Covid-19 discussion and humor thread [Was: CDC says don't touch your face to avoid Covid19...Vets to the rescue!

[Lurker]

https://gnrmerch.com/collections/clothing/products/live-n-let-die-with-covid-45-t-shirt?variant=31623707066466

 

All proceeds to charity...

 

[TheBrownBear]

Well, I can confirm Covid-19 is real.  Got my positive test yesterday.  Stay safe friends.

[Punching Bag]

12 minutes ago, TheBrownBear said:

Well, I can confirm Covid-19 is real.  Got my positive test yesterday.  Stay safe friends.

 

I hope you got it the fun way with mouth to mouth transmission.

[Simon]

16 minutes ago, TheBrownBear said:

Well, I can confirm Covid-19 is real.  Got my positive test yesterday.  Stay safe friends.

Hang in there, brother.

[Buffalo Bills Fan]

5 hours ago, TheBrownBear said:

Well, I can confirm Covid-19 is real.  Got my positive test yesterday.  Stay safe friends.

 

Stay safe man

[Hapless Bills Fan]

5 hours ago, TheBrownBear said:

Well, I can confirm Covid-19 is real.  Got my positive test yesterday.  Stay safe friends.

 

Sending you positive thoughts for a mild case...it may not help but drink lots of hot tea and take vitamin D

 

My friend's 90 yr old dad, multiple health problems including obesity and hypertension, tested positive two weeks ago tomorrow.

He seems to be OK...a bit lethargic.  He is in isolation in the nursing home where he lives.  Family is not allowed to visit him or even bring him items he needs like hearing aid batteries.  The home is dealing with 49 positive covid-19 patients and 19 positive staff and have no time to communicate with family members.

 

Extremely stressful

[TheBrownBear]

Thanks guys.  Pretty mild so far.  Just some light muscle aches, fatigue, chills, mild cough and headache.  It's nothing I wouldn't have continued to work through (or exercise during) in another time and place.  So far, it's nothing close to as bad as having the flu, though that could obviously change.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

2 minutes ago, TheBrownBear said:

Thanks guys.  Pretty mild so far.  Just some light muscle aches, fatigue, chills, mild cough and headache.  It's nothing I wouldn't have continued to work through (or exercise during) in another time and place.  So far, it's nothing close to as bad as having the flu, though that could obviously change.

 

My best advice is be very very careful if you recover, and THEN start to feel bad again with cough/trouble breathing/lack of energy.  That seems to be the danger point where some people's immune system goes bug***** and overreacts.  Try to get your hands on a pulse oximeter and monitor oxygen levels along with temperature.

 

(Man those suckers have soared in price but may be worth it if in your budget)

[BuffaloBillsGospel]

8 hours ago, TheBrownBear said:

Well, I can confirm Covid-19 is real.  Got my positive test yesterday.  Stay safe friends.

 

TheBrownBear I was just tested positive today, we can be Covid buds if you want? LOL

 

I only have mild symptoms so far also. 

 

Stay safe my brothers from other mothers and sisters from other misters!!!! 

[Sundancer]

Very happy for Florida Jon in Jax. I hope every state reopens with great success. I’m rooting hardest for the states reopening fastest. Who wouldn’t be?!?

[BUFFALOKIE]

THAT IS ALL,

 

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 hour ago, Sundancer said:

Very happy for Florida Jon in Jax. I hope every state reopens with great success. I’m rooting hardest for the states reopening fastest. Who wouldn’t be?!?

