Posted on 10/02/2020 8:52:20 AM PDT by karpov
Beat Covid Without a Vaccine, with "frequent rapid at-home testing" write Larry Kotlikoff and Michael Mina in the Oct 2 WSJ. I've made this point many times before, as have Larry, Michael, and many others (Paul Romer especially) but this one is well written and concise, and the issue is so important it bears a bit of repetition and efforts to package the message.
How would you like the recession to be over in a month? Here's the ticket. A vaccine is a technology for stopping the spread of a virus. Frequent rapid at-home testing is a technology for spreading the virus. And it is one we have now, if only the government will let us use it.
"At least one such test, Abbott Labs ’ BinaxNOW, is already being produced for the government....
... each is simple enough to be self-administered. With the BinaxNow test, you swab the front of your nose, insert the swab into one side of a small card, add saline to the other side, close the card, and see if the reader on the front lights up green or red. A phone app records a negative result for use as a digital passport."
No doctor visit, no referral, no insurance, no lab, no do you fit the criteria. Just test and see if you're sick.
"Asking those presumed to be infectious to stay home would cut transmission chains, ending Covid outbreaks within weeks. Each transmission stopped may prevent hundreds more. .... Like vaccines, the tests don’t have to be perfect. It’s enough to drop the virus’s reproductive number (the average number of people each infected person infects) below 1."
The tests don't have to be perfect and what we do with them doesn't have to be perfect.
(Excerpt) Read more at johnhcochrane.blogspot.com ...
The Left will go mad when they learn that Trump has beaten the virus by another regiment of HCQ.
"Digital passports would be required, like masks, to go to work, attend school, make reservations, enter stores, etc.""Papers, please" is going to be a big problem. Red China has that today -- you do not get anything in that country without your digital passport and the authorities track where every person in the country is 24x7.
Using good numbers would make it seem like we have already beat it. Stop mass testing, open everything up and stop hysteria ‘reporting” and nobody but Dems will be talking about it..
MS dropped the mask order for 99% of day-to-day living and I started wearing my mask below my nose at Walmart (about only place I haunt that required masks) for the last week - noticed a number of folks doing same and nobody was panicking.
Went today w/o a mask and about 95% of folks still had masks on so us clean-faced folks stood out - no nasty looks or panicking....but many folks have been inured enough to the lack of FReedom that they will continue their “obedience”.
For a bug that has 98% or better recovery stats? No thank you.
The President being positive shows the flaw in the “rapid, repeated testing” concept.
YES, having a test does catch asymptomatic people, but people who NEVER have symptoms may not spread the disease anyway.
YES, having a test can catch a person who is just starting to have symptoms. But the virus spreads a day or two before a test can detect it, as you can see with Trump, who had everybody around him testing every day, but managed to get COVID from one of them.
And once you have symptoms, you don’t need a rapid test, you just need people to go get tested with symptoms, and then isolate until they have results.
A test does no good if the people taking it won’t isolate when they are positive, and we know people go out and party while waiting for test results.
You know what works really well to lower the R-value of the virus? Wearing a mask. Studies show that a person who wears a mask cuts their chance of spreading COVID up to 75%; if 2 people wear a mask, it does as much good as one person getting vaccinated.
Maybe this time he can beat it with ivermectin or quercertin. Exploding heads over at Fauci Land.
I have an old flip phone. All I ever do (or care to know how to do) with it is to make phone calls. No texts, no photos, no apps, and the thing stays home on the charger except when I have a specific reason to carry it. Don’t know how I could have any sort of “digital passport”.
“...if 2 people wear a mask, it does as much good as one person getting vaccinated.”
Well, that’s good to know. Since I see at least two people wearing masks every day, that means I don’t have to get vaccinated, so I won’t.
On the other hand, the vaccine protects you from getting it. So if you are in a risk group, it’s much better for you than wearing a mask.
I’m just old enough that I’ll get the vaccine. I just started getting the flu vaccine last year
I don’t really buy into blanket statements such as “the vaccine protects you from getting it”, at least not yet. I’d like to see how well an actual coronavirus vaccine works in practice.
I’m 65, in pretty good health (though my lungs aren’t what they once were), and not routinely exposed to coronavirus, so I’m not worried. I’m not an anti-vaxxer by any means, just don’t see the necessity for myself.
As for other vaccines, I’ve never had a flu shot and it’s been decades since I had the flu. I haven’t made up my mind about shingles vaccine yet; I had chickenpox when I was young, and judging from my wife’s experience with shingles, I don’t want shingles.
I just got a note from my doctor recommending the shingles vaccine. I did have chicken-pox, so I guess that is a good idea, because I too do not want shingles.
I had never really had the flu, then i got it two years in a row; I say from my daughter who got it from school, but she says I gave it to her. One time I was laid up for a few days, and it was miserable.
I will admit that I did not get the flu last year. Of course, I think a lot of people avoided the flu last year. I got the shot because I was scheduled for surgery, and didn’t want it cancelled because I caught the flu again.
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