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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Posted by compscitiger

Secret City

Member since Oct 2007

101 posts

Posted on 8/16/20 at 12:41 pm to the808bass

quote:
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?

i'm sure this has been linked before, but have a look at the definitions here:

LINK

accuracy is a derived thing (the formula is given in the entry).

creating (with all that goes into that) a high-sensitivity test is, broadly speaking, expensive (in time & money). so the article seems to be written to advance the idea that cheaper (t & m) and therefore more broadly available testing (even though it may be less sensitive) is a net gain.

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Posted by Big Scrub TX

Member since Dec 2013

33656 posts

Posted on 8/16/20 at 2:09 pm to the808bass

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

I know this is one of your main tenets, but I disagree - at least in part. Certainly you agree that if we had instant contact testing (like, they take your temp and it tells you simultaneously if you have the virus or not), then it would be relatively easy to widely prevent the spread...enough so that we could bridge to a vaccine and/or have it just snuff out from isolation.

Thus, the goal should be getting as close to that ideal as possible. If we can get it down to 15-minute spit tests, then I would argue we are effectively there. At the very least, it would be a lot easier to re-open things en masse. People could fly to see their relatives, take an exit test at the airport, etc. etc.

I only got this anecdotally via friends there, so I'm looking for some corroboration, but Orlando had a vote of their taxpayers sending children to school to go remote or re-open. Only 20% voted to re-open. At this point - regardless of how we got here - the main thing killing the economy is the populace's fear itself and not government actions. I think the quickest way to win the populace back is rapid testing.

This post was edited on 8/16/20 at 2:10 pm

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