CDC Adopts Near Real-Time Flu Tracking System 102
CWmike writes "The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an effort this week to better and more easily track for H1N1 and other seasonal influenza activity throughout the US. The CDC said it is now tracking data on 14 million patients from physician practices and hospitals stored on a database hosted by GE Healthcare. The data is submitted daily from physicians' offices and hospitals that use GE's electronic medical record system. The data is then uploaded to GE Healthcare's Medical Quality Improvement Consortium, a database repository designed with HIPAA-compliance parameters of patient anonymity and best practices, where it can be the subject of medical data queries. The CDC can perform queries to look for flu-like symptoms being reported by physicians, and then disseminate the data for health care providers and local government officials throughout the country, who can alert businesses and others about flu outbreak hot spots. The CDC also hopes its analysis of the data helps it better understand the characteristics of H1N1 outbreaks and to determine who is most at risk for developing complications from the virus. Prior to implementing the new system, the CDC relied heavily on tracking insurance claims data, which could take days or weeks to make its way to the agency's medical staff for analysis. The medical data is normalized so that, for example, reports of hypertension, HTN, and high blood pressure all mean the same thing when a researcher enters a query against the data."
And Look at How Useful It Is! (Score:5, Informative)
But in all seriousness their report does have some decent data on it [cdc.gov].
Re:And Look at How Useful It Is! (Score:5, Funny)
Uh. Dood. According to the CDC, there was no report of any kind received from the Virgin Islands. That's right, silence! Now what do you suppose *that* means, eh? That's right, EVERYONE in the Virgin Islands has already died from the flu and probably turned into hideous flesh-eating monstrosities!
Do NOT go there.
It would be bad.
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That tunnel leads to the Virgin Islands.
We don't go there anymore.
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And more specifically, alien invasion.
This flu season: Maybe partly government fraud. (Score:2)
I notice that whenever there is a lot of joking on Slashdot, there is apparently an underlying feeling of skepticism, even if the skepticism is not conscious.
Note that the map linked in the grandparent comment says "*This map indicates geographic spread and does not measure the severity of i
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Re:And Look at How Useful It Is! (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they correlating this data with the fear of people [slashdot.org] of getting H1N1 in an airplane?
I recently sent an e-mail to a local radio station after they read a news item stating that, so far this year, 12 people have died from the swine flu in my state. I sent them a letter because that's all that the news item said. It did not mention that about 1600 die of the regular old influenza every year. With all the hysteria about this issue I think some perspective is very badly needed. It's just piss-poor journalism to report a raw figure with no context like this.
Your comment about the fear of H1N1 made me think about the various ways that it's being encouraged. To me that's just media sensationalism, which is not really unusual because it sells. Is H1N1 a threat to some people? Probably so; I am not a doctor so I should not say too much on that. Do I personally feel threatened by it? Not in the slightest. It'd be a nuisance to me, but not a threat. There's no way I am going to cower in fear and alter my life over it. It is their own damned laziness but the fact is most people aren't going to do their own research on this one. If there were more perspective and context in media reports about H1N1, it would be much easier for others to make up their own minds as I have done.
Even if this is or were a true threat to life and limb, acting like a bunch of panicked animals is the wrong way to reduce a threat.
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I had an epiphany while trying to describe attitudes like yours to someone else yesterday. I was trying to put into words why it aggravates me so much when it suddenly hit me. I was watching 3 or 4 live streams last year when the outbreak was first detected, and we were being bombarded with press conferences as one state after another started announcing how many cases they were treating. As it happens, I was in the middle of making my first serious attempt at writing a novel about a pandemic and all the hys
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It'd be a tragedy, and I might loose a couple good friends, but the golden lining of the pandemic killing a couple million people in Western countries would be that it's more likely the dead would be the ones prone to believing in conspiracy theories and the like. The rest of us having gone and gotten immunized.
Finally -- Darwin Awards on a massive systematic scale.
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It'd be a tragedy, and I might loose a couple good friends, but the golden lining of the pandemic killing a couple million people in Western countries would be that it's more likely the dead would be the ones prone to believing in conspiracy theories and the like. The rest of us having gone and gotten immunized.
Finally -- Darwin Awards on a massive systematic scale.
