Coronavirus tests accelerate the spread of coronavirus?

by philg

We’ve done more than 70 million coronavirus tests in the U.S. so far (CDC). Yet the plague rages, even in virtuously masked Trump-free states such as California. What’s the solution? More testing: “‘We’re Clearly Not Doing Enough’: Drop in Testing Hampers Coronavirus Response” (NYT, August 15).

Does this make sense? What if Covid-19 tests actually accelerate the transmission of coronaplague? Consider that a swab from an infected person who is asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic is unlikely to contain any virus. Even with perfect machines and technicians, therefore, any test will return a false negative. (perhaps about 70 percent of tests on the infected, but not-sick or not-very-sick, will be false negatives)

Suppose that we enter the American technocrats’ dream world. We have unlimited testing capacity with the current testing technology. The person who doesn’t feel 100% goes in for a test. It comes back negative a day later. Buoyed by the test result, even though the person feels a little worse, he/she/ze/they decide to go shopping, go to work, etc. Thanks to the negative test result, this person can be fairly sure he/she/ze/they is suffering from a cold or some other minor virus, not the dreaded Covid-19.

Imagine a world in which no testing is available. Fever or just not feeling well? Stay home in isolation because there is no way to know whether it is Covid-19 or not.

Readers: What do you think? Is all of the testing not only a waste of time and money, but actually counterproductive if the goal is to slow down the spread of coronaplague?

Potential evidence: A bunch of American universities were reopened recently. This was partly due to faith in (a) masks, and (b) testing. Some of them have already shut down for in-person instruction. The explanations in the media that I have seen are that not every student wore a mask at all times and that not enough testing was done. It could have worked if only mask habits had been better and perhaps if testing had been stepped up to every day instead of every three days. These media articles are typically accompanied by a photo of students wearing masks and standing or sitting fairly far apart.

Related (sort of): if cowbell isn’t working… More Cowbell

Related:

  • Stockholm University: “The Public Health Authority urges everyone with symptoms of a respiratory infection, even a mild one, to avoid social contact, as they pose a risk of spreading infection. Everyone with symptoms of illness should stay at home.” (i.e., don’t come out coughing even if you have a negative test result to show!)

14 thoughts on “Coronavirus tests accelerate the spread of coronavirus?”

  1. Is all of the testing not only a waste of time and money, but actually counterproductive if the goal is to slow down the spread of coronaplague?
    The testing goal is not to slow the spread of coronaplague but to maintain the power structure of a coronaplague emergency. The test results will always show the gov’t needs more power.

  2. Oh, my goodness, Philip. I’m beginning to worry that the CDC and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are going to descend on your home with a phalanx of hazmat-suited minions, drag you off to a hospital, and plunge a needle into your arm to stop the spread of your unorthodox questions. [Watch again from 0:45 just for the expression on Jason Goodman’s face.]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xku71yDuuIc

    They did it to Gene Simmons back in 2005! 😉

    https://www.theonion.com/scientists-isolate-gene-simmons-1819587804

    I’m afraid you’re basically alone in the wilderness with this hypothesis, because it’s never going to be tried, even as an experiment, except inadvertently, and in those instances it won’t be discussed as an alternative we should widely adopt. This is all about learning how *many* tests we need, and how often, not how few. We are convinced that we can and will measure and test this epidemic until it is controlled. We will keep testing until the false negatives turn positive enough to be detected and quarantined. There may be some additional spread in the meantime, but there’s zero chance of your imaginary world ever emerging.

    We are never going to return to normal, that much has been decided. We are all going to live for the rest of our lives in the new world of constant public health intervention, and we are going to spend as much money as it takes to establish that infrastructure, including the testing infrastructure.

