English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

12:40 AM

Canada's first cases of the omicron coronavirus variant confirmed in Ottawa, last updated 1 hour ago.

Cerberus

1:06 AM

Yeah, it's everywhere.

They should have banned all air travel.

But no.

It worked well enough for New Zealand.

For us, it could have delayed the spread of variants around the world tremendously.

tchrist

1:19 AM

I'm perfectly certain it's everywhere. I don't know that they could have stopped it, though, because I don't think they knew it was happening before it had managed to get to everywhere already.

And that's because we don't care enough to force a proper quarantine. It's the only way.

And we're still a good two weeks out from knowing anything we want to know. We're months out from knowing most things.

Like is it more transmissible? Does it cause increased illness and death? How do our current treatments and vaccines stand up against it?

It appears to be more transmissible, maybe 2x–6x worse than Delta. But we don't know for sure yet.

Our hospitals are already too full. No ICU beds left in my county at last update. But this won't make the antisciencers get scienced. Nothing will.

anonymous

1:55 AM

and to think they believe in stuff called "Scientology"

tchrist

At family Thanksgiving this year, one person knew someone who'd already caught this three times.

anonymous

:O

How old are they?

Cerberus

@tchrist Even a 99% quarantine would delay the spread significantly.

tchrist

early 30s

anonymous

🤔

Cerberus

2:04 AM

@tchrist Our intensive care is approaching maximum capacity again as well.

tchrist

@Cerberus But we don't do quarantines. Not really.

Cerberus

Just stopping intercontinental travel would delay the spread of variants significantly.

tchrist

People would rather die.

Cerberus

In the papers, we read that, on the last flights from South Africa, on Saturday, around 60 people are probably positive.

This was tested only after arrival at Amsterdam.

Those people should never have been allowed to board.

tchrist

Don't you remember when I was aghast at all those spring-break kids in Europe bringing it back from their alpine adventures, and you said well you can't stop people from moving around?

Cerberus

2:06 AM

And I think they would normally NOT have been forced into isolation after arriving.

And they would NOT get PCR tested here.

tchrist

I can't understand how 10% were positive.

@Cerberus Right, we've completely given up trying to stop this.

Cerberus

It's because the country of departure has no incentive to do testing properly and enforce it 100%.

@tchrist I don't, but have always advocated banning all air travel, from the beginning.

tchrist

This was on busses.

Cerberus

I think most kids went by bus, yes.

Those are much harder to ban.

tchrist

New Zealand managed. :)

Perhaps Old Zealand needs to be an island.

Cerberus

2:08 AM

They might have a slight advantage there, I forgot what it was.

Old Zeeland is still a collection of islands.

tchrist

Colorado had one town that managed to evade the last pandemic by letting absolutely nobody in or out.

Cerberus

@tchrist Good idea, if possible.

tchrist

There can be no pandemic safety that's based on taking someone's word for anything.

Cerberus

But it is much more difficult to prevent people from travelling over land.

@tchrist No, indeed.

tchrist

Or even their forgible paperwork. You put them in a bloody bunker for 40 days and 40 nights to see if they survive. If they do, you let them out.

Cerberus

2:12 AM

That may be a bit long.

Two weeks should be a good compromise.

tchrist

I'm being etymological. Maybe a few weeks.

Cerberus

I think it was two week sin NZ.

By the way, that map is wrong: the large orange island is also Zeeland.

tchrist

Now we know why Noah spent 40 days and 40 nights in that bloody ark of his: he was in quarantine!

@Cerberus Didn't you evict the sea from there now?

Cerberus

I just don't understand why there wasn't, and still isn't, a mainstream discussion on stopping air travel.

tchrist

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Cerberus

2:14 AM

@tchrist No, they are even 'giving back' some polders to the sea now.

@tchrist The lock-downs cost much more.

Do you still see the old islands in the modern province?

tchrist

People hate being told what they HAVE to do. Hate hate hate. They would rather die. And do.

