4 ms·

This, unless we do that there is no way to establish true IFR so we wont know until its in hindsight how deadly the covid is? I dont know why this is not the pr

This, unless we do that there is no way to establish true IFR so we wont know until its in hindsight how deadly the covid is? I dont know why this is not the priority 1 for the CDC. on the similar lines, Germany is doing something clever, they are mixing samples to do a kind of binary search with covid tests so they can clear a large number of people with few tests. we should do that without waiting for antibody tests etc. it should be noted that this approach would only work if the infected sample set is very small so the window of doing this is going to close soon.

lmm 7y ago
> I dont know why this is not the priority 1 for the CDC. What actions would we do differently based on the result? Not knowing is frustrating for everyone, but we should save our resources for stuff that's actually going to improve outcomes.
- DesiLurker 7y ago
  IFR is a really important peice of information as it effects the overall management of outbreak. consider these scenarios: A) IFR is really low and most people dont seen anything past slight discomfort, so given the number of 'cases' being treated now it would mean a much larger portion of populus is already infected. translation we can reach herd immunity faster & more safely. B) IFR is high (closer to CFR), which means the current case count is more or less in line with actual infected people. which means we really need to focus on lockdown and slow the growth so we can manage the hospital capacity. as you can see both of these scenarios have different optimal responses but we cannot decide unless we get this info. so far we only have a few biased sample sets (from us pov) diamond cruise & skorea which dont shed much light on our situation.
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  Testing should be saved for two purposes: 1) to guide care in a hospital setting. 2) to determine the current status of the population. Randomized testing would give us a view into where the virus is spreading and allow us to allocate resources effectively. It would also give us a view into what percentage of a given population is a carrier, or has already recovered. All of these data would be greatly helpful. What isn’t helpful is using tests on people who aren’t either part of a study or under active care.
- timr 7y ago
  Literally every epidemic model being used to justify lockdowns depends on IFR as a critical parameter, and the best we can do right now is guess at the value. If the IFR is 1/10th (quite possible!) or 1/50th (less likely, but still possible) of the current estimate, it completely changes the calculus for locking things down. A fifty fold under-estimate of infections would mean that approximately half of NYC has already been infected, for example, and that we're not far from herd immunity. We just don't know.
zelos 7y ago
> Germany is doing something clever, they are mixing samples to do a kind of binary search... Do you have a link for that? I can find some papers suggesting you can detect one positive sample mixed with 31 negative, but nothing about that being applied.
- eneveu 7y ago
  Just googled this and I found a discussion here: https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1245037948099330048 https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1245037948099330048 "Testing capacity in Germany will be increased by up to factor 10 to up to 400,000 a day (!) by doing pooled testing. E.g mix 16 samples and if negative - all are negative, otherwise binary search for the positive(s). Could of course be used worldwide." He quotes a tweet with a link to this study: https://idw-online.de/de/news743899 https://idw-online.de/de/news743899

lmm 7y ago

> I dont know why this is not the priority 1 for the CDC. What actions would we do differently based on the result? Not knowing is frustrating for everyone, but we should save our resources for stuff that's actually going to improve outcomes.

DesiLurker 7y ago
IFR is a really important peice of information as it effects the overall management of outbreak. consider these scenarios: A) IFR is really low and most people dont seen anything past slight discomfort, so given the number of 'cases' being treated now it would mean a much larger portion of populus is already infected. translation we can reach herd immunity faster & more safely. B) IFR is high (closer to CFR), which means the current case count is more or less in line with actual infected people. which means we really need to focus on lockdown and slow the growth so we can manage the hospital capacity. as you can see both of these scenarios have different optimal responses but we cannot decide unless we get this info. so far we only have a few biased sample sets (from us pov) diamond cruise & skorea which dont shed much light on our situation.
Skunkleton 7y ago
Testing should be saved for two purposes: 1) to guide care in a hospital setting. 2) to determine the current status of the population. Randomized testing would give us a view into where the virus is spreading and allow us to allocate resources effectively. It would also give us a view into what percentage of a given population is a carrier, or has already recovered. All of these data would be greatly helpful. What isn’t helpful is using tests on people who aren’t either part of a study or under active care.
timr 7y ago
Literally every epidemic model being used to justify lockdowns depends on IFR as a critical parameter, and the best we can do right now is guess at the value. If the IFR is 1/10th (quite possible!) or 1/50th (less likely, but still possible) of the current estimate, it completely changes the calculus for locking things down. A fifty fold under-estimate of infections would mean that approximately half of NYC has already been infected, for example, and that we're not far from herd immunity. We just don't know.

zelos 7y ago

> Germany is doing something clever, they are mixing samples to do a kind of binary search... Do you have a link for that? I can find some papers suggesting you can detect one positive sample mixed with 31 negative, but nothing about that being applied.

eneveu 7y ago
Just googled this and I found a discussion here: https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1245037948099330048 https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1245037948099330048 "Testing capacity in Germany will be increased by up to factor 10 to up to 400,000 a day (!) by doing pooled testing. E.g mix 16 samples and if negative - all are negative, otherwise binary search for the positive(s). Could of course be used worldwide." He quotes a tweet with a link to this study: https://idw-online.de/de/news743899 https://idw-online.de/de/news743899