https://www.axios.com/nebraska-coronavirus-masks-f45cee42-628d-41c3-8c1f-21f8cbc383c8.html
It takes real courage to ignore the advice of experts this way, courage that could only come from a deeply held conviction that the role of the government is to help its citizens live their best…
https://governor.nebraska.gov/press/stop-obamacare’s-medicaid-expansion
Stop Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion
By Governor Pete Ricketts
…never mind.
Let’s hope things don’t get even uglier here:
Police later found the woman a few blocks away and took her into custody without incident.
Friendly wager on the race?
Is this the same one that was covered here earlier? (I hope so,; while I’m not a McDonalds fan I wouldn’t like to see them as the center of a string of shootings. They have become kind of important as a way for people without much money to enjoy eating out.)
By the date and location, I’m thinking they could be the same incident, but the articles seem to disagree on the number of suspects. I wonder which agency got it wrong?
Or victims?
If it is the same incident, the answer is maybe surprising.
I think that we’re so used nowadays to entitlement being at the root of bad behavior, that we forget that sometimes overwhelming stress or need can also lead to similar behavior. Jean Valjean didn’t steal because he thought he had a special right to that baguette.
I’m sorry to hear that.
Honest question: why can’t you get antibody testing? I know we are very privileged in Germany right now, but I would have assumed that certified reliable tests should be available in the US as well.
Just for the record: the cost of a reliable test is about 16 € in Germany. I had one last week.
Manufactured by Roche pharma, for instance. Roche claims to be able to test 2 million a week in the US, according to their website.
What’s the bottleneck? Why isn’t testing available to you guys? That’s seriously worrying.
That’s a pretty bad assumption. Many people want to stop testing so the case numbers go down. It’s like my kid used to do when I was telling her that she needs to help clean. Fingers in the ear and shouting “LA LA LA! Can’t hear you!”.
My primary care physician, which is basically your family doctor, the doctor you go to for just simple stuff, does not want to order one for me because they are deemed unreliable here. From all accounts that I have read they do seem pretty unreliable and they give a lot of false positives and false negatives. The upshot is I trust my doctor, she’s not led me down the wrong path so I am trusting her on this judgement. She has put me on a list to get antibody testing as soon as the hospital I go to is comfortable enough to recommend this to patients
Regardless of the results, I am still going to keep wearing a mask in public, sanitizing and washing my hands, social distance, and everything that is recommended to keep healthy, but I just want to get some solid information on what happened to me, and I’m willing to wait for the vaccine or for a reliable antibody test. Now on the subject of just regular testing to see whether you have an active infection or not, that is widespread now in the states. In my town, in fact, they just had two days of free driveup testing for anyone who wanted to get it, regardless of symptoms, that folks could get.
Edit: I forgot to say this but she actually believes that I had COVID-19 from all the symptoms, and she would love to get me an antibody test too, they just don’t deem them reliable right now.
Let us leave politics aside for a moment, ok?
Every lab should be able to order reliable antibody tests by now. Every physician should be able to send blood samples to a lab which offers this service.
That are some conditional clauses, but go check the Roche webpages. 2 million tests a week. That’s their promise for the US. And they are not the only company selling certified, reliable antibody tests. These tests have been cleared by reference labs (consiliar labs). (In case of Europe, the reference lab in question is in the Charité in Berlin. I mentioned it before: the head of the Virology lab there is doing an interview podcast and has done a great job in public outreach. That’s how I know how
Now,
There are different kinds of tests. Pregnancy test like so-called lateral flow devices are, to the best of my knowledge, flooding the market and are not reliable. However, lab-based immunoassay test are a different thing entirely. As stated above, they undergo rigorous testing and get certified by reference labs. The labs advertising them to physicians usually include the certified test accuracy percentages.
That said, details matter for interpreting the results. There are several antibodies which can be tested for. Ig-G is the type which is interesting for anyone who thinks they had Covid-19. Typically Ig-G are developing around six weeks after the infection, they are specific and are hopefully giving people at least some immunity.
False negatives are possible, but not due to unreliable tests: an immunoassay testing for Ig-G tells you if you have the antibody, and determines the concentration in your bloody.
Test reliability, in fact, should not be your problem. The problem is rather that a) it’s possible that you had Covid-19 and did not develop specific Ig-G (various possible reasons for that), or b) you could develop Ig-G but we do not know for a long time (reminder: there are literally no long-term experiences with this!). Either way, even if you have Ig-G, it is not clear if they really will protect you from infection, or maybe just lower your chance of getting ill (while probably still being infectious), or even might lead do other reactions.
However, all in all, there is a relevant possiblity that if you get Covid-19, you will develop a certain immunity. Which would be good. I got myself tested because of this, and it came back negative.
I suggest, @CMUwriter, that you speak with your physician again. Point her to the Roche website, if necessary. She should be able to find a lab where she can send your sample. Otherwise, ask her to help you to find a physician who can.
These two sentences stand in direct contradiction of one another. It is precisely because of politics and the monumental (and likely intentional, given Trump’s insistence that fewer tests = fewer cases) mishandling of the pandemic that reliable tests are not widely available.
That’s exactly what my doctors, and doctor friends have said: the antibody tests aren’t reliable enough yet to tell us anything, and we don’t know what even an accurate result actually means with regard to immunity with this virus. It could just mean immunity for one particular strain of the virus, for example, which is not the same thing as full immunity.
This is what is published as news these https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-test-false-negative-1.5610114
Roche’s antibody test doesn’t even make the radar in Canada. Look at the date of the article. Although some serological tests have been approved in Canada, they aren’t widely available. After the serological test fiasco that happened in the States, I suspect the situation there is similar (in nutshell, the CDC issued emergency preliminary approval to a lot of providers offering serological tests, the tests were largely bogus and emergency preliminary approval got withdrawn. Some Canadian company was involved in that fiasco too… Canada didn’t approve them because independent tests revealed they had a 30% false negative rate, as I recall, but the US did. Briefly. )
EDIT: I was mistaken about how many serological tests were approved in Canada.
Key quote from the article:
I’m more optimistic about this, because it seems to be a vocal minority’s view that they can go back to business as usual and everything will be fine. What the rest of us can do is continue to follow safety guidelines (from medical professionals), and wait them out. When the negative consequences come, policies and regulations might be adjusted again.
Either way, the other thing we can do is work to change who is in charge. So, my plan is to focus on change in November and January. In the meantime, staying healthy and as safe as possible is a top priority. When it comes to workplace safety, people have to act in their own best interest because most companies and government agencies won’t.
