UK, UofL professionals urge broader testing
By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News
Gov. Andy Beshear disagreed Monday with two prominent Kentucky economists who want the state to do random testing for the novel coronavirus to get a more reliable estimate of its spread than they say is available from voluntary testing.
"My belief is that we have so much testing statewide right now that we are getting an accurate picture," Beshear said at his daily briefing. "I mean, we've got over 2 million, I believe now, total tests that we've done since the beginning of this virus."
He added, "I know some economists, just from a value system, are more worried about, you know, economic impact than lives. But it's not an either-or here. It's not. I mean, all the national economists . . . say that protecting our economy is about lessening the virus, because if people think restrictions are a problem, if the virus continues at this level, anywhere we go in public, anywhere inside, the virus will be spreading and it'll impose capacity restrictions on its own."
The economists are Kenneth Troske, who holds an endowed chair at the University of Kentucky, and Paul Coomes, emeritus professor of economics at University of Louisville. They made their case for increased random testing, combined model-based estimates, in a paper commissioned by UK's Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise.
They write that "convenience samples," as opposed to representative random samples, offer an inaccurate measure of the spread of the disease, and that Read the Rest of this Article at KY Health News... here.
