One curious thing: epidemiologists, public-health experts and statisticians have failed collectively to change the coronavirus testing strategy in many countries, like US, UK and France. I keep hearing us pleading for wider and more randomized testing on TV every night but nothing real is happening.
I found this appeal from a French professor to President Macron on Christian Robert's blog. Worth reading. Link.
Mr. President, we are at war, let us give ourselves the means to fight effectively against this scourge. Thanks to a significant effort, the number of individuals that can be tested daily increases significantly, let’s devote some of these available tests to samples representative. For each individual drawn at random, we will perform a nasal swab, a blood test, let us collect clinical data and other items of information on its follow-up barriers. This would provide important information on the percentage of immunized French people. This data would open the possibility to feed mathematical models wisely, and hence to make informed decisions about the different strategies of deconfinement.
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In my Wired article from a few weeks back, I explained why we need broader testing in business terms. Sadly, the situation today is not that different. The number of tests has increased but not nearly enough. We're still testing only the people with severe symptoms. With all the talk of re-opening the economy, it is simply impossible to execute without good data. It's not about tracking people's movements; there is little point in doing so without testing results.
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