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A Third Solution

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

201–210 of 535 posts

Re: A Third Solution

#201
Sounds like the start of a plan. My questions would be around those 10 minutes at the entry door. What do we do with people? How are they connected to the test? How do we keep separation between people? How do we grant access after the passed test? What happens to those around if someone is +ve?

Re: A Third Solution

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people who are antibody-positive have a standardized note confirming recovery How do you prove recovery if you were never proven sick first? As an example, I had all the symptoms of Covid in late February, the same severity many people in my age group described, yet was never tested since our health authority dropped the ball and claimed community transmission wasn't a thing back then. If I tested positive for anti…

Test positive. Wait 14 days. Now you're positive clean.

Also test igg instead of igm, and data suggests igg is more reliable anyway

Re: A Third Solution

#203

> 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…

There is plenty of data to come up with a viable solution.

The Proximity Solution:

https://medium.com/@dilip.dasilva/introducing-the-proximity-...

Re: A Third Solution

#204
post #90
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I have not found any mainstream sources that advocate screening everyone every day That's because we currently aren't capable of testing everyone who is obviously sick just once. If we got there, we wouldn't even be close to being capable of testing key personnel (like health care workers). If we got there we wouldn't even be close to being able to test everyone once. If we got there we wouldn't even be close to be…

If this concept would work in principle, covid could be reduced to scaling testing capacity. My impression is that estimates about achievable testing capacity don't assume a most-important-short-term-problem-of-mankind priority and resource allocation.

The linked article suggests a novel and much cheaper test, which would be great. But even if that didn't work out, what scale could possibly be feasible with existing tests? Pre-shortage, an RT-PCR seemed to be much cheaper than a missed day of work.

Re: A Third Solution

#205
We have Trump claiming things like "we don't have a shortage of tests" and "everybody who needs a test gets a test" and "the US is testing more people than every other country combined". These are daily press conferences broadcast on a national level. Unfortunately, rational information outlets are covering this too.

Trump would rather pretend that we don't need more tests than admit to something the administration could do slightly better. I'm sure if we took the pulse of all Americans there would be a shockingly large number of people who didn't think testing was a big deal.

Re: A Third Solution

#206
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I suggest you look at the data instead of responding emotionally. We need to allow the data to guide us. I'm skeptical of the Medscape list, since it appears to be the product of a Google form. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I chose not to use it as my primary source because unlike the government data I provided, it's unclear how or if it's being verified.

I agree that data is good, but the data you linked to seems to be for Italy only. Perhaps they had adequate PPE? I'm kind of skeptical of the idea that the doctors and nurses in the United States are simply reacting out of irrational fear.

If I had to put myself in their shoes I would react out of panic too, if all of a sudden my day to day was flooded by cases of this new respiratory disease. Doctors and nurses suffer the same sort of adverse selection bias as CFR data: you're not counting the healthy. The doctors are only ever exposed to the sick, day in and day out, not to the healthy who don't walk through their doors. They're experiencing a concentration of the negative effects, orders of magnitude worse than what's happening outside the hospital.

Re: A Third Solution

#207
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is suggesting daily testing and used "testing at the door" as an example. Wouldn't it stand to reason that you could be tested once per day, in the parking lot to a mall or some other shopping establishment, and thereafter _verify_ that you had been tested that day for the remainder of your commercial transactions? Thinking in those terms, 10 minutes per day is not so great of an imposition. We could form…

You can't just ignore people who don't travel by car. The hardest hit place in the country in New York City. Most New Yorkers don't own cars and many go months at a time without entering one. And even outside of cities, it is still classist to only allow people with cars to reenter society. The system also becomes much more complex and requires a bigger infrastructure if you aren't literally testing people at the doo…

A solution that works outside of the vicinity of New York, would still allow at least 47 other states to open up.

As for checking who has a test, simply give colored stickers. If someone wants to “beat” the system, so be it. Social disapproval and common sense will keep most people honest.

Re: A Third Solution

#208

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…

The fast gun like IR thermometers are not very accurate. And can be fooled. In one case an infected person took fever reducing medicine specifically so that they would be allowed on a plane where the temperature was checked on boarding.

Re: A Third Solution

#209

> 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…

"Just fine" is really misleading. The 45 - 64 age group accounts for 23% of deaths currently [1]. There are widespread reports of high hospitalization rates for people under the age of 50 [2][3][4][5]. Unfortunately, most of the statistics being collected are focusing on official mortality rates, which leads people to see much higher numbers for "old" people and assume there's no impact for younger groups, which isn'…

> Finally, please stop referring to what's going on as "panic". All things considered, most people have been remarkably calm. The only ones panicking seem to be the crazy attention-seekers blocking traffic.

Stopping the world is the panic button. 100% of the news cycle devoted to coverage. All schools shut down. It can be justified or unjustified but I think it's a stretch to call it anything but panic. I'd say the only ones who aren't panicking are the Swedes. A bold strategy, cotton, let's see if it pays off.

Re: A Third Solution

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This paper found more than half of the asymptomatic patients had lung damage [1]. 1. https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryct.2020200110

The Diamond Princess averaged (mean age, 62 years ± 16, range 25-93) years old. That's not the demographic we're discussing. We know they're way, way worse off than younger folks. I was also informed that the "73% asymptomatic" rate they quote in this article dwindled down to below 18%. Your study also appears to indicate that the amount of damage is correlated to severity of the disease ("The CT severity score was h…

I was making the point that this disease is an issue for the young and it causes damage to the lungs even in the absence of symptoms. This is a serious disease that needs to be taken seriously.
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