We want our politicians transparent, yet we want them powerful as well, and power, even in the best of circumstances, means the management of information and telling the truth is not managing the information. Nathan Heller writing in The New Yorker about Jimmy Carter.

In a way, by doing all this testing, we make ourselves look bad, President Trump said last Thursday, May 7th.

Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time, and then all of the sudden she tested positive … this is why the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great … today, I guess, for some reason, she tested positive. President Trump in a speech on May 8th.

Today, San Mateo County announced that even as the state eases up it will continue the quarantine and start testing about fifteen hundred people a day with the goal of testing everybody in the county. At that rate, it will take more than a year, but it is a start, at least. In the meanwhile, cases of COVID-19 continue to rise at a rate that will double the current number of 1425 in 32.9 days (neighboring Santa Clara County – the heart of Silicon Valley – has 2307 cases but the growth rate has been cut back to doubling every 127 days). In other words, it is still getting worse. We are constantly told that the only way we are going to cut the infection rate is to test – to find out who is infected so they can be isolated – and it makes sense to me. Trying to irradicate the coronavirus without testing is like trying to fight a war without reconnaissance.

Reading the order? directive? – whatever it is, it is more than a suggestion – in both emails and texts from the County and the Mayor of our little burg gets me thinking about why Donald Trump is so resistant to testing. All politicians want to control the narrative and President Trump more than most, it is what his background as a Developer has taught him. But testing is its own narrative and that is a narrative that is not controllable unless we don’t have testing.