The chief problem I'm having is that there are too many ways there are weird and possibly self-serving misresponses to this crisis, some of which I find reminiscent of the clever little firearms-confiscation exercise run in the wake of Katrina.
Here we have widespread emphasis on social distancing, stay at home, mandatory crashing of the economy, armed security keeping more than 5 or 6 people out of the few places of business still open ... but nothing done at all about keeping people from talking close to each other in lines, or at counters, or in the melee outside the carefully-regulated bureaucratic environment.
I was informed yesterday that a company developed a Web-enabled thermometer, and data from over a million of these things is being reasonably continually tracked and analyzed. On NPR last night the commentary mentioned that this technology was detecting fever clusters that were apparently good predictors of COVID-19 outbreaks a few days to a couple of weeks after the phenomenon emerged ... with the meathead comment that this 'proved' the need for even greater social distancing to cut down on the transmission supposedly causing the clusters. Not a word, not even a thought, that detecting and tracking these clusters should be a guide for enhanced segregation of the susceptible through subsidized social distancing, or that resources and materiel should be specifically directed toward those areas promptly as they emerge. I see folks everywhere wearing N95 masks, when they can get'em, none of them I've asked so far aware that the 'vent' on most of these happily expels particles, a bit like a finger on a garden hose, when an infected person coughs or sneezes wearing one.
Back in the plague time, people had all sorts of feel-good 'precautions', some of which might slow the propagation of airborne contamination, but some of which really won't. Modern Betsy Rosses happily sewing face masks from fabric sourced at Jo-Anns strikes me as sentimentality, not sentiment. We actually have posters here who don't understand the difference between viral deposit on a hard surface vs. on cardboard.
I'm a native New Yorker who has extensively promoted transit over taxis for decades, but I would no more ride a subway in Manhattan now than ... well, than I'd go to New Orleans to Mardi Gras, or march in a Lunar New Year parade, or chug beers in some flashmob movable-feast spring break in Florida. If an LD train is a moving petri dish, what's a poorly-washed hard-surfaced vehicle patronized by hundreds or thousands of random people getting on and off every hour? And yet the response is let's make it free so more people use it?
OM: As they say, there are no easy answers. And doubts about the right questions.
Convicted One Right there, IMO, is part of the reason that the naysayers got so far off track misleading people as to the actual risk. Testing was being restricted to those only showing severe symptoms for quite a while here, with even out top officials stating on TV that "we don't want everyone running out and getting tested" ....so with that being the reality, it's no wonder that reported incidence was "reassuringly" low. to those who wanted to minimize this thing. -snip- When the authorities themselves frown on the desire to be tested, reported cases are going to be suppressed.
Right there, IMO, is part of the reason that the naysayers got so far off track misleading people as to the actual risk.
Testing was being restricted to those only showing severe symptoms for quite a while here, with even out top officials stating on TV that "we don't want everyone running out and getting tested" ....so with that being the reality, it's no wonder that reported incidence was "reassuringly" low. to those who wanted to minimize this thing.
-snip-
When the authorities themselves frown on the desire to be tested, reported cases are going to be suppressed.
San Diego County health department has also been discouraging people from getting tested unless they are showing serious symptoms. They stated that ~80% of infections are mild enough not to require medical attention, which implies that the actual cases in the county could easily be 5X the confirmed cases. One implication is that the death rate may not be much worse than from the seasonal flu, though the death rate will likely trail reported infection rate by one to three weeks.
I would prefer that the county health department make more of an effort to determine actual case load, e.g. through some sort of sampling.
Any form of mass transportation of people can be bad news during a pandemic.
OvermodHere we have widespread emphasis on social distancing, stay at home, mandatory crashing of the economy, armed security keeping more than 5 or 6 people out of the few places of business still open ... but nothing done at all about keeping people from talking close to each other in lines, or at counters, or in the melee outside the carefully-regulated bureaucratic environment.
Some places are putting up plexiglass barriers between cashiers and customers - and putting lines on the floor at 6' intervals to make people stay apart.
But here's my question - I've heard scuttlebutt that if someone in one of our smaller yards would test positive for COVID-19, the company will shut down that yard, and I assume pull everyone OOS pending medical review. And I'm sure the RR medical won't want us back until we can show 2 negative COVID tests, but if you aren't showing symptoms, no doctor is going to let you take a COVID test when there's a shortage.