Cerberus

I think compulsory vaccination is about to spread.

tchrist

There are actually far-left anti-vaxers too, not just far-right ones.

Cerberus

You mean the 'spiritual' ones?

The Rudolph Steiner ones?

Yes: never trust people who believe in things that aren't there.

tchrist

The super health food crazies.

We have those ones, too. Boulder is too much like San Francisco in that regard for its own good. I've heard of those people here.

> Some are ex-hippies, now in their late 60s and early 70s, who regard their bodies as “sacred” and don’t want anything or anyone to “invade” it.

One, who grows her own food and lives by herself in a cabin not far from here, told me she didn’t want anything going into her body that she didn’t control. When I asked whether she had been vaccinated against smallpox, measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, she told me she assumed so but had been too small to have had knowledge or control.

So that's the key to vaccination mandates. You have to say that unvaccinated people are not allowed to participate in civil society. They can't go to school, they can't go to restaurants, etc etc.

They can't go to work.

At least, not if it involves being inside around other people.

Ever.

It's not like we (knowingly) let kids without up-to-date vaccinations into our public schools.

People get killed telling others to put a mask on.

2

anonymous

2:25 AM

Mask rage vs road rage.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yeah, those are the same people.

@tchrist That's 2G.

They are preparing the law for that now.

But it will not have as quick and as strong an effect as lock-downs.

@anonymous Yeah, that's funny.

tchrist

> Effective November 8, 2021, all non-immigrant, non-U.S. citizen air travelers to the United States will be required to be fully vaccinated and to provide proof of vaccination status prior to boarding an airplane to the United States.
U.S. citizens and Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs) who are eligible to travel but are not fully vaccinated will need to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test one (1) day before their flight.

U.S citizens and LPRs who are fully vaccinated will need to present airlines with proof of vaccination and of a negative COVID-19 test three (3) days before their fl…

Cerberus

I mean, those mouth caps are horrible, but, if they work, and if it's the law, you just put them on. They won't kill you.

tchrist

I'm sure Holland was doing something like that to the South Africaners, right?

@Cerberus People think laws don't apply to them.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yeah, and that régime has been proven time and again not to work.

60 positive people out of 600, from a relatively civilised country like South Africa.

@tchrist All countries are doing things like that, to travellers from abroad.

tchrist

2:29 AM

Exactly. Which means that that same rate applies where we didn't look for it as well. So we're hosed.

Cerberus

But even here, the non-PCR testing infrastructure is extremely unreliable.

tchrist

Well, non-PCR testing isn't all that reliable to start with. Just a quick check.

Cerberus

That is, you can get negative test results while you were not properly tested, or not at all.

tchrist

Or maybe that's changed. I don't know.

Cerberus

Yes, that is true.

But that is just the baseline of unreliability.

My friend went to a random bridal shop to get tested.

As she described it, the stick was vaguely waved around her nose, and she received the result within two minutes, which is impossible in any case.

Experiences like these about.

Those tests should not be valid anywhere important.

tchrist

2:32 AM

My friend's mom had to go through quite a lot of trouble just to go home to China, including a very recent negative PCR test just to get on the plane, then a two-week quarantine (at her expense) on entry to China and another one after she got out of that one and went to her own province. Took her a month to get home, after having been stuck here for more than a year.

Cerberus

That is correct.

If you must needs travel, you'll have to pay for it in time and money.

tchrist

They aren't screwing around with it. We are. I hate that.

Cerberus

Yeah.

I mean, we don't want Chinese-like lock-downs, we want to live in a liberal society; but restricting foreign travel is really not a big deal.

Well, intercontinental and air travel isn't.

Stopping buses is very difficult on a continent without borders.

tchrist

When you live in a country as wide as Russia or China or America, you really have to consider regional travel as well.

Cerberus

If possible, yes.

And they did some of that here.

tchrist

2:35 AM

But we don't have any good way to stop traffic at state borders. China is managing it to some extent.

Cerberus

You weren't supposed to go to Germany or Belgium unless absolutely necessary.

