Taking one of the latest coronavirus tests to gain federal approval is as easy as spitting.
SalivaDirect, developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, was granted emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday and offers a more comfortable alternative to a nasal swab. Saliva can be collected in any sterile container.
As the United States grapples with building testing capacity to meet the growing demand brought on by people resuming school and work, officials have placed their hopes on several solutions including saliva testing. Since the test doesn’t require chemical reagents or swabs that have become scarce during the pandemic and offers a faster turnaround than the standard test, some believe it could offer the country a way to determine the spread of the virus quickly.
“Providing this type of flexibility for processing saliva samples to test for Covid-19 infection is groundbreaking,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in a statement.
This is getting emergency approval. Been tested against PCR with the same level of error. If it can be rolled out cheaply and easier to perform aka spit in the tube it can help improve and increase testing. Still requires a lab but less regents.
They are also immensely effective for anywhere with low prevalence of the virus (not the US right now, but, we aren't safe until we are all safe) because you can easily build machines to take 10 samples, extract a small control volume, mix it into one 'combined sample' and test that.
Its one path among many to being able to actually test a significant fraction of a large population every day. Which is a true and safe path back to a more stable near normalcy while we wait for better treatments. With testing like this, you genuinely could hope to test 5-10% of the population of some nations every day. Which would be enough to mean the virus couldn't effectively spread, espescially if you combined it with dilligent contact tracing and triggered tests for a positive.
Could the US do this? No, not right now. The best we could hope for is just having more tests and faster. But, if you are in say, Singapore or South Korea with an engaged and supportive population and a technology driven government? I genuinely think you could drive cases to zero and keep them there using tests like this.
Taking one of the latest coronavirus tests to gain federal approval is as easy as spitting.
SalivaDirect, developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, was granted emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday and offers a more comfortable alternative to a nasal swab. Saliva can be collected in any sterile container.
As the United States grapples with building testing capacity to meet the growing demand brought on by people resuming school and work, officials have placed their hopes on several solutions including saliva testing. Since the test doesn’t require chemical reagents or swabs that have become scarce during the pandemic and offers a faster turnaround than the standard test, some believe it could offer the country a way to determine the spread of the virus quickly.
“Providing this type of flexibility for processing saliva samples to test for Covid-19 infection is groundbreaking,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in a statement.
This is getting emergency approval. Been tested against PCR with the same level of error. If it can be rolled out cheaply and easier to perform aka spit in the tube it can help improve and increase testing. Still requires a lab but less regents.
ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
At a glance this is a collection method rather than a test that eliminates the PCR step. Still awesome, but the other things would remain potential bottlenecks.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
+1
Options
38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Actually I think it is a testing method. They were talking about it on NPR yesterday.
Since the test doesn’t require chemical reagents or swabs that have become scarce during the pandemic and offers a faster turnaround than the standard test, some believe it could offer the country a way to determine the spread of the virus quickly.
Actually I think it is a testing method. They were talking about it on NPR yesterday.
Since the test doesn’t require chemical reagents or swabs that have become scarce during the pandemic and offers a faster turnaround than the standard test, some believe it could offer the country a way to determine the spread of the virus quickly.
Its a wholly alternate testing method and sample collection method. It still requires a PCR machine, but, it eliminates the majority of the reagents which are in short supply and allows you to just kinda go with what you have.
The big thing here is that the data and test plans are not proprietary. Anyone can make most of these reagents provided they can do it with the right level of quality control, and they will be continually validating more potential reagents. They also think it will work with LAMP and pooled tests.
................
Pooling. By combining saliva from many people and testing it all at once, we can increase the number of samples that can be tested per day and reduce the amount of each reagent used per person.
Rapid detection. We are working on approaches to replace the PCR step with either LAMP or RPA. PCR will still have a role, but a simple rapid test has the ability to be point-of-care.
................
