Community Chat

[pitdakota]

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@Sooner wrote:

Most of the stuff associated with this pandemic make little sense to me.  Like testing.  Not sure what the point of it all is because it proves nothing for more than that moment. 

You could walk to your car and get the virus in the elevator and there goes the test. 

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@Sooner, it might be due to looking at it from only an individual perspective.  Maybe?  The goal is not to find the negative cases or place emphasis on who is negative. 

From a public health perspective, the goal is to identify who is positive.  For a couple of reasons.  The most important reason is to get them out of circulation so as not to expose others.  Then with contact tracing they can get to other possible contacts and identify exposures and possible cases coming from that exposure.  That also helps prevent even more cases in the chain.

Of course with transmission rates at these numbers one just can't do contact tracing effectively.  There is also the challenge with many refusing to deal with the contact tracers and provide information.  

Even with that though, it is usually very sobering for people to find out they have been exposed & it heightens their awareness in terms of how they are feeling, etc.    And usually if someone knows they were exposed they will follow through and be tested at the appropriate time interval to make sure they aren't positive at that time. 

[Sooner]

@pitdakota My point is you really aren't identifying anything except in the moment.  And I see little good in that considering the effort and expense and arm waving about a reading that is not very accurate 6 hours (or even 30 minutes) from when it was taken--since someone may be exposed right afterward.  

[pitdakota]

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@Sooner wrote:

@pitdakota My point is you really aren't identifying anything except in the moment.  And I see little good in that considering the effort and expense and arm waving about a reading that is not very accurate 6 hours (or even 30 minutes) from when it was taken--since someone may be exposed right afterward.  

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@Sooner  Yes, but identifying the postives at that moment and hopefully getting them in quarantine is very important.  The moments count.  Just like in critical care, we learn quickly that every second can make a difference in the outcome.  

It is also important for people to know in terms of possible health outcomes for the person with covid-19.  For many if they know they are positive and start to experience trouble breathing or get really sick they are far more likely to seek medical care sooner.

I don't know this person but a friend of mine had a family member that started feeling sick and spent a couple of days just thinking they had picked up some type of cold.  One evening she started having some problems feeling like she was able to get a deep breath.  She just somewhat blew it off as being older and not able to deal with a cold as well now that she was older.  Her husband ended up calling EMS in the middle of the night.  Unfortunately, the woman tested positive for covid-19 and ended up passing away in a couple of days.

That is one thing that is fairly sobering about this virus.  People can die fairly quickly and without a lot of warning.   While it is not ever 100% certain if people know they are positive they may not delay seeking care as much when they do start to experience problems & not try to explain their symptoms away on something else.  

[Sooner]

@pitdakota You are talking about specifics and I'm stating that this random testing does little. I believe that a lot of it is a waste of time and money and provides little accuracy or useful information.

[bikerbabe]

@Sooner 

Larger scale testing in the community is a big benefit to hospitals! By looking at positivity trends in the community we can get an idea on what the patient load is going to look like in the near future and prepare. Testing isn't perfect (and rapid tests actually are bad about false negatives) but without testing we're truly flying blind.

[pitdakota]

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@Sooner wrote:

@pitdakota You are talking about specifics and I'm stating that this random testing does little. I believe that a lot of it is a waste of time and money and provides little accuracy or useful information.

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@Sooner, the aggragated results of that testing gives public health and infectious disease docs quite a bit of information and data.  It might not mean a lot to the general public, but it is anything but a waste of time and money.  

As @bikerbabe stated, without that information one is flying blind.  That is actually how we know this virus is transmitted, exactly how contagious it is, what mitigation factors work, which ones aren't that effective, etc. 

There are several universities in the country that have had relative success in holding in person classes for their student population.  Those universities are ones that have aggressive testing mandated for students, faculty, & staff, identifying those that are positive, requiring a quarantine area and period for those testing positive, rigorous protocols for students to adhere to covid policies, and implementing those measures that they know from testing that works.

That would not have been possible up to this point without testing.  So yes, those in public health learn quite a bit from testing.  No question that testing is crucial in managing any pandemic.   

[Spurt]

In their testing the NFL had a lot of false positives from one lab in particular....

[pitdakota]

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@Spurt wrote:

In their testing the NFL had a lot of false positives from one lab in particular....

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@Spurt, exactly.  And they learn from that as well and then work to address the reasons false positives occur and make corrections.  That part is critical in the overall response as well which people sometimes don't consider.  Ongoing evaluation is very important and necessary to improve.  But you have to test first.   

They have had labs that had problems with various tests, not related to covid that have had problems in the past.  But if you don't do the tests, no one figures out their is a problem with their calibration or whatever the problem turns out to be. 

[Porcelain]

The quickie tests are inaccurate. Elon Musk is weird. And he is not a medical expert. Dude needs to stay in his lane.

[lkat]

Elon Musk is a nut job who also said there would be close to zero cases by April.