COVID-19 aka 2019 (and 2020) Novel Coronavirus

[cwerdna]

I'm more likely to end up in a hospital because of work or driving to work. And yet I don't hide at home.

It is not only about YOU and its possible effects on you.

You could already have it and spread it to others. You might catch it and spread it to others. Those others can then spread it to others that could end of in the hospital or die (esp. elderly folks or those w/pre-exisiting conditions). People can be pre-sympotmatic or asymptomatic and spread it.

The odds of me dying from catching it are pretty low due to my age so I'm not too concerned from the POV of my own health. However, if I passed it onto my parents (who live in the same city as me), it's possible one or both might die from it. They're both in very high risk age groups (79 and 80) and both have some pre-existing conditions. My dad is slightly older and used to smoke for years, as well.

I could also unknowingly spread it to others. See above.

Some of my co-workers also have elderly relatives at home. We're all WFH ever since my county lockdown around March 16th.

I'm pretty sure before my county locked down, there was a thread on Nextdoor about some member of the "extended" member of a local elementary school testing positive for COVID-19 and people calling for the district to shut the schools. Other threads got spawned w/one very active one (w/a lawyer with kids at the school finding out lots of info) that got deleted. IIRC, it turns out there were (IIRC) 3 dads and 2-3 of them caught COVID-19. IIRC, at least 1 of those was a coach for something at the school and 1 of those died from COVID-19. I don't have all the details committed to memory since the thread got deleted and I didn't participate (don't care much as I have no kids).

People were all up in arms about how the district communicated it, left it vague (e.g. "extended" member), didn't shut down schools and people were concerned about sending kids there where they might bring COVID-19 home, sicking or killing family/community members. I only have fragments from emails and memory.

I also just got a push alert about https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-funeral-home-morgue-bodies.html which I haven't read yet but it referred to: “The death rate is just so high, there’s no way we can bury or cremate them fast enough.”

At the height of the outbreak in April, a New Yorker was dying almost every two minutes — more than 800 per day, or four times the city’s normal death rate. And though the daily toll has recently slowed, hundreds of bodies are still emerging each day from private homes and hospitals.

 

[Oilpan4]

If I got seriously hurt at work or driving to work it would effect other people, but I don't hide at home.
Not going to work also effects more than just me.

Kids will spread it like wild fire. Closing schools was the right call.
Actually a serious rethinking of the balance between the public education system which seems to offer little more than free day time child care, work and home homelife has been over due for decades.
I hope more people take the teaching of their children into their own hands. It would shrink over loaded class rooms, lay off a bunch of teachers and overall shrink the ever growing public education monster.

 

[downeykp]

I'm more likely to end up in a hospital because of work or driving to work. And yet I don't hide at home.

It is not only about YOU and its possible effects on you.

You could already have it and spread it to others. You might catch it and spread it to others. Those others can then spread it to others that could end of in the hospital or die (esp. elderly folks or those w/pre-exisiting conditions). People can be pre-sympotmatic or asymptomatic and spread it.

The odds of me dying from catching it are pretty low due to my age so I'm not too concerned from the POV of my own health. However, if I passed it onto my parents (who live in the same city as me), it's possible one or both might die from it. They're both in very high risk age groups (79 and 80) and both have some pre-existing conditions. My dad is slightly older and used to smoke for years, as well.

I could also unknowingly spread it to others. See above.

Some of my co-workers also have elderly relatives at home. We're all WFH ever since my county lockdown around March 16th.

I'm pretty sure before my county locked down, there was a thread on Nextdoor about some member of the "extended" member of a local elementary school testing positive for COVID-19 and people calling for the district to shut the schools. Other threads got spawned w/one very active one (w/a lawyer with kids at the school finding out lots of info) that got deleted. IIRC, it turns out there were (IIRC) 3 dads and 2-3 of them caught COVID-19. IIRC, at least 1 of those was a coach for something at the school and 1 of those died from COVID-19. I don't have all the details committed to memory since the thread got deleted and I didn't participate (don't care much as I have no kids).

