topic Re: Testing, Testing, Testing in Community Chat

Testing, Testing, Testing

CrazyDaisy — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 12:46:06 GMT

OK, exactly what does everyone want tested.

You can be tested for the virus. Be negative, stop at the grocery store on the way home and pick it up.

You can be tested for the antibodies. Have them indicating you had been sick once. No idea how long the antibodies will last or if you can get sick again.

Just seems like all this general testing people are screaming for will only give people a false sense of security. Targeted testing to control outbreaks to me seems logical and practical.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Laura14 — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 12:49:26 GMT

It's too late. I needed a test weeks ago when I am pretty sure I had it. Unless I get re-infected, past time now.

And you are absolutely right about testing negative. If you thought the spring breakers were arrogant, I think a lot of people will be "holding their beers."

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Imaoldhippie — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 12:54:21 GMT

IMHO the testing is worthless unless you are ill.

Get tested today no virus, get sick in 2 days or 2 weeks bam you have covid19. What good did it do?

And if you test positive then what? No preventive medicine and no cure.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Patriot3 — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 12:56:19 GMT

@Imaoldhippie wrote:
IMHO the testing is worthless unless you are ill.

Get tested today no virus, get sick in 2 days or 2 weeks bam you have covid19. What good did it do?

And if you test positive then what? No preventive medicine and no cure.

@ImaoldhippieExactly what I have been thinking.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Bhvbum — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 12:57:05 GMT

Testing will identify those who have had the virus. Most experts say those people are now immune. They can return to work.

Also if someone tests positive, they need to be quarantined.

Why is this taking so much time to get testing? We have the lowest rate of testing of almost all the major countries. Why?

We don't require 50 states to each develope and acquire their own tests for other diseases for a reason, it slows the whole process down and many states just don't have the resources.

So why are we forcing each state to do it now instead of the Federal Govt doing it?? Business leaders said yesterday they will not be opening up their workforces until we have the testing.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

CrazyDaisy — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:00:50 GMT

@Bhvbum wrote:
Testing will identify those who have had the virus. Most experts say those people are now immune. They can return to work.

Also if someone tests positive, they need to be quarantined.

Why is this taking so much time to get testing? We have the lowest rate of testing of almost all the major countries. Why?
We don't require 50 states to each develope and acquire their own tests for other diseases for a reason, it slows the whole process down and many states just don't have the resources.

So why are we forcing each state to do it now instead of the Federal Govt doing it?? Business leaders said yesterday they will not be opening up their workforces until we have the testing.

Which is why targeted testing to control outbreaks is important, everything else is meaningless at this point, except possible research which should not prohibit businesses from opening.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Shanus — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:34:47 GMT

The only true test is not re-opening until about a month without any new cases. Sorry, just my opinion. If there's a 14 day incubation period, then testing is useless. I think I'll be masked, hand washing and sanitizing everything for quite awhile.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

CrazyDaisy — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:43:26 GMT

@Shanus wrote:
The only true test is not re-opening until about a month without any new cases. Sorry, just my opinion. If there's a 14 day incubation period, then testing is useless. I think I'll be masked, hand washing and sanitizing everything for quite awhile.

While intitled to your opinion, you would have to shut down the entire world. At that point why bother re opening.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

gardenman — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:49:10 GMT

Most of the testing that's done now is antigen testing looking for the virus. That's largely done by PCR testing which looks for the DNA/RNA of the virus. It only tells you if you have a detectable level of the virus in the sample that was collected. You could have an undetectable level of the virus but be infected. The swab may have been collected improperly or handled improperly and missed an active infection giving you a false negative. The swab could get cross-contaminated at some point due to the volume of testing being done now and give you a false positive.

Testing is a tool, but it's not nearly as foolproof as many like to assume. It's far from a panacea. Oddly enough, temperature monitoring seems to have been most effective in China in containing the spread, if you believe the Chinese numbers. They reportedly had drones scanning people's temperatures as they walked on streets and even through their apartment windows and then dragging away and isolating anyone with even a slight fever.

