Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by alasdair_ » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #115

IIAOPSW wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, d…

Despite the claims that we would have a million test kits out by last Friday, we don’t have them.

Hell, the people in the Kirkland home that is the biggest source of deaths STILL have not all been tested - today they finally got more test kits - 45 test kits for 63 untested patients and dozens of staff.

We are being lied to.

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

#162

Post by thawaway1837 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #122

xenospn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend paid his health insurance for years. Got diagnosed with cancer (leukemia). Hospital said treatment would cost $750k. Insurance told him to go fuck himself and isn't covering anything.

After ACA there are no lifetime maximums. If it’s an FDA approved treatment which he is eligible for (e.g. there are not other first line treatments which should be tried first) then AFAIK an insurance company cannot simply refuse to pay. Another option is to move to a Medicare expansion state and stop working, which will allow you to immediately qualify for free health care with generally some of the best coverage y…

Just to be clear, you mean that the insurance company is not allowed to set a maximum lifetime (or annual, for that matter) limit beyond which they will stop paying expenses, correct? P

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

#163

Post by joe_the_user » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

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'…

1) China and Korea have effectively treated the virus, infections in both those areas have been declining. And Korea now is effectively the lowest fatality rate for any of the effected countries which points to excellent surveillance and treatment. I darn well intent to keep pointing to this.

2) Some article point to the main vector in Italy being patient left in a hospital for 36 hour before being diagnosed and treated. This allowed the disease to spread in the community where testing was not being done - kind of like the US.

3) The Chinese test may indeed might have had problems at various points (your first link is rather anecdotal, hardly proves the test was a "coin flip". Other posters note your links don't back your arguments). The American test had even more problems and still hasn't ramped up to strong production. Making tests is hard, it seems. The CDC's "your test has problems and we know we can do better" attitude looks misguided in retrospect.

4) It seems like you're doing a bunch of speculation with little evidence. I suggest you look at infection and mortality as a basis for thinking about what country is doing well or badly. [1]

[1] https://covid19info.live/

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

#164

Post by thawaway1837 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

offmycloud wrote: post #79

fancyfredbot wrote: post #22

This is very admirable of Bill, but it seems odd that the world's biggest economy is reliant on hand-outs to keep its citizens healthy.

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.

Playing a role in exposing inefficiencies, and fulfilling basic needs, that governments and health care systems in far poorer countries across the world have had no trouble doing so, are very different things.

This appears far more of the latter.

I mean, the article says they will be able to do about 400 tests a day.

That’s a fraction of the number of tests poor developing countries have been doing for weeks now.

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

#165

Post by CobrastanJorji » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

kalium_xyz wrote: post #160

fspeech wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The key point is in “basically” its a metaphor. The test kits have a 40% false positive and alternative test kits which may test using an entirely different method may improve this. If you think a 40% false positive is good I urge you to actually read the who guidelines which both state this information and recommend testing people multiple times over two weeks. Source is who technical guidelines for testing on their…

A 40% false positive may be acceptable for purposes of quarantining, so long as the false negative rate is low and the percentage of healthy people being tested is relatively low. It'd be a bit like a bloom filter of quarantine. Can this person skip quarantine? Test says okay. Can this other person leave? Test says no, but that's not solid evidence that they have the disease.

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

#166

Post by claudeganon » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

kalium_xyz wrote: post #160

fspeech wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The key point is in “basically” its a metaphor. The test kits have a 40% false positive and alternative test kits which may test using an entirely different method may improve this. If you think a 40% false positive is good I urge you to actually read the who guidelines which both state this information and recommend testing people multiple times over two weeks. Source is who technical guidelines for testing on their…

I’ve seen no evidence of this rate of false positives, only for false negatives (which is a problem across these tests for respiratory illnesses). What’s your source on the false positive rate?

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

#167

Post by joe_the_user » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:33 AM UTC

kalium_xyz wrote: post #160

fspeech wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The key point is in “basically” its a metaphor. The test kits have a 40% false positive and alternative test kits which may test using an entirely different method may improve this. If you think a 40% false positive is good I urge you to actually read the who guidelines which both state this information and recommend testing people multiple times over two weeks. Source is who technical guidelines for testing on their…

Source is who technical guidelines for testing on their site.

I can't see any easy way to get that info from your description. Can you give an actual link?

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

#168

Post by ajross » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:38 AM UTC

glofish wrote: post #118

ajross wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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 [...]

This is where you're off the rails. You're thinking only in terms of danger to the infected. There aren't going to be hospitals in a pandemic!

The problem with this is that that behavior (i.e. "You don't need to do anything at all") tends to infect everyone around the sufferer! And if the virus is a routine flu where 70-80% of the population is immune, that's fine. It spreads a little and stops.

This doesn't work like that. No one is immune to a novel virus. This will spread across the world and infect whole ?!@#$%! cities at once, overwhelming health care facilities with infections that in a normal situation would be trivially treatable in a hospital. But we'll run out of hospital beds given your insane advice, and people will die for lack of care. Seriously, in worst case scenarios literally millions of people are going to be dead by next year in a situation where we could have saved them had we simply done obvious stuff like testing and quarantine and not told them (sigh) "nothing will happen. You don't need to do anything at all, clears up on its own."

Stop this. Stop it. Stop listening to whoever is telling you this nonsense. It's going to get people killed.

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

#169

Post by londons_explore » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:47 AM UTC

theseadroid wrote: post #142

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…

You are the problem the virus is not under control right now. What background do you possess to make such claims? What scientific references can back up your no-matter-what? You might be expert in other fields but that doesn't give you the qualifications to decide matters on public health. No I'm not here to present evidence that what you said is not true. I'm just angry. You might be intelligent, you might be follow…

Conjecture is accepted here on HN. Others can back it up with sources, or refute it with sources.

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

#170

Post by londons_explore » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

mysterypie wrote: post #65

whymauri wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A close friend of mine's wife paid their health insurance for decades, without fail. Their employer changed the insurance provider without notification, but somehow they continued paying the wrong provider. She recently got breast cancer, and now the new provider is denying all claims on the basis that she was paying the wrong provider. They are basically screwed now after maintaining a non-deliquent relationship wit…

> somehow they continued paying the wrong provider How does it happen that the wrong (old) provider still accepts money if they no longer cover you? Can this be used as a legal argument that the old provider is on the hook for coverage since they continued taking the money?

"After review, it seems you are no longer eligible for our services. Have a refund"