But it was very difficult to enforce.

Many people work on one side.

@tchrist Exactly.

China has never had free travel between provinces.

tchrist

Exactly. For regular people it doesn't matter, because they just don't do that.

Cerberus

Do what?

Travel abroad?

They do here, but not far.

They travel the same, short distance every day.

tchrist

Travel between provinces much, travel cross country. The jetsetters who do are highly placed, and can afford to pay the quarantine hotel and downtime of two weeks.

Cerberus

Not long distances, no.

But many people live on one side of a border and work on the other.

Taking people's employment away from them is a draconic measure; preventing people from flying is merely taking away a luxury.

tchrist

2:39 AM

Thinks of all the poor discoteque employees who lost their jobs.

Cerberus

Especially if you can still fly as long as you go into air-tight quarantine.

@tchrist Yes, of course, and of people working around aeroplanes.

But they can be paid off, if the cost of letting their work continue will be far higher.

tchrist

Why would you pay them off? Nobody does that here.

When the state withdraws the operating licence for a restaurant or bar that isn't meeting safety inspections, they don't have to pay all those people who can't work now.

We paid the airlines billions not to fire people it laid off. They pocketed the money and just as soon as the law let them do so, fired them anyway.

Cerberus

Well, out of clemency.

@tchrist How is it possible that the money didn't go to the employees?

It did here, for the most part.

KLM got a special loan.

tchrist

I probably don't know what I'm talking about. You hear things.

> The real reason U.S. airlines and Boeing went for a combined $73.7 billion in buybacks
Buybacks juiced the companies’ earnings per share but left them in a worse position for the coronavirus pandemic — and in need of a bigger bailout from tax payers.

> The Airline Bailout Loophole: Companies Laid Off Workers, Then Got Money Meant to Prevent Layoffs
Three companies including Gate Gourmet, a global provider of airline meals, received $338 million in relief money for workers — and laid workers off anyway.

See that's just evil.

Good for Iceland, Denmark, and Luxembourg. Probably not a lot of South African visitors, though. Look how low that South Africa itself is in that chart. You wonder what will happen in India.

From here.

> [a] country needs to sequence 5 percent of its coronavirus cases to detect a new variant when the variant represents about 0.1 percent to 1.0 percent of the country’s cases. Actions to slow such a spread are most effective during these early phases of circulation.

SA was only sampling 0.8% and it found this. I wonder how many were omicron not delta?

Cerberus

3:04 AM

@tchrist How is that even allowed?

Why didn't they forbid firing those people?

Or withhold the money?

@tchrist SA has good testing infrastructure.

That is probably why it was discovered there.

tchrist

@Cerberus They put in the application and waited for approval, fired lots and lots of people, and then were awarded money based on the head counts from before approval.

Cerberus

Who knows, it might have come from India originally.

tchrist

Indieed.

Cerberus

@tchrist How could such a loophole be allowed??

tchrist

@Cerberus Republicans.

Cerberus

3:06 AM

Odd.

tchrist

It's all because of the old Treasury Secretary, Mnuchin.

Cerberus

Ugh.

I'm glad Trump's government is gone.

tchrist

This spring will not be as bad as last spring. We have new tools.

Cerberus

Yes.

One hopes the new anti-viral medicines will work as well as advertised.

And that they will be produced and priced such as to become widely available.

tchrist

> In other good news, new antiviral drugs that may cut down death rates and hospitalizations in high-risk patients by as much as 90 percent are not affected by mutations in variants because they target enzymes that the virus needs to replicate. At the moment, this recent antiviral drug (yet to be authorized even in the United States) is expensive, though Pfizer has talked of cheaper access for lower- and middle-income countries.

You've been hanging out with the TimeGhost again.

Cerberus

3:11 AM

One wonders why enzymes cannot change, mutate, or be replaced by viruses?

Time Ghost?

tchrist

Zeitgeist.

Cerberus

What is it saying?

tchrist

That there's hope that Pfizer will make this available on the cheap for nonrich countries.

