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Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

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Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#61

Post by stronglikedan »

kingkawn wrote: post #38
stronglikedan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America is finished if this is the best we got. Thank goodness NYC isn't America, or even the best America's got.

The fact that this is how you decided to respond is further proof of the country’s dysfunction. The winner will not be your perspective; we are all losing it together.

It's not a matter of perspective. NYC was clearly not prepared for a crisis, and is still not handling it on par with the rest of the country. Their dysfunction does not reflect the rest of the country, of which the majority is not handling the crisis in a dysfunctional manner.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#62

Post by krapp »

whatshisface wrote: post #42
krapp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's common for Americans to assume everything their government does is a false-flag pretext for a fascist power grab, but to assume the government never has a good reason for drastic measures even in the midst of a global pandemic seems more cynical than necessary. That's the kind of thinking that leads people to believe in FEMA death camps.

> I know it's common for Americans to assume everything their government does is a false-flag pretext for a fascist power grab History does not support the most hyperbolic speculations, but it does support the idea that the USG files away at the base of lady liberty every time the public's back is turned. Remember the Patriot Act and 9-11?

It can be true for some cases, but not all cases. Closing businesses, stay at home orders and quarantines are good ideas and, I believe, necessary for the public good. I'm also willing to believe they're temporary measures, if for no other reason than a permanent state of police-enforced quarantine would destroy the country and do no one any good, least of all the government.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#63

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

whatshisface wrote: post #58
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's possible that if you pursued corporations and a small number of individual defectors with the liability system and asked normal people nicely, you would be able to handle it. So, this doesn't seem like an approach that has a materially different desired effect from what we're already doing. The policy's goal is to achieve temporary shutdown of businesses and prevent transmission of the virus. You're just using…

> I guess what I was asking was whether you have any ideas that have any likelihood of being more effective than current approaches. Well, what we're talking about is how to keep civil liberties while also effecting a quarantine. I think if we came up with a solution that was as good as the current solution but that had less risk of giving the government abusable and sticky power, that would satisfy the goal of the d…

> the broader point of "if we put our heads to it we might be able to avoid an expansion in government power while not making any unacceptable sacrifices."

And I guess my point is that I admit that possibility, but I consider the likelihood very low.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#64

Post by scottlocklin »

ceejayoz wrote: post #59
scottlocklin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're changing the subject: if indeed the number of deaths from flu and covid are the same, during a quarantine, we have made a terrible mistake. I have no idea if they are the same. Do you?

You need to reconcile the "no worse than the flu" idea with "collapsed the northern Italian healthcare system". If you're proposing they're similar in impact, you need to explain why their actual real-life impact is not similar. The CDC estimates somewhere between 24k and 63k flu deaths since October. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... The previous season was estimated at 34,200. https://…

>You need to reconcile...

No, actually, I don't need to reconcile anything. I'd prefer to stick to the OP assertion. If flu deaths are similar to C19 deaths during mitigation, it is abundantly obvious that we've made a terrible mistake. You seem to want to litigate something. I want to do a t-test.

Of course if C19 deaths are 10x what the flu is during mitigation, and overall pneumonia deaths are much higher (aka we're not mistaking flu for C19), then shutting down the world economy was a good idea. I have no idea which thing is true. Your statements above indicate you don't either.

Are total pneumonia deaths (aka flu and covid19 summed up) bigger or smaller than in previous years? Presumably someone's tracking this?

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#65

Post by ceejayoz »

scottlocklin wrote: post #64
ceejayoz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to reconcile the "no worse than the flu" idea with "collapsed the northern Italian healthcare system". If you're proposing they're similar in impact, you need to explain why their actual real-life impact is not similar. The CDC estimates somewhere between 24k and 63k flu deaths since October. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... The previous season was estimated at 34,200. https://…

>You need to reconcile... No, actually, I don't need to reconcile anything. I'd prefer to stick to the OP assertion. If flu deaths are similar to C19 deaths during mitigation, it is abundantly obvious that we've made a terrible mistake. You seem to want to litigate something. I want to do a t-test. Of course if C19 deaths are 10x what the flu is during mitigation, and overall pneumonia deaths are much higher (aka we'…

> If flu deaths are similar to C19 deaths during mitigation, it is abundantly obvious that we've made a terrible mistake.

