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A Third Solution

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

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Re: A Third Solution

#481

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

pb wrote: post #22
caymanjim wrote: post #13

This isn't a unique idea. This is the mainstream view. Everyone knows we need more testing and that testing is the only way to effectively ease distancing rules. That was a pretty extensive writeup to say what we've been hearing from all rational information outlets for a month.

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.

Isn't this a minor upgrade on what the authorities did in Wuhan? They squashed the disease at the epicenter, faster than the tail-off in Italy, and a lot of it was massive screening and isolation of anyone showing symptoms, or with a high temperature (1), or testing positive, or anyone in contact with those.

If "it happened and it worked" isn't "mainstream" then I don't know what is.

1) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-23/wuhan-s-r...

Re: A Third Solution

#482

Post by Aeolun »

RivieraKid wrote: post #454
pb wrote: 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 suggested testing everyone every month about a month ago. This is a conservative testing frequency that would almost certainly put r0 under 1. Everyone every day is an overkill - why not everyone 4 times a day? What's the rationale for it other than it sounds good?

Because going out every day and knowing you are not infected feels pretty good?

Re: A Third Solution

#483

Post by Aeolun »

danohuiginn wrote: post #439
pb wrote: 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.

Christian Drosten (German virologist, one of the most prominent experts here) has been advocating daily testing of medical workers. This is a slightly easier situation, since you can trust them to swab themselves, and the logistics for collecting samples is already in place.

Can you trust them to swab themselves if their livelihoods depend on them attending work? The testing is only one component there I think.

Re: A Third Solution

#484

Post by tmoertel »

tlb wrote: post #2

You can rank people by the likely benefit of testing them. Interestingly, it goes up as the square of the number of people they interact with daily. (Because their risk of having it increases, and also the number they are likely to spread it to.) So you can allocate tests by sorting by (# of daily contacts in a closed space) ^ 2. But as PB says, it should be practical to test everyone every day.

Since squaring is a monotone transform over nonnegative numbers, why not just sort by (# of daily contacts in a closed space)?

Re: A Third Solution

#485

Post by kwhitefoot »

Aeolun wrote: post #483
danohuiginn wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christian Drosten (German virologist, one of the most prominent experts here) has been advocating daily testing of medical workers. This is a slightly easier situation, since you can trust them to swab themselves, and the logistics for collecting samples is already in place.

Can you trust them to swab themselves if their livelihoods depend on them attending work? The testing is only one component there I think.

In Germany, and generally in Europe, yes.

Being off work for such should not result in severe reduction in income unless your income was already high; at least that is the case here in Norway where laid off personnel get 80% of their normal salary up to a limit that is above average salary.

Edit: typos

Re: A Third Solution

#486

Post by danielovichdk »

Soon you will realize, that the cost of keeping people alive times the growing number of new people on earth will be the thing that will kill us all.

Fuck your third solution.

No one has been promised a long life nor a happy life. The gift of life is imminent, and you should aim for being well and in a good state until you cannot.

Nature is the only religion than you really need to respect and obey. The rest is just for fun.

Let the virus go. Let people go. We cannot act as god, it's unfair for everyone.

Re: A Third Solution

#488

Post by concordDance »

caymanjim wrote: post #13

This isn't a unique idea. This is the mainstream view. Everyone knows we need more testing and that testing is the only way to effectively ease distancing rules. That was a pretty extensive writeup to say what we've been hearing from all rational information outlets for a month.

Testing isn't the only way.

Some people just advocate for isolating the elderly and having everyone else mingle.

The life expectancy loss from just letting it run its course would be less than a tenth of the life expectancy difference between the second and third wealth quartiles in the USA. And if we aren't worried about that difference, then why are we imposing a quality of life reduction that's much larger than the quality of life difference between those two quartiles for a much smaller gain in life expectancy? (similarly the economic costs of bringing the lowest quartile up a year or two would be much lower than the cost of this lockdown)

Re: A Third Solution

#489

Post by roelschroeven »

john4532452 wrote: post #397
johncalvinyoung wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while finding ways to connect remotely with the people who are important to us Good stop-gap, but not remotely viable long-term. Humans aren't made for isolation, even if video calls help take the edge off soon. FaceTime and Zoom have a significant cognitive load, too. As long as we're talking about how society should adapt to this sort of risk, we can't just go to living in individual hermetic pods with internet c…

> FaceTime and Zoom have a significant cognitive load, too Why the cogntive load would be lesser in a face to face conversation than digital assuming the internet connectivity is good ?

I don't know why or how, but I can confirm that remote connections have a significantly higher cognitive load than in-person interactions. Perhaps it's the same reason as why talking on the phone while driving is much more dangerous than talking to the passenger in the seat next to you.

Re: A Third Solution

#490

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

remote_phone wrote: post #421
pb wrote: 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.

You won’t be able to scale your solution before a vaccine is out, rendering your entire solution useless unfortunately. Johnson and Johnson have already started scaling their vaccine and plan to have 1 billion doses available by January 2021. If their vaccine is approved, it will be an instant solution and better than testing everyone every day. Moderna has also started the process of scaling their solution as well b…

> You won’t be able to scale your solution before a vaccine is out

Why not? Scaling a test is a completely separate exercise to scaling a vaccine, and it has the advantage that multiple proven working tests exit now, they just need to be scaled. Both can be done, by different people.

You might also find that having a vaccine and a test is better than having just a vaccine.

> If their vaccine is approved

Multiple vaccines are in development. This is not a situation where we should stop doing X now because Y _might_ happen in 8 months or more time. None of the vaccines are guaranteed to be ready and working and scaled at any given date. None of them.

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