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We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

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Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#171

Post by mcdevilkiller »

meheleventyone wrote: post #152

I’d like to point out that schools are not open in the normal sense in Iceland. All the older kids school is stopped and Universities are shut. Our youngest is three and is in her leikskoli on alternate days so they can maintain small group sizes with no contact between them. Our eldest is six and only in school for a few hours in the morning, skips a bunch of more risky activities and is again segregated from other…

The thing is, your country reacted, decisions were made and things changed a lot, thus you at least can maintain some volume of classes. Imagine just thinking about something like this here in Spain. Our politicians are a joke, and society lazy and selfish.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#172

Post by n8udd »

arcticbull wrote: post #167
meheleventyone wrote: post #152

I’d like to point out that schools are not open in the normal sense in Iceland. All the older kids school is stopped and Universities are shut. Our youngest is three and is in her leikskoli on alternate days so they can maintain small group sizes with no contact between them. Our eldest is six and only in school for a few hours in the morning, skips a bunch of more risky activities and is again segregated from other…

Interesting, children are at basically zero risk (no child under 10 has died). I assume they don't want to spread it between parents via children?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/04/five-year-ol...

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#173

Post by arianvanp »

mcdevilkiller wrote: post #171
meheleventyone wrote: post #152

I’d like to point out that schools are not open in the normal sense in Iceland. All the older kids school is stopped and Universities are shut. Our youngest is three and is in her leikskoli on alternate days so they can maintain small group sizes with no contact between them. Our eldest is six and only in school for a few hours in the morning, skips a bunch of more risky activities and is again segregated from other…

The thing is, your country reacted, decisions were made and things changed a lot, thus you at least can maintain some volume of classes. Imagine just thinking about something like this here in Spain. Our politicians are a joke, and society lazy and selfish.

Also just for perspective. The country of iceland has only 360K people. Their decisions are orders of magnitude easier to pull off.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#174

Post by meheleventyone »

arcticbull wrote: post #167
meheleventyone wrote: post #152

I’d like to point out that schools are not open in the normal sense in Iceland. All the older kids school is stopped and Universities are shut. Our youngest is three and is in her leikskoli on alternate days so they can maintain small group sizes with no contact between them. Our eldest is six and only in school for a few hours in the morning, skips a bunch of more risky activities and is again segregated from other…

Interesting, children are at basically zero risk (no child under 10 has died). I assume they don't want to spread it between parents via children?

Kids can get infected although at a lower rate under 15.

So yeah and essentially that by keeping contact limited if someone does get sick you only need to quarantine a limited set of people and close a classroom rather than the whole school. I feel like a lot of the success here has been in being aggressive with contact tracing and people able to take the social responsibility to self-quarantine.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#175

Post by mikorym »

arianvanp wrote: post #173
mcdevilkiller wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, your country reacted, decisions were made and things changed a lot, thus you at least can maintain some volume of classes. Imagine just thinking about something like this here in Spain. Our politicians are a joke, and society lazy and selfish.

Also just for perspective. The country of iceland has only 360K people. Their decisions are orders of magnitude easier to pull off.

South African here. We are 60m people (plus quite a few immigrants that are not counted) and we have a complete lockdown.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#176

Post by michaelt »

arcticbull wrote: post #167
meheleventyone wrote: post #152

I’d like to point out that schools are not open in the normal sense in Iceland. All the older kids school is stopped and Universities are shut. Our youngest is three and is in her leikskoli on alternate days so they can maintain small group sizes with no contact between them. Our eldest is six and only in school for a few hours in the morning, skips a bunch of more risky activities and is again segregated from other…

Interesting, children are at basically zero risk (no child under 10 has died). I assume they don't want to spread it between parents via children?

Basically, some simulations show [1] if lots of people from an otherwise-socially-distancing population all go to one central location, that increases the R0 (i.e. spread) of the virus.

This is a problem for anything that draws together lots of people from a large area into the same place - trade shows, sports events, music festivals, cinemas, conventions, busses and trains, food stores, beaches, universities and schools.

We almost certainly haven't hit on the most optimal solution - in my country we closed schools, yet keeping crowded metro trains running? - but it wouldn't have been wise to wait for more data to come in before taking any action.

[1] https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs?t=1010

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#177

Post by tirant »

mcdevilkiller wrote: post #171
meheleventyone wrote: post #152

I’d like to point out that schools are not open in the normal sense in Iceland. All the older kids school is stopped and Universities are shut. Our youngest is three and is in her leikskoli on alternate days so they can maintain small group sizes with no contact between them. Our eldest is six and only in school for a few hours in the morning, skips a bunch of more risky activities and is again segregated from other…

The thing is, your country reacted, decisions were made and things changed a lot, thus you at least can maintain some volume of classes. Imagine just thinking about something like this here in Spain. Our politicians are a joke, and society lazy and selfish.

I don't see Spanish politicians making more or less mistakes that other governments in Europe. Spain was one of the first countries to adopt strict measures to limit mobility of its citizens. And according to Google Mobility Analysis [1] Spaniards have mostly complied with it, staying at home at much higher rates than other neighbouring countries.

So no, I don't see a reason to say that its politicians are a joke and that Spanish society is selfish and lazy.

[1] https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#178

Post by ed_balls »

dvdt wrote: post #2

I'm the co-founder and CTO at BillionToOne. I'm happy to answer any questions here. I've also posted a slightly more technical explanation of how the test works and why it can scale here: https://twitter.com/dtsao/status/1247642005510873088?s=21 Edit: Since our site seems to be overwhelmed at the moment, here's a recap: We’ve been working hard at BillionToOne on a new COVID-19 test that scales testing to everyone in…

Is there any way a random HN reader could help? I wish my country do more tests.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#179

Post by ejstronge »

onion2k wrote: post #144
zepto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dismissing the value of serological testing seems like a self-serving move. Such tests are immediately of very high value because they allow us to understand immunity to Covid-19, and to actually validate the estimates of cases amongst those who haven’t sought treatment. These are both of huge value regardless of the percentage of the US population estimate to have previously contracted Covid-19. By all means market…

Serological tests are useful and needed right now, not at some future stage. It takes about a month before an antibody test is accurate in someone who has had a virus, so using them now would only detect cases where the person had the virus in early March. That limits the value of serological testing considerably.

> It takes about a month before an antibody test is accurate in someone who has had a virus

This is only true for the IgG class of antibodies; we typically see the IgM class of antibodies arise within 5-7 days of infection.

You are generally correct, however, in stating that antibody tests have a window in which they cannot detect a new infection.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#180

Post by ejstronge »

cheriot wrote: post #115
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Testing has been ramping up https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily

That's where I've been getting data. We have a long way to go. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y9_ZrMBhhVLg2xQHtBCc...

Why do you state that our testing capacity has been maxed out? My understanding is that factors like the availability of swabs and the availability of medical personnel to administer tests are a bigger bottleneck than qPCR machines.
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