Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo made news this week after suggesting the Biden administration is inflicting psychological damage on the country by demanding healthy people stand in line to get tested for Wuhan coronavirus. Dr. Ladapo received his medical degree from Harvard.
"We're going to be working to unwind the sort of, testing psychology that our federal leadership has managed to, unfortunately get most of the country in over the last two years. We need to unwind this testing, sort of, planning and living ones life around testing. Without it, we're going to be sort of stuck in the same cycle. It's really time for people to be living, to make the decisions they want regarding vaccination, to enjoy the fact that many people have natural immunity," Dr. Ladapo said at a press conference Monday.
As Omicron surges, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo says the state is working to "unwind" the COVID "testing psychology" that the federal government has prioritized. pic.twitter.com/cju0o1uVJm
— The Recount (@therecount) January 3, 2022
Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Lapado: "This idea that you could stop this with vaccines was unrealistic ... There's a mismatch between the policies and reality, and more people need to wake up to that and stop participating in this really dystopian view of public health." ?? pic.twitter.com/bvCn2Rh1h2
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) January 5, 2022
Dr. Lapado is right and the Obama administration, where President Biden served as Vice President, told states in 2009 to end testing during the H1N1 pandemic.
"In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases. The rationale given for the CDC guidance to forego testing and tracking individual cases was: why waste resources testing for H1N1 flu when the government has already confirmed there's an epidemic?" CBS News reported at the time.
The CDC explained the change this way:
Individual case counts were kept early during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak when the 2009 H1N1 virus first emerged. As the outbreak expanded and became more widespread, individual case counts become increasingly impractical and not representative of the true extent of the outbreak. This isbecause only a small proportion of persons with respiratory illness are actually tested and confirmed for influenza (including 2009 H1N1) so the true benefit of keeping track of these numbers is questionable. In addition, the extensive spread of 2009 H1N1 flu within the United States made it extremely resource-intensive for states to count individual cases. On July 24, 2009, CDC discontinued reporting of individual cases of 2009 H1N1, but continued to track hospitalizations and deaths.
Over testing healthy and asymptomatic people is burdensome, currently causing testing shortages for individuals with symptoms and causes Americans to remain in an unhealthy psychological state about the pandemic.