Ah yes the good old "any alternative viewpoint must be a conspiracy theory" bit. I wish some of you would find a different playbook, because these easily-refuted [wikipedia.org] tactics [wikipedia.org] are rather tedious and boring. At any rate, I think that H1N1 has been overhyped and that, speaking only for myself (you want medical advice, talk to a doctor because I am not a doctor) the threat it poses has been greatly exaggerated. That's a conspiracy theory?
I'll give an analogy. What if I said that Windows Vista was overhyped?
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I had an epiphany while trying to describe attitudes like yours to someone else yesterday. I was trying to put into words why it aggravates me so much when it suddenly hit me. I was watching 3 or 4 live streams last year when the outbreak was first detected, and we were being bombarded with press conferences as one state after another started announcing how many cases they were treating. As it happens, I was in the middle of making my first serious attempt at writing a novel about a pandemic and all the hysteria it may cause. Of course, now that we're in the middle of one, there's really no point to finishing the book. Having said that, I had researched dozens of reports, information sites from both government and non-government entities, and other things like various states' emergency response plans. It was actually pretty cool having the various states' plans open while "following along" through live streaming on the net. Then someone wrote a post somewhere that aggravated me to my core. He wrote, "call me when there are 36,000 dead because that's how many die every year."
What his, and apparently your, thoughts about this don't take into account is that we may pass the typical number of fatalities on a single day as the body count rises from say, 28,000 to 42,000. In that hypothetical situation, you and that guy are ready to start caring. What are you going to do the next day when the count climbs from 42,000 to 60,000? At what point do you shit yourself? I watched a symposium on pandemic flu given by the NIH as part of my research, and I learned an interesting fact. During the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, approximately 4,500 people died in the City of Philadelphia during the course of *one week*.
Yet you two don't want to do anything until the death toll passes the normal annual figure. Please don't take my word for it. Do your own research. Spend just a little bit of time reading up on the topic. Think about the logistics, and hopefully you will form an opinion that you feel is well-informed and is something you can defend. But just turning your back and calling it scaremongering is irresponsible and dangerous. A lot of people are going to die during the second wave. If we wait until you suggest before taking action, it will be way too late.
It was way before my time, but if I had lived during the 1950s-1960s I would have voluntarily accepted a polio vaccine. Why? Because polio is a horrible crippling illness that can maim someone for life. That's a real threat.
For what I am about to say now, it must be understood that I am speaking only for myself. I am not a doctor. Therefore, I would not dream of telling someone else what they should do about a medical issue. You as an individual must handle this as you see fit, which is exactly wha
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Yet you two don't want to do anything until the death toll passes the normal annual figure.
You're putting words in peoples mouths. No one said to do nothing, just that making Swine Flu into a bigger deal than the regular flu (did your research reveal that the regular flu virus is different every year?) is pointless.
Or is there something about the Swine Flu virus that makes it more dangerous than "just another flu virus variant"?
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That's an extremely common technique around here. Well, that and ad-hominem attacks. I don't think it's deliberate so much as it's a product of ignorance about argumentation and reasoning. Anyone who resorts to such tactics is substituting them for useful debate. Ergo, they are taking a very weak position even if they otherwise would have had a valid point. Still, since you know how to deal with that, it means you know how to deal with almost anyone here.
That
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I recently sent an e-mail to a local radio station after they read a news item stating that, so far this year, 12 people have died from the swine flu in my state. I sent them a letter because that's all that the news item said. It did not mention that about 1600 die of the regular old influenza every year. With all the hysteria about this issue I think some perspective is very badly needed. It's just piss-poor journalism to report a raw figure with no context like this.
It also has something to do with the piss-poor state of people's understanding of statistics in general. Your story is a classic example of how society needs to put a lot more emphasis on education when it comes to stats. I'd even put forward a "law" of information theory regarding this: the actionable value of data increases by the amount of its supporting data. So in this example, saying that 12 people have died of swine flu has a value of 0 (it has no context so it's meaningless). Saying that 1600 die of
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I recently sent an e-mail to a local radio station after they read a news item stating that, so far this year, 12 people have died from the swine flu in my state. I sent them a letter because that's all that the news item said. It did not mention that about 1600 die of the regular old influenza every year. With all the hysteria about this issue I think some perspective is very badly needed. It's just piss-poor journalism to report a raw figure with no context like this.
