Re:FDA grants emergency use authorization for 5-13 minute Co...
by roenxi on Saturday March 28, 2020 @01:06AM
(#22709351)
> I’m not sure why there’s an obsession with testing right now. If everyone is supposed to be isolating no matter what, what difference does it make if you have a covid test or not?
I'll admit that this is a hard one to explain; I've gone through a bunch of drafts for this comment.
There is a 3-5 week (1-2 weeks incubation, 1-3 weeks to resolve the symptoms) lag between infection and conclusion of the disease. So all the statistical information available to the people responding to an outbreak is weeks out of date.
They (government bodies coordinating the response) don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting ahead of an exponential process with a doubling time of ~4 days if they only have 3-5 week old information. They need sub-24 hour feedback on what is going on. Once that is in place, targeted & proactive methods can be deployed that are less crippling than turning off entire cities.
I'll admit that this is a hard one to explain; I've gone through a bunch of drafts for this comment.
There is a 3-5 week (1-2 weeks incubation, 1-3 weeks to resolve the symptoms) lag between infection and conclusion of the disease. So all the statistical information available to the people responding to an outbreak is weeks out of date.
They (government bodies coordinating the response) don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting ahead of an exponential process with a doubling time of ~4 days if they only have 3-5 week old information. They need sub-24 hour feedback on what is going on. Once that is in place, targeted & proactive methods can be deployed that are less crippling than turning off entire cities.