China Starts Using Anal Swabs To Test 'High-Risk' People for Covid (theguardian.com) 155
Joe2020 shares a report: China has begun using anal swabs to test those it considers to be at high risk of contracting Covid-19, state TV has reported. Officials took anal swabs from residents of neighbourhoods with confirmed Covid-19 cases in Beijing last week, according to the state broadcaster CCTV, while those in designated quarantine facilities have also had the tests. Small, localised outbreaks in recent weeks have resulted in multiple cities in northern China being sealed off from the rest of the country and prompted mass testing campaigns, which had mostly been conducted using throat and nose swabs. The anal swabs method "can increase the detection rate of infected people" as traces of the virus linger longer in the anus than in the respiratory tract, Li Tongzeng, a senior doctor from Beijing's Youan hospital, told CCTV. CCTV said on Sunday anal swabs would not be used as widely as other methods, as the technique was "not convenient."
the technique was "not convenient" (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it would make the drive-through testing a bit more challenging.
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I've been offering free drive-through testing to the women here but they seem to get mad for some reason and some even called the cops!
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What,you never mooned anyone out a car window? Protects your privacy too--all they can see is a pair of asscheeks.
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"The potential for using the human anus as a biometric identifier is not a new concept," writes study co-author Dr. Seung-min Park in an accompanying blog post. "The famous painter, Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), had already figured out that the anus has 35 or 37 creases, which are as unique as fingerprints."
https://mashable.com/article/s... [mashable.com]
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I.. I.. I like Dali. But... TIL. Maybe too much.
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Read nothing about the private life of James Joyce.
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They'll switch to ride-a-bicycle-through for the anal testing.
IANAL, but ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:IANAL, but ... (Score:5, Funny)
obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm glad that wasn't an obligatory goat se =)
Cartman (Score:4, Funny)
Anal probes.
Re:Cartman (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cartman (Score:4, Funny)
How Deep Do They Go? (Score:3, Funny)
I know that they tickle the back of your brain with the nasal swabs. I wonder how far they go with the anal swabs?
Whitehouse used this test (Score:5, Funny)
A field day for the antivaxxers (Score:2)
Re: A field day for the antivaxxers (Score:2)
I fear there is just as much representation of that group in China as anywhere.
Re: A field day for the antivaxxers (Score:2)
Some. Chinese are extremely risk adverse, especially when it comes to the potential for death. Combine it with the grapevine effect that "I heard one person died from the vaccine" and a lack of scientific education, then it's easy for them to think they don't want them vaccine. The largest difference is that when an authority tells them they must get vaccinated, they will and no guns or riots will be involved.
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Well, I would question the lack of scientific education in China...it's a pretty big focus, actually
And....the person I've heard express reluctance to get a covid-19 vaccine is actually highly educated engineer. I guess his reasoning isn't quite so irrational as is typical of 'antivaxers', so perhaps it's not fair to lump them all together - ie he's only an 'antivaxer' in a literal sense and perhaps only in this case. By 'literal', I mean the literal meaning of 'literal', not the common meaning in the US wh
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My girlfriend and my colleagues are both Chinese and I am living in China. Qinghai, so we are talking the more "backwards" parts. Both have expressed a concern with taking the vaccine because they heard about one person dying. I agree though the reasoning isn't the same as antivaxers.
I agree scientific education is an area of focus but that's also because in general realize they need to play catch up which is effectively what Mao's works for industrialization are about. Since the market is more "free" there
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I've been living in China for decades now and have relatives and friend who are Chinese, etc etc, so I consider myself similarly qualified, though I don't have the experience of such a remote place - I've lived in/around Beijing for the most part. I've been to remote places, of course, and some vaguely in that direction; Xinjjian (a year or so ago), Juizhaigou (back in 2002 so it was pretty rough), but only as a tourist. Even some places on the outskirts of Beijing are quite 'remote'.
I guess there's some el
Why not test the product rather than the producer? (Score:2)
I'm having some confusion here... I know that there has been some sewage testing for entire cities, but I'm not seeing the reason why that basic approach can't be extended down to the individual level? Basically an FOBT, but for Covid-19 rather than blood. Not exactly pleasant, but not 'intrusive'.
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Do you trust they won't also go ahead and test for other things like drug use and/or pregnancy. Also, what are the odds the govt would keep a DNA sample for whatever reason?
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There’s already laws against that. For example, in many states they can’t test you for HIV without consent.
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Once you assume the medical system has been breached, then there's no sense in worrying about protecting any part of your personal medical information. On that grounds I'm calling him a troll of some sort.
