A couple of thoughts on what we know and what we don’t know.

We know we need to have much more testing; that is obvious.

We don’t know how much testing is enough. If we tested 1 million people a day, it would take six months to test half the population. Clearly that is too long and too few. However, we also need to keep testing the same people on a regular basis because they might become infected at any time. My thought is that we need a minimum of 10 million tests a day — enough to test every person in the United States once a month.

We know how many people have tested positive, we know many people with the symptoms are not being tested and we know many people are asymptomatic carriers.

We don’t know how many people have been or are currently infected. The estimates run from five to 20 times the number of positive tests.

We know we need a test for antibodies, for those that have had COVID-19 and recovered without ever being tested while they had it.

We don’t know if having it gives you immunity, or how long that immunity might last. If you can get it again in eight months or a year, we need to know that. Until we know if and for how long any immunity might last we are only guessing that it is safe to resume life as normal.

We know that until there is a proven vaccine, and it has been administered to a large percentage of people, we are not done with this disease.

 

Alan Tibbetts

Sidney

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