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My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

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Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#151

Post by endorphone »

rsync wrote: post #149
endorphone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masks are considered useless unless you are infected. This is a bizarre claim that can be countered against the reality that every front-line worker is equipped with a mask. EDIT: Almost immediately I dropped to -2. Bizarre. Again, every health agency the world over equips health workers who deal with potential COVID-19 with N95+ masks. For some reason people desperately want to clutch onto the notion that it's usele…

"EDIT: Almost immediately I dropped to -2. Bizarre." I downvoted you because you talked about your downvotes. If you're keeping track of scoring, HN is perhaps not the right community for you.

Congratulations. If you feel the need to tell people about your moderation choices, HN is perhaps not the right community for you.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#152

Post by garmaine »

voidmain wrote: post #145
garmaine wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC doesn't run the tests. The hospitals and independent labs do. There has been some issues with the test kits distributed by the CDC, but since the virus genome has been sequenced you don't actually need a test kit (it's just a faster process if you have one). However the CDC has enacted emergency powers to make it illegal for hospitals to use their own testing equipment, which they have in-house, to test their…

Some clarification based on what I've been able to put together (caveat: I'm not an expert in this area) The CDC developed a testing protocol (crudely, a set of 3 conserved RNA sequences of the virus to chemically "grep" for). The protocol is here [1] and I think anyone with suitable equipment (an RT-PCR machine and an oligonucleotide synthesizer to make the primers and probes?) could run tests using just the informa…

What you say is correct, but is conflating a separate issue.

You are correct that FDA approval is required for a clinical test, and for that a CDC test kit must be used (even though the biochemistry involved is trivial and a grad student with access to the right tools could put together their own kit...)

An entirely separate issue is that the CDC has used its emergency powers to restrict usage of these kits--you cannot use the kit to test a patient unless the CDC gives the OK for doing so. Even though for a long time many of these kits were not being used to available capacity...

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#153

Post by themagician »

enchiridion wrote: post #123
themagician wrote: post #107

This helps highlight just how much of this is nothing more than FUD. The CDC counts real flu deaths and estimates infections. It doesn’t test for them. As a result you get a relatively low fatality rate. But for COVID-19 we are using only confirmed deaths and confirmed tested infections to come up with a fatality rate that seems much higher than it actually is because most infections go unreported. This is just a rea…

I keep seeing similar arguments. Does that mean China's response is based on FUD? If it is really just a flu, then why the drastic measures?

Because the flu is really bad. But it’s not unusual.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#154

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

hutzlibu wrote: post #86
seraphsf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core problem is that the CDC (and country) has had the capacity to test only a few hundred samples per day. Meaning, they don’t have the ability to test everyone with flu-like symptoms. Nobody thinks it’s right to NOT test every potential case. It just wasn’t possible. Good news: Just today, they released new rules that should increase testing capacity by 400x.

"Good news: Just today, they released new rules that should increase testing capacity by 400x" How can new rules increase testing capacity? All you can do, is adjust the rules to the existing capacities ...

The capacity basically existed, but couldn’t be used until it had gone through fda certification for the virus. The new rules allow labs to perform testing after sending the required information to the fda but before the fda has had time to review that information

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#155

Post by im3w1l »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #17
allovernow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Masks are considered useless unless you are infected Considering there are multiple papers out of china which suggest the virus is aerosolized, I think it's irresponsible for anyone to claim masks are useless PPE. Anything less than n99 or p99 might be useless, but that's a different story. There's also one paper which claims that treating a mask with saline solution makes it substantially more effective against vir…

Governments have other concerns besides your individual health. They need to prevent panic as much as possible, prevent economic collapse, etc. The response to events like this can be worse than the initial problem. What do you think happens if the CDC says everyone needs to wear masks, you go to your local store, and there are no masks? There would be violence in the streets.

> Governments have other concerns besides your individual health.

Exactly. And that's why I'm gonna look out for myself.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#156

Post by voidmain »

garmaine wrote: post #152
voidmain wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some clarification based on what I've been able to put together (caveat: I'm not an expert in this area) The CDC developed a testing protocol (crudely, a set of 3 conserved RNA sequences of the virus to chemically "grep" for). The protocol is here [1] and I think anyone with suitable equipment (an RT-PCR machine and an oligonucleotide synthesizer to make the primers and probes?) could run tests using just the informa…

What you say is correct, but is conflating a separate issue. You are correct that FDA approval is required for a clinical test, and for that a CDC test kit must be used (even though the biochemistry involved is trivial and a grad student with access to the right tools could put together their own kit...) An entirely separate issue is that the CDC has used its emergency powers to restrict usage of these kits--you cann…

My understanding was that prior to Friday, CDC Atlanta's comically limited RT-PCR capacity was backlogged even under the "see-no-evil" testing criteria, and that approximately no other labs were able to do tests (since validation of the CDC issued tests failed). If there was also unused lab capacity that is good to know, do you have a source?

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#157

Post by antognini »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #113
mnm1 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CT scan is fairly standard procedure for diagnosing many things. Why do doctors and hospitals need CDC permission to use it to test? This seems like a bad movie where the CDC is not doing much due to political pressure. Why can't doctors act in their patients' best interest on their own?

A CT has a pretty high radiation dose. As far as I understand, for every 2000 people given a chest CT we expect 1 person to get a fatal form of cancer due to the CT. Compared to the natural incidence of getting a fatal cancer in your lifetime (about 400 in 2000), this is a very low. And for serious conditions, a CT can literally be a life saver. But if you apply chest CTs to screen for a disease with (let's say) a 0.…

Yes, the rule of thumb I know is that you can get about 25 CT scans in your lifetime before having a significantly increased risk of cancer. By contrast you can get about 25,000 chest X-rays.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#158

Post by outside1234 »

I have a brutal cold right now with a ton of congestion and a fever. I am trying decide on if I should go to the hospital here in California - has anyone read anything that helps you make that decision?

I am a Caltrain rider daily and I feel like it is not fair to subject other folks to this if it is a COVID-19 - but I don't also want to overload the health system unnecessary if there are folks with Acute symptoms.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#159

Post by throwGuardian »

Not to state the obvious, but there's not been a diagnosis of covid-19 yet, so let's keep that in mind before concluding this person has it.

Also, otherwise healthy 30-year olds need to do exactly what this person is doing: quarantine & treat it with the same meds as the flu.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#160

Post by scottlocklin »

eganist wrote: post #119
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CT has a pretty high radiation dose. As far as I understand, for every 2000 people given a chest CT we expect 1 person to get a fatal form of cancer due to the CT. Compared to the natural incidence of getting a fatal cancer in your lifetime (about 400 in 2000), this is a very low. And for serious conditions, a CT can literally be a life saver. But if you apply chest CTs to screen for a disease with (let's say) a 0.…

From what we can tell, SARS-CoV-2 has a 2% mortality rate among those diagnosed. That seems like a pretty decent trade in odds if it accelerates early stage treatment.

Considering you just read an article on how the CDC has told people to not test people who aren't obviously going to die, you may want to revise that figure downward some out of sample bias.
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