Thank you for posting this! To be fair, that’s only about two days longer than expected, but what a crucial two days! Last thing you want is to quarantine for 14 days, finally leave quarantine, then have it be premature.
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Is that time connected to being testable? That’s a shorter window, right?
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Correct. My understanding is that testing during incubation is hit-or-miss. You can easily test negative during the incubation period. Testing positive (at least for the PCR tests) depends upon shedding virus, a.k.a. being contagious. Basically, if the viral particles are all locked up in cells, there are very few that are available to be detected.
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Or as Trump would likely say, “totes worth it.”
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Right. This is why current CDC guidelines are to quarantine 10 days (or until 24 hours without fever, whichever is longer) if positive and 14 days if negative following a known exposure. At first that looks stupid, but it actually makes sense. Now the question is, is that too optimistic?
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As stated above, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that everyone has to agree that schools must remain open in Germany.
Oh, just FTR: that’s bitter cynicism pouring out of me.
So, well, that may get some headline traction over here. And in Heidi’s own home country, of course.
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Wait, but when are you being tested? Is “incubation” two weeks, and if so should you wait two weeks then get tested? This sounds like you get tested first and are then quarantining regardless of result?
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Yeah. If you have a contact with someone who tests positive while they were contagious, a negative test doesn’t avoid quarantine.
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That is exactly right. Negative test (or no test) should result in 14 day quarantine. If you really want fun, if my spouse has a 14 day quarantine I have to do the 14 days plus another 10 days in case I contracted it on the last day of hers. Fun times.
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So tests are pointless, because I’m just doing a 14 day quarantine, whatever.
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If it’s positive, you only have to do 10, so…
No, not pointless, but the epidemiology of this thing is just brutal. So with a confirmed exposure, yes, a negative test gets you 14 days. This does not apply to the screening for college or whatever, and for contract tracing tests are vital. Like a lot with this, it is far more about protecting others than protecting yourself.
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Except that there’s no contact tracing going on here that I’m aware of. Basically, I’m traveling next week for 10 days, and then when I come back we need to quarantine from my parents before seeing them again. I was hoping that we could use testing to shorten the time, but it sounds like we just have to wait two weeks, except now it sounds like, since there are three of us, we need to wait…34 days?
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Wait, no, I still don’t get it.
I’m “exposed” (no point talking about having been around a positive person, there’s no contact tracing going on, but I’ve been in an airport, let’s say). If I take a test that day it’s useless, because I wouldn’t have enough in my system for the test to catch anything. Right?
So I quarantine for…14 days? Then if I take a test it will be meaningful?
Then if I’m positive I only need quarantine for another 10 days, but if I’m negative it’s a second two weeks?
President Bolsonaro counters Vice President Mourão on the purchase of the vaccine Coronavac, developed by the chinese company Sinovac Biotech. He said “I do not delegate matters that belong to the President.”
The president made the statement after Mr. Mourão told Veja magazine that the government would buy doses of Coronavac. “The Bic pen is mine,” said Bolsonaro, according to CNN Brasil and the R7 portal.
A little bit of context:
Bic is a popular brand of inexpensive ballpoint pens. At the beginning of his government, Mr. Bolsonaro said that because he was a simple man, he only used this type of pen and that the pen was the symbol of his power, as only he would sign the documents of official government acts.
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Those only mean something if you have an identifiable exposure. Your roommate tests positive. Someone you had dinner with tests positive. In an airport doesn’t meet that criterion unless the person you were seated with tests positive. You don’t have to quarantine because you got tested, you need to quarantine because you were exposed. Ideal time to test is on the third day of symptoms, which is really tough if you have no symptoms.
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Yes. If you’re negative after quarantine, then you’re good to go. That’s how you eliminate the situation that you’ve quarantined but are past incubation and asymptomatic. If you quarantine (that is, you haven’t been exposed after the potential exposure), test negative, then you don’t need further quarantine.
It should also be noted there are two kinds of quarantine: one that states and countries are requiring upon entry, which is more about avoiding exposing others during a possible asymptomatic period, and one that is the result of a definite exposure to an infected person during their contagious period. The first is kind of a population hedge; the second is a definite public health step to reduce spread.
I
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Yeah… about that… it’s… part of the Very Stable Genius &Co. plans for us all:
by
James Hamblin, M.D., is a staff writer at The Atlantic . He is also a lecturer at Yale School of Public Health, co-host of Social Distance, and author of Clean: The New Science of Skin .
and see also
Golly, it’s almost like there’s some connection between superspreader events and our current pandemic situation here in the U.S.
ETA:
discovered a wiki entry, it’s apropos
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Trump’s infected far more people. Lock him up?
Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938), also known as Typhoid Mary , was an Irish-born cook believed to have infected 53 people with typhoid fever, three of whom died, and the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the disease.[1] Because she persisted in working as a cook, by which she exposed others to the disease, she was twice forcibly quarantined by authorities, and died after a total of nearly three decades in isolation.[2][3]
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