Just to be clear: 10% of the *detected* cases. Of course there were many more cases that no test picked up.
“If they had waited until they developed symptoms to get a PCR test, and then waited another 24 hours until they got the PCR results, that’s at least two days where they might have been unknowingly spreading the virus.”
On the benefits of speed:
“If they had waited until they developed symptoms to get a PCR test, and then waited another 24 hours until they got the PCR results, that’s at least two days where they might have been unknowingly spreading the virus.”
In it you say up to 18% owing to rapid tests. I agree. But I’d go further and say that owing to the specificity for infectious cases (plus speed) the relative benefit of those 10-18% is probably as much as half of all the PCR testing.
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As high income nations squabble over whether to vaccinate the youngest and least vulnerable, much of the world has yet to vaccinate their absolute most vulnerable.
Global inequities run deep. But this is a particularly egregious one.
Again, these are optimization problems.
We should ask questions like: how many childhood doses are worth a single dose in a 70 year old in India.
Probably you need thousands of childhood doses to offer as much benefit as a single dose to a 70 year old.
Of course, these are not just simple public health decisions that need to be optimized - these are massive geopolitical (mis?)calculations that are above my pay grade.
The paper shows 500 ppl who went to a concert and were rapid tested before hand.
They also received super high sensitivity molecular lab tests before as well - but the results arrived only after the event.
2/x
What they found was interesting.
First - no one turned up positive on the rapid test at the outset. So a strong evaluation of its ability to screen ppl out didn’t really happen. But that’s ok, we already know the test sensitivity.
To maximize vaccines to halt #COVID19 - look to immunity 🧵
When someone gets their first dose - they should be offered to take a fingerprick blood sample at same time
That should be tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies
If positive, then don’t come back for a second dose.
1/
There is now abundant evidence that shows that people who have been infected have as good a response to their first dose vaccine as those in infected and w 2 doses.
A nice paper here discusses an approach based on knowledge of being infected in past
This was a great paper in @ScienceMagazine that demonstrated strong B and T cell responses following single dose vaccine that rivaled or was even better than a two dose vaccine schedule (when absent the prior infection)
I posted this and have seen that many question it.
From my vantage the changes remain below radar yet are massive.
Virtual medicine, at-home testing/treatment. The virtualization of healthcare towards consumers is happening fast. This pandemic is accelerating this 5-10 years.
Whether it will be for best, or not... well, only time will tell how it shakes out. I'm not going to say one way or the other since it's impossible to know.
But I get to see glimpses of what is happening and the many companies getting involved. Remarkable pace.
To be clear though - this is about medicine, not public health.
If I'm being honest, I don't think "we" will learn much from this pandemic about how to do good public health. I think the energy around it will fade and we will see billions wasted trying to set up crappy systems.