COVID tests
And I know it’s tempting to criticize the administration for not supplying ample amounts of tests but that is the wrong approach also.
Tests are how this goes on forever so by criticizing them now you are just setting them up for a win when they produce 40 gazillion tests in a month.
My response? Yes and no.
Yes, tests yield cases, and cases have been the wrong metric for a long long time now. Tests also might play into the increased number of hypochondriacal people who want to test themselves all the time.
But the administration will claim a win no matter what happens, and the MSM will back them up and their supporters will believe. It doesn’t really have to reflect reality. So whether we criticize the administration or not is somewhat irrelevant, I think.
What’s more, home tests are really helpful. Over a month ago I was visiting my grandkids and caught a very nasty bug. In fact, I’m still recovering a month later, although I’m nearly 100% now. But I had symptoms that seemed to point to COVID: sore throat and runny nose, insistent cough, exhaustion, and chills and fever. I think for a while I also didn’t really taste much, and my appetite was decreased. The fever, which was somewhat low-grade much of the time although sometimes higher, lasted nearly two weeks, which was highly unusual for me and quite alarming.
I had access to a home test through a relative, and it was a wonderful thing to be able to avoid waiting in line with other sick people, and also being able to find out quite quickly whether I tested positive or not. The test was negative, and I took another a couple of weeks later – negative also. I’ve had friends exposed to COVID who had to wait many days for test results and missed important family events because of it.
So I do think it would be a great thing on a personal level if people had access to such tests. How they use them is their business, I suppose.
One other thing – the more tests available, the easier testing is for even the asymptomatic hypochondriacal among us, the more people will test positive and will perhaps be able to relax and live more normally, knowing they now have good immunity for COVID. Or am I giving people way too much credit?
My daughter mentioned the other day that the home tests are reportedly not as accurate as the PCR tests.
Less than trustworthy ABC confirms;
“At-home rapid COVID-19 tests may not be as accurate as PCR tests” https://abc7chicago.com/coronavirus-testing-at-home-covid-test-results-how-effective-are/11066219/
A few days later I read “CDC Announces It Is Dropping PCR Testing For COVID-19”
https://www.shorenewsnetwork.com/2021/07/26/cdc-drops-pcr-tests-for-covid-19-rapid-testing/
What good are testing procedures in which we have little certainty as to its accuracy?
Yes, you are giving people too much credit. Some of these people would test themselves hourly if they could.
I also said a bit earlier that don’t get tested unless you have to which would include if you are actually sick although I would qualify that by saying only if you are over 65 or have other comorbidities or are around someone who does.
If you a 30 year old healthy person with a runny nose and scratchy throat why test?
And getting the media to give up there love affair with ‘cases, cases, cases’ is going to be damn near impossible so it does matter because they will continue to whip up fear (with decreasing success but still) based on them no matter what the suddenly ‘team reality’ scaremongers say.
If tests are going to be helpful, I would like to see antibody tests to see who is immune. I know the vaccine effect is fading but I don’t know the result with real immunity in those who have recovered from the virus. My wife had an illness in June 2020 that had all the signs of Covid and spent three days in hospital but she had 5 tests, PCR tests, that were all negative. It would be helpful to know what her antibody status is but we have an internist who is obviously a Democrat. He wears a whole face guard, not just a mask, and told my wife she had to keep her mask on when talking to him as he “has a 9 year old at home,” and feared for the child’s safety. He is uninterested in anything but vaccination. I told him that we were both taking HCQ when she was sick and he dismissed that. I was a physician when he was in high school but no matter. He knows better.
What I don’t like and I have seen a lot the last week is the criticism of the administration from the right that goes something like:
‘With cases surging Biden promises more testing but it will take a month to get them’
That is conceding something that should not be conceded.
An earlier version of this was when critics on the right would say:
‘With cases surging Gov. Lefty McLeftist went out to eat without a mask on while mandating it for others’
That is conceding that masks mandates should be followed. No, no, no!
The way to attack that is by saying that even Gov. McLeftist knows these masks don’t work.
I agree with Griffin. Home tests are not going to be even close in accuracy to even the infamous PCR, yet alone gene sequencing which seems to be needed for complete identification of omicron.
Testing is the next phase in keeping the people in a state of hysteria, and it’s working. Note the continuing push for more and more jabs of an mRNA shot designed for the long past alpha.
Neo, I know you don’t like listening or watching videos, but the Malone and McCullough interviews are worth the 5 hours. Take them in stages, browse other things while listening.
A couple of really good big picture pieces from Kevin Roche.
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2021/12/31/get-the-hell-out-of-here-2021-and-oh-shit-here-comes-2022/
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2022/01/01/a-to-do-list-for-2022/
As I’ve said before, do the what we physicists call the gedanken experiment: 1) there’s no easy, quick, good test for identifying a specific virus, yet alone a strain. ie it’s like, say, 1955. 2) the pandemic of the past 18 months seems to be fading away, cases down, hospitalizations and deaths way down, ie this past October, only its 1955 3) a lot of people seem to be getting a head/throat cold that lasts about 3 days and that’s it.
