Privatization May Be Killing Us: Mystery of Why the Trump Administration Still Hasn't Sent Out Promised Million CV Tests, as Delay is Facilitating Transmission of the Virus by Undetected Carriers
March 12, 2020
Thom Hartmann (Chris Eaves)
By Thom Hartmann
After it was widely reported that Tom Hanks and his wife were able to simply walk into a clinic in Australia with the symptoms of a common cold and instantly get a coronavirus test – which was positive – Americans are beginning to ask out loud, “Why can’t we get tested?“ According to President Obama‘s Ebola Czar (last night on Rachel Maddow‘s show), Ron Klain, Trump “privatized“ the testing here in the United States. Instead of taking the World Health Organization (WHO) test kits which are cheap and widely available all over the planet, and having them distributed across the country back in December, or January, or February when we knew this disease was spreading in the United States, Klain said that Trump has outsourced the testing to two big American companies, Quest and Labcorp. Trump’s head of HHS, Alex Azar, is the guy who doubled the price of insulin when he was CEO of Eli Lily company. Do he and Trump owns stock in these testing companies? Why are we refusing to accept the WHO test that the entire rest of the world is using? What the hell is going on here?
BuzzFlash Afterword: The CV tests that are being done now are generally in private labs, through commercial insurance via a doctor or hospital. BuzzFlash doesn’t know if these for-profit labs are covered by government insurance. but the one million government tests that have been promised by Mike Pence for a bit of time, it appears, have yet to show up.
If one were a cynic, one could argue that someone or persons is willfully holding these Coronavirus tests up. One must also mention that is likely the US could still accept the WHO test, as Hartmann notes, and end the rampant infection that is assuredly exponentially growing because infected people are walking around untested due to the WH's utter failure on testing. In Addition, there is the issue of the additional kit needed to confirm the tests and its shortage. As Politico detailed in a November 10 article: “US coronavirus testing threatened by shortage of critical lab materials.”
The disaster of the missing and falsely promised government CV testing kits, given that it is resulting in perhaps boosting the Coronavirus toll out of manageable control because of untested transmission that may paralyze our hospital system when the testing kicks in, should be the lead story in every news medium
Most journalists are caught up with reporting what the Trump propaganda machine says, not what it does. The exponential additional transmissions that result from the delay in distributing the CV kits, and remember again the Trump administration could still use the WHO test, is akin to criminal homicidal negligence.
Mike Pence symbolized the mysterious failure of the Trump administration to distribute CV testing kits in a CNN interview. According to a March 12 Raw Story article, Mike Pence was forced to admit government Coronavirus testing numbers appear, on the CDC website to be going down! Maybe the CDC is just disorganized in its data collection, or maybe it is due to no adults being in charge of ensuring widespread national Coronavirus testing.
Then, there is the issue Thom Hartmann raises, what is the role of profit or potential profit by Big Pharma. What role is profiteering playing in the unfolding Coronavirus tragedy?