Bill Gates Complains America's Coronavirus Testing Data is 'Bogus' (businessinsider.com) 185
Appearing on CNN Thursday, Bill Gates called America's coronavirus testing data "bogus," in part because "the United States does not make sure you get results in 24 hours." Business Insider reports:
Testing in the U.S. remains a long and complicated task, and it can take several days before people are told whether they have tested positive or negative for COVID-19. "If you get your test results within 24 hours so you can act on it, then let's count it," Gates said, adding that people were most infectious within the first three to four days after infection and might continue to interact with others and spread the virus until they have definitive results. "What's the point of the test?" he said. "That's your period of greatest infectiousness."
Gates added that residents of low-income neighborhoods had lesser access to testing facilities and were not prioritized, despite indications that the virus has taken a disproportionate toll on marginalized communities. "Our system fails to have the prioritization that would give us an accurate picture of what's going on," he said.
While America is now testing about 200,000 people a day, the article cites experts from Harvard University who believe 20 million tests a day are what's needed to fully "remobilize the economy."
Gates added that residents of low-income neighborhoods had lesser access to testing facilities and were not prioritized, despite indications that the virus has taken a disproportionate toll on marginalized communities. "Our system fails to have the prioritization that would give us an accurate picture of what's going on," he said.
While America is now testing about 200,000 people a day, the article cites experts from Harvard University who believe 20 million tests a day are what's needed to fully "remobilize the economy."
Maryland protecting its 500,000 test kits (Score:3, Interesting)
The governor of Maryland was able, with the help of his wife, to procure 500,000 test kits from South Korea. The entire batch was flown in under cover of darkness to BWI rather than Dulles and taken to an undisclosed location where it is protected by the National Guard and State police [newsweek.com]. Why? Because the governor didn't want the con artist stealing the kits as has already been done [ems1.com] with other equipment [latimes.com] throughout the country [businessinsider.com].
Re: (Score:2)
So, at three tests per person (one to establish that they have it, two to verify that they're over it), he got about 3% of what was needed for Maryland alone...
Yeah, 500,000 tests sounds like a lot. But it's a drop in the bucket of the 1,000,000,000 or so tests needed for the whole country.
Re: Maryland protecting its 500,000 test kits (Score:2)
All that matters in testing is how many and how fast. I do not care if for some tests people paid through the nose.
Are these hoarded tests being used?
solidarity in the face of totalitarianism (Score:2)
Join the Software Workers Union.
When we stop working the Internet stops working.
No Thank You (Score:2)
My non-union software shop treats me 10x better than my friend's unionized IT job at a University. He gets more fringe benefits, like "free" lousy cafeteria food, but his job is a political nightmare and it's nearly impossible for him to get anything done. The only reason he still works there is to get free university classes, which is actually a nice benefit, but he's out of there the second he gets his degree.
Re: (Score:2)
But I recognize that unions have value and a point because they balance power between the most senior employees and abusive management, with the least senior employees being pawns in this power struggle.
There, fixed that for you.
Bullshit (Score:2, Troll)
were most infectious within the first three to four days after infection
You don't even get symptoms that quickly. This leads to a respiratory disease.
You are most infectious if you get symptoms and end up coughing all over the place and going to a hospital to seek help.
You are least infectious if you have no symptoms and just go about your day. Yes, you are still potentially infectious, but that's why we're sOcIaL dIsTaNcInG, right?
Outside of a few hot spots where governors and mayors encouraged people to gather in crowds in March, the US has done remarkably well with this thi
Re: (Score:2)
were most infectious within the first three to four days after infection
You don't even get symptoms that quickly..
You can be infectious without having symptoms.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. By the time symptoms appear, you have been spreading the virus far and wide for days. You are most infectious for the two or three days before symptoms appear and on the first day of symptoms. Remember that the symptoms are caused by your body trying to take control, so after they appear, your contagiousness typically starts to fall off.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. By the time symptoms appear, you have been spreading the virus far and wide for days. You are most infectious for the two or three days before symptoms appear and on the first day of symptoms. Remember that the symptoms are caused by your body trying to take control, so after they appear, your contagiousness typically starts to fall off.
