Zvi: Allowing more tests at home would provide information. Information is good. The FDA should use lower criteria to allow more tests (and should have done that months ago)
FDA: Too low sensitivity and bad use of tests at home could lead to misplaced confidence. Misplaced confidence is bad.
Zvi: In this situation the extra information outweights the misplaced confidence.
FDA: In this situation the extra information does not outweight the misplaced confidence.
Can you provide evidence that the information indeed brings more value ? Also, did I miss the point of your post and/or misrepresent it ?
I guess my heuristic here would be looking to see if there are similar situations to the American situation in the world, and what they’re doing differently. Europe has quite a few similarities (EMA to FDA), (440 million to 330 million), and so I’d look to Europe for comparisons.
Anecdotally, buying a bundle of rapid tests in Europe was cheap and easy. They were available in every drugstore, and the ease/price of access was a huge advantage, which may be hard to overstate, especially if you’re coming from a position of “high” access to the American rapid tests.
(No easy ability to research these numbers at this time, apologies.) Quoting half-remembered articles without sources, Europe hasn’t had higher numbers of super-spreader events. Europe hasn’t had significantly higher case numbers over the whole pandemic. Hard to think of what other statistics would show “extra information outweighing misplaced confidence”, but I feel that Europe has outperformed the US or been even with the US in the majority of those cases.
Here is what I take from your post:
Zvi: Allowing more tests at home would provide information. Information is good. The FDA should use lower criteria to allow more tests (and should have done that months ago)
FDA: Too low sensitivity and bad use of tests at home could lead to misplaced confidence. Misplaced confidence is bad.
Zvi: In this situation the extra information outweights the misplaced confidence.
FDA: In this situation the extra information does not outweight the misplaced confidence.
Can you provide evidence that the information indeed brings more value ? Also, did I miss the point of your post and/or misrepresent it ?
I guess my heuristic here would be looking to see if there are similar situations to the American situation in the world, and what they’re doing differently. Europe has quite a few similarities (EMA to FDA), (440 million to 330 million), and so I’d look to Europe for comparisons.
Anecdotally, buying a bundle of rapid tests in Europe was cheap and easy. They were available in every drugstore, and the ease/price of access was a huge advantage, which may be hard to overstate, especially if you’re coming from a position of “high” access to the American rapid tests.
(No easy ability to research these numbers at this time, apologies.)
Quoting half-remembered articles without sources, Europe hasn’t had higher numbers of super-spreader events. Europe hasn’t had significantly higher case numbers over the whole pandemic. Hard to think of what other statistics would show “extra information outweighing misplaced confidence”, but I feel that Europe has outperformed the US or been even with the US in the majority of those cases.
FDA is wrong. If tests are abundant, one can test every day and there is no problem of misplaced confidence.