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"You cannot test 320 million people, and do followup weekly testing on them." I mean, that is factually wrong. We could actually do that. It wouldn't even be

"You cannot test 320 million people, and do followup weekly testing on them." I mean, that is factually wrong. We could actually do that. It wouldn't even be that expensive. Of course, such a thing isn't really necessary. If everyone who wanted a test could get one without delay and get results back in hours, that would be sufficient to implement test and trace effectively.

kmonsen 6y ago
Of course testing scales with the size of the country.
- pedrocr 6y ago
  So do available resources. This go to argument that things that work in smaller countries don't work in the US is bizarre. It's used in all these discussions of how things that work in the EU couldn't possibly work in the US, even though the EU has a larger population.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Nobody is talking about the EU - we're talking about NZ and Taiwan.
    - pedrocr 6y ago
      New Zeland hasn't tested more per population size than the US or the EU. If the argument is scale the EU is a counter-example. If the argument is management there are literally dozens of countries that have managed things better than the US. NZ and Taiwan are just examples of where things were done particularly well, but there are plenty of others.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    Mostly agree 100% with you, there is one caveat: you can’t restrict travel inside the USA, so it’s harder to keep things local. For scale it clearly should scale, and there should be efficiencies you can find in bigger countries.
redis_mlc 6y ago
I suggest you watch the videos from the Seattle hospital involved with the first corona patient. They emphasize that each test is expensive, involving PPE for the collector, the lab assistants, reagents and machine time. Then there's the question of accuracy and retesting to verify a positive result ...
- pedrocr 6y ago
  At this point in Europe we have private accredited labs doing tests for under 100€ on-site whenever there's an outbreak. Testing the entire US population once would cost ~30B$. Do it three times and spend 100B$ which would be incredible overtesting, and yet well below the other measures your congress has already passed in terms of cost.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Not enough labs, corona is too contagious to test only 3 or 4 times.
    - pedrocr 6y ago
      You're somehow assuming that doing things properly in the US requires a testing rate that's 1000x larger than everywhere else. I was just putting numbers to the absurd scale of testing everyone 3 times, which is far far beyond what is actually needed given examples of everywhere else.
- hcknwscommenter 6y ago
  The first corona patient is always going to be expensive. We had no testing infrastructure or really any best practices. We were unprepared in every way imaginable. Nowadays it doesn't have to be that way at all (and in fact it isn't that way). Watch videos of Korean drive through testing sites.

kmonsen 6y ago

Of course testing scales with the size of the country.

pedrocr 6y ago
So do available resources. This go to argument that things that work in smaller countries don't work in the US is bizarre. It's used in all these discussions of how things that work in the EU couldn't possibly work in the US, even though the EU has a larger population.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Nobody is talking about the EU - we're talking about NZ and Taiwan.
  - pedrocr 6y ago
    New Zeland hasn't tested more per population size than the US or the EU. If the argument is scale the EU is a counter-example. If the argument is management there are literally dozens of countries that have managed things better than the US. NZ and Taiwan are just examples of where things were done particularly well, but there are plenty of others.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Mostly agree 100% with you, there is one caveat: you can’t restrict travel inside the USA, so it’s harder to keep things local. For scale it clearly should scale, and there should be efficiencies you can find in bigger countries.

redis_mlc 6y ago

I suggest you watch the videos from the Seattle hospital involved with the first corona patient. They emphasize that each test is expensive, involving PPE for the collector, the lab assistants, reagents and machine time. Then there's the question of accuracy and retesting to verify a positive result ...

pedrocr 6y ago
At this point in Europe we have private accredited labs doing tests for under 100€ on-site whenever there's an outbreak. Testing the entire US population once would cost ~30B$. Do it three times and spend 100B$ which would be incredible overtesting, and yet well below the other measures your congress has already passed in terms of cost.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Not enough labs, corona is too contagious to test only 3 or 4 times.
  - pedrocr 6y ago
    You're somehow assuming that doing things properly in the US requires a testing rate that's 1000x larger than everywhere else. I was just putting numbers to the absurd scale of testing everyone 3 times, which is far far beyond what is actually needed given examples of everywhere else.
hcknwscommenter 6y ago
The first corona patient is always going to be expensive. We had no testing infrastructure or really any best practices. We were unprepared in every way imaginable. Nowadays it doesn't have to be that way at all (and in fact it isn't that way). Watch videos of Korean drive through testing sites.