That is true for some viruses, but this one peaks later.
Over the course of the infection, viral RNA has been identified in respiratory tract specimens up to 1-2 days before the onset of symptoms. Viral load persists up to eight days after the onset of symptoms in mild cases and peaks in day 11 in more severe cases. [europa.eu]
That's not actually contradicting what I said. What that says is that it starts 1–2 days before the onset of symptoms (I've read three elsewhere, but close enough), and that you don't completely cease to be contagious until 8–11 days after symptoms begin. But it isn't saying that you're exactly as contagious at 7 days as you were on day 1.
Less is known about transmission, because it is harder to study, but coughing does a lot to spread a virus.
This is certainly true, though to the extent that it is also present in aerosols, so does breathing, albeit perhaps not to the same degree. But you're right
Re: (Score:2)
The funny thing is that 'contagious starting 2-3 days before symptoms' seems to be a powerful rule. It means those who don't start coughing are not (very) contagious. It means that if one person in the family is in contact with the outside world , then the other people are not contagious till the first person has coughed.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean those who don't start coughing at all, those who remain asymptomatic and to lesser extent those with other symptoms but no coughing.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, while you are infectious after your symptoms manifest after an average of 5.2 days- you are most infectious (shedding the most particles) from about 12 hours after exposure until about 2 days after you manifest symptoms.
The rest of your post is wrong. Hopefully you are just deluded and not actively lying.
We had 36,000 cases yesterday. C19 is waning in NY but it's rising exponentially by over a1,000 cases a day in a half dozen states.
We are averaging 2,000 test certified deaths per day (Since we don't test most corpses... the real death total is *much* higher.)
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
Especially click on the "USA" link and look at the states.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis... [arcgis.com]
Note that we have multiple cases in almost every *county* in the U.S. now. That includes rural areas with 25+ cases in counties with tiny populations.
The rate of new cases and of deaths is *not* dropping fast. It's likely that what we are really seeing is the limits to testing but if we are not then it's important to realize that the rate of new cases is close to stable under current conditions- not declining rapidly. We do not have this under control. It's growing by 3% in most population groups.
https://aatishb.com/covidtrend... [aatishb.com]
If the IFR is 1% then based on our 65,000 deaths we have 6.5 million active cases waiting to spread when we open things back up.
And the leader of the covid19 protest group has tested *positive* for covid 19.
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/... [salon.com]
I have 30 years experience with exponential and logistic curves in a business forecasting background and my models don't get less than 200,000 deaths by year end at this point.
Re: (Score:2)
you are most infectious (shedding the most particles) from about 12 hours after exposure until about 2 days after you manifest symptoms.
You're going to need a citation on that one, because it sounds like you've been reading conspiracy websites.
Re: (Score:2)
I understand. Lots of crazy folks out there.
I've been following this since january (Doctor John Campbell on Youtube has been a fantastic evidence based daily listen plus "MedCram" has also been good) so I can't recall the specific article but a quick google turns up some articles with these facts from reliable looking sources...
Here's one...
https://www.sciencenews.org/ar... [sciencenews.org]
"Coronavirus is most contagious before and during the first week of symptoms"
https://www.statnews.com/2020/... [statnews.com]
"The researchers found ve
Re: (Score:3)
". According to the paper, more than 1 in 10 infections were from people who had the virus but did not yet feel sick."
The article refers to that as "asymptomatic transmission" but it's likely they already had a fever. The distinction is important because if they have a fever, then using thermometers to screen people will still work (or something like an Oura Ring for yourself).
Re: (Score:2)
70% of people get a fever (per Campbell reading studies). 30% don't.
OK, you have a lot of links, I'm not sure exactly which one you're referring to here. Is there any reason to believe they are contagious if they don't have a fever?
