Covid-19 #18: Everything Old is New Again!

[Fragile Bird]

Rabbit Redux?

1918 was an ominous year...

[Ormond]

I found this article just published yesterday to be very interesting. It focuses on how the fact that Covid-19 seems to spread mostly in large clusters, with the large majority of those infected actually not infecting anyone else, means that "backward tracing" to find out who infected an ill person may be more important in containing the spread than "forward tracing" of the ill person's contacts since becoming infected. It also discusses how the importance of super-spreader events involving large groups in poorly ventilated close spaces helps to explain the fairly unique experiences of Sweden and Japan with this problem:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

[Zorral]

To those of you who believe an economy functions just fine with millions of deaths, far better than people function without the economy -- then face it and tell the truth.

You say the economy isn't just about the rich.  But "THE ECONOMY" is always about the rich getting and keeping theirs in these cases -- because, notice nobody shut down 'essential workers' -- I suggest you read the historic accounts of other pandemics that did kill millions and millions, as in the 6th century -- where in hell do you think the whole idea there was a Dark Age in Europe came from? Read what happened in the further 14th and 15th centuries after the first and multiple subsequent waves of the Bubonic plagues. There were more than one kind, and particularly in the second wave of 1360 -1362 of both pneumonic and bubos -- as well as another associate plague of anthrax that wiped huge regions' domestic animals.

The people who "need the economy" of food, etc., those who were left, were the ones who suffered, and had no economy of any kind.  Which led to some very bloody uprisings, which always happen after these kinds of outbreaks that so effect in infinitely greater degree those WHO ARE NOT RICH, while the rich insist on the same life style, the same lavish eating and drinking, the same spending and same services as before, but don't want to pay for them either, or pay higher wages.

I have no sympathy for this at all, and that's essentially what you all are arguing.  The rich continue to get theirs, with all the bailouts and transfer of public wealth of lands (as right here where I live where all the public space has been handed over to rich real estate owners so the restaurants can keep functioning and paying exhorbitant rents to them), as well as all other sorts of assets.  This further includes violently coerced labor -- as the rich in California whining that due to covid prisoners were given early release and that essentially non-paid, life-risking labor of fighting fires they've relied on (helping with taxes!) isn't available, so they should be rounded up again and forced to work.  Also goddamn it! teachers at every level are forced to go to work to keep the big real estate money generators like Columbia University, NYU, the U of Chicago going -- but what happens to the teachers and their families?  And they're not getting any financial help at all, and in fact their wages are cut -- to help out in this time.  But the President's isn't, the Board of Directors isn't, the star profs' aren't -- who aren't teaching f2f either.  The wages of the cleaners -- and even the staff of cleaners -- are cut.v  Still gotta fill up those vast dormatories and vast cash-generating services like the food courts.  But the cooks don't get wages or even protective equipment and have to work in non-ventilated kitchesn.  One can go on and on with example after example.

Just not havin' your argument that economy is not the rich because it is.  Just am not, because 'saving' the economy does not help the poor, the homeless, the hard working small business person at all.  As we see when huge corps got the vast bailouts handed out by the shoggoth governments, and little bizes like bodegas get nothing.

 

 

[Zorral]

And we are hard working small business owners too.  We happened to be fortunate enough to re-invent it after asshole killed it -- which the rethugs have done 5 times since Partner first began it at the end of the 80's . 5 frackin' times.  And each time, somehow Partner reinvented it, revisioned, etc.

But -- and this is the kicker about the rich and the economy.  The economy, at least a capitalist one of how the USA operates, functions only in the service of the rich and what their needs are and what they want.  So the only way the not rich survive is to service them.

And that is exactly what's going on right now as Partner's (and I help and work my butt off too, though I'm neither the brains nor the visionary) new vision is working.  The Rich signed up for it.  And I do mean rich, people with really nice portfolios, people in real estate, etc., who have very very very comfortable disposable income right now even, but aren't quite rich enough to own planes, yachts or islands and vast country estates in more than one country.  That is how we survive.  There is something very wrong with this model of work and economy, which is definitely not community driven.

In very fact this entire economic catastrophe of the present 'economy' is driven by this model of serve the rich, their wants and needs and nothing else.  It was the rich who truly fueled the pandemic in Europe, and then in the US, spreading the infection from their luxury ski enclaves -- because that's the only reason for those enclaves to exist at all, to serve and cater to the rich.  It's no different from the religious zealot communities who refuse to distance, isolate and wear masks drove our first hot spots in NY state, into the city, and even down to Miami because nobody else is to be considered.

If the virus did come from a connection to wild meat in China, well, again, there seems to be no other way for those who provide the meat to those who can afford it can survive.  The whole system is wrong, but hey, it works just fine for the rich and powerful whom it serves.

Unlike my Partner evidently none of these assholes is smart enough and visionary enough to reinvent what can't and doesn't work, because why should they?

[DireWolfSpirit]

Zorral if you know of cooks working in non ventilated kitchens, please report that to your local Fire Marshall.

That is a very dangerous situation and such conditions need to be inspected by the proper authorities.

[Filippa Eilhart]

middle class people go skiing too. 

