Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[MultiVerse]

Deebz attempting to turn the absence of evidence into a man bites dog story. A half-witted jellyfish could make a better point.


At the time Mofro, iceman, and others had good laugh at deebs obviously fake 80% asymptomatic rate. And yeah the quotes don't lie but deebz clearly does.

[Deebased]

Deebz attempting to turn the absence of evidence into a man bites dog story. A half-witted jellyfish could make a better point

Quotes don't lie and you're migrating camps. 8 weeks late is still better than never.

[frorider]

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have developed an experimental COIVD-19 test that uses nanoparticles to detect if coronavirus is present in saliva or a nasal swab sample, revealing the results in about 10 minutes through a change in the color of the test liquid, they report in the journal ACS Nano.

"Based on our preliminary results, we believe this promising new test may detect RNA material from the virus as early as the first day of infection," lead researcher Dipanjan Pan said in a statement, noting that additional studies are need to confirm the results. "Many of the diagnostic tests currently on the market cannot detect the virus until several days after infection. For this reason, they have a significant rate of false negative results." If RNA material specific to the new coronavirus is present in the sample, the gold nanoparticles turn the purple test reagent blue.

Preliminary but still cool.

[jono]

Preliminary but still cool.

Hell yes. This is the kind of thing we need to move back toward normal. Well, that and good pressure at the hydrants, I guess.

[jono]

Interesting. I wonder if we’ll see cases decline over time and the severity of the cases will keep going down? Apparently something similar happened with SARS until it went away.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile..../idUSKBN2370OQ

The doctors quoted describe changes in presentation of COVID-19 using terms that imply changes in SARS-Cov-2, but the two things are distinct. A change to the virus should be detectable genetically, but there are a lot of factors that would change the average presentation of the disease without any change to the genetics of the virus.

A change to the virus would be more convenient, but less severe infections could also be evidence of lower viral loads at transmission, quicker average detection, more social distancing among the most vulnerable--or many other factors tied to behavioral changes. And/or a change in the population itself. Point being, a change to the virus would "just happen" without human actions, but all other explanations imply that something is working.

[ron johnson]

What kind of society do we want to have? Should we just bring everyone in the forest naked at 75 and leave them to die for maximum efficiency? Not to mention that the system was designed to have people pay into the safety net so they could harness some gains and be comfortable in old age. The problem with the boomers isn't that there are so many of them, it's that they've worked so hard to defund and break these social programs for 40 years with success no matter who is in the OO.

Further, the idea that inherited wealth is productive goes against a centuries of american thought and destroys social mobility. there is no reason we need a protected aristocratic class of people with 20 generational wealth. this directly causes the societal unrest we are seeing now. People should be able to leave money to heirs but for a long time we agreed as a society on what a fair number was and how to tax above that but that same wealthiest class has been assaulting these norms since the 90s as a death tax with major success under one party.

Totally OT, has nothing to do with my argument.

No point getting into a big argument on inheritances, but it's a fallacy to think the state will make better use of that money than the heirs.

the myth of job creators is. How many more jobs have bezos and the waltons destroyed than created (in this country)?

When combined with supercharged policy to funnel more wealth to these people it's exacerbated further, since they are now richer and even more important job creators! The system is broker than we are and the coronavirus response is just like the social unrest, the result of a complete failure of leadership and the social contract in our country.

Seems like some people are ok with it because they aren't old, have gates around their neighborhood, etc...

You are ignoring the increased standard of life that Amazon provides. Being able to have virtually any product at your doorstep in two days is pretty nice. By your line of thinking, the tractor must have been a terrible invention because it put so many farmers out of work.

Agree on bailouts.

[funkendrenchman]

The doctors quoted describe changes in presentation of COVID-19 using terms that imply changes in SARS-Cov-2, but the two things are distinct. A change to the virus should be detectable genetically, but there are a lot of factors that would change the average presentation of the disease without any change to the genetics of the virus.

A change to the virus would be more convenient, but less severe infections could also be evidence of lower viral loads at transmission, quicker average detection, more social distancing among the most vulnerable--or many other factors tied to behavioral changes. And/or a change in the population itself. Point being, a change to the virus would "just happen" without human actions, but all other explanations imply that something is working.