Now the real question: how do we all react to this “cold”?????
physicsguy,
There has to be no social media in your experiment also.
The answer is last winter would have been treated like a few others where a few local newspapers would print a page 7 article about the bad flu season and how local hospitals are overflowing and that would have been it.
There are tons of compilations of doctors, hospitals, etc. talking about how overcrowded they were from winter 2018.
One of the many eye openers from this is that people have no clue about statistics and risk assessment and two years later they are actually worse at it than before.
@ Geoffrey addresses my major questions: what are the false-positive and false-negative rates of all of these tests? – no matter what their basis or methodology. Stories are rife on the internet about multiple tests on the same person giving both results, obviously wrong results based on symptoms, and so forth.
I was also amused at this juxtaposition: from the “At-home rapid COVID-19 tests may not be as accurate as PCR tests” post, the doctor quoted says this (in October 2021): “They’re these so-called antigen tests. They detect the protein product of the virus much in the same way that a home pregnancy test works. They’re actually very good tests. Now, they’re not perfect. The gold standard is still the PCR test, that’s the laboratory-based test,”
But the first link “CDC Announces It Is Dropping PCR Testing For COVID-19” was from the previous July.
If the experts aren’t keeping up, what good is their advice?
Three stories for consideration:
https://twitter.com/akheriaty/status/1476731338707275784
https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2021/12/27/why-are-some-people-with-omicron-testing-negative-for-covid-n437887
And this: why do some people still test positive after they have recovered from the virus? (Neo featured this on a post 12/29)
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/12/29/cdc-director-drops-bombshell-calling-covid-testing-protocol-into-question-n498778
Now refer back to that July 2021 post:
So, maybe there are different kinds of PCR test; it’s not clear to me.
In fact, a LOT is not clear.
(to be continued)
AesopFan,
There was an NFL player that tested positive back in September and thus didn’t need to be tested for 12 weeks and that ended the other day and he immediately tested positive again.
Did he have it then? Or now? Or ever?
Unfortunately, yes.
Griffin said: ” Yes, you are giving people too much credit. Some of these people would test themselves hourly if they could.”
Some people just enjoy and/or are peculiarly susceptible to the frisson and self-importance of living in fear — and contemporary corporate media encourages and cultivates this susceptibility.
I wonder sometimes whether the books, TV shows, movies about historical convulsions like WWII, the 1918 flu, and the like has grown a vast multitude of people who know they will never face a crisis and thus will never be seen as heroes by history — so they have manufactured their own heroism.
The only way out of covid is to just stop focusing on it. Treat it like the annual flu, which it is more and more like with every wave. Wash your hands a lot, take your D/Zn/etc, stay home if you’re sick, go to the Dr. if you’re that sick. Otherwise, just stop. Everybody’s going to get it eventually, no way out but through.
Early on in the “pandemic” I wondered aloud, “What’s the point of being tested? If you’re positive, they won’t treat you until you’re at the point of hospitalization, then they’ll they’ll take you and kill you with a ventilator set at too high pressure.”
Now it’s more like they won’t allow you to be treated with the hyper-dangerous HCQ or the horse dewormer; instead they’ll give you Remdesivir to destroy your kidneys so more fluid can accumulate in your lungs.
If I sound like I’ve lost all faith in the medical-pharmaceutical-government complex, that’s just not true; instead I’ve developed a great deal of faith that none of them have my best interests at heart.
Could be in Quebec I guess. They are back in a curfew and you can’t even walk your dog anymore after curfew.
Viva Frei’s ‘Viva On The Street’ are very entertaining and filled with righteous anger and they began during the last curfew in Quebec which did allow walking your dog.
https://twitter.com/thevivafrei/status/1477413597995282432
Stan wins the thread in the last sentance. It was a close run thing. Happy New Year!
Plus One on the Rogan-Malone interview. My wife and I both listened and learned.
And a lot I thought was confirmed correct, regardless of the media.
I’m 68, sitting here with what he described as the Omicron symptoms.
Yeah, the monoclonal was probably a waste of time.
But listening to that interview was not.
When I went for my test, I was asked, do I want the rapid or the PCR (by appointment, sit in your truck, they come out to your window).
To me, the PCR tells you nothing when you don’t know how many cycles they will run it at. But they said the rapid was 80%.
Who knows?
At the risk of stating the obvious: clinical testing for a patient differs from population testing for public health officials and epidemiologists.
Back in the spring of 2020, I was shocked that the CDC never implemented a rigorous testing program for random samples of people. I’ve read that random sampling has been done in the UK, but I don’t know the details.
