Corona Horse, Corona Rider - Covid #9

[Zorral]

17 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

fuck, but that's scary.

Quote

 

"It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have.

He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over. Indeed, such people behave as though a house were burning in the city and nobody were trying to put the fire out. Instead they give leeway to the flames so that the whole city is consumed, saying that if God so willed, he could save the city without water to quench the fire.

No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate the house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city."

 

- Martin Luther, "Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague

Why we do need to wear mask, DISTANCE AND ISOLATE.

[Week]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Fuck this man SOOOOO much

 

 

When owning the libs goes wrong.

[ithanos]

8 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

Apparently, the way the Germans are getting so many more people tested, is really clever.
They take a double sample from everyone, and pool the tests.
So 1 sample goes into storage, and the other is mixed with 10 other people. That batch is tested together, and if it's negative, all 10 people are negative. If it's positive, then the 10 samples are taken out of storage and tested individually.

Using up 1 test for 10 if negative (the vast majority), or 11 tests for 10 if positive.
Really smart. Really obvious. No-one else seems to have thought of it.

This is genious! and such a simple implementation, because the basis of PCR is amplification (mass duplication of the target primer(s)), it would show up even if present in only one of the ten samples. 

[ithanos]

Edit: and it saves on reagents. Someone upthread mentioned this would be a bottleneck to prolonged testing. I listened to podcast yesterday where supply chain becomes critical as nations compete with each other to secure the resouces needed to support it.  

[Fez]

I wonder if there's an issue that prevents other countries from doing that. I don't know much about testing, but I have heard concerns about some of the tests being under sensitive and causing false negatives. Maybe there are concerns that mixing samples like that could dilute the virus too much and make that an even bigger issue?

[Mudguard]

34 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

Apparently, the way the Germans are getting so many more people tested, is really clever.
They take a double sample from everyone, and pool the tests.
So 1 sample goes into storage, and the other is mixed with 10 other people. That batch is tested together, and if it's negative, all 10 people are negative. If it's positive, then the 10 samples are taken out of storage and tested individually.

Using up 1 test for 10 if negative (the vast majority), or 11 tests for 10 if positive.
Really smart. Really obvious. No-one else seems to have thought of it.

That's a really good idea, especially if the vast majority of samples are negative, which is normally the case in the containment phase where there should be very few positive cases.  The US FDA is not very nimble or flexible, so I don't think that the US is doing this.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Yeah, intermittent lockdowns is a terrible plan.  Not practical and I agree that it wouldn't be tolerated by the public.  However, the papers presented extremely simplified scenarios, that aren't what you are limited to in the real world.  In the real world, we can add containment measures, once we get the numbers low enough, that will allow you to maintain the case numbers low so that you won't have to implement another lockdown.  Containment means mass testing, contact tracing of all new cases, and quarantining of these individuals.  This isn't possible though until we get the case numbers way down.

This sounds reasonable, but you still need a lot to go right for it to work. And I fear the regional spread is increasing which will stress the hell out of the system.

3 hours ago, lessthanluke said:

They already are.

I don't see how this lockdown can last any real length of time before people lose their shit. Myself included. At least I can still go lift so I'm in a better position than most of my social circle.

I think we're only just seeing the tip. Reports of lock downs until the end of April are doable, but imagine if that gets extended another month or two? 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

28 minutes ago, Fez said:

I wonder if there's an issue that prevents other countries from doing that. I don't know much about testing, but I have heard concerns about some of the tests being under sensitive and causing false negatives. Maybe there are concerns that mixing samples like that could dilute the virus too much and make that an even bigger issue?

My first thought upon readying WT's post wasn't one of joy. A false negative now becomes more problematic. The certainty of those tests better be damn high to take those kinds of risks.  

[Fragile Bird]

The WaPo has free access to it's coronavirus stories. Here's a story about what the virus can do to rural America. Blaine County Idaho is the location of posh ski resorts, like Sun Valley. Ketchum is the main town. It has a per capita infection rate higher than NYC. They were in serious trouble when 4 out of 7 doctors in their hospitals emergency room were quarantined.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tourists-brought-prosperity-to-an-idaho-ski-valley-they-also-brought-covid-19/2020/04/01/661b2166-737e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html

[Mudguard]

37 minutes ago, Fez said:

I wonder if there's an issue that prevents other countries from doing that. I don't know much about testing, but I have heard concerns about some of the tests being under sensitive and causing false negatives. Maybe there are concerns that mixing samples like that could dilute the virus too much and make that an even bigger issue?