  3. And by the way, I don’t personally think your unorthodox questions are outrageous or out of line. Certainly they’re not more unorthodox or outrageous than the notion that the U.S. Government could continue to print money indefinitely, until our debt far surpasses our GDP, virtually without consequences, which everyone seems to blithely accept now. Or that the S&P 500 would rebound past its previous highs within 6 months during a pandemic that has no end in sight, even while the main street economy is still in tatters. Or any number of otherworldly, unthinkable ideas that are all happening every day now, like Tesla trading at 2048.66, a gain of nearly 1000% in 1 year (it was 220.83 on August 21, 2019). Who knew?

    Compared to those things, your idea of questioning the efficacy and cost of testing is almost mundane, and certainly not irresponsible. We’re living in a surreal world, and who knows what kind of reality we’re ever going to “return” to?

  4. An “instant” test like a pregnancy strip would allow life to sorta resume, test-before-commute, test-before-stadium, test-before-Tinder (that one’s for philg). The current test regime with days-later results are useless except to terminate quarantines for people already isolated.

    • Nope. All it will do is cause massive discrimination of people who for some reason got tested positive.

      With relatively low prevalence of the actual disease the false positives absolutely dominate the test results. Stats 101.

    • Duh. PCR and RT-PCR are useful research and manufacturing techniques. Nobody in his right mind (I assume basic scientific literacy and integrity here) would use them as diagnostic tests.

  8. India, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Nepal
    had widespread national Tuberculosis vaccination for decades. An article in Nature suggests this correlates with resistance to spread of SARS-COV-2

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41419-020-2720-9

    the universal vaccination with Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) seems to be statistically linked with herd-like immunity to covid-19.

    • Thanks, Henry, for that link. The article is from July. It is amazing to me that Dr. Donald J. Trump, MD’s hypothesis regarding HCQ remains untested. There is only one disease that Americans care about anymore: COVID-19. Tens of billions of dollars are funneled into medical research every year. How can we still not know whether taking a standard malaria prevention dose of HCQ every day changes a person’s probability of coming down with COVID-19?

      “Although the matter of CQ and HCQ does not have the degree of numerical sophistication of BCG vaccination, it still deserves to be considered. Unfortunately, the literature on CQ and HCQ has so far exclusively dealt with their therapeutic role in patients affected by the COVID-19 infection, frequently in its advanced stages. In this contribution, we have instead emphasized the possible chemoprophylactic role of CQ and HCQ: even if the evidence for it is admittedly only circumstantial, such a role should be tested in appropriately designed trials.”

  9. At Oklahoma State University, the testing goes hand-in-hand with tracking students’ movements down to the last step they take. Testing people and tracking them is the justification for more testing and tracking. More cowbell!

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oklahoma-state-university-students-steps-are-tracked-stop-coronavirus-n1237525

    At Oklahoma State University, the school tracks where students are at all times on campus to slow the spread of the disease.

    “It feels like we’re kind of being spied on,” said junior Beatrice Essel.

    “If it helps us with COVID and keeps everybody safe from the harmful effects of it, then I’m all for it,” said freshman Simon Landrum.

    But Oklahoma State University President Burns Hargis said the information is used for internal purposes only.

    “Those that are worried about the privacy issues and the Orwellian effect of all of this really don’t understand what we’re using this for,” he said. “We’ve got lots of information on everybody on our campus. But we don’t distribute it. We don’t share it with anybody.”

    He said the data was “critical” in the effort to keep the campus free of COVID-19.

    Students have no ability to opt out of having their card swipes and class attendance used to track their locations, but they can turn off Wi-Fi on their phones if they don’t want staff members to know their every move.

    /snip

    This is right in line with what I thought about a month ago: the returning college student population is being used as a living laboratory for the constant testing/surveillance/quarantine regime that is necessary to stop the virus. Once these students leave College, they’ll be conditioned to accept this constant surveillance in the name of public health for the rest of their lives, whenever it is called for.

    • Also, a few months ago I quipped to Philip (I’m paraphrasing):

      “Obviously you don’t understand that the primary function of higher administration at a University is to protect the faculty from the students.”

      That was tongue-in-cheek then, but not anymore.

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