That could prove interesting.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
I'd be willing to bet they're smart enough to make priority SARS-CoV-2 testing (it's the virus, not symptoms of COVID-19, that any early test would look for) available first and foremost to essential personnel. Don't you have a letter that says what you are?
Seriously: this is the sort of thing that deserves a top priority, perhaps on a daily basis for the two weeks it would take.
Of course, it would be better still if they had premeasured dosing of 3CLpro inhibitors ready for everyone that tests positive, to assure they stay COVID-19 free indefinitely while they have to work and be noninfectious...
You're joking? We still don't have enough testing kits, masks, gloves etc. You think there is a big supply of 3cl protease inhibitors?
Overmodon't you have a letter that says what you are?
Everybody and their uncle has a letter these days.
I don't know what will happen. Damnit Jim, I'm an engineer...
charlie hebdoYou're joking? We still don't have enough testing kits, masks, gloves etc. You think there is a big supply of 3cl protease inhibitors?
But if we have more test kits, we will test more people and we will have more confirmed cases and the numbers won't drop to zero by Easter.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
OvermodI was informed yesterday that a company developed a Web-enabled thermometer, and data from over a million of these things is being reasonably continually tracked and analyzed. On NPR last night the commentary mentioned that this technology was detecting fever clusters that were apparently good predictors of COVID-19 outbreaks a few days to a couple of weeks after the phenomenon emerged ... with the meathead comment that this 'proved' the need for even greater social distancing to cut down on the transmission supposedly causing the clusters. Not a word, not even a thought, that detecting and tracking these clusters should be a guide for enhanced segregation of the susceptible through subsidized social distancing, or that resources and materiel should be specifically directed toward those areas promptly as they emerge.
I am particularly interested in the excellent point you make about "not even a thought of detecting and tracking..."
We are told that there is an incubation period during which people get the virus, but don’t develop symptoms for a 2-3 three weeks or so. We are told that during that this asymptomatic period, they are nevertheless able to transmit the disease to others. Generally, the significance of this has been explained that the disease is easier to spread due to the asymptomatic period where an infected person is not isolated due to not realizing they have the disease.
I seem to detect that this point often goes right over the heads of people, including very important people. I get this feeling because these people argue against widespread or even universal testing as though it would be a pointless exercise. They don’t oppose it on these points:
It will cost too much.
We don’t have the technology.
Instead, they oppose it on the basis that they claim it is misguided and will do no good. They act like it is a foolish idea. They seem to limit their understanding of the purpose of testing to being just a convenience to people who worry they might have the virus. Dr. Fauci argues that widespread testing is unnecessary if everyone would just follow his rules about distancing, hand washing, etc. He scoffs at widespread testing.
But in my opinion, we need a way to know day by day, which people have the virus. This is for the benefit of society and our survival collectively, and not just for the convenience and reassurance of individuals. The reason is simple. The interest of society is to stop the spread.
We are beginning to see what “goes viral” really means. It is the way a virus wins its war against the victims. It is the way a fire grows to be unstoppable. Could you imagine if a house caught fire, and there was a fundamental 2 hour period during which nobody could know it was burning?
This is the critical and seemingly widely obscured point of fighting the virus. The so-called asymptomatic period is giving the virus an incredible advantage to go viral. A person gets the virus and does not realize they have it for 2 weeks. Because they don’t know they have it, they don’t report it and they don’t see a problem with interacting with other people. Thus, they inadvertently infect a lot of other people during their phase of not knowing.
Even if you set aside the issue of a pre-symptom phase causing people to not report or not isolate; people will naturally delay these responsibilities. Say they got symptoms at the moment of infection. They would first wait to see how the symptoms develop. Next, they will wait to see it they get bad enough to take action. There again is your 2 week delay. This delay gives the virus a head start. The best advantage you could give a viral opponent is a head start.
I don’t know how to make the necessary invention, but I do know what it needs to accomplish. Every day when society wakes up, it needs to know which members have the virus. Then immediate action must be taken to isolate the members found to have the virus. That is the only key to defeating the virus. Find it and isolate it early.
So here is what the invention needs to do: When people wake up every day, they are automatically tested, and if the test is positive, their doors lock and the authorities take them into isolation. This is a critical to a society as police and fire department. I believe the reason we don’t have this instant response to virus transmission is the belief that society has progressed beyond the times when old fashioned plagues killed millions.