It's possible that it could increase the rate of false negatives, depending on how the pooling and sampling was done, and the performance characteristics of the assay.  However, as ithanos noted, PCR based assays are usually extremely sensitive and require very little sample RNA/DNA.  Theoretically, a PCR assay is sensitive enough to detect a single virus.  Antibody based assays are much less sensitive and could be more greatly affected by the potential dilution issue.

Also, I don't know how the pooled samples are prepared in the German approach, but it is probably possible to concentrate the pooled sample to counteract the dilution.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

The small victories in a crisis. My mom's now shuttered company is a dental supply company. She had to go in for the last few days to make sure everyone got their last paycheck and to clear some barriers for people to file for unemployment. At some point it dawned on her that they have a warehouse room full of supplies. There are a lot of masks and gloves in there. Like A LOT. So she's going to give all her employees some of each, and me thankfully, and once she thinks she's taken care of her former staff she's going to start donating it to local hospitals and maybe some grocery stores. The stuff is a little old (she thinks no one has gone in this part of the warehouse for 2-3 years, as they no longer needed them after they updated the machinery). Not sure how that affects the supplies, but something is better than nothing. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, Arakan said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-coronavirus-death-toll-is-far-higher-than-reported-11585767179

As could be expected. Bottom-up counting only leads so far. It is estimated that the „real“ death toll in Italy is at least double the current figure. No malice, simply no time and resources. 

And on that note:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says?utm_source=twitter&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&__twitter_impression=true

[Mystical]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And on that note:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says?utm_source=twitter&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&__twitter_impression=true

Is that surprising? It's China.

On that note. Something that no one seems to want to report.

https://news.yahoo.com/suspected-sars-virus-and-flu-found-in-luggage-fbi-report-describes-chinas-biosecurity-risk-144526820.html

[AverageGuy]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

I wonder if there's an issue that prevents other countries from doing that. I don't know much about testing, but I have heard concerns about some of the tests being under sensitive and causing false negatives. Maybe there are concerns that mixing samples like that could dilute the virus too much and make that an even bigger issue?

Shouldn't be if it's two samples instead of split samples. 

False negatives can happen if the patient's tested too early, but then it wouldn't really matter how many samples you tested. We also had early false negatives because the tests weren't great.

[Impmk2]

The one thing I would be worried about is the QC. If one of your samples had a dodgy extract that wasn't picked up (say a particularly low yield or rnase contamination) you'll still get a seemingly good result on the extraction positive control reaction if it's pooled with a good sample.

Overall it does sound a little risky as you're basically invalidating one of your controls. But if you're running out of kits it's better than nothing.

[Zorral]

The son of some of our oldest and dearest friends is sick.  They thought he was getting better so they drove to their reservation getaway, a remote B&B in Vermont.  Now they're there.  She's got pneumonia, he's still not well after all.  They brought it with them to this place where there were no cases.

They are under 30, strong, healthy as shyte, fit, eat nutritionally, don't drink or take drugs.  They're in Broadway theater.  She's got a voice that can hit the back of a theater without a microphone.  She was a rising star.  I hope she gets over this, with her voice still intact.

Our friends are frantic.  Also the place they left for, three weeks ago, a small town, almost a village, in Connecticut, has its first case reported today. 

[Loge]

8 hours ago, The Monkey said:

As a Swede, it's really fascinating to consider how different life is in my country is right now compared to the vast majority of the world's counties, including all of Europe. 

I read articles and listen to podcasts from Europe and North America where they chide at people hanging out in the park in groups of three, even ridiculing people jogging alone. In Sweden, the restaurants, bars, cafe's and shopping malls are still open. There are far less people drinking and eating inside, but the outdoor areas of the pubs are packed with people on sunny days. A friend yesterday asked me if I wanted to go the movies, and I was shocked to learn the cinemas are still operating. I haven't seen a single person with a face mask (alright that could have more to do with the fact that no store has them in stock). 

