When?
What about reports that the recovered have contracted it again?
that dang swab test looks horrible-
People are going “stir crazy” after two weeks?
What a bunch of pansy asses the US has become. These stories make the country sound so weak it’s sad.
Test for anti bodies and get released. That’s fine. But really? Two weeks to too much for folks?
“Other US companies are already selling antibody tests abroad. The California biotech company Biomerica sells coronavirus antibody tests for less than $10 in Europe and the Middle East, while Chembio Diagnostics, a medical-device company based in New York, is sending its antibody tests to Brazil and plans to study them in the US, Reuters reported last week.
The UK government bought 3.5 million at-home antibody tests last week and is looking to distribute them to people who are self-isolating as soon as possible, The Guardian reported. Australia has ordered 1.5 million tests.”
Huh? And why aren’t they being sold here?
Time to throw to pull the pin on this hand grenade and then throw it into the melee:
Covid-19 – The tipping point?
Tom Jefferson, Carl Heneghan, March 30, 2020
A quick look at the distribution of SARS 2 cases around southern Europe shows that viral circulation is widespread. [1] Higher incidence may be explained (at least in part) by the old adage “seek and thou shall find”. Translated into technospeak, it’s ascertainment bias.[2]
If you test, test, test you will find. [3] Epidemics are no strangers to ascertainment bias. In the spring of 1918 military censorship ensured that most information relating to a mysterious acute respiratory syndrome was suppressed. Except for places like Spain which had not joined the war and had no censorship. So selective release of information made it look like most cases came from the Iberian peninsula – hence the name “Spanish flu”.
Technospeak notwithstanding, there can be little doubt that Covid 19 may be far more widely distributed than some may believe. At the time the first symptomatic case was diagnosed In Vo Euganeo, Italy, about 3% had already been infected – most were asymptomatic. [4]
Nor can there be little doubt that the price of lockdown to society and economic paralysis is likely to be paid for generations to come. In the short term economic devastation seems certain, imposing a heavy penalty on us and probably successive generations.
In Bergamo, Italy, clinicians reflected on how to prepare for the next outbreak. Their view is that focussing on hospitals is the wrong way to manage COVID. [5]
The symptoms of COVID-19 are unusual, wide-ranging, and in some cases can be severe: over-referral can lead to significant numbers either turning up or sent into hospital. The disease then spreads rapidly in hospital settings. [5] Healthcare workers have both a higher risk of exposure, and of being the vectors of onwards transmission – as happened in the 2002-3 SARs outbreak.
Because there are no licensed treatments for COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions, management of complications and early recognition of those deteriorating and most likely to benefit from hospitalisation, should be the mainstay of management.
Changing the emphasis from hospitals to the community could avert a disaster for the wider population. Care in the home setting restricts movements of the infected. All those with a fever and a cough should stay at home; they could be prescribed pulse oximeters, and oxygen could be delivered to severely affected cases; rescue antibiotics prescribed along with daily video-monitoring could be used to detect deterioration. In the older population, the mildly ill and the recovering, food supplies should be delivered at home.
Older Patients admitted to hospital are at greater risk of delirium, pressure sores, adverse effects of new medications, malnutrition and hospital-acquired infections. [6] An older person admitted to hospital runs the risk of never seeing the light of day again. This is probably the clearest message coming from Italy.
Lockdown is going to bankrupt all of us and our descendants and is unlikely at this point to slow or halt viral circulation as the genie is out of the bottle. What the current situation boils down to is this: is economic meltdown a price worth paying to halt or delay what is already amongst us?
Tom Jefferson is a senior associate tutor and honorary research fellow, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford.
Carl Heneghan is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FWCUd_3sET8wwWzP1bNnXVsQ-euyo3JpoD0QeHFDWhY/edit
Disclaimer: the article has not been peer-reviewed and the sources cited should be checked. The views expressed in this commentary represent the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the host institution, the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health. The views are not a substitute for professional medical advice.
References
1 [No title]. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/Communicable-disease-threats-report-28-mar-2020_0.pdf (accessed 29 Mar 2020).
2 Ascertainment bias – Catalog of Bias. Catalog of Bias. 2017.https://catalogofbias.org/biases/ascertainment-bias/ (accessed 29 Mar 2020).
3 WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 – 16 March 2020. https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—16-march-2020 (accessed 30 Mar 2020).
4 Crisanti A, Cassone A. In one Italian town, we showed mass testing could eradicate the coronavirus | Andrea Crisanti and Antonio Cassone. the Guardian. 2020.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/20/eradicated-coronavirus-mass-testing-covid-19-italy-vo (accessed 29 Mar 2020).
5 [No title]. https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.20.0080 (accessed 30 Mar 2020).
6 Older Patients: Common Risks for Seniors in the Hospital. https://www.parentgiving.com/elder-care/older-patients-at-risk-in-the-hospital/ (accessed 30 Mar 2020).
“What is known is that more than 647,000 people per year die from heart disease in this country, according to the CDC; and more than 599,000 die from cancer.
What is also obvious is that many if not most Americans are now living in fear of the newest disease to threaten in ways they never lived in fear of those old, established diseases.”
https://mustreadalaska.com/an-infection-of-fear/
[[Epidemiologists at Harvard University think intermittent lockdowns may need to extend into 2022, with social-distancing measures in place 25% to 70% of the time.]]
