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"But is anyone going to be getting the test every day? Particularly when it apparently costs $30." This is why it needs to be subsidized by the government. Al

"But is anyone going to be getting the test every day? Particularly when it apparently costs $30." This is why it needs to be subsidized by the government. Also, according to that TWiV episode it could be done for something like $1 per test.

justinlink 6y ago
$330 million per day or nearly 10 billion per month, not counting distribution costs. And could we manufacture 10 billion of them a month?
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "could we manufacture 10 billion of them a month?" Yes, it could be done. According to that TWiV episode (which, again, I encourage everyone to listen to) the tests are very simple: just a piece of paper with some antibodies on it. As for the $10 billion per month cost, from the TWiV episode (about 31 minutes in): It just boggles my mind, the enormity of this problem. This is killing enormous numbers of people every day. It's costing the country trillions -- literally trillions of dollars. This should just be part of the national emergency. It's one thing to make vaccines, it's one thing to make therapeutics, but these are things that necessarily take time. We have to wait to see what the efficacy is, we have to... it's really hard to make therapeutics. A diagnostic test should be a no-brainer. Make a $1 test. Get it to everyone. Change the way we view these things, and that should be completely being plowed through by the federal government. We don't have to make 300 million of them overnight. We just have to focus them at the moment in places where the cases are worst... it's just astounding that we don't see a flurry of activity from the US Army... I don't know who makes it, but take every manufacturing company that knows how to print paper, adapt their tools to print monocolonal antibodies on to those sheets and just start slicing it up and shipping it out. It's as easy as that.. well, you know, I'm simplifying it a bit but...
- lthornberry 6y ago
  $10 billion per month is far, far less than either 1) the economic losses of the pandemic to society, or 2) the amount of money the pandemic is costing the government. I have no knowledge on whether it's feasible, but if it significantly reduced the impact of the pandemic, the economic decision is easy.
rhino369 6y ago
Maybe a year ago this would have been worth it. But the resources should be used for mass vaccination instead.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people are afraid of getting vaccinated. Those people, at the very least, should be getting tested. Also, it's going to take a long time for even those who want to get vaccinated. Finally, we don't know how long the immunity given by the vaccination will last. If it only lasts a couple of months people might need to get revaccinated again and again throughout the year, which will probably lead to even less people willing to be vaccinated. So vaccines are very unlikely to be a complete solution by themselves. We still need mass testing.
  - rhino369 6y ago
    I'm going to make an educated guess and say that there isn't a ton of overlap between people who will refuse a vaccine and people who will voluntarily submit to continuous testing. Maybe I'm underestimating how fast they can ramp up production on these tests, but you'd need billions a month to just test everyone every week.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >Maybe a year ago this would have been worth it. But the resources should be used for mass vaccination instead. Given that it will be at least 6-9 months before an appreciable fraction of the population can be vaccinated, frequent testing still makes a whole lot of sense. As to the effort/expense, you'd think we'd be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, no?
  - rhino369 6y ago
    >Given that it will be at least 6-9 months before an appreciable fraction of the population can be vaccinated, frequent testing still makes a whole lot of sense. What makes you think we can ramp up production on these faster than that? You'd need a billion of them to test each America once every three months. >As to the effort/expense, you'd think we'd be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, no? Only if the resources used were entirely unrelated, which I doubt. Every public health offical's man-hour should be dedicated to setting up vaccination sites. Every medical manufacturing facility should be making vaccine components and accessories. I very much doubt you could set up mass testing of asymptomatic people without making trade offs regarding resources for mass vaccinations.
fortran77 6y ago
> This is why it needs to be subsidized by the government. If it were subsidized by the Government, they'd be charging 10x that per test.
- thebigman433 6y ago
  Not if the government is the only real buyer

justinlink 6y ago

$330 million per day or nearly 10 billion per month, not counting distribution costs. And could we manufacture 10 billion of them a month?

pmoriarty 6y ago
"could we manufacture 10 billion of them a month?" Yes, it could be done. According to that TWiV episode (which, again, I encourage everyone to listen to) the tests are very simple: just a piece of paper with some antibodies on it. As for the $10 billion per month cost, from the TWiV episode (about 31 minutes in): It just boggles my mind, the enormity of this problem. This is killing enormous numbers of people every day. It's costing the country trillions -- literally trillions of dollars. This should just be part of the national emergency. It's one thing to make vaccines, it's one thing to make therapeutics, but these are things that necessarily take time. We have to wait to see what the efficacy is, we have to... it's really hard to make therapeutics. A diagnostic test should be a no-brainer. Make a $1 test. Get it to everyone. Change the way we view these things, and that should be completely being plowed through by the federal government. We don't have to make 300 million of them overnight. We just have to focus them at the moment in places where the cases are worst... it's just astounding that we don't see a flurry of activity from the US Army... I don't know who makes it, but take every manufacturing company that knows how to print paper, adapt their tools to print monocolonal antibodies on to those sheets and just start slicing it up and shipping it out. It's as easy as that.. well, you know, I'm simplifying it a bit but...
lthornberry 6y ago
$10 billion per month is far, far less than either 1) the economic losses of the pandemic to society, or 2) the amount of money the pandemic is costing the government. I have no knowledge on whether it's feasible, but if it significantly reduced the impact of the pandemic, the economic decision is easy.

rhino369 6y ago

Maybe a year ago this would have been worth it. But the resources should be used for mass vaccination instead.

pmoriarty 6y ago
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people are afraid of getting vaccinated. Those people, at the very least, should be getting tested. Also, it's going to take a long time for even those who want to get vaccinated. Finally, we don't know how long the immunity given by the vaccination will last. If it only lasts a couple of months people might need to get revaccinated again and again throughout the year, which will probably lead to even less people willing to be vaccinated. So vaccines are very unlikely to be a complete solution by themselves. We still need mass testing.
- rhino369 6y ago
  I'm going to make an educated guess and say that there isn't a ton of overlap between people who will refuse a vaccine and people who will voluntarily submit to continuous testing. Maybe I'm underestimating how fast they can ramp up production on these tests, but you'd need billions a month to just test everyone every week.
nobody9999 6y ago
>Maybe a year ago this would have been worth it. But the resources should be used for mass vaccination instead. Given that it will be at least 6-9 months before an appreciable fraction of the population can be vaccinated, frequent testing still makes a whole lot of sense. As to the effort/expense, you'd think we'd be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, no?
- rhino369 6y ago
  >Given that it will be at least 6-9 months before an appreciable fraction of the population can be vaccinated, frequent testing still makes a whole lot of sense. What makes you think we can ramp up production on these faster than that? You'd need a billion of them to test each America once every three months. >As to the effort/expense, you'd think we'd be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, no? Only if the resources used were entirely unrelated, which I doubt. Every public health offical's man-hour should be dedicated to setting up vaccination sites. Every medical manufacturing facility should be making vaccine components and accessories. I very much doubt you could set up mass testing of asymptomatic people without making trade offs regarding resources for mass vaccinations.

fortran77 6y ago

> This is why it needs to be subsidized by the government. If it were subsidized by the Government, they'd be charging 10x that per test.

thebigman433 6y ago
Not if the government is the only real buyer