Covid-19 discussion and humor thread [Was: CDC says don't touch your face to avoid Covid19...Vets to the rescue!

[Augie]

1 minute ago, Gray Beard said:

I have the same question.  In my case it’s the basement bathroom that’s being renovated, and I don’t interact with the workers very much at all.  It took forever to get them to finally put my job at the front of the line.  They’ve been working on it for over a month because of a plumbing and jackhammering fiasco that is now finally resolved.  I believe social distancing can be achieved. There’s a lead contractor who is handling the job. I will be interacting with them as little as possible, and washing my hands like crazy. 

 

We have a contractor, and I know the foreman pretty well from a previous bath renovation. It should be relatively simple, but it’s not in the basement. It’s in the heart of the house off the family room near the kitchen. 

 

I’ve been strangely obsessed with sequestering myself. It just feels weird to then invite all these people I don’t know into our home. Maybe I shouldn’t be so strict, but I tend to be a rule follower. At the same time, I’m pretty sure we can get by with extra precautions and I hate for people to miss paychecks. 

 

Our son is engaged to a wonderful young lady who works in group sales for a major hotel downtown. Marriott just announced furloughing tens of thousands of employees. Hard to sell that $500k conference for people from all over the country right now! Fortunately  they both have a safety net, but so many people do not. I seriously feel for those who will be hit the worst. I’ve lived through horrible angst, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. 

[Gugny]

1 hour ago, Gray Beard said:

I just saw an article that said West Virginia was the last state to report a confirmed case because of lack of testing, not because it isn’t there.  In fact, West Virginia has an older population, and many coal miners with lung damage. They’re very scared.

 

And then there's this idiotic (purely political with no regard for human life) rationale ...

 

“We have all of this equipment in stock and we’re looking at different sites and a few different locations,” Trump said. “And we’re not going to need them in West Virginia, where so far, I guess they have none.”

“Big Jim, the governor” — referring to Gov. Jim Justice, whose flip to the Republican Party was celebrated by Trump — “he must be doing a good job of that. That’s what’s reported. … West Virginia is the only one that has no cases. So obviously that’s being treated differently than a New York or California.”

[Hapless Bills Fan]

I have posted these numbers.  But this is a really nice graphic produced by a friend's EMS management team. 

If you have a runny nose and are sneezing, it is fairly unlikely to be covid-19, those are low percentage symptoms

 

[Augie]

37 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

I have posted these numbers.  But this is a really nice graphic produced by a friend's EMS management team. 

If you have a runny nose and are sneezing, it is fairly unlikely to be covid-19, those are low percentage symptoms

 

 

Thanks. I’ll only ask that you keep posting this stuff, even if it’s been posted before. People won’t always see what happened 6 pages ago, and a lot of valuable information can be lost. We all need as much information as possible to get thru this mess without making it worse than it needs to be. 

[BillsFan4]

Testing numbers as of today. The U.S. is still lagging way behind every other country in testing. I’m still reading all sorts of stories on social media of people with symptoms who can’t get wasted. I just read a twitter thread from Lizzie O’Leary (contributing writer for the Atlantic) saying that’s she’s 6 months pregnant, has an auto immune disorder and has a cough, fever, headache and chest tightness but can’t get tested. Says she’s been directed to call about 5 different places but none could test her. Best they could do was give her a flu test to rule that out.

 

I sure hope they get a handle on testing soon. This should not be happening in the United States. 

[K-9]

14 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

Testing numbers as of today. The U.S. is still lagging way behind every other country in testing. I’m still reading all sorts of stories on social media of people with symptoms who can’t get wasted. I just read a twitter thread from Lizzie O’Leary (contributing writer for the Atlantic) saying that’s she’s 6 months pregnant, has an auto immune disorder and has a cough, fever, headache and chest tightness but can’t get tested. Says she’s been directed to call about 5 different places but none could test her. Best they could do was give her a flu test to rule that out.

 

I sure hope they get a handle on testing soon. This should not be happening in the United States. 

Our response was designed for low testing numbers from the outset. I think we can all figure out why and it should outrage everyone in this country. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

21 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

Testing numbers as of today. The U.S. is still lagging way behind every other country in testing. I’m still reading all sorts of stories on social media of people with symptoms who can’t get wasted. I just read a twitter thread from Lizzie O’Leary (contributing writer for the Atlantic) saying that’s she’s 6 months pregnant, has an auto immune disorder and has a cough, fever, headache and chest tightness but can’t get tested. Says she’s been directed to call about 5 different places but none could test her. Best they could do was give her a flu test to rule that out.

 

I sure hope they get a handle on testing soon. This should not be happening in the United States. 

