8 ms·

The explosion of new coronavirus tests that could help to end the pandemic

74 points by akbarnama 6y ago

pmoriarty 6y ago
The most promising plan I've heard along these lines is detailed in a recent episode of This Week in Virology.[1] We could have this disease under control by the time school starts by giving everyone (or at least everyone in highly affected areas) tests every day. This is possible, practical, and affordable. The technology for fast pregnancy-test style tests for COVID-19 exists right now, and they could cost as little as $1 per test. The reason these tests aren't being used yet is because of the FDA's misguided requirements for extremely high sensitivity for COVID-19 tests. If these requirements could be relaxed to allow lower-sensitivity tests, then these tests could go out on the market... or, better yet, the government could take over and ensure everyone gets tested with these tests every day for $1 a test. Even a more limited plan of testing just all schoolkids every day for $1 a test would be way better than what we've got now. [1] - Starting at about 6'20" in to episode 640: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/
- ISL 6y ago
  To put this idea in perspective, there are ~56 million students in the US. To do this daily for an entire school year at $1/test would cost ~1% of the trillion dollars allocated spent in the first relief bill. Testing and contact tracing is a bargain compared to continuing to pay everyone to stay home. I don't understand why we're not seeing for-real effective contact tracing from our governments yet.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Some of us are seeing effective contact tracing. The most effective step here, I believe, was requiring at-the-door call-backs to verify numbers given by people going clubbing. (We're currently running 11/million new cases per day @ 3,2% unemployment. At one point our per capita case rate was much worse than that in the States.) https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/03/27/coronavirus-visualisez-les-pays-qui-ont-aplati-la-courbe-de-l-infection-et-ceux-qui-n-y-sont-pas-encore-parvenus_6034627_4355770.html https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/03/27/coro...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - fouc 6y ago
    I would just consider that it's about $30/mo per student. Cheap enough to roll into the tuition costs for most schools I imagine. Prices would come down fast as this scaled up too
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Preventative measures are often orders of magnitude cheaper than whatever it costs to clean up later.
  - vmchale 6y ago
    > I don't understand why we're not seeing for-real effective contact tracing from our governments yet. The trump administration does the worst thing possible in any situation.
    - dang 6y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? Particularly please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. Comments like this lead nowhere good. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - xienze 6y ago
    > To put this idea in perspective, there are ~56 million students in the US. To do this daily for an entire school year at $1/test would cost ~1% of the trillion dollars allocated spent in the first relief bill. Which $1 test currently in production would this be? And as a point of context, there’s been nowhere near the ~10B tests (I assume you’re talking about a 180 day school year) you’re proposing administered _worldwide_. Furthermore, what factory produces and ships 56 million of anything on a daily basis? I’ve said this before but I think HN readers suffer from thinking that everything in the world works like AWS in that you can just spin up unlimited “anything” on a moment’s notice.
    - acqq 6y ago