Re: (Score:2)
You would generally expect the worst super-spreaders to be carrying the virus without much negative effect on them, but also without much immune response. Fever is part of the immune response. I'd expect anybody with a fever to be less contagious than they were right before they developed the fever. That should be broadly true of any virus that causes a fever.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd expect anybody with a fever to be less contagious than they were right before they developed the fever. That should be broadly true of any virus that causes a fever.
I don't know why you think that. I talked to a doctor about this in January and she said that generally if you don't have a fever you're not contagious.
Harvard "experts" - magical thinking is reality! (Score:2)
Let's see, 20 million tests per day to "remobilize the economy."
Who, exactly, creates these tests? Where? How are they distributed? Where do the resources come from? Where does the money come from?
20 million per day is testing everyone in the US in about 2 weeks.
All this does is expose Harvard "experts" as being idiots and Business Insider people as having no bs meter.
These people would look at the classic cartoon of two scientists discussing equations where one scientist says to to the other, "I think you
Re: (Score:2)
Who, exactly, creates these tests? Where? How are they distributed? Where do the resources come from? Where does the money come from?
You do realize that the fact that it would be extremely difficult to manufacture and distribute test kits fast enough to administer 20 million tests per day doesn't somehow make that number ridiculous? Answers that upset us aren't automatically wrong.
Right now the most tested population in the world, if you exclude microstates, is Iceland. On a per capita basis they're currently doing about 4x the number of tests per day that the US is; altogether they've done roughly 7x the number of tests per capita th
Seriously? (Score:2)
If Iceland were as efficient as the US( 200k tests a day ), their entire population would have been tested in less than 2 days.
Why are you comparing a pebble to a mountain and praising the pebble for being much larger?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, seriously. On a per capita basis, Iceland's effort is larger than ours. We're a thousand times larger than them, but we also have a thousand times the resources going by GDP.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It may impress you, but the virus is the actor here that matters.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you understand what "per capita" means. Or numbers, really.
Comparing total numbers between the US and Iceland is nonsensical. We literally have 1000x the population and capacity for production that they have.
The closest comparison you could come to is comparing Wyoming to Iceland, as they only have twice the population. And... Wyoming has done 1/5 the testing that Iceland has done. So twice the population, 1/5 the testing. If you understand numbers, that means Wyoming is managing to test its people at 1/10th the rate of Iceland.
So, in summary: We're doing a really shitty job testing. 200k is not even remotely impressive, merely less embarassing than a month ago. Yes, Iceland is doing a better job than the US.
Re: (Score:2)
Its really not impossible, just very difficult.
A few q-tip factory wouldn't have much issue retooling to make that many swabs, the problem comes in the analysis. If you are doing RNA testing its possible to finish the test by dunking the swab in a chemical bath, something that "can" be mass produced, but not yet. Retooling factories to make these test are the real issue, and few factories would be willing to spend a billion dollars to retool for a job that will only exist for a few months. This is where go
Re: (Score:2)
Even if it were impossible to do, that would necessarily make it false.
However on a practical standpoint, knowing you had to do the impossible is actually useful. It tells you you've got to cut down the problem by other means first.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, 20 million tests per day is so far beyond what any country anywhere on the planet can manage, despite concerted efforts by a number of them, that it's as good as saying that testing is not feasible for the purpose they want to use it for. Not that you'd realize that from any of the mainstream media reporting. All of the mainstream publications like the New York Times have worked hard to make it sound like the ludicrous testing numbers they're expecting are totally normal things that countries which ar
Re: (Score:2)
(Testing success story South Korea is actually testing substantially fewer people per capita than the US nowadays, though you wouldn't know that from the mainstream media reporting either.)
South Korea easily has the capacity to test more. They are selling tests to other countries.
The reason South Korea is doing less testing now, is that they just don't need to any more. [worldometers.info] They hardly have any infections. They do much better contact tracing and testing of people who need it. America isn't even in the same league.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Your rationale doesn't make sense even within its own crazyness.
The elderly vote... not once they are dead.
Option 4: "Open the economy and start killing off his mostly elderly base, risking both a back lash as well as enough of them dying to change the election outcome in November."