That could prove most effective in containing the spread here if it's truly as simple as that. Monitor the temp of everyone entering or leaving a business, school, stadium, etc, and exclude those running a temp. Send them back home until their condition resolves. If a temperature occurs before the person is infectious, it would make containing this virus very easy. Taking temps can be done in a blink with modern tools these days and is a very fast, accurate and reliable test. No fever, come on in. Running a temp, go back home. Simple, fast, easy, and cost-effective.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

stevieb — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:53:42 GMT

@CrazyDaisy I agree with you. The testing is flawed and besides, it's nothing more than a place in time. All this hue and cry about testing would be better placed on treatment and prevention.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Hoovermom — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:56:23 GMT

@Shanus wrote:
The only true test is not re-opening until about a month without any new cases. Sorry, just my opinion. If there's a 14 day incubation period, then testing is useless. I think I'll be masked, hand washing and sanitizing everything for quite awhile.

Wow @Shanus : I guess you are talking about another 6-12 months? Really? Our economy will be in the tank and the rest of the world will follow. The numbers are nowhere near the estimate of 150-240,000 deaths. Time to start opening up parts of the country.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Shanus — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 14:19:49 GMT

@Hoovermom wrote:
@Shanus wrote:
The only true test is not re-opening until about a month without any new cases. Sorry, just my opinion. If there's a 14 day incubation period, then testing is useless. I think I'll be masked, hand washing and sanitizing everything for quite awhile.
Wow @Shanus : I guess you are talking about another 6-12 months? Really? Our economy will be in the tank and the rest of the world will follow. The numbers are nowhere near the estimate of 150-240,000 deaths. Time to start opening up parts of the country.

@Hoovermom Didn't say I wasn't going out, just what I thought was truly safe. Of course, no states will follow that. I just hope new cases/clusters don't appear or another outbreak in the fall as some have mentioned. I'm climbing the walls now.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

pitdakota — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 15:21:23 GMT

No testing program is ever 100% perfect.

But testing with accurate tests will be crucially important along with other factors that may be in place for some businesses and/or companies such as taking temperatures when reporting to work, for example.

The infection rate for this virus is 2.5, meaning that each infected person can infect another 2.5 people. And then each one of those 2.5 people spread it to another 2.5 individuals. Kinda hard to think about half a person, but statistically that is how they figure the infection rate.

So if I am employer with some type of manufacturing plant that employs 1,000 people, just one employee that has the infection can lead to a total of 406 people with the virus in 30 days if no other protocols are put in place to prevent transmission. So more than a third of my workforce is now infected as a result of just one person that had the virus.

If I put mitigation factors in place to reduce the exposure to my employees aimed at reducing the infection rate to 1.25, then the number of infections for 30 days for one person drops to 15.

Even if there is an employee that tested negative does contract the disease later and goes on to develop the infection, if I have temperature checks in place, hopefully the temp check will trigger another required test. Along with not allowing the employee to report into work, contact testing would then take place testing all individuals that had contact with that one person within the past 1-2 weeks.

No doubt there will be clusters that develop. But with adequate testing they can get in there and test and also do contact testing.

A major reason that not only adequate supplies of testing materials needs to be available, but they also need the manpower to do all the contact tracing.

And @Hoovermom, when they give the number of 150,000-240,000 deaths....that is if nothing is done to slow the transmission of the disease. Guess everyone overlooks that print at the bottom of the slide. If a country does nothing, that is the potential death range.

Put mitigation factors in place and you reduce that number. Just like the example above. The infection rate drops to 1.25 from 2.5. And that saves lives.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

MorningLover — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 15:54:18 GMT

@Hoovermom wrote:
@Shanus wrote:
The only true test is not re-opening until about a month without any new cases. Sorry, just my opinion. If there's a 14 day incubation period, then testing is useless. I think I'll be masked, hand washing and sanitizing everything for quite awhile.
Wow @Shanus : I guess you are talking about another 6-12 months? Really? Our economy will be in the tank and the rest of the world will follow. The numbers are nowhere near the estimate of 150-240,000 deaths. Time to start opening up parts of the country.

Yes, and Dr. Birx had said pandemic forecasts initially predicted 1.5 million to 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. But that was a worst-case scenario, without efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus through social distancing and other efforts.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Porcelain — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 16:06:37 GMT

The other countries that are having the most success are doing mass testing. They wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work for them. Germany is doing amazing and is really on track. So is South Korea, and they had a very bad outbreak that was similar to ours at first.

Those of you who don't want testing, not sure what you think would work instead. We can't know which areas are safe to re-open if we don't know who is infected or where the hotspots are.