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
0
Options
ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
Awesome, thanks. That's what I get for skimming. Very good news if it can open a bottleneck anywhere in the process.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
+1
Options
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Let's revisit Indonesia, who spent the first three months actively claiming/lying that they had no SARS2 while not testing for any of it because they were cheap. They're in an endless first wave. How bad it is exactly, no one is really sure since their testing rate per capital is even lower than Mexico's (and I've already talked about how pathetically low Mexico's testing rate is). But to make things worse, the government was hiding half the cases it did find to "not start a panic" and instead promoted magic cures, like special necklaces and herbal remedies while claiming that everyone's prayers were keeping the virus at bay.
But we do know the excess death rate has been higher than normal since March and there's been no signs of any of that slowing down.
Actually I think it is a testing method. They were talking about it on NPR yesterday.
Since the test doesn’t require chemical reagents or swabs that have become scarce during the pandemic and offers a faster turnaround than the standard test, some believe it could offer the country a way to determine the spread of the virus quickly.
Very specifically they're basically skipping the entire Nucleic Acid extraction step, which is admittedly a pain in the ass, and utilizing the unique nature of Coronaviruses- that is, they're already RNA so that you can immediately run a quantitative-Real-Time-PCR protocol on them without having to turn them from a DNA sample into an RNA sample.
It's also important to note that as they say, it's a protocol, not a set of chemicals.
What they're specifically doing is saying "we found out that if you take saliva, incubate it with Protinase K (a common laboratory reagent), heat-inactivate the Prot K, it doesn't interfere with the RNA stability and you can just do qRT-PCR afterwards, saving you about three-four hours of lab work!"
Notably, this is cool, but also not that novel. People have been doing this for RNA viruses for a while. I even did it when I worked with Zika virus (another RNA virus).
I can't be too mad though, because they're at least sharing this information free of charge instead of pretending like it's some proprietary secret.
Actually I think it is a testing method. They were talking about it on NPR yesterday.
Since the test doesn’t require chemical reagents or swabs that have become scarce during the pandemic and offers a faster turnaround than the standard test, some believe it could offer the country a way to determine the spread of the virus quickly.
Very specifically they're basically skipping the entire Nucleic Acid extraction step, which is admittedly a pain in the ass, and utilizing the unique nature of Coronaviruses- that is, they're already RNA so that you can immediately run a quantitative-Real-Time-PCR protocol on them without having to turn them from a DNA sample into an RNA sample.
It's also important to note that as they say, it's a protocol, not a set of chemicals.
What they're specifically doing is saying "we found out that if you take saliva, incubate it with Protinase K (a common laboratory reagent), heat-inactivate the Prot K, it doesn't interfere with the RNA stability and you can just do qRT-PCR afterwards, saving you about three-four hours of lab work!"
Notably, this is cool, but also not that novel. People have been doing this for RNA viruses for a while. I even did it when I worked with Zika virus (another RNA virus).
I can't be too mad though, because they're at least sharing this information free of charge instead of pretending like it's some proprietary secret.
The main point is that they have done the testing to show it works with all the reagent options they list and intend to do more. Clearly noone is going to invent some new technique for virus detection in 3 months, but these people have done the diligent work to show that you can use these alternative methods and still get good results.
| Zinnar on most things | Avatar by Blameless Cleric
0
Options
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
The Sturgis explosion has already begun. Seven cases in Nebraska, 15 in Minnesota, and a tattoo parlor worker in Sturgis just tested positive too, on top of that asshole who hit up all the bars all the time while presumably contagious.
And as for right now...I have been hearing way, way too damn many overly-loud asshole motorcycles driving by the house.
The Sturgis explosion has already begun. Seven cases in Nebraska, 15 in Minnesota, and a tattoo parlor worker in Sturgis just tested positive too, on top of that asshole who hit up all the bars all the time while presumably contagious.
And as for right now...I have been hearing way, way too damn many overly-loud asshole motorcycles driving by the house.
Sturgis wasn’t that long ago, so I imagine a good chunk of these people were sick before the event and only just became symptomatic. Meaning that a non-insignificant fraction of these people didn’t catch it at Sturgis, but spread it there.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
The Sturgis explosion has already begun. Seven cases in Nebraska, 15 in Minnesota, and a tattoo parlor worker in Sturgis just tested positive too, on top of that asshole who hit up all the bars all the time while presumably contagious.