I think I get what you're saying. Reading the article, it's tough to to tell if they're talking about less severe infections or a change to the virus.

I missed this when it came out, but a month ago there was some evidence of the virus mutating to weaker forms, like it did with SARS. https://asunow.asu.edu/20200505-asu-...onavirus-study

[old goat]

Interesting. I wonder if we’ll see cases decline over time and the severity of the cases will keep going down? Apparently something similar happened with SARS until it went away.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile..../idUSKBN2370OQ

Is it the virus that's changed or people's behaviors so that when exposure does occur the viral dose is much lower? If it's the latter then we'll obviously see a spike when things open up. And don't expect a spike to necessarily occur within a week or two--evidence from California and NY that the virus was circulating in the community for quite a while before cases starting popping up.
A third explanation is that only a fraction of the population is susceptible and the virus has run out of victims. No proof of this theory yet, and this has been going on long enough that I would think if there were genetic differences in susceptibility we would know that. But I keep hoping.

[Meathelmet]

What kind of society do we want to have? Should we just bring everyone in the forest naked at 75 and leave them to die for maximum efficiency?

Not naked, for crying aloud.
We are not animals.
They can wear their loafers.

[XXX-er]

Totally OT, has nothing to do with my argument.

No point getting into a big argument on inheritances, but it's a fallacy to think the state will make better use of that money than the heirs.



You are ignoring the increased standard of life that Amazon provides. Being able to have virtually any product at your doorstep in two days is pretty nice. By your line of thinking, the tractor must have been a terrible invention because it put so many farmers out of work.

Agree on bailouts.

except it ain't really a better tractor its just all the $$ going into one persons pockets

[Tippster]

Is it the virus that's changed or people's behaviors so that when exposure does occur the viral dose is much lower? If it's the latter then we'll obviously see a spike when things open up. And don't expect a spike to necessarily occur within a week or two--evidence from California and NY that the virus was circulating in the community for quite a while before cases starting popping up.
A third explanation is that only a fraction of the population is susceptible and the virus has run out of victims. No proof of this theory yet, and this has been going on long enough that I would think if there were genetic differences in susceptibility we would know that. But I keep hoping.

Cases in CA going up again, so no, it did not run out of victims. Social distancing and quarantine kept it at bay.

[jono]

I think I get what you're saying. Reading the article, it's tough to to tell if they're talking about less severe infections or a change to the virus.

Yeah, I think translation might make it hard to tell what they actually think the cause is. And I'm certainly not trying to discredit anyone. The article just seems to state it in a way that implies more than what you'd expect clinicians to know directly (and of course that/they could be right, too, direct knowledge or not). Regardless, they're reporting good news, what's unclear is what is the actionable takeaway?

[MultiVerse]

Is it the virus that's changed or people's behaviors so that when exposure does occur the viral dose is much lower?

Currently there's no way to quantify what the threshold is but a higher dose is clearly worse. The number of infected people matters, proximity matters, timing matters, and aiflow whether indoors or out, whether fresh air is brought in or stagnant air is recirculating.

People avoiding indoor crowds, wearing masks, washing hands, staying home when sick and so on might make the difference when it comes to dosage in Italy after the virus was brought under a semblance of control.

Whereas in take it on the chin Brazil poor workers are compelled to keep working, people are crowded together not wearing masks leading to a greater share of the population exposed to the virus at a higher dose. Dosage along with higher pollution levels and less access to health care could explain why coronavirus deaths are skewing younger in eveloping countries.

[jono]

Currently there's no way to quantify what the threshold is but a higher dose is clearly worse.

It seems like if we know the above for certain then we know that at least on a statistical basis reducing the amount of exposure helps. Right?

[MultiVerse]

Yeah, that's the best educated guess. Exposure to high doses would explain why young healthy health care workers died from the virus. The problem, statistically speaking, is it's difficult to test the theory in humans and there's little correlation with subsequent viral loads because there's so much variation when it comes to things like cellular receptors and overall individual health.

In the hamster study discussed earlier the subset of masked hamsters who became infected, presumably receiving a lower dose than unmasked hamsters, had less severe disease indicators.

