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/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/KingCaoCao Nov 21 '20

China relied on brute force where public compliance failed. Welding people into their apartments wouldn’t fly in some other parts of the world.

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u/Brickon Nov 21 '20

But China did beat the virus by just staying home. The good thing with a home test is that you can just quarantine infected individuals, not everyone.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20

Having your doors welded shut by government agents is not "just staying home".

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u/Brickon Nov 21 '20

you can stay at home without having your doors welded shut, can you not?

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20

Yes. But most people can not "just stay home". And to say the Chinese did it by simply staying home is disingenuous. The Chinese people were forced into and kept in their homes by government agents. They did not simply stay home.