 

Agree with you completely should not be happening in the United States.  Needing to place rush orders for ventilators because we can't get our testing act together fast enough to enable better containment should not be how we roll (and how are we going to operate them and care for those people?  we aren't giving our health care workers optimal personal protective equipment because we don't have enough...they're going to get sick)

 

I thought I posted a "dot graph" that makes an even more vivid picture somewhere upthread but can't find it.  Yours makes the point though.

 

 

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

21 minutes ago, K-9 said:

Our response was designed for low testing numbers from the outset. I think we can all figure out why and it should outrage everyone in this country. 

 

TBH, I don't think anything like "design for low testing numbers" was involved.  I think we have three things creating a perfect storm:

1) leaders who are not able to assimilate science themselves AND who don't really trust/listen to their scientific leadership

2) remaining scientific leadership relatively weak-sauce, many good people left or were fired (Fauci is a bright and shining exception and is speaking truth)

3) as a consequence, the boots on the floor given the task of designing and rolling out the tests didn't get the memo "Check your ego at the door and make this testing happen Soonest.  Now figure out what else you can do to expedite." and they didn't approach the whole process with the necessary urgency.

 

[K-9]

15 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

TBH, I don't think anything like "design for low testing numbers" was involved.  I think we have three things creating a perfect storm:

1) leaders who are not able to assimilate science themselves AND who don't really trust/listen to their scientific leadership

2) remaining scientific leadership relatively weak-sauce, many good people left or were fired (Fauci is a bright and shining exception and is speaking truth)

3) as a consequence, the boots on the floor given the task of designing and rolling out the tests didn't get the memo "Check your ego at the door and make this testing happen Soonest.  Now figure out what else you can do to expedite." and they didn't approach the whole process with the necessary urgency.

 

From a VOX report dated 3/8:

 

Quote

And at a press conference at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) on Friday, Trump said he didn’t want to bring the Grand Princess’s passengers back to land because doing so would increase the official count of US coronavirus cases.

 

For weeks we’ve heard empty promises of the imminent shipments of millions of test kits. For weeks we’ve heard from the scientists how critical it is to have this testing done ASAP.  And for weeks we’ve heard story after story of how people with symptoms have been denied the test and/or given the bureaucratic run around when trying to obtain one. Sure looks like a deliberate plan to keep the numbers low from where I sit. 
 

Like I said, we all know why that is. And it should piss us off to no end. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

52 minutes ago, K-9 said:

From a VOX report dated 3/8:

 

For weeks we’ve heard empty promises of the imminent shipments of millions of test kits. For weeks we’ve heard from the scientists how critical it is to have this testing done ASAP.  And for weeks we’ve heard story after story of how people with symptoms have been denied the test and/or given the bureaucratic run around when trying to obtain one. Sure looks like a deliberate plan to keep the numbers low from where I sit. 
 

Like I said, we all know why that is. And it should piss us off to no end. 

 

Well, I'm pretty pissed off, and I do know of the quote you made.  But please try to look past the quote and read this story of U of Washington scientists trying to get the Covid-19 test he developed (out of frustration with lack of action by CDC) and his struggle to get an EUA (emergency use authorization). 

You may have a different opinion.  But to me, it reads not like deliberation or plan, but bureaucracy and ego, lack of central direction towards urgency.  I don't think it was "let's bollix the testing approval process to keep the case numbers low" I think it was "we don't believe this virus is a real threat, it's over in China, who cares? No need for red alert.  I'm the smartest guy I know, and the sources I trust say it's just like flu."  And of course there's no pandemic team, no central Command and Control structure to make sure agencies communicate, coordinate, and are accountable to work with urgency.  Here ya go:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-americas-coronavirus-testing-crisis?utm_source=pocket-newtab

(Background: Nobody but the CDC was allowed to develop a test, and when their test was shipped out in early February, it produced false positives)

"After emailing his application to the FDA, [Feb 18] Greninger discovered that it was incomplete. (...) In addition to electronically filing it, he also had to print it out and mail a physical copy along with a copy burned onto a CD or saved to a thumb drive. (...)  On February 20, he overnighted the hard copies of his application to the FDA."  [this is for EUA, emergency authorization. are you kidding me?]

"Four days later, the FDA responded with its guidance. It (...) wanted Greninger to conduct a few more tests. the FDA wanted him to run his SARS-CoV-2 test against the MERS and SARS coronaviruses to make sure his test didn’t cross-react with them.  It wasn’t a terrible idea, Greninger thought. (...) It did seem strange, however, that the FDA was asking for this in an emergency use application: by this point, COVID-19 cases had appeared in six states."

