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kleinbl00  ·  1481 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Help. Please help me understand the panic

Since you didn't ask, but since it matters:

TESTING

So let's say you think you have CV19. You'd like to be sure and, after all, Alex Azar says there's a million test kits out there.. You happen to live in a hotspot, there's an easy thousand cases out there

And your alma mater, UW, is at the absolute forefront of testing. Hell, your wife transports to UW all the time! You know some nurses over there! And the WA state testing lab is literally a mile from your yoga studio. Let's do our part, right?

So the first thing you'll discover is that the COVID19 hotline is pretty much busy all day. The next thing you'll discover is that they're only testing known exposures to COVID19, or ER patients in respiratory collapse. Theoretically you can get a referral for COVID19 testing from a doctor, but speaking as a doctor's office, we don't know where to refer to or how to refer and we spent eight hours on the phone figuring this shit out Thursday.

If you dig into it you'll discover that the Shoreline clinic can do about 100 tests a day, and that patients are being tested twice for redundancy so that's 50 patients. UW can do 1000 which is another 500 patients. Presume you find somewhere to send your patient (yourself): you're at the end of the line no matter what and that line is currently filled with (A) respiratory collapse ER patients (B) known exposures (C) patients who have been in China in the past 14 days (still!). Not only that you're entirely at the local level because the CDC has decided that coronavirus is now endemic to the Seattle area so they are actively not testing anyone local for CV19.

We have Quest and LabCorps accounts. Theoretically LabCorps has a COVID19 test. It is available under the CDC guidelines which are

    Clinicians should use their judgment to determine if a patient has signs and symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and whether the patient should be tested. Decisions on which patients receive testing should be based on the local epidemiology of COVID-19, as well as the clinical course of illness. Most patients with confirmed COVID-19 have developed fever1 and/or symptoms of acute respiratory illness (e.g., cough, difficulty breathing). Clinicians are strongly encouraged to test for other causes of respiratory illness, including infections such as influenza.

    Epidemiologic factors that may help guide decisions on whether to test include: any persons, including healthcare workers2, who have had close contact3 with a laboratory-confirmed4 COVID-19 patient within 14 days of symptom onset, or a history of travel from affected geographic areas5 (see below) within 14 days of symptom onset.

So. If you have had confirmed contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19, or if you've been in Iran, Italy, China, South Korea or Japan in the past 14 days, you can order up a Lab Corps test.

Quest has a test, too. It's available to practitioners, starting tomorrow, who "use their discretion" and has a five-day turnaround. They would much rather you take their "everything but coronavirus" panel which tests against 19 flu-like viruses that aren't SARS-COV-2. I have my suspicions about this; the WA State Insurance Commissioner has ordered all insurers in WA state to waive testing fees for CV19 but if I know my insurance companies, they'll go "that's not a CV19 test, that's an 'everything but CV19' test and THAT we'll pass the entire $3500 cost on to you, fucker."

So. 71 confirmed cases in King County. 27 confirmed cases in Snohomish County. I've had symptoms for two weeks. And starting tomorrow, I can pay to have my wife swab my cheek and send it to St. Louis to find out if I still have CV19 friday but only because I'm married to a medical professional. Anybody else? They better know one of those 98 cases by name because the CDC figures Coronavirus is like ivy, it just lives here now no need to test for it we know it's here.

https://quillette.com/2020/03/06/dont-test-dont-tell-the-bureaucratic-bungling-of-covid-19-tests/