      > Which $1 test currently in production would this be? It's not about what's "currently in production." It's about what should be a strategic goal to produce the bigger number of tests and use them frequently. 1) The current arguments against the speed tests is that they are not "sensitive" enough. But if one's goal is to do day to day testing and isolating from some environment those that can spread, there's no necessity to detect the RNA leftovers detected by the "sensitive" tests. Rather, the goal is to detect those that are the "powerful spreaders" who in fact have way more instances of virus present in their samples at the moment they are tested. Apparently even the "less sensitive" tests are in fact sensitive enough to catch these who produce a lot of virus. Those who produce a lot of virus have many orders of magnitude more virus RNA present in their samples than those who are in the phase of infection where they aren't so dangerously infective. Once one accepts that the "ultimate sensitivity" is not necessary, much cheaper tests than those currently used are possible. 2) Even if a single test is still e.g. 20 USD, just stating the goal of having very frequent and regular tests for the sole purpose of protecting a big group of people allows for "pooling" the tests, e.g. testing 20 people together using just one test. Running the numbers for a university of 1000 people: 1000 / 20 = 50 means only 50 tests per day allow for testing for protection of all 1000 people. Once one batch of 20 is positive, which should not happen every day, additional 20 tests allow for recognizing the one who is the actual carrier. Again, as those that are "dangerous" have many orders of magnitude more virus in the samples, pooling of 20 samples together should be still keep the result detectable enough. 3) Moreover, the test should be less complicated as the one used now: the idea is to test the spit, not to swab the deeps inside of the head. 4) Expensive and slow tests are simply not giving us the possibility to do these "detect early and often" strategies. The really sensitive PCR tests are indeed expensive and aren't as fast as the less expensive can be. How can the cheap test be made? For example, by designing them to be used the same way the diabetics test their blood sugar levels: https://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/blood-glucose-monitoring https://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/blood-glucose-monitorin... Or even the way the pregnancy tests work: https://www.123rf.com/photo_107386863_positive-pregnancy-test-result-with-two-strips-on-the-table-two-stripes-on-a-test-.html https://www.123rf.com/photo_107386863_positive-pregnancy-tes... In short, just new test strips. Moreover, there are already companies that did some development of such kinds of tests. It could be done, but it depends on the goals being set. China successfully used pooling to test the population of 11 million: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/how-china-tested-11-million-people-for-virus-in-just-two-weeks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/how-china...
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    The money is barely going to individuals. $35,000 USD per tax payer (at least) has been pushed through. How much went to individuals? A few thousand for the people that got any money at all. The entire base money supply of the US shot up and the ramifications will be felt for decades. Casinos and steak houses received bail outs, the money was never meant to be used wisely.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Good luck convincing people who refuse to wear a mask to subject themselves to a test every day.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    If testing was required to go to work, go to school, enter a restaurant, a bar, or a theater, people would do it.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Wearing a mask is required for many of these activities are people still refuse.
      - fouc 6y ago
        No mask, no service.. surely businesses can refuse service out of safety concerns
        bolasanibk 6y ago
        It's not always that simple: French bus driver attacked over mask rules dies [https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/11/europe/france-philippe-monguillot-bus-driver-dies-coronavirus-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/11/europe/france-philippe-mongui...]
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        I mean, murders also illegal. The legality of enforcing a mask order is easy, the process of actually enforcing that rule might not be.
        dvdbloc 6y ago
        Can confirm that every day in Seattle I am seeing customers not wearing masks and businesses serving them without issue even though they are not allowed to.
- ttul 6y ago
  Everyone must listen to TWIV. It’s actually the best podcast on any topic, let alone virology.
- est31 6y ago
  For those who don't like videos, Michael Mina has also made an op-ed in the NYT (mentioned in the TWIV episode linked): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests...
