The Homa Files

Test results come too late for therapeutic decisions … and “the science” still can’t answer basic questions.
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Based on some back-of-the envelop arithmetic, I estimate that about 13 million Covid tests have been administered in the 3 weeks ending July 13

Note: The time period is strictly arbitrary.  And, since I don’t have all of the daily data series, I just derived rough estimates off the charts. I doubt conclusions would change much with a different time period or more precise numbers 

Now, let’s drill down on those numbers….

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Of the roughly 13 million tests that were reported, over 12 million (94%) came back covid-negative’.

Note: Practically all headline reporting is “confirmed cases” — the test results that were covid-positive. Total test minus positive results estimates negative results.

My 1st question is who the heck are these 12 million people who are testing negative … and why, in the first place, are they even being covid-tested.

Some possibilities:

• They’re exhibiting flu-like symptoms that might indicate covid.
• They know (or think) that they’ve been exposed to the virus … via a super-spreader person or at a superspreading event
• Their employer is making them take the test (e.g. frontline healthcare workers)
• They’re participating in a medical research project (e.g. a vaccine trial)
• They’ve been selected to be part of a random surveillance sample
• They’re trying to be good citizens by participating in the “test, test, test” program
• They’re just curious as to whether or not they’re infected.

I think the top 5 categories are pretty legit.

The last 2 strike me as a waste of constrained testing capacity.

Regardless, wouldn’t it be nice to know how the 12 million sorts out by those categories?

Apparently, that sort of classification data isn’t captured at the  point-of-testing … or, public health officials just aren’t making the data available.

That’s too bad

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Moving on…

Less than 1 million of the 13 million tested Covid-positive … a “positivity rate” of 6%.

Who are these people and how are they treated when they’re tagged as infected?

I’d like to know:

• How many present with severe, mild or no symptoms?
• Do they have co-morbidities or not?  If yes, how many? Which ones?
• What treatment plan is prescribed? Hospitalization? Quarantine? R&R?

Again, it appears that this sort of classification data isn’t captured at the  point-of-testing … or, public health officials just aren’t making the data available.

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Bottom line: We need to focus constrained testing resources on therapeutic decision incidences … and, we need to gather and analyze more classification so that the testing helps pin down how this virus is acting.

Testing that simply increases the number of tests doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere.

This entry was posted on July 15, 2020 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Covid-19 Testing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.