Cruise ship ( MSC Grandiosa) restarts with rapid antigen testing (immunofluorescence swab test). Backed up with PCR testing if you fail the immunofluorescence test.
What I want to know is, who developed the test kit they are using? How much does it cost? Why does it take an hour? Who else is doing immunofluorescence testing? And mostly —
Why isn’t antigen fluorescence testing being used in Australia?
Are you using your last few precious minutes of curfew to catch up on your posts before you bugger off somewhere for a beer?
Melbourne, Victoria is ending its curfew. It had a second wave via a badly arranged hotel quarantine process. From <10 cases per day at the start of June, they peaked with 723 cases on 30 July. With a rigorous shutdown of Melbourne it’s back down to the teens. That’s 4 months of chaos and impact to rectify two ‘minor’ slips, which also cost nearly 700 deaths. It might take maybe two more months to chase the long tail down and to get down to single digits again.
"A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the bulletin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet-call preceded the news. A sort of electric thrill ran through the cafe. Even the waiters had started and pricked up their ears.
" He could hear just enough of what was issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all happened, as he had foreseen; a vast seaborne armada had secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy’s rear, the white arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din: ‘Vast strategic manoeuvre–perfect co-ordination–utter rout–half a million prisoners–complete demoralization–control of the whole of Africa–bring the war within measurable distance of its end–victory–greatest victory in human history–victory, victory, victory!’
"Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Dan Andrews.*”
* Premier (Governor) of Victoria
Double plus good!
That really doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s one data point, but here is Dallas, the only school feeder pattern that is really pushing for full time return to school is the most affluent one. Those parents want their kids to have a traditional school experience, and feel like they are being robbed. They also, I suspect, need kids in school so they can work from home at their professional jobs where work from home is allowed.
Poor people are as likely or more likely to want to keep their kids home, here. They don’t want to get sick anymore than affluent people, and they are managing.
It’s self-centered behavior to say, essentially, ‘I want to go anywhere I please, including the bar, so I’m gonna need everybody who works at the bar and all the other places I want to go, plus everyone who I might come near while they’re doing essential errands, to accept an increased risk of dying or being long-term seriously damaged, [ETA: plus accept that increased risk on behalf of everybody they come into contact with] in order to let me do the things I want to do.’
The difference being, of course, that they couldn’t care less if you decided to say ‘nope, too dangerous for me, I think I’ll just stay home’. The controlling of others’ behavior is mostly a one-way street.
It is impossible for many people to stay home all the time.
Aside from the fact that some need to go to the doctor etc.,: this entire discussion started with the fact that the decision of a business owner to open a business means that those who work there will either need to go to work, or no longer be able to get unemployment which may be their main or only source of income. This problem of course weighs heaviest on those with little money, many of whom also work in the highest-risk jobs [ETA: and may need to take public transport to get there].
Plus which, why should some people be shut in their homes entirely, unable to go anywhere at all for months or years, so that other people can not only go for walks and to low-risk places and businesses but also go to high-risk amusements?
I thought about bumping the “Asymptomatic Case Rate” or “The Ten Times as Many …” threads for this but better maybe just to drop it here.
Context. Last half of July cumulative confirmed infection rate was roughly half of what it is today Positivity rates had been higher end of March through April and had come down to where they are now. There have been smallish studies that suggest that seroprevalence may underestimate the rate of resolved infections as defined by T-cell immunity by roughly a factor of two, but not yet verified in larger studies.
The study below uses as its sample of convenience those who have been receiving dialysis, problematic in some ways but reflective of a broad population with information that allows slicing and dicing the information some. Could over- could under-estimate compared to the general population.
This could be read as implying that 18 to 23% of America may currently have antibodies currently with great heterogeneity by region and subgroup (and some unknown number additionally having had infections resolved by T-cell positivity alone). The 23% is figured by taking the current percent of Americans with confirmed infections to date and dividing by the 9.2% identified rate.
FWIW and interpret as you will.
