Transcript
Those voices are discussing coronavirus testing, the only way to tell with any degree of accuracy if your respiratory illness will be able to get into a good college.
In an effort to control the pandemic, testing in the United States lags behind other major countries. As the rest of the world plays football, we continue to insist that it’s called soccer.
Alongside social distancing and muting the microphone at the White House podium, the World Health Organization has identified mass testing as one of the most effective ways of reducing the spread of the virus.
Experts believe widely testing populations, including people who exhibit mild or no symptoms, makes it possible to identify small outbreaks and prevent the long-term shut down major parts of society, like businesses and schools, and minor parts of society, like CBD vendors and improv comedy shows.
But in the United States, we’ve chosen not to pursue this path, instead forging our own trail as poorly made as one of those rainbows by a kid who needed to take another art class before it got canceled.
That’s not to say nobody can get a coronavirus test — they’re just released in such sporadic and exclusive drops, they may as well carry the Supreme logo.
The White House believes that only people exhibiting symptoms of the virus should get tested, yet an asymptomatic Kris Jenner was able to secure one, in hopes of keeping alive her family’s tradition of testing positive for things.
The same goes for the entire Brooklyn Nets, whose roster was able to secure tests for its players while the rest of us are stuck in the nosebleeds — where our noses are most definitely not bleeding because we can’t get the tests to shove in there.
In an Instagram video posted from a rose-filled bathtub, Madonna called the virus “the great equalizer,” but it’s easier to maintain social distance from a 1.17 acre, 9-bedroom, 15 bathroom Beverly Hills estate than it is from a four-family Brooklyn brownstone.
It’s also a hell of a lot easier to get a test to a person like Tom Hanks, the star of Larry Crowne, than it is to get a test to a person like his character Larry Crowne, an unremarkable guy who worked at a Wal Mart and dated unremarkable woman, Julia Roberts.
If Madonna is right, and this virus is “the great equalizer,” why does Heidi Klum get a test, and not someone else who isn’t showing any symptoms or discernible talent?
And because testing is effective as a preventative measure, what happens when the numbers of afflicted start to rise even higher?
Take Idris Elba, who tested positive for the virus. He’s a great actor — he’d do a much better job replacing Daniel Craig as James Bond than his likely successor, James Corden — but can anyone imagine Idris Elba having to share a ventilator with some 50-year-old CPA in Los Angeles?
When asked about the rich and famous getting access to tests before average people, Mr. Trump replied that it’s “perhaps the story of life” — and unfortunately, in this case, it’s also perhaps the story of death.