People were all up in arms about how the district communicated it, left it vague (e.g. "extended" member), didn't shut down schools and people were concerned about sending kids there where they might bring COVID-19 home, sicking or killing family/community members. I only have fragments from emails and memory.

I also just got a push alert about https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-funeral-home-morgue-bodies.html which I haven't read yet but it referred to: “The death rate is just so high, there’s no way we can bury or cremate them fast enough.”

At the height of the outbreak in April, a New Yorker was dying almost every two minutes — more than 800 per day, or four times the city’s normal death rate. And though the daily toll has recently slowed, hundreds of bodies are still emerging each day from private homes and hospitals.

You need to stop feeding the troll. He obviously has issues with reality.

 

[Oilpan4]

I'm more likely to end up in a hospital because of work or driving to work. And yet I don't hide at home.

It is not only about YOU and its possible effects on you.

You could already have it and spread it to others. You might catch it and spread it to others. Those others can then spread it to others that could end of in the hospital or die (esp. elderly folks or those w/pre-exisiting conditions). People can be pre-sympotmatic or asymptomatic and spread it.

The odds of me dying from catching it are pretty low due to my age so I'm not too concerned from the POV of my own health. However, if I passed it onto my parents (who live in the same city as me), it's possible one or both might die from it. They're both in very high risk age groups (79 and 80) and both have some pre-existing conditions. My dad is slightly older and used to smoke for years, as well.

I could also unknowingly spread it to others. See above.

Some of my co-workers also have elderly relatives at home. We're all WFH ever since my county lockdown around March 16th.

I'm pretty sure before my county locked down, there was a thread on Nextdoor about some member of the "extended" member of a local elementary school testing positive for COVID-19 and people calling for the district to shut the schools. Other threads got spawned w/one very active one (w/a lawyer with kids at the school finding out lots of info) that got deleted. IIRC, it turns out there were (IIRC) 3 dads and 2-3 of them caught COVID-19. IIRC, at least 1 of those was a coach for something at the school and 1 of those died from COVID-19. I don't have all the details committed to memory since the thread got deleted and I didn't participate (don't care much as I have no kids).

People were all up in arms about how the district communicated it, left it vague (e.g. "extended" member), didn't shut down schools and people were concerned about sending kids there where they might bring COVID-19 home, sicking or killing family/community members. I only have fragments from emails and memory.

I also just got a push alert about https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-funeral-home-morgue-bodies.html which I haven't read yet but it referred to: “The death rate is just so high, there’s no way we can bury or cremate them fast enough.”

At the height of the outbreak in April, a New Yorker was dying almost every two minutes — more than 800 per day, or four times the city’s normal death rate. And though the daily toll has recently slowed, hundreds of bodies are still emerging each day from private homes and hospitals.

You need to stop feeding the troll. He obviously has issues with reality.

Sounds like a problem for NY.
When you play stupid games like cram millions upon millions of people in on top of each other and then order them to stay inside and breath on each other, then you win stupid prizes like someone dieing every 2 minutes during the height of an epidemic.

That's literally exactly what's happening. How do I have a problem with reality?

 

[WetEV]

How do I have a problem with reality?

A good question. I do not have the answer.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

New York's issue has a lot to do with their public transportation system which likely helped to spread the disease thru out the city.

 

[cwerdna]

Back to false positive problem w/antibody tests, this was written by three MDs.

