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Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

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Re: Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

#31

Post by yingw787 »

I’m starting to take some precautionary measures even here in Virginia. Stocking up on food and other emergency supplies, avoiding public transit and walking everywhere, wiping down all surfaces I come in contact with with Clorox wipes I keep in my backpack. Hopefully I’m just going insane and there’s no reason to panic, but a respiratory illness with no treatment protocol besides quarantine, an r nought of probably no less than 2 given lack of testing, and untraceable infection paths for new cases domestically sounds concerning to me. This isn’t Ebola or Zika. This doesn’t even look like SARS. It looks more like the first wave of Spanish flu. Second wave of Spanish flu made it land in the history books.

I really, really hope I’m just going insane and nothing will happen.

Re: Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

#34

Post by sergiotapia »

waynecochran wrote: post #2

How do you differentiate influenza from covid-19? These folks probably just have the flu. I live in WA state and I had the worst case of the flu I can remember about 3 weeks ago. Did I have covid-19? No way to really know.

I saw on the news, they are now using CAT scans to detect as a first pass. Apparently the damage done to the lungs has a distinct popcorn like outline, easily seen on the scans.

Re: Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

#35

Post by adrianmonk »

aazaa wrote: post #27

From another story on the nursing home outbreak: > "If we had the ability to test earlier, I'm sure we would have identified patients earlier," he [a Washington State health official] said. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/485302-officials-annou... This is a pattern playing out with striking regularity: 1. Local authorities can't test for themselves. 2. CDC adjudicates testing requests, rejects many (most) of th…

> apparently deliberate suppression of information

There's an alternative explanation: that the CDC massively dropped the ball on making enough test kits available.

The CDC comes off looking pretty bad regardless of whether it's deceit or incompetence, but they're pretty different things.

Hanlon's Razor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor) would tell us which to prefer, although it's not always right.

Re: Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

#36

Post by vanniv »

Pfhreak wrote: post #15
waynecochran wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistically it is still far more likely that they had the flu. I think it is dangerous to overstate the problem because then when it really does become an issue it will be dismissed because of all the previous folks "crying wolf."

You can test for influenza. In that article I didn't see, "tested positive for influenza". I did see "tested positive for coronavirus". So no, I don't think it's statistically more likely that ill patients around a highly contagious disease randomly picked up something else.

The influenza test exists, bit it has a very high false negative rate. It is useful in epidemiology, because if you test large populations, you'll get enough positives to learn something -- but you learn virtually nothing from a negative influenza test.

Re: Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

#37

Post by wolco »

adrianmonk wrote: post #35
aazaa wrote: post #27

From another story on the nursing home outbreak: > "If we had the ability to test earlier, I'm sure we would have identified patients earlier," he [a Washington State health official] said. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/485302-officials-annou... This is a pattern playing out with striking regularity: 1. Local authorities can't test for themselves. 2. CDC adjudicates testing requests, rejects many (most) of th…

> apparently deliberate suppression of information There's an alternative explanation: that the CDC massively dropped the ball on making enough test kits available. The CDC comes off looking pretty bad regardless of whether it's deceit or incompetence, but they're pretty different things. Hanlon's Razor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor ) would tell us which to prefer, although it's not always right.

I'm sure this is the reason. Not being honest about it is a problem.

Re: Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

#38

Post by vanniv »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #16
waynecochran wrote: post #2

How do you differentiate influenza from covid-19? These folks probably just have the flu. I live in WA state and I had the worst case of the flu I can remember about 3 weeks ago. Did I have covid-19? No way to really know.

There’s an RNA based test procedure that can differentiate Covid-19 from the Flu, I think it’s what everyone is using.

The better thing is the new (not yet widely available) antibody test, which can determine if you had it even after you recover.

Useless in a clinical setting, of course, but highly useful for epidemiology

Re: Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

#39

Post by baq »

wolco wrote: post #37
adrianmonk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> apparently deliberate suppression of information There's an alternative explanation: that the CDC massively dropped the ball on making enough test kits available. The CDC comes off looking pretty bad regardless of whether it's deceit or incompetence, but they're pretty different things. Hanlon's Razor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor ) would tell us which to prefer, although it's not always right.

I'm sure this is the reason. Not being honest about it is a problem.

Why didn’t they buy working kits from other countries though? They had weeks to do that.

Re: Officials: Dozens at WA nursing facility show possible coronavirus symptoms

#40

Post by cryptoz »

adrianmonk wrote: post #35
aazaa wrote: post #27

From another story on the nursing home outbreak: > "If we had the ability to test earlier, I'm sure we would have identified patients earlier," he [a Washington State health official] said. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/485302-officials-annou... This is a pattern playing out with striking regularity: 1. Local authorities can't test for themselves. 2. CDC adjudicates testing requests, rejects many (most) of th…

> apparently deliberate suppression of information There's an alternative explanation: that the CDC massively dropped the ball on making enough test kits available. The CDC comes off looking pretty bad regardless of whether it's deceit or incompetence, but they're pretty different things. Hanlon's Razor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor ) would tell us which to prefer, although it's not always right.

I think the CDC comes off looking like the victim here. Years ago, Trump fired the pandemic response team [1] with a cited reason to 'cut costs'. Clearly there must have been some other reason, because firing a pandemic response team is guaranteed to increase costs, not reduce them.

Either way, the CDC has been intentionally handicapped by the Trump administration who specifically and intentionally reduced their ability to respond to crises like this one.

I certainly do not blame the CDC for their issues this time around, they are generally an incredible organization employing truly top minds and very high tech. If there is blame to go around here, it is with those who think that science is fake and that no money needs to be spent on community healthcare or prevention.

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

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