Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonymouswacker | Hacker News Reader

So it was halted because the original requirement for this sort of testing program was for surveillance, not diagnosis. Washington's public health authorities chose to change its intention and purpose (to instead provide the results immediately to patients, also known as diagnoisis) while still expecting the FDA to approve it. This is just a case of one bureaucracy not being forthright with another one, and I don't see why the fact that Bill Gates "backs" it has anything to do with the program.

Is Bill Gates somehow involved in this decision? Because one would hope that a private individual would not be have undue influence on public health organizations' decisions, especially when he has much of his wealth invested in the very industry that is likely to be affected by the results of this Coronavirus study. It's an overt conflict of interest.

View on HN

> especially when he has much of his wealth invested in the very industry that is likely to be affected by the results of this Coronavirus study

Citation needed. As far as I can tell, his only healthcare related holding is Schrodinger, Inc. which is new, and at 300M out of his 106B net worth could hardly be considered "much of his wealth" .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...

A charity isn't an investment nor is it his wealth anymore.

A charitable foundation is something rich people start to launder their reputation after a lucrative career of skulldaggery. Once you have more money than God you don't need an ROI for your bank account -- you need one for your soul.

I was wrong, and thank you for pointing it out. I conflated his Foundation with his person. And you are correct, "much of his wealth", is misleading. It is the hundreds of millions of USD in his private healthcare investment and several billions under his control through his Foundation [1] that I know of. Given how extremely wealthy and powerful he is, I think that even though it is not a majority of his life on the line, it is a lot of control, influence, and maybe a teensy bit of a return on investment, that he has to gain from this.

[0] - https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/bill-gates-says-foundation-...

>I don't see why the fact that Bill Gates "backs" it has anything to do with the program

I doubt the FDA's decision had anything to do with the Gates connection, but most study rejections don't get articles in the NYT. His backing is why it's "news," he spend/gives millions to the press to ensure it.

You're right. I wish NY Times were slightly above this practice, of including a polarizing celebrity with no relation to the story as if he is either A. an authority, or B. an actor in the narrative. This attracts both the audience who thinks Bill Gates' work is humanitarian, and those who think he is doing this for selfish (money/power/influence) reasons. It seems his only connection, from what I can tell, is proximity and endorsement, which are irrelevant, and only tangential to the story, which is already scant.

I disagree with that - at least in this instance. Perhaps in other situations, but if you're suggesting that a program between the major state and city health departments in Seattle (which was one of the earliest known COVID-19 cities) _about_ COVID-19 being halted would otherwise "not be news", I'm going to have to disagree.

Edit: to say "halted".

For a start, it wasn't "canceled," it was halted until proper authorization is obtained.

I don't really see the point of most of the stories about various ongoing tests. Until something is shown to be effective, what benefit do we get from learning all these details?

> His backing is why it's "news," he spend/gives millions to the press to ensure it.

No, it's news because the FDA is haulting COVID testing over utterly stupid bureaucracy when we need massively ramped up COVID testing and SCAN/Seattle Flu Study are actually providing quality home tests at scale.

This stands in stark contrast to the hundreds of poor quality home antibody tests the FDA has approved with almost no oversight. It seems inconsistent with the need to cut red tape to fight COVID.

>No, it's news because the FDA is haulting COVID testing over utterly stupid bureaucracy

It's not utterly stupid, diagnostic testing adds some amount of bias in the results. The quality of these home tests needs to be proven.

> diagnostic testing adds some amount of bias in the results.

How does it add bias? Also, this is not the FDA's stated concern.

> The quality of these home tests needs to be proven.

They have been. That data has been submitted to the FDA a month ago.

A diagnostic test is often run on a person who suspects they already have the virus. That creates a loaded sample pool, and adds bias to the results.

That is not how the SCAN study chooses study participants.

From what I can gather, they allowed a free signup for participants. People with flu-like symptoms are more likely to be searching for tests and to go through the hassle of acquiring a test.

Source https://www.king5.com/mobile/article/news/health/coronavirus...

They don't send kits to everyone who uses the website, and they ask "do you have symptoms?" in advance of asking if you want to be tested. Certainly there is some self-selection bias in using the website at all. That would also be true if they did not provide results. Regardless, it has nothing to do with the TFA and the FDA's actions.

>That would also be true if they did not provide results.

Both sides would have notably different biases that would need to be accounted for, and would have different guidelines for FDA approval. Pausing the project when you discover there was a miscommunication over what kind of testing was being done makes sense. You need to keep the potentially tricky data separate from further results.

>Regardless, it has nothing to do with the TFA and the FDA's actions.

It's the actual reason they gave for their actions, and their request for more information on tests done to people not showing symptoms would be one of the main things they need to determine what bias is present.

It is fair to say this group is the reason we didn’t have an even worse outbreak, and it was solely due to defying the Federal officials:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/em...

“By Feb. 25, Dr. Chu and her colleagues could not bear to wait any longer. They began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval.

What came back confirmed their worst fear. They quickly had a positive test from a local teenager with no recent travel history. The coronavirus had already established itself on American soil without anybody realizing it.”

This story strikes me as off. It runs counter to every other aspect of the virus we focus on. Specifically, if it was already spreading in schools, then why don't we see scores of critical kids and parents? With how contagious this is, I find it fairly unconvincing that it was just that student.

Combined with symptoms taking about a week to present, this was in community spread for a while. Yet, here in WA, the deaths figure is still 92% over sixty years old. I don't know the percent from long term care facilities. (I would love that stat.)

Then the question is at what point did it break into long term care facilities? And could we have done something to strengthen their protection?

With a further question of what, exactly, causes it to go severe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com