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COVID-19

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  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    My wife wants to go places due to boredom and wants people to start taking it seriously so covid will end and she can go places again. I am perfectly happy at home.
    Balrog99
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    Our lifestyle hasn't changed much except for our weekly at home hangout with a friend or two. I was already a hermit before this hit. But we REALLY miss those few friends we saw regularly.
    Balrog99TarotRedhandArvia
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    A Canadian company has developed a mobile COVID testing kit. It can give results in about an hour and uses freeze dried regents to detect the virus so refrigeration isn't needed.

    The price of it is kinda steep however, coming in at $30,000 (Canadian) each, and includes 1,000 tests. Although $30 a test seems reasonable.
    ThacoBellBalrog99Proont
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    deltago wrote: »
    A Canadian company has developed a mobile COVID testing kit. It can give results in about an hour and uses freeze dried regents to detect the virus so refrigeration isn't needed.

    The price of it is kinda steep however, coming in at $30,000 (Canadian) each, and includes 1,000 tests. Although $30 a test seems reasonable.

    Quick results are great and all, but how reliable is it? The NFL has already shown how unreliable testing can be. Case in point: Matthew Stafford, the Lions QB - Negative, Positive, Negative, Negative, Negative...
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    The Russians just released a new vaccine for Covid-19 after just two months of trials. It must be great because Putin's daughter just got a dose. What could go wrong? America's answer will certainly be to rush our own version out. I'm no anti-vaxxer but I really don't think I'm going to be first in line for a Covid vaccine at this point in history...
    jonesr65Proont
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    Balrog99 wrote: »
    deltago wrote: »
    A Canadian company has developed a mobile COVID testing kit. It can give results in about an hour and uses freeze dried regents to detect the virus so refrigeration isn't needed.

    The price of it is kinda steep however, coming in at $30,000 (Canadian) each, and includes 1,000 tests. Although $30 a test seems reasonable.

    Quick results are great and all, but how reliable is it? The NFL has already shown how unreliable testing can be. Case in point: Matthew Stafford, the Lions QB - Negative, Positive, Negative, Negative, Negative...

    It’s still in guinea pig stage. The article states it tests for different parts of the virus to prevent false negatives, but it really needs a good human trial to determine its effectiveness.

    An isolated mining community might not be the best place to test its accuracy, but it’s a start.
    Balrog99ThacoBellProont
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Balrog99 wrote: »
    deltago wrote: »
    A Canadian company has developed a mobile COVID testing kit. It can give results in about an hour and uses freeze dried regents to detect the virus so refrigeration isn't needed.

    The price of it is kinda steep however, coming in at $30,000 (Canadian) each, and includes 1,000 tests. Although $30 a test seems reasonable.

    Quick results are great and all, but how reliable is it? The NFL has already shown how unreliable testing can be. Case in point: Matthew Stafford, the Lions QB - Negative, Positive, Negative, Negative, Negative...

    You can see now what is required to get sports to work. The NBA had to construct a practically hermetically sealed bubble at Disney World, and the NHL fled to Canada.
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    Balrog99 wrote: »
    deltago wrote: »
    A Canadian company has developed a mobile COVID testing kit. It can give results in about an hour and uses freeze dried regents to detect the virus so refrigeration isn't needed.

    The price of it is kinda steep however, coming in at $30,000 (Canadian) each, and includes 1,000 tests. Although $30 a test seems reasonable.

    Quick results are great and all, but how reliable is it? The NFL has already shown how unreliable testing can be. Case in point: Matthew Stafford, the Lions QB - Negative, Positive, Negative, Negative, Negative...

    You can see now what is required to get sports to work. The NBA had to construct a practically hermetically sealed bubble at Disney World, and the NHL fled to Canada.

    The NHL fled to Canada, but the teams are still 'bubbled' up and that is basically it. You test everyone to make sure no one has the virus, then you quarantine yourselves and do not let anyone in.

    This will work for the NHL because they are doing the playoffs and only have to keep this up for 2-3 months, losing half of the people every two weeks as teams are eliminated and you won't need as many 'secondary staff' such as extra refs. A league won't be able to pull this off for an entire season.
  • dunbardunbar Member Posts: 1,603
    edited August 2020
    The bubble concept has worked for the England cricket team so far by only playing in stadiums that have a hotel attached and quarantining both teams in the complex for all five days of the Test match (with daily testing taking place before and during the match). England have successfully completed a three match Test series against the West Indies under this protocol and the first match of a Test series against Pakistan has already been played - all so far without incident apart from one England player who broke quarantine when travelling from one venue to another (he tested negative but was banned for one match anyway).