None of the American re-opening plans being touted anywhere by anyone just leave out testing. In fact, they all rely on mass testing. Not sure why anyone would want to hinder re-opening and getting the economy back on track and put people back to work--by being against testing.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

CrazyDaisy — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 16:18:27 GMT

@Porcelain wrote:
The other countries that are having the most success are doing mass testing. They wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work for them. Germany is doing amazing and is really on track. So is South Korea, and they had a very bad outbreak that was similar to ours at first.

Those of you who don't want testing, not sure what you think would work instead. We can't know which areas are safe to re-open if we don't know who is infected or where the hotspots are.

None of the American re-opening plans being touted anywhere by anyone just leave out testing. In fact, they all rely on mass testing. Not sure why anyone would want to hinder re-opening and getting the economy back on track and put people back to work--by being against testing.

As they say "the cat is out of the bag" what would anyone hope to accommplish with mass testing (and what are you even testing)

Please identify those States looking at reopening requiring mass testing. I have only seen targeted testing based upon new cases to identify/prevent hotspots.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Porcelain — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 16:21:12 GMT

@CrazyDaisy wrote:
@Porcelain wrote:
The other countries that are having the most success are doing mass testing. They wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work for them. Germany is doing amazing and is really on track. So is South Korea, and they had a very bad outbreak that was similar to ours at first.

Those of you who don't want testing, not sure what you think would work instead. We can't know which areas are safe to re-open if we don't know who is infected or where the hotspots are.

None of the American re-opening plans being touted anywhere by anyone just leave out testing. In fact, they all rely on mass testing. Not sure why anyone would want to hinder re-opening and getting the economy back on track and put people back to work--by being against testing.
As they say "the cat is out of the bag" what would anyone hope to accommplish with mass testing (and what are you even testing)

Please identify those States looking at reopening requiring mass testing. I have only seen targeted testing based upon new cases to identify/prevent hotspots.

It's a cornerstone of the national plan that was published yesterday. It's a requirement to go into Phase One.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

CrazyDaisy — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 16:33:55 GMT

@Porcelain wrote:
@CrazyDaisy wrote:
@Porcelain wrote:
The other countries that are having the most success are doing mass testing. They wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work for them. Germany is doing amazing and is really on track. So is South Korea, and they had a very bad outbreak that was similar to ours at first.

Those of you who don't want testing, not sure what you think would work instead. We can't know which areas are safe to re-open if we don't know who is infected or where the hotspots are.

None of the American re-opening plans being touted anywhere by anyone just leave out testing. In fact, they all rely on mass testing. Not sure why anyone would want to hinder re-opening and getting the economy back on track and put people back to work--by being against testing.
As they say "the cat is out of the bag" what would anyone hope to accommplish with mass testing (and what are you even testing)

Please identify those States looking at reopening requiring mass testing. I have only seen targeted testing based upon new cases to identify/prevent hotspots.
It's a cornerstone of the national plan that was published yesterday. It's a requirement to go into Phase One.

HUM....not seeing anything about requiring mass testing as a requirement. In fact, just the opposite on the National side.

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

Porcelain — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 18:58:40 GMT

@CrazyDaisy wrote:

@Porcelain wrote:

It's a cornerstone of the national plan that was published yesterday. It's a requirement to go into Phase One.

HUM....not seeing anything about requiring mass testing as a requirement. In fact, just the opposite on the National side.

"Before entering the first phase, the guidelines say that the number of cases, positive tests and reports of flu- or Covid 19-like symptoms in a state or region should be trending downward"

Re: Testing, Testing, Testing

CrazyDaisy — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 16:47:16 GMT

@Porcelain wrote:
@CrazyDaisy wrote:
@Porcelain wrote:
It's a cornerstone of the national plan that was published yesterday. It's a requirement to go into Phase One.
HUM....not seeing anything about requiring mass testing as a requirement. In fact, just the opposite on the National side.
"Before entering the first phase, the guidelines say that the number of cases, positive tests and reports of flu- or Covid 19-like symptoms in a state or region should be trending downward"

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/coronavirus-trump-issuing-guidelines-on-reopening-parts-of-us-amid-outbreak.html

That is NOT mass testing, that is targeted testing, Which is what I have been saying all along,