You're asking for data we won't have yet. As I noted, COVID deaths are only just ramping up; 90% of them in the USA are in the last week or so.

There are early indications the lockdowns have impacted flu, as is fairly obvious. Local to me:

https://www.rochesterregional.org/news/2020/01/flu-season-20...

> New York State is reporting 157,426 positive cases. The latest data (ending March 28) shows a 77% decrease in reported cases from the previous week.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#66

Post by justin66 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #57
justin66 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s silly to think one city is better than another on some objective scale I think very old, classic measures like economic activity, the number of great works of art that come out of a place, the influence of a city on its surrounding region and its world, and the progress toward better public health and safety measures (highly relevant here) are a lot more quantifiable than one might at first believe.

Yeah, NYC is better than Tucson on all those metrics. Tucson is better on metrics like "I subjectively think the landscape looks nice", and "I like the sort of people who live there". What's your point?

I was engaging with the grandparent post about "the best America's got," which is an interesting topic generally, but also specifically in terms of public health. And then I corrected your statement it’s silly to think one city is better than another on some objective scale by naming a number of very reasonable - and I think, important rather than silly - objective scales by which a city can be measured.

I mean, if you don't think a city's economic output is an important objective measure, congratulations on never having lived in an area with a serious economic contraction (or read about one, apparently). If you don't think a city's rate of cholera cases (to use a classic example) or, more to the point, COVID 19 cases, is important, I don't even...

(I wouldn't want to live in NYC either, but I think that's uninteresting and not what any of this is about.)

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#67

Post by johnchristopher »

Take that with a pinch of salt, things aren't clear yet, but:

Well, I read today we have a problem like that in Belgium: it seems small bio labs aren't allowed to test even though they adapted their equipment and workflow. Only big pharma are lined up.

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#68

Post by justin66 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #61
kingkawn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this is how you decided to respond is further proof of the country’s dysfunction. The winner will not be your perspective; we are all losing it together.

It's not a matter of perspective. NYC was clearly not prepared for a crisis, and is still not handling it on par with the rest of the country. Their dysfunction does not reflect the rest of the country, of which the majority is not handling the crisis in a dysfunctional manner.

I haven't been following all the numbers but one ironic thing about this is that it might be that a city like New York that ordinarily does pretty well in terms of public health has fallen down, but California's cities, which are a medieval nightmare of public health in a lot of ways, seem to have locked things down fairly well.

(I have some suspicions about that, like cases in the homeless population being underrepresented in the data at this stage, but we'll see)

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#69

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

koolba wrote: post #19
EarthIsHome wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What civil liberties are you afraid of eliminating in a crisis like this?

Both the right of assembly and the right to bear arms have been repeatedly infringed. For example in CA: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-24/l-a-coun...

No rights are absolute. Your right of free speech famously has limits; "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" is prohibited.

Temporarily closing gun shops, like shops for anything else not required for daily life, is absolutely reasonable.

If you claim that guns are required for daily life, that says more about your country than any other point here (and not in a good way).

Re: Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

#70

Post by stronglikedan »

kingkawn wrote: post #43
stronglikedan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing - you really don't know until you're asked to give them up, and it's usually implied that you will only be giving them up for the duration of the crisis, but in reality you hardly ever get them back. This is how they get chipped away over time, so an abundance of caution must be used when deciding what you're will to give up, even during a crisis.

17,000 dead Americans in this circumstance is not a pittance of caution let alone an abundance

It's the abundance of caution that's kept it so low.
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