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Re:A Movement to Stop the Covid-19 Pandemic by mumblemumble on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @09:48AM (#22545789)
What I'd like to see doctors do differently is encourage people to treat their illness as if it were covid-19 regardless of the test result.

If my health care provider can try to sell me antibiotics despite a negative strep test, "just to be sure, because sometimes you get a false negative", then they're surely not ignorant of the phenomenon where tests are less than 100% accurate. (Perhaps they're just variably aware of it, depending on what the bean counters from the health care network's corporate office are telling them to do. But still.) And, if you take a "better safe than sorry" attitude regarding false negatives, then you're not too far off from realizing that not having the test is not that big of a deal, because you'd be telling people to stay home when they're sick in either case.

Re:A Movement to Stop the Covid-19 Pandemic by kilburn on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @10:32AM (#22546128)
What do you think "treating their illness as if it were covid-19" means?

This is a viral illness. There is simply no treatment. You go home, rest and eventually get through it in most cases. If you have annoying symptoms, you try to alleviate those in the usual ways (as if it was any other cold/flu). If you get life-threatening symptomps, you call for help and they'll take you to the hospital (at least while they aren't completely collapsed).

What would you like the doctor to say or do here?

Re:A Movement to Stop the Covid-19 Pandemic by mumblemumble on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @10:47AM (#22546260)
Sorry, ambiguous language. "treat" in the general sense, not specifically in the sense of medical treatment.

Specifically, I would like the doctor to say, "Stay the eff home and keep your germs to yourself, sickie."

More doctors doing this would also help put pressure on employers to change their policies. Maybe (dare I dream?) we can even get restaurants to start giving their employees sick leave, and encouraging them to use it, instead of requiring them to show up and germ up all the food on pain of losing their jobs.

Re:A Movement to Stop the Covid-19 Pandemic by mumblemumble on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @10:14AM (#22546001)
(And keep doing so even after covid-19 blows over, so that we can maybe start reducing the influenza body count, too.)