The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming • Hacker News Board

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#251

Post by sp332 » Mon, Mar 23, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

shalmanese wrote: post #249

sp332 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but about HALF of those tests were done in the last TWO days! Capacity is coming online very rapidly now and while we are starting from behind, we will not be so short on tests for long. Roche alone is shipping 400,000 tests per week and Abbot Labs is on track to perform one million tests per week in the next couple of weeks. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/america-is-final...

The important number is the ratio of tests:true case count. You need ~1000 - 10,000X tests/case to do true contact tracing because you want to a) blanket the country with tests and test every single suspected case even if 99% of them end up not being COVID 19 and b) proactively quarantine every person that a positive person has come into contact with and then test each of those people every single day for 14 days unt…

I agree with wanted to blanket the country in tests, but you don't need 1000 tests to do contact tracing for one person, even normally, let alone during social distancing.

You don't need to test people every day for 14 days.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#252

Post by irq11 » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 12:26 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #244

irq11 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I said above was directly taken from non-amateur epidemiologists. I have invented nothing. The error bars on CFR estimates run from fractions of a percent to a few percent. In countries that have tested large numbers of people who are not severely ill, the case fatality rates have been at the low end of that range. This isn’t “shocking to epidemiologists”, it’s shocking only to people who dismiss basic fac…

Epidemiologists say that influenza is easier to control. Irrelevant distraction relevant to topic says that only school here and there has to be closed to contain it. Epidemiologists say on that that one infected person with influenza infects less people then one infected with corona. Epidemiologists do count with overwhelmed hospitals and services, excess deaths due that that, excess deaths on unrelated heath proble…

” Epidemiologists say that influenza is easier to control.”

Not that I have heard of. You’re going to have to cite some evidence here.

(They’re both respiratory viruses with similar R0, so your evidence needs to be pretty extraordinary to be convincing.)

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#253

Post by shalmanese » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 1:30 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #251

shalmanese wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important number is the ratio of tests:true case count. You need ~1000 - 10,000X tests/case to do true contact tracing because you want to a) blanket the country with tests and test every single suspected case even if 99% of them end up not being COVID 19 and b) proactively quarantine every person that a positive person has come into contact with and then test each of those people every single day for 14 days unt…

I agree with wanted to blanket the country in tests, but you don't need 1000 tests to do contact tracing for one person, even normally, let alone during social distancing. You don't need to test people every day for 14 days.

You do because as soon as that person is confirmed positive, then you need to contact trace and quarantine that person's contacts. Every day that goes between a confirmed positive and a contact trace, the more that person's contacts are walking around, spreading it asymptomatically and making the cluster even more out of control.