Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[ColePens]

*** I cannot stress this enough. Some political talk is fine, but once we start to show party lines, it's 100% done. This is not a political debate. We can talk about how it affects politics (unemployment, help on the way financially, etc) - but we cannot go into party lines. I will immediately remove you from the thread. There will be no more warnings.***

Instant thread bans will be in play. If you have been removed from a prior thread and removed again - additional discipline will take place.

Click to read more...

 

[ColePens]

That's one of my issues with the "test our way out of this" strategy:
1) Our tests are inaccurate
2) We can't produce enough
3) We can't distribute them well

I think it worked in SK and Taiwan because they acted super early with limited cases and a strong centralized state. Here? Horse/Barn, Train/Station, Cat/Bag. Pick yer metaphor.

I want to take this into the current thread. People talk about when is it safe to hit some normalcy and this post is exactly why I think we are massively so far away from it. We are talking vaccines/treatment but we can't even test appropriately yet. And I think it's been long enough where testing should be somewhat decent. It's not. That's a bit scary.

 

[66-30-33]

Looking forward to the day these threads are a thing of the past and GDT's are back.

I'm outta the loop on things covid-19 now, shits too depressing and I am waaaayyyy too depressed to jump into what's happening.

 

[LOGiK]

I want to take this into the current thread. People talk about when is it safe to hit some normalcy and this post is exactly why I think we are massively so far away from it. We are talking vaccines/treatment but we can't even test appropriately yet. And I think it's been long enough where testing should be somewhat decent. It's not. That's a bit scary.

The UK... or England at least... is considering a lockdown the entire year.
You're not kidding that is ****ing scary.

We already have cities cancelling fourth of july events.

This lockdown is not going away anytime soon.

 

[ChaosAgent]

I want to take this into the current thread. People talk about when is it safe to hit some normalcy and this post is exactly why I think we are massively so far away from it. We are talking vaccines/treatment but we can't even test appropriately yet. And I think it's been long enough where testing should be somewhat decent. It's not. That's a bit scary.

I don't think "normal" is possible. I do think you can stop having police threatening people in public parks. There's a wide difference between the two.

 

[HandshakeLine]

I want to take this into the current thread. People talk about when is it safe to hit some normalcy and this post is exactly why I think we are massively so far away from it. We are talking vaccines/treatment but we can't even test appropriately yet. And I think it's been long enough where testing should be somewhat decent. It's not. That's a bit scary.

I didn't even get a response from the Czech ministry of health regarding my test, so who only knows if I had it but a mild version, or if that awful cold/flu I had in late January was actually that, or if I am an asymptomatic carrier, or if it really was a negative test.

It's also why the only thing I and my GF can do is self-quarantine until something more definitive (either test or vaccine) comes up, or the pandemic passes.

 

[LOGiK]

Looking forward to the day these threads are a thing of the past and GDT's are back.

I'm outta the loop on things covid-19 now, shits too depressing and I am waaaayyyy too depressed to jump into what's happening.

Yep. Same here. I only turn on netflix or a movie or game on the tv now.
Every friggin commercial is just pounding into your head all of this and I don't go for that.

Just let me know when sports are back and things are opened back up.

I visited my grandmother last night and when I'm there I'm forced to watch VHS movies and air broadcast tv... I couldn't believe what I was seeing on the news and commercials. Relentless virus drama.

I saw on the news they were closing down trails in the woods because of crowds and people throwing garbage all over the trails... people are disgusting.

With how mad things are getting I wouldn't be surprised if I was walking in the woods with my dog and saw a police officer out there telling me to go home or get arrested.

 

[Mario_is_BACK!!]

I’m slowly improving. My stomach issues have all but vanished. I woke up this morning and took my temp, it was 98.5. Just took it and it was 99.3, so that’s improving. My cough seems to be productive. I’m going to give some work a try tomorrow (it’s all editing video so pretty low impact) but not going to push myself.

Im just assuming I ended up with some flu or something. Just my luck.

 

[LOGiK]

I don't think "normal" is possible. I do think you can stop having police threatening people in public parks. There's a wide difference between the two.

See the video of officers in philadelphia basically assaulting a guy not wearing on mask on the bus? They threw him off eventually, not social distancing and I saw 2 officers without masks themselves.

I can't post the video because there is F bombs all over the place. That's a lawsuit... that guy will get paid for that ugly display of authority.

Can't believe this is happening to the US.

 

[ChaosAgent]

I’m slowly improving. My stomach issues have all but vanished. I woke up this morning and took my temp, it was 98.5. Just took it and it was 99.3, so that’s improving. My cough seems to be productive. I’m going to give some work a try tomorrow (it’s all editing video so pretty low impact) but not going to push myself.

Im just assuming I ended up with some flu or something. Just my luck.

