Its Sunday 11am and I am getting ready to watch some football having walked the dogs up to Sam's knob. I got a beautiful view from Slot of the hot air ballons. Weather is great. Dogs found some bones. Son got to work on and fly one of the balloons. Daughter got to practice pipetting on her computer. We almost got working laundry machines today but hey didn't fit (yes I am paying $20k a month in rent and at day 12 still don't have a working laundry machine---clearly I expect too much). All good.
It's now been 98 hours since my daughter's CVOID test was administered, and 116 hours since the school requested she be tested. No results so far.
To put it simply, IMHO this is a massive failure by both Pitkin County and Aspen School District. How is it possible that a private lab can turn around test in hours but it takes Pitkin County days (or maybe weeks who knows). If the school wants students and staff tested (and they should) they should make sure they can provide rapid PCR tests. If Pitkin county is serious about lives and livelihood they should also be able to provide testing equal to the private sector, but they can't even come close. What a fucking joke.
Let me take a minute to walk through some possible objections.
1. Cost---private PCR test cost either $185 or $425. That is gonna be a pretty big bill for school parents if every time their kid gets tired or a runny nose they need to drop $425 to get their kid back in school. But the county is awash in COVID money from the state and federal government. And if that isn't enough put a special COVID fee on ---well everything. Resturants did this, hotels can do this, all retail can do this, shoot if Pitkin wasn't scared they could do it on real estate transactions. If there is a will there's a way to get this paid for----maybe there just isn't the will.
2. Availability and staffing. Currently there are 4 locations all within about 2 miles of each other but the county ones are pretty much only open from 7:30-11:30 am 5 days a week. Why 3 county locations? Why shut at 11:30 AM? My guess is it's hard to get staff, but might I suggest 1 location open 11 hours a day and get the tests processed in the roaring fork valley? If it's a cost issue see above---there has got to be a way for a county as rich as Pitkin to be able to process tests locally---a private business figured out how to do this why can't the county that covers 4 police departments and a hospital.
Goodness, I am struggling to find any good objections. Fast, free and accurate testing is a key tool to fight a pandemic. The testing functionality exists. The source of funding exists in Pitkin County. But if you can't get fast test results free and accurate is pretty much meaningless. I guess we could argue over the meaning of fast but I strongly believe that most right minded people would agree that results in hours is fast and useful as a mitigation measure, and results that take 3-7 days isn't.
While I am on a rant, how about ASD provides N95 masks to students and staff? How about ASD having a plan and implementing it for kids that are told to isolate or quarantine (simple and obvious one being turn the cameras on at school so students can attend class virtually ---its not perfect but better than nothing). How about the school provide fast turnaround testing if the county can't -won't. How about ASD only use providers who are vaccinated (the guides on my daughter's raft trip weren't).
Pitkin County how about moving out of third world services where testing results take 3-7 days? How about doing contact tracing (well that is pointless if results take days---but if you figure out how to get test results in hours like the for profit business in town then contact tracing is effective).
And Aspen Times and Daily News how about a tiny bit of investigative journalism and less puff marketing bits. If you were sending employees to get tested a couple of times a week a the free county facilities you could have broken the story about how delayed testing results are in Pitkin County.
My guess is our leaders are scared. They don't really want to know how much COVID there is. So they bury their heads in the sand, and take walking tours on Pandora's and debate removing parking spots to improve parking in downtown.
I feel like I have fallen through the looking glass.
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