Originally Posted by
Johnson85
Then maybe you need to read more posts back because you are apparently lost as to what we are talking about.
We're not talking about using tests back in December or February. We're talking about using tests now to guide how restrictive our mitigation efforts need to be to keep our healthcare system from being overwhelmed. And it doesn't matter if somebody tests negative and then later contracts the virus. I mean, it matters to them obviously, but it just means they would get retested. THere would be some people who contract it so soon after testing that they don't get retested b/c they assume it is whatever they were dealing with before, and they would essentially have the same impact as false negatives. They'll have an impact, but it will be in the noise.
So to reexplain, we look at our hospital capacity remaining, and the number of positive cases. We know roughly what percentage of cases will require hospitalization and then ICU care, so we can look at the number of positive cases and predict what kind of hospitalizations and ICU needs there will be in a week. We can also see whether the virus is spreading more or less quickly (really as of about 4-7 days before the tests because of typical lags between infection and symptoms). That will give a rough idea of whether we can loosen up mitigation measures for the next week without overwhelming our healthcare system or whether we need to stay the same or even tighten back up. Won't be perfect, but seems like a viable plan. Basically similar to what the whitehouse has proposed but altered to recognize the fact that their gate keeping doesn't make sense for areas that haven't already reached their healthcare capacity.