As a semi-tangent, I've heard more in recent years that the "98.6" guideline has always been garbage because each of us have different baseline temperatures at different times of the day. I just took mine - it's 96.9. So we need to set our guidelines on what constitutes a fever differently at an individual level. I'd often feel like absolute crap but then see that my temperature was "only" 99.2 or something. Well that's 2.2 degrees above normal so the equivalent of 100.8 in the "98.6" world.

This could at some ways be applicable to COVID temperature tracking as well.

 

[Borgir]

I will be pissed if this leads to me having to own a donkey cell phone to travel, etc.


f***ing Flu World Order

 

[LOGiK]

As a semi-tangent, I've heard more in recent years that the "98.6" guideline has always been garbage because each of us have different baseline temperatures at different times of the day. I just took mine - it's 96.9. So we need to set our guidelines on what constitutes a fever differently at an individual level. I'd often feel like absolute crap but then see that my temperature was "only" 99.2 or something. Well that's 2.2 degrees above normal so the equivalent of 100.8 in the "98.6" world.

This could at some ways be applicable to COVID temperature tracking as well.

Yeah I read that too. 96-99 can be 'normal'.

I myself run 97's for the most part.

 

[LOGiK]

@Borgir

whats a donkey phone?

 

[Jacob]

As a semi-tangent, I've heard more in recent years that the "98.6" guideline has always been garbage because each of us have different baseline temperatures at different times of the day. I just took mine - it's 96.9. So we need to set our guidelines on what constitutes a fever differently at an individual level. I'd often feel like absolute crap but then see that my temperature was "only" 99.2 or something. Well that's 2.2 degrees above normal so the equivalent of 100.8 in the "98.6" world.

This could at some ways be applicable to COVID temperature tracking as well.

Apparently “normal” temperature was decided like 160 years ago by some German physician that took the temperatures of thousands of random patients. But normal temps have gone down since due to, they think, things like heating and air conditioning that lets our internal temperature regulation kind of turn off a bit.

My theory is that a random pool of 10,000 people back in the 1800s probably has a much higher % of people fighting random mild infections than a random pool of 10,000 people today would, which would skew results warmer.

I couldn’t even find a thermometer in my house so I’m ordering one.

 

[Borgir]

@Borgir

whats a donkey phone?

A cell phone.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Apparently “normal” temperature was decided like 160 years ago by some German physician that took the temperatures of thousands of random patients. But normal temps have gone down since due to, they think, things like heating and air conditioning that lets our internal temperature regulation kind of turn off a bit.

My theory is that a random pool of 10,000 people back in the 1800s probably has a much higher % of people fighting random mild infections than a random pool of 10,000 people today would, which would skew results warmer.

I couldn’t even find a thermometer in my house so I’m ordering one.

Ah yes, averages. Those beautiful things. Like how the average age of someone wearing diapers is 40.

 

[HandshakeLine]

Can't believe this is happening to the US.

Honest question: Why? It's always been there.

 

[Jacob]

Ah yes, averages. Those beautiful things. Like how the average age of someone wearing diapers is 40.

lmao

I just pictured some board room meeting at Huggies that’s like, “people, we got some new numbers in. Our target demo is now the 35-45 age range. Let’s get Shaqille O’Neal and John Krasinski on the horn.”

 

[Clare2904]

A few Residential homes have started to take our temperature when we arrive, mine was 36.3c today.

 

[HandshakeLine]

lmao

I just pictured some board room meeting at Huggies that’s like, “people, we got some new numbers in. Our target demo is now the 35-45 age range. Let’s get Shaqille O’Neal and John Krasinski on the horn.”

It's all about the right marketing. You could sell 'em as safety pants for a night of binge drinking!

 

[ColePens]

Honest question: Why? It's always been there.

Legit my buddy had cleaner that always noted Coronavirus on it for his gym. So yeah... it was always there.

 

[billybudd]

So, the "test our way out" strategy wouldn't be for the purpose of tracking individuals, locking them down, tracing their contacts then locking them down. That's just not viable outside of pocket regions (mostly cities). The US is too distributed. Too large. People are complying voluntarily now, but implement SK's measures on enough people for a long enough time, in some cases interfering with essential matters of survival and they'll stop. China, with all its tech surveillance and draconian measures, never gave a thought to trying to also carpet bomb the hinterlands with bleach. They never sent the PLA to patrol the boonies for violators and drop off rations once a week, as it did in Wuhan for months. Because they couldn't have. Distributing resources would have been beyond them, (let alone trying to enforce anything).

The purpose of mass testing is to get an idea of where Covid is and what it actually does. We are presently working off equations that are using nearly blind guesses to populate almost every variable in them. The only thing we know for certain is that high population density + mass transit + covid = bad. How bad? How high can a pop density be before covid creates real disaster? How low of a population density do you need before covid's no more dangerous than a seasonal flu? We don't know any of this.