 

Greninger complied. He called the CDC to inquire about getting some genetic material from a sample of SARS. The CDC, Greninger says, politely turned him down: the genetic material of the extremely contagious and deadly SARS virus was highly restricted.  “That’s when I thought, ‘Huh, maybe the FDA and the CDC haven’t talked about this at all,’” Greninger told me. [the point here is that the limited access to viral material wasn't to the new Covid-19 viral material; it was to SARS and MERS viral material which seems like an extra wrinkle for the FDA to put on an urgently needed test, especially when the CDC has it and is refusing to supply it]

"By this point, there were already over 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and still, nobody but the CDC was permitted to conduct testing. The Association of Public Health Labs sent a letter to the FDA, pleading (..) to (..) allow labs to start developing their own test—and was rejected. (...) Greninger, who already had a test, was chasing after the genetic material of a different virus so he could secure (EUA). In the meantime, he had drafted a letter to Congress, begging them to relax the restrictions, and was collecting signatures from colleagues at labs all over the country. [The FDA finally did relax them...after the first patient in the US died in Washington on Feb 28]
(...)
To keep pace with the rising demand for tests in the Seattle area, the Virology Lab scaled up its operation to 1,000 tests a day in a little over one week.

So let's review: one professor at a University teaching hospital Virology lab started developing a test shortly after the Covid-19 genome was published Jan 12.   He had the test ready enough to file an EUA a month later - Feb 18.  He finally got the SARS viral material to do the extra tests the FDA required Feb 28 and started using the test Mar 2, quickly scaling up to 1,000 tests a day. (I think they're doing more than that now).  The author is correct that most hospital clinical labs don't have the resources of U of W Department of Virology - but there are probably a dozen teaching hospitals across the country that do.  If everyone had been allowed to develop a test (these guys are typically willing to share notes), we could have had at least a dozen virology labs at med schools crankin' for several weeks now - maybe a month, the U of W test was ready Feb 18. 

 

That'd be 336,000 tests or about 1024 tests/million people - the same testing per million pop that per graph @BillsFan4 posted, is being done in say, Austria and a bit more than UK.   Having all those programs working on tests might even have spurred the fix and release of the CDC tests.  And we'd know a lot more about the real size of our problem.

But I don't think it was all about "the Big Boss wants to keep the Case Numbers Low" (though that's apparently true) - I think it was about ego, bureaucracy, and lack of central coordination working with no sense of urgency.  And admittedly, sense of urgency comes from the top.

 

Kind of water under the bridge now except to fix any crap that's still going down and make sure it doesn't happen again.

 

 

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

[K-9]

7 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Well, I'm pretty pissed off, and I do know of the quote you made.  But please try to look past the quote and read this story of U of Washington scientists trying to get the Covid-19 test he developed (out of frustration with lack of action by CDC) and his struggle to get an EUA (emergency use authorization). 

You may have a different opinion.  But to me, it reads not like deliberation or plan, but bureaucracy and ego, lack of central direction towards urgency.  I don't think it was "let's bollix the testing approval process to keep the case numbers low" I think it was "we don't believe this virus is a real threat, it's over in China, who cares? No need for red alert.  I'm the smartest guy I know, and the sources I trust say it's just like flu."  And of course there's no pandemic team, no central Command and Control structure to make sure agencies communicate, coordinate, and are accountable to work with urgency.  Here ya go:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-americas-coronavirus-testing-crisis?utm_source=pocket-newtab

(Background: Nobody but the CDC was allowed to develop a test, and when their test was shipped out in early February, it produced false positives)

"After emailing his application to the FDA, [Feb 18] Greninger discovered that it was incomplete. (...) In addition to electronically filing it, he also had to print it out and mail a physical copy along with a copy burned onto a CD or saved to a thumb drive. (...)  On February 20, he overnighted the hard copies of his application to the FDA."  [this is for EUA, emergency authorization. are you kidding me?]

"Four days later, the FDA responded with its guidance. It (...) wanted Greninger to conduct a few more tests. the FDA wanted him to run his SARS-CoV-2 test against the MERS and SARS coronaviruses to make sure his test didn’t cross-react with them.  It wasn’t a terrible idea, Greninger thought. (...) It did seem strange, however, that the FDA was asking for this in an emergency use application: by this point, COVID-19 cases had appeared in six states."

 

Greninger complied. He called the CDC to inquire about getting some genetic material from a sample of SARS. The CDC, Greninger says, politely turned him down: the genetic material of the extremely contagious and deadly SARS virus was highly restricted.  “That’s when I thought, ‘Huh, maybe the FDA and the CDC haven’t talked about this at all,’” Greninger told me. [the point here is that the limited access to viral material wasn't to the new Covid-19 viral material; it was to SARS and MERS viral material which seems like an extra wrinkle for the FDA to put on an urgently needed test, especially when the CDC has it and is refusing to supply it]

"By this point, there were already over 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and still, nobody but the CDC was permitted to conduct testing. The Association of Public Health Labs sent a letter to the FDA, pleading (..) to (..) allow labs to start developing their own test—and was rejected. (...) Greninger, who already had a test, was chasing after the genetic material of a different virus so he could secure (EUA). In the meantime, he had drafted a letter to Congress, begging them to relax the restrictions, and was collecting signatures from colleagues at labs all over the country. [The FDA finally did relax them...after the first patient in the US died in Washington on Feb 28]
(...)
To keep pace with the rising demand for tests in the Seattle area, the Virology Lab scaled up its operation to 1,000 tests a day in a little over one week.