 

Can anyone tell me what's up with Liberty, Hamilton, and Jackson county in Florida?  Looks like they're having a bit of a boom (panhandle counties)

[Nelius]

Interview with Von Miller about his Covid experience, didn't see this posted - https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/05/13/von-miller-coronavirus-experience-nfl-season/

 

TLDR - mask up, take seriously. He also says he caught it at home after locking down, that seems very important.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Nelius

[ExiledInIllinois]

2 hours ago, BUFFALOKIE said:

THAT IS ALL,

 

 

Yet... His heart gave out at 71.  In his defense, he probably  didn't  want  us to cry for  him.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

On 5/13/2020 at 12:30 PM, spartacus said:

Accuracy of COVID-19 tests coming to market uncertain

 

https://www.startribune.com/accuracy-of-covid-19-tests-coming-to-market-uncertain/569570582/

blurbs from the article

 

 

“A Star Tribune review of hundreds of pages of regulatory filings from the first 30 rapid tests to detect COVID-19 found that most test makers are doing the bare minimum amount of validation work before putting their wares in clinicians’ hands.”

 

“Most of the 30 or so lab-based rapid-detection tests that detect genetic traces of the virus were validated using 30 “contrived” samples of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 — not a clinical trial with hundreds of specimens from real patients, federal filings show. “

 

“Federal records show that the Mesa and Abbott Labs point-of-care tests were validated by scoring 100% accuracy on 30 positive samples and 30 negative samples. “

 

I really appreciate you coming back here and giving your source, @spartacus, so I wanted to wait until I had a minute to give a careful reply.

 

the TL;DR summary:

1) more than one thing can be true at once

2) the FDA is, sadly, doing a piss-poor job of regulating covid-19 tests.  I looked it up: their actual standard is 5 positive and 5 negative tests. 

3) that said, this article is NOT a very well written article, and IMO fits the profile of "alarmist journalism".  The author misunderstands a couple things, and states a very unreasonable assumption. 

 

First, to frame the discussion a little bit: we need to understand that fundamentally, many of the diagnostic (virus-detecting) tests filing for EUA from various hospital and university labs, are the same test.  They are often using the same primers and the same amplification conditions as the CDC-designed test.  They may be using a different polymerase, or a different machine, or some other minor change.  So they're required to file EUA basically to show "hey, it works for us, too".  Under that circumstance, it's not intrinsically unreasonable to set a low bar and just have labs show "I got this" rather than having them do a whole dog-n-pony show. 

 

But IMO, having started out setting an unreasonable and unrealistic high bar (for example, initially the FDA demanded that any lab developing a test show it wouldn't react to MERS and SARS, highly-contagious diseases that the CDC refused to send samples of to test developers - for good reason!!!!), after they were justly criticized for that the FDA dropped the bar onto the floor and went too far in the other direction.  5 positive and 5 negative tests is just way too low.

That said, while I didn't look at every single filing (and that seems to be an outdated list somehow, tests that I know have sought and received EUA aren't on there), I looked at a bunch, and most of these test developers have done considerably more than the minimum. (I don't think the author looked at them all, nor understood them, frankly).

 

About the "contrived samples": the author implies this as a negative.  In the context of filing, it's simply a technical term saying they altered samples in one of several ways, rather than working 100% with current clinical samples.  Maybe we can lure @BillsFanNC or one of the guys who has developed diagnostics to talk about this, but there are good and valid reasons to do this during test development. 

1) you are developing the test in a lab that doesn't meet the safety standards to work with live, infectious human pathogens - so you do your development work and initial tests in a safer way, by using frozen negative patient swabs and spiking them with viral RNA

2) you want to focus on the limit of detection so that you ensure you have a good test.  For a clinical sample, the viral titer is unknown - you can obtain a more challenging sample set if you work with spiked samples where you spike with RNA just over your LOD.

3) if you work with actual clinical samples for all your development, you're actually just replicating the good and bad work of existing clinical tests.  There is benefit in working de novo with samples that you have high confidence are actually negative (they date before the virus emerged) and that you know are positive (because you spiked them).

 

So some test developers used contrived samples, then verified using a limited number of FDA-required actual clinical samples.  As a development strategy, this has merit, but the article makes it sound sketchy.

 

Ordinarily, yes, clinical tests undergo a long development period and extensive clinical trials.  But that's clearly (IMO) an unrealistic expectation during a pandemic.  For one thing, everyone is dipping out of the same limited pot of reagents.  If test developers have to run thousand-sample clinical trials depleting the supply of reagents, that's not a good thing.  For another, time is of the essence here.

