Michael Mina. Click to go to video
Lex Fridman -- an AI researcher at MIT -- talks with Michael Mina, an immunologist, epidemiologist, and physician at Harvard.
Prof Mina makes the case for wide distribution of simple, cheap, at-home Covid testing kits. They exist, but are not widely distributed because of bureaucratic bottlenecks. They fall into the limbo between “medical device” and “public health service”. Click on the screenshot above takes you to the beginning of his talk on this, in the two-hour long podcast. All fascinating, by the way.
Lockdowns, he says, are only -- can only be -- temporary emergency measures. They’re being used around the world as a cure-all. But they have public health implications - in addition to the obvious economic ones - which are being ignored. But his main point is about the cheap, simple, testing. Lex agrees, in a big way. So do I, for what that’s worth. Support is bipartisan, says Mina, but stuck in bureaucratic limbo.
I’d read about this concept of having widespread cheap and easy testing kits, earlier in “Could ten million Covid tests a day get Britain back to normal?”. Short answer: yes.
