We’re Testing the Wrong People
theatlantic.com
We’re Testing the Wrong People
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Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#2The article mentioned using bar-coding to run pooled tests - that sounds really interesting. Anyone know if there's a link to a paper on that? The article doesn't link to anything on that unfortunately but that sounds really interesting. I'm trying to visualize how that works with qpcr, where the barcode is attached and where the primers bind (and presuambly after amplification you sanger them to read the barcode?).
Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#3The only data that is somewhat reliable in this pandemic is COVID deaths. Testing the population that is very sick / dying is crucial to understanding the baseline for the worst part of the problem.
Once you have that under control, and we are not nearly there yet, you have to get every first responder tested regularly so you can prevent them from spreading the disease and give them some assurance that coming to work isn’t a death sentence.
Next we have to focus on getting a baseline of the population regularly tested to estimate the spread of the disease. This should be randomized and geographically distributed so we can start to obtain reliable data about the spread of the disease and deploy resources proactively.
Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#4This seems to ignore the importance of testing symptomatic people to rule out COVID (the most common outcome) so care givers can stop wasting PPE (which is is short supply).
Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#5"This type of voluntary contact tracing is labor-intensive and requires some training, but it does not require highly specialized skills. Technology can speed it up without risking a permanent erosion of privacy or the further intrusion of for-profit firms into our personal lives."
This requires a huge leap of faith, which frankly, under surveillance capitalism you would be a fool to accept at face value.
Austria developed such an app, but only 3% of people could be convinced to install it which makes it completely useless even if it would have worked (which I believe it would not for technical reasons).
Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#6The article mentioned using bar-coding to run pooled tests - that sounds really interesting. Anyone know if there's a link to a paper on that? The article doesn't link to anything on that unfortunately but that sounds really interesting. I'm trying to visualize how that works with qpcr, where the barcode is attached and where the primers bind (and presuambly after amplification you sanger them to read the barcode?).
Here's one preprint: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kP2w_uTMSep2UxTCOnUhh1TM...
("A Massively Parallel COVID-19 Diagnostic Assay for Simultaneous Testing of 19200 Patient Samples")
I think Figure 1b is the diagram you want.
Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#7The only data that is somewhat reliable in this pandemic is COVID deaths. Testing the population that is very sick / dying is crucial to understanding the baseline for the worst part of the problem. Once you have that under control, and we are not nearly there yet, you have to get every first responder tested regularly so you can prevent them from spreading the disease and give them some assurance that coming to work…
it sounds like you’re advocating for the use of logic. with the current administration this is a strong no-go.
Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#8The only data that is somewhat reliable in this pandemic is COVID deaths. Testing the population that is very sick / dying is crucial to understanding the baseline for the worst part of the problem. Once you have that under control, and we are not nearly there yet, you have to get every first responder tested regularly so you can prevent them from spreading the disease and give them some assurance that coming to work…
I would say the number of hospitalizations is reliable as well. Those are the only two numbers I've really been paying attention to, because the number of total cases is really just a factor of testing, and doesn't yet give us an accurate picture of the situation.
Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#9Since many states cannot deficit spend, the strategy of 'leaving it to the states' is a deliberate strategy of abdicating responsibility at the federal executive level.
With a federal unitary executive disinterested in expanding testing, and no other backstop, we are left without a country-wide strategy.
I'm thinking that we won't get out from under this shroud until we get a new president.
Re: We’re Testing the Wrong People
#10The article mentioned using bar-coding to run pooled tests - that sounds really interesting. Anyone know if there's a link to a paper on that? The article doesn't link to anything on that unfortunately but that sounds really interesting. I'm trying to visualize how that works with qpcr, where the barcode is attached and where the primers bind (and presuambly after amplification you sanger them to read the barcode?).
Here's one preprint: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kP2w_uTMSep2UxTCOnUhh1TM... ("A Massively Parallel COVID-19 Diagnostic Assay for Simultaneous Testing of 19200 Patient Samples") I think Figure 1b is the diagram you want.
Awesome! Thanks for finding that. So they do give up the extra specificity from the reverse primer by having it be a constant region in the barcode, I guess having a sanger step makes up for that a bit though since you can read what it ligated to past the barcode and see if it's a SARS-COV-2 fragment, but that does slow down getting the results. Like a truck of hard drives barreling down a street versus sending data over fiber. Get a lot of reads in giant batches or get less reads but with less latency.