Re:Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [...
by twomoretime on Saturday March 21, 2020 @12:12AM
(#22644375)
Aren't there multiple existing labs all over the country who do this regularly? Are these tests made in small batches or something? Do you need to grow viral cultures? What exactly is the limit here and why can't a typical lab just double production in a few weeks by doubling it's hardware?
Re:Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [...
by hyperion2010 on Saturday March 21, 2020 @12:19AM
(#22644405)
You don't have to culture anything (if we did we might as well just give up). We use PCR to amplify a known section of the viral genome. With the oligo production capacity in this country alone we could synthesize enough primers test everyone in the country 10 times in a couple of days. That is not the limiting reagent. The limit is either sample prep or sample collection. Actually running the amplification shouldn't be a bottleneck, there are hundreds of thousands of thermal cyclers across the country. In my more cynical moments I might say the bottleneck is that some companies might want to make money from all the tests ....
Re:Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [...
by oggy on Saturday March 21, 2020 @08:12AM
(#22646007)
I'm trying to learn a bit more about how testing works. Aside from the logistics (getting the samples to the lab, etc), what are the necessary steps for sample prep? Heating to inactivate the virus? Splitting the sample into RNA/DNA/proteins?
Also, where do you draw the numbers of primer production capacity from? IIUC, the only other things that an amplification needs are enzymes (just DNA polymerase for PCR) and "food" (nucleotides), but that I assume is not a bottleneck?
How difficult is it to safely dispose of amplified samples? Can you basically just dump them in the toilet?
Re:Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [...
by 6510 on Saturday March 21, 2020 @08:33AM
(#22646106)
Well, figuring all that out sure seems a lot more fun than sitting and waiting. I take dying trying to do something useful over just dying.
Like in war profits will probably be huge but if there is enough pressure government cna seize stuff too.
Re:Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [...
by twomoretime on Saturday March 21, 2020 @02:22AM
(#22644925)
Yes I am also cynical about the situation. There is something not insurmountable standing in the way.
And think about it, I'm only talking about getting up to 10 mil or so here. We'd need a lot more than that to implement the plans being proposed on this thread. Logistics really does demand that medical personnel, and emergency responders be tested regularly to ensure their continued fitness for purpose under such schemes. Consider, there are right around 12,000 law enforcement officers alone in Washington state. Not counting doctors, nurses, EMT's and firemen. (And lest we forget the most important emergency worker of all right now, the Walmart stock boys.)
Add all that up. Multiply it by 50 states, some much larger than Washington. Under the plans you guys are proposing, we'd need multiple tests as the crisis goes on for each of these workers to make sure they aren't out infecting citizens when they interact with them. (Or when they put food on shelves that a customer picks up 4 hours later.)
Please, try to be reasonable. Maybe the current approach is not tenable, but the ideas being proposed on this thread are problematic as well.