
Why not randomly test city populations to learn asymptomatic Covid rates? - Khelavaster
It seems simple enough to test a few thousand healthy random residents of San Fransisco, Seattle, and New York to get a rough idea of the level of asymptomatic community Covid in the area. Why haven&#x27;t random community Covid tests been carried out yet?
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troydavis
It’s happening in at least one location and maybe others. This is the Seattle
Coronavirus Assessment Network, from King County Public Health and Seattle Flu
Study: [https://publichealthinsider.com/2020/03/23/introducing-
scan-...](https://publichealthinsider.com/2020/03/23/introducing-scan-the-
greater-seattle-coronavirus-assessment-network/)

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tastroder
Mainly because that insight would be relatively irrelevant and can be
extrapolated on tests that actually make sense I would guess. There's a
shortage in test capacity right now, especially in those areas that are most
affected. Why would one go out of their way to waste thousands on random
people?

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Someone
The reason for doing this is to better estimate the essential parameters of
the disease (ease of spreading, distribution of symptoms, lethality rate)

We need those for capacity planning and for deciding when and how to ease
restrictions. I think many of the richer countries already have decent enough
estimates for capacity planning, and are in the process of widening testing to
gather ideas about how to wind down restrictions (may take till the end of
2021, in some scenarios)

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tastroder
That seems beside the point OP was trying to make. They were suggesting random
sampled tests in current hotspot areas where there's already a shortage in
available tests. I'm not sure what benefit random sampling would give you over
testing actual potential disease candidates through sensible contact tracing
in these areas. That might get you data slightly biased towards a sensible
worst case and you're free to use data from other areas for capacity planning
to compensate until they ramp up test availability.

