COVID19 Update - Day 109

US Tests: 30,401,644

US Cases: 2,498,822

US Deaths: 119,156

Worldwide Cases: 9,949,767

Worldwide Deaths: 498,100

Yesterday, we discussed the incompetence.  Today, we discuss (yet more) criminal malfeasance.  One of the mysteries of the virus over the past 3 months has been that some people who tested positive for having COVID19 antibodies --- indicating that they had already been exposed to the virus --- would later get sick.  This was truly alarming, because it suggested that successfully recovering from the virus does not give one immunity.

Well, guess what:

Federal officials failed to immediately stop the distribution of many COVID-19 antibody tests they knew were flawed, leading to inaccurate data about the spread of the virus. Congress is now investigating why the FDA did not review the tests it allowed to be distributed widely throughout the U.S. Sharyn Alfonsi's three-month investigation into the faulty tests will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, June 28 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.

. . .

Laredo, Texas, wound up getting thousands of antibody test kits from a Chinese company. The untested kits were then tested by the city's health director, Dr. Hector Gonzalez, who found the tests accuracy to differ wildly depending on when it was given and how long after a person was exposed to the virus. The small sample he tested was only about 20% accurate. "We had such high hopes to test… we were ready to do public drive-through testing… Now we couldn't. We were on hold," recalls Gonzalez.

 

Laredo officials reported the faulty tests to federal agents at Homeland Security and officials came to town to seize the tests and start an investigation, but the federal government did little to halt the spread of other un-proven antibody testing kits.

This certainly led to unnecessary deaths, by giving essential workers and others the false sense that it was safe to return to work when they were still at risk of catching the virus.

Of course, there is a staggering body of evidence right now that Trump and the Republicans who still support him don't care about deaths of Americans --- whether it's the nearly 120,000 who have succumbed to the virus, or the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan who were the targets of a Russian bounty.