It also has something to do with the piss-poor state of people's understanding of statistics in general. Your story is a classic example of how society needs to put a lot more emphasis on education when it comes to stats. I'd even put forward a "law" of information theory regarding this: the actionable value of data increases by the amount of its supporting data. So in this example, saying that 12 people have died of swine flu has a value of 0 (it has no context so it's meaningless). Saying that 1600 die of regular flu every year increases its value by 1, saying that last year 2500 people died of regular flu increases it by +1 again, saying that flue deaths this century have averaged 0.007% of that of the annual rate 100 years ago increases it +1 again, etc.
Sir, I'd mod you up to +5 if I had points. I think the real issue there is that if the public schools don't teach this, the average person won't know it. This is much to our collective shame. I have always believed it is a big mistake to wait for someone to come along and teach you important things out of the kindness of their hearts when basic literacy is the only requirement for educating yourself. It's a passive "spectator" approach to life and it means that many important things are left undone.
T
Re:And Look at How Useful It Is! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why on earth does the CDC need to use flash for a still, non interactive image??
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You've never done software development for a government organization, have you?
I've seen sites like this put together in the past by large teams of "professional software development consultants". Even for a site that amounts to nothing more than an image that's changed a few times daily, you'll have reams and reams of architectural diagrams and documentation. You'll have massive class hierarchies. Four tiers (because three aren't abstract enough), each implementing MVC and loads of other design patterns. A
Re:And Look at How Useful It Is! (Score:4, Funny)
You don't have clearance to see the flashy dots from the tracking beacons we were injected with.
Re:And Look at How Useful It Is! (Score:4, Insightful)
At first I thought the map updated dynamically via an xml, but it seems we have a flash movie that dynamically loads a big JPEG image and shows it - nothing more.
Improper use of a technology, nothing new.
Should I also count how many times I've seen a big js framework like jQuery being used for a trivial thing? I mean, load an entire 100Kb library to do something that could be done with 2-5 lines of javascript anyway...
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Well, if that's done by the people, who are advising us on what they believe to be a life-and-death decisions, their improper use of technology is noteworthy, even if not, indeed, "new".
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Actually, jQuery's only 55KB and goes down to 19KB if the browser supports gzipping if the server's configured to compress stuff, but I get your point. The difference there is that jQuery, unlike Flash, makes everything easier for the developer (creating a Flash document is easier than an img tag how?), and more importantly, takes care of discrepancies between JavaScript interpreters in different browsers (providing you use pure jQuery). Also, it doesn't require any extras from the browser's perspective: yo
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That is South Carolina, not Georgia.
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or.
you could just look at the google trends to see what CDC will be reporting next week
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Since there's no report of flu in the Virgin Islands [...]
Dude, get with the times. Ever since Chuck Norris went there, they're just called "The Islands."
-b
Real Time? (Score:1, Funny)
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Here's the thing: Why the fuck would anybody have a GE credit card?
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Oh, so the evil the mega-corporation did was to loan someone who wanted money some money. What bastards.
(I use a credit card, but I don't carry a balance, I think people who do are crazy, the idea that someone would max out 9 credit cards out of 'necessity' isn't very credible, clearly they need to find a way to spend less money, or to earn more money)
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Sure. A key aspect of it is that you planned to (relatively) quickly pay off the balance, you were using the credit to move your spending forward, not to increase your spending power.
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Here's the thing: Why the fuck would anybody have a GE credit card?
Because GE is a bank. That's what banks do.
What, you thought they made lightbulbs? Ha! I'll bet you also think that IBM (you know, the consulting company) makes computers!
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I would tend to think of jet engines, and industrial and medical equipment. Or maybe NBC Universal. But I knew that had a large finance division, I was just antagonizing the OP for displaying an attitude that consumer credit card debt was somehow the sole fault of the corporation extending the credit and not in any way the responsibility of the cardholder.
I see.. (Score:1, Funny)
GE Healthcare (Score:2)
General Electric Healthcare?
Re:GE Healthcare (Score:5, Informative)
Yes.
They are a very big division of GE, that makes equipment, like X-Ray machines, and software, such as electronic medical record software...
Interestingly enough, someone there has recently said that as profitable as GE Healthcare is, it doesn't bring in as much money as GE as a whole pays for healthcare for its employees.
