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by a9h74j 2256 days ago
A Stanford MD PhD who had a recent article in the Wall St Journal was interviewed on video[1]. In the video he refers to this very denominator-related test being forthcoming. There are two things I don't understand. First, why did this have to wait for some approved(?) antibody test, rather than being tried with a presumably research-grade test to start?? Second (physicist talking here), to get a rough estimate (to within a factor) whether exposure has already silently _significantly_ spread, why not relax some rigor in the sampling design and just sample 100-1000 geographically-diverse people to get _some_ estimate that could at least speak to the "is exposure already widespread?" question?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UO3Wd5urg0