They are now dead (not the most affluent, since they are well protected within their macmansions), which means they can't vote. But they died to "protect" the economy and the wellbeing of the youngsters and the economy tycoons s
Re: (Score:2)
52% of the people who put President Trump in office were over 62.
He's unpopular (amazingly unpopular!) with a majority of the young.
He *barely* won three states and two of those turned hard blue in 2018.
He has ruined his numbered because he's up there daily showing us how ignorant, childish, dangerous, and literally insane he is.
He's lying in easily verifiable ways about things that matter to people. (and Pence has taken to lying like a fish to water).
We have the clear evidence from South Korea, New Zealan
Re: (Score:2)
The elderly vote, are far more numerous than the young
I swear, I don't know how stupid someone has to be to post such a ridiculous, easily disproven claim.
People 65 and over account for about 17% of the US population. [statista.com] To get to just "more numerous" than the young, you'd have to define "elderly" as those aged ~38 and above. [worldometers.info]
Of course, you said the elderly are "far more numerous than the young". Tell me, how long before your 20-something daughter joins the ranks of the elderly?
Re: (Score:2)
My impression is that the ownership class has a bunch of overlapping fears.
1) The public gets used to payments for less or no work, leading to a newfound taste for large-scale government intervention which will ultimately erode the income and wealth disparity as taxation increases to pay for it. I'm guessing nationalized health care might wind up being far more palatable. Jerry Yang's UBI plans were mostly scoffed at some weird kind of socialism, but I wonder what the interest would be like if the primari
Scaling of costs with mass testing? (Score:2)
Not addressed so far in the discussion, but I'm wondering how the costs would be affected by mass testing a la mass production.
The only fairly sold number I've seen in all these weeks has been about $18/test. That was for the (lucky) Maryland purchase of South Korean test kits. Not sure if that included supporting equipment, and obviously it doesn't include the time of the people who administer and process the tests.
However the theory of mass production is that producing at large volume drives down the per-
Bayes Theorem? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Point? (Score:2)
Otherwise, a negative test today does not mean he's safe tomorrow; he'd have to be tested again, and again. So, what's the point--there is no constant testing. 'Ruling out other diseases, perhaps, but the tests are not infallible either.
As usual, people are the problem (Score:2)
People are imbeciles if they don't quarantine themselves until they get their results.
I mean seriously, at this point I wonder how many people on this planet actually understand what a pandemic is, how viruses spread, etc. From what we've seen on the news, it's probably less than 1%.
He's right (Score:2)
And he's wrong.
Washington State still refuses to to any testing that is statistically meaningful. You get tested if; 1) you are a first responder, 2) you are a member of an 'at-risk' group, 3) you are a VIP, or 4) you are already exhibiting symptoms of covid-19. God forbid that we should test a randomly selected cross section of the population to see what the infection rate is. Everything is based upon deaths or recoveries compared to 'confirmed cases'. We simply can't have anyone raising the denominator o
France and Spain's numbers are bogus too. (Score:2)
If you look at the amount of new cases for each day, it should be a gradual change, like with literally every other country.
But first I noticed this for France: The daily numbers jumped down in big steps, every fee day, that were completely unrealstic. With normal gradual changes or no changes in-between. And then a big step again. It looked like stairs instead of a slope!
And then Spain started doing it too.
Sorry, but that smells as bogus as an "Adibas" tracksuit.
This is the main problem with healthcare in the US (Score:3)
It's not insurance. It's not paying for it. It's lack of testing. It is common, if not prevalent, to treat the likely explanation for a set of symptoms and see if the treatment takes. It's more likely to be offered treatment than to be given high-fidelity test. COVID-19 has exposed this because there is no treatment. So the usual way of doing things does not work. This is why the doctors panic. This is why there was such a high demand for the breathing machines. Because they are the only thing which provides any resemblance to treatment.
