Machu Peach

The response to this is that it's not up to you (or anyone else) to determine what is needed for others practice their faith. Most religions don't use the bible, so what it says is irrelevant.

This is probably what you're 'missing'. Asymptomatic individuals generally have much lower viral shedding, and therefore are much less likely to infect others, than those with symptoms in every viral disease I can think of. There's no reason to think COVID is any different. Asymptomatic people certainly can spread, but at least a few case studies have shown that this is less likely than initially reported. Thus by removing people with fevers you are reducing the amount of potential spread. You are certainly not eliminating possible spread, but neither does almost all of the mitigation efforts (Eg, 6 feet distancing, masks). The other thing I would caution against is the idea that people that go out with a fever aren't smart. People can run a fever without realizing it. I went to work with a bad headache this morning. Was it caused by a fever? No, but I didn't know that until I took my temperature (required before I go to work). A big part of the confusion is the term "asymptomatic" is ridiculously imprecise, almost to the point of uselessness from a disease tracking point of view. If someone runs a fever, but doesn't realize it or doesn't report it to a healthcare provider are they asymptomatic? Of course not, but they will be recorded as asymptomatic. A term that's generally used often to avoid that problem is "sub-clinical", where someone may or may not have symptoms, but the symptoms are not severe enough to cause the individual to engage with healthcare. "Asymptomatic" has been used to mean "sub-clinical" throughout the pandemic, even by people that should know better than to confuse the two. I assume that's intentional to avoid public confusion, but I think it actually making things more confusing.

My female friends have the exact opposite response. Fair enough. Of course everyone comes from a different view. Any chance they're generally well off financially as opposed to say avg salary nurse/teacher types? I think I would also clarify mine a bit to maybe take out hair, might have overstated there. I think they mean the more niche things like nails, eyelashes, eyebrows, etc. Some are and some aren't better off than nurses/teachers. I suspect the major differences are age (your use of 'girls' while my friends fall into the 'women' category) and race. Hair, in particular, is a big big deal for them. One friend is giving us a a daily countdown in a group chat until her first hair appointment because she thinks she looks like a skunk with a grey strip down the middle of her head. The pictures are pretty funny.

My female friends have the exact opposite response.

People think the development of an effective vaccine within a short time period is a given and I'm not sure where that certainty is coming from. I spent 15 years as a vaccine scientist and while I think a vaccine is likely, I would not assume immediate success. Also safety studies on vaccines usually take a decade. I'm sure the FDA will take some shortcuts but I don't know how much it can be condensed.

I honestly don't see anything major changing forever. This isn't the first pandemic, nor the worst pandemic. There's nothing particularly novel about COVID19 itself. I think the reasons this 'feels' different is 1) it's arguably the first true pandemic in living memory for most people, 2) numbers are publicly available in realtime, 3) social media allows everyone to publicly comment their opinions on outbreak modeling and the efficacy of mitigation efforts. There are certainly things I would like to change, but I have little hope that they actually will.

Not to throw more gas on the masks vs no masks fire, but I think this could be of interest to some people. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372 On a semi-related note, I always find it bemusing when I hear someone say something to the effect of "Trust The Science!" I don't trust the science, I question it constantly. That's what makes me a Scientist. People everywhere, including some here, seem to think of SCIENCE! as a monolithic organization when it is certainly not. It's okay (and even necessary) for scientists to publicly disagree. Similarly, it's okay (and even necessary) for the opinions and positions of scientists to evolve as new information become available. It does not mean that anyone screwed up and it's all a very normal part of the process. I think the disconnect is because people are used to seeing public political debates and then apply the same rules to scientific debates.

If only it was this easy.

What trend line are you referring to?

People who wear masks vs People without masks

Removing support systems from vulnerable people was alway going to have a negative impact. https://abc7news.com/health/suicides-on-the-rise-amid-stay-at-home-order-bay-area-doctors-say/6201962/ However quantifying that impact is going to be quite difficult. This NYT article highlights some of the difficulties. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/health/pandemic-coronavirus-suicide-health.html Whether that's the cure being worse than the disease? I don't know. I suspect that most people will interpret the (eventually available) data as needed to help them believe what they want to believe, just like with everything else related to COVID.

Is this what you're looking for? The two big caveats is that reporting on data like this can be severely delayed and that this is counting all deaths; directly COVID related, indirectly COVID related, and COVID unrelated. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

If anyone is interested COVID and transmission here is, in my opinion, a very nice study in Lancet Infectious Diseases. It has it's drawbacks but is quite a bit more thorough and well done than anything else I can find. https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099(20)30287-5.pdf

In addition to Georgia and Virginia, you can add Pennsylvania, Vermont, Texas, Maine, and the CDC to the list of places mixing serological and PCR tests. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/

A lot of states are doing this. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/covid-19-tests-combine-virginia/611620/ Whether or not it's a bad practice depends on what one is trying to understand from the data. Per that article and the one from Georgia, it looks like two states are doing it. "Other differences make it hard to track the pandemic. In at least three other states, officials have lumped together probable and confirmed COVID-19 deaths; most don’t specify how they’re counting deaths. While most states report the number of people who have been tested for the coronavirus, six states say they track the number of samples that have been tested—and California and New Jersey switched methods in the past few weeks." "Other states report positive serological tests as “probable” COVID-19 cases." "At least 16 U.S. states and two territories have reported such “probable” cases, although they may not always have done so using serological tests, according to the CDC." It's unclear what exactly most states are doing, but it is very clear that there are major differences in how things are being counted. I personally don't think it's nefarious. There are multiple correct ways to compile data depending on what one wants to look at.

