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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

#171

Post by lern_too_spel »

joe_the_user wrote: post #163
partiallypro wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trea…

> 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.

That's misleading. Korea has the highest active case ratio of any of the hardest hit countries. The flip side of the lowest CFR coin is that Korea also has by far the lowest recovery rate of any of those countries.

You need to wait for the active cases to turn into deaths or recoveries.

From JHU CSSE:

South Korea

Confirmed: 7,382

Deaths: 50

Recovered: 118

Existing: 7,214

If you're just looking at recovery rate (also misleading), Iran seems much better than Korea:

Iran

Confirmed: 6,566

Deaths: 194

Recovered: 2,134

Existing: 4,238

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

#172

Post by kalium_xyz »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #165
kalium_xyz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It also has a large false negative, see the posts i replied to

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

#173

Post by creato »

legionof7 wrote: post #14
glofish wrote: post #10

If anything sets a bad precedent, citizens starting testing themselves and each other, what could possibly go wrong (sarcasm)... Should we test for flu, cold as well? All other diseases? Should you only be allowed to be somewhere if you tested yourself within the last N hours ... etc .. because that is the next step, looking at each other with suspicion. When did you last test yourself? Did you not test yourself? Why…

If I could test myself continuously, I would. Why would you not?

Tests like this have false positive rates that are significant. The test may be a useful tool when we already reasonably expect someone to test positive (showing symptoms plus contact with a known case or travel from an affected area).

However, if you have no reason to believe you are infected, a false positive might easily be more likely than a true positive. And in fact, even a very modest false positive rate would still make it orders of magnitude more likely than a true positive.

Consider that even if you assume the worst about the state of the virus in the US, it's probably a few thousand people. If you randomly tested every person in the US, and the test had a false positive rate of only 1%, you would have thousands of times more positive results than real cases. Someone else in this thread mentioned an existing test that might have a 40% false positive rate.

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

#176

Post by joe_the_user »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #171
joe_the_user wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trea…

> 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. That's misleading. Korea has the highest active case ratio of any of the hardest hit countries. The flip side of the lowest CFR coin is that Korea also has by far the lowest recovery rate of any of those countries. You need to wait…

I don't know what the criteria for recovery is. My impression is there isn't much of a international standard and so the inter-country comparisons aren't that useful. Iran might have a higher recovery rate but that might be more an artifact of how they measure this.

In all other measure, South Korea is doing well. Avoiding death is much unambiguous a measure.

Edit: Yes, because Korea has experienced an exponential increase in cases, most cases in Korea are "new" but this is true for most other countries - though countries where they only find cases by people dying might be different but not in a good way.

Edit2: Also, it is true that Korea's lower mortality is likely partly a product of Korea's widely testing and finding asymptomatic carriers. But this is also a good thing since it allows Korea to get these people to quarantine and lower the transmission rate, hence the declining rate of infection there.

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

#177

Post by D2187645 »

eyegor wrote: post #75

I feel torn posting this, but it seems like the US president is truly trying to go against the country's interests at every turn. The only non malicious explanation I can come up with for the covid response is a gamble in the hopes that somehow the economy will tank less if the outbreak is marginalized. So far: lack of testing, lack of screening at intl airports, lack of quarantine for the latest cruise ship, constan…

Us has 55x+ cases according to the arcgis john hopkins tracker. 70 workers at the nursing home alone have symptoms now.

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

#178

Post by kalium_xyz »

joe_the_user wrote: post #167
kalium_xyz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

Start reading here: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/330857/WHO-...

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

#179

Post by buzzert »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #41
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 absolutely not tons of data, the CDC and FDA have been trying to manipulate the infection figures by preventing people from being tested. Have a look at this thread from a former FDA commissioner, which was posted on Feb 2(!) https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/12240422206653071... It took another month for things to seriously change after that was posted. South Korea, a nation of 50 million people, h…

Posting a link to twitter is a great way to instantly lose credibility.

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

#180

Post by philwelch »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #164
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.

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.

Non-profits play a role in the health care systems of most major countries that do have universal systems.
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