Octopus Overlords

Daehawk wrote: Sun Jul 12, 2020 10:35 am

Daehawk wrote: Sun Jul 12, 2020 10:35 am

hitbyambulance wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 12:05 am I am having questions about the effiectiveness of the covid 19 test as administered by the ZoomCare clinic I went to tonight (one of those 'urgent care' kinda setups). i was brought into the exam room and handed what looked like a normal double-ended cotton swab (the kind that you [don't] clean your ears with) and was told I would be 'self-administering' the collection. at no point was I told to sanitize my hands for this procedure. i was told to insert the swab about an inch into each nostril and swirl it two or three times. i stuck it up my nose about that much and asked if that really was far enough (i have had nasal subsection surgery twice and the upper inside of my left nostril is very raw and sensitive to this day) and i was assured it was.

my question is, is this really effective? if so, why were the procurement of the longer (six inch) swabs such a big deal in the early days of the covid 19 pandemic? it was mentioned in many news outlets that normal sized cotton swabs would _not_ work.

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Mar 20, 2020 8:33 pm The doctor who helped defeat smallpox explains what's coming

Daehawk wrote: Sun Jul 12, 2020 6:35 pm Florida

Bad news - 15,000 new cases in 1 day.

Good news - Disney reopens.

Me - *Bonks forehead*

Also in the news the White House is actively trying to discredit Fauci.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... e-n1233612

YellowKing wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 11:50 am The kids' test came back negative. Round 1 bullet dodged. Guess we'll be going through this every time they catch a cold for awhile. Nice to know we don't have to go through another week of quarantine.

Defiant wrote: Sun Jul 12, 2020 7:57 pm

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Mar 20, 2020 8:33 pm The doctor who helped defeat smallpox explains what's coming

Here's a follow up interview

stessier wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 11:58 am You would think, but people won't. And I don't blame them given the different work situations that are out there - it's going to be a mess.

Jeff V wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 3:03 pm The biggest problem remains that all truly safe solutions require a lot of participation and effort on the part of the parents, and this is not practical for every family.

Zaxxon wrote:Since schools are not doing screening at the door, those kids will for the most part make it to the classroom. At which point any sane quarantining protocol that's fit for COVID-19 will send the whole class home for 2 weeks.

YellowKing wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 3:50 pm

Zaxxon wrote:Since schools are not doing screening at the door, those kids will for the most part make it to the classroom. At which point any sane quarantining protocol that's fit for COVID-19 will send the whole class home for 2 weeks.

My kids daycare is doing screening at the door and it's a zero-tolerance symptom policy. Not only is there a temperature check at the door, but kids aren't allowed in if they have any symptoms of anything whatsoever. Parents are also not allowed in the building.

You'd almost have to have something like that at the school level for this to have a chance in hell of working, but I don't know you'd scale it. There's a big difference between parents dropping young kids off at the door one or two at a time between 6am and 9am, and hundreds of elementary school kids showing up at the same time.

NYTimes.com wrote:Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrics infectious disease specialist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, helped write the academy’s guidelines. He is a father of two children, 12 and 16, and a survivor of Covid-19 who is still experiencing some symptoms after he and his wife contracted the coronavirus in March.

“I absolutely take this seriously,” Dr. O’Leary said. “I’m still sick.” But he explained why the academy was emphasizing the need to get students back in classrooms.

The academy guidelines place a big emphasis on the importance of physical school over remote learning. Can you summarize why?

As pediatricians, many of us have recognized already the impact that having schools closed even for a couple months had on children. At the same time, a lot of us are parents. We experienced our own kids doing online learning. There really wasn’t a lot of learning happening. Now we’re seeing studies documenting this. Kids being home led to increases in behavioral health problems. There were reports of increased rates of abuse.

Of course, the reason they were at home was to help control the pandemic. But we know a lot more now than we did then, when schools first closed. We’re still learning more every day.

This virus is different from most of the respiratory viruses we deal with every year. School-age kids clearly play a role in driving influenza rates within communities. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Covid-19. And it seems like in countries where they have reopened schools, it plays a much smaller role in driving spread of disease than we would expect.

Back in March, there was this idea of children as silent superspreaders who put older adults and other vulnerable people at immense risk. Has that picture changed?

What we have seen so far in the literature — and anecdotally, as well — is that kids really do seem to be both less likely to catch the infection and less likely to spread the infection. It seems to be even more true for younger kids, under 10 or under 12. And older kids seem to play less of a role than adults.

