Free Tests We Cannot Afford

A new crisis has been spawned by the pandemic.  This crisis was announced by the President in December, and it will consume more and more bandwidth in coming months.  It is the crisis of testing.  This is a fabricated crisis, unrelated to people’s health.  This crisis is a distraction designed to perpetuate the pandemic so that more of your wealth can be transferred from public coffers into the pockets of special interests.

On December 21, in the same speech that introduced the testing crisis, the President  announced an initiative to make 500 million free tests available to Americans.  These tests can be ordered “free of charge” at covidtests.gov, and they will delivered to your home by the US postal service.  Furthermore, the government has “incentivized” insurance companies to reimburse Americans for over-the-counter tests, up to eight tests per covered individual per month.

As Omicron burns through the country, it’s time for a dose of common sense.  Omicron is mild.  With over-the-counter medications and the advice of Front-Line doctors, most people can recover at home, without a test. 

Many people think that a negative test means that you cannot infect others, but that is not the case.  PCR tests have issues, but over-the-counter tests are antigen tests, and antigen tests are notoriously unreliable.  Using manufacturers’ submission data, over-the-counter tests have average sensitivity confidence intervals of near 70%, meaning that up to 30% infected people will have a negative test.  Results are influenced by timing and technique.  Test too early, and the confidence intervals can drop below 40%.  A negative test does not mean you cannot spread disease, and a positive test does not mean you will spread the disease.  Using test results to control social, educational, and business interactions will fail to stop the spread of the virus.  Relying on test results to determine who is sick and who is not is dangerous.

So why the push for testing?  Two reasons.  It’s a boondoggle, and it perpetuates the emergency. 

“Free tests” for all Americans are not really free to all Americans.  The government buys them with taxpayer dollars from companies that have little incentive to produce quality tests.  This is because the tests are available by EUA which eliminates the manufacturer’s liability.  There is no consumer protection for shoddy work, no matter how egregious.  Even more, these companies have a governmental market guarantee.  With the promise of four free tests per address, manufacturing test kits is the same as printing money.

But even worse is how indiscriminate testing adds to pandemic panic.  Every positive test raises the CDC’s case count, and rising cases fuel the pandemic, keeping the emergency active.  It should be clear to everyone that the emergency is over.  We have treatments, we have ventilators, we have vaccines, we have hospital beds.  The original emergency was two weeks to flatten the curve.  We’ve reached a status quo.  We may not like where we are, but here we are anyway.  It is no longer an emergency.

It is time we take down our emergency provisions and restore power to the people.  Stop obsessing, stop naming, stop testing indiscriminately.  Everyone knows when they are well and when they are under the weather.  It is time to use common sense about our new common cold.

We know what to do when we have cold symptoms.  Stay home from work, stay away from vulnerable family and friends, and take the vitamins and therapeutics recommended by Front-Line doctors.  Go to the emergency room if you have trouble breathing, if you do not get better, or if something feels different than a common cold.  

Fight corruption and help end the pandemic.  Test as directed by your doctor, not by your government.