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Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

colorado.edu

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Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#21

Post by threeseed »

sohamsankaran wrote: post #18

This has been obvious for months -- Romer has been yelling from the rooftops about it -- and yet no major western govt save the Brits have attempted to even try this strategy. Madness.

Because the more effective and proven strategy is to simply pay businesses and people to lockdown.

It has been effectively eliminated in both Australia and NZ this way. And the impact to the economy is significant but it's turning out to be far less severe than the rest of the world and their on/off again strategy.

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#22

Post by vmurthy »

xscott wrote: post #6

I would love for this whole thing to end as much as anyone, but I don't see how this gets anything back to normal. In January of this year, there were a negligible amount of people in the US with Covid. Let's say now in November everyone gets tested every day, and you have an unbelievable compliance for self quarantining on positive results. It would never happen, but pretend it's 99.9% of people following the rules…

Agree this won't get everything back to normal but think of it as an equivalent of "defence-in-depth" of info sec.

Rapid testing and isolating (I doubt the US could "enforce" it but you have to give the benefit of doubt that a percentage of people do care for others and will isolate - FWIW, I've seen this happen in Oz where a large %-age of people did isolate) will reduce/delay the infection surge and give time for the healthcare system to recover from the second shock this year. In addition, with the EUAs in flight by Jan '21 (hopefully), this one-two punch should drastically cut both infections and deaths. Remember, in the world of exponentials, both increase and decrease are exponential.

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#23

Post by threeseed »

taeric wrote: post #7
xscott wrote: post #6

I would love for this whole thing to end as much as anyone, but I don't see how this gets anything back to normal. In January of this year, there were a negligible amount of people in the US with Covid. Let's say now in November everyone gets tested every day, and you have an unbelievable compliance for self quarantining on positive results. It would never happen, but pretend it's 99.9% of people following the rules…

This is my problem with most every success story so far. For how quickly this spreads where it spreads, and that it is a corona virus, I'm not seeing any panacea here. I say this as someone that is fine complying with my states restrictions. I even think they are correct, if only as something to try. I'm just not seeing the end game here. :(

[flagged]

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#24

Post by anonytrary »

threeseed wrote: post #21
sohamsankaran wrote: post #18

This has been obvious for months -- Romer has been yelling from the rooftops about it -- and yet no major western govt save the Brits have attempted to even try this strategy. Madness.

Because the more effective and proven strategy is to simply pay businesses and people to lockdown. It has been effectively eliminated in both Australia and NZ this way. And the impact to the economy is significant but it's turning out to be far less severe than the rest of the world and their on/off again strategy.

> simply pay businesses and people to lockdown

This is anything but simple. Vast majority of businesses and people will not be supported if indefinite lockdown continues. The hidden costs of bankrolling an entire country for an indefinite period is much greater than the cost to deploy a persistent, scalable testing framework. The latter is also an investment into the future as this will not be the last pandemic.

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#25

Post by addicted »

04rob wrote: post #3

Wasn't this the White House strategy? They were doing daily rapid antigen tests, and have had several outbreaks.

They also haven’t been following basic safety protocols. Further, we learnt when Trump had COVID that they were actually not even testing Trump on a regular basis. That’s probably also true of other members of the administration.

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#26

Post by danenania »

04rob wrote: post #3

Wasn't this the White House strategy? They were doing daily rapid antigen tests, and have had several outbreaks.

It seems that even extremely frequent testing isn’t enough to prevent outbreaks without any other precautions. False negatives are too common.

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#27

Post by vmurthy »

mchusma wrote: post #10

There are over 6 vaccines that have very low expected downside (vaccines rarely have severe side effects and these have none found in thousands of tests)and are all expected to work (>90%). They are all currently banned (people who want them can't buy them legally), and the FDA is refusing to even discuss lifting the ban for 3 weeks. It seems odd to discuss anything other solution than letting people who want to take…

Banned? Perhaps you are under the impression that the data has been reviewed by the FDA?

IIRC, the EUA analysis is in flight (for a December timeframe) and that is to ascertain that the data is up to the mark and not to take what the companies have announced at face-value.

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#28

Post by threeseed »

anonytrary wrote: post #24
threeseed wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the more effective and proven strategy is to simply pay businesses and people to lockdown. It has been effectively eliminated in both Australia and NZ this way. And the impact to the economy is significant but it's turning out to be far less severe than the rest of the world and their on/off again strategy.

> simply pay businesses and people to lockdown This is anything but simple. Vast majority of businesses and people will not be supported if indefinite lockdown continues. The hidden costs of bankrolling an entire country for an indefinite period is much greater than the cost to deploy a persistent, scalable testing framework. The latter is also an investment into the future as this will not be the last pandemic.

No. It's very simple. You just keep paying people until the lockdown is over.

Again this isn't some hypothetical exercise. Australia and NZ have just done this and now have basically eliminated COVID-19.

As opposed to manufacturing and distributing 100s of millions of tests each week which is very much an unproven exercise.

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#29

Post by ScottBurson »

xscott wrote: post #6

I would love for this whole thing to end as much as anyone, but I don't see how this gets anything back to normal. In January of this year, there were a negligible amount of people in the US with Covid. Let's say now in November everyone gets tested every day, and you have an unbelievable compliance for self quarantining on positive results. It would never happen, but pretend it's 99.9% of people following the rules…

What you're missing is that a rapid test like this can be used as an entry check at restaurants and other public venues, allowing them to go back into business. Even if the vaccines turn out not to work for some reason, we can have our economy back, while limiting spread of the virus. It's not so much about getting people to fully self-quarantine, although that would be nice, as about eliminating super-spreader events.

Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks

#30

Post by xscott »

pmoriarty wrote: post #13
xscott wrote: post #6

I would love for this whole thing to end as much as anyone, but I don't see how this gets anything back to normal. In January of this year, there were a negligible amount of people in the US with Covid. Let's say now in November everyone gets tested every day, and you have an unbelievable compliance for self quarantining on positive results. It would never happen, but pretend it's 99.9% of people following the rules…

"How does this do anything other than reset the clock back to last January just in time for next January?" First, that alone would be HUGE progress. "As soon as everyone lowers their guard and goes back to normal, it's going to spread again." Yeah, but this time you're not going to have whining, tantrum-throwing, conspiracy-mongering, megalomaniacal, science-denying children in charge. We've yet to see if they wind u…

And then what? We're going to impose 2 week quarantines on every flight into the US? Have a dedicated branch of the CDC perform contact tracing on everyone who crosses the borders?

I think you greatly overestimate how politics plays into this. It never ends until we're immune.

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