outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

yes, but a home PCR test (Lucira). so yours truly coulda fucked it up. lol...

the official test my study did and confirmed in a lab (taken last Thursday) came back negative - they confirmed with me this morning. they also checked for other viruses like RSV etc and found nothing.

I guess they happen (FPs), but they rarely happen to me.

well...except on this borad

A friend tested positive using a PCR yesterday (test taken on Monday morning). Not a single symptom, she said. Then she got a rapid PCR yesterday an hour before learning the results of the first....negative lol.

I.e. she tested negative with the second one. Now she wonders if she got a false positive the first time.

ugh. one thing that is possible is that both brands of PCRs have different 'cycle' cutoffs for a positive result. a 'cycle' being a cycle of amplification to the original sample to detect the viral RNA.

Lots of tests have cycle cutoffs that are above the level that would likely result in infectious disease, and there's no standard that all tests abide by - it's up to the testmakers themselves. so if it took 38 cycles to find the presence of viral RNA, and one test's cutoff was 40 cycles, the other 37, one test might pop positive, the other might not.

that's just a theory. either that or her immune system fought off the virus and it never took hold.

she might wanna try an antigen test in a day or two. the guidance around this isn't real clear, admittedly. they usually just tell you to trust the positive, but that's understandable, because the idea is that if you take two tests, and one is positive, and one is negative, you can't easily tell which one was wrong,and going back and living your life is like playing roulette a bit. If a series of tests over several days routinely come back negative (PCR or antigen), that would seem to suggest to me that it was a false positive.

(obv I'm not a doctor or scientist so these are just layman guesses and might be hilariously wrong) - should just write that after all my posts

Yeah, I advised her to go with antigen tests for a couple cycles if she suspects a PC -- we know now how well PCRs pick up dead viral residue in the nose.

PC = FP

i still want to do an antibody test to see if I maybe had it and didn't know it sometime in the past.

I got one done as part of my blood tests in December 2020 a couple weeks before testing became widespread. Reassuring.

ooof

Newly emerging data suggest the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine works substantially less well at preventing infection and hospitalizations in children aged 5 to 11 than it does in those aged 12 to 17 — a finding that is raising questions about whether the companies chose the wrong dose for the younger children.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/28/pfizer-covid-vaccine-kids-5-11/

How often are kids 5-11 hospitalized for covid?

ok socrates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzzYxTPYAcA

xxp In the study discussed, hospitalizations peaked at 0.35 per 100k of the vaccinated children aged 5-11, and 1.04 out of 100k for unvaccinated children aged 5-11.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.25.22271454v1.full.pdf

he isn't actually asking

exciting news, daughter gets her first shot this saturday, at the Museum of Natural History.

👍

Ugh caek that is really shitty news. And possibly going to be missed by some alongside the Ukraine news.

Thanks for sharing.

lmao https://www.statnews.com/2022/03/01/cdc-data-suggest-pfizer-vaccine-protection-holds-up-in-kids-5-11-raising-questions-on-earlier-study/

Just a lil' whoopsy-doopsy, no biggie.

Good vaccine

Finally. After years of no big outbreaks, thus little prior immunity, Hong Kong got an Omicron outbreak with fairly dismal vaccination rates, especially among the elderly.

Highly and properly-vaccinated New Zealand also got hit with Omicron.

See their cases vs deaths.😢 pic.twitter.com/NqkHv11AQN

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) March 4, 2022

HK is using the vax that didn't go through much trials that has been shown to be fairly ineffective, right?

good god @ that Chotiner interview

lol wrong thread

Wasn’t Twitter just clowning on an article that asserted HK’s “Zero Covid“ policy actually made them vulnerable?

…the company?

what's made them vulnerable is a lowish 2 dose vaccination rate, an extremely low booster rate, and (i assume, don't know for sure) some use of attenuated vaccines (sinovax etc.) which are about as effective as paracetemol against anything other than the original strain.

and apparently particularly low vaccination rates among the elderly according to tufekci. NZ by contrast has among the highest booster rates in the world (about the same as western europe, double that of the US and HK).

xxxpost Zero COVID should have given them the ability to achieve high vaccination, which would have prevented this, but one thing several Zero COVID countries ran into is that their strategies succeeded in keeping COVID at zero (or very low), so lots of people said "why the fuck should I get the vaccine, there aren't any cases!". then you run into extremely immune naive populations that have little infection-based or vaccine-induced immunity.

the other problem is, while Pfizer's vaccine is available there, the other one they use is CoronaVac, which studies showed that even with three shots of that vaccine, barely neutralized Omicron whatsoever. so anybody with that vaccine is quite possibly dealing with lower protection against severe disease as well.

not a great situation right now, though I don't know that I'd blame it on Zero COVID so much as that myriad of factors I mentioned above.

a good article on vaccine complacency in zero COVID countries: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00554-0

i guess the other challenge in HK is population density, although the case rate isn't actually any higher than NZ right now.

…the company?

Tweets on China
Never mattered before

China reports 500 new Covid cases on Monday - its highest number in two years.

Clusters in more than a dozen cities are posing a fresh challenge to Beijing's zero-Covid policyhttps://t.co/xdkBXTSAD3 pic.twitter.com/tjYemlm1MQ

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 7, 2022

New European wave just dropped.

Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia and Brunei all reached their peak of cases this week.

Iceland has risen to 82% of peak, Germany to 90% and NZ to 95%.

China has reached their highest peak since March 2020.

Australia is trending up (after trending up since first week of December, then trending down since the 1st of Feb. WA had their third and fourth deaths from local transmission.).

Wastewater COVID signs rising around the U.S.: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-14/are-covid-cases-going-back-up-sewer-data-has-potential-warning

😬 https://t.co/BUDIqfFV9z pic.twitter.com/yAfesj5Xsc

— Eric Ziegenhagen (@ericzieg) March 14, 2022

Going to be really fun around here next month when they start putting restrictions back in place. Half this country will absolutely meltdown.

when they start putting restrictions back in place

not going to happen

There weren't restrictions here anyway

xp to caek - fair enough, but I suspect some schools and universities might require students to mask up again

Would you not consider mask and vaxx requirements for entry types of restrictions?

i would, but tragically i am not in charge.

i would run on a platform of https://www.change.org/p/the-world-long-chile, free e-bikes for everyone, and adult masking in public places where the rate is above 25 per 100,000 and the three dose vaccination rate is below 85%.

Wastewater COVID signs rising around the U.S.: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-14/are-covid-cases-going-back-up-sewer-data-has-potential-warning

😬 https://t.co/BUDIqfFV9z pic.twitter.com/yAfesj5Xsc
— Eric Ziegenhagen (@ericzieg) March 14, 2022
― deep luminous trombone (Eazy), Monday, 14 March 2022 21:46 (yesterday) link

IDGI -- I see way more blue (decrease) than orange (increase) on this map.

The increase grabs the headline because if an editor has a choice between a continuation of the recent trend down and an indicator that's maybe going up, then up's going to lead because it is 'newer' and more emotionally grabby.

Maybe it's that I'm in Chicago and so the orange pops.

Doomposting and an orange pop in the last four hours, this thread is such a gift.

Yeah, sorry to take up your attention.

The article was worth reading. No need to apologize. Some places are seeing an increase in what's considered a leading indicator. Whatever bearing that may have on the near future is extremely speculative, but it is worth knowing that it has been detected. Headlines tend to be bad criteria for judging the contents of nuanced stories.

(my post was a joke about a post in the other thread, Eazy - sorry to confuse)