[thu2111]

It's hard to disentangle cause and effect though. Countries that were very hard hit also had the most extreme government reactions to it. This can compromise the efficiency of the healthcare system, for example, I've read that in Spain at the peak of the epidemic many nurses and doctors were self-isolating because they'd tested positive, so there was a huge loss of healthcare capacity. Then later on it was discovered that a lot of positive tests are asymptomatic and asymptomatic people don't transmit the disease, so this just hurt healthcare capacity for no reason.

Many countries had problems with care home workers abandoning their jobs, for example to return to their home countries before borders closed. There are some quite horrific stories of the terrible conditions created in care homes in some of the places with excess death spikes.

The imagery of ice-rink morgues etc had a similar effect. There was no real demand surge for morgue space, but undertakers were refusing to work until they were supplied with ample PPE because they thought they would be infected by the bodies with a killer virus. Same story in Bergamo. So then a sudden shortfall in PPE was converted into a shortfall in funeral capacity, even though at that point there was no sudden tsunami of bodies. This then led to more panic especially amongst health system workers.

It's very hard to disentangle what really went on here.

[adrinavarro]

> "Then later on it was discovered that a lot of positive tests are asymptomatic and asymptomatic people don't transmit the disease, so this just hurt healthcare capacity for no reason"

I think it makes sense to isolate anyone who tests PCR positive for coronavirus, right?

Also, is it 100% sure that asymptomatic people will not transmit the disease? What if they are just pre-symptomatic? Where do you establish the cut-off?

[thu2111]

No. Why would it? Given how mild almost all infections are, and that doctors/nurses can routinely save lives from much more serious conditions, it's a strange cost/benefit analysis that assumes it's better to lose huge chunks of healthcare capacity than for some people to get COVID.

Asymptomatic is being used as a different classification than pre-symptomatic in the literature. Asymptomatic means you never develop symptoms. Pre-symptomatic means you haven't yet but will. Pre-symptomatic phase is not long though. Typically just 1-3 days, I think, from the latest literature.

Given the tiny window of time that exists when people are infectious and might not know it, and given the very low likelyhood of a PCR test being done in exactly that time, and given that PCR testing has a lot of problems (e.g. triggers even if your body has destroyed the virus), and given that nurses and doctors are pretty important, I can't see it being useful to actively test in hospitals. It's everywhere by now anyway.