- irrational 6y ago
  How would the testing once a day happen? Would people take the tests at home and self report? Would everyone have to go to a central location?
  - iso947 6y ago
    With a “pee on stick” test you’d do it every day before heading out and be trusted to self report of positive (presumably you’d then do a better lab based test which could return within 24 hours to confirm the case)
    - irrational 6y ago
      Are there lab tests that return in 24 hours? Two of my kids recently got lab tested (thankfully both negative) in 2 different states and both took 72 hours to get results back.
      - pmoriarty 6y ago
        Here are some references to quick COVID-19 tests: "Blood test detects positive COVID-19 result in 20 minutes" - https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-blood-positive-covid-result-minutes.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-blood-positive-covid-... "Fresno health clinic offering rapid COVID-19 tests that give results in minutes" - https://abc30.com/fresno-county-coronavirus-covid-19-everyday-health-care-rapid-tests/6318753/ https://abc30.com/fresno-county-coronavirus-covid-19-everyda... "15-minute COVID-19 test proves accurate at confirming infection" - https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/05/08/15-minute-COVID-19-test-proves-accurate-at-confirming-infection/6641588951991/ https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/05/08/15-minute-COVID-1... "New rapid COVID-19 test approved by FDA, results in as little as 15 minutes" - https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/video/new-rapid-covid-19-test-approved-by-fda-results-in-as-little-as-15-minutes/vi-BB16q4Qe https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/video/new-rapid-covid-19-te... "A new COVID-19 test can return results in 5 minutes" - https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/28/21197944/coronavirus-test-fast-doctors-office-abbott-fda https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/28/21197944/coronavirus-test...
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  That requires an actual functional government. This is never happening with Trump.
- ykevinator 6y ago
  "because" is a stretch and it might be a $1 in variable cost but it's trillions in fixed costs. The FDA is correct to be cautious
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- manicdee 6y ago
  Tests aren’t going to stop the virus. Self-isolation, social distancing, proper hygiene are going to slow the virus down. To implement those properly requires paying low-income workers to stay home. A vaccine will stop the virus, but we don’t have one yet. It looks like it will be a year or more for a vaccine to be available.
aaron695 6y ago
I would say, testing being the solution is one thing that wasn't pushed in January or even pre C19 that I saw. It wasn't mentioned in "Contagion" for instance. A vaccination or cure was always known as not possible but the media pushed these false hopes. In part I suspect this is the usual medial malpractice of doctors keeping their profession wealthy and keeping everything they can tied up and regulated. I'd be interested to look at HIV and testing in the 80/90s to see whether at home tests were stopped by doctors or technology.
- ladberg 6y ago
  In "Contagion" almost everyone who got it showed symptoms immediately and died within a few days, so testing wasn't really a solution.
  - aaron695 6y ago
    It's a tiny bit of my point. That's not true generally. Perhaps because of this misconception we are missing out on a paradigm shift, testing technology needs more money but first get comfortable with anyone using the test and making mistakes, which includes the real poor, including illiterate people. Because medical has been locked up for so long, researchers and governments aren't looking at people looking after themselves.