The story sounds incredible: Researchers at UC San Diego claim to be developing a colormetric strip that you stick on to a mask that will change colors when COVID is detected. The press is all aflutter about it. Researchers in San Diego just received $1.3 million to test the stickers for accuracy from the National Institutes of Health. This makes it sound like the stickers already exist.
So go to the college website, and you discover the truth: They haven’t been invented yet.
The team will create test strips, or stickers, that can be put on any mask (N95, surgical or cloth). They will be designed to detect the presence of protein-cleaving molecules, called proteases, that are produced from infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Some clerk at the college managed to secure a grant for for over a million dollars that will fund a project that is in the concept phase and will likely never come to fruition.
1 Comment
billrla · January 24, 2021 at 3:12 pm
Nice job with the new site. My eyes and brain appreciate the simplicity of the layout, the lack of clutter and your ability to deflate the hot air of today’s “news stories” and fabricated narratives with a few well stated observations. The bombast, ranting and editorial posturing on other sites gets tiresome.
As for your post about a colormetic “Covid test strip” from UC San Diego, this sort of breathless reporting about “medical breakthroughs” that may never see the light of day is commonplace in academia, and make good fodder for the local press. In academia, winning grants is an end in itself. Make a few mock-ups, take some photos, and presto! You’ve got yourself a new medical miracle. Having worked in this field for many years, I’ve been to the circus and seen the show.
Comments are closed.