Seriously? This is government takeover of people’s lives- plain and simple- This seriously is seeming like it’s setting up end times one world government crap where they control every aspect of your life- Bill gates and the idiotic chip infused vaccine- Government telling folks when they can and can’t work- when they can and can’t socialize- people being arrested for simply going out and enjoying themselves out in the wilds away from everyone else- pastors being arrested etc- This is end times crap-
Give everyone the HCQ- send everyone back out into life- and be done with it- folks will still get the virus but nowhere near as bad for the sick and elderly- work on the blood plasma treatment in the meantime- and be done with this nonsense-
They want to test everyone for antibodies then brand those who pass.
The same reliable test, S. Korea has been using, has been available for about a 3-4 weeks in America at UC Davis, California.
So what kind of games are being played at the testing level?
UC Davis Health speeds up COVID-19 testing [video]
Academic medical center in unique position to benefit patients in the Sacramento region
(SACRAMENTO) — Clinical pathologists, infectious disease physicians and scientists at UC Davis Health are collaborating on new reagents (substances used for chemical analysis), diagnostic tests and a vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus in hopes of preventing and ultimately treating the infection.
UC Davis Health’s Clinical Laboratory began internal testing March 19 with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assays (tests to determine presence of infectious agents) while, at the same time, developing high-throughput assays on the Roche Diagnostics cobas® 6800 System to meet an expected surge in cases. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted “emergency-use authorization” to UC Davis’ test in mid-March.
This week, UC Davis Health Clinical Laboratory specialists developed the capacity to run as many as 200 tests a day. The commercial device has the capacity to perform more than 1,000 tests per day if the need arises.
Lydia Howell, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Nam Tran, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and senior director of clinical pathology in charge of the COVID-19 testing at UC Davis Health, discuss the instruments, the testing and their implications for COVID-19.
Q: When did UC Davis Health acquire the Roche cobas 6800 system?
Howell: It was delivered in December. We had chiefly purchased it for oncology testing. We didn’t anticipate it was going to be used for this, yet there it was ready to go when this crisis came up.
Q: Describe the instrument and UC Davis Health’s strategy in putting it into operation.
UC Davis Health clinical lab scientists load the university’s newly installed Roche Diagnostics Cobas 6800 instrument for high-speed COVID-19 testing.
Tran: The Roche cobas 6800 is effectively a giant robot the size of an SUV. We knew we’d have to move with the flow of where the demand was then be able to scale, so we came up with a three-pronged approach.
The first prong was come up with an assay, in this case, a CDC-based assay, to test 20 patients a day and sustain that for a while. The key term there is sustainability.
That brings us to the next platform that we looked at – an instrument called the GenMark ePlex. We already use it, and they had an available laboratory-developed test.
Once reagents were available simultaneously, which is the third prong, we deployed the Roche cobas 6800. To go from something that can test 20 tests a day to something that could test up to a 1,000 or more a day with a robot, that’s our end game. This is a marathon. It’s not a sprint.
Q: How accurate are the test results?
Tran: This is bread-and-butter laboratory medicine that we do day in and day out. We go through typically rigorous validations, including now with this COVID response. We compare against multiple standards to ensure that we are either meeting or exceeding what the manufacturer has claimed. And in this case, we’re seeing, at least with a CDC assay, a 91% sensitivity up to 100% specificity.
Q: Are we the only health system in the area with this technology?
Howell: Yes. We had this assay in advance of the emergency-use authorization. It was only released to certain laboratories such as academic health laboratories capable of bringing it up and onboard before it’s been FDA approved. We’re the ones able to do that testing and validation.
And the fact that we had some of the earliest COVID-19 patients here at UC Davis has helped us do that testing on real patients and their specimens, ensuring that this is a safe test for everybody. We have epidemiologists, treating physicians and the entire spectrum of expertise saving specimens and documenting what we see. Then, we’re able to take this knowledge and go forward and study for the future. That’s what an academic health center is all about. We’re really lucky here.
Q:Are you confident we will weather this crisis?
Tran: Yes. I have full confidence that the lab, the School of Medicine, the Davis campus and UC Davis Medical Center will meet these challenges. This is more sustained and challenging than Ebola back in 2015, but we have the resources and great people. It makes this institution great. We’re able to overcome it.
COVID-19: Stay Informed On The Latest Coronavirus
https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/newsroom/uc-davis-health-speeds-up-covid-19-testing/2020/04
they are working on a finger stick to paper blot test which will be more efficient and quicker
Pretty sure I already had it. Couldn’t stop coughing long enough to hold a conversation. But I have O blood type. So it didn’t kill me.
Okay, I want all those preening test-positive celebrities out there on the front lines, driving the sick to the hospital, delivering meals to them at home, etc., etc.!
Antibody testing is going to be very helpful moving forward.
I imagine the roll out is going to be just as chaotic as the PCR testing was when it started.
Who decides on the priority of test?
Job description?
Age?
Part of the country?
China’s WuXi AppTec Invests In US Biotech Software Firm ...
https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2019/01/07/chinas-wuxi-apptec-invests-in-us-biotech-software-firm-backed-by-bill-gates
“Jan 07, 2019 · Schrödinger Inc., an American computational software developer for drug discovery, has raised a US$85 million financing round, led by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and Chinese biopharmaceutical company WuXi AppTec’s Corporate Venture Fund, according to an announcement released last Friday.”
Plz somebody, tell me how I can go ahead and get this virus so I don’t have to take Bill Gates poison pill. Or I die, either is preferable than to have anything to do with that vaccine.