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  No, a vaccination was not always known as not possible. It still isn't, in fact. And amazing amounts of effort are being spent to make the administration of tests easier. The first tests required trained research technicians. Today tests are still not widespread because they require specialized machinery or other materials. If it were possible to pee on a stick as a self test, everyone would be ecstatic - but it's not, so far. The pandemic planning stuff I've read from before this year seems to suffer from a number of assumptions that were violated by covid, from asymptomatic transmission to the long lead time. E.g in MERS or Ebola or even flu, the infectious but asymptomatic period is more like Contagion. You don't have to worry about infected people wandering around town for a week or two. Most planning mentions the need for having tests, and quickly gathering materials etc, and then moves on to tactics for containment and vaccine development. Where testing is focused on, it's as a way to differentiate between people who have symptoms but are actually infected with a non-panfemic disease, so that resources aren't wasted quarantining them. I haven't yet found a scenario studied with a long lead time and possible low level or asymptomatic presentation as standard.
ggm 6y ago
The pooled sample testing method looks tractable.
- lps41 6y ago
  Yes, but it’s only more efficient than testing everybody if you are unlikely to get a positive result. So, in places where covid is not widely spreading.
  - lern_too_spel 6y ago
    The method described in the article isn't a traditional pooled test. Each sample is marked, and it tests and reports on all samples at once.
paulie_a 6y ago
The article says new tests, is that a test for a new person. Or simply a test in a certain time frame I assume it is the latter, which means the stats can be skwed somewhat. I can't say what degree it would be but I've had 8 tests. Which means I show up in the testing stats 8 times. My situation is somewhat unique, but I'm not alone. Hence the distinction I am curious about.
pragnesh 6y ago
https://youtu.be/857B7u_vUBc https://youtu.be/857B7u_vUBc indian company developed automatic test machine
Barrin92 6y ago
Testing is great but you can do all the testing in the world, if the population is not compliant and superspreaders in particular simply ignore all health guidelines and don't even show up for tests you've gained nothing. The pandemic already is under control in most places and I'm not sure testing had all that much to do with it. The successful strategy seems to be pretty straight forward. Initial lockdowns if the country is hit badly to curb the disease, then strong compliance with basic health guidelines and regional lockdowns if necessary. Japan has performed about 800k tests in total on a population of ~120 million, which is lower than most other countries by a magnitude and about 50 times less than the US, but has had very few excess deaths. At the end of the day the virus cares about behaviour, not testing.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  >The pandemic already is under control in most places This is an interesting claim. I think it's potentially misleading, and possibly motivated by a need to portray places where it isn't under control as isolated. I suppose it might be technically correct if you count a list of "places" and divide the number where it is growing rapidly by the number where it isn't. However, the results you get are very dependent on how you define a "place". If you divide the world into Europe, North America, Asia, South America, Africa, and Oceania, the only one that definitely seems to be under control right now is Oceania. Africa and Europe are growing much slower than the others, but not obviously "under control", and Asia notably is seeing over 60,000 new cases per day even though it previously seemed to be under control until India started reporting large increases. If you count countries, you could claim that about 3/4 of them have it under control, but that might not be permanent. Considering Brazil (which I think people would generally consider to have a serious problem right now) and everywhere the epidemic is growing faster, it is a minority of countries, but very near half of the world population. Source (as usual) is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
ccvannorman 6y ago
Some AI researchers[0] claim to be able to detect the virus by the sound of your voice via speech signals. They took samples of youtube celebrities who were recording videos at a time they were infected, but just before their diagnosis, as part of their positive-case labeled data. Maybe soon we'll have dogs that can smell Coronavirus too[1]! [0] http://news.mit.edu/2020/signs-covid-19-may-be-hidden-speech-signals-0708 http://news.mit.edu/2020/signs-covid-19-may-be-hidden-speech... [1] https://www.ecowatch.com/dogs-smell-covid-19-2646105814.html https://www.ecowatch.com/dogs-smell-covid-19-2646105814.html

