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That's why I think testing at the door is the more straightforward way to start. We can reopen factories, office buildings, even shopping malls, but no one gets

by pb 6y ago

That's why I think testing at the door is the more straightforward way to start. We can reopen factories, office buildings, even shopping malls, but no one gets in without passing the screen.

xyzzyz 6y ago
What door? You mean my front door? I'm not letting anyone in, and I'm not leaving either. What are you going to do, call the cops to kick in the doors to test me?
- pb 6y ago
  No, I mean the door to the office building, shopping mall, or other place where groups of people gather and potentially transmit the virus.
LiquidSky 6y ago
But that just moves the compliance and logistics problem back one step. Who's doing this massive amount of testing? If it's the government, you'd need armies of workers spread out everywhere. If it's the owners of these buildings, who checks to ensure compliance? Imagine trying to enforce this on every non-residential building in, say, NYC. It would be practically impossible.
- jedberg 6y ago
  > If it's the owners of these buildings, who checks to ensure compliance? Who checks to make sure every restaurant follows the standards of cleanliness? They have inspectors who (theoretically) show up randomly, so it ensures most places comply voluntarily, because the cost of getting caught is very high. A combination of random inspections and steep fines would solve the compliance problem. Edit: I just had another idea. Offer cash rewards to people who can prove they they weren't tested when entering a public place (which the business pays for via fines). You'd have people running around trying to find missed testing for the cash reward.
  - sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
    For this to work I think you would need a much stricter compliance than what is enforced in restaurant cleanliness.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      It doesn't have to be good enough to catch all cases immediately, just good enough that isolated outbreaks can't sustain themselves.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    To your point, many businesses and facilities implement safety measures because they fear civil liability for preventable damages. I don’t think that’s likely in this case but if you can get most businesses and facilities to be mostly compliant most of the time, that might be enough.
  - Marsymars 6y ago
    There are many unlawful activities that could be solved with cash rewards for people reporting said activities.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      There are many that are. Don't people get rewards for reporting malfeasance to the SEC, or ADA violations? I'm sure I've read about that, as well as about how some people think it's a questionable system. But privatization of enforcement of some regulations is a thing.
- chatmasta 6y ago
  Now imagine going out shopping, you’re stopped at the door, and you test positive. What happens then? The government puts you in a car and sends you... back to your apartment? Sounds like a dystopian nightmare, to be honest.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    The store does not permit you to enter and you are asked to go home and self-quarantine.
    - chatmasta 6y ago
      What if you infect someone on your way back?
      - macintux 6y ago
        You’re still in a much better position than we are today, where you’d infect several people in the store, and again the next day, and the next.
        lolc 6y ago
        I'm weirded out by this binary thinking arguing against masks or testing. It's like the people who say that helmets don't prevent all injuries, which they conclude means one shouldn't be wearing one. Except that where helmets are only individual protection, measures against infection are affective at a population level, where you profit from others' actions.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    You are handed a free mask that serves as warning people to give you space, and you are simultaneously logged as being infected with the CDC.
  - notatoad 6y ago
    we're in the middle of a pandemic. at some point you've got to accept that dystopia is here, and the dystopian things that are happening are realistic ways of dealing with the situtuation. you can't reject solutions because they sound dystopian unless you've got better, non-dystopian solutions. and everybody has to stay in their homes at all times and all non-essential services are shut down is not a less dystopian solution.
