On Vashon, they instigated their own test-and-trace program because they saw that the cavalry wasn’t coming. Unsurprisingly, here in Island County something similar has been put in place.
The county is doing a crash testing program to try to figure out how many people on the island have the virus. They solicited volunteers from the general public, then attempted to select a representative and statistically significant subset. They contacted me Thursday and asked me to show up Friday at the high school parking lot, where they have set up a drive-through testing system.
Friday, I pulled in with my car; a county employee at the gate checked my name off a list. Maybe coincidentally, he was the only male in the group; I think his job was to discourage people who weren’t supposed to be there from driving in. I pulled up to an outdoor shelter they’re set up in the parking lot. Another volunteer had me hold my license and insurance card up to my closed driver side window and she took a picture. They put a test kit under my windshield wiper, and had me pull forward.
A nurse in full hazmat suit, mask and face shield reconfirmed I was the person on the label (name, birthdate), told me what she was going to do, and had me open the window and lean at just the right angle while she swabbed me. Then they had me pull further forward to take some info, and I was done. Didn’t get out of the car.
As far as I could tell the whole operation was two nurses and a handful of volunteers. The drive-in site has been running for a week, and is a replica of one in Coupeville halfway up the island and one in Oak Harbor at the top. The samples are sent to the university in Bellingham. The local hospital set up a portal for checking results. Very efficient.
The moral of this whole mess in the US is that the local authorities have taken the bit between the teeth and cut the federal authorities out of the picture. So we are all winging it, mostly borrowing best practices from each other. Some counties are refusing to follow the lead of their state government. Some cities are doing their own thing independent of the counties they’re in, for ideological or rational reasons. The states are taking only what they see as useful from the feds (CDC bulletins, mostly), ignoring the rest, pandering to D.C. as and when needed and otherwise bidding against each other to get their hands on essential supplies. Everyone gets to make up their own mind about who to listen to, and what they should be doing. And 1000 people a day are dying.