“If you’ve lost your sense of smell unexpectedly, that should be a signal to make sure the mask is on tight,” said Daniel Larremore, a professor at CU who is one of the three researchers…
— from the Colorado Sun article by John Ingold, ‘Your nose knows you have COVID before you do…’ dated January 4, 2020.
According to a recent article in the Colorado Sun, researchers at the University of Colorado and Yale have developed a simple, inexpensive ‘scratch-n-sniff’ test they believe could be as effective for coronavirus surveillance as regular PCR tests.
The problems, however, are exactly the same as the advantages: it’s simple, inexpensive, and effective.
Here in America, we pride ourselves on making life as complicated, and as expensive, and as ineffective, as possible… and we make use of wide range of complicated, expensive, ineffective technologies to accomplish this. When someone comes along with a process that’s simple, inexpensive and effective, the lobbyists in our state and federal capital buildings quickly go to work to make the process illegal.
But maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The Colorado Sun article summarizes the work of Daniel Larremore (Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder), Derek Toomre (Department of Cell Biology, Yale University School of Medicine) and Roy Parker (BioFrontiers Institute, University of Colorado Boulder). The three researchers published a “pre-print” paper on the medRXiv server. “Pre-print” means the research has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Peer-review is a very important part of scientific research in the 21st century. The process consists of scientists getting their friends (who are also scientists) to read their research and click the LIKE button. The more LIKES, the better chance the article will later appear in a popular scientific journal, and — with any luck — result in a Nobel prize.
From the medRXix pre-print paper:
A central problem in the COVID-19 pandemic is that there is not enough testing to prevent infectious spread of SARS-CoV-2, causing surges and lockdowns with human and economic toll. Molecular tests that detect viral RNAs or antigens will be unable to rise to this challenge unless testing capacity increases by at least an order of magnitude while decreasing turnaround times.
The researchers note that about 80% of people who later test positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus report a loss of their sense of smell (or, as the researchers phrase it, “olfactory dysfunction). This includes both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.
For some people, this loss of smell is actually a blessing, if — for example — you live with someone who refuses to bath regularly. But other symptoms of COVID-19 can be less pleasant.
Early in the global pandemic, public health officials noted that COVID-19 symptoms often included fever, and taking people’s temperature became a standard way of checking for possible infections. Unfortunately, only about 20% of people (who are later confirmed to be infected) present a fever. And the fever, even when present, typically lasted less than two days. And lots of non-COVID health conditions present fever. Checking for fever is, to put it lightly, hit-or-miss.
But huge numbers of infected individuals have apparently reported loss of smell.
The three olfactory researchers concluded that testing people for “olfactory dysfunction” would be at least as effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 spread as PCR testing — due to its instant results, its low cost, and its ease of implementation. Just hand someone a ‘scratch-n-sniff’ card, ask them to identify the odor, and voila, we can tell if their nose is working. Ideally, only pleasant smells would be included on the ‘scratch-n-sniff’ card. Mint. Chocolate. Orange. Vanilla. Grape. Yummy smells. The kind of smells you would be happy to sniff, any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
If the nose is not working, it might be because the person is coming down with COVID.
It might also be, because you recently had a large swab shoved up your nose by a well-meaning health care worker. Personally, I would prefer to sniff ‘chocolate’ on a scratch-n-sniff card.
But I’m very much afraid the ‘scratch-n-sniff’ test these researchers have modeled will prove too simple and effective, even though it does require the use of technology (a cell phone). The PCR tests currently in use here in America are processed in multi-million-dollar laboratories run by college graduates.
What would happen to our national economy, if everything were easy and inexpensive? I hate to think.