[Zorral]

25 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Zorral if you know of cooks working in non ventilated kitchens, please report that to your local Fire Marshall.

That is a very dangerous situation and such conditions need to be inspected by the proper authorities.

The schools' cafeterias here, for one. Which is why the schools can't get enough staff to work in them, and for the same reasons there aren't anywhere near enough teachers.  Many of these buildings don't even have windows, thanks to a star school architect who thought it was a cool look, and many others have windows that can't be open, and all of them have overcrowding and hallways packed due to narrowness (thanks, real estate prices) and too many students.  It was all over the newspapers. Hey we've reported to the fire marshals the restaurants here that have built right over the fire hydrants. NOTHING.  NOTHING AT ALL. The real estate billionaires that ultimately own the restaurants is too powerful for the fire department to do anything about -- and they don't really give a damn now either.  Nobody gives much of a damn about anything from cops to other any one else since the country doesn't either because it's bad for THEIR economy, and the fire department and cops, just like we do, exist ultimately only to serve the rich. You see this in no starker terms than right where I live, or in London and other hotspot generators that also exist to serve the rich and powerful.

Beyond that too. the deaths due to letting covid wildfire instead of track, trace, test, isolate, etc. are growing in large numbers that can't even be calculated, as are many other serious and grave illnesses and disease.  The stress and anxiety of having no coherent policies anywhere for dealing with this is contributing to vast leaps in numbers of hypertension.

Which is why people are furious here with the ultra orthodox who maintain that they are following the herd immunity model.  While, of course 1) there is no such thing, until just about everybody is dead; 2) it infects everybody else who isn't them; 3) and all the rest.

[Heartofice]

I guess rich people went skiing in Wuhan and came back to Europe. Bloody rich people. 

[Fragile Bird]

15 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I guess rich people went skiing in Wuhan and came back to Europe. Bloody rich people. 

Actually, a whole bunch went skiing in the Swiss and Italian Alps  and returned to the US with Covid-19. The Lombardy region of Italy was the worst hit region in Europe with a very infectious and deadly version of Covid-19 and all kinds of rich Americans and upper-middle class (no no, we’re not rich, we’re middle class!) Americans went skiing there. Some of the earliest stories I heard about involved people who went skiing and were sick within a day or two of getting to the ski hills.

[Zorral]

Most people in the US cannot take the entire month of January - early February off to go skiing even in middle class resorts in the US, as do the very rich here and in Europe, including the royal family.  And here too, those who went skiing brought back the virus into their schools, universities and communities.

Why do you think there is a need for a separate thread on captitalism as it has uncategorically been stated here there is no way to un-entwine deaths from the economy?

[Fragile Bird]

37 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

A mix of true (Lombardy region was hard hit) and iffy - right now, scientists are saying that the different Covid variants are neither no more or infectious than other variants, nor more or less deadly.

It was so deadly in Lombardy, people explained it by saying “oldest population in Europe”, but then it came to NY and younger people died as well. Somewhere down the road I suspect that someone will discover there was a worse mutation.

[Filippa Eilhart]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Most people in the US cannot take the entire month of January - early February off to go skiing even in middle class resorts in the US, as do the very rich here and in Europe, including the royal family.  And here too, those who went skiing brought back the virus into their schools, universities and communities.

Why do you think there is a need for a separate thread on captitalism as it has uncategorically been stated here there is no way to un-entwine deaths from the economy?

well, in Europe, people take a week off and go skiing with their kids. Rich people, middle class people, even lower income people. It’s just a winter sport people do in countries where it snows. No need to make it into a class war.

[BigFatCoward]

25 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

well, in Europe, people take a week off and go skiing with their kids. Rich people, middle class people, even lower income people. It’s just a winter sport people do in countries where it snows. No need to make it into a class war.

Even when I was on PC money I used to go skiing 2 weeks a year, unless you are going to courchevel or davos it's really not a big deal financially. 

[lessthanluke]

19 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Even when I was on PC money I used to go skiing 2 weeks a year, unless you are going to courchevel or davos it's really not a big deal financially. 

Rich prick. 

[Fragile Bird]

Big news in Canada is the fact that we have approved the Abbott rapid test for use.

How many countries have a successful rapid test? Or are failure rates high?

[Fragile Bird]

8 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

You should take a look at the link that Ormond had in The Atlantic. It gave a helpful view on rapid tests.

ie. - unless you are a total social butterfly, like I am (and even then, I am now a responsible social butterfly!!!) a rapid test giving you a false negative is not much to worry about. 

Its because of the 80/20 effect with Covid being spread by 20% of the cases to the remaining 80% - it’s got like a dispersal thing and a k effect. Or the k is really important. 

I did look at the article but didn’t have a chance to finish it. I am asking only because I’m in a fight with an asshole on the internet who claims the whole world had had rapid tests for months and months, which is bhllshit, but I’d like to hear from people in other countries. As far as Zi know most rapid tests have had high failure rates.