And as for right now...I have been hearing way, way too damn many overly-loud asshole motorcycles driving by the house.
Sturgis wasn’t that long ago, so I imagine a good chunk of these people were sick before the event and only just became symptomatic. Meaning that a non-insignificant fraction of these people didn’t catch it at Sturgis, but spread it there.
I mean, yeah. That was part of the point. They held an indoor sneezing contest for duck’s sake.
The Sturgis explosion has already begun. Seven cases in Nebraska, 15 in Minnesota, and a tattoo parlor worker in Sturgis just tested positive too, on top of that asshole who hit up all the bars all the time while presumably contagious.
And as for right now...I have been hearing way, way too damn many overly-loud asshole motorcycles driving by the house.
Sturgis wasn’t that long ago, so I imagine a good chunk of these people were sick before the event and only just became symptomatic. Meaning that a non-insignificant fraction of these people didn’t catch it at Sturgis, but spread it there.
The average incubation period before symptoms begin to appear is 4.5 days. This is very much in line with catching it there, especially if exposed early on.
+1
Options
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
The symptoms often start out mild, just a little dry cough and/or a slight fever they don't even notice, something easy to ignore, especially when you're a tough guy cosplayer full of performative machismo. If it's not shaken early it could be another week or two before the symptoms actually start getting bad enough that people are forced to notice (assuming happy hypoxia hasn't set in). And all the while, they're hitting up bars and spreading SARS2.
The symptoms often start out mild, just a little dry cough and/or a slight fever they don't even notice, something easy to ignore, especially when you're a tough guy cosplayer full of performative machismo. If it's not shaken early it could be another week or two before the symptoms actually start getting bad enough that people are forced to notice (assuming happy hypoxia hasn't set in). And all the while, they're hitting up bars and spreading SARS2.
This has been my worry since start of covid. I will have really no way to tell via symptom if I have it because various underlying health conditions have had me in a constant state of covid like symptoms for decades
The symptoms often start out mild, just a little dry cough and/or a slight fever they don't even notice, something easy to ignore, especially when you're a tough guy cosplayer full of performative machismo. If it's not shaken early it could be another week or two before the symptoms actually start getting bad enough that people are forced to notice (assuming happy hypoxia hasn't set in). And all the while, they're hitting up bars and spreading SARS2.
Loss of sense of smell which is not accompanied by a stuffy nose seems to be the best symtom to watch out for as an actual indicator of covid. Its far from universal, but its pretty common in symptomatic cases and is actually a thing other viruses don't cause. Fever is good as a population wide indicator and vaguely useful as a screening tool, but not a personal one.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
+3
Options
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
506 new cases in the Czech Republic on Friday, on all of 5600 tests no less. The turbo-boning has started in earnest and it's still a week until the re-maskening.
Oh baby KVN's got the magic, and the magics got KVN...
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
(Devi Sridhar is Chair of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University, Karen Grepin is an Associate Prof. at Hong Kong University School of Public Health, Lilian Cheng is a reporter with the South China Morning Post)
That sounds rather more rigorous than the earlier anecdotal reports of the same thing. It’s definitely worrying, but we’ll need to see how common it is before panicking. I’m also not sure how this affects vaccine development.
Mild medically or colloquially? As in "didn't need hospitalization, but was close to it" or "patient barely perceived any symptoms"?
Paper says completely asymptomatic second time around. They only caught it because the person was traveling and had to go through screening at the Hong King airport.
First time was the typical sore throat, mild fever, runny nose type situation.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Hm... where is the full manuscript? I've been looking for it to evaluate how they actually did the sequencing, but the full text doesn't appear to be available. There is so much garbage being produced these days (and yes, this includes peer-reviewed stuff), that you really have to evaluate everything yourself. Not saying their findings are false, but without actually looking at their methods (and ideally having access to their raw data as well), it's probably a good idea to don't take it at face value. Anyone been able to find the full text on med/arxiv?
