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A Third Solution

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

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Re: A Third Solution

#251

Post by cameldrv »

slg wrote: post #93
pb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This test takes 10 minutes. That is probably still too long to implement at the doors for most places. It will end up creating a bottleneck of people waiting to enter the building and another avenue to spread the virus. Making the inside of the mall safe from the virus isn't going to matter if everyone is exposed to the virus while waiting in the 30 minute line to get into the mall.

You could probably use an app or just get their mobile phone number. It seems likely to me based on reading a lot of case studies that this virus is largely spread through talking, yelling, and singing. If we tell people not to talk for 10 minutes while they wait for their result, it could work if you could get people to comply.

Re: A Third Solution

#252

Post by vikramkr »

lvs wrote: post #232
predxionbio wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0) From a clinical perspective this is data we are generating on an on going basis. Analytically this is a largely a function of the characteristics of the affinity, specificity of the capture molecule used to capture the target (viral particle). As you point out EUA gives opportunities to launch sooner... But it's still critical to validate technogies both internally and externally probably to a greater extent than…

How is chip fabrication is more scalable than plastic 384-well plates and cotton swabs? Nothing shy of a home pregnancy test is more scalable than qPCR.

You're getting downvoted but I think it's a fair question actually. I'd assumed they were referring to tapping into non-stressed supply chains. What you mention is valid though and something I'm curious about as well. Are the consumables reliant on chip fabrication? I don't think PCR machines themselves are scalable, maybe chips are more scalable than the optics systems for qPCR, but a valid point about whether the consumables are more scalable as well.

Re: A Third Solution

#253

Post by mkl »

esahione wrote: post #242

A fourth solution: force the boomers and vulnerable to retire. Let's bail them out. Let the young take control of the economy. Everybody wins.

Younger people get it too, and some die. Not only that but many older or vulnerable people live with or depend on younger people. Separation like you suggest is simply impossible, and your misbelief that young people are invulnerable is dangerous.

Re: A Third Solution

#254

Post by nkohari »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #196
arcticbull wrote: post #134

> This could be a reason why so many otherwise young and healthy doctors and nurses have been killed by this virus. This isn't well supported by data. In the sense that (a) young people just aren't particularly affected any more so than with the flu (old and sick people of course are much worse off) and (b) in Italy's data, no health professionals under the age of 49 died. There have been some deaths outside Italy bu…

"Just fine" is really misleading. The 45 - 64 age group accounts for 23% of deaths currently [1]. There are widespread reports of high hospitalization rates for people under the age of 50 [2][3][4][5]. Unfortunately, most of the statistics being collected are focusing on official mortality rates, which leads people to see much higher numbers for "old" people and assume there's no impact for younger groups, which isn'…

The key piece is young and healthy. Very few people who are under 50 and don't have chronic health conditions have succumbed to Covid-19. A recent study of NYC patients [1] indicated that only 6.4% of hospitalizations (for all age groups!) were patients with zero co-morbidities.

I would also argue that being aged 45-64 isn't exactly "young". The share of U.S. deaths for those under 45 is 2.8%. Under 35 is 0.89%. [2]

It's also important to point out that the percentage of deaths attributed to a given age bracket is not the same thing as your chance of dying of the disease. I don't think you were suggesting this, but just in case other people read these statistics and are alarmed, I wanted to mention it.

I'm not saying that Covid-19 isn't serious. But we have a good deal of data at this point that indicates that if you are young and healthy, you are very unlikely to die if you contract the disease.

[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765184

[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

Re: A Third Solution

#255

Post by predxionbio »

dekhn wrote: post #216

I was curious about the company that's being touted in this post so I did a little searching. The website doesn't seem to have much on it. I guess it's a YC17 company. The founders are Caroline Landau, Tim Cornell, Walker McHugh. From 2016: Landau was an MBA candidate, the other two founders have biomedical research/medical backgrounds: Walker McHugh, Co-Founder, PreDxion Bio / Biomedical engineering candidate, Unive…

Hi, Walker here, one of the PreDxion co-founders. Up until recently we've been focused on developing our technogy as a point of care biosensor for us in patients experiencing dysfunctional immune responses (e.g., sepsis, ARDS, and the immune responses induced by certain cancer immumotherapies).