    N.B. For those of you unfamiliar with the strange and somewhat arcane game of Test Match Cricket one match lasts for five days and there are nine 'playing' hours per day. Thus a Test match can take up to 45 hours to complete.

    Edited to add: The stadiums were closed to the public but the quarantining included TV crews and commentary teams.
    Grond0
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    Everything I know about Cricket, I learned from Douglas Adams.
    dunbarProontArvia
  • TarotRedhandTarotRedhand Member Posts: 1,481
    edited August 2020
    It appears to have been finally proven that the virus is infectious (e.g. air-born) and not just contagious (e.g. transferred by touching something contaminated) according to this article.

    TR
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    That was a no brainer though considering the spread via air recirculation.
    Balrog99ThacoBellProont
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    It appears to have been finally proven that the virus is infectious (e.g. air-born) and not just contagious (e.g. transferred by touching something contaminated) according to this article.

    TR

    That's like proving that water is wet...
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    It appears to have been finally proven that the virus is infectious (e.g. air-born) and not just contagious (e.g. transferred by touching something contaminated) according to this article.

    TR

    I swear this is the third time this has been stated in this thread's history. How many times are we going to confirm this?
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    Previous mentions have referred to observing the spread of the disease, e.g. noting that dogs in separate cages can spread the disease between them. What's different about this is:
    1) It directly confirms that virus particles are airborne (which I know is a "no shit, Sherlock" moment).
    2) It confirms that virus particles can spread in still air considerably further than current social distancing distances. Those distances are based on how far larger droplets can travel and there's been an active debate for some time on the extent of importance of smaller droplets in the spread of the disease. It was already known of course that smaller droplets could travel far further than 2m, but this is the first time (that I know of) that someone has isolated the virus from such droplets.

    Much more work is needed, but this study does highlight the need for research on airborne transmission. If that is more of a danger than many have suggested that would explain how so many people could get infected during something like a church service - in that case many of a congregation could be infected by a single individual, which would be consistent with some real world examples we've seen.
    Balrog99TarotRedhandJuliusBorisovArvia
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    I found this interesting article when I did a deep dive on the net for Coronavirus news. It's dominating the headlines so much that it's hard to find out much other than the raw numbers. Anyway, the information here may explain why this virus is so seemingly random (which is what I was trying to figure out).

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/immunological-dark-matter-does-it-exist-coronavirus-population-immunity
    Grond0
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Canada had five deaths yesterday. Five. We had 1200. In case anyone needs a reminder, we share a 5500-mile border with this country. We have ten times their population. Yesterday, we had 240x more deaths. How you respond to things matters.
    ThacoBellAdam_en_tiumProont
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    A good summation of how various countries responded to the Novel Coronavirus.

    Hint: The US did and is doing quite poorly...

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5610047002
    Grond0
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Balrog99 wrote: »
    A good summation of how various countries responded to the Novel Coronavirus.

    Hint: The US did and is doing quite poorly...

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5610047002

    #1 in cases, #1 in deaths and (excluding two countries that have almost no population) #7 in deaths per million (and climbing) is not really debatable at this point. The combination of those 3 categories is irrefutable. That said, India and Brazil are now insisting on giving us a run for our money. Not surprising, as those countries also despise their poor citizens, perhaps even more than we do.
    ThacoBellBalrog99Proont
  • TarotRedhandTarotRedhand Member Posts: 1,481
    So it would appear that re-infection is a reality. The thing I find interesting is that in the two cases I know about (Hong Kong & USA) the persons who caught the disease appear (from what I read) to have caught two different strains of the disease. In the case of the Hong Kong victim they initially had the East Asian variant and subsequently caught the Spanish/Italian/European version of the disease. According to the Nevada study their re-infected patient's bouts of covid had different DNA (shouldn't that be RNA?). As this latter study has literally only been released in the past few hours, here are the tweets about it.

