Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I'm not sure having a labradoodle in charge of the nations public health would be much worse than having a labradoodle breeder. It is effectively the same scenario when you think about it. Might as well have put a hairdresser in charge, or perhaps Limu the emu and Doug.

 

I have a masters degree from Hopkins. Now all bow down

 

Next up: meat shortages. Pork and poultry plants shutting down at a rapid clip due to employee infections.

U.S. Reels Toward Meat Shortages and the World May Be Next

Sounds like a vast conspiracy to get us to turn into vegetarians. It's only a matter of time before Trump suggests cannibalism as a good idea during a press conference.

 

Johns

 

I am the true owner of Swamp Castle! I have vast tracts of land! At some point, I will stand at my window high in the castle, turn to my child and say, "Some day, all of this will be yours!"

I AM real estate itself. If I could just get the guards to do what they're told.

 

but I stayed at a holiday inn

 

This is a very important point. The UPenn person is entirely correct. If you have an antibody test with 5% false positive rates, that means the test means almost nothing. Just doing the math quickly here, let's look at the Miami-Dade numbers we were discussing, with 6% positive reading, the expectation on a test with a 5% false positive rate (even let's assume a 5% false negative rate as well). The actual expected infection rate would be 1.11% with a reading of 6%. So if you got a positive antibody test, the expected likelihood of infection would go from 1.11% without a test all the way up to 18.3% with a positive test. Basically, more than 4 out of 5 of the positive tests would be false positives.

We really need to study this because that is a huge deal.

 

Kentucky might become a focal point for the protests over the next couple of weeks. There are a lot of frustrated people here. Tennessee will begin allowing people to dine in at restaurants on Monday. Ohio is allowing a lot of businesses to re-open on Friday. Kentucky? Well, you will be able to go see your doctor or optometrist!!! You will still not be allowed to enter a grocery store or another essential business with your spouse. You have to go solo. And Kentucky has an infection rate per capita far below Ohio, Tennessee and Jawga. Sad that Governor Beshear is going to make Kentucky families and businesses suffer while the states around us open things up and get people back to normal living.

 

Will you think that Beshear is a genius if the states around yours develop a second outbreak and have to shut things down again?

 

Well I don't know what the 5% false positive number means. Does it mean that 5% of all tests are false positives, or that 5% of the positive tests are false positives. If it is the latter, then you can still get some good information out of it. If it is the former, it is worthless.

 

No, because if there is a second outbreak, regardless of what Kentucky does now, we will not be immune. And when states around you with double, triple the amount of infection per million are opening up, you're foolish not to do the same and try to prove everyone else is wrong. Nobody would blame Beshear for joining Tennessee and Ohio, but they sure as hell will blame him if those states are opening up while we suffer in destitution.

 

Here is a scary possibility: having coronavirus and recovering from it may not prevent you from catching it again. If that is true, then there is no immunity, herd or otherwise.

WHO says no evidence of Covid-19 immunity from antibodies - CNN

 

It means that 5% of all tests produced positive results that were false.

With the Santa Clara study, in theory this would suggest that the 50 positive cases were false.

 

Then it's of no use.

 

That's exactly what many researchers have been saying.

The quandary is that we can be certain that there are many more positive cases "out there" than we know about. However, we can't trust that the extrapolated numbers from Santa Clara put us anywhere near the true but unknown number due to the problem with the reliability and validity of the antibody testing and because of the sample methodology limitiations.

 

Here's a good story about Hokkaido, Japan, which had a very quick first response to the virus. And because the leaders of Hokkaido thought they had things under control, and businesses on the island were over-eager to reopen, the island did reopen and guess what happened? The second wave of Coronavirus was much worse than the second. And now, businesses are closed again, and the economic damage will likely be far worse than had they waited and been more patient to reopen.

It's a good case study. Sadly, it will far any many a deaf ear.

 

So much this. I wish republicans weren’t so brainwashed on this issue. A second wave is so much worse for the economy than waiting a bit to open back up.