It's why there are so many phantom "conditions" that are being pushed by questionable sources. Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, etc.? If you read a little about them, you'll see that these are just sets of symptoms. You can't test for whether you have those or not. You can only try a "treatment" which "has sometimes worked." What makes these worse is that these sets of symptoms have other possible causes. The "treatments" might just as well be placebos. If you don't know the causes, you don't know whether the treatment eliminated them or not.
It's not just the US (Score:2)
Canada has the same problems, only a million times worse.
Me Complains America's Coronavirus Data is 'Bogus' (Score:2)
I miss the Borg Bill icon for stories about him. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sick of Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, we're all sick of Bill Gates. Doesn't mean he's wrong though.
He's a jerk, not a dummy, and he's spent his career after leaving Microsoft focused on public health issues. He's basically saying the same things anyone in the field would say, but he's rich and famous so people pay attention to him. That's actually a good thing.
Americans haven't wrapped their brains around this fact: you can't get through this by throwing some group of other people under the bus. The transmissibility of a virus like this links us together *inextricably. If it's in New York, it'll be in Waterloo Iowa too. If it's in tiny Sumter County GA it'll be in Atlanta, and soon after that around the world. If poor people have it, rich will get it.
Re: Sick of Bill Gates (Score:2, Flamebait)
No.
He's given a bunch of money out based on some PowerPoint presentations he saw so he knows stuff?
No.
He's was an asshole then, an asshole now and no more an virology expert than my dog. She knows when she's sick and curls up miserably under the chair when she's sick. Bill Gates knows about as much as her except he's not quiet about it. I wouldn't listen to either regarding public policy decisions. And my dog is way cuter and nicer than Gates.
Re: (Score:2)
he's lead the effort to successfully eradicate multiple diseases
Only two diseases have been eradicated: Smallpox and rinderpest.
Bill Gates had nothing to do with either.
He's spent 100 million dollars of his own money fighting disease
He has spent over $10 billion fighting diseases.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree- dramatic reductions isn't yet Elimination.
So let me amend it to say that the Gates Foundation has been working on eradicaiton of many diseases for years and the incidence of the diseases they are focused on has dropped significantly.
https://www.who.int/health-top... [who.int]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In 2015, cases of dracunculiasis (guinea worm disease) fell to a historic low of 22, contained in just four countries. While 120 million people are infected with mosquito-borne lymphatic filariasis (eleph
Re: Sick of Bill Gates (Score:2)
Apparently, you fell for it.
What exactly are his scientific credentials that we should do more than point and laugh when he talks?
Oh right he has been warning about plague. Guess what? So has everyone else. There have been plague ripping through large populations since t
Re: (Score:2)
He's a jerk, not a dummy, and he's spent his career after leaving Microsoft focused on public health issues.
Thing is, solutions from a smart psychopath aren't desirable. Yes, Bill, tattooing small children to show they've been immunized would make it very easy for schools to block kids who haven't. No, we're not going to do that, please go away.
He's basically saying the same things anyone in the field would say,
Let's hope not.
he transmissibility of a virus like this links us together *inextricably. If it's in New York, it'll be in Waterloo Iowa too.
Except that's wrong when you look at the number, and not just hand waving. New York has 1242 deaths/million, while Texas has 30. In New York, the CV19 is a crisis requiring extreme measures. In Texas, driving remains more dangerous, and we shouldn't hav
Re: (Score:2)
Thing is, solutions from a smart psychopath aren't desirable. Yes, Bill, tattooing small children to show they've been immunized would make it very easy for schools to block kids who haven't.
Maybe you should stop drinking from a septic tank? See: https://www.factcheck.org/2020... [factcheck.org]
The tattoo idea probably crossed over from this article: https://futurism.com/neoscope/... [futurism.com] about a team investigating possibility to use invisible microscopic anonymous tattoos to track vaccination history in countries with poor record keeping.
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you linking a political propaganda site to back up your views. You might as well link Pravda.
Re: (Score:2)
You might as well link Pravda.
Sorry, but I don't watch Fox Noose. And I guess that for Conservatives real facts are propaganda. After all, Conservative's motto so far has been: "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength".