Beware of Antibody-based COVID-19 ‘Immunity Passports’
Dozens of tests with unknown accuracy have flooded the U.S., thanks to a move by the FDA that loosened restrictions
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/beware-of-antibody-based-covid-19-immunity-passports/

Accurate tests do, however, exist. The first of four antibody tests that was approved on an emergency basis by the FDA, one manufactured by Cellex, boasts a sensitivity of 94 percent (the proportion of people with the disease who will test positive) and a specificity of 96 percent (the proportion of people without the disease who will test negative). Those numbers might seem impressive, but, as former defense secretary Robert McNamara once said, in the fog of war, “belief and seeing are both often wrong.”
...
Over 860,000 Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19, roughly 0.25 percent of the population. The true total is surely higher, possibly around 1 to 2 percent, because most infections are asymptomatic (50 percent in Iceland) or undetected (86 percent in China). Random population sampling has indicated various numbers for prevalence in different areas, including 0.5 percent in San Miguel County, Colorado, 0.8 percent in Iceland[OO1] , 1.8 percent in South Korea and 2.8 percent in Santa Clara County, Calif.

What would happen if we used the FDA-approved Cellex test to issue COVID-19 passports in a hypothetical society with 10,000 people where the prevalence is 1 percent? If all 100 people who had COVID-19 also had antibodies, passports would be correctly issued to 94 (94 percent of 100) of them who test positive. Of the 9,900 uninfected, 9,504 (96 percent of 9,900) would correctly test negative. However, the remaining 396 (4 percent of 9,900) would falsely test positive and get passports incorrectly. Thus, 396 out of the 490 (94 plus 396) passports issued (four out of every five) would be illegitimate!

Even if the prevalence were 2 percent, two out of three passports would be issued to people who didn’t have antibodies. This false positive problem is what bedevils mass population screening when the prevalence is low.

 

[mwalsh]

Back to false positive problem w/antibody tests, this was written by three MDs.

Beware of Antibody-based COVID-19 ‘Immunity Passports’
Dozens of tests with unknown accuracy have flooded the U.S., thanks to a move by the FDA that loosened restrictions

I think the Roche blood draw test looks to be about the best of the bunch to get FDA emergency use approval so far. That's the one I'm probably going to wait on anyhow.

In other news... Elon Musk has now taken his douchebaggery to epic levels.

 

[LeftieBiker]

If Musk's behavior has to do with the pandemic, please tell. I don't bother to follow him - or anyone else.

As for using antibody tests to certify people 'free and safe' from COVID 19, I think that's nuts, for the reasons listed above. Aside from the tests not being certain enough, they still don't know how large an antibody titer you need - or if any level actually fully protects you from the virus.

 

[cwerdna]

If Musk's behavior has to do with the pandemic, please tell. I don't bother to follow him - or anyone else.

Just look at his tweets from May 1st and April 28 at https://twitter.com/elonmusk.

 

[LeftieBiker]

He seems to be a self-engrossed man who uses drugs to deal with isolation.

 

[cwerdna]

^^^
Indeed. Earlier, there were these:
https://time.com/5829686/tesla-elon-musk-covid19-rant/
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-deleted-liberty-tweet-after-calling-lockdowns-fascist-2020-4
https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/world/maybe-it-has-covid-elon-musk-jokes-that-he-allegedly-caused-californias-health-department-website-to-crash-after-he-linked-to-it-during-a-twitter-rant/ar-BB13rcZa?li=BBr8YXK near the bottom of the actual story has a pic of the deleted tweet that I'd seen on TV.

 

[LeftieBiker]

What social distancing we had here in Upstate NY seems to have gone largely by the wayside. I went for another bike ride today: 17 miles, but avoiding the bike paths and sticking to rural and suburban roads and streets. I'm not sure I saw a single mask, although I did see plenty of people - people in groups, close together. People riding around with groups of kids packed into golf carts, possibly acting as mobile super-spreaders. (They were also running stop signs.) Men clustered together talking, women as well. Kids playing together in yards and on bicycles as in the past, with no masks, no distancing. I wore a light balaclava (it was almost 80F) and raised the mouth and nose portion when I approached anyone within 20', but I was the standout.

Expect a second wave in about 3-4 weeks. Between the right-wing protests and the growing trend to just ignore what's being said because, ironically, there aren't huge numbers of deaths, the initial efforts to flatten the curve are going to fail to keep it low. It's going to be a sad, deadly Summer.

