The US tested the wrong people for coronavirus
And you can tell because of a number called the test positivity rate.Become a Video Lab member! http://bit.ly/video-lab
As the rate of new coronavirus cases in the US slows down, many states and cities there are encouraging businesses to open again, easing the lockdowns that have been in place since March. But public health experts warn that in many of those places, opening up is premature.
The reason is that throughout the US, as well as in many other countries, we still don’t really know how many people have the virus, or where they are. That’s dangerous because it means infected people who don’t feel sick are probably mingling with the rest of the population, which could enable further outbreaks. And the only way to really prevent that is by proactively testing people for covid-19 until the people who have it have been tracked down and isolated.
The US started testing its population for covid-19 very slowly, but it’s since ramped testing up, and by early May was performing over 200,000 tests a day. Unfortunately, there’s no magic number of tests that is “enough” to contain an outbreak. The important thing is to test the right people — and to evaluate whether that’s happening, public health officials recommend looking at a different number: The percentage of tests coming back positive. It’s called the test positivity rate.
Note: The headline on this piece has been updated.
Previous headline: What the US needs to do to open up safely
Sources:
Our World in Data is a reliable source for country-by-country covid-19 data:
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=log&zoomToSelection=true&deathsMetric=true&dailyFreq=true&aligned=true&smoothing=7&country=USA+GBR+CAN+BRA+AUS+IND+ESP+DEU+FRA+RUS
Our World in Data also has weekly-rolling test-positivity rate data which gives a better snapshot of where countries are currently at:
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing
We based our state test-positivity rates on this May 6 Harvard Global Health Institute and NPR analysis:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/07/851610771/u-s-coronavirus-testing-still-falls-short-hows-your-state-doing
The Atlantic’s coverage of the importance of test-positivity rates:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/us-coronavirus-outbreak-out-control-test-positivity-rate/610132/
An important disclaimer on potential inflation in testing numbers at the national and state level in the US:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H Receive SMS online on sms24.me
TubeReader video aggregator is a website that collects and organizes online videos from the YouTube source. Video aggregation is done for different purposes, and TubeReader take different approaches to achieve their purpose.
Our try to collect videos of high quality or interest for visitors to view; the collection may be made by editors or may be based on community votes.
Another method is to base the collection on those videos most viewed, either at the aggregator site or at various popular video hosting sites.
TubeReader site exists to allow users to collect their own sets of videos, for personal use as well as for browsing and viewing by others; TubeReader can develop online communities around video sharing.
Our site allow users to create a personalized video playlist, for personal use as well as for browsing and viewing by others.
@YouTubeReaderBot allows you to subscribe to Youtube channels.
By using @YouTubeReaderBot Bot you agree with YouTube Terms of Service.
Use the @YouTubeReaderBot telegram bot to be the first to be notified when new videos are released on your favorite channels.
Look for new videos or channels and share them with your friends.
You can start using our bot from this video, subscribe now to The US tested the wrong people for coronavirus
What is YouTube?
YouTube is a free video sharing website that makes it easy to watch online videos. You can even create and upload your own videos to share with others. Originally created in 2005, YouTube is now one of the most popular sites on the Web, with visitors watching around 6 billion hours of video every month.
