quote:
The wand that will accomplish this feat is a thin paper strip, no longer than a finger. It is a coronavirus test. Mina says that the U.S. should mass-produce these inexpensive and relatively insensitive tests—unlike other methods, they require only a saliva sample—in quantities of tens of millions a day. These tests, which can deliver a result in 15 minutes or less, should then become a ubiquitous part of daily life. Before anyone enters a school or an office, a movie theater or a Walmart, they must take one of these tests. Test negative, and you may enter the public space. Test positive, and you are sent home. In other words: Mina wants to test nearly everyone, nearly every day.

The tests Mina describes already exist: They are sitting in the office of e25 Bio, a small start-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts; half a dozen other companies are working on similar products. But implementing his vision will require changing how we think about tests. These new tests are much less sensitive than the ones we run today, which means that regulations must be relaxed before they can be sold or used. Their closest analogue is rapid dengue-virus tests, used in India, which are manufactured in a quantity of 100 million a year. Mina envisions nearly as many rapid COVID-19 tests being manufactured a day. Only the federal government, acting as customer and controller, can accomplish such a feat.

Really seems crazy that this hasn't happened yet.

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Posted by the808bass

The Lou

Member since Oct 2012

111702 posts

Posted on 8/15/20 at 1:02 pm to Big Scrub TX

quote:
Many Americans may understand that testing has failed in this country—that it has been inadequate, in one form or another, since February. What they may not understand is that it is failing, now. In each of the past two weeks, and for the first time since the pandemic began, the country performed fewer COVID-19 tests than it did in the week prior. The system is deteriorating.

We can’t test our way out of a virus. We were told we could. We can’t. This article subscribes to that fallacy.

quote:
These new tests are much less sensitive than the ones we run today,

I may be reading this incorrectly, but this is a really odd sentence that is kind of buried in the article. We already have a huge issue with the accuracy of the tests we are using. I don’t have a rock solid handle on the pathology question, but a less sensitive test seems to indicate less accuracy. Is this test a coin flip? How does living our lives subject to a coin flip at every point of entrance into a group improve our situation?

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