[The Anti-Targ]

6 hours ago, Ormond said:

I found this article just published yesterday to be very interesting. It focuses on how the fact that Covid-19 seems to spread mostly in large clusters, with the large majority of those infected actually not infecting anyone else, means that "backward tracing" to find out who infected an ill person may be more important in containing the spread than "forward tracing" of the ill person's contacts since becoming infected. It also discusses how the importance of super-spreader events involving large groups in poorly ventilated close spaces helps to explain the fairly unique experiences of Sweden and Japan with this problem:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

In our experience forward tracing has been absolutely essential to getting close to achieving elimination for the second time. And from my non-academic experience in epidemiology both forward and backward tracing are of great value in controlling outbreaks. Backward tracing may have been overlooked, but I don't think it should be prioritised over forward tracing, it should be given additional resource so that it can be prioritised.

I only read about 1/3 of the article because I don't have time to read the whole thing (I'm a slow reader) and I might get back to it. The sense I got from the top 1/3 was not that backward tracing is more important than forward, but rather that the pattern of the spread means forward tracing is often not going to find a single other case, while it will find hundreds in a few instances. But the thing is, you don't know at the time of diagnosis if a person was a super-spreader or not, so you have to do the work, track people down and get them to isolate and test. It's really only after the fact that you can say, oh well, that person didn't infect anyone. What you can do is prioritise tracking down the contacts who were in an environment that encouraged spread: the people who were on the bus, in the bar at the restaurant at the same time as that person. Whereas the people at the beach, or in the park with them are probably not at much risk. One group of people should be told to isolate and test, the other group could be told to wear a mask (if they aren't already), watch for symptoms, and don't go into any crowded places.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

You should take a look at the link that Ormond had in The Atlantic. It gave a helpful view on rapid tests.

ie. - unless you are a total social butterfly, like I am (and even then, I am now a responsible social butterfly!!!) a rapid test giving you a false negative is not much to worry about. 

Its because of the 80/20 effect with Covid being spread by 20% of the cases to the remaining 80% - it’s got like a dispersal thing and a k effect. Or the k is really important. 

I think the article is possibly giving a false impression. The writer is not an epidemiologist and cannot claim any professional credentials that they know what they are talking about. They are interpreting what other people are saying.  And she is also quoting people with no notable relevant expertise. 

Quote

As Dylan Morris, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton,

What qualifies that person as an epidemiological expert? At best they've done some undergrad papers on epidemiology, and while that is a helluva lot more than 99% of people it doesn;t really qualify them to be a named point of reference in an article trying to educate people on the pandemic.

A rapid test with low sensitivity and high specificity is fine as a population based test, because even at low sensitivity if the disease is present in enough people it will pick it up. So it is good at finding infected populations when there is a high proportion of infected people. But it is pretty bad at finding infection when there is a low proportion of infected people. And the problem is, in a stochastic spreading disease you have no idea if the one infected person you miss with a rapid test is going to go on to become a super-spreader or not. If you have a group of 100 people and only one person is infected a low sensitivity rapid test has a good chance of returning a false negative for that person. Depending on where that person is in their course of infection that can either not be a problem or could be a major problem. If they are early in their disease and they get the rapid test negative, then they will behave as if they don't have the disease. If they happen to be a super-spreader and they go into an environment conducive to super-spreading then that is going to create a whole new cluster that was missed, because a rapid test gave a false negative.

Every test has a confidence number and it is not just about sensitivity and specificity, it's also about prevalence of infection in the population and sample size. If you have low sensitivity then for 99% confidence that the population is not infected you need a lot of samples to be that confident. If prevalence is 1% then you probably need at least 5 infected people within that sample to be infected to be able to find 1% prevalence, which means 500 samples to be 99% confident that prevalence is <1%. If you only want 95% confidence then you could probably be fine with 200 samples, or if you only want to make sure there isn't a 5% prevalence then you probably only need 100 samples. And if it is a small population (like a workplace in a small business) and there is a known exposure event then a low sensitivity rapid test may be of no value at all. If in your office you had 5 people in close, unmasked proximity to a known infected person who was contagious at the time, then I would utterly reject any suggestion that a rapid test would be OK.

Also if you only want to limit spread and exposure then you can go with a rapid test, but if you want to stop spread and prevent exposure then the rapid test is not so good. With our current situation and policy settings I don't see us ever relying in a low sensitivity rapid test. The US, India and other places, however, with a different situation and different policy settings may be able to deploy a low sensitivity rapid test to achieve much of what they are trying to achieve.

And on the note of us getting close to elimination again, we're now 7 days with no new community cases, so fingers crossed.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

this could really have big implications

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54381848

 

Trump has Corona

[rotting sea cow]

8 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I did look at the article but didn’t have a chance to finish it. I am asking only because I’m in a fight with an asshole on the internet who claims the whole world had had rapid tests for months and months, which is bhllshit, but I’d like to hear from people in other countries. As far as Zi know most rapid tests have had high failure rates.

(Fast) Antibody tests have existed for already a while, not sure since when, at least as far back as March. Some antigen tests have been deployed too, but their success seems to be more limited. The one people are talking about seems to be the first successful one.

For example an old new we never heard back https://www.massdevice.com/fda-authorizes-quidel-antigen-test-for-rapid-covid-19-detection/