3 ms·

This is very, very, very easy to test experimentally though, right?

• xster 6y ago
  It's already been done no? That's how Wuhan tested 11 million residents in May.
  • pmiller2 6y ago
    I'm not saying you're wrong, but, if that's the case, why haven't we used the same technique already to ramp up testing?
    • bhickey 6y ago
      This has been used at the University of Nebraska Medical Center for a few months now. They do 5-way pooling.
    • FuckButtons 6y ago
      The interview covers this to an extent, the reason is a lack of appreciation of the potential and an overestimation of the complexity. It’s a somewhat complicated thing to multiplex all the samples correctly, it’s too complex a scheme for an individual lab scientist to do, it either requires a robot or some form of semi automation, I think in Rwanda they were using a smartphone app to tell the scientists which batch to put each sample in. I think that if you could convince the worlds public health bodies, and we can get saliva sampling off the ground in combination you could get to the levels of testing needed to actually do national level surveillance.
  • bhickey 6y ago
    Wuhan tested in batches of 10.
    • jmpman 6y ago
      Do they stick the same q-tip up everyone’s nose?
      • bhickey 6y ago
        That would be a very effective way to achieve herd immunity quickly. Typically the swab is stored in a liquid viral transport medium. You perform a RNA extraction on this liquid, pool the product and run RT-PCR on it.