My post with the summary, 7 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881080 "Apparently even the "less s

My post with the summary, 7 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881080 "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." Thinking more about it, the most important point I'd add now is: We should learn not to think about "the test" but about (at least) two different kinds of tests for different purposes: 1) fast tests to reduce the chance of virus spreading. Anybody isolated before managing to spread the virus is better than not testing, so it doesn't have to be too precise. We just have to understand its limits. 2) more reliable tests for clinical purposes, whenever they are needed. Interestingly, even in such scenarios antibody tests could find their use and allow cheaper or faster results, something like this: https://www.clinisciences.com/en/read/newsletter-26/sars-cov-2-covid-19-diagnosis-by-2264.html https://www.clinisciences.com/en/read/newsletter-26/sars-cov... E.g. if somebody has symptoms and IgM (or IgM and IgG), that could be good enough of information to decide how somebody is to be treated. One more example where I'd guess nobody needs to wait for a PCR result.