Rigorous random sample testing could have provided valuable data about spreading rates and treatment efficacy. Now, almost two years later, after all this testing, we have nothing but garbage data. Instead of random samples, we have convenience samples. Some people volunteer, some people show up at a hospital emergency room, some people take required tests for their job or university. Taken altogether, the biases in the data are so hard to interpret that “excess deaths” have become the best measure of the pandemic.
Data sampling methods, data collection procedures, and data standards comprise the most fundamental mission of the CDC. They have failed miserably.
Covid Test Quandaries continued:
Question: are antibody tests the same as antigen tests, as mentioned in the post about at-home rapid tests?
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/05/27/cdc-actually-dont-believe-anti-body-tests-that-come-back-positive-n2569569
CDC Changes Its Tune About Antibody Testing
So, they are guessing, modeling, extrapolating, or whatever – not measuring.
Sounds like the standard MO of the CDC all through this operation.
Were the antibody tests showing too many recovered – and mild – cases to sustain the pandemic narrative?
The NEJM isn’t usually in the hysteria business, but after what’s been printed and retracted and question in The Lancet, and the BJM, and other reputable (ahem) journals, who can tell anymore?
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/11/29/natural-immunity-works-better-than-covid-vaccines-new-england-journal-of-medicine-n1537331
That seems to me like a rather large hole in their methodology.
I assume the studies each devised some reliable method of determining who actually had been sick before, whether then vaxxed or not, since the PCR tests and antibody / antigen tests are all suspect — or are the gold-standard, depending on the news cycle.
BUT the CDC told us not to trust antibody tests, remember?
And we can’t really trust the PCR tests either – which was known a long time ago.
https://redstate.com/michael_thau/2020/09/03/ny-times-up-to-90-of-people-who-tested-positive-for-c19-not-infected-truth-a-whole-lot-worse-pt-3-n253332
Astute readers will remember that the Biden CDC abruptly recommended that the number of cycles be reduced before the PCR test could be counted as a real positive, because they needed to reduce the number of cases on Biden’s watch; didn’t help them much.
From one of our resident Astute Readers:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/05/22/open-thread-5-22-21/#comment-2556269
We are just now seeing an admission that the CDC should only count hospitalizations FROM Covid rather than including (as before) everyone WITH Covid.
Convenient huh?
https://townhall.com/columnists/katiepavlich/2021/12/31/fauci-finally-admits-covid-data-is-garbage-n2601272
So, maybe this next one is a leetle on the side of conspiracy hysteria, but events since it was published didn’t lead to increased confidence.
And I like the rhetorical device of Catte’s repeated refrain, although I can’t replicate her italicizing of it in the blockquote mode.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/08/03/repeat-after-me-the-pcr-tests-dont-work/
The pandemic is only as real as the test, and test is a dice roll. – by Catte Black
*About the Sars-Cov-2 RNA: Catte Black links these references:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/05/pcr-inventor-it-doesnt-tell-you-that-you-are-sick/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/07/29/cdc-fda-confess-they-had-no-virus-when-they-concocted-the-test-for-the-virus/
CDC/FDA confess: they had no virus when they concocted the test for the virus
by Jon Rappoport
July 29, 2021
The CDCs apparent incompetence is entirely intentional. When given constantly changing information that contradicts previous information, confusion results. Which creates fertile ground for fear among the trusting.
49,000 ‘cases’ reported today in New York City alone. A month or two ago Fauci said until the US is regularly below 10,000 cases a day this will still be an emergency.
That’s 10,000 in the entire US not one city.
Test, test, test, test!
Griffin:
I’ve already acknowledged that some people would test themselves hourly. The point is: how many? I think it’s a rather small percentage.
Also, I doubt they’d get enough tests from the government to test themselves hourly, anyway. So it’s rather moot.
Outbreak at a mask factory.
https://twitter.com/daniela127/status/1476931179974647812
neo,
That was an exaggeration. But there were some tweets by a couple of CNN people showing their boxes of tests. One of them was that Cizzilla guy who I think just had it.
Even if it’s not hourly they will just go the sites and do it multiple times.
Point is if you have no symptoms there is NEVER a need to test and if youngish and healthy even with mild symptoms it’s debatable.
BTW, that last post brings us full-cycle to Geoffrey’s comment, the one where the “CDC Announces It Is Dropping PCR Testing For COVID-19” —
Someone better qualified than I am may be able to evaluate these claims:
*That may have been true at the time; perhaps some proofs (of the scientific kind, not of the Science-c’est-moi Kind) have since been presented?
Tests are how this goes on forever
It isn’t. This dissipates when there’s a general realization that you’re not having appreciable waves of people landing in the hospital and dying. In re Omicron, the Netherlands went from zero to peak in about seven weeks. It appears the mortality rate among their tested population has been just shy of 0.3% to date.