Obviously, an accurate test is better, but even an inaccurate test could, for example, provide a better estimate of R0 than "somewhere between 2 and 35, not adjusted for population density." An inaccurate test could give you a better prediction of estimated total US covid mortality than "between 30k and 2 million."

We don't need a vaccine to proceed from where we are to something better. But before we can do that, we need to know

1. how quickly covid spreads on a per region basis, both in quarantine conditions and without them
2. what the rate of hospitalization is per infection (this should be static once adjusted for demographics)
3. a better guess at the true percentage of people who have contracted covid at some point

The testing doesn't need to be accurate to allow for improvements; it just needs to be granular to the region and better than the little that we have now. Even with a test that has a 30% error ratio, we could narrow these variables down a lot.

 

[ChaosAgent]

So, the "test our way out" strategy wouldn't be for the purpose of tracking individuals, locking them down, tracing their contacts then locking them down. That's just not viable outside of pocket regions (mostly cities). The US is too distributed. Too large. People are complying voluntarily now, but implement SK's measures on enough people for a long enough time, in some cases interfering with essential matters of survival and they'll stop. China, with all its tech surveillance and draconian measures, never gave a thought to trying to also carpet bomb the hinterlands with bleach. They never sent the PLA to patrol the boonies for violators and drop off rations once a week, as it did in Wuhan for months. Because they couldn't have. Distributing resources would have been beyond them, (let alone trying to enforce anything).

The purpose of mass testing is to get an idea of where Covid is and what it actually does. We are presently working off equations that are using nearly blind guesses to populate almost every variable in them. The only thing we know for certain is that high population density + mass transit + covid = bad. How bad? How high can a pop density be before covid creates real disaster? What needs to be the rate of mass transit usage? We don't know any of this.

Obviously, an accurate test is better, but even an inaccurate test could, for example, provide a better estimate of R0 than "somewhere between 2 and 35." An inaccurate test could give you a better prediction of estimated total US covid mortality than "between 30k and 2 million."

We don't need a vaccine to proceed from where we are to something better. But before we can do that, we need to know

1. how quickly covid spreads on a per region basis, both in quarantine conditions and without them
2. what the rate of hospitalization is per infection (this should be static once adjusted for demographics)
3. a better guess at the true percentage of people who have contracted covid at some point

The testing doesn't need to be accurate to allow for improvements; it just needs to be granular to the region and better than the little that we have now. Even with a test that has a 30% error ratio, we could narrow these variables down a lot.

I totally agree with that.

Doing a distributed panel across the US and testing them longitudinally and anonymously (like Nielsen ratings back in the day) could account for a lot of these factors. Or just doing them in towns and such could also get you to those answers - though it wouldn't encompass geography as well IMO.

Testing this way would tell you how effectively you had flattened the curve and how high R0 is in certain areas.

But for some people the goalposts on "flatten the curve" have shifted to "crush the curve" and do the South Korea test/trace/isolate on a massive population when millions have it/have already had it. That sounds a lot like Sisyphus pushing the ball up the hill for me.

Let's see how far we've knocked R0 down. I betcha it's under 1 right now especially in areas where you're not "butts to nuts" on public transit 2x/day. Personally just working from home has reduced the amount of time I spend in close proximity to others - the driver of R0 on a population basis - by 90%+.

 

[billybudd]

I totally agree with that.

Doing a distributed panel across the US and testing them longitudinally and anonymously (like Nielsen ratings back in the day) could account for a lot of these factors. Or just doing them in towns and such could also get you to those answers - though it wouldn't encompass geography as well IMO.

Testing this way would tell you how effectively you had flattened the curve and how high R0 is in certain areas.

That's a great example. Nielsen ratings are shit. I got a look at their methodology for this market once and it's shit. The sample sizes are shit. The attempt to control for variables is shit.

But what Nielsen ratings did do is give a good general idea of what programs are popular and which of these programs are more popular than other programs. In which TV markets was a thing more popular than it was in other markets. Even shit data can go a long way to answering general questions like that.

But for some people the goalposts on "flatten the curve" have shifted to "crush the curve" and do the South Korea test/trace/isolate on a massive population when millions have it/have already had it. That sounds a lot like Sisyphus pushing the ball up the hill for me.

People can want this, but it's just not going to happen. You would need to create a closed ecosystem to even attempt it. That would mean no international entry of any kind, for anyone, American or foreign, into the United States ever (not by plane, not by border, not by boat) until Covid were eradicated on a global basis--and that's just step 1.

 

[ChaosAgent]

People can want this, but it's just not going to happen. You would need to create a closed ecosystem to even attempt it. That would mean no international entry of any kind, for anyone, American or foreign, into the United States ever (not by plane, not by border, not by boat) until Covid were eradicated on a global basis--and that's just step 1.

I'm just increasingly concerned that this is where people's heads are at. "We open up when we can test/trace/isolate on an individual level." Which is delusional. Rather than just tracking R0 on a local level and futzing around at the edges of R0>1.