3 ms·
Here on the west coast the nominal strategy is the traditional one: testing and contact tracing to get R<1. In order to do that, you need enough testing capaci
by chris_va 6y ago
Here on the west coast the nominal strategy is the traditional one: testing and contact tracing to get R<1.
In order to do that, you need enough testing capacity for anyone with similar symptoms (which we finally have), though most of those are other conditions. You also need to do contact tracing on positives, and test all of those folks. That's 10-20x the number of true positives, so you can do the math on how many tests you need.
Large events can seed massive hotspots, so I imagine some limitations on gatherings and mask requirements will stay in place until either testing is fully ubiquitous (test everyone), or a vaccine is developed.
- cm2187 6y agoBut ubiquitous testing doesn’t prevent people from getting sick, and presumably we do not plan to have all these constraints ad vitam. So implicitly it means they are either banking on a vaccine in the short term or this virus going away by itself. These are strong assumptions, we are told by scientists in the UK that a safe and efficient vaccine may or may not be found. [1] [1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-bank-on-a-coronavirus-vaccine-says-sir-patrick-vallance-rzs2pthcj https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-bank-on-a-coronaviru...
- chris_va 6y agoUbiquitous testing would be sufficient to stop the epidemic.
- glofish 6y agoI don't think that is realistic to expect unless testing would be as simple as blowing into a sensor. why not apply this to every disease then? We could then stop every transmissible disease once and for all. you know what the real solution is? What mother nature already gives you, your immune system. The key is finding out how to help the body avoid severe reactions. That is the path of success, finding out how to keep people's own bodies over-reacting, then everyone could deal with it just fine.
- chris_va 6y agoSuch a thing is feasible for most infectious diseases with sufficient resources. You'd be surprised by how little funding virology research gets.
- cm2187 6y agoYou mean ubiquitous testing forever? It only took one guy in China to infect tens of millions of people. This virus is bound to come back again and again. I am not sure this is a long term solution. And it is possible that this virus goes away by itself (ie it won’t be reimported). Apparently some viruses do. But if it is the assumption it should be stated.
- glofish 6y agoat what point would you think that no contact tracing is necessary? Should you track people that are not at risk at all, just because some people are? What percent of those people should be at risk for this to make sense? these are the type of issues that the original post talks about, real numbers that allow you o see what exactly is being traded off for what how mild should a disease (in general) be for this to not be necessary? would you advocate contact tracing for the flu? Should we contact trace HIV?
- chris_va 6y agoIf you get R<1, eventually the disease will die out (see SARS-1). Coronavirus get deletions, etc. A vaccine will likely be developed (we got lucky, at first glance, that SARS antigens are fairly stable). All these things take time. You don't "track" people with contact tracing, you ask positive cases who they came in contact with and ask those people to get tested. We could probably "eliminate" influenza with ubiquitous testing (at least for 99.99% of the human race). There just isn't an obvious entity to fund such an effort. There should be, but there isn't. Contact tracing is done for HIV.