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Exactly. The problem with self testing is trust. If you get tested by an authority - a doctor - then there is only so much discussion to be had. Whereas if you

Exactly. The problem with self testing is trust. If you get tested by an authority - a doctor - then there is only so much discussion to be had. Whereas if you are asked to test yourself in the morning, who's going to be able to verify your claimed outcome? Consider STD's and - in particular - HIV. Even with medical testing, the first basic lesson any teenager (should) get(s) is to use a condom if you don't know your partner. Moreover, it's a good thing that many legal systems (a) only grant doctors the ability to issue sick leave and (b) protect the rights of those who are issued sick leave. Labor laws being byzantine as they are, allowing employers to test their workers at their own discretion poses a wide range of prickly legal issues. The fact that South Korea or China (arguably) succeeded in curbing their epidemic happened because their public governance puts the collective above personal rights and people are totally fine with that because that's a deep part of the moral standard of their culture. Current mass quarantine exercises are painful in the short term, but if you can keep them up for significant time, it might be possible to safeguard liberties and protections that aren't self-evident. You could curtail those exercises and favor self testing in order to open up the economy quicker, but doing that in a meaningful way requires that we all are prepared to compromise on some of those protections and rights, with all the unintended societal consequences that might bring.

tooltalk 7y ago
> their public governance puts the collective above personal rights and people are totally fine with that because that's a deep part of the moral standard of their culture. I kind of disagree with that point. South Korea has succeeded in curbing the virus so far because, in large part, they are simply better prepared. To give a quick historical context, they suffered another (much smaller) coronavirus called MERS not too long ago (2015) and they ran into similar problems that many countries are now dealing with. So they spent the last 4-5 years improving their regulation (eg, quicker KFDA approval), logistics/supply chain (eg, testing kits development, distribution), and legal/public policy (eg, privacy and public disclosure) and preparing for the next virus outbreak. So, for instance, we hear a lot about their high-tech, big-data driven tracking system (using personal GPS, credit cards data) to identify hotspots/potential contacts and isolate further infections -- that didn't exist 5 years ago during the MERS outbreak because it was thought to be intrusive and violated individual rights. The intrusive search and diagnosis strategy employed today was born out of necessity; normally not permissible under their moral or cultural code. https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/south-korea-learned-its-successful-covid-19-strategy-from-a-previous-coronavirus-outbreak-mers/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/south-korea-learned-its-succ...
csense 7y ago
If it's a test you run yourself, it's absolutely true that some people won't test, or will test positive and lie about it. As long as a large majority of people do the right thing, and report / self isolate if positive, a few people cheating here and there probably won't be enough to affect the course of the disease. We need to remove incentives to cheat. I don't see much stigmatization of people with the disease in the USA, so that's not a worry. The biggest problem is economic, lost paychecks. We should probably require companies to allow sick leave for coronavirus, and have taxpayers pick up the tab for now.
hakfoo 7y ago
I could imagine some sort of signed-submission system. The test device generates a QR code you can print or screenshot, and the inspector can scan that and it's either a device-signed message or a link to a repository which would say "this test was performed by machine 123456 at 2020-04-23 10:00:20, result negative" If someone aims to defraud the system by having someone else take the test for them, or by forging the submission system, there's probably some fraud-related legal recourse.

tooltalk 7y ago

> their public governance puts the collective above personal rights and people are totally fine with that because that's a deep part of the moral standard of their culture. I kind of disagree with that point. South Korea has succeeded in curbing the virus so far because, in large part, they are simply better prepared. To give a quick historical context, they suffered another (much smaller) coronavirus called MERS not too long ago (2015) and they ran into similar problems that many countries are now dealing with. So they spent the last 4-5 years improving their regulation (eg, quicker KFDA approval), logistics/supply chain (eg, testing kits development, distribution), and legal/public policy (eg, privacy and public disclosure) and preparing for the next virus outbreak. So, for instance, we hear a lot about their high-tech, big-data driven tracking system (using personal GPS, credit cards data) to identify hotspots/potential contacts and isolate further infections -- that didn't exist 5 years ago during the MERS outbreak because it was thought to be intrusive and violated individual rights. The intrusive search and diagnosis strategy employed today was born out of necessity; normally not permissible under their moral or cultural code. https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/south-korea-learned-its-successful-covid-19-strategy-from-a-previous-coronavirus-outbreak-mers/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/south-korea-learned-its-succ...

csense 7y ago

If it's a test you run yourself, it's absolutely true that some people won't test, or will test positive and lie about it. As long as a large majority of people do the right thing, and report / self isolate if positive, a few people cheating here and there probably won't be enough to affect the course of the disease. We need to remove incentives to cheat. I don't see much stigmatization of people with the disease in the USA, so that's not a worry. The biggest problem is economic, lost paychecks. We should probably require companies to allow sick leave for coronavirus, and have taxpayers pick up the tab for now.

hakfoo 7y ago

I could imagine some sort of signed-submission system. The test device generates a QR code you can print or screenshot, and the inspector can scan that and it's either a device-signed message or a link to a repository which would say "this test was performed by machine 123456 at 2020-04-23 10:00:20, result negative" If someone aims to defraud the system by having someone else take the test for them, or by forging the submission system, there's probably some fraud-related legal recourse.