74 points by akbarnama 6y ago

The most promising plan I've heard along these lines is detailed in a recent episode of This Week in Virology.[1] We could have this disease under control by the time school starts by giving everyone (or at least everyone in highly affected areas) tests every day. This is possible, practical, and affordable. The technology for fast pregnancy-test style tests for COVID-19 exists right now, and they could cost as little as $1 per test. The reason these tests aren't being used yet is because of the FDA's misguided requirements for extremely high sensitivity for COVID-19 tests. If these requirements could be relaxed to allow lower-sensitivity tests, then these tests could go out on the market... or, better yet, the government could take over and ensure everyone gets tested with these tests every day for $1 a test. Even a more limited plan of testing just all schoolkids every day for $1 a test would be way better than what we've got now. [1] - Starting at about 6'20" in to episode 640: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/

ISL 6y ago
To put this idea in perspective, there are ~56 million students in the US. To do this daily for an entire school year at $1/test would cost ~1% of the trillion dollars allocated spent in the first relief bill. Testing and contact tracing is a bargain compared to continuing to pay everyone to stay home. I don't understand why we're not seeing for-real effective contact tracing from our governments yet.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Some of us are seeing effective contact tracing. The most effective step here, I believe, was requiring at-the-door call-backs to verify numbers given by people going clubbing. (We're currently running 11/million new cases per day @ 3,2% unemployment. At one point our per capita case rate was much worse than that in the States.) https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/03/27/coronavirus-visualisez-les-pays-qui-ont-aplati-la-courbe-de-l-infection-et-ceux-qui-n-y-sont-pas-encore-parvenus_6034627_4355770.html https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/03/27/coro...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fouc 6y ago
  I would just consider that it's about $30/mo per student. Cheap enough to roll into the tuition costs for most schools I imagine. Prices would come down fast as this scaled up too
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Preventative measures are often orders of magnitude cheaper than whatever it costs to clean up later.
- vmchale 6y ago
  > I don't understand why we're not seeing for-real effective contact tracing from our governments yet. The trump administration does the worst thing possible in any situation.
  - dang 6y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? Particularly please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. Comments like this lead nowhere good. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- xienze 6y ago
  > To put this idea in perspective, there are ~56 million students in the US. To do this daily for an entire school year at $1/test would cost ~1% of the trillion dollars allocated spent in the first relief bill. Which $1 test currently in production would this be? And as a point of context, there’s been nowhere near the ~10B tests (I assume you’re talking about a 180 day school year) you’re proposing administered _worldwide_. Furthermore, what factory produces and ships 56 million of anything on a daily basis? I’ve said this before but I think HN readers suffer from thinking that everything in the world works like AWS in that you can just spin up unlimited “anything” on a moment’s notice.
  - acqq 6y ago
    > Which $1 test currently in production would this be? It's not about what's "currently in production." It's about what should be a strategic goal to produce the bigger number of tests and use them frequently. 1) The current arguments against the speed tests is that they are not "sensitive" enough. But if one's goal is to do day to day testing and isolating from some environment those that can spread, there's no necessity to detect the RNA leftovers detected by the "sensitive" tests. Rather, the goal is to detect those that are the "powerful spreaders" who in fact have way more instances of virus present in their samples at the moment they are tested. Apparently even the "less sensitive" tests are in fact sensitive enough to catch these who produce a lot of virus. Those who produce a lot of virus have many orders of magnitude more virus RNA present in their samples than those who are in the phase of infection where they aren't so dangerously infective. Once one accepts that the "ultimate sensitivity" is not necessary, much cheaper tests than those currently used are possible. 2) Even if a single test is still e.g. 20 USD, just stating the goal of having very frequent and regular tests for the sole purpose of protecting a big group of people allows for "pooling" the tests, e.g. testing 20 people together using just one test. Running the numbers for a university of 1000 people: 1000 / 20 = 50 means only 50 tests per day allow for testing for protection of all 1000 people. Once one batch of 20 is positive, which should not happen every day, additional 20 tests allow for recognizing the one who is the actual carrier. Again, as those that are "dangerous" have many orders of magnitude more virus in the samples, pooling of 20 samples together should be still keep the result detectable enough. 