Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[Lvovsky]

destroying the economy and instituting a police state.

]

Funny that it happened with Republicans in the White House and senate

[KenJongIll]

Fuck! CT just extended their stay at home and business closures to May 20th at least. My father in law is going to lose the last of what's left in his head, the near complete lack of socialization has accelerated his dementia to the point where it's nearly impossible to communicate with him anymore. Now he's going to be locked in for at least that much longer Fuck! The place he lives lost another 3 residents this week to the virus and there are 4 more employees that are out because they're sick. We're not even allowed to take him out... Fuck!

That’s tough man. I’m really sorry.

[Lvovsky]

Uggh the mental health situation in my house just turned sour. My wife is so bummed about her dad being locked in and she can't even go see him because his apartment is interior so he can't come to a window and see us. He's 94 and fading and she is afraid she'll never get to hug him again. How do I keep her from losing it? Fuck...

That's terrible. I'm so sorry she has to go through with that.

My boyfriend's boss' wife is in the same situation.
They just moved her 91 year old mother from nursing home to COVID hospital for terminal patients.
She has pneumonia from coronavirus and her lungs are failing.
I don't think she can ever see her mother again while she's still alive.

That’s awful. Everyone has to decide for themselves what to do. I don’t know what I’d do. Take the chance?

Wow... I don’t know...

[KenJongIll]

Correct me if I’m wrong but this kind of data from the NYTimes/WH is completely misleading.

“The White House coronavirus task force released a breakdown of testing data Thursday that gave a sense of how hard the virus is hitting different age groups, further confirming that older people are the most likely to contract it.

Among people who were tested:

11 percent of those under 25 were positive.

17 percent of those between 25 and 45 were positive.

21 percent of those between 45 and 65 were positive.

22 percent of those between 65 and 55 were positive.

24 percent of those over 85 were positive.”

I know that in Wake County, NC, they are not even testing anyone unless they have all 3+ major symptoms, or over 65, or a 1st responder.
So that data from the NYT/WH is pointless.
This shit drives me crazy... the data of positive cases is useless. Hospitalized and deaths..has more value at this point. Am I wrong?

[gravitylover]

Sorry dude. Rough stuff. Maybe someone inside the complex can give a few minutes of facetime or zoom?

Yeah we tried, he doesn't see well enough anymore and the phone screen wasn't big enough and he got annoyed. We are going to try to convince them to let him come outside tomorrow with a mask and we'll have masks too. He needs people around and he needs some sort of stimulation or he will just fade away.

That's terrible. I'm so sorry she has to go through with that.

My boyfriend's boss' wife is in the same situation.
They just moved her 91 year old mother from nursing home to COVID hospital for terminal patients.
She has pneumonia from coronavirus and her lungs are failing.
I don't think she can ever see her mother again while she's still alive.

I'm sorry for all you two are going through.

Thanks for the thoughts all, now the trick is keeping my wife from falling off the edge...

[old goat]

Our neighbor, who is a nurse, brought her mother to their house from the assisted living, but she does not have significant dementia, so feasible. For an elderly parent with significant dementia that would be an extremely difficult challenge, even for trained medical people.
Nursing homes, cruise ships, war ships, prisons, detention centers, churches, --tough places to be right now. During the Spanish Flu WWI military barracks were a particularly hazardous place to be.

[The SnowShow]

And to think, not long ago Trump was saying we should reopen the country two days from now.

[Benny Profane]

And to think, not long ago Trump was saying we should reopen the country two days from now.

Looks like there's going to be thousands of Christians gathering together on Sunday, adding some real juice to this whole thing for the next month or so.

[The SnowShow]

Looks like there's going to be thousands of Christians gathering together on Sunday, adding some real juice to this whole thing for the next month or so.

Awesome.

[Mofro261]

Can you source the 70% number? I am having boatloads of trouble trying to track down any solid number on sensitivity while plenty of people throw out 70% 82% or 96%.... or 50% for the IgG/IgM...

Wouldn't viremia be the wrong term since none of the samples are serum?

Can you point me to the IgM+PCR study?

Personally... I have deep suspicions about the (in)adequacy of NP sample collection technique for a lot of users.

