[mbreese]

The fundamental problem Theranos failed at overcoming was that you can’t accurately measure many things using small volumes of blood. All of the fraud was aimed at covering that up. (Glucose concentration is one of the few tests that does work with low volumes.) The CoV test we’re talking about has the same fundamental issue — you can’t have an accurate test for an antigen using a small amount of blood.

It’s less of a biological problem and more of a statistical sampling problem. The chances of there being a CoV antigen in the small drop of blood that you’d measure with a glucose monitor is very small. Sure, it might work, and the theory behind the device is sound. However, if you had a negative test, you’d never know if it was because you didn’t have CoV or if you just didn’t have any in that small blood sample.

I’d be happy to be wrong about this. A quick blood check as opposed to a 15min (the Abbott test) or 24hr (to 1 week with this backlog) wait would be amazing. But the amount of validation you’d need to demonstrate effectiveness would be equally amazing.

[jessriedel]

As you allude to, that's an argument based on the basic biology and statistics, not based on Theranos. You could have made that argument pre-Theranos. That Theranos tried, failed, and the covered it up is not much new evidence. Lots of companies try and fail on hard problems all the time.

Given that the above test is some random marketing PDF and I haven't heard anyone respectable talk about this mechanism, I don't have much faith in it, so that is consistent with your analysis.