- danenania 6y ago
  It doesn’t need perfect compliance to push down the R0 significantly. Lockdowns in the US are mostly not being strictly enforced, but enough people are complying to have a major impact. I think economic incentives are also fairly well aligned here. If tests are widespread, a significant segment of the market is likely to prefer locations that are testing to those that don’t, just like the market tends to prefer clean restaurants to unsanitary ones.
slg 6y ago
This test takes 10 minutes. That is probably still too long to implement at the doors for most places. It will end up creating a bottleneck of people waiting to enter the building and another avenue to spread the virus. Making the inside of the mall safe from the virus isn't going to matter if everyone is exposed to the virus while waiting in the 30 minute line to get into the mall.
- condiment 6y ago
  The article is suggesting daily testing and used "testing at the door" as an example. Wouldn't it stand to reason that you could be tested once per day, in the parking lot to a mall or some other shopping establishment, and thereafter _verify_ that you had been tested that day for the remainder of your commercial transactions? Thinking in those terms, 10 minutes per day is not so great of an imposition. We could formalize it and create drive-through test centers where you drive up, spit into the tube, have a bar code on your phone scanned, and drive off. On your way to the mall you get a text message with your results. Everywhere else you visit that day scans your phone upon entry and confirms that you've been tested.
  - slg 6y ago
    You can't just ignore people who don't travel by car. The hardest hit place in the country in New York City. Most New Yorkers don't own cars and many go months at a time without entering one. And even outside of cities, it is still classist to only allow people with cars to reenter society. The system also becomes much more complex and requires a bigger infrastructure if you aren't literally testing people at the door. How do you verify someone has had a test today? In your bar code idea, can the bar code be faked? Is there some centralized database behind the system that tracks who tests positive? Is that database politically feasible? Some comments here are already objecting to that idea.
    - true_religion 6y ago
      A solution that works outside of the vicinity of New York, would still allow at least 47 other states to open up. As for checking who has a test, simply give colored stickers. If someone wants to “beat” the system, so be it. Social disapproval and common sense will keep most people honest.
freepor 6y ago
Frankly this is the idea that a software guy comes up with. It’s like you translated the idea of checking every API request for malicious payload to a real-world situation and left out the 99.997% of the parts that make the problem hard. It’s like assuming the existence of a teleporter.
epicureanideal 6y ago
Paul, I posted this is part of another comment also, but for places like shopping malls, testers could also test people while they're in the parking lot. No lines to spread the disease, and better throughput if you're testing many cars simultaneously rather than whoever is at the front of the line. (Although I suppose many people could be tested near the front of the line too.)
Theodores 6y ago
How about the doors being to planes? The cheap flight was what made this epidemic a pandemic. We can continue lockdown until everyone who has got it has recovered and is no longer infected. This is a matter of weeks and we are mostly there. Once we get to no new cases per week for a couple of weeks then we can end the lockdown and get on with our lives. To prevent reinfection then anyone that flies in gets quarantined unless they come from a plague free country. The same applies to other border crossings, e.g. ferries and roads. This approach works with rabies in the UK and with other historical plagues. No widespread daily testing is needed this way just the health service testing we have now. This approach is the only realistic option using what we can do now. However there is little talk of quarantine being used for those that fly. Quarantine means forty days.