My concern is that "probe" sounds bad and it's making me suspect the entire story, even though it seems to have originated with reliable sources. Or maybe I've become overly accustomed to FOBT over the years? (I'm trying hard to avoid provoking any scatological jokes, but maybe I should go all in for the F
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Excellent point. The govt never broke its own laws before.
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We still haven’t rolled out rapid Covid tests to the public at any significant scale yet. A FOBT style test will take even longer.
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Why do you think that would be the case? Even though I strongly agree with your premise that the Covid-19 testing has been amazingly deficient, I don't see any relationship to how long it would take to develop one more test.
Some background information is needed? You know that some researchers are already doing sewage testing for Covid-19? Without getting any individual-level information, they have already proven that it is possible to detect the presence of infected people in large populations.
But it seems
Re: Why not test the product rather than the produ (Score:4, Informative)
Several reasons;
Because of how dangerous false negatives are, all tests must go through a rigorous process to compare them to a gold standard (like PCR or cultures) to verify accuracy. This requires huge amounts of data and large patient populations to sample to compare results.
If labs working since March are finally rolling out home nasal Covid test kits, it will take nearly as long to get there for rectal Covid test kits.
Population-level testing like sewage tests are not nearly subject to the same level of scrutiny because of how inaccurate they can be and because they donâ(TM)t affect clinical decision-making. Those tests are performed in a high-complexity lab with certified operators. Your average doctors office will not be able to run their own test anytime soon, so first you will need the test to be approved in a CLIA-certified lab, and then eventually manage to prove its efficacy in a lower-complexity test kit to work in a CLIA-waived lab (eg. A doctors office running a urinalysis using a small desktop analyzer or a color-changing test strip kit. Getting it to home use will be another hurdle from there.
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Okay, I think your primary focus is on the "rapid" and "clinical" parts. Fair enough nick.
Not sure those concerns apply so well in the context of the story, however. Much of the Chinese testing is just preliminary filtering, where groups of samples are tested in one go. As long as they can continue to keep the infections out of the community and most of the tests come back negative, they can do that and just come back for second-round individual testing of the group when they get a positive result. In that
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I teach biostatistics and epidemiology. That is unfortunately not how it works. Even with pooled testing (which is what you were describing), you need a high enough sensitivity and specificity of the test to make it worthwhile to test in that manner. A low sensitivity (ie high false negative) will be a major problem as it will let more cases spread, and a low specificity (ie high false positive) will cause a lot of unnecessary followup testing, along with anxiety and costing resources.
You're talking about t
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Okay, you sound like you know what you're talking about, but it still seems like it's going away from the actual Subject question. Now it sounds like you think the Chinese have no good reason to use the new test in the first place. That would seem to put your responses somewhat close to the jokesters with all the 'punitive' probe jokes. If the Chinese can't even get useful screening information via that route, why bother at all?
I'm still trying to avoid the scatological humor, but it's kind of difficult her
Public masturbation of 1673220 (Score:2)
Z^-1
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Well played, sir. Or am I wrong that you were casting aspersions at the editor whilst avoiding stepping into the humor?
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Are you trying to make a joke? Or are you asking for an explanation? If so:
We should test more so that we can figure out who has Covid-19 and limit the spread of the disease. The cheaper and less intrusive the tests, the better.
Or do you want details about the FOBT? I decided not to include the link because of the risk of scatological humor, but you might be insisting. So https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Such jokes are probably unavoidable given the topic of the story?
Testing with anal swabs - Bend over. (Score:3)
The jokes, they just write themselves!
2020 is supposedly gone. (Score:2)
...instead we get coup attempts lead by Buffaloman and anal swabbing*. Honey, slap me awake, I'm having a really strange nightmare.
* The two don't seem related, but I can't rule it out based on patterns so far
IANAD (Score:5, Informative)
I am not a doctor, but...
traces of the virus linger longer in the anus than in the respiratory tract
I think they mean "rectum" or "large intestine" or maybe "digestive tract". The anus is merely an orifice - an opening into the rectum. So the virus wouldn't actually be lingering at the anus itself.
Fetish shaming (Score:2)
Maybe they like having their asshole sneezed on. Given that porno is illegal in China (not enforced), who knows what they're in to.
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Maybe they like having their asshole sneezed on
Sometimes you can tell with pinpoint accuracy when a thread has jumped the shark,
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Well that depends on how well you wipe now doesn't it.
I've never seen so many shit jokes on Slashdot. And I'm not helping.