The technical implementation of a viral detection assay is much simiplier to implement than our quantitative, multiplexed small MW biomarker sensors... But there are certainly many other hurdles that remain as you point out as well as the additional biological uncertainty that remind around SARS-CoV-2 it's infectious course as well as our bodies subsequent immune responses.

There are certainly many hurdles left to be tackled but that's exactly what we're working towards.

Re: A Third Solution

#256

Post by mrfusion »

zaroth wrote: post #243
mastermojo wrote: post #223

Why are there so many armchair quarterbacks in this thread spouting dismissive criticism? Paul already acknowledges that "success is far from guaranteed." If this works, great! If it doesn't, I don't think any of us are worse off... This seems like a heavy application of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

I’d be less inclined to offer negative opinions on someone making a product that helped manage COVID and financially benefiting from that product, if it; 1) Actually helped solve a problem we face with COVID without doing more harm than good, and 2) Did so in a way that didn’t trample civil liberties with invasive daily tests before allowing someone to leave their house.

I wonder why we always jump to the China approach of forcing people to do things.

Why not use an incentive system instead? You’d need a lot of work to design a good system but for example pay $100 for a positive test and proof that you isolated that day. (For proof of isolation maybe a system texts you at random times and asks for a picture of something in your house. Eg. 10:13am you get a text asking for a picture of a pillow.)

Please don’t critique the plan, I’m only offering it as an example of an alternative to having the national guard show up on your doorstep.

Re: A Third Solution

#257

Post by johncolanduoni »

tptacek wrote: post #229
zmmmmm wrote: post #212

The post refers to an alternative method of testing for COVID-19 based on surface plasmon resonance that would have significant advantages, but unfortunately it provides absolutely no real substantiation that the test exists or works. The link about surface plasmon resonance goes to a generic Wikipedia page, the link about saliva is a small scale study that was conducted on RT-PCR not surface plasmon resonance, and t…

According to my biochem-undergrad kid, surface plasmon resonance is a thing; it had come up in classes. "It's like doing an ELISA with no secondary antibody". Someone here will know what that means. I don't!

It’s a thing, but doing a saliva test with limited sample prep (which you need to be beat PCR, otherwise you might as well just make more known to work qPCR machines) is not something anyone has accomplished with it for any virus. It’s a promising technology; but not for having a widely deployable test before we have boring old ELISA antigen tests. Which we have developed for plenty of viruses, and which some individual companies alone can manufacture at a rate of several per second with existing production capacity.

I’m glad more money is being put towards research in this tech (I used to study plasmonics from the physics side), I don’t think it’ll make a difference for COVID specifically before it’s too late to matter.

Re: A Third Solution

#258

Post by thaumaturgy »

dang wrote: post #238
thaumaturgy wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you're one of those. Okay, thanks for showing your hand. For anybody else reading that's unaware: Sweden is still in the earlier stages of growth, not yet peaking in total cases [1], but they already have 6x the per-capita death rate of either of their neighbors, Norway or Finland, and 50% higher than the per-capita rate in the US. If the US followed the Swedish model, we'd need, conservatively, another 25,000 bo…

Please don't cross into personal attack, no matter how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. It makes the thread strictly worse, and you can make your substantive points without that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough.

I'm out of ideas for countering this particular argument which has been coming up on HN on almost every virus-related thread recently. Ignoring it doesn't make it sound less convincing and engaging it just results in hopelessly-long back-and-forth citefests between two sides that cannot be convinced by anything the other says. I'm open to other suggestions at the email address in my profile.

Re: A Third Solution

#259

Post by jhwang5 »

distantaidenn wrote: post #218

This is essentially what South Korea did. Granted it was done in a different way but everyone was “tested.” I was there just as covid-19 was on the rise and every shop, every station, and every high traffic area had people set up with thermal guns. Shop staff were having their temps checked before their shifts started. Everyone was gloved and masked. And once they had a proper test in place it was made easily accessi…

But of course you need to package it as an unique, never seen before, game changing solution and write a blog post about it. He’s shilling his startup

Re: A Third Solution

#260

Post by rytill »

mastermojo wrote: post #223

Why are there so many armchair quarterbacks in this thread spouting dismissive criticism? Paul already acknowledges that "success is far from guaranteed." If this works, great! If it doesn't, I don't think any of us are worse off... This seems like a heavy application of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

Thanks for the link! A useful ethical-social concept with examples.
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