My Kingdom for a Leader

 Last week President Trump had this to say….        

So we have the best testing in the world.  It could be the testing’s, frankly, overrated?  Maybe it is overrated.         

By the time I tapped-out this post last evening our country is coming-up on close to 1.7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and by Trump’s low standards for convoluted logic this is largely because the U.S. has carried out more tests.  

Donald Trump is lying to us again.         

Nationally, roughly 146,000 people per day have been tested for coronavirus this month.  Don’t take my word for it – you can find the documentation here.  We currently are testing an average of 45 per 100,000 people per day.  Experts tell us that we have to ramp-up that testing to an average of 150 per 100,000 people per day.  It was done in Korea and Germany and the smaller death toll reflects that universal truth.       

With most states beginning to reopen plenty of people are going to be tempted to look at the data over the next week or so and will boast and gloat on their Face Book pages that Trump has conquered the virus.      

Consider a careful and reasoned analysis of the data.

Never forget that tests yield data and data is king - because in the near term the data will reflect the continuing lock-down of early May and late April.  This is a consequence of the lag time in the pandemic numbers.  Infected individuals don’t typically become symptomatic for roughly 5 to 7 days with the very worst of this disease materializing 2 to 3 weeks later.  There is a built-in lag before greater outbreaks of COVID-19 are obviously in your infected face.  The 'experts' with their hasty Face Book expert medical conclusions do so at great personal peril.  Party in the bars if it trips your trigger - but for the love of God and all that is holy please stay away from grandma. I digress.

Getting back to the beginning of this post it is important to recognize two things:       

• We still do not have mass testing.  Testing and contact tracing along with quarantining of the sick and exposed from the healthy population is key to anything close to a return to normalcy.         

• President Trump lies even when it is in his own best interests to tell the truth.  

Sure, it’s weird, but that’s the truth.           

On the latter point v. the former; if the president says to you that everyone who wants a test gets a test. That is a lie.         

Stop lying to me.       

Now.