Today I saw something from a test manufacturer that confirmed my immunoassay concerns: potential crossreactivity to the 4 common human coronaviruses.

I can't post pdf's to the board, here are some links. In terms of the absolute % #'s, they will vary a bit with time from infection onset to date of testing.

"Antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in patients of novel coronavirus disease 2019." Clin Infect Dis. 2020 Mar 28. pii: ciaa344. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa344

"Profiling Early Humoral Response to Diagnose Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)" Clin Infect Dis. 2020 Mar 21. pii: ciaa310. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa310.

"Breadth of concomitant immune responses prior to patient recovery: a case report of non-severe COVID-19" Nature Medicine https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0819-2.

"Temporal profiles of viral load in posterior oropharyngeal saliva samples and serum antibody responses during infection by SARS-CoV-2: an observational cohort study." Lancet Infect Dis. 2020 doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30196-1

"A serological assay to detect SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion in humans". https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....17.20037713v1

You are correct, viremia /virus in the blood isn't the right term- viral load was what I intended.

Re: cross reactivity. The 2 main antigens that have been used for Sars-1 and Mers assays remain the 2 main antigens for detecting Sars-2 antibodies: Nucleocapsid (N) and Spike (S). The N protein has dominated the early assays released for Sars-2, as N is not glycosylated nor has disulfide bonds and was much easier for test makers to produce as a recombinant in bacteria. Based on the early work with Sars1, the N protein did show some cross reactivity with the 4 human coronaviruses that cause common cold. Addition of the other coronavirus N proteins is sometimes used to help define the "background" in an assay. The Spike glycoprotein was harder to produce requiring mammalian cell systems and yields were low, though the RBD receptor binding domain of Spike has been used as it has the lowest homology among all the coronavirus proteins and is the primary target of neutralizing antibodies. Antibodies from patients to the Spike of Sars-1 was not found to be cross reactive to the other human coronas in these early studies, in some studies the Spike RBD was used to confirm a positive Ab to N as Sars1 specific.

Where I work we develop these types of tests. We have purchased several from overseas companies in China and Korea that have been total crap in our hands- positive on archived "normal" and other disease samples. My take is in an effort to get these quickly to market that in some cases the diligence has not been done to ensure accuracy. A few of these have made it into the US market either through second site resellers, either without FDA EUA approval or with minimal data claims. We're very cognizant of not putting out an assay that will not hold up to scrutiny.

The antibody tests (we) have developed based on the virus Spike trimer should get EUA sign off sometime in the next 2-3 weeks if things hold course. The Spike we have made has strong binding to ACE2 and to select neutralizing antibodies cross reactive with Sars1, and so far picking up IgM and IgG to all of the confirmed rtPCR pos serum samples we have been able to get a hold of. Cleaner backgrounds/ better specificity in our hands than N protein and some others we've evaluated. Not sure what good juju I had but we were hitting 50-100X better expression/production than what had been reported by others in the literature out of the gate, been sending material out to be evaluated at multiple sites in the US. Still, we were delayed 2-3 weeks in March because we couldn't get enough true pos samples for our assay developers to say with confidence what we had was going to work on expanded serum sets.

[Hott Butt Mud]

Looks like there's going to be thousands of Christians gathering together on Sunday, adding some real juice to this whole thing for the next month or so.

And at the same time, there's a huge social media outcry to prevent people in Colorado from leaving their 'Home County' to hike/bike/ski, etc. which is probably crossing the line of what is truly necessary.

Next, you can't leave your neighborhood to walk/bike/hike, however, it is OK to go to church to worship and visit the grocery/liquor/MJ stores?

WTF?

[glademaster]

And at the same time, there's a huge social media outcry to prevent people in Colorado from leaving their 'Home County' to hike/bike/ski, etc. which is probably crossing the line of what is truly necessary.

That seems lax, the mayor of Seattle was on the local NPR station today telling people that they really shouldn't even be going for a run in their neighborhood, and that the "stay at home" order meant that you should be indoors unless you are going to the grocery store, the pharmacy, or the doctor.

