COVID-19: Chapter 7 - Brags, Beats, and Variants

States are setting up mass vaccination sites as well. The flow will improve, each publix/pharmacy doing 20-25 of these a day will make a dent over time. Vaccines distribution will get better, it won’t take until 2024. It may take until 2022, but decent chance the issue next winter isnt supply, its getting uptake levels high enough to avoid another winter of harsh restrictions and closures.

I’m not trying to suggest this strain isn’t more transmissible or more airborne. Seems very likely it is and reasonably likely that we shouldn’t be relying on previous guidelines. I think we can make good guesses at what is more dangerous (being in indoor air others were in recently) but we don’t know.

Here we are dealing with a controlled setting where all precautions were taken. We “know” there was no contact between individuals. So it seems to me that probably either

  1. This new strain is so contagious that people who are in different rooms can infect each other and we are going to start seeing other infections like this in quarantine hotels.

  2. There’s a ventilation problem or some other (sorry phone autocorrect) issue specific to this case which made this possible.

I’d guess 2, but plan for 1 (narrator, summer child, etc)

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When was the first one?

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https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1356662358345723908?s=21

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I would recommend that you talk to your schools Office of Disability Services (or whatever). At my school, students are definitely getting COVID-related accommodations, and I think it’s worth your while to describe your experience and see what they have to offer. It could be that you get extended time on quizzes and exams (most common, in my experience), you get someone to take notes for you, or other accommodations. I think you’d generally be surprised at how many students get accommodations and how many varieties of accommodations there are, and I suspect schools in this environment are going to bend over backwards to retain their students.

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https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1356975113191776256

This

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Nate’s about to go full “Do your own research!” on us.

Excellent point. No flu but still over 100,000 covid cases per day.

https://twitter.com/reuterje/status/1357087480701403137?s=21

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i’m watching it like a degen too. It seems first wave of vaccinations might be having a suppressive effect on deaths, which may manifest itself like a shorter lag between cases/hospitalizations/deaths. it’s too early to tell, but last two days were lower than your model’s projections by a few percent. which isn’t nothing.

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The odd thing is that sometimes paradigm shifting discoveries actually fit this- though they are usually from another scientist.

My favorite is H pylori as cause of ulcers. Aussie doc drank some, made himself sick, antibiotics were demonstrated to cure.

I don’t know if there is data, but I assume most advancements are made by incrementalism but the fundamental shifts get all the press (and perhaps deservedly so).

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I know of that, and while it’s bold, it’s only my second favorite bit of medical self-experimentation:

Clinical application of cardiac catheterization begins with Dr. Werner Forssmann in 1929, who inserted a catheter into the vein of his own forearm, guided it fluoroscopically into his right atrium, and took an X-ray picture of it.

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Agreed. The news has had far too much deference for official guidance this entire time.

BREAKING NEWS “6 feet and 15 minutes is not a certain standard based on NFL experience” is shameful. We were having advanced talks about masks and ventilation and how time nor distance are set in stone by any means ~11 months ago.

Not as dramatic, but there was some doc in Europe who drastically reduced his infection rates by washing his hands in between dissections of corpses and delivering babies. Ended up in an asylum because of the criticism

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The lesson I always took from the whole 100 years of not washing their hands despite the evidence - is that doctors really really don’t like being told how to do their jobs by non-doctors. :flushed:

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That’s definitely true. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure anyone in profession X really, really doesn’t like to be told how to do their job by someone not in profession X. Lawyers, car mechanics, plumbers, accountants, etc. It’s widely true of all human professionals.

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Journalists, politicians…

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Sounds very similar to Georg Cantor.

I’m sure everybody here knows that Newton stuck needles into his eyeballs