outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

lots of ppl

fucking idiots are gonna be fucking idiots but the city needs to shut these guys down

we were talking about airplanes and airports the other day.

apparently 1000 TSA employees have tested positive. (i think that’s total)

To Simon: Epidemics & plagues are the most important events in demographic history, and likely the most important evolutionary pressure of the Neolithic shaping our species. I'm only living where I am now because smallpox eradicated the Chitimacha, as it did many other Native American groups. I'm very interested in the history of disease, and think its worth putting down spikes of when groups were aware of a threat. It may aid future historians.

yeah but everyone of them has started a band

COVID Update July 10: The most disturbing thing right now is not the growth in new COVID cases.

It’s that even after 4 months, we have no visibility into what’s happening. Or what has happened.

And that makes for a tough Fall. 1/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) July 10, 2020

Did a test in the UK for the first time this week (came back negative) and it really was surprisingly easy. Everything gets delivered a day after you request it and the result came back by text after maybe 36hrs.

The whole process appears to have been outsourced to AstraZeneca and Amazon but I can't deny that it worked. From now on if I'm feeling even slightly under the weather I'm doing one.

I've got a home one to do today. the Zoe app invited me to after i reported symptoms that are (99% sure) cold/ hayfever symptoms - no covid symptoms apart from i coughed 3 times yesterday... kids back at school are spreading sniffles imo, other parents have also entered symptoms on app and been asked to test and it was super efficient (one went to the test centre within the half-hour)

Nothing against Andy Slavitt personally or his message, but if you have to make a 31-post thread wouldn't it just be more prudent to slap that up on a blog or something?

lol nobody reads blogs

My sister shared a fb post from a friend of hers who had it in March and is currently on oxygen in a covid ward:

Hey pals. Let’s talk covid a second. I know, I know. I feel like I keep banging on about it. Humour me though. Especially now things are starting to reopen and we’re starting to find our ‘new normal’. Please, please be safe. I’m writing this from the covid ward of the QE. I’m not an ‘extreme’ case, but I’m sick enough to warrant being in hospital. I’ll be here for a few more days, too. I tested positive on 12th March. 120 days later, and I am still ill. This isn’t just ‘a bad cold’. This isn’t just an illness that will last for a couple of weeks. I’ve been told this morning that I am likely going to live with the effects of coronavirus for the rest of my life. I’m 29, and I was otherwise fit and healthy. My lungs are operating at half capacity at best right now, and my o2 levels drop around 10% every time I walk any distance. I’m sleeping anything from 10 hours a day and the exhaustion is like nothing I’ve experienced before. My hands tremble pretty much all the time, and I have constant pins and needles in my feet. I’ve not even started on the dizziness and the headaches and the random, inexplicable aches and pains that I get on and off. I am fed up now.

I know it’s exciting to start going back to normal, but please take this virus seriously. Please take precautions and do the right thing. I know it’s boring and I know it’s rubbish that you can’t see people - believe me, I know - but try and keep healthy and well 💖💗💕

Ps anyone who has seen me at any socially distanced social events, please don’t worry. I’m not contagious - I am no longer covid positive. I’m now just suffering with the after effects ❤️

Shit like this (and suggestions people with my blood type are more likely to develop symptoms) kind of make me want to hide in my flat forever tbh

just hide until there’s a vaccine. there’s never been a better time to be a shut-in. delivery, the internet, it fucking works.

Well I have to go to work but yeah apart from that

Is there anywhere in the US where asymptomatic people can get tests?

you can in chicago, at least. but it wasn't that way for a long time, and we're a blue state with a blue governor. i imagine for much of the country it's dismal. :(

Call your doctor and ask imo. That’s the guidance in my locality in general for those wanting to be tested. If you aren’t ill and have no particular reason to believe you were exposed you might get discouraged from bothering I guess.

In SF you can just check the box that says you feel fatigue.

Do I ever

Do I ever

It's not consistent. In Houston there are some places that will test anyone. Other spots you have to fill out an online reservation that includes a screening to determine if you are eligible.

I am asymptomatic and got tested here in Michigan - active swab and antibody blood draw - on Thursday but haven’t gotten results yet. You technically need a doctor authorization but there was a doctor there authorizing so extremely easy.

It was drive through at an abandoned Sears automotive center and hot as shit and the governor was on NPR giving a press conference about Covid stuff and it all felt extremely surreal and dystopian.

Nice, editorial board of PNAS:

Xie et al, 2020. Working memory capacity predicts individual differences in social-distancing compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. PNAS.

Is there anywhere in the US where asymptomatic people can get tests?

― Boring, Maryland, Saturday, July 11, 2020 4:08 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

LA County, but there's currently a long wait.

I've gotten two.