The was another publish that explains a little bit more why some patients are tested positiv after hospital discarge in this case 12 out of 117:
2.1 Study design and participants
It's a retrospective, single-center cohort study of 117 patients with COVID-19. All the patients were hospitalized in the isolation ward from January 2020 to March 2020 and followed up in the outpatient department of Affiliated Yueqing Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University after discharge. Affiliated Yueqing Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, a tertiary university hospital with 1100 beds, located in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, the endemic areas of COVID-19. It is responsible for the treatments for COVID-19 assigned by the government. Inclusion criteria were age 18 years or older and hospital admission with a diagnosis of COVID-19 according to World Health Organization interim guidance. [8] Exclusion criteria were pregnant or lactating women, uncontrolled diseases of the blood and cardiovascular system, liver or kidney, history of mental disorders, drug abuse or dependence. As of March 31, 2020, a total of 117 patients who were hospitalized as confirmed of COVID-19 in Affiliated Yueqing Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University were discharged after meeting the hospital discharge criteria and retested real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase-chain-reaction (RT-PCR) in the outpatient department within 1–2 weeks, of which 12 (10·3%) were found positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA and 105 (89·7%) were found negative
.
.
In conclusion, patients with COVID-19 may still retest positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA even after meeting discharge criteria. Longer hospital stay or lymphocytopenia may be risk factors for COVID-19 patients to retest SARS-CoV-2 RNA positive after discharge from hospital. It should be noted that there is no evidence for infectiousness of the patients who retest positive, however, isolation and active RT-PCR retest are still recommended for discharged patients.
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Anxiety among 13 and 14 year olds has dropped since the lockdowns according to one survey. As an introvert who went to a hellschool, I could totally see myself this way. School for so many is just constant stress, full of hormone-monsters and sadistic teachers who are just there to try to assert their authority and high pressure to succeed despite the crushing weight of reality and your own vulnerable awkwardness. Getting away from that would be a godsend for many. Read, do your work without interruptions, and you don't have to worry about being surrounded by savages who are looking for any opening, any moment of weakness, to hurt you.
The survey was specifically for British schoolchildren, but I could see this for plenty of other places as well. Suicides in Japan dropped by 20% during the lockdowns, probably for similar reasons. Our cultures are broken and toxic. That "normal" that people supposedly crave going back to was endless demeaning emotional oppression.
Yes I know people are going to try to immediately jump in here to say "What about domestic violence or whatever?" Yes, I know, extroverts aren't having a great time and this is very bad for a lot of people, but even in this very bad situation, that overall whole demographics are finding it less bad than what they had before shows how rotten and messed up our societies are. Also, the norms of those societies are what led us to this situation in the first place.
Anxiety among 13 and 14 year olds has dropped since the lockdowns according to one survey. As an introvert who went to a hellschool, I could totally see myself this way. School for so many is just constant stress, full of hormone-monsters and sadistic teachers who are just there to try to assert their authority and high pressure to succeed despite the crushing weight of reality and your own vulnerable awkwardness. Getting away from that would be a godsend for many. Read, do your work without interruptions, and you don't have to worry about being surrounded by savages who are looking for any opening, any moment of weakness, to hurt you.
The survey was specifically for British schoolchildren, but I could see this for plenty of other places as well. Suicides in Japan dropped by 20% during the lockdowns, probably for similar reasons. Our cultures are broken and toxic. That "normal" that people supposedly crave going back to was endless demeaning emotional oppression.
Yes I know people are going to try to immediately jump in here to say "What about domestic violence or whatever?" Yes, I know, extroverts aren't having a great time and this is very bad for a lot of people, but even in this very bad situation, that overall whole demographics are finding it less bad than what they had before shows how rotten and messed up our societies are. Also, the norms of those societies are what led us to this situation in the first place.
You also have to consider how many students went from having to get up between 5-5:30a for school, versus now being able to sleep in until well past 7. Plus, not only do that get that much more sleep time, they get nearly as much more time at home to work on school work and study and whatnot, so they are not only sleeping more, but also have more time to work with outside of school and sleep, so they actually have less stress to manage and more time to manage it.
