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A Third Solution

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

471–480 of 535 posts

Re: A Third Solution

#471
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,

I would love to hear about your advisor role experiences with VC funds. Would you be up for a short chat/call? My email can be found in my profile.

Background: Chemistry/Startups, looking what to do next with my life.

Cheers!

Re: A Third Solution

#472

> It is my belief that the best cure for any disease is to avoid the disease. That's not a cure. That is prevention. > As such, I want to avoid ever catching this virus. I’m optimistic that we will eventually have a good vaccine, but until then I need to avoid those who are contagious. Completely unrealistic. Same person would have said in 1918 that they want to avoid ever catching the flu. Maybe back then some HN us…

> just respect nature and how nature works and please live life like animals like us are meant to live. Freely.

Given a ridiculous argument like that, why do you get vaccinations? That's also unnatural and we're not meant to live like that, we're meant to die from certain diseases (your reasoning, not mine, if I understand you correctly).

Re: A Third Solution

#475
There’s not enough consumable tests, and there is currently no installed base of surface plasmon resonance machines, nor any of the other myriad types of constant-monitoring systems that have actually been proven to work for many years now in high-risk facilities (I developed some for the government 15 years ago and it wasn’t new).

If you want my opinion, the right way to approach this is using the consumable tests to maximum effect for mass viral surveillance by contact group hierarchies. For instance, pool an entire school district on a single test, and then hunt down positives by school then class etc. There won’t be enough tests to find every case. That’s okay; others in contact are suspect anyway even if their test would have been negative at that time. The contact group discovery is simple too: cell tower data (civil liberties notwithstanding).

This is pretty obvious, but it doesn’t work because our medical system is set up to charge individuals, and the highest priority will always be hospital admittances. This does little for the patient, but does protect others in the hospital.

Re: A Third Solution

#476
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What TRL are you at for the original POC test, and what TRL are you at for viral detection? Any published papers for viral detection?

Are TRLs usually used outside of government R&D related things? If they got an SBIR I guess they'd be familiar with the technology, but I'm only familiar with it because of DoD funding applications and stuff, it's not terminology I've seen used in the private sector too much. Maybe it is, I'm curious to know if that's the case. I've usually only heard stages of tech development discussed in terms of preclinical, clin…

I’ve seen TRLs used in tech transfer offices and engineering departments in academia; NIH and NSF (usually associated with SBIR programs) as well as the DoE; in medical device and pharma manufacturing; and in life science VC groups. In private companies and VCs I’ve heard it used most in management and BD contexts. I think TRLs can provide a useful second axis to the more common clinical or regulatory development staging.

Re: A Third Solution

#477
post #38
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about the doors being to planes?

The cheap flight was what made this epidemic a pandemic.

We can continue lockdown until everyone who has got it has recovered and is no longer infected. This is a matter of weeks and we are mostly there.

Once we get to no new cases per week for a couple of weeks then we can end the lockdown and get on with our lives.

To prevent reinfection then anyone that flies in gets quarantined unless they come from a plague free country. The same applies to other border crossings, e.g. ferries and roads.

This approach works with rabies in the UK and with other historical plagues. No widespread daily testing is needed this way just the health service testing we have now.

This approach is the only realistic option using what we can do now. However there is little talk of quarantine being used for those that fly. Quarantine means forty days.

Re: A Third Solution

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gov Cuomo should call up Gov Pritzger. Illinois recognized the challenge of testing supplies and asked the state universities to solve the problem. They have. Illinois is reporting a lot more positive cases in the past week because they keep increasing the number of daily tests. I believe that today was well over 12000 tests in Illinois. Anyone who feels like getting tested is now allowed to get a test.

New York has done more tests and more tests per capita than any other state per latest numbers - the reason for more tests isn't just to test people who want it, it's to run large random tests, require tests before visiting nursing homes, get an accurate picture of the infection rate, etc. We're testing more per capita than most countries in the world and it's still not enough. We've tested approximately 4 times as m…

Honestly, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if New York has tested more people per capita than all the comparably-sized countries in the world. There's a few countries which have beaten them, but it's generally small ones like Iceland.

Re: A Third Solution

#479

Quotes from the article: “It’s easy to fall into dystopian visions of the future — a world shut down by one virus after another” “It doesn’t have to be that way. ..... Ubiquitous screening is the key.” The approach is interesting and the possibility of eliminating large scale spread of covid, flu and others is attractive. However the idea of requiring a saliva swab from every visitor to an office or event has the pot…

The swab could be ok, but I’d get really annoyed if entering any place required me to wait around for 10 minutes.

Re: A Third Solution

#480
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romer has called for as much as 30 million tests a day, which I think was based on some simplistic modeling. I think he was targeting everyone in the US being tested every two weeks. I think the two approaches are similar: let's test lots of people all the time, however many X million tests a day that is, so that we can quickly isolate and treat them. People are spreading it before they know they have it, so let's ju…

Basically like the porn industry.

This is a really good analogy actually. The porn industry has higher risk for STDs but lower incidence than the general population.
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