Re:GE Healthcare (Score:4, Funny)
GE is actually a suprisingly diverse company:
http://www.nbc.com/30-rock/exclusives/30R_GEWigChart.pdf [nbc.com]
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And Immelt is one of the big time White House visitors [nytimes.com]. With the health care division, and the "green" products, they stand to make a killing from this influence peddling. Not to mention their extension of the communications office, NBC News/MSNBC.
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Good data? (Score:1)
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Re:Good data? (Score:4, Funny)
If it's antidotal, he's probably cured now.
Re:Good data? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, this will lead to overprescribing, and also is probably likely to encourage people to self certify themselves ill when they aren't - so they can have a week off work (no sicknote required for Swine Flu, as you can't get in to see your doctor) and get their supply of Tamiflu in before stocks run out...
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Have you not looked at the raw statistics?
Right now, if you have flu, you have swine flu. Only something like 1/1,000 flu cases is "some other" flu. 99% of all cases tested, test positive for swine flu.
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The thing is, this will lead to overprescribing, and also is probably likely to encourage people to self certify themselves ill when they aren't - so they can have a week off work (no sicknote required for Swine Flu, as you can't get in to see your doctor) and get their supply of Tamiflu in before stocks run out...
I know more than a few doctors and after the initial panic (in the USA), they mostly just stopped testing for H1N1.
Taking Tamiflu sucks almost as bad as the H1N1 flu (which I learned from one of my Doctor friends)
and both will put you out of rotation for ~10 days.
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You're right. CDC guidelines don't suggest testing everyone. Really just the sickest patients. The problem being that 1) it's expensive 2) the rapid tests are really pretty bad with significant false negative rates and the better tests take too long to be useful.
So you are seeing H1H1 + some percentage of seasonal viral illnesses of various types. The interesting thing to me as an ER doc
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Even if the doctors are telling the CDC it's verified who is checking that they actually did the tests?
Yeah, the thing that caught my eye was the claim in the summary: "The medical data is normalized so that fir example reports of hypertension, HTN, and high blood pressure all mean the same thing when a researcher enters a query against the data."
"Mean the same thing", eh? To whom? Meaning is a verb: it is what knowing subjects do with data, information, raw stuff.
People mean anything they want by anyt
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Back in July, the CDC told the states to not to bother to test people for H1N1; they should just count people that appear to have H1N1 symptoms as a positive test result since it is a "OMG! We're all fucked! Pig are flying and they have teh flu!" situation.
Of course, the fact that this overestimates the reported occurence of H1N1 by a factor of 5 to 50 times [cbsnews.com] is of no concern to us peasants.
It's not meant to be a sampling, more of a census. (Score:2)
This is purely antidotal but a colleague got sick and when to the doctor. The doctor, without testing, said he had H1N1.
This is actually a reasonably diagnosis.
From statistical sampling of the population (with strain typing) that's been done so far, the normal seasonal flu strains are not really circulating yet, while H1N1 has been observed to be spiking in frequency. I think there's some diagnosis guideline out there that your family doctor should assume any flu case is H1N1, at this time of the year.
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Right now, something like 1% of all flu in the US that is attempted to be subtyped is NOT H1N1. See http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/ So basically, if the person has the flu, it is almost definitely H1N1.
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There's a chart. In summary:
* If you don't have a fever or body aches or chills or a headache, you have a cold.
* If you have a runny nose and are slightly tired, and sneezing or a sore throat, and a slow onset of a few days, you have the normal flu.
* If it shows up over 3-6 hours, with chills, severe aches, headache, and a fever, it's swine flu.
They're really quite different. No test is needed for most cases...
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Follow the money
The CDC states that only a PCR test can distinguish between seasonal flu and H1N1,
PCR tests cost between 100 to 300 dollars and takes about 2 days. ( the costs in India were said to be about 200 dollars.
The PCR machines are expensive; from 50,000 to 100,000 dollars.
They require trained staff
They can only do so many tests ia a day
The WHO talks about "confirmed" cases; but not about the lack of PCR machines in most of the world.
(Hearsay) a distant relative, a nurse in the USA, says that when t
Sturdy Examples (Score:1)
Excellent! (Score:2)
What, that's not what the map shows?