It's like the rest of the world has locked down, and in Sweden stands alone in its old ways. Obviously the coronavirus has an enormous effect on daily life in Sweden as well, but you can barely tell by walking the street. 

The whole basis of the Swedish government's relaxed approach is the hope that people conform to the social contract. They hope people will abide by the recommendations and advise of the government by their own volition, and don't need direct orders. This in turn relies on an extreme level of trust between the people and the government agencies. I myself am fairly sceptical this will work out as they hope. The social contract might have been sufficiently strong in the 70s to pull something like this of, but no longer.

Obviously no one will know what the best approach was until a year or more down the line, when we can count our dead. I am equally sceptical of mandated complete lockdowns being effectively in place for months and months. It's a huge thing to ask people who have spend their entire lives in freedom to not leave their tiny flat until the autumn. Especially as the psychological toll of this pandemic increases the need for social contact and intimacy even more. All credit to those who manage to bear it, but I think the number of curfew infractions after a month of quarantine will increase dramatically. 

If you look at the figures, then case numbers in Sweden are still growing exponentially while there has been a slowdown in countries with stricter measures. From what I see the measures taken by Sweden mid-March slowed down the growth of case numbers considerably, but they did't break the pattern of exponential growth. If that trend continues for another week or so Sweden will have to tighten its measures to contain the virus. 

[Ran]

3 hours ago, Loge said:

If you look at the figures, then case numbers in Sweden are still growing exponentially while there has been a slowdown in countries with stricter measures. From what I see the measures taken by Sweden mid-March slowed down the growth of case numbers considerably, but they did't break the pattern of exponential growth. If that trend continues for another week or so Sweden will have to tighten its measures to contain the virus. 

Sweden has done so, but largely in the form of recommendations, as has been the norm. Right now they have extended recommendations to last through to the end of the year. They involve a host of things, from sporting events to instructions that store should limit overcrowding and attempt to find ways to reduce queues.

Stricter legal requirements may happen later as needed. That said, the recommendations are taken seriously. All of our small local restaurants now only do take-out, no seating places except for outdoor tables, and a number of restaurants have closed voluntarily in Gothenburg.

The curve definitely has been bent, with the trend from last week's data being a doubling every 5 days rather than every 3 days; Denmark, which imposed a far more stringent lockdown at the same time as our modest ones, is at every 4 days but also slowing (and probably more sharply, it's true). Per the public health authority, their view is that we're seeing different countries at different stages, some ahead, some behind.

It should be emphasized, as well, that the vast majority of issue lies in Stockholm right now. Here's my own region, containing Sweden's second largest city, having a much calmer time of it at the moment. The recommendations to reduce travel have largely kept it to Stockholm and the immediately surrounding regions (due to commuters). The hope is that the peak is reached in different parts of the country at different times, thereby allowing ICUs in different regions to share the burden. 

 

In other Swedish news, the French have been doing us dirty, apparently. Mölnlycke is actually a local company, and their products can be found in pharmacies throughout Sweden (mostly in the form of various kinds of bandages). I did not realize how big they were in the PPE market. In any case, it seems like "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" applies only within the borders of France ATM. (Particularly liked the bit where they finally allowed Mölnlycke to fulfill its shipments to Italy and Spain, and then French media presented it as France itself donating the masks...)

[Which Tyler]

Couple of really good articles in the New Statesman over the last couple of days - UK-centric, but probably applicable for much of the West

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/03/why-weren-t-we-ready

Why weren’t we ready?

A lethal pandemic was considered the most serious security risk to the UK. But nothing was done.

Quote

In May 2009, Alan Johnson, the then Labour health secretary, was questioned by the House of Lords science and technology committee. The committee was, in the midst of the 2009 swine flu outbreak, investigating the threat of pandemic influenza. Swine flu would infect 780,000 people in the UK in 2009, but only 203 died. The Lords committee was concerned about a far more lethal hypothetical threat – one such as Covid-19, which researchers from Imperial College London have estimated to be about 50 times deadlier than swine flu. 