Keep in mind that Fauci and Brixx have to walk a narrow line. If they sound too critical of Trump, they will lose their authority. As to testing, we lack not just kits, we lack the needed swabs! These have been largely from China, but are blocked because of some detail concerning the cotton and the trade war.
Blame for the lack of supplies and ventilators? Going back to 2005, all three administrations were warned we had a critical lack of equipment.
It seems the present occupant is not the only one to blame. I wonder if someone will question the last occupant or his vice-president about this?
"In at least 10 government reports from 2003 to 2015, federal officials predicted the United States would experience a critical lack of ventilators and other lifesaving medical supplies if it faced a viral outbreak like the one currently sweeping the country."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/27/cnn10/ventilators-supply-government-warnings-coronavirus-invs/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2020-03-28T01%3A49%3A58&utm_source=twCNN
York1 John
President for over three years? Nothing done, dismantled the office in the NSC for this type of emergency, still blaming Obama, Bush. Why not blame JFK? Reagan? Washington? AWOL.
charlie hebdoPresident for over three years? Nothing done, dismantled the office in the NSC for this type of emergency, still blaming Obama, Bush. Why not blame JFK? Reagan? Washington? AWOL.
So sidestep the issue. Reread what was posted.
From 2003 to 2015 (and one from 2017), the administrations ignored the warnings and advice of several agencies that the U.S. did not have the equipment or supplies to fight an epidemic like this.
That's exactly what the 14 day quarintine period is for, 14 days from the first contact with someone that has the virus. If after those 14 days you had no symptoms you're free and clear and can return to the outside world. The problem is with overlap, if we could get every single person to stay inside and isolate for 14 days(21 would be better), most likely cases would fall off the table. I'm not going to say go to zero, but drop significantly.
However, here's another way to look at this, nature is trying to tell us we have over populated the world and we need to do something about it. If we won't, nature will.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JRThat's exactly what the 14 day quarintine period is for, 14 days from the first contact with someone that has the virus. If after those 14 days you had no symptoms you're free and clear and can return to the outside world.
I don't know what you are referring to, but if it is what I said above, I don't see it. There is no 14-day quarantine until after a person has symptoms unless they were closely associated with someone known to have syptoms. Otherwise everyone is free to spread the virus prior to having symtoms, and that give the virus a 2-3 week head start in its exponential rampage.
It is nobody's fault that we don't have the system I am advocating of full time testing for everyone. It has never been developed, because is has no purpose other than protecting from palgues, and we thought we were beyond that old fashioned terror. I believe we could develop such a system, however, but it is too late to stop this pandemic. But if we had the system at the outset, we would have avoided this world disaster. We would have stopped it at the first confimed case and case #2 would not have happened.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JRIf after those 14 days you had no symptoms you're free and clear and can return to the outside world.
That has not yet been established, at least not to my satisfaction. There was considerable evidence prior to the recent spate of outbreaks that some people 'recovering' to the point they are asymptomatic still continue to shed virus -- in plain language, are still capable of causing infections that can spread dramatically to at-risk population -- and hence the 'return to the outside world' has to be qualified by an effective (and cost-effective) test that shows negative virus titer.
Yes, that should have been a priority, and yes, that still is a priority, and yes, it's pathetic that more hasn't been done even with present crude methods to develop effective logistics for making and distributing tests. An interesting discussion that is probably years old by now was the idea of adapting the 'paper cell-phone' approach (using flexible circuit technology on relatively inexpensive substrates) to making viral/bacteriological test equipment -- 'plug it into a penlight battery and watch it recharge' and all that. I have seen this brought up -- as a theoretical example of what we 'might' have with enough angel investment -- at least a couple of times since December 2019. (And note that once it includes an actual paper cell-phone circuit, something for which all the SPICE was done long ago, you have the ability to upload properly-dereferenced data via any cell connection to 'the cloud'...)
Nature has told us many times that a little too much overpopulation -- or bad habits, like demonizing and killing cats in the early 1300s -- can be extremely bad for human business. Some of the 'corrections' go largely unrecognized to this day; the "Mayan" and the prospective scourge of the Mississippi Valley mound-building culture being two of the more familiar examples.
