Lidiya: Everything you say here about overtesting and the economic interests behind it is true. Still there may be a few (just very few) examples of chronic (emphasis on chronic) diseases for which it may be justified to screen asymptomatic people. Breast cancer and colon cancer come to mind. There are criteria to determine what diseases should be screened, which are too long to comment here. But for acute diseases, such as covid, it has never been considered appropriate to test asymptomatic persons. We have never tested asymptomatic people for influenza, or mono, or mycoplasma, or dengue, or any acute disease. It is just never done... not even in a world with economic incentives for overtesting. With covid, they have reinvented the way things are done in medicine.
Of course we need screening tests but when reasonable and for people who are under higher risk of certain diseases. COVID-19 testing makes tests for real dangerous diseases more difficult because takes time and resources. As you know regular cancer screenings are almost none because of that. I wanted to bring attention to it but also to point that isn't a new thing just now it's really crazy. Medicine should be about human health, not profit.
Agree 100%. Again, screening for chronic diseases is another matter completely. ONE of the criteria used to determine if screening could be desirable is that the disease has a long pre-clinical stage. Even so, there are really not so many diseases and cancers worth screening, because there are other criteria to be met. With acute diseases, we NEVER screen asymptomatic subjects. The pre-clinical stage is too short, the result could be diffeeent tomorrow. In addition, the positive predictive value will always be too low (that means too many false positive results). And that occurs with any diagnostic test, not only PCRs. It is much worse with these PCRs... and I don't need to tell you that 🙂
Lidiya: Everything you say here about overtesting and the economic interests behind it is true. Still there may be a few (just very few) examples of chronic (emphasis on chronic) diseases for which it may be justified to screen asymptomatic people. Breast cancer and colon cancer come to mind. There are criteria to determine what diseases should be screened, which are too long to comment here. But for acute diseases, such as covid, it has never been considered appropriate to test asymptomatic persons. We have never tested asymptomatic people for influenza, or mono, or mycoplasma, or dengue, or any acute disease. It is just never done... not even in a world with economic incentives for overtesting. With covid, they have reinvented the way things are done in medicine.
Of course we need screening tests but when reasonable and for people who are under higher risk of certain diseases. COVID-19 testing makes tests for real dangerous diseases more difficult because takes time and resources. As you know regular cancer screenings are almost none because of that. I wanted to bring attention to it but also to point that isn't a new thing just now it's really crazy. Medicine should be about human health, not profit.
Agree 100%. Again, screening for chronic diseases is another matter completely. ONE of the criteria used to determine if screening could be desirable is that the disease has a long pre-clinical stage. Even so, there are really not so many diseases and cancers worth screening, because there are other criteria to be met. With acute diseases, we NEVER screen asymptomatic subjects. The pre-clinical stage is too short, the result could be diffeeent tomorrow. In addition, the positive predictive value will always be too low (that means too many false positive results). And that occurs with any diagnostic test, not only PCRs. It is much worse with these PCRs... and I don't need to tell you that 🙂