The plans to reopen the economy are scary

Re:The plans to reopen the economy are scary by alkonaut on Friday April 10, 2020 @02:34PM (#22836003)

Sweden uses much lighter restrictions with industry still running, most shops still open, and schools for younger children open. One of the keys in this lighter strategy was to protect the elderly, with bans on visits to homes for the elderly and so on. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough, the spread has hit many such facilities with a high number of deaths as a result.

It’s hard to isolate the elderly if they are so old that they need care by the young.

Isolating the not-quite-so-old that can self-isolate is easy.

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Re:The plans to reopen the economy are scary by jfnixon on Saturday April 11, 2020 @08:26AM (#22841301)

Test the young caregivers for antibodies. Only permit those with antibodies and no viral load to get anywhere near the elderly. Pay extra if necessary, it would be much better than breaking society.

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Re:The plans to reopen the economy are scary by alkonaut on Saturday April 11, 2020 @11:08AM (#22842037)

The problem is that the problem of finding staff is difficult in normal circumstances, and almost impossible right now when lots of people are sick. Add to that the fact that unlike healthcare professionals these caregivers have much less hygiene trained and currently littlr PPE available, and you have the recipe for trouble.

Antibody tests are also almost useless on an individual level: If they have 4% false positive rate and 10% have antibodies then there are 36000 false positives (4% of 900k) when a million people are tested! Antibody tests are good at a group level to measure the progress of the epidemic, but unless the incidence is high or better test methods are found, they are near useless for what you are describing, sadly.

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