Re:New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19
by wool_gather on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:47PM
(#22629234)
I'm curious about the technical reasons for what you're saying. Can you say more? Is it a problem with figuring out the false negative rate for people without symptoms?
Re:New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19
by PeterisP on Thursday March 19, 2020 @01:06PM
(#22629431)
If you test on antigen that matches the virus, then that will return a negative result in the very beginning of infection and after recovery.
If you want accurate numbers for statistics, including people who never had symptoms, you can do antibody testing on a random sample of population, that will indicate people who had the disease - but that's kind of too late for that particular location and those particular patients, that's for epidemiological studies and helping other locations. I recall reading about one such study for Covid, but I don't remember which country did it.
Re:New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19
by djsumdog on Thursday March 19, 2020 @01:18PM
(#22629561)
I heard in an interview with Michael Osterholm, that scientists in China started testing people who had come in contact to those who were sick in the early days of the outbreak, and found people who were not showing any symptoms, but had a large amount of viral load in their throats they were actively breathing out.
What kind of testing they do in those situations?
Re:New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19
by PeterisP on Thursday March 19, 2020 @01:54PM
(#22629887)
The first one - if you have the virus, it's multiplying in you and you're infectious then that test will detect it (during that time) no matter if you have severe symptoms or light symptoms or if for you the infection doesn't have any symptoms that you would notice.
Re:New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19
by dueh3brhdudu on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:25PM
(#22629003)
Number 2 is misleading, Trump got tested to quell opponents' fear mongering about his health. That doesn't make it more useful scientifically but no one thought it was happening for science anyway.
1. The current test is designed for the scenario that someone shows up to medical provider with symptoms. Test answers the question: are the symptoms caused by COVID-19?, quite reliably (negligible false positives, low false negatives).
2. The current test won't produce terribly useful data in someone without symptoms (either before, or after the illness). This is why for example certain well-known political figures saying they have been tested and cleared after potential exposure is not very meaningful.
Therefore ideas like: let's randomly test the population to see how much of this is out there, and I had what I think was COVID-19, I want to be tested to confirm, are not practical.
A test that can determine if someone was infected in the past is in development still.