Forever doesn’t have to mean at this level. It will drop and then in the spring some other surge will come and they will test test test again and then when the seasonal wave comes to the south again next summer they will test test test again and then next year when fall/winter comes and cases rise there will be cries to test test test.
neo,
Sorry to hear you were ill and glad you’re on the mend.
I think home tests can be helpful, but in the vast majority of instances they’ll be used I think they’ll be unnecessary at best, and often detrimental. I don’t really understand how the two tests you mention taking helped you. You were sick. Even when you learned it was not COVID I assume you did your best to not infect others. Which is what one should do if one is ill and symptomatic. Try not to spread the illness. How did the test results change your behavior?
I helped someone do a home test today. The test was made in China, of course! I felt the instructions were actually good. Succinct, explicit wording and helpful images. It worked as claimed and the results were negative for the person who took it. But I can see many people getting confused. And, the test we used uses a line to indicate a positive result and stresses any indication, no matter how faint, should be treated as positive. I can see many people imagining a faint line when there is none.
But even if the tests always worked perfectly, are never misused and people use them judiciously; I don’t understand the point. If you have symptoms and feel sick stay away from others. It’s common sense. Why would it be any different if it’s COVID-19 or the Chicken Pox?
Griffin:
If even a young and healthy and asymptomatic person has been in a room with a group of people and many came down with COVID shortly after that, I would suggest a test in order to know if the person is positive and should stay away from other people for a while – particularly if they have elderly relatives or elderly people they might otherwise be visiting.
Rufus T. Firefly:
It changed my behavior and also changed my attitude.
I was really quite sick. If I knew I’d had COVID, I would have also been FAR more anxious about my breathing, etc., than I already was. It was definitely a plus to have that extra anxiety allayed.
In terms of my behavior, it’s really quite simple. The entire time I was sick, I was mostly visiting my son and his family – that is, my grandkids. They all had been sick before I was and were tested for COVID which they did not have, although not nearly as sick as I was and with slightly different symptoms. I thought I might have caught whatever they had, but as I said my symptoms were much worse and slightly different, so I thought it possible I actually had contracted COVID elsewhere (I’d been in restaurants and supermarkets without them, and I had been traveling on planes, etc. too). I did not want to give them COVID and would not have visited them if I’d had it, even though I had traveled thousands of miles to see them. Knowing I didn’t have COVID meant I had almost certainly contracted a cold/flu from them, and I was free to see them unmasked as long as I wasn’t feeling too sick. It was extremely important to me to be able to do that.
Well, the ‘rona has finally breached the last continental holdout: Antarctica. “Researchers working at Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Polar Station in Antarctica have contracted Covid-19, even though all personnel have been inoculated and any new arrival has to follow rigorous safety protocols. Two-thirds of the station’s staff of 25 have been infected with the coronavirus, Belgium’s polar secretariat confirmed to local media earlier this week. But how the virus could have reached the remote station, located some 220km (137 miles) from the Antarctic coast, remains a mystery.”
https://www.rt.com/news/544909-belgian-station-antarctic-covid-outbreak/
The Belgian station relies on the results of PCR testing: “Those en route there take one PCR test in Belgium before leaving for South Africa and another five days after their arrival. They self-isolate for 10 days in Cape Town, then undergo two further tests: one before leaving for Antarctica and another five days after arriving at the station.”
Meanwhile, y’all will be pleased to know that the ever-vigilant CDC is warning us-folks against traveling to Antarctica, “COVID Level Unknown.”
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/covid-unknown/coronavirus-antarctica
The page has not been updated since May 19, not that that’s a surprise.
A comprehensive survey of the COVID morass:
“Omicron Offers An Off-Ramp From Our Failed Pandemic Policy”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/omicron-offers-ramp-our-failed-pandemic-policy
…together with an optimistic look to the future—something along the lines of “What can’t continue won’t” (though I wish I could be as optimistic…):
“Reflections On Another Year Of Covidian Lies & How The Truth Will Ultimately Prevail”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/reflections-another-year-covidian-lies-how-truth-will-ultimately-prevail
“…remains a mystery.”
Gotta be the penguins.
Go wherever they want, whenever they want.
Refuse to be vaccinated.
Don’t wear masks.
Totally undisciplined.
Utterly deplorable. Racist. Supremacist. Look and walk suspicious-like.
They should all be put away, deported to South Georgia or wherever.
Justin Trudeau (AKA “Obama Light”) has the right idea….
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/justin-trudeau-the-unvaccinated-are-usually-racist-and-misogynist/
Justin Trudeau (AKA “Obama Light”) has the right idea….
Both Trudeau and Obama are indicators of the degree to which peer review has broken down in their respective political parties and the degree to which the voting public in each country is content with that. Trudeau is not ‘Obama light’, he is parody Obama.
