The White House Bet on Abbott's Rapid Tests. It Didn't Work Out.

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text: Atul Gawande
@Atul_Gawande
The White House is screening guests and staff using Abbott's BinaxNOW antigen test card, which was only authorized for people w symptoms. Of note, it's 2000X less sensitive than PCR, per data Abbott submitted to FDA--a poor test for a one-time screening.
President Trump inspects one of Abbott Laboratories’s rapid coronavirus tests at the White House in March.
The White House Bet on Abbott’s Rapid Tests. It Didn’t Work Out.
Federal officials relied too heavily on the tests, then took the results for granted, experts say.
nytimes.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/health/covid-white-house-testing.html

After months of crowded events and often maskless encounters, a growing number of top government officials, including President Trump, and their close contacts have tested positive for the coronavirus.

The fault for the outbreak lies in no small part with an ill-conceived disease-prevention strategy at the White House, health experts said: From the early days of the pandemic, federal officials have relied too heavily on one company’s rapid tests, with little or no mechanism to identify and contain cases that fell through the diagnostic cracks.

“It seems the White House put all their eggs in one basket: testing,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency medicine physician at Brown University. “But there is no single strategy, no single thing we can do to be safe. It has to be multimodal.”

Other health experts noted that the tests deployed by the White House, manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, were given emergency clearance by the Food and Drug Administration only for people “within the first seven days of the onset of symptoms.” But they were used incorrectly, to screen people who were not showing any signs of illness. Such off-label use, experts said, further compromised a strategy that presumably was designed to keep leading officials safe from a pandemic that so far has killed more than 210,000 Americans.

*snip*


And not to be left out, here's DeSantis from yesterday:

Link to tweet

Tweet text: Ron DeSantis
@GovRonDeSantis
Yesterday I was pleased to highlight Abbott’s new BinaxNOW COVID-19 test that delivers results in 15 minutes or less. Being able to provide patients with results in minutes will make a huge difference in protecting our residents most vulnerable to the disease.

[tblue37]

1. Those tests have a high rate of false negatives.

[Nevilledog]

2. Which perfectly pairs with them doing random testing......for a deadly virus.

Treating it like a random fucking drug test.

[BlueNProud]

3. Their entire strategy regarding testing was as a rationale to not wear masks

they understood neither the tests nor the disease and didn't actually want to. The result is that the seat of our government is a covid ridden clown house.

[underpants]

4. I was actually shocked when I found out that that was what they were using

I figured they’d be using something different. Even I know they have at least a 20% false negative rate.

Apparently they don’t ask the screening questions or even take temperatures. Everyone does at least that.

[Wounded Bear]

5. I've heard it's as high as 45-50% false negatives...

which is far more problematic than false positives. False negs give someone a false sense of security, which is apparently what happened at the White House.

[underpants]

6. I heard that from Dr. Vin Gupta on MSNBC

He said 20-50%. 50%? That’s a flip of a coin.

This explains a lot
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214231590

[Ilsa]

7. And now the White House looks like this:

Link to tweet

?s=09

[LisaL]

8. It especially doesn't work if you don't take it.

We can't even figure out when Trump was last tested.

[Nevilledog]

9. I'm guessing he still believes if you don't test you don't get infected.

I'd bet big bucks he has gone off on everyone around him that things would have been fine if they just didn't test him.