This article is infuriating. Smaller labs are being under used for testing because they don’t hook into hospitals billing systems like the hospital would prefer.
One lab was offering free testing to hospitals and were told to bug off. So they worked with a non profit to test firefighters and homeless people.
Urnov’s lab wound up testing some patients outside the hospital system—including firefighters and homeless people. The non-profit group coordinating these tests doesn’t have software compatible with the Berkeley testing service’s software, but folks on both sides were willing to do manual data entry to accelerate the testing process.
Imagine a hospital turning down free testing because they didn’t want to do any manual data entry during a crisis.
We don’t really do the Euro sit on a bench and smoke and socialize thing that much. We like to eat lunch at our desks. We generally shun human interaction unless drinking, which we can’t do in public.
I was always amazed at Frenchies and Italians when I waited tables in SF. How can two friends who have clearly known each other forever, still have a long involved, animated, engaged conversation over a 3-hour languid lunch - where they make eye contact like 90% of the time? Baffles me to this day.
Germans are a lot more like Americans - bring me my food and hurry up so I can get out of here.
Well that prolonged eye contact and conversation thing is pretty rare here (amongst guys). That’s probably why we like benches where you don’t have to look at anyone.
Quite often, or toking because that’s virtually decriminalised now, in London anyway. Olds sit quite happily doing neither, often staring into space as they like to do.
Benches perfectly suit the need for some human contact without breaching the Anglo Saxon code of intimacy.
My friend in London said he and his buddies would make a game out of making eye contact on the tube just to see how long you could get people to stare at their shoes.
Other than Canada, London was the first English-speaking place I traveled - after being through a lot of Europe. I was excited. I thought I can finally have fun conversations with people. Never felt more alone traveling. I had a girl at a pastry shop go and get her manager because she couldn’t understand my American accent.
In Italy you end up in a 30 minute conversation with a stranger pretty much any time you want. Same for Ireland, which I went to later. London, so cold. Lovely city though.
Apart from sightseeing only I’d neve recommend people to visit London alone. Even Londoners find it cliquey and hard to meet new people.
Some other parts of Britain are much friendlier to outsiders. It’s not aloofness that it’s often mistaken for, but extreme shyness and awkwardness in the company of strangers. That’s the main reason we drink so much.
Like expected some economics council of our biggest party suggested today that we scrap the climate targets and check every obstacle that could be in the way of a speedy economic recovery. Because we are apparently threaten by a deindustrialisation of Germany. What the actual fuck. Well that was always a big concern for me that even if the virus wont kill a lot of us its the final nail in the coffin for fighting climate change.
My hope before he gets too old is to fly my Dad to England and drive up the countryside to Scotland together. He’s half Scottish, half Italian - we’ve already done Italy and met distant relatives there.
Let’s start with the basics. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the emerging diseases and zoonoses unit at the World Health Organization, told me that the WHO so far has found few truly asymptomatic cases, in which a patient tests positive and has zero symptoms for the entire course of the disease. However, there are many cases where people are “pre-symptomatic,” where they have no symptoms at the time when they test positive but go on to develop symptoms later.
“Most of the people who were thought to be asymptomatic aren’t truly asymptomatic,” said Van Kerkhove. “When we went back and interviewed them, most of them said, actually I didn’t feel well but I didn’t think it was an important thing to mention. I had a low-grade temperature, or aches, but I didn’t think that counted.”
That would be a pretty unforgettable experience for him. Go via the Lakes and stay overnight there, then to the Scottish highlands and over to Skye imo, though other islands come into the reckoning too.
Edinburgh is grand but don’t miss out on Glasgow, which many including me prefer.
I did a similar thing with my dad, driving him around France when he was thinking of moving there. It turned out to be only a few years before he died, and I’m so glad we did it.
I actually didn’t originally notice that last sentence or mean to copy it lol.
Anyway the point stands - we know this thing is replicating like crazy and shedding from the throat when people are pre-symptomatic. It stands to reason there might be something we could all take as a prophylactic to slow or stop that process. There is at least some suggestion zinc helps with rhinovirus - the common cold. But inconclusive.
