.

Brian Tyler Cohen

Now then, focusing in on the continuing testing fuckup:

1. We weren't adequately supplied with testing kits. And this is NOT an Obama problem. Obama knew there were problems, and he talked about it, and he asked Republicans every year for more money for CDC and FEMA and DOD so they could get us ready for this kind of threat, but somehow, Congress just couldn't see their way clear to ease up on any of the stoopid "sequestration" constraints.
2. WHO offered us kits and we turned 'em down. I think that's because somebody closely connected to this White House felt they deserved to get a paycheck out of it.
3. Testing finally starts to get ramped up, but this fuckin' moron 45* thinks that sticking a swab up somebody's nose is all there is to it. The reason he can brag about how great the testing is going while we still don't know what the fuck is going on, is that we have a shitload of tests sitting in boxes waiting to be processed.

So yes, we're #1 in test volume,

 ...but like I said, that's the number of tests performed - the number of samples collected - but we have yet to figure out how to boost the processing throughput so those tests can actually tell us something useful.

And, BTW, one of the numbers that really matters is the Tests/Million Population, and we're #44 on that list.