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A Third Solution

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

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Re: A Third Solution

#31

Post by JoeAltmaier »

centimeter wrote: post #28
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible analysis, for reasons well-covered all over HN and elsewhere. This is a whole different thing from 'another flu'. We have to address it head-on. Throwing people (a million people?) under the bus is not going to fly, not politically and not morally.

> for reasons well-covered all over HN and elsewhere. I've yet to see a compelling argument that LY or QALY analysis is the wrong approach. > This is a whole different thing from 'another flu'. We have to address it head-on It sounds like you're not actually offering any relevant response to the parent comment, but just repeating the taglines we all saw in the article. > Throwing people (a million people?) under the…

Because, its well-covered all over HN and elsewhere. I suggest reading and thinking, before posting throw-away pseudo-analyses.

Re: A Third Solution

#32

Post by texasbigdata »

saeranv wrote: post #8
tlb wrote: post #2

You can rank people by the likely benefit of testing them. Interestingly, it goes up as the square of the number of people they interact with daily. (Because their risk of having it increases, and also the number they are likely to spread it to.) So you can allocate tests by sorting by (# of daily contacts in a closed space) ^ 2. But as PB says, it should be practical to test everyone every day.

Curious to know how you are getting power of 2 exactly. Are you just saying it's some sort of power law growth and approximately 2, or is there an actual way of deriving it?

Wouldn't it also vary by percent of population without immunity, perhaps demographics in the underlying population, and other environmental things (weather?). Seems like a (useful) aproximation.

Re: A Third Solution

#33

Post by tonyarkles »

saeranv wrote: post #8
tlb wrote: post #2

You can rank people by the likely benefit of testing them. Interestingly, it goes up as the square of the number of people they interact with daily. (Because their risk of having it increases, and also the number they are likely to spread it to.) So you can allocate tests by sorting by (# of daily contacts in a closed space) ^ 2. But as PB says, it should be practical to test everyone every day.

Curious to know how you are getting power of 2 exactly. Are you just saying it's some sort of power law growth and approximately 2, or is there an actual way of deriving it?

If you have N nodes and completely connect the nodes, there are O(N^2) edges. This comes from the formula for the sum(1...N).

Edit: I’m not sure I interpreted the original statement correctly.

Re: A Third Solution

#34

Post by temac »

There are insanely high amount of speculation in there.

To my knowledge no significant amount of non droplet or hand-to-face contamination as been demonstrated out of medical contexts where aerosolization is more a problem, because of technical gestures and cares.

Even the linked page supposed to serve as a reference is completely speculative on the subject of the potential for the virus to be airborne: "In addition, it is possible that SARS-CoV might be spread more broadly through the air (airborne spread) or by other ways that are not now known."

So yeah, it also has not been proven that airborne transmission does not happen. But there are no strong signs showing we should highly worry about that highly speculative subject. The main contamination paths are well-known: droplets, and hand-to-face. If you want to strongly reduce the rate, you must focus on that.

> Even if we don’t avoid the virus 100%, reducing it by 80% could be the difference between something mild and something life-threatening. This could be a reason why so many otherwise young and healthy doctors and nurses have been killed by this virus.

Yeah, no. This is also completely speculative at this point. There is no strong technical reason for why it should be the case, given how viruses work... So not completely impossible, but short of real reasoning and evidences and studies, this is not a theory to particularly to focus on... ANYWAY, it is a good idea to avoid spreading the virus on all surfaces, but simply because this will statistically reduce the contamination rate (maybe without any impact on the severity for those who will be contaminated)

More generally, I'd like essays on that subject from people working in the medical field. And I'd probably not like essays on CS from virologists and epidemiologists...

Re: A Third Solution

#36

Post by [deleted] »

caymanjim wrote: post #13

This isn't a unique idea. This is the mainstream view. Everyone knows we need more testing and that testing is the only way to effectively ease distancing rules. That was a pretty extensive writeup to say what we've been hearing from all rational information outlets for a month.

[deleted]

Re: A Third Solution

#37

Post by centimeter »

rguzman wrote: post #20
marcell wrote: post #6

> First of all, it’s not “just the flu”. It is something much more dangerous. Catching this virus is a bit like playing a round of Russian roulette. You’ll probably be fine, but you could end up dead I think this is mischaracterizing it. People have to die eventually. One year of existence has a mortality rate of 1%. For a 75-84 year old individual it is nearly 5%. Above 85 it's 14%. [1] The coronavirus infection fat…

the CFR is only as low as 0.5-1% when there is adequate medical care and the population is otherwise healthy. in NYC the CFR for the 18-45 cohort is ~5%[1]. [1]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

CFR is a terrible metric - you should be using IFR. CFR is of course going to be much higher than the IFR, probably orders of magnitude higher.

IFR data hasn't been available until recently because you need A) randomized sampling and B) antibody tests, which have only just been rolled out.

The most up-to-date IFR data suggests that "0.5%" is actually an astoundingly high overestimate for any reasonable metric of "number of people who die from this", and that's before adjusting for the fact that the people who die were usually going to die soon anyway.

Re: A Third Solution

#38

Post by pb »

jawns wrote: post #24
pb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's daily screening for exactly that reason. Is there something I should change to make that more clear?

But how realistic is daily screening on a wide scale? You're going to face major issues with compliance.

That's why I think testing at the door is the more straightforward way to start. We can reopen factories, office buildings, even shopping malls, but no one gets in without passing the screen.

Re: A Third Solution

#39

Post by tlb »

rguzman wrote: post #26
pb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's daily screening for exactly that reason. Is there something I should change to make that more clear?

it is pretty clear, but the conclusion of the parent is still pretty strong: > Sounds like a logistical nightmare.

Making most people a coffee every day also seems like a logistical nightmare. But we built that infrastructure.

Re: A Third Solution

#40

Post by scott_s »

pb wrote: post #22
caymanjim wrote: post #13

This isn't a unique idea. This is the mainstream view. Everyone knows we need more testing and that testing is the only way to effectively ease distancing rules. That was a pretty extensive writeup to say what we've been hearing from all rational information outlets for a month.

I have not found any mainstream sources that advocate screening everyone every day (which is very different from simply doing "more testing"). Would love some pointers if I'm wrong.

Paul Romer, an economist at NYU, has been advocating for testing millions of people a day for a few weeks. He is co-author of a piece in The Atlantic, "Without More Tests, America Can’t Reopen", https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/were-testi...

Googling for "romer covid 19" should turn up a lot of news sources covering the notion of testing millions of people a day.

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