Well OK, though perhaps more like parotting Obama…
(Also wouldn’t agree that the voting public in the US is “content with that”…. Canada has a different problem because its parliamentary system gives the left-of-center a practically permanent majority, even if the result is almost automatically a minority government
Speaking of parody, though, here’s Peter Berkowitz trying to inject a little reality back into the mix of Leftist and center-Right (so-called) delusion, senseless rage and bizarre invective.
Not an easy task, mind you (if possible at all), and most likely thankless.
Alas, he’s trying to be so even-handed—trying to construct his argument so carefully—that he leaves a very effective take-down of Liberal insanity to the very end, which (together with at least one odd claims—pertaining to Irving Kristol) may cause the impatient reader to simply stop reading in the middle.
Nonetheless, a well-wrought column.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/01/02/david_brooks_requiem_for_conservatisms_most_recent_death_146972.html
H/T Powerline blog.
Forever doesn’t have to mean at this level. It will drop and then in the spring some other surge will come and they will test test test again and then when the seasonal wave comes to the south again next summer they will test test test again and then next year when fall/winter comes and cases rise there will be cries to test test test.
So what? Look at the British data and compare it to ours. There’s been record-breaking numbers of ‘cases’ for the last seven months, but there hasn’t been even one seven day period where the mean daily death toll was not below the 25th percentile of the mean daily death toll in the U.S. as measured over the last 21 months. Eventually you get politicians like Jared Poleis who begin to say ‘fu*k it, I’m not putting my career on the line for nuisance problems or for a statistical artifact’.
Everything we’ve seen so far suggests (1) omicron will come and go over a period of about 3 months and (2) the death toll will be only the weakest reflection of the case counts. Omicron is about 70% over in the Netherlands and in South Africa. From the third week of October to the end of the year, death counts in the Netherlands were > 40% below last year’s and those in South Africa 75% below last year’s.
Different countries are emerging on the other side at different rates. In the U.S., the death toll from the 3d week of October to the end of the year has been about 1/3 below last year’s. In Britain, it’s been about 2/3 below last year’s. In Sweden, it’s been > 90% below. In let her rip Brazil, it’s been 60% below. Eventually this ends.
Canada has a different problem because its parliamentary system gives the left-of-center a practically permanent majority, even if the result is almost automatically a minority government
No, their electorate does that. Canada would benefit from a velvet divorce. Each side could go its own way and bicker intamurally over policy questions, without identity questions giving the Liberal Party a leg up.
Note, they’re electorate does that even though the Liberal Party is, like the Democratic Party in the U.S., attempting to augment their electoral base by importing a lot of immigrants. Anglophone Canadians haven’t much of a sense of self-preservation and in the civic realm they’re generally craven.
neo,
I don’t want to criticize your behavior; it’s the norm these days. But my point is, take a step back and imagine it wasn’t 2020 or 2021 and the same thing happened. Let’s say it happened during a visit to your son and his family in 2018. You would have paid close attention to your symptoms. You would have avoided others to not spread the illness. You would have sought additional medical treatment if any symptoms increased to a compromising level. You would have “babied” yourself; rest, fluids, bubbe’s chicken soup, so your body could fight the infection…
This is how we get back to normalcy. Yes, COVID-19 is out there. So is influenza, rhino-virus, chicken pox, athlete’s foot. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a first cousin and a second cousin who both died of influenza (years apart). Both in their early 30s. Both in decent shape. They caught flus that escalated to pneumonia quickly and by the time they were hospitalized the infections were too severe to be reversed.
We are living in a disease vector and COVID-19 is now part of that mix. In 2018 or 2016 if I ran a fever, had congestion and felt nauseous I would be a bit curious about the name of what I had, but as long as my body seemed to be successfully fighting whatever it was I didn’t spend money or time going to a Dr. or clinic or doing a home test. I rested and tried not to infect others.
Let’s say someone is feeling a bit under the weather and has an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party. She takes one of Joe Biden’s at home COVID tests and the results are negative. So she goes to the party and infects 1/3 of the revelers with a bad flu? What do the tests change?
I should add, I don’t judge neo for her curiosity. That’s why I ended up assisting someone taking a home test yesterday. She had some mild symptoms, a home test was available, so why not?
But this is why I think mailing millions of home kits to Americans will cause more harm than good. In my example, turns out the person yesterday just awoke with a headache and congestion that does not appear to be illness. Likely caused by a change in air pressure, temperature, and breathing more air from a forced heat furnace. Multiply that by 300 million Americans every morning and you’ll have thousands self-quarantining due to falsely administered tests or misinterpretations of test results.
If you have noticeable symptoms (whether from COVID, the common cold or dengue fever) do what you can to avoid infecting others, rest, drink fluids and monitor your symptoms. If they escalate or you don’t recover in a reasonable time period seek medical attention. Just like Mom taught us all those decades ago.
