FDA authorizes rapid, at-home coronavirus test

And that would be a bad idea because untrained drivers may cause injury to others. The same logic applies to disease tracking, we have to know because someone might harm someone else. It's being measured so we know if prevention methods like lockdowns and masks are working. And just like a driver's license is not something you can volunteer to have (or not), neither should the knowledge of your virus status be optional.

Imagine running a country and being asked "So, how is your country coping with the virus?", and answering "I don't know, we don't have the numbers."...

If the executive branch (which the FDA falls under) is so far beyond reigning in that we have to resort to disabling an important functionality of government instead of improving the check on power (which is where I believe the focus should be), then why would you assume that they're being honest when they promise you that they're anonymizing your data? You're arguing that the executive branch is out of control but you're willing to trust them if they promise to anonymize the data they collect? That makes no sense to me.

If you're going to use the "rogue administration" argument, then how exactly does FDA, which falls under the executive branch, not fall into the same rogue behavior category?

The UK pays a £500 incentive to anyone who gets covid-19, and suddenly a lot more people started getting infected... If you're young and poor, it's a pretty sweet deal since the mortality and complications rate is so low for young people.

And could we manufacture 10 billion of them a month?

If it were subsidized by the Government, they'd be charging 10x that per test.

Maybe the concept would be workable, but it's also not a simple slam dunk, and again, I don't know that any country is doing anything like it.

They're not shipping dozens of tests (that didn't exist until now) to their citizens at no cost, which I what you seem to be implying...

Unfortunately I'm afraid that at this point its way too late. The window has moved and the new accepted normal seems to be lots of people dying from the virus. Due to privacy protection those people are also largely invisible to the majority of the population, except for their loved ones - an abstract number. There is also a general sense that "testing doesn't work" - even more so accentuated by the repeated insistence of various medical professionals that rapid tests are "not reliable" (which misses the point - they are not for diagnosis but they're a good infection control tool) and a focus on the vaccines.

Success for rapid tests is therefore highly unlikely at this point. Could have worked 3 or 4 months ago. Maybe if there are huge incentives to get tested and a large campaign to inform the public, it could work - but otherwise I doubt it.

That was a long time ago when the vast majority of media available to people was willing to go along with what the government told them was ok or not ok to print. Even if you got 90% of the media on board today, think of the number of Facebook clicks and thus fat stacks of ad revenue one media outlet could generate by just posting a couple of stories a week that "present another viewpoint" or "ask questions" about "the debate".

In funding our news via ad revenue we have turned all issues into a decision of Coke versus Pepsi and tossed any idea of a mutually-agreed upon reality out the door.

I mean, I've been known to use the blood pressure machines that drug stores make available mostly because I like the feeling of pressure on my arm. Maybe you didn't have anything better to do. People do lots of things.

In Bozen they mass-tested 65% of the population over the course of 3 days.

They were getting 540 positive PCR tests every 100k people a week in the week before the mass screening; the latter yielded 900 positive antigen results every 100k people; they got 435 positive PCR tests every 100k people in the week after the screening.

This 20% reduction in positive PCR tests seems mostly due to the lockdown, given that the week before the mass screening the reduction had been even greater, 32%.

Friend of mine got COVID, the health department told him he could get reinfected and to continue taking percautions. He was sick enough with it that he's taking the threat of reinfection seriously.

Plus as far as I'm aware there was no lying, it was a very wishy-washy diversion, woes about PPE shortage due to China shut down, and 5D chessing about trying to not worsen the shortage instead of giving a simple and clear answer, that "yes, they unquestionably help [healthcare workers use them for a reason!], but we'll be stockpiling every shipment for later".

Interesting note? Right at the beginning of the crisis Republicans trusted the CDC more than Dems.

People don't like being lied to "for their own good" or whatever. This is the Red Cross Doughnut moment. It's over for trust in public health institutions.

Unfortunately early on it was viewed as masks or social distance, with both competing for the top spot in the prevention hierarchy.

The truth is masks help, but no where near as much as social distancing. I also think this was a misfire of harm reduction vs prevention.

Stay home, and if you have to go out wear a mask was probably the right messaging. Along with masks are not fool proof and you can still get sick, so really minimize interactions.

I think a mask is meaningless walking outside on the sidewalk; if virus particles survive past six feet and through wind then we have bigger problems ; no, the mask mandate makes sense in stores, workplace hallways and bathrooms, hair salons and stuff like that.

It's complex to tell people to wear a mask in specific situations so the authorities say to wear it all the time, which feels oppressive. It's complex to tell people not to hoard things so we lied and told the public masks weren't recommended until June.