Every year at flu season a billion birds in China breed new avian strains of virus, including novel H1N1 strains. Mercifully most of these, year after year, produce relatively noncritical responses (to which we have become almost inured) - I think it's been noted that something like 100x the deaths from H1N1 strains alone have been reported during the same timeframe as COVID-19 but no one has batted a particular eyelash at this, as flu is 'natural' until someone declares it a catastrophe. Any year, at virtually any time, we could expect a pandemic that combines enhanced human sensitivity -- perhaps with high affinity for conserved human receptors followed by as long as possible an incubation time, coupled with high propensity to induce cytokine storm, ARDS, or other chronic debilitating sequelae -- and a prompt and ordered response to this up to and including use of all that armor-piercing weaponry cleverly issued to FEMA might have been required long before now.
The reasoned answer to this, which is common-sense even if charlie hebdo might disagree, is that anyone attempting to set up such a radical set of responses in a time the threat isn't in fact recognizably deadly already will be branded as crying wolf at best ... and just imagine the political future for anyone who plans to spend $2 trillion on only the first feeble steps of a working response to some of the rather obvious consequences of a pandemic.
And although this is nothing more than a preference of mine, I would look far more carefully at the actual steps being taken, and their synergistic effectiveness, than at 'public perceptions', spin, clever exploitation, etc. etc. of the "crisis" or lack thereof surrounding each successive infectious-disease scare. We have the choice of either buying sensible response to this sort of thing with our trillions wasted, or having this be another Ford-era swine-flu Kohoutek. Given the impending need for radical Government cutback in the wake of a great dying-off of taxable income revenue in the next few years, I don't think there is much hope right now ... or in a Biden presidency, for that matter ... of anything particularly effective actually being worked out. Which means it falls to people in the private sector to design it, and probably set up to provision it, then give it credence with direction from 'the democracy people deserve'.
Euclid-- Well that's interesting and logical but how do you test for something you don't even know exists in the first place.
If we had such a 'plague detection system' in place it would be testing for known viruses only. We cannot predict the future.
Perhaps I am wrong.
York1 charlie hebdo President for over three years? Nothing done, dismantled the office in the NSC for this type of emergency, still blaming Obama, Bush. Why not blame JFK? Reagan? Washington? AWOL. So sidestep the issue. Reread what was posted. From 2003 to 2015 (and one from 2017), the administrations ignored the warnings and advice of several agencies that the U.S. did not have the equipment or supplies to fight an epidemic like this.
charlie hebdo President for over three years? Nothing done, dismantled the office in the NSC for this type of emergency, still blaming Obama, Bush. Why not blame JFK? Reagan? Washington? AWOL.
We are in the world of here and now! The country and indeed the World is looking for leadership - they are not finding it where it previously existed.
EuclidIt is nobody's fault that we don't have the system I am advocating of full time testing for everyone. It has never been developed, because is has no purpose other than protecting from palgues, and we thought we were beyond that old fashioned terror. I believe we could develop such a system, however, but it is too late to stop this pandemic. But if we had the system at the outset, we would have avoided this world disaster. We would have stopped it at the first confimed case and case #2 would not have happened.
There are places this would work, and places it wouldn't. Let me start by noting that for any 'Captain Trips'-like pandemic no particularly good system would work particularly well, and the 'fallback' position has to be a combination of extremely careful vigilance and the ability to seqregate or 'sequester' demonstrable infection as quickly and effectively as possible -- this well in advance of any conceivable treatment or even therapy for the infection or its logical sequelae or complications.
One reasonable 'start' to testing is, as mentioned before, a properly-deferenced system of early-warning devices. The cloud-based thermometers (which I'm sure aren't properly dereferenced except by accident, not design -- but that should be easy to address) are one very good early approach, and it would only take 'a few million' of "stimulus" money to distribute them, and their power, and their instructions, to a wide range of people, and then to assure the necessary data bandwidth (which need not be synchronous, or full data-transfer grade, to 'get the message through' as needed with effective latency) and the secure data-warehousing and analysis to give the Spaceguard-like early warning of clusters of disease. The architecture, and perhaps even much of the equipment, could easily accept more specific testing results or metadata once that has been developed (e.g., once a virus has been sequenced, its proteome reasonably mapped to determine key factors, and early Rx (which means 'responses', by the way) designed.
The concerns over potentially-intrusive responses, however, need to be considered too: at present there are too many ways a system like this could be manipulated, or gamed for 'other purposes', or used as one pawn in ongoing policy battles that ought to be eradicated from any thoughtful culture's democracy entirely. And there is then the cost of the 'eternal vigilance' in what will likely be, most of the time, relative calm. Waiting for the moment of screaming terror to reach under the pilot's seat for the aircraft manual to discover how to recover from that inverted dive at full power is not good timing ... but also remember the Babcock and Wilcox training models used for TMI2. And be prepared to pay, a great deal, but not to waste any on the wrong stuff. Of which there are sure to be many, many, many proponents, some of them well-connected, all of them insistent.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JRHowever, here's another way to look at this, nature is trying to tell us we have over populated the world and we need to do something about it. If we won't, nature will.