Art Deco,
Yes, I agree with everything you said about how the actual virus will play out but my concerns are not about the actual virus but about the governmental response to it.
With each one of these waves it becomes more ingrained in the governmental culture that it is acceptable to deprive the citizenry of their liberties and ensure that they will always be an option in the future when in actuality they should never be done again.
So to me forever doesn’t mean it will always be like exactly right now but instead we will be living in a forever limbo where every winter we could be having mask mandates and business closures at the whim of some leftist politician or bureaucrat.
About 5-6 years ago my then mid 80s mother got some sort of virus and it advanced to pnuemonia and she was in the hospital for about a week. What was it? No idea I don’t even know if they did any analysis of it or if they just treated her and moved on. I can only imagine what would have happened if she presented the same way from March 2020 onward.
My point is that at some level ‘sick is sick’ and putting a precise scary name on it doesn’t always change anything.
I have mentioned here before that there have been several instances of college basketball/football teams playing through large flu outbreaks in the last few months. They tested them for COVID and they were all negative but ‘sick is sick’ except when it comes to this time period.
my concerns are not about the actual virus but about the governmental response to it.
They’ll get too much Irish resistance to be able to do much but bay at the moon. The CDC and the FDA don’t have much in the way of boots on the ground, and, see university scientists who’ve worked with CDC, they’re often pre-occupied with busywork even in emergencies. They rely on state and local government. Well, the red state governors aren’t co-operating and a vanguard of the blue state governors are getting PR conscious and responding with selective resistance. Even with some mediocrity like Kathy Hochul in charge, you’ll have work-to-rule responses by local police and inspectors.
In my part of the country, the masks are still evident, but you see old people lunching in my local bakery (I still keep it to take-out), the runs on hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol are long gone, the 6 foot stickers in stores have been rubbed off and not replaced. The place where you see neuralgic responses are the places most under the thumb of other-directed people for whom social signaling is a reflex – i.e. in higher education.
This just in from my former hometown in CT. I read it and just can’t believe it. Mass psychosis.
“We have received our first test kit distribution from the state! These test kits will be distributed TODAY January 2nd at the Lebanon Senior Center as a drive-through distribution from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM while supplies last.
Due to the limited quantity of tests, the distribution may end early. We will share an update when kits run out. We have not yet received masks from the state so this distribution is for test kits only.
Due to the limited supplies, we are asking residents to help us prioritize people who have symptoms or have been exposed within the last week. One test kit will be given to each vehicle at the drive-through. There are two tests per kits.
Proof of residency required. You MUST wear a mask to help us protect the individuals assisting with the distribution.”
If a person has the same symptoms as COVID but continually tests negative are they less sick?
Check out Canadian Covid Care dot Org and read the piece they have up about the dangers of the jab…..FROM the Pfizer study data!!
When my mother started showing symptoms of Covid back in August, I drove her to a small satellite branch of one of the large local hospitals for drive up testing, about two days after symptoms began. They took two nasal samples , one for the “ quick test” and one for a longer test. The understanding was that if the quick test was positive, they would let her know, but if the quick test was negative, they would run the longer test. Both test came up negative. Her symptoms continued to develop and she became quiet ill. A full week after the first test, she tested positive at the emergency room.
At the ER we were told this was common when testing someone who only recently began showing symptoms. Whether the test show positive or negative, there seems to be a lot of false results with these test.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Your point doesn’t make sense to me.
If I was quite sick pre-COVID with a nasty long-lasting bug while visiting another family, I would STILL have loved to have had some sort of test to learn whether I had the same bug as they or a different, potentially much more serious one. No such tests were available, but now they are, at least for COVID. So I was glad to have it available for my use. And I would have been similarly glad prior to COVID. Same for the opportunity to decrease anxiety. There was no downside to taking such a test. I was able to visit my grandkids as long as I felt well enough, even while sick. Otherwise I would not have done so. In fact, pre-COVID I did get sick for a while when I was visiting them, and I had to stay away for many precious days of my visit because I didn’t want to give them whatever I had. Bummer.
She-it! To H with tests. We need treatments, treatments with drugs long ago approved by FDA for other ills, like lupus.
Our society is upside down when it worries about tests, vaccine passports as if this were 1930s Germany. Just release these meds!
@AD:
“Trudeau is not ‘Obama light’, he is parody Obama.”
That explains the blackface, at least.
I knew this whole covid thing was a method to scare the hell out of people when the media’s focus was on case numbers; not deaths or hospitalizations. And the age and other medical conditions of these sick and dead are never discussed.
The Left scares people by headlines.
jon baker:
False negatives are more common than false positives. That’s why people often repeat the test later.
That’s not all that unusual and not just with COVID. Screening tests are rarely perfect or anywhere near perfect in that sense.