Now the gloves thing is a mystery to me. Do people not have control over their hands? The virus doesn't enter the hands, it enters the face-holes, but the hands have to be close to the face-holes to enter, where they bind to receptors in the airways. The virus-facehole transit route exists even if you wear gloves.

A few months back I saw someone sitting outside, on a park bench, mask on chin while they ate a sandwich -- with their gloves.

Yeah, it can be the case that people are dumb-dumbs AND our institutions are awful at messaging strategy.

Other things people said:

* N95s have a short shelf-life. Complete bullshit. The real first POF is the elasticated band. If that's fine, your fit will probably be fine. We knew this wasn't true so my 10 year old masks were still legit.

* N95s require a lot of training for fit. The fit test is trivial to do. We knew this but lots of people on HN and authorities claimed this wasn't the case.

* N95s cannot be reused. This was highly likely to be nonsense. The virus doesn't survive on surfaces for very long and that was the high probability event. After all, viruses rarely mutate so that they're terrible in all ways. i.e. this virus likely behaves like other coronaviruses except for a few variations.

And of course those with our half-mask respirators printed our exhale valves and placed our P100s in them and were full protected.

There was a lot of misinformation going around by people who just didn't know very much and were very eager to sound authoritative. They were all about "sources" and "citations" that are just parrot views (i.e. single primary source, many secondary sources giving the impression of consensus).

People made fun of the tech industry for how they handled it, too. Techies (being coddled millennial snowflakes) shut down before any government, stopped business flights to/from China, and started working from home and wearing masks earlier.

Honestly, my biggest mistake was that I was one of the few in my group of friends who believed the US had competent bureaucrats and so I stayed in the market while my friends sold ahead of the crash. Welp.

Science bias leads you to come down hard that things that aren't proven are false. No hard proof double blind studies that masks work with covid19 means mask don't work.

Credentialist bias makes you assume people without are stupid and need to be tricked to do the right thing.

Nevertheless, IHME was kept in the spotlight by the government and media because they deemed the experts as an independent health research center at a reputable university. Their predictions drove many poor policy decisions, culminating in the infamous claim by Trump that the pandemic would be over soon after Easter. Many epidemiologists, statisticians, physicists, mathematicians etc. called their conclusions into question and built better models (mostly using SEIR / SEIS). It took several more months for IHME to improve their own model, but by then the damage was already done.

They had it wrong for a few weeks, okay. But they changed their guidelines, and there was new data showing the efficacy of wearing masks(at least the combination of the masks and the social behavior they encourage), and they have stuck to those guidelines for nearly 8 months now.

I'm honestly amazed how long people are being hung up on that single, one-way change in guidelines during the early weeks. It's unfortunate the guidelines didn't come sooner. But looking at the timeline, where we were then, and where we are now.. The totality of it all.. IDK, it's weird seeing people constantly bringing it up and blaming public health official. Especially considering what the messaging from non-health public officials has been over the past 8 months and 300k deaths.

This expert did the professional version of a facepalm when she recounted the times when these health experts failed in their drills. She made it clear that the public will look to them as experts, so be clear, be informative, tell the truth, give actionable steps, etc. Because if these experts _don't_ do these things, the public will look elsewhere. And that "elsewhere" will likely be random yahoos on the internet. Doctors saying "wear a mask" will have greater overall benefits, even if people follow that advice BADLY.

Yes, if you want absolute certainty in a highly infectious environment like the hospital, when you're doing bronchoscopies or taking care of COVID patients, you'd want to get the fit absolutely perfect (especially if it takes key resources like Nurses / docs out of commission for several weeks).

But if you're just worried about everyday scenarios like sharing an elevator in my apartment building or going to a grocery store where people still seem to turn up with out masks (or worse, pretend bandanas are masks) or get on public transit, then getting some protection is good enough.

Edit: I misremembered the original advice. CDC specifically said masks were unnecessary. Obviously they didn't have the evidence to make that kind of assertion.

There is no reasonable explanation except that the misleading statements were intentional - there's no way they didn't notice how their statements were received. And infamously the US Surgeon General made a pretty clear statement with his "Don't buy masks" tweet.

> I was confused, since N95s come in two sizes, regular and "small."

As I understand it, if neither passes the fit test, you need a different brand or can't do work that requires one.

For what it's worth I have a degree in physics and used to work in rocketry and sim science so I'm not just some naive person arguing with a domain expert.

What I learned from this is that there's a lot going on besides facts. Social status and signaling matters a lot and the reason they were upset is because I upset that, even though it was in private. When we politicize and socialize things it's a double edged sword. It can get people to adopt strategies but can also add binders.

The White House used it for that purpose anyway, it seems to have been moderately effective for a while but they ended up having 3 super spreading events because of relying exclusively on the ID Now tests (used against directions) and without masking, social distancing, or ventilation/outdoors events.