[Hott Butt Mud]

That seems lax, the mayor of Seattle was on the local NPR station today telling people that they really shouldn't even be going for a run in their neighborhood, and that the "stay at home" order meant that you should be indoors unless you are going to the grocery store, the pharmacy, or the doctor.

Yeah, until they put up road blocks, I don't see how they can keep people from going on a hike in the woods.

[gretch6364]

And at the same time, there's a huge social media outcry to prevent people in Colorado from leaving their 'Home County' to hike/bike/ski, etc. which is probably crossing the line of what is truly necessary.

Next, you can't leave your neighborhood to walk/bike/hike, however, it is OK to go to church to worship and visit the grocery/liquor/MJ stores?

WTF?

Let’s be honest, people shouldn’t be leaving their county to go hike/ski/bike.

It doesn’t seem that hard...stay the fuck at home.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[summit]

I can't post pdf's to the board, here are some links. In terms of the absolute % #'s, they will vary a bit with time from infection onset to date of testing.

"Antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in patients of novel coronavirus disease 2019." Clin Infect Dis. 2020 Mar 28. pii: ciaa344. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa344

"Profiling Early Humoral Response to Diagnose Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)" Clin Infect Dis. 2020 Mar 21. pii: ciaa310. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa310.

"Breadth of concomitant immune responses prior to patient recovery: a case report of non-severe COVID-19" Nature Medicine https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0819-2.

"Temporal profiles of viral load in posterior oropharyngeal saliva samples and serum antibody responses during infection by SARS-CoV-2: an observational cohort study." Lancet Infect Dis. 2020 doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30196-1

"A serological assay to detect SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion in humans". https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....17.20037713v1

You are correct, viremia /virus in the blood isn't the right term- viral load was what I intended.

Re: cross reactivity. The 2 main antigens that have been used for Sars-1 and Mers assays remain the 2 main antigens for detecting Sars-2 antibodies: Nucleocapsid (N) and Spike (S). The N protein has dominated the early assays released for Sars-2, as N is not glycosylated nor has disulfide bonds and was much easier for test makers to produce as a recombinant in bacteria. Based on the early work with Sars1, the N protein did show some cross reactivity with the 4 human coronaviruses that cause common cold. Addition of the other coronavirus N proteins is sometimes used to help define the "background" in an assay. The Spike glycoprotein was harder to produce requiring mammalian cell systems and yields were low, though the RBD receptor binding domain of Spike has been used as it has the lowest homology among all the coronavirus proteins and is the primary target of neutralizing antibodies. Antibodies from patients to the Spike of Sars-1 was not found to be cross reactive to the other human coronas in these early studies, in some studies the Spike RBD was used to confirm a positive Ab to N as Sars1 specific.

Where I work we develop these types of tests. We have purchased several from overseas companies in China and Korea that have been total crap in our hands- positive on archived "normal" and other disease samples. My take is in an effort to get these quickly to market that in some cases the diligence has not been done to ensure accuracy. A few of these have made it into the US market either through second site resellers, either without FDA EUA approval or with minimal data claims. We're very cognizant of not putting out an assay that will not hold up to scrutiny.

The antibody tests (we) have developed based on the virus Spike trimer should get EUA sign off sometime in the next 2-3 weeks if things hold course. The Spike we have made has strong binding to ACE2 and to select neutralizing antibodies cross reactive with Sars1, and so far picking up IgM and IgG to all of the confirmed rtPCR pos serum samples we have been able to get a hold of. Cleaner backgrounds/ better specificity in our hands than N protein and some others we've evaluated. Not sure what good juju I had but we were hitting 50-100X better expression/production than what had been reported by others in the literature out of the gate, been sending material out to be evaluated at multiple sites in the US. Still, we were delayed 2-3 weeks in March because we couldn't get enough true pos samples for our assay developers to say with confidence what we had was going to work on expanded serum sets.

1. Thanks for the articles, will read!

2. The S test is the best damned news I've heard in a while.

[Benny Profane]

Let’s be honest, people shouldn’t be leaving their county to go hike/ski/bike.

It doesn’t seem that hard...stay the fuck at home.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

You must live in a nice place to hike and bike.

