Covid-19 discussion, continued...

posted by iclfan2

Giving Cuomo the benefit of the doubt is strange. He forced nursing homes to take Covid patients and now downplays the significance of it and hides deaths from the most vulnerable of the population.

It's also sad & hilarious how, in the early days, he cried that if he shut down this town it would be worthless because people would just drive to the next town.  Now he's enforcing travel restrictions, same thing he cried about other states doing to NY in the early days.

Like many, many others, he simply miscalculate in the early days and was slow to react because of the economic damage he knew it would cause.  And like most politicians, he tried to pass the buck for that responsibility.  Except, more than anyone Cuomo was out there almost every day saying Trump couldn't tell him what to do.

posted by gut

To be fair, they were concerned about hospital capacity.  And it's not his fault many of those private nursing homes were un-equipped and incompetent in dealing with this.

Which should be an easy reality to acknowledge, and which he did at one point.  The problem becomes when you had all those additional resources that went unused.  Then it becomes a political issue for which he's trying to spin and cover-up.

The reality is they did a poor job of managing their hospital beds.  This isn't that surprising - technology-wise, the US is well behind in other countries not in medical care, but in how it manages it's medical system and patient records.  It's sort of like your old snail mail managing distribution vs. how Amazon does it.

Federal resources were in NYC within days and the amount of beds and resources werent an issue but Cuomo sent sick people into nursing homes that from reports I have seen were screaming about not being able to handle them for 46 days.  Think about that.....take 16 days away from that and he still did it for a month.  

posted by gut

The reality is they did a poor job of managing their hospital beds.  This isn't that surprising - technology-wise, the US is well behind in other countries not in medical care, but in how it manages it's medical system and patient records.  It's sort of like your old snail mail managing distribution vs. how Amazon does it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2020/08/15/fda-approves-covid-19-saliva-test-developed-yale-nba-nbpa-aid/5590452002/

This seems like really good news?

posted by friendfromlowry

This seems like really good news?

posted by gut
It's a faster, reasonably more accurate test.  It could be significant in reducing risk in some places, but not really significant for the gen pop.

I remember BR saying he had to get tested and it was a 2-5 day wait. At least, something like this could reduce that sort of shit because "it's a pandemic and everyone needs to be safe -- oh, by the way, barricade yourself away from society for most of a week while we check to see if you have this or it's just allergies flaring up again" really is a horribly inefficient way of handling business.

posted by Heretic

I remember BR saying he had to get tested and it was a 2-5 day wait. At least, something like this could reduce that sort of shit because "it's a pandemic and everyone needs to be safe -- oh, by the way, barricade yourself away from society for most of a week while we check to see if you have this or it's just allergies flaring up again" really is a horribly inefficient way of handling business.

It still has to get sent into the lab for processing, so does nothing for that particular bottleneck.  But it's easier and less invasive, safer for the medical professional to administer.  If you were a pro athlete, imagine having to get that nasal swab 3X a week!

And you really need to take it twice to get 99% effective (like the nasal swab is), because 88-94% effectiveness allows for too many false negatives to my liking.

mine came back on day 4

UNC suspending in person classes after 130 students test positive in first week back on campus. 

I don’t fault schools for not wanting to bring students back on. But don’t try and act like business as usual then freak out when this virus continues to spread. 

130 test positive and literally 130 arent sick.....i think we need to just stop the insanity and stop locking down people that arent at danger form this

posted by Spock

130 test positive and literally 130 arent sick.....i think we need to just stop the insanity and stop locking down people that arent at danger form this

Some people are as dense as the anti-maskers.  Who gives a shit if UNC has 130 cases?  If that concerns you, then DON'T GO TO UNC!

It's ass backwards for 80% of the country to stop living their lives to protect 20% who are fully capable of locking themselves down.  Not to say there aren't smart, easy and cheap measures to be taken to help.  But maybe it's better to come up with a plan that EVERYONE is willing to comply with.

And it does make you wonder how much of the stupidity and confusion coming from the media and DC is simply politics in an election year.

posted by friendfromlowry

I don’t fault schools for not wanting to bring students back on. But don’t try and act like business as usual then freak out when this virus continues to spread. 

Been saying the writing is on the wall since they began canceling football.  If you don't think you can keep athletes safe, then there's just no way thousands of students are going to avoid contracting it.

Give them the choice and manage your restrictions accordingly, just like any other community.  At-risk professors should have the option of giving virtual classes.  And, actually, I think what you could do for your typical 3-credit class is have 1/3 come each time, and watch online the other 2 classes per week.

posted by friendfromlowry

UNC suspending in person classes after 130 students test positive in first week back on campus. 

I don’t fault schools for not wanting to bring students back on. But don’t try and act like business as usual then freak out when this virus continues to spread. 

I wonder what the magic number was to not close school.  138 is not acceptable, I guess.  What about 100 or 50 or 25...  What's the magic number they were after.  Pardon me being cynical that I think that magic number was right around 0, as impractical as that is.  

Who cares if the kids who decided to come back to school get sick from it.  They are there by choice and COVID is far from the most dangerous threat facing those students.  This is absolutely insane.  You can literally make the argument that schools should never open again.  We'll never be risk free.  

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

I wonder what the magic number was to not close school.  138 is not acceptable, I guess.  What about 100 or 50 or 25...  What's the magic number they were after.  Pardon me being cynical that I think that magic number was right around 0, as impractical as that is.   

I was thinking the same thing. What was the threshold of acceptable positive tests? Did they not think they were going to hit a number as small as 130 on a college campus?

I also wonder how many were false positives, how many have actual symptoms, etc. 

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

I wonder what the magic number was to not close school.  138 is not acceptable, I guess.  What about 100 or 50 or 25... 

Good question.  Given what we can guess about student behavior, though, 130 in a week would probably blow-up into hundreds, maybe thousands, within a few weeks. 

Probably hard to contact trace college students.  Imagine someone has gone to 5 classes this week - there's 150 students exposed.  Add in the cafeteria and library.  And that's before we start talking about bars and parties.

To your point, this is entirely predictable.  So why did they even bother trying if this was going to be the reaction?

It’s incredibly half-ass and incredibly irritating. 

posted by justincredible

What was the threshold of acceptable positive tests? 

The threshold is obviously 69

posted by MontyBrunswick

The threshold is obviously 69

Health director spoke to our school staff today and said the contract tracing would be to any person that was within 6 feet of the infected individual for 15+ cumulative minutes that day.

posted by Ironman92

Health director spoke to our school staff today and said the contract tracing would be to any person that was within 6 feet of the infected individual for 15+ cumulative minutes that day.

I've seen the 15 minute thing before.  I think it was actually within the context of average time to infect if you are within 6 feet for over 15 minutes, indoors.  Which is a fairly shocking revelation when you realize how that must drop with masks and social distancing...especially given lockdowns are the alternative.

But I did see an update that said, basically, if someone coughed or sneezed on you it could be enough to infect you right then.

I still have no idea what the actually effectiveness of social distancing and masks is.  I definitely don't think it's close to 0.  But it would be really upsetting to find out it was like 90% and most of this was avoidable.  Along those lines, I wonder how much of this is the result of assholes knowing they were exposed, maybe even having symptoms, and not masking up much less quarantining.