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How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

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Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#261

Post by js2 »

catalogia wrote: post #244
asiachick wrote: post #167

I'm still trying to understand why Japan's numbers are so low. You can argue they aren't testing but if the infection rate is similar then the death rate should be similar was well regardless of testing or not. They aren't staying home. Restaurants, bars, and events are still open. Trains are still packed at rush hour. Festivals are still happening. They're planning on starting school in April. I can only see a few p…

> "I don't believe this one. Japanese might wear masks but not all of them wear masks and they are not N95 masks." Substandard masks are better than no masks, and many people wearing masks is better than few people wearing masks. These are not "all or nothing" matters.

A surgical mask may also do more to prevent a contagious person from spreading the virus (than to keep a healthy person from getting it) because it stops droplets close to the mouth before they aerosolize.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#262

Post by mrdrozdov »

dang wrote: post #248
mrdrozdov wrote: post #162

The actual title is: How the CDC’s Restrictive Testing Guidelines Hid the Coronavirus Epidemic This is very different from guidelines in general. Encouraging people to avoid large crowds, wash their hands and wipe surfaces, and possibly self-quarantine could have made a huge impact earlier on. Instead, people kept going to bars, concerts, and traveling. A lot could have been done, and testing is only part of the stor…

Yes, we've reverted the title now. Submitters: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (Submitted title was "CDC Guidelines Hid the Coronavirus Epidemic")

Cheers.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#263

Post by rmetzler »

maxerickson wrote: post #142
rmetzler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany does the same. I’m under the impression that there is a big selection bias because I know a lot of friends who have symptoms but can’t get testing because they don’t fit the criteria. And the criteria is having contact with a known corona patient or traveled to a risk area.

~90% of tests administered with restrictive criteria come back negative. There's a lot of other infections out there. I don't say that to diminish the importance of testing, my point is that the anecdotes aren't necessarily very informative.

Do you have a source for that number? I'm asking, because I somewhat feel like this number is supportive of my assumption that they test the wrong people.

I understand that the symptoms are pretty ordinary and there are a lot of pathogens which could cause it. And you're right, all I have are anecdotes.

My own cough is still going on for almost two weeks now. I'm pretty sure that I got it from a coughing man on my commuting train. Four days later I had a sore throat and on the fifth day I had this cough. If this person was tested, and was positive, there's no chance they could find me.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#264

Post by TeMPOraL »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #235
SkyMarshal wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great idea, 100% agree. Let’s Chaos Monkey all the things, not just Netflix. > Personally, I viewed that as a positive - a decently resilient economy would absorb such short-term shocks without any long-term issues. That’s my sense of it too. The markets may fall in the short term, but as soon as the outbreak is stopped, roughly a month later, the markets will recover most or all of their losses. Politicians so afrai…

Yes, it's terrible that politicians in the us at least were doing their utmost to say this isn't a real problem because they didn't want to hurt the stock market and impact their re-election changes. But there's another side to testing things to failure in the real world, people can die. There are vulnerable people of every stripe. Unlike me they may barely get enough food, barely be able to pay that apt that depends…

> Some stress testing is good, but how to do it without killing the vulnerable.

Less stress, more often. I think regular random border closures or brief, targeted disruptions of small parts of supply chains would do wonders to curb over-JIT-ting of the economy, while not hurting too many people too much.

That said, I worry it's too little - it doesn't address head-on the incentives that create vulnerable supply chains.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#265

Post by maxerickson »

rmetzler wrote: post #263
maxerickson wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~90% of tests administered with restrictive criteria come back negative. There's a lot of other infections out there. I don't say that to diminish the importance of testing, my point is that the anecdotes aren't necessarily very informative.

Do you have a source for that number? I'm asking, because I somewhat feel like this number is supportive of my assumption that they test the wrong people. I understand that the symptoms are pretty ordinary and there are a lot of pathogens which could cause it. And you're right, all I have are anecdotes. My own cough is still going on for almost two weeks now. I'm pretty sure that I got it from a coughing man on my co…

https://covidtracking.com/data/

I wouldn't double down on an exact number, but it's clear enough that there are lots of negative tests happening in the US.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#266

Post by acqq »

rmetzler wrote: post #263
maxerickson wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~90% of tests administered with restrictive criteria come back negative. There's a lot of other infections out there. I don't say that to diminish the importance of testing, my point is that the anecdotes aren't necessarily very informative.

Do you have a source for that number? I'm asking, because I somewhat feel like this number is supportive of my assumption that they test the wrong people. I understand that the symptoms are pretty ordinary and there are a lot of pathogens which could cause it. And you're right, all I have are anecdotes. My own cough is still going on for almost two weeks now. I'm pretty sure that I got it from a coughing man on my co…

Across the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#267

Post by acqq »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #89
tdfx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the casual observer point of view, it appears only some Asian governments have been able to competently handle this crisis. It appears we're going to learn the hard way things that China, South Korea, etc. understood through intuition: (1) Widespread testing is key. Testing symptomatic people is too little, too late. (2) You can't rely on people to self-quarantine. (3) Infected people need to be isolated from th…

> From the casual observer point of view, it appears only some Asian governments have been able to competently handle this crisis. Anything I’ve read indicates China screwed up at almost every step only to have to do what the rest of the world is being forced to do now. Axios did a good timeline that leads me to believe the Chinese aren’t that special and if anything their government acted in such a way that doomed t…

"Jan. 21: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms the first coronavirus case in the United States."

Which country managed to get it under control it its own house since that date?

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#268

Post by bionhoward »

Metagenomics would solve these issues. Of course we have these problems when a new disease comes along if we have to invent new diagnostics for it. Metagenomics isn’t new, you just sequence the everything and look to see what DNA/RNA is in the environment. That’s orders of magnitude more data because it doesn’t require labels, you don’t need to know in advance what you’re looking for...

The devices to do this are getting cheaper faster than Moore’s law. Just takes the will to set up the programs

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#269

Post by robocat »

asiachick wrote: post #167

I'm still trying to understand why Japan's numbers are so low. You can argue they aren't testing but if the infection rate is similar then the death rate should be similar was well regardless of testing or not. They aren't staying home. Restaurants, bars, and events are still open. Trains are still packed at rush hour. Festivals are still happening. They're planning on starting school in April. I can only see a few p…

> "I don't believe this one. Japanese might wear masks but not all of them wear masks and they are not N95 masks."

This is a very western belief. Why do we continue to think that asians wearing masks are stupid?

Most importantly, say masks prevent 50% of transmission, and the majority of transmission is via the air (highly plausible), then that would mean drastically less transmission.

Even an N20 mask that reduces risk by 20% would make a huge difference to a population.

It is my prediction that masks are the single most effective means of dealing with the virus at present. Japan’s low infection rates are because they wear masks.

Wearing a bandanna over your mouth and nose just makes sense.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#270

Post by jayd16 »

gfodor wrote: post #237
cycrutchfield wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancelling flights is not even remotely courageous or impactful, given that the virus was already spreading in WA at that time. After January, the Trump administration did essentially nothing productive to prepare for the coming storm and squandered the following critical 6 weeks claiming it was no worse than the seasonal flu. There is plenty of blame to go around but it concentrates at the top.

The fact that you leap from "Trump should have done more" to "what Trump did was not impactful" shows your bias. Cancelling flights was impactful, but clearly insufficient. You're the one who is off-balance here, not me. There were systematic failures to recognize the threat from leaders and citizens alike. Regulatory structures that have been in place for decades have shown their cracks in an emergency. The CDC/FDA…

>"Trump should have done more" to "what Trump did was not impactful" shows your bias.

These are not mutually exclusive in any way.

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