WhitinsvilleWX

13 minutes ago, OSUmetstud said:

Thats the pcr reagent problem. Its why we need the rapid at home tests. 

An at home test would be better , but that’s not an option right now. Takes a long while to get something like that. The Abbott test uses a standard instrument that is available at minute clinics and POC places. They could even be set up at large companies that have nurses, schools, really anywhere as long as a nurse that’s trained is at the location. 
Spending tax dollars on that, which is something that could help stop this, is far preferable than printing money to pay people to stay home.

2 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

I got my results in 12 hours

Because you probably went to the head of the line because you needed it to have your surgery.

Just now, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

I’m also hearing stories of days and days for tests and results. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of testing?

If I’m sick on Monday, but can’t get a test until Wednesday and then don’t get my results until the following Tuesday, what’s the point?

That’s why the rapid test is the key. Even if it pops a few false negatives, if you test enough in  the same areas and catch the same person again a week  later, it’s better than using a PCR test that takes days to get the results back and calls god knows how many false positives because all its measuring in some cases are dead nucleotides. 

Rapid tests are the key. I’ve said it before , but the PCR test needs to be scrapped.

Distribute millions of the Abbott rapid 15 minute tests and test about 10% f the population every few days. People who are sick enough with a high viral load and can pass it on will test positive. The PCR test is slow and flawed. 
Widespread use of the rapid test will do more than any lockdown of people’s businesses. 

2 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

Yeah. It’s weird. My son’s university has been testing everyone twice a week and have had very few positives since August. 

Yet a church service in Fitchburg has resulted in over 150 cases with a couple of dozen currently (as of yesterday) hospitalized.  

Ive changed my mind on this more then once. I’m back to thinking it’s spread more by touch and surfaces. Too many anecdotes of people I know that got it and others I’ve talked to indicate to me that touch is a key driver. 

1 minute ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

After going months since hearing of any friends/coworkers etc, it seems to be really taking off in my life.  In the last week I know of at least a dozen people who either have it or have recently had it.  
plus numerous students of mine have had it or have immediate family members they live with have it or have recently had it. 
 

Starting to get out of control. 

Ive known a few that had it. They said it wasn’t too bad.

My company did a test/pilot testing program of 300 people on site. They tested all 300 once a week for 4 weeks. That’s 1200 total test. Not one positive. I’m not really sure it’s coming out of work places. Then again, we’re 100% masked unless in a private office, 25% floor capacity, and I have limited occupancy in the lab where we can distance. I really think the distancing and the hand hygiene is more key then the masks. 
 

6 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

You just literally tossed the entire medical profession in the dumpster by stating we should do nothing.  Unless you prefaced your statement, that includes the development of a vaccine.

Dude,  calm the fook down. I dont have time to write a war and peace post every time. Sure I think a vaccine is great. I never said do nothing. My point was that you really can’t mask and lock down your way out of this. 
You’re obviously triggered. 
Again, have a good evening. I’m going to the happiest place on earth tomorrow for 10 days. You need to chill and relax too.

10 minutes ago, correnjim1 said:

he's not doing anyone any harm....just cause you disagree and don't like what he thinks it's no reason to get personal

That’s ok. I’ve been called worse. He’s on edge. I just tell the truth and some dont like it. 
Eh, what can you do?

1 minute ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Nor do you know shit about me.  You call yourself a doctor but you’re breaking the oath you made to “do no harm”.

We’ll have to agree to disagree. 
Again, you have a great evening.

13 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Not sure anywhere in his post he said “stopped”.  Good to know where you stand though.  Do nothing and let the virus run into course and kill countless humans without taking measures to lessen that number.  Heartless, unethical and disgrace to your profession.  Guess we should just stop with a vaccine as well since we should just let it “run its course”.

You have a great evening now.

You don’t know shit about me so keep the personnel stuff out of it. Vaccines? I hope to hell they work. But you can’t stop death. It’s a fact of life. People will continue to die. Fact not opinion. You’d think after 9 months people would understand that now.