3) Moreover, the test should be less complicated as the one used now: the idea is to test the spit, not to swab the deeps inside of the head. 4) Expensive and slow tests are simply not giving us the possibility to do these "detect early and often" strategies. The really sensitive PCR tests are indeed expensive and aren't as fast as the less expensive can be. How can the cheap test be made? For example, by designing them to be used the same way the diabetics test their blood sugar levels: https://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/blood-glucose-monitoring https://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/blood-glucose-monitorin... Or even the way the pregnancy tests work: https://www.123rf.com/photo_107386863_positive-pregnancy-test-result-with-two-strips-on-the-table-two-stripes-on-a-test-.html https://www.123rf.com/photo_107386863_positive-pregnancy-tes... In short, just new test strips. Moreover, there are already companies that did some development of such kinds of tests. It could be done, but it depends on the goals being set. China successfully used pooling to test the population of 11 million: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/how-china-tested-11-million-people-for-virus-in-just-two-weeks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/how-china...
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  The money is barely going to individuals. $35,000 USD per tax payer (at least) has been pushed through. How much went to individuals? A few thousand for the people that got any money at all. The entire base money supply of the US shot up and the ramifications will be felt for decades. Casinos and steak houses received bail outs, the money was never meant to be used wisely.
adrianN 6y ago
Good luck convincing people who refuse to wear a mask to subject themselves to a test every day.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  If testing was required to go to work, go to school, enter a restaurant, a bar, or a theater, people would do it.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Wearing a mask is required for many of these activities are people still refuse.
    - fouc 6y ago
      No mask, no service.. surely businesses can refuse service out of safety concerns
      - bolasanibk 6y ago
        It's not always that simple: French bus driver attacked over mask rules dies [https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/11/europe/france-philippe-monguillot-bus-driver-dies-coronavirus-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/11/europe/france-philippe-mongui...]
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        I mean, murders also illegal. The legality of enforcing a mask order is easy, the process of actually enforcing that rule might not be.
      - dvdbloc 6y ago
        Can confirm that every day in Seattle I am seeing customers not wearing masks and businesses serving them without issue even though they are not allowed to.
ttul 6y ago
Everyone must listen to TWIV. It’s actually the best podcast on any topic, let alone virology.
est31 6y ago
For those who don't like videos, Michael Mina has also made an op-ed in the NYT (mentioned in the TWIV episode linked): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests...
irrational 6y ago
How would the testing once a day happen? Would people take the tests at home and self report? Would everyone have to go to a central location?
- iso947 6y ago
  With a “pee on stick” test you’d do it every day before heading out and be trusted to self report of positive (presumably you’d then do a better lab based test which could return within 24 hours to confirm the case)
  - irrational 6y ago
    Are there lab tests that return in 24 hours? Two of my kids recently got lab tested (thankfully both negative) in 2 different states and both took 72 hours to get results back.
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      Here are some references to quick COVID-19 tests: "Blood test detects positive COVID-19 result in 20 minutes" - https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-blood-positive-covid-result-minutes.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-blood-positive-covid-... "Fresno health clinic offering rapid COVID-19 tests that give results in minutes" - https://abc30.com/fresno-county-coronavirus-covid-19-everyday-health-care-rapid-tests/6318753/ https://abc30.com/fresno-county-coronavirus-covid-19-everyda... "15-minute COVID-19 test proves accurate at confirming infection" - https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/05/08/15-minute-COVID-19-test-proves-accurate-at-confirming-infection/6641588951991/ https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/05/08/15-minute-COVID-1... "New rapid COVID-19 test approved by FDA, results in as little as 15 minutes" - https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/video/new-rapid-covid-19-test-approved-by-fda-results-in-as-little-as-15-minutes/vi-BB16q4Qe https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/video/new-rapid-covid-19-te... "A new COVID-19 test can return results in 5 minutes" - https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/28/21197944/coronavirus-test-fast-doctors-office-abbott-fda https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/28/21197944/coronavirus-test...
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
That requires an actual functional government. This is never happening with Trump.
ykevinator 6y ago
"because" is a stretch and it might be a $1 in variable cost but it's trillions in fixed costs. The FDA is correct to be cautious
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
manicdee 6y ago
Tests aren’t going to stop the virus. Self-isolation, social distancing, proper hygiene are going to slow the virus down. To implement those properly requires paying low-income workers to stay home. A vaccine will stop the virus, but we don’t have one yet. It looks like it will be a year or more for a vaccine to be available.

