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>The waste from COVID testing is a rounding error on the damage we're doing to the environment Citation needed. In most countries except Japan or the US I have

by carlmr 5y ago

>The waste from COVID testing is a rounding error on the damage we're doing to the environment Citation needed. In most countries except Japan or the US I haven't seen single wrapped bananas. Even the normal covid tests produce so much plastic trash. This adds electronics which are even worse waste. All to determine with terribly low accuracy that someone has covid.

jacobolus 5y ago
You won’t believe how much plastic trash is produced by hospitals treating Covid patients. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118
- carlmr 5y ago
  Sure, but the tests are so inaccurate that a lot of people still spread covid, any time the government instituted extreme testing measures there was 0 dent in the covid cases. Where from a statistical perspective you would expect a similar dent in the number of prevented cases if this worked. They did a test of the tests he in Germany and basically 6/7 failed to be positive for everything except huge viral loads where you would feel seriously sick anyway. So it's not even clear these tests help. And testing PCR at scale is too inefficient.
ceejayoz 5y ago
These specific tests are wasteful; I think Bluetooth is an absurd addition to what works quite well as a plain old analog test strip. It's a bit like banning single-use plastic straws, though. The overall contribution to the waste in landfills and oceans is tiny in the grand scheme of things. Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. The plastic from all that would fit in a quart-sized ziplock. A drop in the bucket, and that's likely to hold on the global scale.
- carlmr 5y ago
  >Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. In some places you have to get tested every day at the job. It adds up quickly. Or every day when you want to go out.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    The cost of at-home tests (and availability issues; they're pretty much universally sold out here at the moment) in the US means basically no one here would dream of testing "every day when you want to go out" as is possible in, say, the UK.

by carlmr 5y ago

jacobolus 5y ago

You won’t believe how much plastic trash is produced by hospitals treating Covid patients. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118

carlmr 5y ago
Sure, but the tests are so inaccurate that a lot of people still spread covid, any time the government instituted extreme testing measures there was 0 dent in the covid cases. Where from a statistical perspective you would expect a similar dent in the number of prevented cases if this worked. They did a test of the tests he in Germany and basically 6/7 failed to be positive for everything except huge viral loads where you would feel seriously sick anyway. So it's not even clear these tests help. And testing PCR at scale is too inefficient.

ceejayoz 5y ago

These specific tests are wasteful; I think Bluetooth is an absurd addition to what works quite well as a plain old analog test strip. It's a bit like banning single-use plastic straws, though. The overall contribution to the waste in landfills and oceans is tiny in the grand scheme of things. Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. The plastic from all that would fit in a quart-sized ziplock. A drop in the bucket, and that's likely to hold on the global scale.

carlmr 5y ago
>Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. In some places you have to get tested every day at the job. It adds up quickly. Or every day when you want to go out.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The cost of at-home tests (and availability issues; they're pretty much universally sold out here at the moment) in the US means basically no one here would dream of testing "every day when you want to go out" as is possible in, say, the UK.