So let's review: one professor at a University teaching hospital Virology lab started developing a test shortly after the Covid-19 genome was published Jan 12.   He had the test ready enough to file an EUA a month later - Feb 18.  He finally got the SARS viral material to do the extra tests the FDA required Feb 28 and started using the test Mar 2, quickly scaling up to 1,000 tests a day. (I think they're doing more than that now).  The author is correct that most hospital clinical labs don't have the resources of U of W Department of Virology - but there are probably a dozen teaching hospitals across the country that do.  If everyone had been allowed to develop a test (these guys are typically willing to share notes), we could have had at least a dozen virology labs at med schools crankin' for several weeks now - maybe a month, the U of W test was ready Feb 18. 

 

That'd be 336,000 tests or about 1024 tests/million people - the same testing per million pop that per graph @BillsFan4 posted, is being done in say, Austria and a bit more than UK.   Having all those programs working on tests might even have spurred the fix and release of the CDC tests.  And we'd know a lot more about the real size of our problem.

But I don't think it was all about "the Big Boss wants to keep the Case Numbers Low" (though that's apparently true) - I think it was about ego, bureaucracy, and lack of central coordination working with no sense of urgency.  And admittedly, sense of urgency comes from the top.

 

Kind of water under the bridge now except to fix any crap that's still going down and make sure it doesn't happen again.

 

 

That’s right: it would be. And yet, it isn’t. And the greatest country in the world, home to the greatest technological advancements and accomplishments in human history, that has shown time and time again that we can marshal all resources necessary to meet whatever the emergency demanded of us, is left to lag behind the world in such embarrassing fashion at such a critical time. Because of egos and competing agencies? There have been egos and competing departments and interests involved in meeting challenges in the past. What’s different now? 
 

[Mod edit: my response is "lack of effective central command and control" eg pandemic preparedness office with gov't support.  It seems pretty clear to me that we still don't have this.  And let's stop there and not "water under the bridge" who why - let's just see if we can "Make It So" going forward.]

[Sundancer]

6 minutes ago, K-9 said:

That’s right: it would be. And yet, it isn’t. And the greatest country in the world, home to the greatest technological advancements and accomplishments in human history, that has shown time and time again that we can marshal all resources necessary to meet whatever the emergency demanded of us, is left to lag behind the world in such embarrassing fashion at such a critical time. Because of egos and competing agencies? There have been egos and competing departments and interests involved in meeting challenges in the past. What’s different now? 
 

Anyway, my apologies to the forum for letting the venting of some frustration invite a devolution into political “discussion.” That is NOT my intent. This thread and the information it contains is too valuable to the community. 

Point well taken. And I agree entirely. 

 

Trying times. All good of course, and yes this is a good thread for the most part. Well managed by Hapless. 

 

There's nothing more that any of us (left, right, center) would want right now than Trump tweeting in July that we always had this under control. 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Sundancer

[Foxx]

Alberta Health Services COVID-19 SELF-ASSESSMENT

[plenzmd1]

Interesting article..as someone mentioned upthread..might the cure be worse than the disease?

 

 

[dhg]

15 minutes ago, plenzmd1 said:

Interesting article..as someone mentioned upthread..might the cure be worse than the disease?

 

 

Very interesting read

[Foxx]

https://twitter.com/Getthebagcoach/status/1239716925653090305

 

[BillsFan4]

My sister works at Roswell. I guess They have their first 2 confirmed cases of COVID19. Its 2 inpatients. They have them in quarantine. But safe to say they’re all a bit scared. I pray it doesn’t spread there.

[K-9]

19 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

My sister works at Roswell. I guess They have their first 2 confirmed cases of COVID19. Its 2 inpatients. They have them in quarantine. But safe to say they’re all a bit scared. I pray it doesn’t spread there.

This is concerning. Do they know if it was brought in by a visitor or spread from a care giver at the hospital. I fear that soon we will reach a perfect storm of too many infected patients and too many infected care givers too sick to care for them. 

[/dev/null]

27 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

My sister works at Roswell. I guess They have their first 2 confirmed cases of COVID19. Its 2 inpatients. They have them in quarantine. But safe to say they’re all a bit scared. I pray it doesn’t spread there.

 

Even the Aliens are getting infected?