"Cash Rewards" (cashrewards)
03/27/2020 at 12:22 • Filed to: None
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"Cash Rewards" (cashrewards)
03/27/2020 at 12:22 • Filed to: None | 1
| 12 |
Well, not physically, but one of my best friends. Said Wednesday there was no cases in his county, but was still relatively isolating himself and his family. Social distancing. Everything he’s supposed to. Texted last night to say he has a fever, dry cough, the works. This morning tested negative for both strep and flu. Fucking hell.
ttyymmnn
> Cash Rewards
03/27/2020 at 12:29 |
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And they didn’t test him for Covid because......
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Cash Rewards
> ttyymmnn
03/27/2020 at 12:45 |
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They'll test his wife when she's inevitably symptomatic, and then him when she's positive. Makes sense, right....?
Chariotoflove
> Cash Rewards
03/27/2020 at 13:33 |
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I think so far the testing has been used more for documentation purposes rather than diagnostic ones, until the patient needs medical care where knowing the cover status might change treatment decisions.
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Cash Rewards
> Chariotoflove
03/27/2020 at 13:37 |
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Thats likely true, but also dumb compared to what other countries (south Korea) are doing
facw
> Chariotoflove
03/27/2020 at 13:45 |
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This seems like sort of the opposite of how it should be working. If you want to stop the spread, you should be testing cases where the diagnosis is in doubt (and maybe even randomly). If you think there’s a high likelihood they would test positive, then just treat them on that assumption. Ultimately, if we want to end these lockdowns without everyone immediately getting sick, we need to test lots of people who probably don’t have it, so that we can isolate just the ones that actually do.
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Chariotoflove
> facw
03/27/2020 at 13:53 |
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Do they have enough tests to do that though? If the test they have now can detect virus reliably in an asymptomatic person, then the ideal case would be to test everyone as a matter of course and then isolate the positives. Theoretically then, you wouldn't need the flavors of lockdown that various communities are enacting, at least not for very long. But in the absence of that capability, it seems the best thing you can do is keep everyone from mingling as much as possible and test the people you have reason to suspect might be positive.
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Chariotoflove
> Cash Rewards
03/27/2020 at 13:55 |
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If we had the capability to test everyone, that would be ideal, but they seem to be trying to strike an acceptable compromise with the number of tests they have now. Not saying it’s good, but it may be the best they can do right now?
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facw
> Chariotoflove
03/27/2020 at 13:56 |
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They don’t have them. Hopefully we can get them. The fact we’ve let this spread so much means that we’ll need many more than other countries (possibly excepting China). The numbers have exploded dramatically just in the past week though, and hopefully we can keep at that until we can move to a test and trace (and test) approach.
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Cash Rewards
> Chariotoflove
03/27/2020 at 14:20 |
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Yes, you’re right, but that’s sort of where the problem is for me. If we had just adopted WHO’s test like the rest of the world, we’d be there. Or a lot closer. But we di cked around trying to make our own, for no real good reason.
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Chariotoflove
> Cash Rewards
03/27/2020 at 15:29 |
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I don’t think that’s the only problem. From what I read, it’s also a problem of throughput. It’s not just that the test is sitting on a shelf somewhere. they were using a PCR test that needs enough equipment capacity to run. I think they are using a higher throughput test now, but still, making and analyzing over 300M of them is a challenge.
Now, having said that, I feel I should spend a few minutes updating myself on the testing methods and timeline, because my knowledge probably has big holes.
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Chariotoflove
> facw
03/27/2020 at 15:30 |
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I’m not sure we had the throughput to analyze all the sample we would have collected initially, in the ideal case, but I have to go educate myself on it a little better before I say anything else.
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Cash Rewards
> Chariotoflove
03/27/2020 at 16:36 |
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Same. And it's been quite a few years since I've been running PCR, and high throughput was just starting to be a thing.