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Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

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Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#191

Post by dboreham »

im3w1l wrote: post #181
pneill wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re just going to test yourself constantly? If you experience symptoms for any illness and you care for seniors, you should remove yourself from care. No need to test.

Don't people have low level symptoms basically all the time? Like if you add up all the times your throat feels a little bit sore, or nose is a little bit stuffed or you cough a few times a day or you have a bit of a headache or you feel a little bit lacking in energy... That should add up to like half a year. So I'm not sure if what you are proposing is realistic.

Symptoms are fever and a dry cough (no runny nose, no sneezing). At least for me and my family that happens basically never.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#192

Post by zaroth »

refurb wrote: post #150
zaroth wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After ACA there are no lifetime maximums. If it’s an FDA approved treatment which he is eligible for (e.g. there are not other first line treatments which should be tried first) then AFAIK an insurance company cannot simply refuse to pay. Another option is to move to a Medicare expansion state and stop working, which will allow you to immediately qualify for free health care with generally some of the best coverage y…

Insurance companies are free to not cover an FDA approved product. CVS publishes a list every year, although they tend to either be the branded drug when a generic is available or a drug where there are as effective, but cheaper products are available. It’s a cost versus benefit analysis and no different than what you see in single payer systems. I will say from experience that oncology is one therapeutic area where…

Insurance companies certainly can have formularies. I noticed that there aren't any drugs on the excluded list that don't have alternatives listed.

When we change insurance plans my kids have to change the brand name of insulin they get. Humolog, Admelog, etc. But the insurance company can't decide that they won't pay for fast-acting and slow-acting insulin. And if there is a medical reason a doctor will sign off on that indicates a specific brand is required, I believe that you can generally get even excluded medicines covered.

Can insurance companies refuse to cover an FDA approved drug that doesn't have a reasonable substitute? OP discussed treatment for leukemia. An ACA plan should cover approved treatments for leukemia, but it might not cover, e.g. the latest CAR-T treatment if it's still in Phase 3. You would need to get into the study, in which case treatment would be free.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#193

Post by martingoodson »

kalium_xyz wrote: post #183
claudeganon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen no evidence of this rate of false positives, only for false negatives (which is a problem across these tests for respiratory illnesses). What’s your source on the false positive rate?

Dismiss my claim on false positives, dont have source on that rn.

Then please edit your original comment to correct this false information.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#195

Post by Lucadg »

joe_the_user wrote: post #176
lern_too_spel wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Korea now is effectively the lowest fatality rate for any of the effected countries which points to excellent surveillance and treatment. I darn well intent to keep pointing to this. That's misleading. Korea has the highest active case ratio of any of the hardest hit countries. The flip side of the lowest CFR coin is that Korea also has by far the lowest recovery rate of any of those countries. You need to wait…

I don't know what the criteria for recovery is. My impression is there isn't much of a international standard and so the inter-country comparisons aren't that useful. Iran might have a higher recovery rate but that might be more an artifact of how they measure this. In all other measure, South Korea is doing well. Avoiding death is much unambiguous a measure. Edit: Yes, because Korea has experienced an exponential in…

Numbers per country in general are really hard to evaluate as there is no standard for anything.

Confirmed cases: heavily dependent on tested people. 1500 in US vs 100k in S. Korea makes the comparison useless. Also, who is tested? In Italy they started testing only symptomatic people after a while. China has changed the parameters a few times in these last weeks.

Deaths: are all deceased people tested?

Recoveries: what constitutes as a recovery? Highly variable on a per country basis.

I wonder if WHO has published some standards.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#196

Post by HenryKissinger »

jacobolus wrote: post #156
wintorez wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this epidemic will expose a lot of weaknesses in public health sector globally. Hopefully, we will learn valuable lessons, but I wished we didn't have to learn them at the cost of losing numerous lives.

In the USA maybe we can bring back the pandemic response command chain in the executive branch of the federal government who were all summarily fired in 2018 because the president and his national security advisor didn’t want to keep “people who sit around doing nothing most of the time” (paraphrased) on payroll. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...

Sounds like the old IT joke.

No pandemic: What the hell do we pay you for.

Pandemic: What the hell do we pay you for.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#197

Post by joe_the_user »

kalium_xyz wrote: post #178
joe_the_user wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source is who technical guidelines for testing on their site. I can't see any easy way to get that info from your description. Can you give an actual link?

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2... Start reading here: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/330857/WHO-...

I'm not seeing any references to the accuracy or inaccuracy of the test. They mention a severe case that's negative should be re-tested and that samples from the lower respiratory tract are better.

That is the thing. This discussion started around whether the CDC should have created their test and the claim was the CDC's actions were a response to the inaccuracy of the WHO test. But part of the accuracy of any test is whether the virus in a location at all - if the virus is, say, only in a person's lungs, any test will have trouble using blood or spit.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#198

Post by nutmeg21 »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #22

This is very admirable of Bill, but it seems odd that the world's biggest economy is reliant on hand-outs to keep its citizens healthy.

I will automatically have the biggest house in the neighborhood if my bank is willing to write me a blank check and I use it to build a billion-dollar house.

Biggest economy != healthy economy if you can borrow like there is no tomorrow. And thank you, all you suckers in the rest of the world.

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#199

Post by enumjorge »

zouhair wrote: post #131
fancyfredbot wrote: post #22

This is very admirable of Bill, but it seems odd that the world's biggest economy is reliant on hand-outs to keep its citizens healthy.

America is that way because rich people like Bill made it so. They worked hard at it and still do.

Saying that the US reached its current position in the world solely due to the work of rich people is an incredibly simplistic view of reality.

It also doesn't address the point the parent comment was trying to make. Bill Gates worked hard and now he's rich because of it--why does that mean U.S. citizens need to depend on him to stay healthy?

Re: Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle

#200

Post by enumjorge »

pneill wrote: post #151
timmytokyo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. To give epidemiologists and public health officials a better picture of how widespread the virus is. 2. To make it more likely that infected persons isolate themselves to avoid spreading the virus further.

They get that data the same way they always do, from people seeking medical attention. People who are symptomatic for anything ( flu, cold, etc) should always isolate themselves. What’s madness is asymptotic people testing themselves.

There's a lot we don't know about this new strain of virus, which makes it hard to contain it. Testing provides data points. I'm not sure why it's so hard to understand that having more data as opposed to less when facing an unknown is a good thing.
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