AMuzi wrote:
On 5/29/2020 9:00 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
news18 writes:

On Fri, 29 May 2020 20:42:32 -0400, Radey Shouman wrote:

John B. writes:


But from what I read the U.S. has conducted nearly 17 million tests,
at least 4 times that of any other country except Russia.

Was it all a waste of time and money?

Depends on what you want to do. If you want a good estimate of the
proportion of the total population that is infected, then yes, mostly a
waste of time and money.

Sampling sewerage seems the way to go, if you want 7 days notice of an
cases arising.

No link as "sampling sewerage fr covid-19 in a web search turns up a pile
of links.

And a fine idea it is. But it doesn't involve an invasion of privacy,
so probably will get no traction.


+1 on that!


There are probably also a number of confounding variables that would
prevent this method of testing from providing highly accurate results.