Hilariously in Australia the Sheeple have been so traumatised by fearmongering over the past two years that they’re currently panicking and overloading the testing centres now that Omicron is well and truly on the loose there (If you blinked you might have missed it — the numbers — excluding deaths to date — have really spiked since mid-December). The federal and state governments are having to walk the hype back a bit to take the pressure off their good and faithful servants who man the barricades.
Very good thread on how and why they are still counting deaths WITH Covid at massive levels.
None of the data has any value at this point so even if somebody says we need to concentrate on hospitalizations and deaths is knowingly relying on misleading data.
https://twitter.com/brocklyboy/status/1477425263491182593
Is Omicron driving out the Delta version of COVID-19? And generating natural immunities that will help us all get back to normal?
Dr John Campbell uses new medical research papers to argue that it is, indeed — as he’s expected. SEE Here
https://youtu.be/PYLbJ0H8zdc
“Omicron is displacing Delta [Covid 19] science.”
The SA researchers claim that those infected by Omicron and recovered gain 4.4 times greater resistance to Delta than the previously uninfected. (And this is likely to be longer lasting resistance than gained from vaccination.)
In the AGW thread, neo rightly argues the seriousness of Delta infections: “I also agree that Omicron is relatively innocuous. But there’s still plenty of Delta around, and it’s not innocuous, particularly for the unvaccinated. I say this as a person who has known a previously healthy man in his fifties who died of COVID, and I also have known healthy people in their thirties who became extremely ill and were hospitalized….”
Amazingly, people have been tested and found to have both this year’s seasonal flu and Covid. And even Omicron and Delta versions of Covid.
But the infection data on pushing out Delta seems highly germain to finishing off the pandemic and ending our long insufferable crisis torpor. And therefore possibly key to extirpating the Karen’s and power mad exploiters of the pandemic.
Finally, this week, I hope Neo will ask her audience “What (if anything) are you doing to see you through the Omicron blizzard?”
Most will deign “Nothing,” I think. But since this version is the weakest yet, and still most likely to infect the uninfected, this is not the wisest course.
I hope we’ll share notes in an amiable and productive fashion, instead.
Before we all get too carried away with the magnificence of the negative test meaning we don’t have Covid–note that there’s a reported 36% false negative day one rate with the Ag tests for Omicron.
(Happened here. Not positive til day three.)
and again–agency, agency, agency:
https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FLCCC-Alliance-I-MASKplus-Protocol-ENGLISH.pdf
And straight from the CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert-Changes_CDC_RT-PCR_SARS-CoV-2_Testing_1.html
If you read carefully the CDC is dropping the PCR test!! Why? Because if fails to distinguish between covid and the standard flu viruses. Now we know why the flu disappeared last year. Now how many “cases” were the flu and not covid?? The scam continues.
“died from” and “died with”…see this description of the assessment process:
https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-are-covid-19-deaths-counted-it-s-complicated
As a general matter, when bad things happen they have multiple causes. See NTSB accident reports for examples.
physicsguy–
You’ve probably seen news items about the COVID testing panic in your former state– but in case you missed the frenzy in Stamford, here it is: “STAMFORD — For a handful of hours, Stamford was stuck in gridlock.
Long lines streamed down city streets across Shippan, Downtown and the South End as volunteers, civil servants and Stamford employees geared up to give out thousands of free antigen COVID tests amid the nation’s unprecedented groundswell of new cases. . . . Cars jammed the streets surrounding distribution centers at Scalzi, Cummings and Kocziusko parks as residents rushed to get a hold of the 20,000 tests from California-based company ACON Labs across the city. . . . Along with the lines of cars circling all the parks, each site also distributed tests through a walk-up line, and steadily, packs of residents trudged through the cold and mist to secure their boxes. But even the pedestrian effort caused hiccups for the distributors, as residents started hopping out of their cars to join the faster push.”
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/coronavirus/article/Free-COVID-19-tests-means-gridlock-for-Stamford-16743428.php
Photo essay of the gridlock at the link.
Here’s a link to the ACON Labs home test kit mentioned in the article (“can be used on children as young as 2 years old!”). I notice that the test has only an FDA EUA approval:
https://www.aconlabs.com/brands/flowflex/covid-19-antigen-home-test/
In your opinion, what is likely to happen next?
