This is FUD. Comprehensive testing and isolation is the only thing that can contain a pandemic. There's so little data available every additional point is valuable.
There is absolutely not tons of data, the CDC and FDA have been trying to manipulate the infection figures by preventing people from being tested. Have a look at this thread from a former FDA commissioner, which was posted on Feb 2(!) https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/12240422206653071...
It took another month for things to seriously change after that was posted. South Korea, a nation of 50 million people, has tested 150,000. The US figure is hard to track but it's at around 2,000 right now. There are almost certainly thousands of people in the US who are infected but have not been tested.
There is literally almost no data. We are barely testing at all in the US. And even if we were, the goal here isn't good science, it's preventing deaths. People who get tested "random Joe" at home and get a positive result are less likely to infect others.
Someone sitting in their house is testing themselves is not data! You are confusing data with a number that ticks up. Ha, another infected! Look DATA!
The potential for misuse, abuse, panic and trouble is far bigger than you imagine.
The problem here, with everyone, is that they think that the rest of the population will act like them. Take a test, then if positive but you are not showing any symptoms lay low for a week, avoid contact with others. This is the most common outcome of the disease, 99% of cases nothing will happen. You don't need to do anything at all, clears up on its own. For each one in a hospital, hundreds did not need care.
But no, that's not what would happen at all if the population started self-testing itself. Everyone positive, yet in no need of medical care will rush the emergency, severely impacting health care providers - that will kill more people than COVID itself.
The upheaval this self-testing can cause far exceeds whatever marginal benefits it would produce.
> This is the most common outcome of the disease, 99% of cases nothing will happen. You don't need to do anything at all, clears up on its own. For each one in a hospital [...]
This is where you're off the rails. You're thinking only in terms of danger to the infected. There aren't going to be hospitals in a pandemic!
The problem with this is that that behavior (i.e. "You don't need to do anything at all") tends to infect everyone around the sufferer! And if the virus is a routine flu where 70-80% of the population is immune, that's fine. It spreads a little and stops.
This doesn't work like that. No one is immune to a novel virus. This will spread across the world and infect whole ?!@#$%! cities at once, overwhelming health care facilities with infections that in a normal situation would be trivially treatable in a hospital. But we'll run out of hospital beds given your insane advice, and people will die for lack of care. Seriously, in worst case scenarios literally millions of people are going to be dead by next year in a situation where we could have saved them had we simply done obvious stuff like testing and quarantine and not told them (sigh) "nothing will happen. You don't need to do anything at all, clears up on its own."
Stop this. Stop it. Stop listening to whoever is telling you this nonsense. It's going to get people killed.
Tests are probably not handed out without instructions about the protocol to follow (do not go to emergency, you will be sent back when you do not have severe symptoms etc). If these are not then you pointed out a clear improvement possibility, problem solved.
I think the massive usage of self tests is a very economical way to contain the outbreak.
No, I do not mean the price of the test, I mean the macro economics. Lock downs may be avoided because only infected people must be isolated but the rest can continue to function efficiently.
Even if the containment is not possible by this, it may help to slow down the spread to the level where the health care system could handle severe cases (it is going to be very difficult when spread grows out of control - https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/ff8hns/testimony_... ).
I think that not doing massive testing that is going to be only possible by self testing will create much larger harm.
Edit: the method provided by Bill Gates is not a self test. It is just a way to collect samples. The test will be still done in the lab.