Now let's get to the part that really bothers me: "Mayo Clinic researchers warned Thursday that inaccurate test results may drive a “second wave” of infections involving people who spread the virus after a test falsely indicates they don’t have it."

 

This really has nothing to do with new tests on the market!!!!!  First off, this is true of any of the covid-19 tests, including the CDC test!  People who get tested need to understand that the best tests in the world have a false negative rate.  It may have nothing to do with the test itself.  Maybe the swab didn't get deep enough or swab  well enough.  Maybe it was stored improperly.  Maybe the person in question was early enough in their infection that they didn't have enough virus in their throat.  Maybe the virus had moved on, and was living in their lungs or intestine.  Frankly, it's a failure of the medical profession, of public health, and of journalism if we don't ram home the message that a negative test ONLY MEANS YOU WERE NEGATIVE AT THAT TIME.  If you have symptoms or known exposure, you MUST continue to take precautions.   Distance.  Wear a mask.

 

And finally, even if the test is a true negative, you may be infected tomorrow.

 

That's why the whole thing about mask-wearing is so important.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BillsFan4]

17 hours ago, Nelius said:

Interview with Von Miller about his Covid experience, didn't see this posted - https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/05/13/von-miller-coronavirus-experience-nfl-season/

 

TLDR - mask up, take seriously. He also says he caught it at home after locking down, that seems very important.

Yeah this was from April.

 

Here’s the original story:

 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29050030/broncos-von-miller-tried-take-every-precaution-caught-virus

 

I can’t find the other story I was looking for. It had more details. He was having someone come in to service his fish tanks once a week. Had a couple teammates over. A plumber. His brother was in and out. His assistant too.

 

So my guess is that someone probably brought it into his house.

[Punching Bag]

1 hour ago, BillsFan4 said:

Yeah this was from April.

 

Here’s the original story:

 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29050030/broncos-von-miller-tried-take-every-precaution-caught-virus

 

I can’t find the other story I was looking for. It had more details. He was having someone come in to service his fish tanks once a week. Had a couple teammates over. A plumber. His brother was in and out. His assistant too.

 

So my guess is that someone probably brought it into his house.

 

I remember about the fish tanks.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

4 hours ago, BillsFan4 said:

Yeah this was from April.

 

Here’s the original story:

 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29050030/broncos-von-miller-tried-take-every-precaution-caught-virus

 

I can’t find the other story I was looking for. It had more details. He was having someone come in to service his fish tanks once a week. Had a couple teammates over. A plumber. His brother was in and out. His assistant too.

 

So my guess is that someone probably brought it into his house.

 

That's the whole achilles heel of this covid-19 thing

 

We have "essential workers" who are generally in an economic position of needing to work to make rent and buy food

They typically don't have paid sick time or paid quarantine time

So their self-interest aligns with not getting tested and if sick, to drug themselves up and keep working as long as possible

These are typically the most public-facing jobs: retail workers in grocery stores, cleaners and aides in hospitals,

 

Von Miller is young and healthy and this nibbled him on the butt; in the case of nursing home residents who are extremely vulnerable, this is totally cray-cray

 

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

In honor of @BuffaloBillsGospel and @TheBrownBear

Wishing you health and a quick recovery!

 

 

 

[K-9]

An article on the growing friction between the administration and the CDC. Not happy with CDC data, then hire another data collection firm, I guess. If that doesn’t cause concern, then you don’t have a pulse. 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/growing-friction-between-white-house-cdc-hobbles-pandemic-response/2020/05/15/0e63978e-9537-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html
 

Quote

Last month, the government awarded an unusual $10.2 million contract to a Pittsburgh information technology company, TeleTracking Technologies, to collect data on available hospital beds, hospital capacity, covid-19 patients and deaths caused by the coronavirus — information it already receives from the CDC.