aaron695 6y ago

I would say, testing being the solution is one thing that wasn't pushed in January or even pre C19 that I saw. It wasn't mentioned in "Contagion" for instance. A vaccination or cure was always known as not possible but the media pushed these false hopes. In part I suspect this is the usual medial malpractice of doctors keeping their profession wealthy and keeping everything they can tied up and regulated. I'd be interested to look at HIV and testing in the 80/90s to see whether at home tests were stopped by doctors or technology.

ladberg 6y ago
In "Contagion" almost everyone who got it showed symptoms immediately and died within a few days, so testing wasn't really a solution.
- aaron695 6y ago
  It's a tiny bit of my point. That's not true generally. Perhaps because of this misconception we are missing out on a paradigm shift, testing technology needs more money but first get comfortable with anyone using the test and making mistakes, which includes the real poor, including illiterate people. Because medical has been locked up for so long, researchers and governments aren't looking at people looking after themselves.
lazyasciiart 6y ago
No, a vaccination was not always known as not possible. It still isn't, in fact. And amazing amounts of effort are being spent to make the administration of tests easier. The first tests required trained research technicians. Today tests are still not widespread because they require specialized machinery or other materials. If it were possible to pee on a stick as a self test, everyone would be ecstatic - but it's not, so far. The pandemic planning stuff I've read from before this year seems to suffer from a number of assumptions that were violated by covid, from asymptomatic transmission to the long lead time. E.g in MERS or Ebola or even flu, the infectious but asymptomatic period is more like Contagion. You don't have to worry about infected people wandering around town for a week or two. Most planning mentions the need for having tests, and quickly gathering materials etc, and then moves on to tactics for containment and vaccine development. Where testing is focused on, it's as a way to differentiate between people who have symptoms but are actually infected with a non-panfemic disease, so that resources aren't wasted quarantining them. I haven't yet found a scenario studied with a long lead time and possible low level or asymptomatic presentation as standard.

ggm 6y ago

The pooled sample testing method looks tractable.

lps41 6y ago
Yes, but it’s only more efficient than testing everybody if you are unlikely to get a positive result. So, in places where covid is not widely spreading.
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  The method described in the article isn't a traditional pooled test. Each sample is marked, and it tests and reports on all samples at once.

paulie_a 6y ago

The article says new tests, is that a test for a new person. Or simply a test in a certain time frame I assume it is the latter, which means the stats can be skwed somewhat. I can't say what degree it would be but I've had 8 tests. Which means I show up in the testing stats 8 times. My situation is somewhat unique, but I'm not alone. Hence the distinction I am curious about.

pragnesh 6y ago

https://youtu.be/857B7u_vUBc https://youtu.be/857B7u_vUBc indian company developed automatic test machine

Barrin92 6y ago

Testing is great but you can do all the testing in the world, if the population is not compliant and superspreaders in particular simply ignore all health guidelines and don't even show up for tests you've gained nothing. The pandemic already is under control in most places and I'm not sure testing had all that much to do with it. The successful strategy seems to be pretty straight forward. Initial lockdowns if the country is hit badly to curb the disease, then strong compliance with basic health guidelines and regional lockdowns if necessary. Japan has performed about 800k tests in total on a population of ~120 million, which is lower than most other countries by a magnitude and about 50 times less than the US, but has had very few excess deaths. At the end of the day the virus cares about behaviour, not testing.

perl4ever 6y ago
>The pandemic already is under control in most places This is an interesting claim. I think it's potentially misleading, and possibly motivated by a need to portray places where it isn't under control as isolated. I suppose it might be technically correct if you count a list of "places" and divide the number where it is growing rapidly by the number where it isn't. However, the results you get are very dependent on how you define a "place". If you divide the world into Europe, North America, Asia, South America, Africa, and Oceania, the only one that definitely seems to be under control right now is Oceania. Africa and Europe are growing much slower than the others, but not obviously "under control", and Asia notably is seeing over 60,000 new cases per day even though it previously seemed to be under control until India started reporting large increases. If you count countries, you could claim that about 3/4 of them have it under control, but that might not be permanent. Considering Brazil (which I think people would generally consider to have a serious problem right now) and everywhere the epidemic is growing faster, it is a minority of countries, but very near half of the world population. Source (as usual) is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

ccvannorman 6y ago

Some AI researchers[0] claim to be able to detect the virus by the sound of your voice via speech signals. They took samples of youtube celebrities who were recording videos at a time they were infected, but just before their diagnosis, as part of their positive-case labeled data. Maybe soon we'll have dogs that can smell Coronavirus too[1]! [0] http://news.mit.edu/2020/signs-covid-19-may-be-hidden-speech-signals-0708 http://news.mit.edu/2020/signs-covid-19-may-be-hidden-speech... [1] https://www.ecowatch.com/dogs-smell-covid-19-2646105814.html https://www.ecowatch.com/dogs-smell-covid-19-2646105814.html