[blendergeek]

I don't like how there is no option for, "spend billions of dollars on buying enough rapid Covid tests to test every man, woman, and child in the country every single day". Given that rapid Covid tests cost about $5 a piece, this should be an economically feasible option that should be able to sharply reduce the spread of illness. Its too bad that nobody tried it in real life, or we would be able to see if it works.

[progbits]

Slovakia did this in November [1]. Population ~5.5M, 2.5M tested over a single weekend for the first run.

Afterwards there were a few more weekends with lower turnout and until about month or two ago there were free testing places all over the country. These were during many periods require to cross between regions, go to work or shops. Significant fraction of population was getting tested on weekly-biweekly basis.

I can't find a good chart because most only show PCR tests (for a good reason!) but according to [2] Slovakia averaged 7300 tests per 1000 people.

The initial mass testing weekend was useful to get an overview of distribution of the infections and remove a large chunk of the infected from the pool (despite high false negative rate of those tests). It was also good PR and made people more aware how serious the situation is and reconsider if they would rather wear the mask and distance than go through this.

However the continued testing is now viewed as mostly useless. More money spent or tracing and targeted PCR testing, plus vaccine campaigns could have helped more.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/half-slovakia-... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing#how-many-test...

[scotty79]

I would like to have the option to close schools more selectively. In Poland every major surge of cases started roughly 3 weeks after schools were opened. Even if it was just opening of schools just for kids ages 7-9 while they stayed closed for all other kids.

I know it was only few instances and the same relationship doesn't hold for other countries, and also most recent school opening in the summer didn't cause the next wave for the first time. But I think in Poland where we don't party all that much those little unhygienic buggers share way larger portion of the burden than science could establish so far.

[dalben]

I coordinated a testing center where we piloted antigen tests.

Antigen tests are less sensitive, applicable in a much more narrow time frame than PCR tests, and not as trivial to perform correctly as suggested in the media. On top of that, they can be sensitive to external factors as well (such as temperature swings for tests in storage, and fast expiration).

I dislike these antigen tests due to the false sense of security they give people. They have their uses, but they are not a substitute for PCR tests.

There's a reason why influenza antigen tests are not widespread.