<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/4/1586533807157.jpeg" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>
By
NICK GOSNELL
Hutch
Post
HUTCHINSON,
Kan. — 
Reno County Health Department director Nick Baldetti continues to be frustrated by the lack of good data he can get on this virus because of a lack of testing capacity."It's completely reactive," Baldetti said Monday. "There's a real struggle due to supply chain issues on multiple fronts, to really proactively begin to plan to better inform those policy decision makings such as stay at home orders and social distancing guidelines."Baldetti noted that right now there isn't a framework for antibody testing that would allow those who have had the virus and survived it without knowing it to get back to work."If we had a better understanding of just how saturated exposure was for COVID-19 and we had a much larger denominator than what we're holding now, with the same amount of mortalities and instead of holding a 4% mortality rate, we're holding a .0001% mortality rate, then we would be able to accurately make the statement of, this isn't more deadly than the flu. We don't shut down local economies because of the flu, but we don't have that information and so we can't accurately say that. Indicators suggest that it is more deadly than the flu, but we don't have a way to confirm or quantify that."As long as we don't know and can't get a test to find out how many are sick or how many have been sick, it is not possible to accurately figure a timeline for how long current measures must be taken."We continue to only react to the thunder," Baldetti said. "We have no way of even measuring where the lightning might strike. That makes this response, in its totality, extremely challenging."The best guess Baldetti could give as to how far behind the national curve we are is that it took about two weeks to get from in the United States to Kansas and about another two weeks from Kansas to Reno County, but there still isn't enough data to know how far we are up on the curve definitively.

Baldetti: Response to virus still completely reactive