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Your state has utterly failed to ramp up testing to get to the recommended < 5% positive test rate that would have allowed contact tracing to function. Testing

by orasis 6y ago

Your state has utterly failed to ramp up testing to get to the recommended < 5% positive test rate that would have allowed contact tracing to function. Testing only symptomatic people is not in any way virtuous.

Bootwizard 6y ago
I never said it was, I simply said that is what is happening. Also are you attempting to imply that increased testing will somehow reveal a low positivity rate?
- orasis 6y ago
  Of course the positive rate will go down as testing increases. A low positive rate means you’re detecting a significant number of the cases, which is necessary for contact tracing and isolation.
makomk 6y ago
The idea that failing to get <5% positive test rate shows that a state has failed to ramp up testing is an... interesting one. It seems to have come from South Korea's goal of 5% positive tests, except their target was about decreasing the total number of cases via partial lockdown rather than increasing the number of tests. However, since that doesn't work so well for the narrative that the lockdown was the result of incompetent Republicans failing at testing, publications like the New York Times instead pushed the claim that the US needed to ramp up testing in order to reach this and catch up with South Korea. (This is almost certainly a stupid idea - trying to play catch-up with exponential growth is pretty futile, and it makes absolutely no sense to use the same target for a lagging measure of a growing epidemic as for a shrinking one. It worked great for stretching out the narrative that the US was behind South Korea in coronavirus testing well beyond the point it was actually true those.)
- bonzini 6y ago
  > it makes absolutely no sense to use the same target for a lagging measure of a growing epidemic as for a shrinking one Indeed that measure is unattainable in a growing epidemic, but shrinking it should have been the first target. That some states are moving away from a 5% positivity target is just the symptom that those (mostly Republican) states have failed at achieving the purpose of the lockdown and are still months away from being able to implement contact tracing.
- orasis 6y ago
  It takes about a 3-5% positive rate to ensure that you’re getting significant enough coverage to catch a large number of cases. It’s a log scale of diminishing returns below that level but above that you’re missing too many cases for isolation and contact tracing to be effective.

by orasis 6y ago

Bootwizard 6y ago

I never said it was, I simply said that is what is happening. Also are you attempting to imply that increased testing will somehow reveal a low positivity rate?

orasis 6y ago
Of course the positive rate will go down as testing increases. A low positive rate means you’re detecting a significant number of the cases, which is necessary for contact tracing and isolation.

makomk 6y ago

The idea that failing to get <5% positive test rate shows that a state has failed to ramp up testing is an... interesting one. It seems to have come from South Korea's goal of 5% positive tests, except their target was about decreasing the total number of cases via partial lockdown rather than increasing the number of tests. However, since that doesn't work so well for the narrative that the lockdown was the result of incompetent Republicans failing at testing, publications like the New York Times instead pushed the claim that the US needed to ramp up testing in order to reach this and catch up with South Korea. (This is almost certainly a stupid idea - trying to play catch-up with exponential growth is pretty futile, and it makes absolutely no sense to use the same target for a lagging measure of a growing epidemic as for a shrinking one. It worked great for stretching out the narrative that the US was behind South Korea in coronavirus testing well beyond the point it was actually true those.)

bonzini 6y ago
> it makes absolutely no sense to use the same target for a lagging measure of a growing epidemic as for a shrinking one Indeed that measure is unattainable in a growing epidemic, but shrinking it should have been the first target. That some states are moving away from a 5% positivity target is just the symptom that those (mostly Republican) states have failed at achieving the purpose of the lockdown and are still months away from being able to implement contact tracing.
orasis 6y ago
It takes about a 3-5% positive rate to ensure that you’re getting significant enough coverage to catch a large number of cases. It’s a log scale of diminishing returns below that level but above that you’re missing too many cases for isolation and contact tracing to be effective.