Day 723: Are the Numbers Really Up?

It's a shame "casedemic" was coined in the medieval times of the COVID pandemic, because that bon mot would fit today's omicrommon cold statistics better than ever before.

Vinay Prasad's guest blogger, Dr. Sebastián González, goes into detail about the problems and cost of "overdiagnosis and overtesting", that is, medicalizing every old fragment of viral DNA in evidently healthy people. Some of the issues are quite meta:

Consider the UK, which is now planning for the absence of up to 25% of workers from their workplaces due to covid19 cases. Overtesting could per se, overwhelm the health care system (particularly during covid19 surges) if healthcare workers (HCW) are isolated without need, reducing the HCW force, leading to worsening outcomes and increasing mortality due to hospitals and ICUs constraints. People will die when the people who should be taking care of them are needlessly isolated at home and the quality of care lowers.

Overtesting has ballooned to an extent in which testing capacity becomes overwhelmed. Paradoxically, the healthcare system can be jeopardized by the increasing demand of testing by those seeking covid19 tests.

Given how little over-the-counter rapid COVID testing from various companies wuth friends at the FDA resembles the early days of highly-rationed, broken tests direct from the CDC, is it any wonder our current numbers look higher? Whether they really are higher is one of those questions we may never get a straight answer to.