She did. There she talked to somebody who said she needed to call her pediatrician to have him order a test. The pediatrician told the family to just stay sheltered at home the best they could.

Why?

“He’s not sick enough to qualify for the COVID-19 test,” Williams said she was told. “But he’s too sick to come in to get checked for the regular flu.”

She knows the health-care workers in the St. Louis region are overwhelmed and doing their best, but because the U.S. was so slow to adopt widespread testing, and set such stringent testing parameters compared with other countries, she’s fearful that there are many people like her who could be infected with COVID-19, but are not showing up in any of the statistics, which are rising exponentially.

“How do we make responsible choices?” Williams wonders. “We know who we had contact with, but we don’t know what to tell them. The protocols are just not in place. It’s very scary.”

Indeed, a nurse I know who has done some work on the state hotline agrees.