As Omicron’s spread outpaces an overwhelming demand for COVID-19 tests, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo suggests testing fewer people and that if you have no symptoms, not to get tested at all. This suggestion contradicts advice from myriad public health experts.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends people having symptoms to get tested if they are not fully vaccinated or have had close contact with someone with COVID-19.Â
Ladapo said that people at lower risk of severe outcomes, such as children and people without symptoms, can avoid getting tested. However, people more likely to need treatment for COVID-19, such as the elderly, should get tested.Â
“My department’s goal … doesn’t restrict access to testing, but reduces the use of low-value testing and prioritizes high-value testing. … High-value testing is testing that is likely to change outcomes,” Ladapo said during the news conference at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale. “We need to unwind this … planning and living one’s life around testing.”
Florida International University epidemiologist Mary Jo Trepka contradicted Ladapo’s theory that the highest value gained from testing is determining whether someone needs to be treated for COVID-19. However, the main significance of tests is to tell someone whether they need to be isolated, thus reducing community spread.
“We don’t really have an effective treatment for COVID-19 with the omicron variant. There’s really only one monoclonal antibody,” she said. “But I would argue that you can really prevent a lot of infections if you test widely because then those people who are asymptomatic or very mildly ill can find out if they have COVID-19 and then they can … avoid spending time with highly vulnerable people.”
The CDC points to ample evidence that shows that children can still spread the virus to others, although they are at lower risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19. Since children may not show any symptoms, they can act as asymptomatic people who may not know they have COVID-19.
Elena Cyrus, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine, wrote in an email – “In all epidemics from HIV to previous SARS, screening remains one of the most cost effective ways to help prevent and control the spread of a disease/virus.”
The Food and Drug Administration has also warned that COVID-19 antigen tests may be significantly less able to detect Omicron, the rapidly escalating variant of COVID.
We’ve witnessed irrational, illogical, hysterical, and absurd COVID lockdown lawmakers regularly drive a fear mongering campaign so that they can induce sheer panic into the population.
However, there is no documented evidence of asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19, nor is there any recorded proof that can be said to be occurring in an appreciable way.
In a recent appearance with Joe Rogan, Dr. Peter McCullough explained that from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a concerted effort to instill fear and conceal a protocol for early treatment of the disease in order to justify lockdowns and vaccines. He warned that there is an intentional worldwide plot to suppress early COVID treatments.