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by ramraj07
1917 days ago
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You called yourself a stats guy so I’m going to push, can you show any rigorous analysis by anyone suggesting that theres any benefit to doing temp checks? Is there any number anywhere that gives false positive rate estimates for typically used temperature checking methods? Or false negatives? |
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First of all, the important thing is the R number - how many people does the average infected person infect. If that is above 1, you get spread. Below 1, it dies out. Without mitigations, R is estimated at about 3. With mitigations, the UK is posting various numbers in the 0.7-1.0 range. (See https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52473523 for a source.) Let's assume that the USA is similar.
The question to ask is this. Do the temperature checks make the difference between being above or below 1.0?
Per https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210110/59-percent-of-covid... about 60% of spread comes from people who are asymptomatic. So about 40% happens from people who are symptomatic. Per https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-is-the-risk-of-g... about 55% of spread happens at stores. If those factors were independent, about 1/4 of the spread would happen from symptomatic people at stores. If the temperature checks avoid a significant fraction of those, then in the real world it may indeed be the difference between pandemic spread and dying off.