> It is my belief that the best cure for any disease is to avoid the disease.<p>> Again, the best cure for any disease is to avoid the disease.<p>Sure, if we're talking about HIV or HSV (any variant), then yes, the best cure is to avoid getting it in the first place.<p>Some diseases you don't really get a choice. When 21% of NYC has had a disease that has been spreading for only a few weeks in spite of extreme public safety measures (social distancing, shutdowns), you have to wonder if you can avoid getting it, for how long, and at what cost. If you don't get it now, how do you keep from getting it later? Eradication is typically a decades-long project. Vaccination is anywhere from a months-long project if you don't care about establishing vaccine safety to a multi-year effort -- enough to eradicate if you're serious about it and have a vaccine that can cope with mutation rate (probably not).<p>> Catching this virus is a bit like playing a round of Russian roulette. You’ll probably be fine, but you could end up dead.<p>But that's not really the case. Risk factors for covid-19 are fairly well understood at this point: old age, past history of pneumonia, obesity, and diabetes. That's not not-a-big-deal, but it's in the realm of the manageable: isolate those at risk. But stopping the progression of this virus through the population is clearly not an option at this point -- we long ago passed the point where that was feasible. We can only slow down the progression, and definitely not long enough to obtain a tested vaccine because that's well over a year away and might be closer to two years if anything goes wrong with the current candidates. In terms of morbidity rates, this thing is not that bad as it has <i>not</i> overwhelmed the U.S. healthcare system (a few hospitals, yes, but the vast majority are far from capacity), and some treatments are available.<p>So it's not clear that we need to slow covid-19's progression further, or that we could if we really wanted to. Transmission rates are just extremely high.<p>> With this test, we can screen for the virus at the entrances to buildings and other areas, much like we currently use metal detectors to screen for weapons. [...] Longer term, it can be used to safely reopen more crowded areas such as festivals, sporting events, and even Disneyland.<p>With... a test that... takes 10 minutes to run? Color me skeptical. By the time amusement parks get the go-ahead to reopen, covid-19 will have worked its way through well over 50% of the population. The way things are going, that's not too long from now, maybe two more months and NYC will be at 50% -- by the end of the year maybe most of the U.S. will be past 50%.<p>Covid-19 is just too infectious. We can't stop it.