Anxiety among 13 and 14 year olds has dropped since the lockdowns according to one survey. As an introvert who went to a hellschool, I could totally see myself this way. School for so many is just constant stress, full of hormone-monsters and sadistic teachers who are just there to try to assert their authority and high pressure to succeed despite the crushing weight of reality and your own vulnerable awkwardness. Getting away from that would be a godsend for many. Read, do your work without interruptions, and you don't have to worry about being surrounded by savages who are looking for any opening, any moment of weakness, to hurt you.
The survey was specifically for British schoolchildren, but I could see this for plenty of other places as well. Suicides in Japan dropped by 20% during the lockdowns, probably for similar reasons. Our cultures are broken and toxic. That "normal" that people supposedly crave going back to was endless demeaning emotional oppression.
Yes I know people are going to try to immediately jump in here to say "What about domestic violence or whatever?" Yes, I know, extroverts aren't having a great time and this is very bad for a lot of people, but even in this very bad situation, that overall whole demographics are finding it less bad than what they had before shows how rotten and messed up our societies are. Also, the norms of those societies are what led us to this situation in the first place.
You also have to consider how many students went from having to get up between 5-5:30a for school, versus now being able to sleep in until well past 7. Plus, not only do that get that much more sleep time, they get nearly as much more time at home to work on school work and study and whatnot, so they are not only sleeping more, but also have more time to work with outside of school and sleep, so they actually have less stress to manage and more time to manage it.
Funny how that works.
For the anxiety study UK schools thankfully have later start times than US ones (though not the 9.30/10 they probably should be) and have much shorter commutes to school so hard to gauge that relative effect.
German scientists held an indoor concert with high attendance to study the COVID-19 risk factors from packed social activities called Restart-19. All participants were tested prior to admission. The study website is currently down
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
German scientists held an indoor concert with high attendance to study the COVID-19 risk factors from packed social activities called Restart-19. All participants were tested prior to admission. The study website is currently down
Isn't this like studying the chemical effects of cyanide in Flavor Aid by telling people to drink up?
Feels like a very Jonesian take on experimentation.
German scientists held an indoor concert with high attendance to study the COVID-19 risk factors from packed social activities called Restart-19. All participants were tested prior to admission. The study website is currently down
Isn't this like studying the chemical effects of cyanide in Flavor Aid by telling people to drink up?
Feels like a very Jonesian take on experimentation.
Ehh.
This is a bit on the edge but if every one has full knowledge of the risks involved. Everyone is going to be tracked. And there is full consent from all participants this isn't like that. It is also useful for learning movement through large crowds. And there were probably controls on age and risk factors to limit danger. Its basically a clinical trial idea.
+1
Options
MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
German scientists held an indoor concert with high attendance to study the COVID-19 risk factors from packed social activities called Restart-19. All participants were tested prior to admission. The study website is currently down
How the fuck did that get past an ethics board, jfc
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly tweaked its guidance on COVID-19 testing Monday, making a change that could result in fewer people being tested and hinder contact tracing efforts.
The guidance now states that healthy people who have been exposed to COVID-19 "do not necessarily need a test," as long as they don't have symptoms. That's a reversal from previous advice that clearly recommended testing for all close contacts of infected individuals, regardless of whether they had symptoms.
An exposure is considered spending more than 15 minutes in close contact — meaning closer than 6 feet — with a person who has COVID-19. The new recommendation excludes vulnerable individuals, such as older adults and people with chronic medical conditions, who should still be tested after exposure. It also says that state and local health officials may still recommend a test.
Victory.
/s
XBL: Bizazedo
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
German scientists held an indoor concert with high attendance to study the COVID-19 risk factors from packed social activities called Restart-19. All participants were tested prior to admission. The study website is currently down
How the fuck did that get past an ethics board, jfc
I skimmed it a couple days ago when the article was released. The study required all parties to be subject to COVID tests prior. I can’t remember all the details, but they did three variations of a musical concert (all with masks I believe); normally with people close like a real concert, a social distancing version, and I think something in between. If memory serves, they also tried some variations like inside and outside, they even brought in a real musician to sing so that the audience would be engaged realistically and cheer and stuff. I’m hazey on all the details.
