> On a large scale, the wrong results from such tests don't matter if you test people often enough (say, every day).
But is anyone going to be getting the test every day? Particularly when it apparently costs $30. At that price, once is fine but nobody is going to be doing it over and over; they'll just treat whatever result they get (positive or negative) as binding.
The functional part of the test, the piece of paper that lines appear on, is less than $0.10 a piece. It is mass manufactured, you could mail people a hundred test strips. You could reuse the $1 plastic housing. What do you think people are doing in other countries? This is a failure of leadership.
As a citizen of another country, I'm not aware of any country that is shipping tests to citizens at their homes. Maybe your numbers you quote are correct - there are other problems, like relying on people to report their positive test results and isolate. A lot of people would, but many also wouldn't, because they can't afford the loss of wages. You'd have to cover wages lost, or some percentage anyway, and that would mean requiring another test at a trusted facility, which increases the complexity again...
Maybe the concept would be workable, but it's also not a simple slam dunk, and again, I don't know that any country is doing anything like it.
$10 billion per month is far, far less than either 1) the economic losses of the pandemic to society, or 2) the amount of money the pandemic is costing the government. I have no knowledge on whether it's feasible, but if it significantly reduced the impact of the pandemic, the economic decision is easy.
"could we manufacture 10 billion of them a month?"
Yes, it could be done.
According to that TWiV episode (which, again, I encourage everyone to listen to) the tests are very simple: just a piece of paper with some antibodies on it.
As for the $10 billion per month cost, from the TWiV episode (about 31 minutes in):
It just boggles my mind, the enormity of this problem. This is killing enormous numbers of people every day. It's costing the country trillions -- literally trillions of dollars. This should just be part of the national emergency.
It's one thing to make vaccines, it's one thing to make therapeutics, but these are things that necessarily take time. We have to wait to see what the efficacy is, we have to... it's really hard to make therapeutics. A diagnostic test should be a no-brainer. Make a $1 test. Get it to everyone. Change the way we view these things, and that should be completely being plowed through by the federal government.
We don't have to make 300 million of them overnight. We just have to focus them at the moment in places where the cases are worst... it's just astounding that we don't see a flurry of activity from the US Army...
I don't know who makes it, but take every manufacturing company that knows how to print paper, adapt their tools to print monocolonal antibodies on to those sheets and just start slicing it up and shipping it out. It's as easy as that.. well, you know, I'm simplifying it a bit but...
>Maybe a year ago this would have been worth it. But the resources should be used for mass vaccination instead.
Given that it will be at least 6-9 months before an appreciable fraction of the population can be vaccinated, frequent testing still makes a whole lot of sense.
As to the effort/expense, you'd think we'd be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, no?
>Given that it will be at least 6-9 months before an appreciable fraction of the population can be vaccinated, frequent testing still makes a whole lot of sense.
What makes you think we can ramp up production on these faster than that? You'd need a billion of them to test each America once every three months.
>As to the effort/expense, you'd think we'd be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, no?
Only if the resources used were entirely unrelated, which I doubt. Every public health offical's man-hour should be dedicated to setting up vaccination sites. Every medical manufacturing facility should be making vaccine components and accessories.
I very much doubt you could set up mass testing of asymptomatic people without making trade offs regarding resources for mass vaccinations.
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people are afraid of getting vaccinated.
Those people, at the very least, should be getting tested.
Also, it's going to take a long time for even those who want to get vaccinated.
Finally, we don't know how long the immunity given by the vaccination will last. If it only lasts a couple of months people might need to get revaccinated again and again throughout the year, which will probably lead to even less people willing to be vaccinated.
So vaccines are very unlikely to be a complete solution by themselves.
I'm going to make an educated guess and say that there isn't a ton of overlap between people who will refuse a vaccine and people who will voluntarily submit to continuous testing.
Maybe I'm underestimating how fast they can ramp up production on these tests, but you'd need billions a month to just test everyone every week.
The tests that they used in Austria cost 7€ a piece, and apparently there are even tests available for 4€ (bulk price obviously)
A friend of mine recently ordered a pack of 25 tests for less than 200€ (he only had to check a box confirming that he was a medical professional). They test the kids with a throat swab every time before they visit their grandparents.
Frequent testing is absolutely feasible if you really want to.
But is anyone going to be getting the test every day? Particularly when it apparently costs $30. At that price, once is fine but nobody is going to be doing it over and over; they'll just treat whatever result they get (positive or negative) as binding.