Second wave well and truly up and running in Victoria, deaths just starting to come in. So much complacency* after the first wave and once again not enough done to support the most vulnerable.

Third day in a row of nearly 300 cases and it public housing, hospitals and starting to be aged care facilities as well.

*I’m certainly not excluding myself from complacency

I heard someone from your neck of the woods on BBC WS getting angry about how Aussie pigs were hard policing blocks of public housing that included many vulnerable tenants, whilst leaving the affluent part of town to do as they like scot free during a localised lockdown.

Pretty much, although this is business as usual. There’s not much structurally different between a public housing tower and a private one when it comes to limited lifts, narrow hallways, hard to distance. Only difference is the the number of poor, frightened, vulnerable people, often with poor english language skills as well. So it goes without saying you can guess who got out under house arrest.

The guardian has an article about cops victimising and brutalising the Murdoch media’s favourite scapegoats for every ill, African refugees. This has been the case for years.

See also how we are treating, foreign students and temporary migrant workers who are not eligible for support, have lost there jobs and are living off food banks.

i'm sure it's awful and frightening ed, but 300 cases a day reminds me of a series of viz letters where someone wrote in and said "i've done four shits today, can any of your readers beat that?" and the next month someone wrote in "four? i do more than that before i get out of bed in the morning".

yes. i'm feeling similarly grim. "25 deaths? the 7-day average was 115 in mid-May, this is nothing"

Florida is reporting 15,300 new cases today

new daily record (for any state)

important to note that it came with a big spike in testing/results, too. but overall positivity rate was still above 15%. not good.

the trump administration completely bungled this during the month of february (when they seemingly did...nothing?), and again in may/june when "open up the economy!" fever swarmed the nation. they will almost certainly continue bungling this until november, and as soon as he loses the election, i think it's likely they'll begin working to actively make the situation worse for biden's team when they step in.

People called me an overreacter when i was upset we were reopening when we did. "It'll be done safely", they said.

Yay. God why couldn't Gillam have won

Some rare good news:

Yesterday was the first day since March 13 that there were no new Covid-19 deaths in New York City.

Great news

People called me an overreacter when i was upset we were reopening when we did. "It'll be done safely", they said.

prepare for the next stage: "there's nothing that can be done, we just have to accept that some of our bravest patriots will die"

Yesterday was the first day since March 13 that there were no new Covid-19 deaths in New York City.

None reported - I think it's pretty much always the case that subsequent days bring reports of deaths from the previous few days so there will probably have been some. Not that this isn't a real milestone.

Starting to think Florida might not in fact host the republican convention in a few weeks

lol nobody reads blogs

― Mr. Snrub, Saturday, July 11, 2020

*cough*

Sorry, I just checked my wordpress stats and it’s true

Talked to my Trumpy mom today. She and dad went to a wedding yesterday. Indoors, with about 50 people. Some masked, some not. I asked if she even had a mask and she said that she wears one inside businesses to keep them from getting in trouble (Texas). Otherwise she doesn’t wear it. She’s anxious things are going to shut down again. I pointed out that if everybody wore masks and did the right thing, we might not have to. But you can’t have it both ways. She said that all of this is a bunch of bologna.

I want to blame Foxnews but that’s too easy.

Hahaha sorry Alfred.

ew daily record (for any state)

If Florida were a country, it would rank fourth in the world for the most new cases in a day behind the United States, Brazil and India.

i wonder if someone could explain to trump that if he makes his primary metric positivity %, then he'll "win" each day by doing MORE testing, which will tend to to drag the positivity % down, all else equal. (and in a hidden bonus win for humanity, more testing would be a good thing)

My patient caught Covid-19 twice. So long to herd immunity hopes.

the hits keep coming

I believe it is far more likely that my patient fully recovered from his first infection, then caught Covid-19 a second time after being exposed to a young adult family member with the virus.

The fact that this is printed in Vox, along with that "I believe", puts this very squarely in the anecdotal 'hmmmm' bin. There is obviously a massive amount yet to learn about this pathogen, but this article does not advance that knowledge by even an infinitesimal amount, let alone justify "So long herd immunity hopes".

agree

There are reports elsewhere of evidence that the presence of antibodies in some people is short lived and therefore reinfection may be possible.
At this stage in what is still a novel virus there won't be a wide evidence base of multiple reinfections but I wouldn't dismiss this story based on "it's in vox" and the doctor quite correctly qualifying their opinion rather than speaking in absolutes (due to the lack of an antibody test in this particular patient). The doctor is explicit in stating there were two positive tests and two periods of symptoms with a negative test and period of wellness in between.
It's a sample of one, but it's not an anecdote.

still wondering about tests that detect antibodies, how accurate they are and whether or not they correlate with immunity