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I& #39;m no expert. But I& #39;ve listened to enough experts to be confident of the following points about testing. First, we need a lot more testing capacity. But dramatically higher testing capacity is only threshold necessity. In itself the number of tests doesn& #39;t get you through ...
2/ the lengthy period we& #39;re facing between the end of this initial outbreak and being able to get to an interim new normal we& #39;ll have to live under until there& #39;s a COVID vaccine or very effective therapy. In short you need a system, an integrated system of ...
3/ surveillance testing operating around the country. And that will have to be both testing for the virus and testing for the antibodies. One of the things I& #39;ve learned in recent weeks is that there are very different kinds of testing. You have diagnostic testing to ...
4/ guide the treatment of individual people. And then you have surveillance testing. The tests themselves are likely the same. And some tests when they& #39;re administered are for both purposes. But you& #39;re accomplishing different things with these different purposes.
5/ Before you can reopen the economy to any significant extent you need to have a system in place where you have very good visibility into how the disease is or isn& #39;t circulating in the population and the ability to isolate people very quickly if they& #39;re contagious.
6/ If you don& #39;t have that visibility you& #39;re just cueing up a replay of the disaster we& #39;re going through now. If you& #39;re waiting till people start deluging the emergency rooms again you can& #39;t modulate social distancing or policy in any way. You have to be able to monitor ...
7/ closely to know when to ease up or clamp down in a given city or state. And that requires a system of testing, not just enough tests when people can get one if they feel sick or just want to put their minds at ease. In fact - and this part is more me speculating - it& #39;s ...
8/ hard for me to see how you can have effective surveillance without some level of random (but voluntary) testing of people who aren& #39;t sick or don& #39;t appear to be. You need to be able to see the first signs of spread. As we& #39;ve all learned, once it& #39;s spreading ...
9/ widely it& #39;s too late. So while we appear to be making real progress on flattening the curve, albeit with a daily horror of a couple thousand Americans losing their lives, we need to start planning the restart. It& #39;s not about choosing a date. We need a system.
10/ It has to have the capacity for testing at a huge scale over a long period of time. It has to be integrated and effective for surveillance. It& #39;s not just having them be available. And it has to be national. It& #39;s one country, one integrated system of travel ...
11/ commerce and economy. You can& #39;t have a solid system in one state and a bullshit system in the next one. That won& #39;t work. It& #39;s not about picking a date. You have to have this system in place before you can really do anything.
12/ How to do all that? I& #39;m not the one to ask. For more I follow the people on this list, all of whom are credentialed, knowledgeable and smart. They& #39;re talking about it and we should listen. https://twitter.com/i/lists/1233998285779632128">https://twitter.com/i/lists/1...