Do you actually dispute facts in two articles above?
Re: Sick of Bill Gates (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Conservative's motto so far has been: "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength".
You know that's a book about the dangers of socialism, right?
Re: Sick of Bill Gates (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Total cases will be roughly the same with or without isolation."
Errr...have you taken any mathematics courses or does your brain just sort of spew stuff out wantonly?
Flattening the curve might or might not change the total. Then there are the secondary effects. Flattening the curve might allow hospitals to save more or it might allow better control of its spread to at risk populations.
Re: Sick of Bill Gates (Score:5, Informative)
Mathematically speaking, you're assuming R0 is fixed under social distancing, and only the time rate of infections is changed. If that were true, the area under the curve would indeed be fixed because under the SIR model the herd immunity threshold is a simple function of R0:
herd immunity threshold = 1 - 1/R0
If R0 were a constant, the epidemic would reach a fixed herd immunity threshold no matter how fast or slow we got there. But R0 is not a constant.
Conceptually, you can think of R0 as the number of new people a newly infected person will on average transmit the disease to. That can be changed if, for example, a large number of people start washing their hands. The whole point of social distancing, economic shutdowns, and shelter-in place orders is to reduce R0. The reduction in time rate of new infections follows as a side effect. Initial estimates for this virus suggested an R0 of about 2.5. Here's the impact of reducing R0:
2.50: 60% of the population gets infected.
2.00: 50% of the population.
1.50: 33% of the population.
1.25: 20% of the population
1.00: Below this the epidemic stops wherever it is.
R0 is actually defined as the ratio of two numbers: (1) Alpha -- the probability that an infected person transmits the disease to someone else in a unit of time, divided (2) Gamma -- the probability that an infected person will become non-infectious in a unit of time. Social distancing and other measures like that target alpha. Medical research is attacking gamma. A drug which simply shortened the duration of illness would have strong influence on the number of people ultimately sickened.
So even slowing the time rate of new infections by itself could buy us time for a medical intervention. It wouldn't have to be a knockout drug, just something which reduces the duration of the infection.
R0 value (Score:2)
"1.00: Below this the epidemic stops wherever it is."
That is not correct. If N people are infected and there is no herd immunity, they will infect N*R0 new people, who will then infect N R0^2 people, and so on. The result is N/(1-R0) total infections counting from the moment R0 takes a specific value below one. With, for example, R0=0.9, that is quite a lot of extra infections.
Re: (Score:2)
True, if R0 was just barely below 1 that would be a lot of people, but not relative to the size of the country; not unless we're talking 0.9 R0 1. But of course if we wait long enough then the limit for having a significant effect on the number of people eventually infected gets lower.
But for the moment is still possible to have a significant effect on the total number of people who get sick.
Re: (Score:2)
No, if you want to use overly simplified SIR models, it's like this
2.50: 89% of the population infected
2.00: 80% of the population
1.50: 58% of the population
1.25: 37% of the population
1.00: Below this the epidemic never gets started in the first place. It doesn't "stop where it is"; these epidemic final sizes are assuming starting with a negligible number of infected.
You may have noticed that very few real epidemics actually infect this many. The H1N1 2009 flu virus is supposed to have infected 20% of the
Re:Sick of Bill Gates (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Sick of Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
His argument doesn't make sense (Score:2)
This part is nonsense. When you go to take a test, they make you agree to self-quarantine until after your symptoms are gone, e
Re: (Score:2)
> There is no reason to test anyone with symptoms.
Not true, asymptomatic people who live with them need to know what to do, too.
I'm not saying a quick turnaround isn't helpful, just that it doesn't do what he said because you're required to self-quarantine when you sign the agreement as you drive through for testing. As mentioned, I've been through a testing center. The test was negative, thankfully.
Re: (Score:2)
Just assume they have the virus.
Because we don't have any interest in accurate data about infections?
Re: Sick of Bill Gates (Score:5, Informative)
You start out being unhelpfully vague concerning which tests you're referring to.
