Lost in all of the uproar regarding the politics of the virus and who has the best/worst press conference and who cares more about people are the actual facts and statistics of the virus.
Epidemiologists agree that besides social distancing, TESTING is the best thing you can do to help control an outbreak like this.
Andy Beshear has gotten high praise for his handling of the pandemic. mostly because of his calm and cool press conferences.
But the actual governmental response has been interesting.
Kentucky ranks near the bottom in testing rate in the country. As of yesterday we sit at 46th in the country for testing per capita.
Our testing rate as of yesterday was 8,125 per million. = 36,075 total tests run. The states behind us are Kansas, Texas, Virginia and California.
The following are the rates per million of the states around us.
Ohio - 8,418
Indiana - 10,854
Illinois - 12,825
Missouri - 9,732
WV - 15,257
Tennessee - 17,287
outside of not having a huge outbreak going on, the ability to test and trace is the most important factor in re-opening... It's fascinating to see the governor openly bash Tennessee a couple of weeks ago when he knew that we weren't testing everybody. he bragged that we were doing a better job than they were and that we had fewer cases than they did. The reality is, we have NO DAMN CLUE how many people have the virus in Kentucky because we can't test.
Why can't we test? Based on what I understanding talking with my local health department the state was WAY in the back of the line on private lab testing. By the time Andy got around to trying to arrange for private lab capacity other states had taken the lab capacity in our state and he couldn't find any in other states. Our local health department and Hospital in Christian County realized early on this problem and realized they needed to setup their own contractual relationship with a lab and did so. This has allowed for drive through testing for 4 weeks now in Christian County. there are no restrictions on who can get tested. Christian county has tested at a rate of 15,000 per million. Double the state's rate. We are the exception.
In other parts of our state even those with symptoms still can't get tested if they don't fall into a "risk" category. So we have tons of young people who can't get tested. Beshear admitted as much earlier this week.
I applaud the governor for his steady leadership. But it's time to start questioning why we are ABYSMAL in our testing capacity.
Perhaps he shouldn't have bashed Tennessee and instead asked Tennessee for help when it became apparent that they had one of the best testing programs in the nation for a state without a serious outbreak. Afterall, they've had fewer deaths than us... With twice the cases.
or not... They've actually tested people, they know who has it in Tennessee. We have no damn clue in Kentucky. And we can't open up until we do.
Epidemiologists agree that besides social distancing, TESTING is the best thing you can do to help control an outbreak like this.
Andy Beshear has gotten high praise for his handling of the pandemic. mostly because of his calm and cool press conferences.
But the actual governmental response has been interesting.
Kentucky ranks near the bottom in testing rate in the country. As of yesterday we sit at 46th in the country for testing per capita.
Our testing rate as of yesterday was 8,125 per million. = 36,075 total tests run. The states behind us are Kansas, Texas, Virginia and California.
The following are the rates per million of the states around us.
Ohio - 8,418
Indiana - 10,854
Illinois - 12,825
Missouri - 9,732
WV - 15,257
Tennessee - 17,287
outside of not having a huge outbreak going on, the ability to test and trace is the most important factor in re-opening... It's fascinating to see the governor openly bash Tennessee a couple of weeks ago when he knew that we weren't testing everybody. he bragged that we were doing a better job than they were and that we had fewer cases than they did. The reality is, we have NO DAMN CLUE how many people have the virus in Kentucky because we can't test.
Why can't we test? Based on what I understanding talking with my local health department the state was WAY in the back of the line on private lab testing. By the time Andy got around to trying to arrange for private lab capacity other states had taken the lab capacity in our state and he couldn't find any in other states. Our local health department and Hospital in Christian County realized early on this problem and realized they needed to setup their own contractual relationship with a lab and did so. This has allowed for drive through testing for 4 weeks now in Christian County. there are no restrictions on who can get tested. Christian county has tested at a rate of 15,000 per million. Double the state's rate. We are the exception.
In other parts of our state even those with symptoms still can't get tested if they don't fall into a "risk" category. So we have tons of young people who can't get tested. Beshear admitted as much earlier this week.
I applaud the governor for his steady leadership. But it's time to start questioning why we are ABYSMAL in our testing capacity.
Perhaps he shouldn't have bashed Tennessee and instead asked Tennessee for help when it became apparent that they had one of the best testing programs in the nation for a state without a serious outbreak. Afterall, they've had fewer deaths than us... With twice the cases.
or not... They've actually tested people, they know who has it in Tennessee. We have no damn clue in Kentucky. And we can't open up until we do.
