There seems to be a consensus among some experts: compare Dr. Scott Gottlieb's report for the American Enterprise Institute with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel's recent op-ed in the NYT. Both approaches require widespread testing to permit tracking and isolating of those infected, yet this infectious disease expert tells us that
In three to four weeks, there will be a major shortage of chemical reagents for coronavirus testing, the result of limited production capacity, compounded by the collapse of global supply chains when the epidemic closed down manufacturing in China for weeks.
The second hard truth is that at this stage, any public health response that counts on widespread testing in the United States is doomed to fail. No one planned on the whole world experiencing a health conflagration of this magnitude at once, with the need to test many millions of people at the same time. Political leaders and talking heads should stop proffering the widespread-testing option; it simply won’t be available.
This expert and his colleague propose other ways of tracking the disease, which sound far less reliable, but maybe they will work?
So this is puzzling: do Drs. Gottlieb and Emanuel not know that widespread testing won't be an option? Or is it really an option, contrary to the quote above?
UPDATE: Maybe blood tests for antibodies are the answer?