[funkendrenchman]

Yeah, that's the best educated guess. Exposure to high doses would explain why young healthy health care workers died from the virus. The problem, statistically speaking, is it's difficult to test the theory in humans and there's little correlation with subsequent viral loads because there's so much variation when it comes to things like cellular receptors and overall individual health.

In the hamster study discussed earlier masked hamsters who became infected had less severe infections.

If we are able to to reduce the amount of viral load in each transmission (through distancing, masks, etc), in theory we should see less severe cases. I wonder if this has a chain effect and eventually leads to the virus petering out...eventually becoming something more flu-like in severity. (wishful thinking)

[jono]

Temporarily--reducing COVID without killing off the virus probably only lasts as long as the behavior, as oldgoat pointed out recently.

I think it should be possible to at least come up with some estimates for viral loads at certain transmissions that are likely to have occurred in a known setting (patient coughing in a caretaker's face, for example) and show a correlation with severity of the next infection. Something. Samples are not small at this point. Any link between severity and dose is a very useful piece of information.

[KQ]

The problem with the boomers isn't that there are so many of them, it's that they've worked so hard to defund and break these social programs for 40 years with success no matter who is in the OO.

.

No. The problem is "there are individuals who have worked so hard to defund and break these social programs for 40 years with success no matter who is in the OO." Some just happen to be boomers.

I'm a boomer and I've never worked towards or supported that goal and I have a great many boomer friends who haven't either. Shortsighted selfishness is not the bastion of just one generation.

[huckbucket]

Temporarily--reducing COVID without killing off the virus probably only lasts as long as the behavior, as oldgoat pointed out recently.

The exception is if you're New Zealand. Tracked that shit all the way down to the last person.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronav...-covid-19-case

[Viva]

In the hamster study discussed earlier the subset of masked hamsters who became infected, presumably receiving a lower dose than unmasked hamsters, had less severe disease indicators.

This is k00l because these animals are inbred, i.e., genetically identical, so there's no variation at the level of individual animals. Differences in disease severity may very well be due to outside factors.

Sent from my SM-G960U using TGR Forums mobile app

[The AD]

The exception is if you're New Zealand. Tracked that shit all the way down to the last person.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronav...-covid-19-case

They've done a great job, but they obviously have some serious geographical advantages: a country of less than five million people sitting in the middle of the Pacific helps.

[huckbucket]

Just a reminder that The Hutch is doing incredible work to genetically trace variants of the virus. Almost 4,000 samples sequenced to date which is how they determined that most of America was seeded with cases from Europe and not China directly.

https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

You can actually go in and see the variants in each clade which is to say that variation is fairly modest and that NO ONE has connected variation with disease severity (infectivity or virulence) which makes the Italian story incomplete at best. Even IF a variant arises with properties that make it less severe, its propagation relative to other variants depends more on an increase in infectivity and less on a change to virulence. With that in mind, the current version is already highly infectious.

[Rasputin]

They've done a great job, but they obviously have some serious geographical advantages: a country of less than five million people sitting in the middle of the Pacific helps.

They are golden, as long as their dependence on tourism doesn't bring the virus back. Seems a little like where Montana is, we have all but eliminated new infections, but tourism is a huge part of the economy which is being reopened. "What a nice safe place for vacation....". It worries me, very many think it's done here for good, and have gone back to old habits.

edit: I guess NZ can quarantine visitors, but that will eliminate a lot of interest in tourism.

[huckbucket]

They've done a great job, but they obviously have some serious geographical advantages: a country of less than five million people sitting in the middle of the Pacific helps.

Agreed. No one thinks that's possible here. But NZ was early in their lockdown too which we all know is something that could have helped us.

[huckbucket]

I'm going to keep banging this drum because this is a hugely important resource in my mind. Even if you just look at the table mid-page, it would be worth it.

Read this: https://cdn.hc1.com/docs/covid-19/ae...user-guide.pdf
And then visit this: https://www.aei.org/covid-2019-action-tracker/

Does it have ALL cases, probably not.
It also bothers me that the LRI calculation (and the subsequent heat map) does not factor in the number of test performed.
Also, we don't know if tested is concentration to specific businesses or residences (like nursing homes)

However, you can see the volume of tests for your county and whether there's a spike. The reg version simply breaks the results down by age and gender.