04-20-2020, 12:44 PM
It's good to see more studies being done, but are any of these worth a damn if the tests are bad? That NY Times article mentioned upthread casts a lot of doubt on these tests.
And another issue not being addressed is whether or not a true positive test means you're immune to the disease. I doubt that can even be answered without a challenge test (where the person is exposed to live virus), right? And no one is going to be doing those tests because of the ethical issues.
I'm starting to think that figuring out who's had the disease in the past is a distraction--an interesting distraction but not really important to combating the spread of the virus and reopening things. Given that time, money, and resources in the fight are limited, I'd rather see efforts focused on how to implement mass testing to find and isolate currently infected people. Prevalence is probably in the low single digits range or <1% almost everywhere outside NYC in the US. Does getting that down to an exact number really help anything going forward? Color me skeptical.
And another issue not being addressed is whether or not a true positive test means you're immune to the disease. I doubt that can even be answered without a challenge test (where the person is exposed to live virus), right? And no one is going to be doing those tests because of the ethical issues.
I'm starting to think that figuring out who's had the disease in the past is a distraction--an interesting distraction but not really important to combating the spread of the virus and reopening things. Given that time, money, and resources in the fight are limited, I'd rather see efforts focused on how to implement mass testing to find and isolate currently infected people. Prevalence is probably in the low single digits range or <1% almost everywhere outside NYC in the US. Does getting that down to an exact number really help anything going forward? Color me skeptical.