Cerberus

Biontech, the creator of the current 'Pfizer' vaccine, is also working on something, I think.

Or perhaps I am confusing things.

The whole patent stuff needs to go.

tchrist

You aren't.

Everybody is working on lots of things all the time with this.

Cerberus

3:14 AM

I think Moderna also has soetmhing, but it has proved to be somewhat less effective.

Good.

tchrist

Merck, not Moderna.

One thing that has them worried is omicron is probably going to be shown to largely escape the monoclonal antibody treatments we use to keep people alive, especially the weak or immunocompromised or unvaccinated,

Cerberus

Ah.

tchrist

Something about where the mutations are.

Cerberus

How effective those antibody treatments at the moment?

tchrist

About 80%.

Cerberus

3:17 AM

Huh.

That's almost as high as the new anti-virals.

Is it 80% against death?

tchrist

At keeping such people out of hospitals, ICUs, and morgues.

Cerberus

I had no idea it was so high.

Then why are so many people still dying?

tchrist

But these all have incredible restrictions on them. It's usually too late to use them.

Cerberus

Ah, I see.

tchrist

They have to be taken immediately upon suspicion for them to work that well.

The monoclonal antibody treatments are given only via slow infusion. Pills are easier. But you still need to catch it right away.

Cerberus

3:19 AM

How many days after infection should they be taken, on average?

tchrist

Within the first 3 days, and 5 at the outside.

Cerberus

The new pills can be taken several days after symptoms, I believe?

@tchrist Right, that is often before symptoms.

tchrist

< 3 if you can, < 5 if you can't.

What this really needs to work is that you need to be able to get a quick and inaccurate non-PCR test at a pharmacy, and if that's positive the pharmacist gives you the pills and sends off the other sample you gave for the PCR test.

It's too hard to get tests. And you can't wait days and days for the result.

Because you probably aren't going to bother getting tested until you have symptoms or a positive exposure.

All the while the clock is ticking.

The antibody treatments are meant for pre-hospital care.

Cerberus

Why is it too hard to get tests?

I took a preventative home test yesterday, on a friend's request.

It costs €3 at a supermarket.

tchrist

The Colorado governor just fiat-opened up the antibody treatments to anybody, not just to the CDC applicable candidates. It's because of our hospital situation. He has to keep people out of there however he can, because there is no room for them at the hospital.

Cerberus

3:27 AM

And you can get tested for free if you go to one of the countless (faulty) testing locations I mentioned earlier.

tchrist

@Cerberus I saw one of those at the pharmacy in Wisconsin while I was there. I hadn't noticed them here. I'm pretty sure they're not well distributed.

Cerberus

@tchrist Availability is not an issue?

tchrist

@Cerberus Well yes, all such places are free here, even PCR ones.

@Cerberus No, they were going to waste.

Cerberus

@tchrist Hmm every supermarket has them here, and drug stores, too.

@tchrist Yes, PCR tests are also free, but you need to make an appointment with health authorities, which may take some time.

And you need to go to some location that may be far away.

tchrist

This is why you can't find rapid at-home Covid tests in America

@Cerberus Everything takes time.

> In addition to the slow pace of approvals, manufacturing bottlenecks created by materials and labor shortages are keeping prices high. Prices of rapid tests range from $14 for a two-pack to well over $50 a test, far from affordable for regular use.

Cerberus

3:32 AM

@tchrist Hmm.

tchrist

I know right.

Cerberus

@tchrist The last time I took a PCR test, I called at 15.30, cycled as fast as I could, got tested at 15.50, and received the result before five, I think.

But now they are at or beyond official testing capacity, so it will take (much) longer.

tchrist

@Cerberus My testing place is about 6 miles away. I got there one night too close to 5 and had to come back at 7am.

> LabCentral — a biotech co-working facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was part of E25Bio's testing study — requires participating startups to test workers twice a week. That's a costly safety measure for a nonprofit, said Celina Chang, LabCentral's vice president, so it recently bought rapid tests from Germany for $1.50 each.
"In order to test people twice a week on a regular basis for months on end," she said, "we need it to be, just the same as anyone, affordable."