    TR
    ProontGrond0JuliusBorisov
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    Well, I got the almost inevitable text from my daughter's school. Somebody in her Middle School tested positive for Covid-19. No details and no further info so it wasn't anybody she's in direct contact with or she'd be quarantining now. How long before she gets two weeks off? Anybody's guess...
    JuliusBorisovArvia
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited September 2020
    Balrog99 wrote: »
    Well, I got the almost inevitable text from my daughter's school. Somebody in her Middle School tested positive for Covid-19. No details and no further info so it wasn't anybody she's in direct contact with or she'd be quarantining now. How long before she gets two weeks off? Anybody's guess...

    I think the real question is how many teachers are going to be expected to give their lives to teach pre-Algebra. I have read about three who have died already. If they are active teachers, they are by definition NOT 85-year olds on death's door.

    The most infuriating thing to me is the dismissal of every non-senior citizen who dies of this as some worthless unhealthy parasite who we're better off without. Among some people, it's become a Star of David patch. Do people have any idea what a large percentage of the population has what would be considered a "preexisting condition" in relation to COVID-19?? They also like to pretend that it was the comorbidity that killed them, even if it was totally under control prior. Which is no different than saying an AIDS patient who died when they caught pneumonia didn't die because of AIDS. In other words, moronic. And we haven't even BEGUN to understand the long-term ramifications for survivors. We may see massive problems years or even decades down the line because of this.
    ThacoBellJuliusBorisovProont
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    Balrog99 wrote: »
    Well, I got the almost inevitable text from my daughter's school. Somebody in her Middle School tested positive for Covid-19. No details and no further info so it wasn't anybody she's in direct contact with or she'd be quarantining now. How long before she gets two weeks off? Anybody's guess...

    I think the real question is how many teachers are going to be expected to give their lives to teach pre-Algebra. I have read about three who have died already. If they are active teachers, they are by definition NOT 85-year olds on death's door.

    The most infuriating thing to me is the dismissal of every non-senior citizen who dies of this as some worthless unhealthy parasite who we're better off without. Among some people, it's become a Star of David patch. Do people have any idea what a large percentage of the population has what would be considered a "preexisting condition" in relation to COVID-19?? They also like to pretend that it was the comorbidity that killed them, even if it was totally under control prior. Which is no different than saying an AIDS patient who died when they caught pneumonia didn't die because of AIDS. In other words, moronic. And we haven't even BEGUN to understand the long-term ramifications for survivors. We may see massive problems years or even decades down the line because of this.

    I think the real question is whether teachers are more at risk when teaching than doing other things. There are something approaching 4 million teachers in the US, i.e. over 1% of the population. Even allowing for the big difference that age makes to your risk, there would be bound to be some teachers who die of Covid-19 even if they'd not set foot in a classroom this year.

    There's quite a bit of research been done by now on the extent to which children can spread the disease to adults and this seems to be a pretty low risk (especially for younger children) - many countries have reopened schools without seeing significant increases in community transmission. This is an article reviewing some of the evidence on the role of schools in transmission of the disease.

    If schools are sensible about the way they operate, the risks of Covid-19 transmission are far lower than many other activities (like church services, concerts and visits to bars for instance). That doesn't of course mean there's no risk, but there are currently no good options for how to deal with Covid-19. I think the UK is right in having finally decided that schools should be open, even if that means that some other activities (like in the hospitality sector) are likely to have to be curtailed to manage the overall risks to society.
    Balrog99JuliusBorisovArvia
  • Mantis37Mantis37 Member Posts: 1,173
    If you are not in an area where the most appropriate response to the prevalence of the virus is to lock down entirely then it is probably more beneficial to society as a whole if students remain in school. Students are more likely to spread the virus when outside school, and are more likely to suffer from domestic abuse and other problems if they are not in school. Essential workers often have children too.

    We will have long term problems though, e.g. this study suggests that 79% of persons who have been infected will have suffered some damage to their heart, even if they did not have any other notable symptoms.

    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916?referringSource=articleShare
    Balrog99JuliusBorisovProont
  • jonesr65jonesr65 Member Posts: 66
    My daughter informed my this morning that 149 students and at least 1 teacher has been quarantined. We have 3 grades 10-12 with about 700 kids per grade. And no other parents or any kind of media announcement coming from the school system. I have to wonder what is going on in the 9 elementary, 2 middle, 2 junior HS, and Freshman schools.
    Balrog99JuliusBorisovProont
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