Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Give everyone LCT strips

The idea previously of LCT bracelets won't work. Arm temperatures are just not accurate enough to show fever. In some cases when you get a fever your lower limbs actually gets colder.

But that does not mean these cheap thermometers are of no benefit. There is an interesting model here from Paul Romer about how even an inaccurate test can reduce spread. Here is his simulation for a test with a 20% and 40% false negative rate results in large reductions in the spike int he number of infections.



and with 40% False Negative Rate

One such test might be the thermometer test for fever it is cheap but not very accurate. About 30% of people might not have fevers in spite of having covid-19.  It seems to be unknown how infections these asymptomatic people are.
Another paper on Wuhan says "Per person, these undocumented infections were half (52 percent) as contagious as documented infections yet were the source of two-thirds of documented infections" but undocumented does not mean asymptomatic.

There is also this interesting article on the issues with temperature checking in Asia. ‘Thermometer Guns’ on Coronavirus Front Lines Are ‘Notoriously Not Accurate’ it seems outdoor ones are pretty useless. And they need to be aimed very carefully.

All these bits of evidence combined seem to suggest that encouraging and facilitating everyone to check their temperature everyday at home might be worthwhile. LCT strips in particular are still available and are really cheap

Here is a supplier that can provide a million reusable LCT a month at a price of 3.6 cent each. There are 1.7 million dwellings in Ireland. Buying one for every dwelling in Ireland would cost 62,500 euro. 138.45 million housing units in the United States = 6 million dollars

Supplying these to households as a cheap if not very accurate test could well meet a cost benefit analysis.




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