Cerberus

Didn't you have to make an appointment?

tchrist

Yes, but it was complicated and there was a misunderstanding.

Cerberus

3:35 AM

OK.

tchrist

I had the referral, my doctor told me he thought they could still squeeze me in that night, but I got there without waiting for the confirming phone call and they could not.

I'm not going to complain about a 15-minute drive. I know people who've had to drive 45-75m to get tested and all.

They had let their staff go home at 4:30pm because nobody had booked any of the later slots but my doctor hadn't known that.

I even walked there once. Two leagues is two hours of walking. It's barely 15 minutes of driving in city traffic. I've also biked it but never measured the time.

Cerberus

Hmm.

You don't normally need a referral, do you?

tchrist

Nope.

I had a sinus infection and the doctor said all upper respiratory infections had to be PCR-tested against Covid. And that he couldn't test for flu because all those swabs went for PCR tests. That said, I never got the nasty deep-in-your-nose swab like they use for flu. by the time I needed PCR tests they had less painful ones.

This was before vaccines. So not this past spring but the one before it.

Cerberus

Huh.

They don't go deep into your nose for a Corona test?

They do here.

Only the home tests do not.

tchrist

They did not for these. Normally they do. Well, depends on what you mean by deep.

Cerberus

3:46 AM

I think about as deep as one can?

tchrist

This was one they handed you the swap for and told you how to self-apply it while they stood away from you outside and you were in your car in the hospital parking structure.

Cerberus

We do not have that.

tchrist

So this one was not those really long ones.

Cerberus

That sounds very strange.

tchrist

You do have to get it up there on both sides and expose each side for like 15 seconds, but it was not a nasopharyngeal swab either.

So lots of rubbing around and all.

Just not the one that's up and over and down and in.

Cerberus

3:48 AM

If it could be done without going very deep, which people hate, then why is it done very deep here?

They also go deep into your throat.

tchrist

I don't know. I know that it was a change here.

And that it was only for some tests. Most people I know got the ugly ones.

Cerberus

4:11 AM

Hmm.

This is the first time I have heard about it.

CowperKettle

5:10 AM

Mikhail Kovalchuk. Yesterday he received the Russian National Award "For Commitment to Science".

The TV program he chairs on the federal TV was named the best scientific program in Russia.

In the program, he said that the USA covertly collects sampes of tissue from Russian soldiers, in order to create a super-soldier for the US army.

He also said that man-made climate change is a hoax perpetrated to stifle competitors.

He also said that the ozone hole was a hoax perpetrated to sell a new generation of chemicals.

He said that Russia should follow an authoritarian principle, because any attempts at democratization are aimed at destroying Russia.

Mikhail's brother Yuri Kovalchuk is one of the closest friends of Vladimir Putin, has been ever since they together established the OZERO (LAKE) cooperative.

After Putin came to power, Yuri Kovalchuk quickly became a billionaire.

And his brother found a position as head of Russia's eminent nuclear research institute.

On 30 Sept 2015 in his speech at the convention of Russian state senators, Mikhail Kovalchuk said that he USA pursues a program to create a genetically-modified human, a new subspecies that will be focused only on work, and would be under full genetic control of corporations.

Can. You. Grasp. The degree. Of degradation. In Russia.

Mikhail Kovalchuk also holds a theory that the LGBT movements across the globe are implementing a program to bring the global population down.

When he was appointed the Head of the Nuclear Industry, Russia's scientific community tried to rebel, with protests held since he had zero experience in the field.

CowperKettle

7:12 AM

Word of the day: sucrosomial iron (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrosomial_iron)

> How to save Memorial? We created a website, where one can learn the most important things:
What is happening right now?
What can each of us do?
What can NGOs, initiatives, and movements do?
The site is available in 5 languages:

memorial.ovdinfo.org/en

CowperKettle

7:36 AM

Video blogger Yuri Khovansky has spent the last 6 months in prison awaing the start of hearings over a stupid song he sang 9 years ago youtube.com/watch?v=VgTEfYpUkbA

He writes "I'm already dead" and describes the tortures he's been subjected to.

