"Also on the advice of doctors, he will not be tested at this stage since he has no symptoms. For the same reason, doctors say there is no risk to those who have been in contact with him recently."
Perhaps I'm missing something, but why wait for symptoms? Why not test him anyway? Is there any downside to testing? If not, then seems outrageous not to test the PM whose wife has recently tested positive.
The test may be more likely to be a false negative in the early stages of infection. As a result, it may be better to quarantine people who have been exposed without testing them and only test them after they develop symptoms. Otherwise you may be telling someone who has been exposed and is infected that they're not, and then they don't bother to quarantine themselves and go infect other people.
According to Chinese reports, the body part from which you take samples affect the result pretty significantly. There are people who tested negative multiple times from throat swabs but positive from lung fluid or anal swabs.
Why would you think this is disfunction? He's acting on advice of a doctor and in any case, it seems to be a wise use of scarce resources. He's in isolation for two weeks so what does it matter? Save the test for someone who needs it.
He often does. It’s quite an eye opener to watch more of his live addresses and press conferences. When you read a recap of what happened it all sounds vaguely normal and presidential. But when you watch what actually happened you realise how far off the deep end he really is.
He does quite a bit better at rallies. I believe some of these press conferences catch him at times when he is more tired, and the subject matter is also different (less rehearsed, less stump speech-y) and dryer than his rallies so his charisma level seems a bit lower
if you're going to self isolate anyway there's not much point in testing I suppose other than for statistical purposes and at this point my guess would be that testing people on the frontlines is more important.
healthcare workers, public service workers, food, transportation, pharmaceutical and so on. People who need to definitely know if they are sick or not.
People with symptoms who have had no known contact with the infected, to determine if it's covid-19 or just something else?
Edit: I'm assuming we're talking about in the reality scenario where we don't have the testing capacity to test everyone. If you're not just testing the symptomatic, you're testing everyone who isn't already in the infected set, I don't think the US/Canada is prepared for that.
It's optics. Every Canadian is being told that you won't be tested if you are asymptomatic. If he was to get tested, it shows a disparity in the system.
I have a feeling, the reason why we are now hearing politicians, celebrities etc. being infected is probably because they are getting tested anyway. Symptoms or not. They either have the money to do it or they are in important positions and are prioritized.
Which could mean that the actual number of infections truly is much much higher than we know and therefore the fatality rate could also be significantly lower than what has been estimated so far.
I'm not a medical professional at all. Just guessing.
I’m a medical professional and I think you’re right.
There are medical professionals I know who are quarantined with obvious COVID (or H1N1) symptoms but not tested because they don’t fit the requirements. It matters because if it’s just H1N1 they can be back in action sooner.
Not saying we shouldn’t test famous people, just saying we should expand that type of testing much more broadly.
Oh, to be clear - the person with symptoms hasn’t had patient contact in a long time. But the fact that they can’t get tested causes another asymptomatic person who does have very heavy patient contact to be quarantined for 14 days.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadOnly a matter of time I suppose until he tests positive. I wish them both a speedy recovery.
Maybe he won’t show symptoms but still be contagious?
I think this has spread to more people faster than anyone in several governments expected.
I imagine he talks for longer than 10 minutes
Said no one about Trump, ever.
Edit: I'm assuming we're talking about in the reality scenario where we don't have the testing capacity to test everyone. If you're not just testing the symptomatic, you're testing everyone who isn't already in the infected set, I don't think the US/Canada is prepared for that.
Which could mean that the actual number of infections truly is much much higher than we know and therefore the fatality rate could also be significantly lower than what has been estimated so far.
I'm not a medical professional at all. Just guessing.
There are medical professionals I know who are quarantined with obvious COVID (or H1N1) symptoms but not tested because they don’t fit the requirements. It matters because if it’s just H1N1 they can be back in action sooner.
Not saying we shouldn’t test famous people, just saying we should expand that type of testing much more broadly.
Or at least they used to until recently.
Not in this case.
> Trudeau will also stay in isolation for 14 days, but on the advice of his doctors, will not be tested because he has no symptoms.
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid19-trudeau-premiers-co...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558859