Funny you would mention this, I was pondering the possibility just yesterday that SARS CoV-2 might actually be the antibody, and that we were the plague.
Perhaps a "cure" for global warming is in the works?
Ironic how the skeptics to both so strongly overlap.
BaltACDWe are in the world of here and now!
On this forum, several posters cannot type a sentence without blaming the current administration.
I merely pointed out CNN's report that the current and the past administrations have been warned and did not respond.
As far as leadership, it probably doesn't really matter what comes out of D.C. Those who hate the current occupant say we're not getting any leadership, and those who don't hate the current occupant say we are.
If we are really looking to blame someone, everyone, left and right, should agree that WHO has a major part of the blame.
Taiwan was trying to warn the world in December that the virus was being passed person to person, but the WHO believed the Chinese government that it wasn't occuring. It wasn't until late January that WHO finally admitted the virus was spreading through human contact.
Miningman Euclid-- Well that's interesting and logical but how do you test for something you don't even know exists in the first place. If we had such a 'plague detection system' in place it would be testing for known viruses only. We cannot predict the future. Perhaps I am wrong.
Miningman,
I am not sure about that. I don't know what viruses people may carry as normal routine. Maybe lots, but maybe none. But the testing would have to go on continuously as a watchdog. And it would have to recognize the abnormal, just like watchdog would. Certainly, this would be a major technological challenge, but I am guessing that it could be developed at this time, if only we recognized a need for it. But before that problem, the first problem is recognizing the possiblity of such advanced test/monitoring. The way that public officials ridicule the idea of testing everybody leads me to believe that they have never grasped the purpose.
I have explained it to lots of people, and I don't think any of them even paused to assimilate it. It is not hard. Maybe they hear the word "asymptomatic", and they hear doctor talk. So their minds shut off because nobody wants to question a doctor.
As long as we're looking for leadership (or blame), NYC should look no further than their mayor's office.
“If you’re not sick, you should be going about your life”. Bill de Blasio said the city is “telling people to not avoid restaurants, not avoid normal things that people do.” March 11, 2020.
Now that's leadership!
Euclidhe way that public officials ridicule the idea of testing everybody leads me to believe that they have never grasped the purpose.
We can't even get people to stay at home for a few days. You really think everybody is going to voluntarily go in for testing?
York1On this forum, several posters cannot type a sentence without blaming the current administration.
At least they are balanced out by current fans of the adminstration.
Welcome to the infowars. Later,
sometime during 2021 maybe
zugmann Euclid he way that public officials ridicule the idea of testing everybody leads me to believe that they have never grasped the purpose. We can't even get people to stay at home for a few days. You really think everybody is going to voluntarily go in for testing?
Euclid he way that public officials ridicule the idea of testing everybody leads me to believe that they have never grasped the purpose.
How long before that gets spun into a conspiracy about taking DNA samples from everyone?
Remember, this is a Chinese virus that escaped from a lab.
(I read it on Facebook, so it must be true)
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
SD70DudeHow long before that gets spun into a conspiracy about taking DNA samples from everyone?
That's what pennies are for.
How long before it turns into an actual conspiracy to take DNA samples from everyone? (And to (mis)use some of the massive footballs of 'safety money' to use some of the resulting data for "political" purposes, or otherwise...)
There are already people in the insurance industry who are using advanced modeling to combine disparate public information to help determine people 'at risk' in order to 'optimize their participation in the insurance system' -- and to detect what may likely be pre-existing conditions before they evidence as clinical. It would not be surprising to me to see even intercepted data streaming or helpful 'data channel allocation by social media providers' exploited by 'those in the know' -- not necessarily for nefarious reasons, but certainly exploitive ones.
Compare what is needed for a "23 and me" test vs. what Euclid would propose as a test kit...
zugmann SD70Dude How long before that gets spun into a conspiracy about taking DNA samples from everyone? That's what pennies are for.
SD70Dude How long before that gets spun into a conspiracy about taking DNA samples from everyone?
We haven't had those in Canada for years.
Maybe we should bring them back, considering the well-known antimicrobial properties of copper.
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