8 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

The scale on this graph reflects the upward trend in deaths better.  Bottomed out around 700 per day earlier in Fall and now about 1200 per day.

If you check some of the individual states especially in the Plains and Midwest, deaths have really increased lately... to April numbers or worse in some cases.  It's coming for other regions too unless things tighten up.  Knowledge and treatments have gotten better since April, but not sure how many additional strides have been made since, say, August/September.

 

I’m a medical professional and I guess this may come of as heartless, but it’s a respiratory virus that won’t be stopped by masks, shut downs  lockdowns, etc. 

It will have to run it’s course. Yes, and some will die. Sucks big time. But that’s the way it is. 
 

4 minutes ago, NorEastermass128 said:

I can’t imagine it would be a full lockdown like before. Probably limited to gyms, indoor dining, theaters...but that’s just pure speculation on my part.

 

That’s my guess. 
My company still has the labs open in California and they’re shut down more then we are. Not sure we can afford to shut down the labs again like before. Those 3 months set the pipeline back at least 6 months. We even put clinical trials on hold.

My barber said if they shut them down again, he’ll give back door haircuts. He doesn’t care. He did he couldn’t afford another shut down. I know at least 2 gyms that said they’d stay open. They’re key card gyms with no personnel on site. 

34 minutes ago, NorEastermass128 said:

Rumors swirling from family texts that Baker is about to announce another 4-6 week shutdown. 

How extensive?

Hopefully my company doesn’t shut the labs down again.  We’re technically essential, but we got shut down for 3 months last time. Not a whole lot that lab people can do from home,

44 minutes ago, mreaves said:

But "flatten the curve" isn't a one time thing though right?  Don't you have to keep it flattened until we get to a position where there is combination of better treatment, vaccines and immunity?  It doesn't do any good to flatten the curve for a month or two and then just let it go right?  I would think we have to have some patience to get to that point.

It’s a false narrative somewhat. 
The hospitals were never really overwhelmed before. Those “field” hospitals that were set up never really treated many people anyway. ICUs are full because they are designed to be close to capacity to keep people employed. A lot of these smaller hospitals around the country have Covid patients in ICU as an area of isolation, not because they need that level of care. And the death rate has been basically flat since the summer, even if you believe there are 1000 a day dying because of Covid. We’ve been in this increasing spike now for close to 2 months. If there was a relationship between the spike and higher deaths, it would have shown up by now. Like Phin said, somehow all this morphed into stop the cases. That’s never going to stop until it burns out on its own or Pfizer’s witches brew gets to enough people and actually works. But you can’t keep turning the economy and and off like this, or even threatening to. 
In Massachusetts, around 4% of the total beds are populated by Covid cases. And close to half of that are in there with it, not because of it. I wouldn’t call 4% a crisis. 

13 hours ago, PhineasC said:

We need to get back to the original concept of flatten the curve. The focus should be on making sure the hospitals don't become overwhelmed. That is how Fauci and gang sold everyone on the lockdowns in the first place. I'm serious that at some point the narrative for a lot of Americans morphed into "we can take certain actions such as mask wearing and social distancing to just avoid COVID entirely," which is silly and never what any legit expert said. I'm not sure how this all got twisted, perhaps it was inevitable given what is happening on the political side of things. Either way, you now have people that have been following the supposed silver bullet formula for dodging COVID who are still getting it anyway, and that will cause a lot more people to come to the conclusion that the rules are all pretty useless and throw the baby out with the bathwater. The messaging on COVID is totally messed up now. People are obsessed with cases and have totally lost the forest for the trees at this point. We need a total reset and restart on COVID messaging across the board, IMO.

 

^^ this. 

One of the pluses to waiting is that you generally have your career in hand and aren’t so poor!

By the time we had kids we weren’t struggling to get by. I was making good money, stable job, and could afford good shit instead of trying to raise kids in a tiny apartment eating ramen off of a card table. 
I was kind of unique in that I didn’t need loans. PhD was paid for by the school and the MD was paid for out of someone else’s pocket. Not everyone has that advantage. 

