4 ms·

Testing is only really useful for a handful of things: - Identifying people who are carriers so they can be isolated - Contact tracing (pointless at the momen

Testing is only really useful for a handful of things: - Identifying people who are carriers so they can be isolated - Contact tracing (pointless at the moment, there are hundreds of thousands of people in the US who are infected) - Ruling out other diseases or conditions that are treatable Testing basically doesn't help anyone who has covid, it helps the people they would have spread it to if you can prevent that spread. There is no treatment for covid whatsoever, knowing you have it doesn't help you live longer or become healthy sooner. Knowing you don't have it, if you are already sick, might help if that lets them invest in further testing or treatments for other, non-covid, conditions. Testing is easy to point at, but at the moment more testing would have limited impact. Even if we were to test everyone in the US, it would have to be done in a relatively short window of time to allow for a significant impact, and it's unlikely that there will be enough testing capacity to use this strategy before we reach saturation levels of infection. If they test me today and I'm negative, then they test you in 6 weeks, what does that get you and me? I was very likely infected in the meantime. This could be used socially like an negative AIDS test, except instead of a few months or years the validity of a test as a social currency is about a week, making it more or less useless as a way to avoid being infected.

didericis 7y ago
The biggest benefit would come from antibody testing. If we could end social isolation for people who have antibodies, which is probably a very large number of people, that’d be a big win.
- ltbarcly3 7y ago
  I agree, once they have data to support that antibodies prevent reinfection at a level that would be contagious.
  - didericis 7y ago
    That data currently exists, although I’m not sure how definitive it is. A study was conducted where infected monkeys were exposed, which triggered detectable antibodies, and then exposed again. The monkeys did not show signs of the virus upon secondary exposure. I believe the biggest open question is the longevity of those antibodies and whether or not the virus mutates rapidly enough to eventually make the antibodies ineffective. Information comes from this video: https://youtu.be/kgzFAdYwYLM https://youtu.be/kgzFAdYwYLM
- dawnerd 7y ago
  That could be dangerous - especially if things like theme parks open up. People without antibodies might risk getting infected just so they can go out and "have fun".
  - didericis 7y ago
    That risk already exists. I think we need to be realistic about containment. A full lockdown until a vaccine is released is the safest option, but it isn’t a sustainable strategy. The main thing we should focus on is keeping high risk people away from people likely to have active infections, determining hotspots/where to increase/maintain blanket lockdowns, and detecting people with active infections early/getting them to self isolate when they’re just getting sick. If someone really wants to expose themselves, there isn’t much you can do to stop them short of martial law, which starts a feedback loop of escalating civil unrest. I think you’re likely to have more success keeping people worried about being infected away from people who either don’t care or have antibodies than keeping all the people that want to go out indoors for a year.
pdonis 7y ago
> There is no treatment for covid whatsoever I don't know where you are getting that from. There is no treatment that guarantees a cure, but there are certainly treatments that have helped some number of people. And testing of people who have symptoms is an integral part of how the health care system decides where to put its resources.
- ltbarcly3 7y ago
  > there are certainly treatments that have helped some number of people This is simply an unsupported false assertion. Name one treatment that is used for a person with a positive covid test that would be in any respect different from someone with the same symptoms and no test.
  - lurker458 7y ago
    bloodthinners to prevent clots.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > This is simply an unsupported false assertion. Oh, please. There are plenty of confirmed cases of COVID-19 (confirmed by serological testing for the virus itself) that have responded well to a number of treatments. If you were to say that there is no generally approved treatment protocol (i.e., a guideline that all health organizations agree upon), that would be true. Individual health care providers are having to develop treatment regimes on their own at this point. But the claim you made was much stronger than that. > Name one treatment that is used for a person with a positive covid test that would be in any respect different from someone with the same symptoms and no test. Without any test at all you don't even know if the person's respiratory illness is bacterial or viral, so you don't know whether or not antibiotics are indicated. If you have tested to rule out bacterial infection, that still leaves different possible viral illnesses that have different expected responses to different antiviral drugs, so you need to test further to know which drug is the most likely to help. For COVID-19 there is also HCL thrown into the mix.

didericis 7y ago

The biggest benefit would come from antibody testing. If we could end social isolation for people who have antibodies, which is probably a very large number of people, that’d be a big win.

ltbarcly3 7y ago
I agree, once they have data to support that antibodies prevent reinfection at a level that would be contagious.
- didericis 7y ago
  That data currently exists, although I’m not sure how definitive it is. A study was conducted where infected monkeys were exposed, which triggered detectable antibodies, and then exposed again. The monkeys did not show signs of the virus upon secondary exposure. I believe the biggest open question is the longevity of those antibodies and whether or not the virus mutates rapidly enough to eventually make the antibodies ineffective. Information comes from this video: https://youtu.be/kgzFAdYwYLM https://youtu.be/kgzFAdYwYLM
dawnerd 7y ago
That could be dangerous - especially if things like theme parks open up. People without antibodies might risk getting infected just so they can go out and "have fun".
- didericis 7y ago
  That risk already exists. I think we need to be realistic about containment. A full lockdown until a vaccine is released is the safest option, but it isn’t a sustainable strategy. The main thing we should focus on is keeping high risk people away from people likely to have active infections, determining hotspots/where to increase/maintain blanket lockdowns, and detecting people with active infections early/getting them to self isolate when they’re just getting sick. If someone really wants to expose themselves, there isn’t much you can do to stop them short of martial law, which starts a feedback loop of escalating civil unrest. I think you’re likely to have more success keeping people worried about being infected away from people who either don’t care or have antibodies than keeping all the people that want to go out indoors for a year.

pdonis 7y ago

> There is no treatment for covid whatsoever I don't know where you are getting that from. There is no treatment that guarantees a cure, but there are certainly treatments that have helped some number of people. And testing of people who have symptoms is an integral part of how the health care system decides where to put its resources.

ltbarcly3 7y ago
> there are certainly treatments that have helped some number of people This is simply an unsupported false assertion. Name one treatment that is used for a person with a positive covid test that would be in any respect different from someone with the same symptoms and no test.
- lurker458 7y ago
  bloodthinners to prevent clots.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > This is simply an unsupported false assertion. Oh, please. There are plenty of confirmed cases of COVID-19 (confirmed by serological testing for the virus itself) that have responded well to a number of treatments. If you were to say that there is no generally approved treatment protocol (i.e., a guideline that all health organizations agree upon), that would be true. Individual health care providers are having to develop treatment regimes on their own at this point. But the claim you made was much stronger than that. > Name one treatment that is used for a person with a positive covid test that would be in any respect different from someone with the same symptoms and no test. Without any test at all you don't even know if the person's respiratory illness is bacterial or viral, so you don't know whether or not antibiotics are indicated. If you have tested to rule out bacterial infection, that still leaves different possible viral illnesses that have different expected responses to different antiviral drugs, so you need to test further to know which drug is the most likely to help. For COVID-19 there is also HCL thrown into the mix.