It honestly wasn’t that interesting of an article because I seriously doubt you can do anything like that with people drinking and all the other shit that goes down at a real concert. I don’t know what they were trying to prove, even with testing and mask wearing it’s an unnecessary risk to study disease spread that way and seemed more of a publicity stunt to justify concerts happening. I can’t remember what they used for a control or how they measured spread with whatever they were artificially using as a COVID replacement.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
German scientists held an indoor concert with high attendance to study the COVID-19 risk factors from packed social activities called Restart-19. All participants were tested prior to admission. The study website is currently down
How the fuck did that get past an ethics board, jfc
I skimmed it a couple days ago when the article was released. The study required all parties to be subject to COVID tests prior. I can’t remember all the details, but they did three variations of a musical concert (all with masks I believe); normally with people close like a real concert, a social distancing version, and I think something in between. If memory serves, they also tried some variations like inside and outside, they even brought in a real musician to sing so that the audience would be engaged realistically and cheer and stuff. I’m hazey on all the details.
It honestly wasn’t that interesting of an article because I seriously doubt you can do anything like that with people drinking and all the other shit that goes down at a real concert. I don’t know what they were trying to prove, even with testing and mask wearing it’s an unnecessary risk to study disease spread that way and seemed more of a publicity stunt to justify concerts happening. I can’t remember what they used for a control or how they measured spread with whatever they were artificially using as a COVID replacement.
Website still down. Here is an article with more details.
They used contact tracing with location services and fluorescent hand sanitizer to track contact surfaces.
I find Europe to be on the more conservative side, wondering if masking and 6ft social distancing is even an effective preventive measure to permit any sort of social gathering
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
German scientists held an indoor concert with high attendance to study the COVID-19 risk factors from packed social activities called Restart-19. All participants were tested prior to admission. The study website is currently down
How the fuck did that get past an ethics board, jfc
I skimmed it a couple days ago when the article was released. The study required all parties to be subject to COVID tests prior. I can’t remember all the details, but they did three variations of a musical concert (all with masks I believe); normally with people close like a real concert, a social distancing version, and I think something in between. If memory serves, they also tried some variations like inside and outside, they even brought in a real musician to sing so that the audience would be engaged realistically and cheer and stuff. I’m hazey on all the details.
It honestly wasn’t that interesting of an article because I seriously doubt you can do anything like that with people drinking and all the other shit that goes down at a real concert. I don’t know what they were trying to prove, even with testing and mask wearing it’s an unnecessary risk to study disease spread that way and seemed more of a publicity stunt to justify concerts happening. I can’t remember what they used for a control or how they measured spread with whatever they were artificially using as a COVID replacement.
They were trying to see what they could safely reopen and allow with their low level of covid transmission. Germany also sent people on test holidays, and did similar evaluations for workplaces.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly tweaked its guidance on COVID-19 testing Monday, making a change that could result in fewer people being tested and hinder contact tracing efforts.
The guidance now states that healthy people who have been exposed to COVID-19 "do not necessarily need a test," as long as they don't have symptoms. That's a reversal from previous advice that clearly recommended testing for all close contacts of infected individuals, regardless of whether they had symptoms.
An exposure is considered spending more than 15 minutes in close contact — meaning closer than 6 feet — with a person who has COVID-19. The new recommendation excludes vulnerable individuals, such as older adults and people with chronic medical conditions, who should still be tested after exposure. It also says that state and local health officials may still recommend a test.
Victory.
/s
Adding an extra level to this, it looks like they literally waited until Fauci was unconscious to push through this change
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly tweaked its guidance on COVID-19 testing Monday, making a change that could result in fewer people being tested and hinder contact tracing efforts.
The guidance now states that healthy people who have been exposed to COVID-19 "do not necessarily need a test," as long as they don't have symptoms. That's a reversal from previous advice that clearly recommended testing for all close contacts of infected individuals, regardless of whether they had symptoms.
