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Law360 (March 17, 2020, 11:55 AM EDT )
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| David Lat |
Lat, a managing director at legal recruiting firm Lateral Link and founder of the popular legal blog Above the Law, said he is currently under the care of NYU Langone Medical Center alongside his husband, Zach Shemtob.
to get a simple test that other countries have given to their citizens by the hundreds of thousands (the U.S. isn't even at 21K tests). #COVIDー19 #coronavirus #CoronavirusOutbreak
— David Lat (@DavidLat) March 17, 2020
"If you interacted with me in person after 2/23, you can cite that fact and get automatically tested," Lat said on Twitter. "Otherwise you might have to go to the ridiculous efforts I had to in order to get a simple test that other countries have given to their citizens by the hundreds of thousands."
According to the post, Lat self-quarantined as soon as he showed symptoms of illness, but said that because the disease can be passed even if a patient does not show any symptoms, others who came into contact with him or Shemtob should get tested as soon as possible.
"You can play the 'David Lat card' and can — and should — get tested automatically," he said on Facebook. "Otherwise, you will have to jump through the Kafkaesque hoops that I did to get a simple test that other countries have already administered to 190,000 or 320,000 of their citizens."
The U.S. government has begun ramping up plans to administer COVID-19 testing, with health officials at a White House press briefing on Sunday saying tens of thousands of additional people a week will be tested in the U.S., beginning this week.
Tuesday afternoon Lat again posted to Twitter, saying it took him 90 minutes to eat his lunch because he was winded from the respiratory illness.
"To be sure, #COVID19 hits different people differently #ymmv. I gave it to my husband, and for him it was a low-level flu that seems to have almost run its course after about a week," the tweet said. "But for those who get severe cases, like me, it's been hell. I've had 10 days & counting, with no real improvement, of fever, fatigue, joint aches, chills, cough, respiratory difficulty. I have never been this sick in my entire life."
Lat did not return a request for comment Tuesday and said on Facebook that he plans to update the public "later" via a "longer, first-person narrative." It is unclear on what platform that update will be provided.
A request for more information from Lateral Link on how it is responding to the diagnosis was not returned on Tuesday.
Lat is a managing director in Lateral Link's New York office where he recruits and places associates, partners, and partner groups in law firms across the country.
--Editing by Marygrace Murphy.
Update: This story has been updated with additional information on David Lat's communications to the public.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
