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A comment on What's the point of a Covid-19 test that takes 19 days for results?. Parent comment

Re:What's the point of a Covid-19 test that takes 19 days fo... by bobthepanda on Saturday July 25, 2020 @11:38PM (#23954232)
Teachers are still working during COVID, in fact they probably have to do more work to adapt to hasty, scrappy adoption of online learning.

I don’t think the other ones exist in significantly large amounts to be meaningful and even then, keep in mind that furloughed people are not getting paid. The money has to come from somewhere to start paying them for whatever again, and states and cities have limited funding resources even before COVID blew a hole in most tax revenues.

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Re:What's the point of a Covid-19 test that takes 19 days fo... by pmiller2 on Sunday July 26, 2020 @03:16AM (#23955092)
There are enough people generally out of work to hire all the contact tracers we could ever need.
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Re:What's the point of a Covid-19 test that takes 19 days fo... by bobthepanda on Sunday July 26, 2020 @03:24AM (#23955124)
You do have to pay people money to hire them though, and states and cities do not have the financial slack to just hire more people as tax revenues keep falling.

The only entity capable of nationwide deficit spending is the federal government, which seems unwilling to step up to the plate.

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Re:What's the point of a Covid-19 test that takes 19 days fo... by pmiller2 on Sunday July 26, 2020 @05:01AM (#23955568)
Exactly my point. The question is: why?
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Re:What's the point of a Covid-19 test that takes 19 days fo... by bobthepanda on Sunday July 26, 2020 @02:25PM (#23959021)
States and cities often have balanced budget laws. Even if these were repealed (look how easy that has been for the Eurozone), states do not have the mechanism for bankruptcy (see: Puerto Rico). And cities have one but it can get extremely messy (see: Detroit, New York in the '70s)

The feds have decided to prioritize the economy in an election year, for some short-sighted definition of a good economy. And the party in power has never liked a strong federal government anyways.

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Re:What's the point of a Covid-19 test that takes 19 days fo... by pmiller2 on Sunday July 26, 2020 @11:27PM (#23962000)
My question was regarding the federal government's involvement. I can't fathom why they would let so many people die, unless we elected hundreds of sociopaths to federal office.
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