Glen Weyl: belief

Transcript context

…Let’s say we never soon figure out the puzzle of immunity, how immune you are, and for how long, and we’re not sure how long contagiousness lasts. You get the test, and we learn that you’ve had COVID-19. We’re not sure if you’re immune or you’re contagious for two months. What do we do with you? What box do you get put in? I think serological tests — if we get them working, and they’re not really working very reliably yet — can be quite helpful for that because there’s one of the antibodies — I always forget which one it is, MMM or MMG — but one of them is an indicator of convalescence and at least temporary immunity. So serology is very useful in that case. It’s also widely believed that if you’ve had a period of symptoms and no longer have symptoms — though this is not known for sure because we have seen some returns of it in South Korea — but it’s believed that during that period when you don’t have symptoms, the amount of the virus that you’re shedding is low. So I don’t think we can quite say that those people are immune until they get a serology test, but at least they can go back to being in the same condition as the rest of the population unless we see a resurgence of symptoms. What are the labor requirements for following up on people who test positive? You track them down, you call them up, you text them reminders — whatever’s going to be done. How many people do we need to hire and train to do that work?…

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