re: the plasma thing, my understanding is that there's barely even enough to do clinical trials let alone have it be a widespread treatment.

Why isn't more focus (by the media, politicians and the scientific community) being placed on the time frame within which an infected person remains contagious? Instead,the focus seems to be how to achieve herd immunity. That is a strategy with competing political ideologies about about how to achieve it.

If the general public could roughly follow  the testing plan that major league baseball has in place it is conceivable that we could, like our baseball teams, control the spread of the virus. Economical and timely testing and lab results would be critical. (perhaps the  saliva based test could work).

If one were to test positive they would know they should quarantine for the next week. That would effectively take the contagion off the streets, one infected person at a time. No herd immunity but at the same time, we would be effectively fighting the spread of the virus. That could also be augmented with social tracing, a voluntary system where those who test positive take it upon themselves to quarantine and notify those who they may have contacted during the time period that they were contagious.

So far a system like that has been working for major league baseball. Maybe that should be the example for our country to follow, not Sweden.

 

Edited August 25, 20205 yr by tray

2 hours ago, tray said:

Why isn't more focus (by the media, politicians and the scientific community) being placed on the time frame within which an infected person remains contagious? Instead,the focus seems to be how to achieve herd immunity. That is a strategy with competing political ideologies about about how to achieve it.

If the general public could roughly follow  the testing plan that major league baseball has in place it is conceivable that we could, like our baseball teams, control the spread of the virus. Economical and timely testing and lab results would be critical. (perhaps the  saliva based test could work).

If one were to test positive they would know they should quarantine for the next week. That would effectively take the contagion off the streets, one infected person at a time. No herd immunity but at the same time, we would be effectively fighting the spread of the virus. That could also be augmented with social tracing, a voluntary system where those who test positive take it upon themselves to quarantine and notify those who they may have contacted during the time period that they were contagious.

So far a system like that has been working for major league baseball. Maybe that should be the example for our country to follow, not Sweden.

 

Baseball is testing 1000 players every 2 days at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. The US has been stuck at just over 600,000 tests a day for about 2-3 months and even had weeks where testing went down. There are 50 million kids in schools, testing them 2x a week would need 100 million tests a week when the country can do 3 million a week, and would cost in the billions per semester, and that’s just schools.

The outbreak in the US is simply too large to deal with our current testing rate.

I don’t think the press focuses on herd immunity, I think they focus too much on “living with it” and all these grand strategies to disinfect surfaces, when what the governor of Texas said in May in his talk to his donors about his evil plan still holds true. If you have increased person to person contact, in work or schools or businesses, transmission will increase in response. 

 

Meanwhile, nearly 1/4 of all mailed prescriptions in Cook County have been delayed. Either this is deliberate sabotage of a vital government service for political reasons, or it's simply a staggering level of incompetence. Either way, it's putting people at risk.

22 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

 

Meanwhile, nearly 1/4 of all mailed prescriptions in Cook County have been delayed. Either this is deliberate sabotage of a vital government service for political reasons, or it's simply a staggering level of incompetence. Either way, it's putting people at risk.

What's this have to do with covid?

People are relying a lot on the mail for things right now thanks to COVID, including vital things like medication, as mentioned in my post.

Perhaps opening up colleges was actually dumb and irresponsible. Too bad nobody predicted that ahead of time.

 

 

28 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

People are relying a lot on the mail for things right now thanks to COVID, including vital things like medication, as mentioned in my post.

Ha! let's just be honest strangesox, you wanted to steer the convo more towards politics with that USPS statement. call a spade a spade.

2 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

Baseball is testing 1000 players every 2 days at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

You missed the point which was * if * testing was economical ...like the saliva testing I mentioned  ( I could not readily find a link) that could be an effective strategy given the short window within which infected people are contagious. (appx 10 days as I understand it). Perhaps it will be easier and more cost effective to implement testing than to find an effective vaccine that provides long term (at least a year) immunity.

10 minutes ago, BrianAnderson said:

Ha! let's just be honest strangesox, you wanted to steer the convo more towards politics with that USPS statement. call a spade a spade.

People want to vote by mail much moreso this year thanks to COVID as well.

9 minutes ago, tray said:

You missed the point which was * if * testing was economical ...like the saliva testing I mentioned  ( I could not readily find a link) that could be an effective strategy given the short window within which infected people are contagious. (appx 10 days as I understand it). Perhaps it will be easier and more cost effective to implement testing than to find an effective vaccine that provides long term (at least a year) immunity.

saliva testing should be a really effective tool, but because we are relying on a bunch of individual actors to get it up and running and set policy around it I'm still in wait and see mode. A town like Champaign-Urbana is a good pilot for this, but if it's just a few offices in Chicago doing this it kinda defeats the point.

4 hours ago, tray said:

Why isn't more focus (by the media, politicians and the scientific community) being placed on the time frame within which an infected person remains contagious? Instead,the focus seems to be how to achieve herd immunity. That is a strategy with competing political ideologies about about how to achieve it.

If the general public could roughly follow  the testing plan that major league baseball has in place it is conceivable that we could, like our baseball teams, control the spread of the virus. Economical and timely testing and lab results would be critical. (perhaps the  saliva based test could work).

If one were to test positive they would know they should quarantine for the next week. That would effectively take the contagion off the streets, one infected person at a time. No herd immunity but at the same time, we would be effectively fighting the spread of the virus. That could also be augmented with social tracing, a voluntary system where those who test positive take it upon themselves to quarantine and notify those who they may have contacted during the time period that they were contagious.

So far a system like that has been working for major league baseball. Maybe that should be the example for our country to follow, not Sweden.

 

It should have been and it should be on quick and massive testing turn around.  But the federal government doesn't want to invest the funds to make this happen. Again the rest of the world figured this out, but we can't. 

21 minutes ago, bmags said:

saliva testing should be a really effective tool, but because we are relying on a bunch of individual actors to get it up and running and set policy around it I'm still in wait and see mode. A town like Champaign-Urbana is a good pilot for this, but if it's just a few offices in Chicago doing this it kinda defeats the point.

UIUC now accounts for 1-2% of all testing in the entire country every day. 

https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/1990170345

 

1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

It should have been and it should be on quick and massive testing turn around.  But the federal government doesn't want to invest the funds to make this happen. Again the rest of the world figured this out, but we can't. 

No one else had to go to the strategy of testing their entire population twice a week because no one in the developed world failed at getting at least partial control during the lockdowns. 

 

University of Alabama already with 560 covid cases...but Nick Saban will press on “for kids on his team” 

 

6 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

People are relying a lot on the mail for things right now thanks to COVID, including vital things like medication, as mentioned in my post.

If it counts, my health insurance forms seem to be lost in the mail after nearly 2 weeks, so I damn well better not get sick.

 

 

It's pretty awful that they've managed to seriously damage the credibility of both the FDA and CDC in such a short amount of time.

During the post-game, Ozzie suggested that some fans be let in the stadium for the last series against the Cubs. No, Ozzie, no. Now, will you please go away?

Anyone know how U of I is faring so far? 

 

 

 

NYT reporting that these new guidelines came from the White House rather than the CDC.

To illustrate how stupidly dangerous and deadly this is:

 

Edited August 26, 20205 yr by StrangeSox

5 hours ago, bmags said:

Anyone know how U of I is faring so far? 

https://go.illinois.edu/COVIDTestingData

Looks like they're currently in the 50-100 new cases a day area for the last week, eyeballing it about 300-400 cases in the last 7 days, with some people having been tested more than once??

Everyone is being tested twice a week I think?

Ten fraternities and sororities at Kansas U. are in quarantine. Lot of new cases as expected.