A Third Solution
paulbuchheit.blogspot.com
A Third Solution
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Re: A Third Solution
#2You 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.
Re: A Third Solution
#3The article begins by stating that this is not like the flu, yet we know people die from complications or directly from the flu every year. And further, we're seeing more and more evidence of huge numbers of the population with antibodies, i.e. already infected and immune. We also have seen the damage that using ventilators have had due to misunderstanding how this virus starves the body of oxygen (through the blood, not like pneumonia). We should continue to focus on treatment and realize that treatment along with population immunity is the best way to handle it now. Waiting a year for a vaccine that may not work or rushing a poorly tested vaccine is not good.
Re: A Third Solution
#4Solutions like this give me hope that we can actually return to something resembling normal life in the future. I hope Paul's got everything he needs in funding and resources to pursue all three of his goals.
Re: A Third Solution
#5Can we stop hyping blog posts by tech people writing about epidemiology and medicine? I'm shocked how much baseless speculation and misinformation is being shared on HN.
Re: A Third Solution
#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 fatality is likely around 0.5-1%, but it's heavily skewed towards older individuals. Younger people do die from it, but a very low rates. And young people die from other causes as well, the annual mortality rates for a 20-something is around 0.1%. Getting coronavirus for a 20-something or 30-something is roughly equivalent to the mortality rate of a few months of life.
Death is sad and terrible, but we don't shut down society because people die.
Re: A Third Solution
#7Can we stop hyping blog posts by tech people writing about epidemiology and medicine? I'm shocked how much baseless speculation and misinformation is being shared on HN.
I tend to agree. Maybe medical people should start having opinions on software architecture after reading a few articles. They may have some fresh ideas. Or not?
Re: A Third Solution
#8You 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?
Re: A Third Solution
#9Another round of fear porn. I really wish HN would tone this down, because these articles/blog posts do not actually help or offer new insights in any way.
This "Third Solution" has been offered all the way back in February. It suffers from the same lack of information around reinfection and spread rates as it did the first time around.
Re: A Third Solution
#10Can we stop hyping blog posts by tech people writing about epidemiology and medicine? I'm shocked how much baseless speculation and misinformation is being shared on HN.
He's not. He's hyping his biomedical startup which is trying to make a cheap plasmon covid test. Whether or not he's right, that's sort of right at the HN sweet spot for relevance.
Will it work? God I hope so, but it doesn't seem prudent to bet on it. We know several existing technologies for covid testing that will work. We know they can scale. We know how expensive they are. And while they aren't cheap, we know can afford it at the federal level.
That we still refuse to actually pull the trigger on mass testing and announce a program to fund and launch a universal covid testing regime is just infuriating.
I mean, I desperately hope that a magic bullet like this will pop up to save us. But we know how to beat this. We just won't.