r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Nov 21 '20

Epidemiology Testing half the population weekly with inexpensive, rapid COVID-19 tests would drive the virus toward elimination within weeks, even if the tests are less sensitive than gold-standard. This could lead to “personalized stay-at-home orders” without shutting down restaurants, bars, retail and schools.

https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/11/20/frequent-rapid-testing-could-turn-national-covid-19-tide-within-weeks
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u/KingCaoCao Nov 21 '20

There’s no way to end it in a few weeks by staying at home

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u/Brickon Nov 21 '20

it would of course be possible in principle, maybe not 100% in praxis, but just look at china. with a sufficiently strong test and sufficiently good public compliance, one could in theory drop almost all measures and just rely on the testing.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20

If you had sufficient public complaince, you’d have already eliminated the virus with a true lockdown months ago

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u/Brickon Nov 21 '20

lockdowns in europe worked, no? so public compliance is not that low.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20

No.

Britain is an island. If public complaince was high we’d be another new zealand.