A lot of states are doing this. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/covid-19-tests-combine-virginia/611620/ Whether or not it's a bad practice depends on what one is trying to understand from the data.

False positives vs false negatives is an interesting topic. Obviously you want to minimize both, but for a lot of tests you're really forced which one is going to be be the bigger problem by adjusting the line of what is considered to be a positive result. For most things True positive - Good, people who need treatment get it False positive - Somewhat bad, people get unnecessary treatment True negative - Good, people who don't need treatment don't get it False negative - Very bad, people that need treatment don't get it. However that paradigm is somewhat reversed when discussing serological testing and vaccines True positive - Good, people who don't need revaccination don't get it False positive - Very bad, people who need revaccination don't get it True negative - Good, people who need revaccination get it False negative - A little bad, people who don't need revaccination get it.

I'm having trouble following the logic. A poorly/ineptly run website and too-good-to-check anecdote about a 40 year old educational policy means that Georgia is experiencing the negative effects of structural problems in education (with the unstated implication that Georgians are less educated/intelligent)? If I have correct I'll conclude by saying it is disappointing how easily people confirm their negative biases about others. For anyone interested in data from GA I've been checking with their DPH website (https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report) a couple times a week and it seems quite reliable (or at least as reliable as anything else these days). I'm not sure what website the AJC article is referring to but I haven't seen any of the major errors they point out on it.

Is this just a pointless insult to GA/southerners? I grew up in Wisconsin and lived 5 years in Atlanta before moving back to the Midwest. To say that people in Wisconsin are generally smarter/better educated than Georgia is not at all my experience. I apologize if I'm misunderstanding.

I've worked extensively in vaccine development so I can probably give a little insight. There are a lot of reasons that candidate vaccines fail in pre-clinical and clinical trials. Sometimes it's safety (though this is almost always in the pre-clinical phases), sometimes it's the inability to generate a large, long-lasting response, sometimes it's that the response that generated isn't protective, but most of the time it just isn't worth vaccinating the general population even if the vaccine is effective. One thing to keep in mind is that there are already vaccines for the easy-to-vaccinate diseases, so the vast majority of current work is on hard-to-vaccinate diseases. It's not known where COVID19 falls on the spectrum, but it doesn't have any of the known characteristics that make diseases like flu and HIV hard to vaccinate. I do want to point out that the reason some vaccines require multiple shots is not because they are only 80-90% effective. The vaccines that require multiple shots do so because the immune system requires multiple exposures to generate a good, long-lasting response. It is very important to get the entire series of shots or you likely will have a suboptimal or short-lasting immunity.

No, there's more info behind the story. Only 3% used public transportation, and all of them were sheltering at home. I may have missed it, but I don't think Cuomo is misreading the data. It's more of a whoa didn't expect this, need to continue this type of research to learn more. I can find this sentence. "Cuomo said nearly 84% of the hospitalized cases were people who were not commuting to work through car services, personal cars, public transit or walking." But it says nothing about where those 84% are sheltering or if they're going outside/commuting, just that they're not commuting to work. Given the age of the hospitalized (retirees) and the number of furloughs/unemployed/work-from-home it's not surprising that a large fraction aren't commuting to work. The Newsday article list that 83% are unemployed or retired, but again, does not address their travel habits. At any rate the statement in the CNBC article that "It shows that 66% of new admissions were from people who had largely been sheltering at home." is clearly unsupported by any data presented in the article (or at best is unclear). I'm not saying it doesn't exist because I obviously don't know, but they don't have it. A link to the actual survey data would be greatly appreciated if anyone has one.

As far as I can tell this is a result of Cuomo/the media severely misreading the data. The categories in this graph (Nursing Home, Jail/Prison,Homeless, Home, Congregate, Assisted Living) show that "staying at home" means where they sleep. It does not appear to show that they are "people who had largely been sheltering at home" or not taking public transportation or anything of the sort. It also does not show the location where they were infected/exposed. I'm not 100% sure I have that right, but it's the only conclusion that I can think of given the possible categories. (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html) Edit: grammar

Yes I think that's what the antibody testing is. My wife can get that through her work (she's at a research hospital and they want to do it as part of a study). Yep, antibody testing will let you know if someone has had an infection, but does not give insight into if that person is currently infected. There's also a 7-14 day delay before the body starts making antibodies, so it will not detect a new infection.

Well, the Royals did it. I think if the only thing that makes being a Brewer fan worth it is a World Series, then baseball will be an unsatisfying pursuit. This is a really good point. Enjoy when they do this well, because it won't happen consistently. This is the furthest they've made it in my lifetime and I've loved it.