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There seems to be a really obvious explanation of why they rolled their own test instead of using the WHO's test: there was no WHO test when they did it, the two different tests were developed in parallel (and they're not the only country which developed their own test either, there are something like seven different ones used in various countries). The CDC had already been using its own test internally when the WHO announced the alternative German one they'd been using. Then when the CDC test didn't work when rolled out to labs, it's not like the WHO could have supplied them with testing kits instead. The CDC would have had to produced the WHO-designed test itself, verified it worked, arrange for it to be mass produced, and hope that the same problem didn't happen - all whilst their test rollout was massively delayed by essentially starting from scratch. Most of the media just doesn't seem to be interested in explaining this.


I didn't see any such explanation on the CDC page either, and I thought I was pretty thorough in searching for it. I did know that they were developed concurrently, but I'm unaware of any information about why they couldn't at any point pivot and use the WHO test, for example. Why is this information so hard to find?


There was this medical person on the white house press meeting yesterday and she said that the WHO test had terrible false positive rate (she said 45% but that doesn't sound right)




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