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I am not a doctor, but...
traces of the virus linger longer in the anus than in the respiratory tract
I think they mean "rectum" or "large intestine" or maybe "digestive tract". The anus is merely an orifice - an opening into the rectum. So the virus wouldn't actually be lingering at the anus itself.
Depends on how well people wipe their asses.
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I think they mean "rectum" or "large intestine" or maybe "digestive tract". The anus is merely an orifice - an opening into the rectum
Seriously?
Mrs. East: “Hey Dan, what are you up to?”
Dan East: “Oh, just explaining to a bunch of random people what an anus is. I just hate it when people don’t know.”
Mrs. East: “I see. So, I’ll be at my mother’s ... and I’m taking the kids with me ...”
Not for everyone ... (Score:5, Informative)
They are not switching from throat to anal swabs for everyone.
What seems to be happening is that those testing positive, and are in quarantine facilities recovering, will be swabbed from both the throat and anus, because -- per physicians in China -- there is continued viral shedding from the digestive tract, even when such shedding have stopped from the upper respiratory tract.
I wrote about this here [baheyeldin.com] with quotes from other media supporting the above conclusion.
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Sometimes the switching itself [youtu.be] is the problem, not the swab so much.
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Ha ha
And in China, on social media, there were people joking exactly about the same thing: the nurse switching the nasal and anal swabs ...
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And in China, on social media, there were people joking exactly about the same thing: the nurse switching the nasal and anal swabs ...
Didn’t we see this in a movie somewhere?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Sometimes the switching itself [youtu.be] is the problem, not the swab so much.
You bastard, know I know how women feel when they go to a party and someone’s wearing the same dress.
Go ahead and mod mine redundant. I deserve it.
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If they test positive for longer that can be helpful for tracing. It would be nice if someone with a clue could just read the native Chinese press and just say how it is being used. New Zealand has had hundreds of positive cases in the managed quarantine facilities and have never needed these kinds of tests to contain it.
From the "in neighborhoods" reference, it seems like using the anal tests might be to try to improve back-tracing to see where the infection came from so they can target containment more
Re:Not for everyone ... (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, China is basically the only nation that faced Covid19 head on without warning and beat it.
When I saw what they were doing to beat it last january, I knew this would run rampant thru the rest of the developed world.
Re: Not for everyone ... (Score:2)
It's a bingo. Wait a few hours and you will be nodded as a troll for actually suggesting China did something right and that all their infection numbers are not fake.
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I agree with you fairly fully with the except that I do love China. Respect for a peace between our differences for me requires loving the people of different nations. China is no exception. Governments on the other hand are generally corrupted one way or another, so trying to "contrast and compare" is often this idiom of "the lesser of two evils".
The enemies thing is actually more America against China, than China against us. Many things that China gets caught "doing to us" which appear adversarial, we oft
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They managed to keep the economy going, and minimizing the duration of pain for the populace.
Instead of widespread lockdowns for longer times (100+ days in Australia), they are more targeted and more severe, as well as much shorter.
Four major cities (~ 5M to 12M) were shutdown when outbreaks were detected. TOTAL lockdown, i.e. everybody in their homes, with thousands of testing teams going around tes
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I don't see the anal swab would be different here.
You seem to imply that anal vs. nasal will give a different phylogeny from the nasal one.
That is not the case. Both type of swab are the exact same RT-PCT technology.
It is just a question of duration, and location. These Chinese doctors think, based on cases they saw, that people shed in feces for a longer time after their nasal swabs have gone clear. They are rightfully worried that shedding in feces can infect others.
This is not the first time I have seen
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It is just a question of duration, and location.
It was on that day in late January 2021, that Captain Obvious blew his cover ...
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They are rightfully worried that shedding in feces can infect others.
If any, that makes a strong case for washing your hands properly and cleaning supermarket carts etc.
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Right, but it is less so in the USA, and developed countries ...
The issue is in developing countries where there are low standards (or none) for sanitation. For example, flies carrying the virus from feces to food or eyes. It is well known for certain diseases (fecal-oral route).
How much does that contribute to actual COVID-19 cases? I don't think it is very high. We would have seen much more transmission if it was. So, evidence still says that the main route is being in the same confined space with others
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It could still be infectious under the right conditions. For example, in developing countries where there is low standards (or none) for sanitation. For example, flies carrying the virus from feces to food or eyes.
As for the presence of the genome, that is the limitation of PCR, be it respiratory or intestinal: it only tests for the presence of RNA.
gov anal probe? (Score:2)
Government mandated anal probing is where I draw the line. Sorry, I'm not going there without a fight, you'll have to shoot me.
