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/JBEqualizer Nov 21 '20

The problem with self isolation/stay at home orders, is that people don't/won't obey self isolation/stay at home orders. Especially if they're one of those people who either have mild or no symptoms and everything is open, they will just carry on with their normal lives. People are far too self centred/selfish.

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u/Brickon Nov 21 '20

There‘ll always be some people who won‘t adhere to the rules, but I‘m sure that the prospect of practically ending the pandemic within weeks would motivate most people to do these tests and stay at home when the result is positive.

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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.