 

[cwerdna]

https://twitter.com/MichaelDoudna/status/1257049515946725376?s=20 in Arizona is crazy!

Above tweet is also embedded at https://www.12news.com/article/news...nyway/75-5a8977c0-8b4b-477c-a87f-c0ba03270fc7 (Protesters to Ducey: Reopen or we will reopen anyway), which is his news story.

81 employees of one Massachusetts Walmart test positive for coronavirus
https://www.southcoasttoday.com/news/20200503/81-employees-of-one-massachusetts-walmart-test-positive-for-coronavirus

I listened to this story recently today on NPR: Singapore Was A Shining Star In COVID-19 Control — Until It Wasn't.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/05/03/849135036/singapore-was-a-shining-star-in-covid-control-until-it-wasnt

Then there were these armed protesters inside the Michigan state capital.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/30/michigan-protests-coronavirus-lockdown-armed-capitol

And then you have this garbage:
Anti-Vaccination Activists Are Growing Force at Virus Protests
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/us/anti-vaxxers-coronavirus-protests.html

“One of the things that we’re finding is that the rhetoric is pretty similar between the anti-vaxxers and those demanding to reopen,” said Dr. Rupali J. Limaye, who studies behavior around vaccines at Johns Hopkins University. “What we hear a lot of is ‘individual self management’ — this idea that they should be in control of making decisions, that they can decide what science is correct and incorrect, and that they know what’s best for their child.”

Oh boy... unless this virus somehow burns itself out, things are going to be a mess until there's a safe and effective vaccine or very effective treatment readily available to the American public, or at least the highest priority groups first (e.g. elderly, people w/pre-existing conditions, healthcare workers, essential workers, etc.)

Remdesivir seems like a start but from last I heard it didn't have a statistically significant reduction in mortality.

 

[Oilpan4]

Well someone has to be in the control group.
Antivaxxers make the perfect useful idiot for such a purpose.

 

[WetEV]

Well someone has to be in the control group.
Antivaxxers make the perfect useful idiot for such a purpose.

Sorry, but we are all in this together.

See measles outbreaks in the USA.

 

[Oilpan4]

I see them and I laugh.
Except for the people who have a legitimate medical reason for not getting the vaccination such as compromised immune system or who arw really allergic to the vaccine, ect. I feel bad for them when they get sick become of some idiot antivaxxers were suduced by some Internet yahoo's conspiracy fantasy.

 

[LeftieBiker]

The anti-vaccination movement actually has one root in reality: it used to be common practice to use toxic preservatives like, IIRC, mercury in vaccines, and these additives produced some nasty reactions. Add a government helping the industry to stonewall the problem for years, and voila! You have the basis for mistrust that can result in misunderstanding and exploitation.

Fluoride, BTW, really is an industrial waste product that was found to help prevent cavities, while at the same time relieving an industry of some of its disposal costs. They used to use higher concentrations of it, and I have no doubt that at those concentrations it made some people sick. Be cautious when dismissing any belief as being utterly without foundation.

 

[GRA]

As we all should know, fluoridation is an international Commie conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

We cannot allow a mine shaft gap!

(Still my favorite movie)

 

[Oilpan4]

I thought a dentist in Colorado discovered floride prevented cavities in early 1900s when he setup practice and wanted to figure out why people had stained teeth but also had few cavities.

Since floride salts have to be manufactured or mined to meet industrial and pharmaceutical demand, disposing of waste florides by putting them in toothpaste and drinking water seems redundant and malicious. If it's pure enough to be put in drinking water why can it be used in metals manufacturing?

Seems like getting small pox or polio is worse than a tiny amount of toxic preservative that won't do anything to at least 99.9% of people using it. Or the "flu shot always makes me sick".
That's the logical reason not to like them.
You haven't seen the vaccine conspiracy fantasies.