The Next Pandemic: SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19

[LB3]

49 minutes ago, The Poojer said:

Admittedly that last line is probably true for me.  But i also look at things like I was in Nashville the 1st week in March with 15 other friends.  Nashville is already a very heavy tourist destination.  Add into the mix we were there 2-3 days after the tornadoes came through which added greater numbers of people coming in to help and clean up.  None of my friends or families had as much as a sniffle.  My boss came back from a national conference that same week, came in Monday went home with a bad 'flu', he was in the office and in meetings.  Again, no one in my office or their immediate family were affected by Covid 19.  My son manages a target and lives with me and his 2 other brothers in a small apartment.  He wasn't wearing a mask until 1.5 weeks ago when it was required.  Again, not so much as a sniffle.  you'd think with all of this potential exposure and being in one of the hard hit areas, Philadelphia area, i would have encountered something, anything.  I haven't.  When you are naturally a skeptic, this doesn't help reduce my skepticism.  That being said.  I absolutely abide by all the recommendations that have been put in place and will continue to do so until otherwise notified.

 

I basically wear a mask to avoid physical confrontations with the mask shamers. Nothing screams "punch me in my goddamn face" louder than a pink manbun having Berniebro telling me I'm "going to poison and kill others with my ignorance" as I'm heading into a store. Then to turn around and watch him take down his mask to light up a cigarette as he smugly walks away and gets into his car feeling like he just served some privileged guy at the grocery store on a Saturday morning. This was before masks were even required in NYS.

 

To clarify, it's wasn't the smoking that bothered me. It was the complete lack of self awareness in being so unbelievably hypocritical and condescending without having any fear of getting his ass kicked. The world would be a much better and more respectful place if it was still socially acceptable to punch aholes in the face when they needed it.

[plenzmd1]

1 minute ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

More evidence of Trump and his damndable lies lies lies!!

 

Oh wait, wrong pandemic. $#@! Wilson! 

 

I take your point, but I'm less interested in a battling press, much more interested in fair and accurate. Thankfully, we have choices in that regard and don't have to rely on traditional sources. 

That Wilson was one strange dude! I like battling, fair and accurate. 

[shoshin]

31 minutes ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

It shows that cloth masks are WORTHLESS. It does not matter if you are in an igloo, a desert, a tropical paradise, you are blocking 3% of partials with a cloth mask.  A medical mask is at 44% (frightening, I had hoped for 100%), and the N95 are at 99.97% (what someone who is at risk hopes we all wear).

I am sorry someone sneezed on you when you were little and you do not know how to practice good hygiene, but Jesus H Christ, get over it.

 

 

Your study was for HCWs who would wear a cloth mask in the VERY WORST place to wear a particle-trapping (on the inside) mask ALL DAY. It does not replicate the grocery store. Comparing the situation a HCW finds themselves in with your 30 minute trip to Wegmans is not a great data point. Also...

 

"A limitation of this study is that we did not measure compliance with hand hygiene, and the results reflect self-reported compliance, which may be subject to recall or other types of bias. Another limitation of this study is the lack of a no-mask control group and the high use of masks in the controls, which makes interpretation of the results more difficult. In addition, the quality of paper and cloth masks varies widely around the world, so the results may not be generalisable to all settings. The lack of influenza and RSV (or asymptomatic infections) during the study is also a limitation, although the predominance of rhinovirus is informative about pathogens transmitted by the droplet and airborne routes in this setting. As in previous studies, exposure to infection outside the workplace could not be estimated, but we would assume it to be equally distributed between trial arms. "

 

I will stick with the CDC recommendations. 

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by shoshin

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

5 minutes ago, plenzmd1 said:

That Wilson was one strange dude! I like battling, fair and accurate. 

 

Woodrow Wilson was the WORST president we ever could have had.

 

He's the one who pushed hard for American interventionism. The worst.

 

[Doc Brown]

31 minutes ago, MILFHUNTER#518 said:

Sorry I misunderstood you I thought you meant right now during the lockdown sorry

Driving bans during blizzards is just the first step on the road to communism and tyrannical rule.

 

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

2 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

Driving bans during blizzards is just the first step on the road to communism and tyrannical rule.

