Wide-spread Testing for COVID-19 in Public Interest

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July 10, 2020
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Mass testing for COVID-19 would allow communities and societies to reduce uncertainty, permitting appropriate, targeted, flexible policy across institutions and circumstances, as opposed to crude population isolation and immobilization policing. Increasing testing would permit confidence in restoring institutions like camps, day cares, and schools that allow women to reengage and balance their productive, paid work, a requirement for most to live in expensive, unequal capitalist countries. It would provide the assurance to seek travel relief from extended, unhealthily-confining winters, as the Hawaiian islands for example opening up this fall to tourists who have tested negative. Yet in Manitoba, as throughout Canada and the US, decisionmakers have neglected mass testing. This disinterest threatens working-class and smallholder families, freedom, and economy, women’s welfare, youth health and mental health. It overwhelms our preventative health capacity.

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