An exposure is considered spending more than 15 minutes in close contact — meaning closer than 6 feet — with a person who has COVID-19. The new recommendation excludes vulnerable individuals, such as older adults and people with chronic medical conditions, who should still be tested after exposure. It also says that state and local health officials may still recommend a test.
Victory.
/s
Adding an extra level to this, it looks like they literally waited until Fauci was unconscious to push through this change
Posts
They are also immensely effective for anywhere with low prevalence of the virus (not the US right now, but, we aren't safe until we are all safe) because you can easily build machines to take 10 samples, extract a small control volume, mix it into one 'combined sample' and test that.
Its one path among many to being able to actually test a significant fraction of a large population every day. Which is a true and safe path back to a more stable near normalcy while we wait for better treatments. With testing like this, you genuinely could hope to test 5-10% of the population of some nations every day. Which would be enough to mean the virus couldn't effectively spread, espescially if you combined it with dilligent contact tracing and triggered tests for a positive.
Could the US do this? No, not right now. The best we could hope for is just having more tests and faster. But, if you are in say, Singapore or South Korea with an engaged and supportive population and a technology driven government? I genuinely think you could drive cases to zero and keep them there using tests like this.
This is the actual protocol, if anyone has the proper background to interpret it.
EDIT: Also, here's the main page.
Since the test doesn’t require chemical reagents or swabs that have become scarce during the pandemic and offers a faster turnaround than the standard test, some believe it could offer the country a way to determine the spread of the virus quickly.
Its a wholly alternate testing method and sample collection method. It still requires a PCR machine, but, it eliminates the majority of the reagents which are in short supply and allows you to just kinda go with what you have.
https://covidtrackerct.com/about-salivadirect/
The big thing here is that the data and test plans are not proprietary. Anyone can make most of these reagents provided they can do it with the right level of quality control, and they will be continually validating more potential reagents. They also think it will work with LAMP and pooled tests.
................
Pooling. By combining saliva from many people and testing it all at once, we can increase the number of samples that can be tested per day and reduce the amount of each reagent used per person.
Rapid detection. We are working on approaches to replace the PCR step with either LAMP or RPA. PCR will still have a role, but a simple rapid test has the ability to be point-of-care.
................
But we do know the excess death rate has been higher than normal since March and there's been no signs of any of that slowing down.
Very specifically they're basically skipping the entire Nucleic Acid extraction step, which is admittedly a pain in the ass, and utilizing the unique nature of Coronaviruses- that is, they're already RNA so that you can immediately run a quantitative-Real-Time-PCR protocol on them without having to turn them from a DNA sample into an RNA sample.
It's also important to note that as they say, it's a protocol, not a set of chemicals.
What they're specifically doing is saying "we found out that if you take saliva, incubate it with Protinase K (a common laboratory reagent), heat-inactivate the Prot K, it doesn't interfere with the RNA stability and you can just do qRT-PCR afterwards, saving you about three-four hours of lab work!"
Notably, this is cool, but also not that novel. People have been doing this for RNA viruses for a while. I even did it when I worked with Zika virus (another RNA virus).
I can't be too mad though, because they're at least sharing this information free of charge instead of pretending like it's some proprietary secret.
The main point is that they have done the testing to show it works with all the reagent options they list and intend to do more. Clearly noone is going to invent some new technique for virus detection in 3 months, but these people have done the diligent work to show that you can use these alternative methods and still get good results.
And as for right now...I have been hearing way, way too damn many overly-loud asshole motorcycles driving by the house.
Sturgis wasn’t that long ago, so I imagine a good chunk of these people were sick before the event and only just became symptomatic. Meaning that a non-insignificant fraction of these people didn’t catch it at Sturgis, but spread it there.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
I mean, yeah. That was part of the point. They held an indoor sneezing contest for duck’s sake.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
The average incubation period before symptoms begin to appear is 4.5 days. This is very much in line with catching it there, especially if exposed early on.
BTW there's also an early quick spike in cases in South Dakota.
