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Headspin! Starting next week, you can order COVID tests from government, but not get them for 7-12 days!

January 15, 2022 | | Print Article

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The Biden administration has managed, in one fell swoop, to take one small step forward and seven to 12 giant steps backward for American-kind.

On Friday the administration announced that starting on Wednesday, Jan. 19th, Americans will be able to order free at-home COVID tests from a new government website, COVIDTests.gov.

“To help ensure Americans have tests on hand if a need arises, the Biden Administration is purchasing one billion at-home, rapid COVID-19 tests to give to Americans for free. A half-billion tests will be available for order on January 19th and will be mailed directly to American households,” a White House “fact sheet” reads.

“There will be free tests available for every household, and to promote broad access, the initial program will allow four free tests to be requested per residential address,” the “fact sheet” continues.

Sounds good, right? And this proves that Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t lie when she said on NBC’s “Today” earlier in the week that tests would be shipping out “soon.”

There’s just one problem.

The White House notes quite explicitly that once ordered, these tests “will typically ship within 7-12 days.”

(Source: White House)

This shipping timeline presents two stark conundrums.

First, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the estimated incubation period for the coronavirus hovers “between 2 and 14 days with a median of 5 days.”

And so suppose someone begins experiencing COVID-like symptoms and rushes to COVIDTests.gov to order a free test. Chances are that by the time the test arrives, the individual will already be either COVID-free or hospitalized in the ICU, depending on how their body reacts to the virus.

Second, the current recommended quarantine time for COVID-positive patients is five days. And so assuming the aforementioned individual quarantines immediately upon detecting symptoms, they’d be long out of quarantine by the time the test was shipped, let alone by the time it arrived.

See the problem? The establishment media for the most part don’t:

CNN’s Abby D. Phillip, much to her credit, is a rare exception:

Her concern has been shared by myriads of other social media users.

Look (*Language warning):

Notice what one Twitter user wrote about how the Biden administration “should have had this a year ago.”

As previously reported, three months ago “COVID-19 testing experts” presented the president with a strategy calling for mailing out free at-home COVID tests to the American people. However, the idea was ignored until the last moment.

To be fair, at least the tests that the administration is preparing to ship out are being offered for free. Plus, families can certainly pre-order their allotted amount. After all, it’s not like they come with an expiration date. Or do they?

Verywell, an established website that provides health and wellness information curated by health professionals, notes that at-home tests can “be stored for several months up to a year,” depending on the manufacturer.

“For instance, the RapCov Rapid COVID-19 Test can be stored for eight months. Meanwhile, the shelf lives of two antigen tests, namely the BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card and CareStart COVID-19 Antigen Test, were extended to 12 months after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviewed their stability studies,” the site notes.

It’s not clear which brand of at-home COVID tests the administration will be shipping.

But it’s also fair to point out that the president had spent much of the 2020 presidential election claiming he’d stamp out the coronavirus. Years later, the virus is still here, and free at-home tests are just now beginning to be shipped to the public …

Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

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