Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
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Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#2I think the US gov't is too mired down in ... well, problems ... to do anything this pragmatic, efficient and effective.
Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#3Wasn't this the White House strategy? They were doing daily rapid antigen tests, and have had several outbreaks.
Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#4I think the US gov't is too mired down in ... well, problems ... to do anything this pragmatic, efficient and effective.
Cornell is testing ~everyone once a week. After an initial small flurry of cases, they've picked off 1-2 cases a day before they have a chance to enter the broader populace.
https://covid.cornell.edu/testing/dashboard/
Their case-positivity rate is ~100x lower than many places in the United States.
Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#5At this point there are
Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#6I 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 to "drive the virus towards elimination within weeks". Great, now you think you've beaten it back to where it came from.
How does this do anything other than reset the clock back to last January just in time for next January? As soon as everyone lowers their guard and goes back to normal, it's going to spread again. We need immunity from a vaccine or from it running its course to be done with this.
What am I missing? Are we going to setup nationwide contact tracing this time? Just a few visitors from other countries, and we're at it again.
Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#7I 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. :(
Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#8Wasn't this the White House strategy? They were doing daily rapid antigen tests, and have had several outbreaks.
No, the White House strategy was to ridicule anyone who wore a mask. To make life miserable for you at work if you considered the virus to be a risk. The White House strategy was based on convincing people there that the virus was fake. Not anything to do with rapid daily antigen test. From what I read, that wasn't an enforced thing anyway. Sounds like people there were also just not getting the tests at all.
Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#9I think the US gov't is too mired down in ... well, problems ... to do anything this pragmatic, efficient and effective.
Cornell is testing ~everyone once a week. After an initial small flurry of cases, they've picked off 1-2 cases a day before they have a chance to enter the broader populace. https://covid.cornell.edu/testing/dashboard/ Their case-positivity rate is ~100x lower than many places in the United States.
I go to a university where we're doing something similar - weekly testing for everyone at minimum, 2x per week if you're high risk or live in a dorm with a communal bathroom. For the most part, we've been doing well, but recently we've had a small surge (~100 students in quarantine, about 4-10 cases per day, with about 4000 undergrads, only part of which are on campus at the moment).
We're in a much more suburban area than Ithaca, so that probably plays a factor.
Re: Frequent, rapid testing could turn national Covid-19 tide within weeks
#10There 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 vaccines, take them.
Literally if the vaccines were known to have side effects 10x worse than the worst side effects in history, it would still be orders of magnitude safer to give to those over 65 than not. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....