 

Different situations are different.

 

[Doc Brown]

Just now, Joe in Winslow said:

Different situations are different.

 

No argument there.  Different situations are indeed different.

[LikeIGiveADarn]

4 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

Driving bans during blizzards is just the first step on the road to communism and tyrannical rule.

 

 

So we should keep driving bans up until June for a blizzard from March?

[3rdnlng]

1 hour ago, meazza said:

 

Take vitamin D.

 

 

A,B,C,D, Zinc & Bioperine.

[Doc Brown]

2 minutes ago, LikeIGiveADarn said:

 

So we should keep driving bans up until June for a blizzard from March?

No.  Just during the actual blizzard.  You know, like wearing masks in close public spaces during an actual pandemic.  

[snafu]

5 hours ago, shoshin said:

 

Until you have confidence that you're identifying outbreaks in near-real-time and tracing the contacts of those infected people, testing is inadequate. When someone feels sick and schedules a test, and gets those results a few days later, you're 8 days late. If you cut that to 3 days too late, you might be able to control outbreaks. 

 

 

Dont discount a person’s ability to communicate with the people they come in contact with regularly — as well as their healthcare provider.  Your post reads like it is only government-appointed trackers who are involved in tracking.  If I get symptoms, my family is going to know right away.  I’m telling my coworkers, as well.  That accounts for a lot, and it greatly reduces the “8 days late” aspect of what you’re saying.  

 

It it will be up to those people I inform to do the right thing and watch their symptoms and take better measures to limit contact with others.  My doctor should put me in whatever database exists to see if a hotspot pattern is emerging.  It will be up to me to isolate, etc. It seems that people (not you, but in a general sense) expect the government to be the only monitor of the public.  They won’t be and they can’t be. Like usual, people help each other out and eventually, if necessary, they turn to public officials and programs to fill in the gaps.  It shouldn’t be the other way around.

 

We aren’t baby birds in a nest with our mouths open to the sky.

 

 

[snafu]

6 hours ago, billsfan1959 said:

You keep going on about positive statements Trump made about China in January. What has your panties in such a bunch? That the President would say China is cooperating and doing all they can regarding the virus when that is the exact stance the WHO had at that point - and was pretty much the conduit between China and the world? That the president would be saying positive things when as late as 23 January there were literally a small number of cases outside of China, no deaths - and the WHO reporting that the outbreak did not yet constitute a public emergency of international concern and there was "no evidence" of the virus spreading between humans outside of China?

 

Don’t forget that our CDC contacted their Chinese equivalent back on December 30th (?) and asked if they would let us go to Wuhan to coordinate with them. We were rebuffed.  It would have been great to have gotten some virus samples to make tests way back then.  You can’t make tests without samples of the virus. 

 

 

Edit: here is a NYT article on this from February 7: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/health/cdc-coronavirus-china.html

 

FTA:

For more than a month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been offering to send a team of experts to China to observe its coronavirus outbreak and help if it can.

Normally, teams from the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Servicecan be in the air within 24 hours.

But no invitation has come — and no one can publicly explain why.

The World Health Organization, which made a similar offer about two weeks ago, appears to be facing the same cold shoulder, though a spokeswoman said it is just “sorting out arrangements.”

...

Also, C.D.C. officials have said that they hope to learn more about the new coronavirus from their Chinese counterparts to improve the American response if the virus starts to spread widely here.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by snafu

[dubs]

15 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

Driving bans during blizzards is just the first step on the road to communism and tyrannical rule.

 

 

Roads are managed and maintained by the local municipalities, driving bans are usually a day or two at most, and I've never seen anyone arrested and put in jail because they drove during a ban.  So I wouldn't really say that's an accurate comparison.  But it does go to show how far you need to stretch to try and find any example of the government having the type of authority they've all tried to exert during the last two MONTHS!!

 

 

[LB3]

1 hour ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

You made several false claims all in the same discussion -- then moved the goalposts when it was pointed out to you rather than be an adult and say, "oops, I was wrong". 

 

But yes. Everyone else is the unreasonable ones. 

 

Go back to sleep. 