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Government mandated anal probing is where I draw the line. Sorry, I'm not going there without a fight, you'll have to shoot me.
Wanna know what’s sad ... look back through postings across the internet over the last 30 years. Look at all the lines that were drawn in that time. Now calculate how many remain un-crossed.
“Ain’t nobody gonna put me in no scanner just to get on an airplane, that’s where I draw the line!”
“The state will have to shoot me before seizing my cash,
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Try me.
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The Borg (Score:2)
Brings new meaning to "You will be assimilated"
I predict.... (Score:3)
They're all a bunch of... (Score:2)
...assholes!
Reminds me of the time I got a prostate exam (Score:2)
It hurt like hell. I later told a friend that the doctor had a huge finger.
“How do your know it was his finger?”, my friend replied.
Uh ...
Researchers first used this method: (Score:2)
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There are a number of porn videos promising just that, but I've yet to find any hard evidence.
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As they say, hard evidence is good to find. At least in this context.
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My Provinces CDC recommended keeping a wall between the couples, glory holes basically. IIRC there was also recommendations of wearing a mask while having sex.
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I would like to see what they think of this.
Whatever they're told to think.
Which will match the thoughts that flow from what they're allowed to know.
They don't even have to think about what to think.
If you want a survey, just check their news feed. There are no other answers.
Re: Regrets (Score:2)
You have a weird view of what it is like in China.
Re: Regrets (Score:3)
There are surveys of people in China.
Re: Regrets (Score:2)
Right. They are just in Chinese, of which none of the posters claiming anything about China can speak. They probably have never been to China or consumed any media from China. The only things they know from China are General Tso and Wonton soup which are actually Cantonese. It's really a funny world when you realize most Chinese people are less ignorant about America than Americans are ignorant about China but I guess that's the price of freedom.
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Hell, I've lived and worked in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and I wouldn't pretend to know about "China" in general since it's such a big place.
Re: Regrets (Score:2)
More importantly the places you lived were the most international city in China and the city of self-hating sinos... Yes, China is a huge place with many distinctive areas and a language group that is more diverse than most western languages. To speak about it generally as a westerner, you basically have to devote your life to living in cities that are tier 3 or below and gaining some ability or resources towards understanding their general media. I am working on the former but I am late to the game for
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That sword goes both ways. I've had friends move long term to other countries, and they get a sort of Stockholm Syndrome where everything about the new one is the best thing - because it's new and interesting even if they've been there for ten years - and the previous one does everything wrong.
Hell, I did a bit of it myself living in Japan.
Re: Regrets (Score:2)
It can be easier to critique the devil you know but people who examine themselves and their context deeply often are still able to find aspects of a new culture problematic. In fact there is a concept called the Traveller's curse which says the more we travel extensively, the more no place feels like a home. This happened to me at a young age. It happens because we want the good parts of all the places we have been and no such place exists. I can perfectly happily talk about the parts of China I do not
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Or, as I said to my colleagues on many occasions when gob-smacked by the insularity and ignorance of (most of) the Americans we worked with - "Remember, the ones we see are the outgoing ones with the internationalist mindset."
Re: Regrets (Score:2)
Haha. Right. Our freedoms don't really include being well travelled.
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If their opinion meant anything, they wouldn't be doing anal swabs.
Re: Regrets (Score:2)
Nonsense.
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Your mileage may vary.
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I've had things up my bum.
Least surprising revelation ever.
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Damned right it is! Not only that, when I had it done, my nose was clogged with bloody snot for well over a week. Now, consider how many microbes of various types are down in that area and how easy it's going to be to end up with a nasty infection or three.
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So you're ignorant of biology. Let me give you a hint, name one respiratory virus infection where there *won't* be shed viruses found in stool.
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So you're ignorant of biology. Let me give you a hint, name one respiratory virus infection where there *won't* be shed viruses found in stool.
No thanks. I’m good with “ignorant of biology”.
Re: High risk according to the PRC (Score:2)
Why?
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No. Why 'all the Uyghurs'?
Re: High risk according to the PRC (Score:2)
No, they're not.
Re: Gut bacteria reducing covid symptoms (Score:2)
Completely agree. It would be interesting to see a better comparison of gut bacteria populations relative to the conditions that have comorbidities. I think both diabetes and Alzheimer's are showing patterns where the gut microbiome diversity is reduced and these conditions develop later. Pregnancy might be another area of interesting because pregnancy changes the gut microbiome temporarily.
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In this case it wasn't relevant to the sardonic joke to bring up what a corrupt shithole China is.