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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

by 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.

by ISL 6y ago

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.