Day drinking is a mofo.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

3 minutes ago, snafu said:

 

Don’t forget that our CDC contacted their Chinese equivalent back on December 30th (?) and asked if they would let us go to Wuhan to coordinate with them. We were rebuffed.  It would have been great to have gotten some virus samples to make tests way back then.  You can’t make tests without samples of the virus. 

 

Weekly reminder:

China is an enemy, not a global partner. ***** China.

 

[Motorin']

15 minutes ago, LikeIGiveADarn said:

 

So we should keep driving bans up until June for a blizzard from March?

Only when there's still a blizzard. 

[Boatdrinks]

15 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

Driving bans during blizzards is just the first step on the road to communism and tyrannical rule.

 

Bad comparison Doc ( and a lazy one). Governments must clear the roads of snow  etc and pileups make that task difficult. Driving is also a privilege. Now, if they banned driving except in perfect weather because more accidents would happen during rainy conditions,  etc  and they need to"protect" us and keep us " safe" I might be inclined to agree with your statement 

[Doc Brown]

3 minutes ago, Boatdrinks said:

Bad comparison Doc ( and a lazy one). Governments must clear the roads of snow  etc and pileups make that task difficult. Driving is also a privilege. Now, if they banned driving except in perfect weather because more accidents would happen during rainy conditions,  etc  and they need to"protect" us and keep us " safe" I might be inclined to agree with your statement 

How do you feel about smoking bans in public places?

[Magox]

Testing and Contact tracing will help mitigate the spread some but it's not nearly the panacea for this as being touted.   It's way overstated.

 

 

Why?

 

Because the majority of people who have the virus are asymptomatic.  Just to give you a glimpse of what I'm talking about look at the Pork Plant in Missouri.

 

Quote

373 employees and contract workers at Triumph Foods in Buchanan County, Missouri, have tested positive for coronavirus. All of them were asymptomatic, according to a press release from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

 

Or what about the 4 prisons in Arkansas, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia?

 

 

Quote

 

They started with the Marion Correctional Institution, which houses 2,500 prisoners in north central Ohio, many of them older with pre-existing health conditions. After testing 2,300 inmates for the coronavirus, they were shocked. Of the 2,028 who tested positive, close to 95% had no symptoms.

“It was very surprising,” said Chambers-Smith, who oversees the state’s 28 correctional facilities.

As mass coronavirus testing expands in prisons, large numbers of inmates are showing no symptoms. In four state prison systems — Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — 96% of 3,277 inmates who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic, according to interviews with officials and records reviewed by Reuters. That’s out of 4,693 tests that included results on symptoms.

 

 

 

 

Let's just use common sense here for a second.  These are two examples and it's a pretty large sample size, we are talking about over 4000 positive test cases where on average 97% showed no symptoms.

 

That is an astounding figure.   How in the world are you going to contact trace people effectively if such a large portion of the infected population are not showing any symptoms?

 

What?  Someone who is showing no symptoms is expected to request a test?  That's not going to happen.  At least not in large enough numbers needed for this to work.  I am highly skeptical of increased testing and contact tracing serving as an effective tool to limit the spread.   It's just not going to happen, I can tell you that with near certainty.  

 

I'm not a scientist, but I understand data, I have a knack for extrapolating it and coming to conclusions and I also have common sense.   And the data and common sense says that if the vast majority of the people who have the virus are not showing symptoms you aren't going to be able to effectively mitigate it through those means.

 

If we had been starting off with a much lower baseline to work off, like near 0 then maybe we could employ this strategy as an effective tool to mitigate it.  But we aren't, and most likely by the end of summer, we will still have more than quite a few infections.    

 

Increased testing will have a purpose, without doubt and contact tracing will help, but it won't nearly be as effective as the people who are promoting it to be.  

Edited May 6, 2020 by Magox

[shoshin]

Just now, Magox said:

Increased testing will have a purpose, without doubt and contact tracing will help, but it won't nearly be as effective as the people who are promoting it to be.  

 

Could be. I am not sure if there's been a study yet about the contagiousness of asymptomatic people. I know there have been studies of prespymptomatic people, but that may be a different thing. Maybe @Hapless Bills Fan has some insight on this: I could be nuts to think there would be a difference between asypmtomatic and presymptomatic carriers.