Testing..... numbers.... evidence-based decision making. And advice for returning travelers.....
November 29, 2020
Dear Folks,
How are you doing? You have a nice Thanksgiving? Slipping into Christmas and New Year's preparations without missing a beat? Well.... before you leap too far ahead, I wanted to share a news segment from ABC News that I thought was particularly helpful:
Anyway, here is the ABC segment..... you might want to share it with "a friend" or "your crazy relative" who chose to travel during this Thanksgiving holiday despite warnings not to travel this time from every public health authority in the country: https://abcnews.go.
Also, while we are talking about testing, how come the Yolo County Corona Virus Testing Dashboard shows that we have tested so few people in our county? I saw the article in the Enterprise that copied the County dashboard here: https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/county-closes-out-worst-covid-week-yet/.
It shows 57,993 tests in Yolo County for a population of 220,500 resident in Yolo County. That's only 26%, people. *** So, that's about a quarter of the population has been tested and almost 75% have never been tested. Nine months into the pandemic. Seriously!
And given that nearly half of the people who are infected with coronavirus have ZERO symptoms, there is the possibility that there are a lot of people walking around with the virus. Or maybe not. Because if we don't test them, we simply don't know.
Shouldn't we have more data so our Public Health Department, local health services providers, and other stakeholders can make evidence-based decisions?
Regards,
John
*** I am assuming that the stat "Total Tested" refers to individuals tested and not tests administered. If it were the latter that would mean that an even smaller % of our population has been tested.
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