This has been my worry since start of covid. I will have really no way to tell via symptom if I have it because various underlying health conditions have had me in a constant state of covid like symptoms for decades
Loss of sense of smell which is not accompanied by a stuffy nose seems to be the best symtom to watch out for as an actual indicator of covid. Its far from universal, but its pretty common in symptomatic cases and is actually a thing other viruses don't cause. Fever is good as a population wide indicator and vaguely useful as a screening tool, but not a personal one.
Oh baby KVN's got the magic, and the magics got KVN...
More detail here
And here
It sounds like in this instance both cases were mild.
Paper says completely asymptomatic second time around. They only caught it because the person was traveling and had to go through screening at the Hong King airport.
First time was the typical sore throat, mild fever, runny nose type situation.
The was another publish that explains a little bit more why some patients are tested positiv after hospital discarge in this case 12 out of 117:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30236-4/fulltext
edit: changed the first link
The survey was specifically for British schoolchildren, but I could see this for plenty of other places as well. Suicides in Japan dropped by 20% during the lockdowns, probably for similar reasons. Our cultures are broken and toxic. That "normal" that people supposedly crave going back to was endless demeaning emotional oppression.
Yes I know people are going to try to immediately jump in here to say "What about domestic violence or whatever?" Yes, I know, extroverts aren't having a great time and this is very bad for a lot of people, but even in this very bad situation, that overall whole demographics are finding it less bad than what they had before shows how rotten and messed up our societies are. Also, the norms of those societies are what led us to this situation in the first place.
You also have to consider how many students went from having to get up between 5-5:30a for school, versus now being able to sleep in until well past 7. Plus, not only do that get that much more sleep time, they get nearly as much more time at home to work on school work and study and whatnot, so they are not only sleeping more, but also have more time to work with outside of school and sleep, so they actually have less stress to manage and more time to manage it.
Funny how that works.
For the anxiety study UK schools thankfully have later start times than US ones (though not the 9.30/10 they probably should be) and have much shorter commutes to school so hard to gauge that relative effect.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Isn't this like studying the chemical effects of cyanide in Flavor Aid by telling people to drink up?
Feels like a very Jonesian take on experimentation.
Ehh.
This is a bit on the edge but if every one has full knowledge of the risks involved. Everyone is going to be tracked. And there is full consent from all participants this isn't like that. It is also useful for learning movement through large crowds. And there were probably controls on age and risk factors to limit danger. Its basically a clinical trial idea.
How the fuck did that get past an ethics board, jfc
CDC is now saying if you've been exposed, don't worry, you still don't need tested unless you have symptoms.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-covid-19-guidance-says-testing-may-not-be-n1238013
Victory.
/s
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
The german singer Tim Bendzko
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I skimmed it a couple days ago when the article was released. The study required all parties to be subject to COVID tests prior. I can’t remember all the details, but they did three variations of a musical concert (all with masks I believe); normally with people close like a real concert, a social distancing version, and I think something in between. If memory serves, they also tried some variations like inside and outside, they even brought in a real musician to sing so that the audience would be engaged realistically and cheer and stuff. I’m hazey on all the details.
It honestly wasn’t that interesting of an article because I seriously doubt you can do anything like that with people drinking and all the other shit that goes down at a real concert. I don’t know what they were trying to prove, even with testing and mask wearing it’s an unnecessary risk to study disease spread that way and seemed more of a publicity stunt to justify concerts happening. I can’t remember what they used for a control or how they measured spread with whatever they were artificially using as a COVID replacement.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Website still down. Here is an article with more details.
They used contact tracing with location services and fluorescent hand sanitizer to track contact surfaces.
I find Europe to be on the more conservative side, wondering if masking and 6ft social distancing is even an effective preventive measure to permit any sort of social gathering
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
They were trying to see what they could safely reopen and allow with their low level of covid transmission. Germany also sent people on test holidays, and did similar evaluations for workplaces.
Adding an extra level to this, it looks like they literally waited until Fauci was unconscious to push through this change
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/08/26/politics/fauci-coronavirus-cdc-testing/index.html
*helpless, broken laughter*