In mid-April 2020 when my husband was fighting for his life due to cytokine storm ensuing because he was 3 times turned away from getting help (the normal protocols for assisting those in respiratory distress–in this case low oxygen saturation–not being administered) I asked one of the doctors (during a phone call), shouldn’t I be tested? How can the numbers be right if I’m not tested? His response–“the numbers are never right.” And there you have it. I have never been tested and never will be short of needing to do so for assistance to a person to whom I am connected (i.e. to gain admittance to a hospital to be with a family member/friend and the like.) It’s a scam. I’ve watched the testing center next to my bank for going on 2 years now. Lines of cars when the scare meter has been set high, a desert when things have settled down. Rufus T Firefly has the right of it, apply the same measures of wisdom regarding infection that we always have. I have the IGG antibodies (seriologically tested in May 2020) and have lived as normal a life as possible. This last 2 weeks I’ve been present to assist my son’s family while they have wrestled with the current flu/covid, whatever. I’m 100% fine. I’ve been gargling with 10 drops of iodine in 4 oz of water since last May, when I get that first indication (sore throat/ear always on left side) and have had no flare up. Quashed. After listening to the McCoullough interview, I’ve added using 1 drop of iodine on a damp Q tip and cleansing my nasal cavity after coming home from the infection scene. So far so good. No fear, just measured response.
PA+cat, yeah…as I posted above the fear in my old hometown, Lebanon, CT, is amazing. What’s even more amazing is that it’s a farming community where the chickens and cows out number the people by a large amount. It’s always been a bit more blue than red, but more balance than the rest of the state. A place where there generally is some common sense.
I really can’t believe it’s changed so much in 4 months since I left. Even this morning more FB posts on people upset that the town’s allotment of N95s and test kits ran out after an hour and half. I just can’t believe the panic level. If the mass psychosis has hit a place like Lebanon, who knows where it will spread.
Here in the Fernandina Beach area, life seems pretty normal. I suspect it may be different in Miami area as about 60% of all the state cases are in Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach counties.
PA+Cat and physicsguy,
That’s a great, real-world example of how at home test kits will cause more harm than good. Many people will want to test themselves daily. There will be no way to meet the demand and a lot of the results will be inaccurate. GIGO.
So, one of my kids is triple-vac’ced. Just got her booster in Europe a month ago. Guess who tested positive for COVID yesterday? She’s healthy, thin, runs and works out regularly, eats tons of fruits and vegetables… She’s fairly ill. Seems like she’ll recover just fine, but she’s more than half my age and seems as sick as I was when I got it back in the Alpha variant, pre-vaccine days.
No idea how or where she got it. Of my kids she is by far the most COVID-cautious. Always wears a mask in public. Has been tied at the hip to her double-vac’ced boyfriend for the past two weeks. He is fine, no COVID.
In the past 2 – 3 weeks many of our most COVID cautious friends and family have had it hit their homes.
To Sharon W.’s point, in my personal experience it seems important to many people (perhaps most all of us) to be very binary regarding a COVID-19 infection.
I know many people who seem to want to be able to state that they have had it. So much so that I’ve heard people state things like, “Well, I tested negative, but based on my symptoms I’m SURE I had it,” or, “I felt sick but didn’t bother to get tested but I’m sure it was COVID.”
I also know many people who are nearly pious about the disease not having hit any member of their household and ask very personal, probing questions when we relate tales of anyone we know who has gotten it. It’s very much like an “unclean” vibe.
This is why, if given the opportunity to test from home, at will, I think many will be manic about testing regardless of severity of symptoms. I used to joke that I should have invested in one of the companies that makes home pregnancy kits when I got married. Seemed like every time she brushed her teeth my wife would also do a pregnancy test! 🙂
If only we all could have a governor like Ron DeSantis.
FWIW, it’s getting weird out there:
“Life Insurance CEO Says Deaths Up 40% Among Those Aged 18-64”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/life-insurance-ceo-says-deaths-40-among-those-aged-18-64-and-not-because-covid
Who knows if it’s true? Who knows if it has anything to do with the Covid virus or (and/or?) with the vaccination? But it seems strangely high.
In any event, whatever your personal situation, it might be wise to continue to take quercetin (or equivalent, e.g., ivermectin, HCQ—quercetin, I believe, should be more accessible and also cheaper) + zinc and vitamins D3, K, C, B’s and selenium…and perhaps a recommended nasal spray).
(Note, though, that one shouldn’t take too much zinc or selenium; I’m not sure about the zinc dosage; but for selenium, one—but no more than two—Brazil nuts per day is recommended.)
Barry Meislin,
Not sure about that stat, but there is no question there are many suicides and drug overdoses related to public policy around the COVID-19 virus. And the average amount of weight gain in the past two years among Americans, especially the young, cannot bode well for future health outcomes.
My former employer was financially devastated by the pandemic, putting me on the streets. The ensuing 14 months of stress in looking, interviewing, scrambling to adjust the budget… has definitely impacted my and my wife’s health and there are millions of Americans who have gone through similar, lockdown induced struggles.
Everyone I know who have elderly family members in care facilities has seen a huge decline in their loved ones’ cognitive and physical function (and many have simply died in the past 20 months). My parents still live independently, but they feel the lockdowns and lack of human interaction and activity have taken years off their lives.
We won’t have hard numbers for several years, but it seems definite the overall impact of public policy and the lack of emphasis on good health and preventative measures will prove to show more harm than the virus itself.