Coronavirus

[pioneer98]

Because so many people have screamed about "mai freeeeedums" that they don't have the balls to do it immediately. They are hoping that phasing into it will ease the backlash.

It could be that. It could also be that they need to train and staff people willing to fight angry non-mask people with crescent wrenches.

[Jocephus]

76k cases yesterday. just amazing.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

76k cases yesterday. just amazing.

He told us stop testing. They didn't stop. So now we have this. Why do so many hateful people not follow Our President?

[sighyoung]

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Lulz

[Popeye_Card]

I hadn't really thought about this until I read an article earlier today. They are projecting a higher than normal year for hurricanes, with some of the states currently seeing the biggest spikes also being the usual targets for hurricanes.

So what's going to happen when we have to deal with a hurricane and a pandemic at the same time in the same place?

[mikechamp]

You know Florida will handle it in ways only Florida can.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Watched an interesting podcast of This Week in Virology last night/this morning, it's long.

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/

They had a guy who has a pre-published/non peer-reviewed study out there (link below) that essentially says it's more important to have cheap, quick testing available and the way to do that is to decrease sensitivity and move away from the RT-PCR gold standard. The pros of the RT-PCR are obvious. It's effective, reliable, and is very sensitive. The cons obviously are it is expensive, supplies are still limited, requires healthcare personnel to administer thus requiring PPE, can lead to long lines discouraging people from being tested, and importantly it can take a week to get the results.

This guy advocates to a different kind of testing using spit and molecular recognition on paper (paper test) which he claims are available and can be mass produced. The pros are they cost about $1-$2 per test and offer results in 10 minutes and can be done at home. The con is that it is not as sensitive. The guy, no fan of trump, claims the white house used these types of tests (albeit not the exact same one) and NYU blasted the process as not being sensitive enough. It became politicized and everyone moved away from this form of testing.

Regardless, the crux of the argument is that people who are asymptomatic or not sick enough to go to the hospital (so the vast majority of people infected) only have enough virus in their system to transmit the disease for a certain period of time. The paper test can detect the virus at that level and could be done daily allowing people to stay home, prevent spread, and thereby lowering the R effective to well below 1. As such, this is a relatively cheap, simple path forward to stop the spread, allow people back to work/school/etc, and move forward.

The last key hurdle to use this would be to get FDA approval which is unlikely as they currently require test to be a minimum of 80% as sensitive as the RT-PCR test which the paper tests can't achieve. And, there's little push to get that changed.


https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20136309v2

tl;dr: Tests are available through a completely different method right now that can be done at home in 10 minutes likely telling people if they are positive for Sars-Cov-2 and if they can transmit the disease. The cost of said test is $2.

[GeddyWrox]

I live in an old railroad town outside of STL a bit. Close enough people can commute to STL for work, but still far enough out that it is clinging to that small town / rural feel.

Up until last night I was in the Facebook group for our town. It has been a complete sh!t show lately. There was a 100+ comment argument over masks. Gradually people are finally starting to wear them out here, but it's still less than 50%.

The big problem I gathered from that thread is that fffaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr too many people don't understand the mask isn't to protect themselves, it's to protect OTHERS. So many people were just rage posting stuff like "HOW BOUT YOU WEAR YOUR MASK AND SHUT UP I DONT CARE IF I GET IT. YOU WONT GET IT IF YOU HAVE YOUR MASK ON. MY FRRREEEEEDDDDUUUUMMM."

They just don't understand. People were explaining over and over and over again, and these covidiots just couldn't grasp the concept of not spraying their potentially infections spit all over the people around them. I couldn't take it anymore and I left the group.

Idiocracy is here. We are doomed.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

May be doomed. But I cilng to the hope -faint as it is - that Darwin has a plan for them. That this is all the last gasp of an old worn out order that this pandemic is helping identify and sweep away.

But, yeah, we're doomed.