Four weeks before Alan Johnson responded to the committee, the health department had issued a 127-page document suggesting that the NHS could double critical care capacity during a lethal pandemic. Nevertheless, the document went on, at the peak of the outbreak, “there may be ten times as many patients requiring mechanical ventilatory support as the number of beds available”. Under a worst-case scenario, Johnson conceded in a letter to the committee that “intensive care capacity may well be inadequate”. 

Johnson was not describing a black swan event. He was describing a threat that had, two years earlier, been classified as the number one national security risk to the United Kingdom. A pandemic as lethal as coronavirus has, for the past 13 years, been deemed a “level 5” threat. The only other level 5 threat has been large-scale biological or nuclear attack, but this was deemed to have a less than one-in-200 chance of happening in the next five years. The risk of a pandemic in that time was deemed to be between one-in-20 and one-in-two. 

ARTICLE CONTINUES...

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/04/real-reason-uk-government-pursued-herd-immunity-and-why-it-was-abandoned

The real reason the UK government pursued “herd immunity” – and why it was abandoned

How an attempt to justify mass public gatherings became viewed as a cold-blooded experiment in social engineering. 

Quote

On 12 March Boris Johnson warned the country that, as a result of Covid-19, “families are going to lose loved ones before their time”, yet took little immediate action to stop the virus spreading. Four days later, on 16 March, his tone was far more urgent, as the prime minister requested everyone “to stop non-essential contact with others and to stop all unnecessary travel”. The most vulnerable, especially those over 70, were told to prepare to stay home for up to 12 weeks. After that, the measures escalated; the economy was effectively shut down and all but the most essential activities prohibited. 

What explains the sudden change of course? The established narrative suggests that the government’s strategy for managing the pandemic initially depended on “herd immunity” – a policy tantamount to doing nothing to contain the spread of the virus. But the combination of public revulsion at the government’s apparent readiness to let tens of thousands get sick and die, combined with a frightening report published by Imperial College London about what would happen if stronger measures were not adopted (with a death toll of up to 250,000), forced the government to embrace new containment strategies.

There is a kernel of truth to this narrative. There is a real concern among scientists and politicians that the country might succeed in seeing off the first wave of infections through extraordinary efforts, only to be faced with a more devastating second wave. Given the time taken to prepare and test a reliable vaccine, the more the first wave leaves a large proportion of the population with a natural immunity, the better placed we are to cope with a resurgence of Covid-19. There is a potential trade-off between protecting as many people as possible from the first wave and being best prepared for the second. What became apparent to government advisers in those few days between 12 and 16 March was that the sort of short-term measures required to suppress the spread of Covid-19 could no longer be delayed.

ARTICLE CONTINUES...

 

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/04/why-crisis-turning-point-history

Why this crisis is a turning point in history

The era of peak globalisation is over. For those of us not on the front line, clearing the mind and thinking how to live in an altered world is the task at hand.

Quote

The deserted streets will fill again, and we will leave our screen-lit burrows blinking with relief. But the world will be different from how we imagined it in what we thought were normal times. This is not a temporary rupture in an otherwise stable equilibrium: the crisis through which we are living is a turning point in history. 

The era of peak globalisation is over. An economic system that relied on worldwide production and long supply chains is morphing into one that will be less interconnected. A way of life driven by unceasing mobility is shuddering to a stop. Our lives are going to be more physically constrained and more virtual than they were. A more fragmented world is coming into being that in some ways may be more resilient. 

The once formidable British state is being rapidly reinvented, and on a scale not seen before. Acting with emergency powers authorised by parliament, the government has tossed economic orthodoxy to the winds. Savaged by years of imbecilic austerity, the NHS – like the armed forces, police, prisons, fire service, care workers and cleaners – has its back to the wall. But with the noble dedication of its workers, the virus will be held at bay. Our political system will survive intact. Not many countries will be so fortunate. Governments everywhere are struggling through the narrow passage between suppressing the virus and crashing the economy. Many will stumble and fall. 

ARTICLE CONTINUES...

 

[Jen'ari]

19 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

Too bad Plague was switched for Pollution in that version ... apparently peniciline was not enough to beat it completely.

I kind of liked war the best, well I liked her bike best anyway!.

 

On a more serious note the U.K. deaths yesterday spiked noticeably, I hope the figures are better today, as well as hoping for them to be better everywhere else in the world too obviously.