2 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Definitely a set path for those who go into medicine. Law is the same way. There is a rite of passage period where you are absolutely beat to shit as a junior lawyer at a big firm to earn your stripes.

An MD/PhD will for sure beat the hell out of you. 

I spent my mid 20’s to mid 30’s in grad school, med school and in a hospital. I had no time for much else. 

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

  Getting close to shit or get off the pot time with kids.  Wife turns 30 this year and I’ll be hitting mid-30s... that kid decision yay or nay is barreling at us fast.  

 

Eh, I was 45 when my youngest was born. My wife was 38. You have time.

23 minutes ago, mreaves said:

Paid $1.71/gal for a heating oil delivery yesterday. How does that compare to SNE?

Similar 

Mu guy is $1.50 right now

7 minutes ago, SouthCoastMA said:

Maybe this was already brought up, but apparently the Pfizer vaccine needs to be chilled at -70 degrees and goes bad after 5 days out of those temperatures. Seems like that could pose a lot of distribution issues in worse off countries that don't have the required storage. I don't know if that temp is any different than what other vaccines require either, so it might not be that big a deal. 

It needs -80 C, or dry ice works too. mRNA degrades pretty rapidly even at normal freezer temps. Its really not a huge issue in industrialized countries. Third world....different story.

2 minutes ago, OSUmetstud said:

The CDC still believes 50% of transmission is occurring pre-symptomatically.

I'm not sure it's that high, but ok.  And it's probably not more than 24 hours before symptoms set in either. That's why we should go to a rapid test now. This is a pretty primitive run of the mill respiratory virus. Immunology, viral spread, viral spread kinetics, viral load dogma, etc. hasn't magically changed. And if it wasn't for killing the LTC facilities folks (close to 60% of deaths), this would be relegated to swine flu status in 2009. 

But LTC facility spread of norovirus, C. Diff, and any manner of pestilence has been around for years. I'm not sure why it should surprise anyone that this is any different. Swine didn't kill them because they were immune to it. The infections were among the younger crowd who had a thymus and could fight it off. 

46 minutes ago, OSUmetstud said:

 Unknowing and asymptomatic staff bringing it into facilities has always been the major driver imo. 

There is no widespread asymptomatic spread that's driving this. That's a fallacy propagated by a faulty PCR molecular test, or more specifically a faulty interpretation. Even Fauci acknowledged this as far back as July in a virology today conference. From my 20 years experience with RT-PCR and what I've seen, about 40-50% of "positives" are just reading dead nucleotides from people who never had enough viral load to be infected themselves or infect others.

What needs to happen is widespread use of the rapid test. Abbott's test is much better than the early rapid tests. If someone is actually infected to a level that they are contagious to others,  it'll get picked up on a rapid test. Even if it missed a person with a false negative, if you tested enough, you'd catch the false negatives and still limit the spread. This is what Michael Mina at HSPH advocates as well.

The PCR test should be scrapped in favor of the rapid antigen test. If you folks that want to government to do something, that's what they could do. Buy and distribute millions of these tests that could be used daily in certain settings. 

1 hour ago, Lava Rock said:

So Biden wants to shut down for 4-6 wks and says one of his scientists says we can emulate what Australia and NZ did. Really? That's not going to work and to even think the US is comparable to two islands in the southern hemisphere is ridiculous. it's a non-starter for so many reasons.

That'll never happen.

We'll keep doing what we're doing until we get shot up with Pfizer's witches brew.

1 minute ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

Cali Grill was one of my top dinners I have ever eaten. Beach Club is a great location for Epcot and the Studios. We have not stayed at the Villas there but in the main hotel. Tusker is meh so not missing much. I would go over to Animal Kingdom Lodge and do Boma or Jiko instead.   Or in Animal Kingdom itself Tiffins was very good a couple of years ago.  And Satuli Canteen is fun

I think we’re doing Tiffins for lunch one day. We’re in AK 2 days. 
Cali grill is awesome! Really good steak. Top 2-3 for sure. Only better might be the filet at Ceasar’s in Tahoe. It’s a close second anyway.