The estimated ‘study completion date’ for phase 3 trial for the mRNA-1273 vaccine (Moderna) was October 27.
Has anyone seen anything?
Thank you for your interesting posts.
I kinda wish we had separate threads for “what are the numbers” and “what new science is out there”. I’m interested in both, but I kinda want to dip into them separately…
Well, that’s a month from today, so…no, not yet.
AArrrgh.
Some people are the doctor.
Yes indeed.
And the nurse, and the person who cleans the doctor’s office.
33,306,022 total cases
1,002,389 dead
24,637,458 recovered
In the US:
7,321,343 total cases
209,453 dead
4,560,456 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
As expected, today the world has over 1,000,000 dead from Covid-19. In just 10 months.
For comparison: August 26
September 27:
An increase of 1.2 million cases in just a month and 25,524 deaths. Do I have that right (not great with simple numbers)?
Hey @SayTwo - I have a question for you.
Are you against public health initiatives such as limiting movement, masks and distancing because you feel they are intrusive and unconstitutional, or is it a matter of degree ie: I think it would be OK in some circumstances but I don’t think the pandemic is severe enough to warrant these measures?
Because most conservatives seem to be taking the absolutist position and that’s scary. Because what if the next one is also highly infectious with a 50% fatality rate? Will you be bitching about masks and having to stay home then?
I read a very interesting mystery novel called Lockdown (by Peter May). It’s set in London during a pandemic, one much more severe than this one.
One of the most interesting things about this novel is its backstory. The author wrote it a long time ago, but could never sell it - the pandemic “landscape” was just too alien at the time.
He managed to sell it after this pandemic started. And it has it all, lockdowns, temporary hospitals, curfews and young people defying lockdown and breaking curfew. All the public health measures that the conservatives are trying to paint as a “liberal plot” instead of accepted public health measures that have been in pandemic playbooks for years.
I’m refraining from going out not because I think the risk is incredibly high. I’m not going out to dinner and movies because it turns out that those activities just aren’t that important to me. And I think a lot of people feel that way.
I’m remembering another time when droves of people in a metro area stayed home out of fear. Businesses suffered, schools stayed open but halted outdoor and extra-curricular activities, people all over the metro area voluntarily halted most non-essential movement. There were close to 10 million in this Metro area. The death rate from this event, a shooting spree by two men, was literally around one in a million, 10 people were killed in a three week period.
Yet no one was really accusing their neighbors of playing politics by staying home. No politicians decided that trying to catch these guys was too expensive because they only killed 10 people out of 10 million.
Yet we are all supposed to be OK with the idea of getting sick because we only have a 1 in 50 chance of dying from it?
Neither of those things, really. What I am against is junk science. Or, junk science on the one hand, and public policy being absolutely sacrificed at the altar of, at best, terribly narrowly focused epidemiology on the other. I’m not particularly against any initiatives, whether they restrict liberties or not, if they are effective and if they are commensurate to the problem at hand and if pursuing them aligns well with (what should be) our overarching priorities. I think none of that is true in this case. I’m of the belief that as this whole thing gets dissected over the next ten or twenty years, neither science nor public policy are going to come out clean.
I continue to be flummoxed by both these arguments. I don’t carry what choices anyone else makes for themselves, nor what beliefs they have. What I care about is the spreading of irrational beliefs to others, and the imposition of those personal choices onto others who don’t share the same point of view.
What I would really, really love to see are some ballot initiatives, or public referendums, on these policies. If collectively we all vote on things like business, school, and border closures – well, I guess the people have spoken. But I’m not seeing much evidence at all that any ‘people’ have a say in the matter, anywhere. (What’s going on in a number of countries is so far out of line with their democratic principles that it bounces back and forth between shocking and terrifying.) I do imagine in the long run they will, though. We’ll see. This thing is a long, long way from over.
You lost me. Are you saying the general public should decide whether they want to wear masks, observe social distancing, etc.?
Having the public vote on how to deal with the pandemic strikes me as much dumber than the junkiest junk science.
What was your point again?