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| Zero999:
--- Quote from: cdev on May 16, 2020, 02:08:56 pm ---I don't know about the situation in the UK, but it seems likely to be similar to here. TRUMP - 'When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases'. See it in context: https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1261017121078861826 --- End quote --- I honestly don't want to get into politics. I hope the authorities in the US are ignoring everything Trump says about COVID-19. China is currently doing very well to control the outbreaks through testing and contact tracing, even though most of the social distancing measures have been scrapped. They're testing 1 million per day in Wuhan, over ten times the entire UK. I believe the UK government want to increase testing and contact tracing, so the lockdown can be gradually eased, without a massive increase in cases. Unfortunately I doubt the infection rate has reduced to a level which can be controlled by the current testing and contact tracing capacity. Hopefully the current R0 is well below 1 and the tiny increase due to the recent slight relaxation will not raise it above 1 before testing and contract tracing capacity catches up. I think contact tracing could be more important than testing in bringing the R0 down, without a lockdown. If those who have had close contact with someone who's shown COVID-19 symptoms, can be traced and isolated for at least 7 days, it should mitigate most of the spread. The contact tracer will judge who needs to isolate and who doesn't, based on risk factors such as the closeness and duration of the contact. For example if I develop a fever and have recently visited my nephews, aged 6 and 8, the whole family will probably have to self-isolate, where as one of my colleagues, who I don't work that closely with, might not have to. Testing would be good to cut down on the numbers who are unnecessarily isolating, but we should be able to drastically reduce the spread without testing lots of people, or isolating everyone, just by contact tracing. |
| David Hess:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on May 16, 2020, 04:19:40 pm ---China is currently doing very well to control the outbreaks through testing and contact tracing, even though most of the social distancing measures have been scrapped. They're testing 1 million per day in Wuhan, over ten times the entire UK. --- End quote --- China *says* that but given how duplicitous they have been and the independent reports which contradict them, why should they be believed? |
| cdev:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on May 16, 2020, 04:19:40 pm --- I believe the UK government want to increase testing and contact tracing, so the lockdown can be gradually eased, without a massive increase in cases. Unfortunately I doubt the infection rate has reduced to a level which can be controlled by the current testing and contact tracing capacity. Hopefully the current R0 is well below 1 and the tiny increase due to the recent slight relaxation will not raise it above 1 before testing and contract tracing capacity catches up. I think contact tracing could be more important than testing in bringing the R0 down, without a lockdown. If those who have had close contact with someone who's shown COVID-19 symptoms, can be traced and isolated for at least 7 days, it should mitigate most of the spread. The contact tracer will judge who needs to isolate and who doesn't, based on risk factors such as the closeness and duration of the contact. For example if I develop a fever and have recently visited my nephews, aged 6 and 8, the whole family will probably have to self-isolate, where as one of my colleagues, who I don't work that closely with, might not have to. Testing would be good to cut down on the numbers who are unnecessarily isolating, but we should be able to drastically reduce the spread without testing lots of people, or isolating everyone, just by contact tracing. --- End quote --- It's labor intensive when you have screwed up at the beginning as we have. If you look at the US, subtracting the area that I am in, where the new infections are falling, its still rising quite a bit. The only reason the graph for the US seems to have leveled off is the NY Metro Area reductions. So it is entirely bad policy to relax restrictions now. So we here in the US cant say we leveled the curve because we haven't. I bet the same thing applies to the UK. I saw pictures of people riding the London Underground and buses without masks, lots of people crammed in. A number of other countries relaxed restrictions and new cases started to soar again, so that has turned out to have been a mistake for them. Lots and lots of new cases, fast. There is no reason to think it would be any different in the UK or US. |
| Marco:
--- Quote from: cdev on May 16, 2020, 06:30:11 pm ---A number of other countries relaxed restrictions and new cases started to soar again, so that has turned out to have been a mistake for them. Lots and lots of new cases, fast. --- End quote --- I think most countries have decided to accept Swedish infection/death rates so they can have an economically feasible level of distancing and containment measures are just window dressing. |
| Zero999:
--- Quote from: David Hess on May 16, 2020, 05:50:24 pm --- --- Quote from: Zero999 on May 16, 2020, 04:19:40 pm ---China is currently doing very well to control the outbreaks through testing and contact tracing, even though most of the social distancing measures have been scrapped. They're testing 1 million per day in Wuhan, over ten times the entire UK. --- End quote --- China *says* that but given how duplicitous they have been and the independent reports which contradict them, why should they be believed? --- End quote --- True, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence they're lying either. They aren't any signs that it's getting out of control such as hospitals packed full of COVID-19 patients, or bodies piling up, like they were before. The Chinese are used to this. They've done it before and once the government finally realised it was a problem they seem to have being dealing with it quite well. It's highly likely the higher levels of the government weren't aware of it, at the start when the local authorities were trying to hide it. The fact the authorities know exactly where the current coronavirus clusters are, indicates they've been testing and are able to deal with them. I know China gets bashed a lot by westerners and often quite rightly so, but I believe they're more able to deal with this more effectively than most western governments. --- Quote from: cdev on May 16, 2020, 06:30:11 pm --- --- Quote from: Zero999 on May 16, 2020, 04:19:40 pm --- I believe the UK government want to increase testing and contact tracing, so the lockdown can be gradually eased, without a massive increase in cases. Unfortunately I doubt the infection rate has reduced to a level which can be controlled by the current testing and contact tracing capacity. Hopefully the current R0 is well below 1 and the tiny increase due to the recent slight relaxation will not raise it above 1 before testing and contract tracing capacity catches up. I think contact tracing could be more important than testing in bringing the R0 down, without a lockdown. If those who have had close contact with someone who's shown COVID-19 symptoms, can be traced and isolated for at least 7 days, it should mitigate most of the spread. The contact tracer will judge who needs to isolate and who doesn't, based on risk factors such as the closeness and duration of the contact. For example if I develop a fever and have recently visited my nephews, aged 6 and 8, the whole family will probably have to self-isolate, where as one of my colleagues, who I don't work that closely with, might not have to. Testing would be good to cut down on the numbers who are unnecessarily isolating, but we should be able to drastically reduce the spread without testing lots of people, or isolating everyone, just by contact tracing. --- End quote --- It's labor intensive when you have screwed up at the beginning as we have. If you look at the US, subtracting the area that I am in, where the new infections are falling, its still rising quite a bit. The only reason the graph for the US seems to have leveled off is the NY Metro Area reductions. So it is entirely bad policy to relax restrictions now. So we here in the US cant say we leveled the curve because we haven't. I bet the same thing applies to the UK. I saw pictures of people riding the London Underground and buses without masks, lots of people crammed in. A number of other countries relaxed restrictions and new cases started to soar again, so that has turned out to have been a mistake for them. Lots and lots of new cases, fast. There is no reason to think it would be any different in the UK or US. --- End quote --- Yes contact tracing is a lot of hard work but it's certainly more cost effective and easier than the alternatives. I agree it's a bad policy to reduce restrictions without any clear plan of how to prevent a second wave. If we don't have sufficient testing capacity one possible solution is test pooling. A large number of samples are taken, some of each pooled together and tested. Each sample only needs to be tested, if the pool tests positive, thus cutting the number of tests required. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30362-5/fulltext |
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