Ah, more Trumpian talking points...
It’s true that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped having states report H1N1 cases in late July 2009, a little more than three months after the first U.S. pandemic influenza virus cases were identified in April.
But the CDC did not “totally” stop testing, since some testing continued for surveillance purposes and for select patients. And Trump is omitting relevant context as to why the CDC made that decision — and how the circumstances are different this time around with COVID-19.
The CDC explains in an archived webpage that individual cases of H1N1 pandemic influenza were monitored early on to track the spread of the disease, but as the virus became widespread, the case counts “became an increasingly inaccurate representation of the true burden of disease” as many people were mildly ill and did not seek treatment and the vast majority were not tested.
“CDC recognized early in the outbreak that once disease was widespread,” the website continues, “it would be more valuable to transition to standard surveillance systems to monitor illness, hospitalizations and deaths.”
On another webpage, the CDC says that individual case counts became “increasingly impractical and not representative of the true extent of the outbreak” because only a small proportion of patients were tested for influenza, “so the true benefit of keeping track of these numbers is questionable.”
The webpage added that the “extensive spread” of the virus made it “extremely resource-intensive for states to count individual cases,” and that the agency would continue to track H1N1 hospitalizations and deaths.
Not to mention H1n1 mortality is .0002% and COVID mortality is 4%...
... So there's that...
