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A Third Solution

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

161–170 of 535 posts

Re: A Third Solution

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

strictly speaking, speed in and of itself isn’t the primary problem, it’s distracted driving in its many forms. speed only makes the severity of those accidents greater.

That doesn’t really make sense. If you’re driving too fast, even with perfect focus you could hit someone or something before your normal reaction time could recognize and avoid it.

you’re missing the second half of the random chance argument. you could also have driven right past a collision that would have happened at a slower speed.

Re: A Third Solution

#162

An honest query by a non-medical professional as I'm sincerely curious... Paul advocates daily saliva-based testing, but as an intermediary imperfect, but "better than nothing" measure, what are the benefits and drawbacks of requiring people entering public shared spaces to have their body temperatures taken via handheld temperature guns or infrared monitors, a measure that's already taking place in much East Asia (G…

Thermometers are better than nothing, but unlikely to stop the spread because of asymptomatic transmission (easy to catch the virus from someone who doesn't have a fever). This is why I think directly detecting the virus is essential.

Re: A Third Solution

#163

> 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…

While the young might rarely die, this illness is not something you want even if young. It can be pretty brutal and there is some evidence that it causes damage to lung even in the absence of symptoms.

> While the young might rarely die, this illness is not something you want even if young.

To begin of course, you don't want any disease at any age.

Setting that aside it's pretty clear that you're less likely to die of COVID as a child than you are of the flu (which hits both young and old). Children are less likely to develop any meaningful symptoms in the first place, and if they do, they're less severe. Lots of ongoing research on this.

“The fact is that we are not seeing preponderance of severe [COVID-19] disease in young children, which is distinct from influenza...” [1]

> It can be pretty brutal...

Yup.

> ...and there is some evidence that it causes damage to lung even in the absence of symptoms.

[citation needed], specifically for children.

[1] https://time.com/5816239/children-coronavirus/

Re: A Third Solution

#164
post #61

I’m having difficulty understanding why SPR would be more scalable than LFAs for this type of frequent screening? And what does the ROC look like for this startup’s SPR assay? Frankly, I don’t understand how this test is supposed to work, and I’ve used a Biacore! It might be helpful to have a technical explanation available, for domain experts to evaluate.

There didn't seem to be any details at all. Is there some sort of functionalized surface that specifically binds the virus, if so what molecule/chemistry, how?

edit: this is all I found about the company:

https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/1564207

https://innovation.medicine.umich.edu/portfolio_post/sepsis-...

Re: A Third Solution

#165
post #88

Not only is it completely unrealistic at scale, the specific approach in the blog post is wildly impossible at all. It requires screeners to directly manipulate saliva samples; this is dangerous in a pandemic. The assays referred to (lazily) in a Google Scholar search are almost overwhelmingly antibody assays; this does not allow the screener to differentiate between "has COVID-19" and "had COVID-19". Also, there is…

I mean, my reaction is certainly on the "let us know when you start scaling out a quite accurate test" side of things, but I don't understand the point of declaring that it can't work.

Especially based on assumptions.

The petty whinging in your third paragraph is basically ridiculous. Imagine, waiting 10 or 20 minutes a day for a few months to help save millions of life-years.

Re: A Third Solution

#166
post #143
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming everything goes to plan, how will these be staffed and manufactured at scale?

It's a fully automated solution, like an airport kiosk or a subway turnstile. Maybe I need to make that more clear?

Yes, I didn't get that from the essay. It's a fully automated scanner that can be operated by the person being tested?

Re: A Third Solution

#167
post #63

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.

Everyone says "we need more testing", but there's actually very little discussion of how that testing would translate into lower transmission. I'm skeptical any program less aggressive than the one proposed here would get R0 < 1.

I mean in theory if you had a perfectly accurate test and everyone got tested before coming into contact with others, that gives you an R0 of 0. How close we can get to that standard is obviously very debatable, but simple logic tells us that it certainly could push the R0 below 1 given some (unknown) threshold of test accuracy and compliance.

Re: A Third Solution

#168
This is badly written but very much in the correct direction.

Screw Vaccines and Cures, if these could 'just' be found for Covid-19 then we wouldn't have any sickness in this world.

Work on both cheap and quick tests while we wait for the long, if even possible, timeframes of Vaccines and Cures.

So why aren't Bill Gates self swabs out yet? https://www.gatesfoundation.org/TheOptimist/Articles/coronav...

Re: A Third Solution

#169
post #22

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.

> screening everyone every day (which is very different from simply doing "more testing").

That seems like the logical conclusion of "more testing" to me. If we could, why wouldn't we?

3blue1brown on YouTube did an analysis which similarly shows that fast quarantining is the best way to mitigate the virus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs

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