CowperKettle

8:01 AM

Etymology of the day: culvert (unknown)

CowperKettle

9:46 AM

Current weather. Minus 2°C

CowperKettle

10:26 AM

Mobile stations installed in the street.

CowperKettle

10:57 AM

Russia still has no 5G networks, and so mobile operators resort to installing more and more 4G stations.

This year has been the first year when the speed has fallen for the average user, because there are more users now, and old standards cannot admit all this traffic.

The military and other security services own the necessary frequency ranges and do not give their consent to their use.

The only available ranges are very uncomfortable and can only be used in direct visibility

Therefore 5G networks only exist as pilot projects here and there, in city centers.

5G coverage in Moscow

Only some users are invited to join 5G. The operator decides.

CowperKettle

11:14 AM

Local church

I like the blue tiled bulb cupolas

Actor Elliot Page posted a new photo of himself.

Nice abs.

CowperKettle

11:32 AM

Word of the day: Δ

Matt E. Эллен

12:26 PM

@CowperKettle no transphobia in this chat

CowperKettle

12:40 PM

@MattE.Эллен There was no transfobia there.

Matt E. Эллен

@CowperKettle you clearly referred to Elliot by his dead name and by a feminine pronoun. that's transphobic

CowperKettle

OMG )))

"Dead name" )))

Okay.

M.A.R.

1:33 PM

@CowperKettle Better Call Saul intensifies

@Cerberus I think it makes quite a difference. Upper respiratory flora is different, the pathogens also differ. I don't imagine 'deep' is deep enough, but it should be enough for screening purposes.

CowperKettle

2:18 PM

Better Call Saul

Better Call Saul is an American crime drama television series created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. It is a spin-off, prequel, and a sequel of Gilligan's previous series, Breaking Bad. Set primarily in the early to mid-2000s in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the series develops Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), an earnest lawyer and former con artist, into a greedy criminal defense attorney known as Saul Goodman. Also shown is the moral decline of retired police officer Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), who becomes closely affiliated with the Juarez drug cartel to support his granddaughter and her widowed...

Oh. I never saw Breaking Bad, I only seen memes of it.

CowperKettle

3:24 PM

A guy scratched his arm during a bicycle fall, and it got fungus that damaged his brain. sciencenews.org/article/…

Bicycle trips are nasty.

Was a yacht captain and sailing coach, now can get lost if goes anywhere alone.

I got a fungus too, and some of my nails almost completely fell out.

They just splintered apart. Doctors at first thought there was no infection.

Only at a second attempt they found the fungus and prescribed some strong drugs.

Life before modern medicine was fraught with sudden disability and death from the tiniest of causes.

@M.A.R. Did you get a booster shot of the covid vaccine?

Machine-learning model could enable robots to understand interactions in the way humans do

CowperKettle

4:33 PM

The fight against covid-19. We are here.

Cerberus

5:05 PM

@M.A.R. Then what is it not deep enough for?

M.A.R.

5:27 PM

@Cerberus the lower respiratory tract is a much harder place for pathogens to stay alive. OTOH, it means the more resistant pathogens are not hindered by the bacterial growth in the upper respiratory tracts, so as it happens different pathogens (and immune responses to them) can be found at different parts of the respiratory system

Considering Sars-CoV-2 likes a type of alveolar cells, the innate and adaptive immune responses to cellular damage would be more easily detectable the lower you go, and all the noise from the upper tract is mostly absent.

Though I have zero idea how sensitive the nuclear amplification in PCR really is

@CowperKettle not yet, though one of these days I will, the vaccination rate has dropped

@CowperKettle oh dude, you have no idea what you're missing out on

I've heard the education in Catalytic schools is subpar.

