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Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

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Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#111

Post by fspeech »

partiallypro wrote: post #87
joe_the_user wrote: post #43

Korea 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'…

"Coin flip" would imply half of the people who don't have the disease will test positive. There is no evidence for that. It is a super inept analogy.

The infection is at the lung while the swabs are done to the upper respiratory tract. There will be misses no matter how good the kits are.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#112

Post by mantap »

pkaye wrote: post #86
aplummer wrote: post #24

Earlier 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?

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.

The NHS negotiates prices directly with drug companies. Usually this situation happens if a drug company refuses to offer a reasonable price. Yes this sucks for anybody who depends on such a drug, but there is no alternative.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#113

Post by wool_gather »

kd5bjo wrote: post #85
jlarocco wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very much agree. This is something you learn after a hospital visit or two, and it makes no sense.

Doubly so since, as a patient undergoing examination/treatment, you have zero chance of sussing out who is who, what organization they work for, how their billing works, etc.

All you know is someone came into the room to run a test or otherwise interact with you. It's not like you can interrogate them and then refuse their services -- among other things, they don't even know how their financial org is going to bill you.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#114

Post by orblivion »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #94
offmycloud wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it seems odd that government would have a monopoly on anything in health care. Non-profits can play a very valuable role in exposing inefficiencies in large bureaucracies.

I don't think I implied governments should have a monopoly over health care? There are many other options. For example, I'm wondering why isn't health insurance covering testing? It'd save them money if it helped limit the spread of disease.

It would make sense if everybody were insured. However they really would want everyone to get tested, not just their customers, for the reason you cited. If anything, they should be incentivized to make their own foundation to give it away, like Bill Gates is. Car insurance companies have pooled together to form the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for crash tests. So such things can come about.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#115

Post by zaroth »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #107
djsumdog wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 matt…

I for one have full faith in the United States government to handle the situation competently and expediently. Facetiousness aside, that doesn't sound like the CDC. "Hide the numbers even from ourselves and hope it goes away" is the antithesis of what a scientist stands for. No way someone at the CDC wants that as official policy. But you know who has tons of influence over policy, an estranged relation with objectiv…

The CDC screwed up the tests all by themselves, even the final primers they are using are questionable. Combined with the FDA blocking local labs from testing based on bad regulations, the government screwed up the initial response just fine without any help from Trump.

Trump says anyone who wants to be tested can get tested and the CDC says they just shipped a couple million test kits around the country.

As usual, don’t blame as malice what can be adequately described as incompetence.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#116

Post by makomk »

partiallypro wrote: post #87
joe_the_user wrote: post #43

Korea 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'…

That might be true about the accuracy of the other tests, but it's not the reason the CDC created their own. The reason, as I understand it, is simply that there was no WHO test when they started and there never would be unless some country got up off their ass and made one. As it happens Germany got their test finished first and the WHO used that, but the CDC were already well down the path of preparing and qualifying their own test for US use by that point and switching to the WHO one would mean abandoning that work and starting again.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#117

Post by wool_gather »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #94
offmycloud wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it seems odd that government would have a monopoly on anything in health care. Non-profits can play a very valuable role in exposing inefficiencies in large bureaucracies.

I don't think I implied governments should have a monopoly over health care? There are many other options. For example, I'm wondering why isn't health insurance covering testing? It'd save them money if it helped limit the spread of disease.

Nah, they'll just refuse coverage for COVID-19 treatment anyways.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#118

Post by glofish »

ajross wrote: post #96
glofish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

testing should not be done Random Joe at home! there is tons of data, it helps no one when unqualified people add to the noise, you think it helps you, but the tragedy that it only makes things worse

There is literally almost no data. We are barely testing at all in the US. And even if we were, the goal here isn't good science, it's preventing deaths. People who get tested "random Joe" at home and get a positive result are less likely to infect others.

Someone sitting in their house is testing themselves is not data! You are confusing data with a number that ticks up. Ha, another infected! Look DATA!

The potential for misuse, abuse, panic and trouble is far bigger than you imagine.

The problem here, with everyone, is that they think that the rest of the population will act like them. Take a test, then if positive but you are not showing any symptoms lay low for a week, avoid contact with others. This is the most common outcome of the disease, 99% of cases nothing will happen. You don't need to do anything at all, clears up on its own. For each one in a hospital, hundreds did not need care.

But no, that's not what would happen at all if the population started self-testing itself. Everyone positive, yet in no need of medical care will rush the emergency, severely impacting health care providers - that will kill more people than COVID itself.

The upheaval this self-testing can cause far exceeds whatever marginal benefits it would produce.

The first rule of medicine: First, do no harm!

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#119

Post by zaroth »

sitkack wrote: post #101
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #66

Starve the beast is working as intended. Mission accomplished.

What the parent is referencing is the Republican strategy to defund government services, and then point to how ineffective they are, thus providing justification for privatization. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/amid-coronavirus-out...

Except these agencies have never had so much funding as they do now.

Its hard to put a finger on exactly why they seem entirely incapable of fulfilling their central mission during this crisis. Why were the test kits botched? Why was testing so artificially limited? Why do the primers seem poorly designed? Why does the contact tracing seem to be so behind the ball? Etc.

I think political finger pointing is easy and maybe even satisfying but not helpful or particularly enlightening.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#120

Post by wbronitsky »

glofish wrote: post #58
wbronitsky wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the argument “it never works like that” should be coupled with at least one data point. I don’t think it’s helpful to dismiss other commenters based upon simply your opinion, and not a set of facts we can all inspect together.

"never works like that" was meant to reflect that naive, knee jerk solutions never account for all the complexities of the problem and do more harm than good. distributing COVID tests to the population is a ridiculous idea that does not do anything but create more panic and trouble. The problem that needs a solution has nothing to do with whether Random Jane can or cannot (in the privacy of their home) determine if t…

there are still no facts and no sources in your argument. I cannot and will not engage in this sort of meaningless argumentation without data.

Please stop

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