Here in Colorado, I’ve been following our state health department website very closely. They update data every day and include the outbreaks in the state they are investigating. As you can imagine, there are lots and lots in long-term care facilities and skilled nursing homes, some in restaurants and grocery stores. There have been a total of four in child care centers, and we do have a lot of child care centers open. In almost every one of those cases, transmission was between two adults. The kids in the centers are not spreading Covid-19. I’m hearing the same thing from other states, as well.

The academy’s guidelines talk about balancing the need for physical distance with children’s educational and developmental needs, such as the need for hands-on play. They suggest that if older students are masked, three feet of distance between desks might be sufficient, compared to the six feet recommended by the C.D.C. Why is your advice different?

I don’t know that we’re different. The C.D.C. said six feet if “feasible.” The point we are trying to make is, that’s really not feasible. When you consider the overall health of children and really the community at large, adhering to a six-foot rule, which would mean having a lot of kids at home, may not be in the best interest of overall health. Something has to give.

From our perspective as pediatricians, the downsides of having kids at home versus in school are outweighed by the small incremental gain you would get from having kids six feet apart as opposed to five, four or three. When you add into that other mitigation measures like mask wearing, particularly for older kids, and frequent hand washing, you can bring the risk down.

I do think it’s a balance. I’m not going to come out here and say on June 30 that everything is going to be perfect in the coming school year. There will be cases of Covid-19 in schools even where they make their best efforts. But we have to balance that with the overall health of children.

As I talk to school administrators, most are planning temperature checks. The academy guidelines warn this could be impractical and take away instructional time. Can you say more about why you’re skeptical that this is the right strategy?

Do the harms outweigh the benefits? In this case, if it means students are congregating, it could increase the risk of spread. And we don’t have great evidence that temperature screening is helpful. That’s for a couple reasons. One, a lot of kids who have Covid-19, perhaps the majority, never get a fever. To use fever as a screen and assume that’s going to be good enough? You will miss a kid. And many fevers are not going to be Covid-19. Kids should not go to a school with a fever, period.

stessier wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 3:08 pm In theory, getting the best results from school have always involved a lot of participation and effort on the part of the parents.

stessier wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:26 pm Edit: Wasn't today - was Friday. Sorry - time is a square circle.

Zaxxon wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:41 pm

stessier wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:26 pm Edit: Wasn't today - was Friday. Sorry - time is a square circle.

Excuse me, it's a flat circle.

dbt1949 wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:37 pm I just hope kids are less susceptible than the rest of us.

stessier wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:26 pm time is a square circle.

stessier wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:26 pm That would be the same academy that today came out and backtracked from their previous position and said it should be left to the localities to make the decision based on the individual situations.

Edit: Wasn't today - was Friday. Sorry - time is a square circle.

LordMortis wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:49 pm

stessier wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:26 pm time is a square circle.

I thought lucha libre is a square circle. Wait is Wrestling really time?

dbt1949 wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:37 pm I just hope kids are less susceptible than the rest of us.

dbt1949 wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:37 pm
I believe everybody is going to get covid sooner or later until we can get a cure.

Blackhawk wrote:

dbt1949 wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:37 pm I just hope kids are less susceptible than the rest of us.

Kids absolutely are less susceptible than the rest of us. There are also 56 million of them. They don't have to be very susceptible to have a massive impact.

Jeff V wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 3:03 pmMy son's tolerance for even "fun" learning programs starts to wear thin after 30 minutes though, and he's completely done after about an hour.

naednek wrote:We also don't really know... I mean they were one of the first to be quarantined and more than likely stayed home. Now we're putting them back into school where the cases are higher than they were when it first started. Guess we will see the real numbers soon

Paingod wrote: Tue Jul 14, 2020 6:35 am

Jeff V wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 3:03 pmMy son's tolerance for even "fun" learning programs starts to wear thin after 30 minutes though, and he's completely done after about an hour.

I suspect this is a battle teachers work with in-person all school year and isn't unique to online learning. At home we've taken to deliberate breaks between tasks so the kids get a lot of little moments to decompress and get back to learning again. It seems to work. We might go 30-45 minutes, 10 minute break, 30-45 minutes, 10 minute break...

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:23 pm

stessier wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:26 pm That would be the same academy that today came out and backtracked from their previous position and said it should be left to the localities to make the decision based on the individual situations.

Edit: Wasn't today - was Friday. Sorry - time is a square circle.

Indeed, but that's a result of adverse political pressure in reaction to their original guidelines. It is a controversial topic, after all. Realistically, the science behind what the pediatrics infectious disease specialist specifically pointed out above has likely not changed significantly just over the weekend.