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Well, after all, quote [medicalnewstoday.com]:
"Swine Flu Should More Accurately Be Called North American Flu".
CC.
Near Real Time - Clutching Tissues (Score:1)
Almost caught up to google (Score:2)
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One interesting thing I have noted in the trends is how 'off the chart' the flu trends are this year - I suspect google may not be able to apply an appropriate media hype attenuator to the results this year. But this is a good thing, as google will probably aggregate the search data with media reporting data and adjust their hype-limiter so that when the next overhyped pandemic / outbreak occurs the results will be more accurate and timely than the current official sources.
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"do some self diagnosis via google, "
worst advice ever.
Swine fly isn't the easiest to diagnose.
Sometime people have fever, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they vomit, sometime they don't.
Anecdote:
Before this year I didn't know anyone, or know anyone who knew anyone that dies from the seasonal flu.
I know 2 people who are dead from H1N1 and know 1 person who knew someone who dies. All healthy. 2 were reported with minor symptoms, then suddenly they got bad and died.
To be expected when you have a nasty flu mov
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What I've heard from doctors and nurses around the DC area is that if you have flu-like symptoms outside of the flu season (which starts week 40), then they can be reasonably certain (99%) that it is H1N1.
Gimme a break. EVERY cold I've ever had in my life matched the symptoms of H1N1. The symptoms we are told to look for are so vague and all-inclusive that they would fit nicely into the newspaper astrology section. --And guess what? I've had plenty of colds which hit me before "week 40".
-FL
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So every cold you've had in your life included at least two and possibly more of the following; fever over 100 F, chills, severe aches, significant nausea, with possible vomiting and diarrhea? Those are the symptoms used by the CDC to define H1N1. Granted even the CDC admits that they are similar to seasonal flu symptoms but could be worse in severity. However, if these are the symptoms for all your "colds" it appears you've never really had a cold in your life. Instead you must have contracted various flu
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No, genetic testing of the virus is EXPENSIVE and generally not needed at this point as we are so early in the normal flu season that it is obvious on the face that the majority of cases are related to H1N1.
I've decided that anybody who prefaces some idiotic statement with the word, "Obviously" is more than likely an ignoramus trying to sound more informed and intelligent than they really are.
Please do some research before you open your mouth and advance the agenda of planned hysteria.
H1N1 Cases Overestimat [cbsnews.com]
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Please mod the AC up. I was exposed to someone with a confirmed case of H1N1 and came down with symptoms. I everywhere I've called tells me they are only testing patients at a high risk for complications, because otherwise they'd be swamped with people coming in for tests. Supposedly this is the government guideline. So how is the CDC expecting to actually track this thing if the government isn't allowing people to be tested?
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Crash it (Score:5, Funny)
Already built (Score:2)
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OK... (Score:2)
so where are the pretty graphics? Say a map of the US with color codng for hotspots?
Hype! (Score:1)
Yuor not quite correct (Score:2)
Remember the 36,000 is in a vaccinated populas.
The swine flu has only been going since April, not the beginning of the year.
It is hitting a different demographic.
More children died from August to October from swine flu then die all year from season flu.
This has happend off flu season.
We are entering flu seaon with almost no vaccinated population
It's a pandemic.
Pandemic are know for bouncing around for a few year and changing.
This is poised to be very nasty. So what are they suipposed to do? Do nothing and r
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This video is broken into 6 parts. The first looked fairly reasonable, but in the second she brought up an item which seemed kind of silly to me. Unless I am mistaken, she was suggesting that if you put two live viruses into a test tube that they will somehow mix and turn into one super-virus with the qualities of the two former. Was I hearing that correctly? --Because she went off on that tangent with great energy and I'm fairly certain that this is an entirely false proposition. Especially weird sinc
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Real Science (Score:2)
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"does any of this really make any difference with preventing transmission of the flu.
Yes. As does washing with soap and water preferably in warm water.
". There are lots of assumptions "
no there aren't.
". Are there any real world population studies to see if this makes any difference?"
many. We know they coughins is one of the best ways to transmit colds a flues. We know that touching somene is a great way to spread colds and flu. We know very few people shake elbows.
We also know the N95 masks do almost nothi
Heard behind the CDC building: (Score:2)