WhitinsvilleWX

Some hospitals do their own PCR. Hope you get to feeling better!

November is right up there with April in my book. Cold, dark, little chance of snow, at least down here. But I swear I saw a flake or two right about sundown. I haven’t looked but is it supposed to torch (relative to season that is) again? All I see is one day tomorrow for some winter then it’s back to October.

An at home test would be better , but that’s not an option right now. Takes a long while to get something like that. The Abbott test uses a standard instrument that is available at minute clinics and POC places. They could even be set up at large companies that have nurses, schools, really anywhere as long as a nurse that’s trained is at the location. Spending tax dollars on that, which is something that could help stop this, is far preferable than printing money to pay people to stay home.

Because you probably went to the head of the line because you needed it to have your surgery.

That’s why the rapid test is the key. Even if it pops a few false negatives, if you test enough in the same areas and catch the same person again a week later, it’s better than using a PCR test that takes days to get the results back and calls god knows how many false positives because all its measuring in some cases are dead nucleotides.

Rapid tests are the key. I’ve said it before , but the PCR test needs to be scrapped. Distribute millions of the Abbott rapid 15 minute tests and test about 10% f the population every few days. People who are sick enough with a high viral load and can pass it on will test positive. The PCR test is slow and flawed. Widespread use of the rapid test will do more than any lockdown of people’s businesses.

Ive changed my mind on this more then once. I’m back to thinking it’s spread more by touch and surfaces. Too many anecdotes of people I know that got it and others I’ve talked to indicate to me that touch is a key driver.

Ive known a few that had it. They said it wasn’t too bad. My company did a test/pilot testing program of 300 people on site. They tested all 300 once a week for 4 weeks. That’s 1200 total test. Not one positive. I’m not really sure it’s coming out of work places. Then again, we’re 100% masked unless in a private office, 25% floor capacity, and I have limited occupancy in the lab where we can distance. I really think the distancing and the hand hygiene is more key then the masks.

Dude, calm the fook down. I dont have time to write a war and peace post every time. Sure I think a vaccine is great. I never said do nothing. My point was that you really can’t mask and lock down your way out of this. You’re obviously triggered. Again, have a good evening. I’m going to the happiest place on earth tomorrow for 10 days. You need to chill and relax too.

That’s ok. I’ve been called worse. He’s on edge. I just tell the truth and some dont like it. Eh, what can you do?

We’ll have to agree to disagree. Again, you have a great evening.

You have a great evening now. You don’t know shit about me so keep the personnel stuff out of it. Vaccines? I hope to hell they work. But you can’t stop death. It’s a fact of life. People will continue to die. Fact not opinion. You’d think after 9 months people would understand that now.

I’m a medical professional and I guess this may come of as heartless, but it’s a respiratory virus that won’t be stopped by masks, shut downs lockdowns, etc. It will have to run it’s course. Yes, and some will die. Sucks big time. But that’s the way it is.

That’s my guess. My company still has the labs open in California and they’re shut down more then we are. Not sure we can afford to shut down the labs again like before. Those 3 months set the pipeline back at least 6 months. We even put clinical trials on hold. My barber said if they shut them down again, he’ll give back door haircuts. He doesn’t care. He did he couldn’t afford another shut down. I know at least 2 gyms that said they’d stay open. They’re key card gyms with no personnel on site.

How extensive? Hopefully my company doesn’t shut the labs down again. We’re technically essential, but we got shut down for 3 months last time. Not a whole lot that lab people can do from home,

It’s a false narrative somewhat. The hospitals were never really overwhelmed before. Those “field” hospitals that were set up never really treated many people anyway. ICUs are full because they are designed to be close to capacity to keep people employed. A lot of these smaller hospitals around the country have Covid patients in ICU as an area of isolation, not because they need that level of care. And the death rate has been basically flat since the summer, even if you believe there are 1000 a day dying because of Covid. We’ve been in this increasing spike now for close to 2 months. If there was a relationship between the spike and higher deaths, it would have shown up by now. Like Phin said, somehow all this morphed into stop the cases. That’s never going to stop until it burns out on its own or Pfizer’s witches brew gets to enough people and actually works. But you can’t keep turning the economy and and off like this, or even threatening to. In Massachusetts, around 4% of the total beds are populated by Covid cases. And close to half of that are in there with it, not because of it. I wouldn’t call 4% a crisis.

^^ this.

One of the pluses to waiting is that you generally have your career in hand and aren’t so poor! By the time we had kids we weren’t struggling to get by. I was making good money, stable job, and could afford good shit instead of trying to raise kids in a tiny apartment eating ramen off of a card table. I was kind of unique in that I didn’t need loans. PhD was paid for by the school and the MD was paid for out of someone else’s pocket. Not everyone has that advantage.

An MD/PhD will for sure beat the hell out of you.

I spent my mid 20’s to mid 30’s in grad school, med school and in a hospital. I had no time for much else.

Eh, I was 45 when my youngest was born. My wife was 38. You have time.

Similar Mu guy is $1.50 right now

It needs -80 C, or dry ice works too. mRNA degrades pretty rapidly even at normal freezer temps. Its really not a huge issue in industrialized countries. Third world....different story.

I'm not sure it's that high, but ok. And it's probably not more than 24 hours before symptoms set in either. That's why we should go to a rapid test now. This is a pretty primitive run of the mill respiratory virus. Immunology, viral spread, viral spread kinetics, viral load dogma, etc. hasn't magically changed. And if it wasn't for killing the LTC facilities folks (close to 60% of deaths), this would be relegated to swine flu status in 2009. But LTC facility spread of norovirus, C. Diff, and any manner of pestilence has been around for years. I'm not sure why it should surprise anyone that this is any different. Swine didn't kill them because they were immune to it. The infections were among the younger crowd who had a thymus and could fight it off.

There is no widespread asymptomatic spread that's driving this. That's a fallacy propagated by a faulty PCR molecular test, or more specifically a faulty interpretation. Even Fauci acknowledged this as far back as July in a virology today conference. From my 20 years experience with RT-PCR and what I've seen, about 40-50% of "positives" are just reading dead nucleotides from people who never had enough viral load to be infected themselves or infect others. What needs to happen is widespread use of the rapid test. Abbott's test is much better than the early rapid tests. If someone is actually infected to a level that they are contagious to others, it'll get picked up on a rapid test. Even if it missed a person with a false negative, if you tested enough, you'd catch the false negatives and still limit the spread. This is what Michael Mina at HSPH advocates as well. The PCR test should be scrapped in favor of the rapid antigen test. If you folks that want to government to do something, that's what they could do. Buy and distribute millions of these tests that could be used daily in certain settings.