[glademaster]

Let’s be honest, people shouldn’t be leaving their county to go hike/ski/bike.

It doesn’t seem that hard...stay the fuck at home.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

Says the guy who lives in a town that straddles two gigantic counties.

[Hott Butt Mud]

Let’s be honest, people shouldn’t be leaving their county to go hike/ski/bike.

It doesn’t seem that hard...stay the fuck at home.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

Yeah I would agree that that you shouldn't be traveling far, and do the social distance, but it is absoutley wrong to just ban everyone from "your" county. The land mass of the western states is massive and there is plenty of room to space people out. The argument of trailheads having mass of amounts of cars is fucking absurd when you compare it to the King Soopers or Costco parking lot.

[TBS]

You can do all of those things in scuba regulator.

That’s why scuba is better than pandemic.

I don’t know. I once had the misfortune of being assigned a hungover Asian tourist as a dive buddy at Molokini. He was woofing 30 sec after we left the harbor. He started blowing chunks through his regulator as soon as we got him in the water - fish were swarming us. Pretty disgusting

At least the Captain comp’d me for a subsequent day and assigned me a gorgeous lady as buddy, so it wasn’t a complete loss

[rideit]

And now for some light hearted humor.
Yes, there are people this dumb. And high.

https://www.newsweek.com/iowa-woman-...n=Distribution

[The AD]

Correct me if I’m wrong but this kind of data from the NYTimes/WH is completely misleading.

“The White House coronavirus task force released a breakdown of testing data Thursday that gave a sense of how hard the virus is hitting different age groups, further confirming that older people are the most likely to contract it.

Among people who were tested:

11 percent of those under 25 were positive.

17 percent of those between 25 and 45 were positive.

21 percent of those between 45 and 65 were positive.

22 percent of those between 65 and 55 were positive.

24 percent of those over 85 were positive.”

I know that in Wake County, NC, they are not even testing anyone unless they have all 3+ major symptoms, or over 65, or a 1st responder.
So that data from the NYT/WH is pointless.
This shit drives me crazy... the data of positive cases is useless. Hospitalized and deaths..has more value at this point. Am I wrong?

It's wrong, but it doesn't offend me that much. They could have fixed it simply by saying "...confirming that older people are most affected" or something along those lines.

[splat]

Truckee killin' it at nine times the average rate/% of infection as the rest of Cali.

https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2020/..._pXlXpugQFB9Xg

[rideit]

We currently have 45 positives here, which I am gathering is low for ski towns. But I don’t know.

[bobz]

Let’s be honest, people shouldn’t be leaving their county to go hike/ski/bike.

It doesn’t seem that hard...stay the fuck at home.

A martyrdom lifestyle is going to work for some people. For others, this is going to be more sustainable if we concentrate on doing things that make a difference.

- Not socializing in person: Makes a difference.
- Not going to work in person: Makes a difference.
- Keeping your distance and wearing a mask while grocery shopping, which you only do when necessary: Makes a difference.
- Staying roughly a car's length apart at the trailhead, and spending most of your time on the trail far from others, rather than hanging out at the trailhead with other people: Makes a difference.
- Doing you-fall-you-die steeps or high terrain hazard slopes during high snowpack avy hazard: Not a great idea. Everybody trying to stay within a reasonable safety comfort zone will Make a difference.

- Avoiding public roads, which happen to be relatively empty even in suburban areas, because there's a very very small chance that during a relatively short drive you will get into an injury accident and furthermore take health resources away from Covid treatment, particularly if you're in one of the many areas where hospitals are managing pretty well at the moment: Doesn't make much of a difference.
- Hiking, biking, ski touring, etc., mostly pretty far from others, very occasionally within a few feet of others: Doesn't make much of a difference.

Pace yourselves, people. Stay mentally and physically healthy. Unless you'd rather make a public point by suffering beyond what is really necessary, in which case do what you like.

[MakersTeleMark]

Truckee killin' it at nine times the average rate/% of infection as the rest of Cali.

https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2020/..._pXlXpugQFB9Xg

My county is 8.3/thousand.

You can compare those numbers to anywhere.