No, if you want to know if you should stay home (1) the answer is yes unless you're an essential worker and (2) the answer is yes if you have even ambiguous symptoms.
If you require hospitalization, then you need a diagnostic test that returns results in less than 24 hours. The majority of US testing has been diagnostic tests for active infection (with some bleed over from residual fragments being detected, apparently). They are RNA tests.
If we had more tests available, then you'd want contact tracing or diagnostic tests for people who have ambiguous symptoms. And you'd still want rapid turnaround. That's Gates' argument:
"If you get your test results within 24 hours so you can act on it, then let's count it," he said, adding that people were most infectious within the first three to four days after infection and might continue to interact with others and spread the virus until they have definitive results."
No, the US tests are next to useless for that. The diagnostic tests won't indicate who has already it and recovered. As mentioned earlier, they detect active infection with a bit of post-recovery bleed-over. The serological tests for anitbodies have just begun to be rushed out, and they're not good [latimes.com].
Those are serological tests [goodrx.com]. So yes, his objective is different from what those tests are trying to figure out. Those tests, however, are not more accurate themselves, and still not very good.
Re: (Score:2)
Doctors here are saying they don't really need a test to treat you, they do that based on your symptoms since there isn't any specific medicine for it anyways.
So the testing is only for tracking.
Re: Pedantic A**hat (Score:2)
Re: It's definately not the flu (Score:5, Insightful)
Out of 64000 COVID deaths [cdc.gov], 24000 are from New York state as a whole. So no, half of that is not NYC.
Really? Do your flu numbers magically exclude NYC, or are you making a false comparison where you only exclude NYC when it's convenient?
NYC is locked down.
Oh, you mean why isn't NYC on super-lockdown? Because there are cases everywhere now. You don't have to have people driving out from NYC to introduce COVID to an area. New Yorkers are not chasing down innocent Georgians and licking them.
They went wrong by listening to the Federal government [theatlantic.com], first of all.
Re: (Score:2)
No whole states with no cases? And whole counties [usafacts.org] with no confirmed cases, you mean. Next you'll be reduced to arguing census tracts with no confirmed cases. But since just over 1% of the US population has been tested so far, I agree that it is "mostly irrelevant."
The
Re: It's definately not the flu (Score:2)
Actually they tried that (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's so american. "fuck you, I'm ok." Until you are not.
Am I ready to get sick? How woudl I know? (Score:2)
Are you feeding the AC troll or being baited? Inquiring minds don't care.
At this point I'm ready to "Surrender, Dorothy" and just get sick and get it over with. Can't get sick twice! (We think.)
No, wait! Healthy as I may seem to be, I have no solid basis to estimate the risk to my life.
And wait again. I have even less basis to estimate the risk to my wife's life if she gets it from me. But my mother-in-law would probably be a goner. She's way up there in the risky brackets. (Mother-in-law jokes aside, she's
Re: Am I ready to get sick? How woudl I know? (Score:3)
Public masturbation of 2817221 (Score:2)
Z^-1
Re:Am I ready to get sick? How would I know? (Score:2)
You appear to be pretty much the same age as me - maybe a few months younger - and male so that route is not without its dangers. Males of our age group have a 90% chance of survival but that ignores such factors as other health issues and "high risk occupations" such as healthcare.
And I still think you are barking up the wrong tree with your question yesterday.
btw, there were originally two strains of the virus, called L and S. I think S was the original strain but L overtook it in "popularity" at a very
Re: (Score:2)
And I'm still failing to follow your reasoning. The SARS-CoV-2 RNA is fairly complicated and would seem to offer a number of possible targets for the immune system. The split-spike-and-inject mechanism is pretty simple, so I'm doubtful that there is much wiggle room there for alternative responses, but there are various other ways the coronavirus could be blocked or fought. It's basically a blank slate situation, though you might be right about overlap with some viral diseases. (However, in that case the pa
Re: (Score:2)
>Males of our age group have a 90% chance of survival
unless you live in america, in which case you are fucked, bankrupt or both.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey dude, just google "Microsoft patent 666" who knows at this point?