by pb 6y ago

That's why I think testing at the door is the more straightforward way to start. We can reopen factories, office buildings, even shopping malls, but no one gets in without passing the screen.

xyzzyz 6y ago

What door? You mean my front door? I'm not letting anyone in, and I'm not leaving either. What are you going to do, call the cops to kick in the doors to test me?

pb 6y ago
No, I mean the door to the office building, shopping mall, or other place where groups of people gather and potentially transmit the virus.

LiquidSky 6y ago

But that just moves the compliance and logistics problem back one step. Who's doing this massive amount of testing? If it's the government, you'd need armies of workers spread out everywhere. If it's the owners of these buildings, who checks to ensure compliance? Imagine trying to enforce this on every non-residential building in, say, NYC. It would be practically impossible.

jedberg 6y ago
> If it's the owners of these buildings, who checks to ensure compliance? Who checks to make sure every restaurant follows the standards of cleanliness? They have inspectors who (theoretically) show up randomly, so it ensures most places comply voluntarily, because the cost of getting caught is very high. A combination of random inspections and steep fines would solve the compliance problem. Edit: I just had another idea. Offer cash rewards to people who can prove they they weren't tested when entering a public place (which the business pays for via fines). You'd have people running around trying to find missed testing for the cash reward.
- sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
  For this to work I think you would need a much stricter compliance than what is enforced in restaurant cleanliness.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It doesn't have to be good enough to catch all cases immediately, just good enough that isolated outbreaks can't sustain themselves.
- philwelch 6y ago
  To your point, many businesses and facilities implement safety measures because they fear civil liability for preventable damages. I don’t think that’s likely in this case but if you can get most businesses and facilities to be mostly compliant most of the time, that might be enough.
- Marsymars 6y ago
  There are many unlawful activities that could be solved with cash rewards for people reporting said activities.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    There are many that are. Don't people get rewards for reporting malfeasance to the SEC, or ADA violations? I'm sure I've read about that, as well as about how some people think it's a questionable system. But privatization of enforcement of some regulations is a thing.
chatmasta 6y ago
Now imagine going out shopping, you’re stopped at the door, and you test positive. What happens then? The government puts you in a car and sends you... back to your apartment? Sounds like a dystopian nightmare, to be honest.
- philwelch 6y ago
  The store does not permit you to enter and you are asked to go home and self-quarantine.
  - chatmasta 6y ago
    What if you infect someone on your way back?
    - macintux 6y ago
      You’re still in a much better position than we are today, where you’d infect several people in the store, and again the next day, and the next.
      - lolc 6y ago
        I'm weirded out by this binary thinking arguing against masks or testing. It's like the people who say that helmets don't prevent all injuries, which they conclude means one shouldn't be wearing one. Except that where helmets are only individual protection, measures against infection are affective at a population level, where you profit from others' actions.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  You are handed a free mask that serves as warning people to give you space, and you are simultaneously logged as being infected with the CDC.
- notatoad 6y ago
  we're in the middle of a pandemic. at some point you've got to accept that dystopia is here, and the dystopian things that are happening are realistic ways of dealing with the situtuation. you can't reject solutions because they sound dystopian unless you've got better, non-dystopian solutions. and everybody has to stay in their homes at all times and all non-essential services are shut down is not a less dystopian solution.
danenania 6y ago
It doesn’t need perfect compliance to push down the R0 significantly. Lockdowns in the US are mostly not being strictly enforced, but enough people are complying to have a major impact. I think economic incentives are also fairly well aligned here. If tests are widespread, a significant segment of the market is likely to prefer locations that are testing to those that don’t, just like the market tends to prefer clean restaurants to unsanitary ones.

slg 6y ago

This test takes 10 minutes. That is probably still too long to implement at the doors for most places. It will end up creating a bottleneck of people waiting to enter the building and another avenue to spread the virus. Making the inside of the mall safe from the virus isn't going to matter if everyone is exposed to the virus while waiting in the 30 minute line to get into the mall.

condiment 6y ago
The article is suggesting daily testing and used "testing at the door" as an example. Wouldn't it stand to reason that you could be tested once per day, in the parking lot to a mall or some other shopping establishment, and thereafter _verify_ that you had been tested that day for the remainder of your commercial transactions? Thinking in those terms, 10 minutes per day is not so great of an imposition. We could formalize it and create drive-through test centers where you drive up, spit into the tube, have a bar code on your phone scanned, and drive off. On your way to the mall you get a text message with your results. Everywhere else you visit that day scans your phone upon entry and confirms that you've been tested.
- slg 6y ago
  You can't just ignore people who don't travel by car. The hardest hit place in the country in New York City. Most New Yorkers don't own cars and many go months at a time without entering one. And even outside of cities, it is still classist to only allow people with cars to reenter society. The system also becomes much more complex and requires a bigger infrastructure if you aren't literally testing people at the door. How do you verify someone has had a test today? In your bar code idea, can the bar code be faked? Is there some centralized database behind the system that tracks who tests positive? Is that database politically feasible? Some comments here are already objecting to that idea.
  - true_religion 6y ago
    A solution that works outside of the vicinity of New York, would still allow at least 47 other states to open up. As for checking who has a test, simply give colored stickers. If someone wants to “beat” the system, so be it. Social disapproval and common sense will keep most people honest.

freepor 6y ago

Frankly this is the idea that a software guy comes up with. It’s like you translated the idea of checking every API request for malicious payload to a real-world situation and left out the 99.997% of the parts that make the problem hard. It’s like assuming the existence of a teleporter.

epicureanideal 6y ago

Paul, I posted this is part of another comment also, but for places like shopping malls, testers could also test people while they're in the parking lot. No lines to spread the disease, and better throughput if you're testing many cars simultaneously rather than whoever is at the front of the line. (Although I suppose many people could be tested near the front of the line too.)

Theodores 6y ago

How about the doors being to planes? The cheap flight was what made this epidemic a pandemic. We can continue lockdown until everyone who has got it has recovered and is no longer infected. This is a matter of weeks and we are mostly there. Once we get to no new cases per week for a couple of weeks then we can end the lockdown and get on with our lives. To prevent reinfection then anyone that flies in gets quarantined unless they come from a plague free country. The same applies to other border crossings, e.g. ferries and roads. This approach works with rabies in the UK and with other historical plagues. No widespread daily testing is needed this way just the health service testing we have now. This approach is the only realistic option using what we can do now. However there is little talk of quarantine being used for those that fly. Quarantine means forty days.