We need some states to just start defying the CDC and doing whatever testing they deem necessary. With media backlash and sympathetic juries, no court case will actually succeed if the feds try to charge them with anything, and this is a life-or-death matter. Italy is a first world nation doing testing, and even they are swamped—what will we be in a week?
Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
81–90 of 237 posts
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Health insurance is good enough until surprise they don't want to cover you or you get surprise bills in the mail from the hospital. Constantly amazed this can be a thing in a first world country. Can this actually happen?
It happens all the time here; it's ridiculous. At my company's last benefits meeting (where they go over the yearly changes to our insurance coverage) a coworker described a situation where they had a surgery at an in network (accepted by our insurance) hospital, with in network surgeons and nurses, but was assigned an out of network anesthesiologist without his knowledge, and later got a giant bill for it (well over…
"Even when a person tries to follow all the rules, they find a way to screw you."
The whole hospital seems designed to set a bunch of elaborate traps and all of these traps will cost you a lot of money. Whatever I hear there is almost no way to protect yourself besides being lucky.
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get why the people elect presidents and parties whom interestst clear don't align with theirs. They elect people which promise them they will basically destroy governmental institutions and THAN complain the the government doesn't work. That's like ordering poisoned food and than complaining about the cook...
The U.S. presidency and Congress are elected via a majority vote, not unanimous vote.
> majority vote
No they aren’t.
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#84is anybody surprised?
availability seems not the be the problem, you can order them since 3 weeks ago from alibaba: https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...
or, if you prefer from italy: https://www.screenitalia.it/test-coronavirus-covid-19/
the problem here seems to be of an organisational nature...
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Health insurance is good enough until surprise they don't want to cover you or you get surprise bills in the mail from the hospital. Constantly amazed this can be a thing in a first world country. Can this actually happen?
It happens all the time here; it's ridiculous. At my company's last benefits meeting (where they go over the yearly changes to our insurance coverage) a coworker described a situation where they had a surgery at an in network (accepted by our insurance) hospital, with in network surgeons and nurses, but was assigned an out of network anesthesiologist without his knowledge, and later got a giant bill for it (well over…
A lot of the practical billing annoyances would go away if the individual practitioners had to get paid by the hospital instead of directly by the patient’s insurance, like subcontractors in any other industry. As a patient, you should be dealing financially with no more than 2 parties: your insurance provider and the hospital.
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#86Low cost home testing kits can go beyond SARS-COV2 and track other diseases all from the safety of your home. Why go to the hospital where you could possibly be infected by other people with infectious diseases or infect the people around you. Personally, if it is low cost enough that I don't need to use health insurance then I am all for it. Health insurance is good enough until surprise they don't want to cover you…
> Health insurance is good enough until surprise they don't want to cover you or you get surprise bills in the mail from the hospital. Constantly amazed this can be a thing in a first world country. Can this actually happen?
Yes it happens in many countries. For example in UK someone mentioned they have Phenylketonuria and their NHS will not cover a medicine Kuvan that would improves their quality of life by allowing them to consume a reasonable amount of protein.
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#87Korea is doing drive-through testing with results available in three days. [1] That the US is still at the level of doing testing in a private and haphazard fashion is effectively criminal and seems likely to have a serious impact fairly soon. The US had a difficult time even testing all the workers at the nursing home in Washington where 11 people died.[2] [1] https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-south-korea-uses-…
Everyone keeps pointing to the lack of availability of kits in the US without mentioning the reason. The reason is that the CDC created its own kits instead of using the WHO kits. Why did they do that? Because the WHO kits were inaccurate. Accurate diagnoses happened only ~60% of the time, basically a coin flip. In China the tests were becoming such a problem, now they basically just count anyone with symptoms. That's one of the reasons why numbers jumped drastically. Sometimes it takes up to 8 times to get a hit. Which when you think about it is completely ridiculous. That is with people with full blown symptoms.
The original CDC batch became tainted but were more accurate...unfortunately the CDC version was also giving false positives and didn't meet QC. To make matters worse CDC rules required very stringent guidelines for approval from third parties and states. Most of that has been lifted (I think this is what Trump was referring to when he said he was lifting something from the Obama admin, though I don't think it started with him. But who knows because Trump is often full of bluster.)
Here are a few articles about it.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-testing-kits-flawed....
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51491763
https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc-coronavirus-covid-19-...
I wish people would stop pointing to South Korea and China as the paradigm of how this should be treated. It's entirely possible that the "drive thru" model with relatively inaccurate kits could make things worse. There isn't much point in producing millions of tests if they are no more accurate than a coin flip and can take up to 8 times to properly diagnose someone. Not to say the US hasn't bungled this and wasted some precious time.
The one thing, I'm pretty confused about at this point is how this has spread so quickly in Italy.
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#88Korea is doing drive-through testing with results available in three days. [1] That the US is still at the level of doing testing in a private and haphazard fashion is effectively criminal and seems likely to have a serious impact fairly soon. The US had a difficult time even testing all the workers at the nursing home in Washington where 11 people died.[2] [1] https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-south-korea-uses-…
I think part of it may be intentional. No matter what, and the end, you will get accurate numbers for death, and there's not much that can be done for viral infections, other than cancelling large events and other means of transmission. Some can't be avoided though (elections are happening in the US).
Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly.
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I could test myself continuously, I would. Why would you not?
because it never works like that, never that simple, there are always bigger costs in the end this will be used against you and others next thing you know you are not allowed on a bus if you haven't tested yourself today
This is mindless hysteria. And I suspect you know it. On the other hand, maybe you do, in fact, believe it. Let's make a good faith attempt to test how truly we believe in our predictions. I predict that the Gates Foundation permitting home testing in Seattle will not result in Seattle's public transit system only permitting COVID-19 tested individuals by the end of 2020. In order to back that, I will put up $1000 at even odds. Reply here to take me up on it.
What's your prediction and will you back it like I did?
Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle
#90What’s the point of testing? There is no treatment. So knowing you have it or not is pointless. If you have it, and it’s serious, you’ll seek medical attention regardless of whether you know it or not. When you see the ridiculous on hand sanitizer and toilet paper, even if there was an over the counter version, you wouldn’t be able to find one in the store.
If I have it, I know to self-quarantine. That's useful to me because I don't want to infect people. Listen, normally, questions like this are useful but this one is obvious.