Mitch

5:46 PM

@CowperKettle 'understand' is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. But what if the virus is yet only present in the upper tracts?

Mitch

Or rather it is being used to mean one thing to newspaper readers but really means something else entirely in reality.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus That's pretty transient. The virus will have to enter cells and replicate in order to survive. If someone is showing symptoms, I think it's impossible that an upper respiratory tract sample would be more sensitive than a lower one.

Mitch

@M.A.R. I mean 'The Inquisition' sounds like they're just curious, really curious.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Oh, really? I thought it took some time to spread.

And what if you have no symptoms?

Mitch

5:51 PM

@M.A.R. This brings up the question of how to sample from the lower RI or alveoli... that wold seem to be very intrusive.

M.A.R.

If they're just about to be infected, I don't think the immune system has had enough time to detect the virus.

Cerberus

Symptoms occur some days after infection, normally?

M.A.R.

@Mitch I don't think that's possible. From the bronchioles maybe, with some wacky hospital tech in a hospitalized patient. It's way too overkill for screening, but of course I might not have heard of a commonplace tactic currently in usage at all

Cerberus

You want to find the virus as early as possible.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus yep, and immune responses take two, with a bit of luck

Mitch

5:54 PM

@M.A.R. So just to confirm, deep nose and throat swabs only really are more accurate for URIs?

M.A.R.

@Cerberus depends on the viral load, I think. Whether the future Covid patient hugged and kissed a Covid patient, or if it was just a tiny bit of virus in a tiny little droplet.

Mitch

And would just plain old coughing onto some kind of specimen receptacle go more in the direction of lower RI?

Viral load sounds like a dump truck with a big ol' pile of virus.

Cerberus

I should think they do it this way everywhere for a reason.

M.A.R.

@Mitch well, PCR is supposed to fix that problem as the technology is being refined. I dunno how much better the current kits are (and probably quite a lot depends on the manufacturer, not the basic principles)

Cerberus

As to why Tchrist said they now do superficial probing of the nose, it is an aenigma to me.

M.A.R.

5:58 PM

@Mitch no, first it enters the bloodstream, then it settles where it likes, and then starts replicating, which stimulated harmful immune responses, and is responsible for cell damage itself.

Unless the virus enters cells, and it does this pretty fast, I don't think it will replicate enough to be detected, or cause any serious problem of any kind.

And the cilia on your respiratory tract epithelia constantly push the fluid upwards, and some very small part of it gets aerosolized, so I dunno how much this would help detection

Again, probably a bit of luck involved

@Cerberus a change in the flora, or mucus, or mucosal membranes, caused by the virus and the immune response maybe. I don't know what though

I know the typical PCR for most other infections (bacterial, fungal etc.) has a sensitivity of around 95 to 97 percent, and very high specificity. But because it's a new technology, it's not often the gold standard. It was quickly gonna become gold standard, and Covid probably helped that too

Fact nugget of the day: It would take 5600 years for a single HIV to cause AIDS.

Mitch

8:05 PM

@M.A.R. so -coughing- does -not- have the virus in it? Is that what you're saying?

Cerberus

8:49 PM

@M.A.R. What is a "single HIV"?

A single patient?

A single virion?

tchrist

10:35 PM

@M.A.R. No evangelizing in this chat.

CowperKettle

In the Kursk region, a drunk Cossack with a sabre rode into a store on a horse.

He said his horse wanted some bread, and he decided to let it select the proper brand of bread by itself.

Store clerks must have felt themselves the citizens of Paris in 1815

Russia's most famous rap musicial fled the country 2 days ago.

A couple of days before that, the Head of the Investigative Committee said that the rappers songs were bad, and that the rapper "practically sold drugs to teens", whatever that means.

Instantly there arose problems with concerts, and one of the rapper's stores was subjected to state inspection.

Now there are rumors that the governmnet is proposing that hte rapper supports Putin in his 2024 presidential campaign, and the charges will be dropped.

Researchers are pursuing age-old questions about the nature of thoughts—and learning how to read them. -- the New Yorker

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