Well, I did Google it. And here's what I found. [snopes.com]
TL/DR: Microsoft filed a patent application that happened to have the application number WO2020060606A1. it contains three sixes, so naturally conspiracy-theorists go ape-shit about it. And it's about wearable (not embedded) technology being used to mine cryptocurrency. And the "WO" at the beginning is shorthand for WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) not "World Order". And it has not yet been granted.
Maybe Alex Jones is right!
About many things I suppose, like whether baco
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been sick of hearing about Bill Gates since the days of MS-DOS 3.0, so over the decades I've learned to tune out whatever he says.
Re: (Score:2)
You're lucky, I had to deal with the nonsense of file size issues on MSDOS 1. They we too big for their boots even back in 1986.
Re: (Score:2)
How about neither of those two options is acceptable?
Re: (Score:2)
I think that's more because quite early on, and several weeks before the USA itself was taking this very seriously, some governments were publicly requesting their citizens to come home as urgently as they could, while the flights were still available.
And I can see the point behind it. In the end, it's better to be home during a pandemic than be stuck far away with no practical way to get home even if you wanted to.
Re: (Score:2)
And vice versa. The US government was urging American citizens to return.
Re: (Score:2)
Indian students in the UK have pretty much been left high and dry. When Modi put the brakes on he gave Indians outside the country 48 hours to get back before closing the borders. At that point the price of tickets went way up and the availability way down. There have been reports of stranded students with no income and no food.
Re:Foreign students fled weeks ago (Score:5, Informative)
Australia sent everyone coming home to mandatory quarantine.
Trump's announcement with no warning and no plan put tens of thousands of panicked people in airports and airplanes without PPE at the same time (infecting many people who were not yet sick).
They were not put in quarantine, no tracking information was taken- they just walked off the planes when they got home straight into the community.
I can't think of a worse way to handle it short of ignoring CDC advice and intentionally mixing known infected with healthy people on the same plane. (oh yea- they did that too).
Re: You keep getting surprised (Score:2)
NYC has higher residential population density and a lower percentage of day-only co
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is that a large number of returning US citizens ended up at the E coast, specifically NYC. Some of them were infected. Add in the population density in places like Manhatten and things become a bit clearer.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The virus keeps surprising "experts". The modeling was all wrong. The testing was bad to start with. Many early guesses turned out wrong. There are no clear answers why NYC had so much more trouble than San Francisco, for example.
Oh yes, there are. The far-left just doesn't want to hear it, because it contradicts their environmentalism-over-all narrative. New York City has about the same number of people as the entire San Francisco Bay Area, give or take a few percent. But:
Now to be fair, the Bay Area's population density
Re: (Score:2)
By "no clear answers" I meant no definitive study results.
I didn't mean it's impossible to make up emotionally satisfying stories. You can always make up explanations that seem to make sense to you. People do that all the time. Should we believe them though? The long screed with parts in bold tells me no, this is not a thoughtful dispassionate analysis.
Re: (Score:2)
It's thoughtful, though not dispassionate. Coronavirus spread is strongly correlated with population density [oup.com]; this is a well-established fact. That the reason for the density impact is because of increased interactions with other people in denser areas is also fairly well established, as is the difference in utilization of shared resources in NYC versus the Bay Area.
So basically, dispassionate or not, my argument is just applying inductive reasoning to things that are generally well understood to be true.
Re: (Score:2)
San Francisco also has high population density and public transit.
Re: (Score:2)
There are very clear answers why NYC was so much worse than SF:
- Cuomo & DeBlasio didn't shut down NYC a good 14 days after SF had shut down
- Schools remain open to date to provide 'free food' and 'free healthcare' services in large concentrated groups
- NYC Health, a government funded healthcare system, operates the largest chunk of healthcare facilities and are notorious for being underfunded and poorly managed before the pandemic even started
- The subway system, filled with homeless people and sick ne
Re: (Score:2)
Re:data is BS (Score:4, Insightful)