we re in a viral blizzard right now. those on the east coast are understanding what a snow blizzard is. when a blizzard happens everything begins to shut down. what we re concerned about in the health care setting is the inability to deliver good care. 10 or 20% or more of the health care workers themselves are home infected. and the medical supplies we need are not coming forth as we need them. we re hearing now of pharmacies that are actually saying, you know, we postpone you re getting your drugs for three to five days because we don t have enough people to fill the prescriptions. that s the kind of thing that s going to continue to challenge us throughout the country as this viral blizzard is going to shut down a lot of services that we normally would count on every day to be there. and let s talk about those rapid those home rapid tests. it s so difficult to get anything other than a rapid test right now. are they not as definitive as some had hoped they would be? well, in f
people can t find at-home rapid tests, pcr texts can take several days to get results. what do you think needs to happen to get testing to a better place? well first of all, what we were discussing in our articles is not for the immediate time. it is a strategic plan for three to 12 months. but maetdly, we created the testing infrastructure and then when the vaccines came along, everyone thought, well, we re past this and let it go away. we need to re-create a testing infrastructure. much more pcr testing, much more at-home testing, and a much more coherent strategy for what happens when someone tests positive, so that they get the appropriate treatment whether it s the new oral medications from pfizer and merck or a monoclonal antibody. or if they are not eligible for those, they can go on to a research study and they are advised about how to isolate, so as not to infect other people. we don t have that kind of infrastructure. so we need to build more testing
happen is at the gym, we will have much better ventilation than they generally have now. they ll have air filters, they will have hepa filters and by the way, the prevalence of covid in the community will be much lower. obviously, testing has been a major issue, particularly during this omicron surge. people can t find at-home rapid tests, pcr texts can take several days to get results. what do you think needs to happen to get testing to a better place? well first of all, what we were discussing in our articles is not for the immediate time. it is a strategic plan for three to 12 months. but immediately, we created the testing infrastructure and then when the vaccines came along, everyone thought, well, we re past this and let it go away. we need to re-create a testing
tests. right before christmas, at the beginning of the huge omicron surge of covid, the administration announced plans to buy a half billion, 500 million, home testing kits, at home rapid test kits, kits that could be covered to homes for free. that came as americans were waiting for hours in line. waiting in the cold for hours in line trying to get any tests they could find that would tell them whether or not they had the virus. well, the biden administration finalized the first contracts for those at-home tests about a week ago but it wasn t for 500 million tests. they doubled the order. placed the order for a billion tests instead. they said they would put up a website where everybody could order them. you could have those sent to you at home for free. it was set to launch tomorrow. there s been a change in those plans. surprise. they went early. the government website where you
immunity anyone thad with previous infection, we were a naive population. one of the reason we can see the cases go up right now with omicron is because we have eyes on the virus in a way we didn t back in march of 2020. we have surveillance because we now have testing infrastructure in place. we have rapid tests. yes, they should be free, and available to all. new york city is going to mail out, i think, about a million but we ve got pcr tests. all of these are getting overwhelmed as happens in an outbreak but we have testing capacity that gives us a sense of what s going on. we have quality masks, we know how to take steps to keep ourselves safe, masking in big indoor settings, for instance, at home rapid tests, if you can get them before you go to an event. also, another really important difference between now and 2020 is there s not a sociopath in charge of the country anymore. donald trump is not in charge anymore. we knew his attitude to the pandemic was shockingly bad but tonigh