U. of Chicago COVID-19 interactive data visualization tool

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 1:09:53 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

"biochemist is Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne where she earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1974. Subsequently she went to Cambridge to do post-doctoral work."

I've not got any credentials at all in immunology, but I do know quite a bit about it. You may have mastered more snippets, but you don't seem to understand all that much.

I understand enough to know that the proposal to use the antibody test as an "immunity passport," allowing immune people to break isolation, return to work, travel and other normal pre-corona activities, will not work. The reason being the very small fraction of the population that has actually been exposed to the virus. The U.S. for example /may/ end up with a few million exposures, which is only 0.25% total population per million exposures, meaning hardly anyone is going to get a "passport." Why bother. The antibody test is useful as medical diagnostic, it is worthless as a tool to inform policy for ending this lockdown state. They're going to have to think of something else, and good luck with that!

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 8:46:16 PM UTC+10, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 1:09:53 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

I've not got any credentials at all in immunology, but I do know quite a bit about it. You may have mastered more snippets, but you don't seem to understand all that much.

I understand enough to know that the proposal to use the antibody test as an "immunity passport," allowing immune people to break isolation, return to work, travel and other normal pre-corona activities, will not work. The reason being the very small fraction of the population that has actually been exposed to the virus. The U.S. for example /may/ end up with a few million exposures, which is only 0.25% total population per million exposures, meaning hardly anyone is going to get a "passport." Why bother. The antibody test is useful as medical diagnostic, it is worthless as a tool to inform policy for ending this lockdown state. They're going to have to think of something else, and good luck with that!

Couldn't agree more. The US does seem to working hard to getting the whole country about to New York exposure levels which is now up to 8,786 per million (0.9%) but even 1% of the population isn't going to be all that much use.

Since the tests don't seem to all that reliable yet, it really isn't a great idea.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Ricky C]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 6:46:16 AM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 1:09:53 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:


"biochemist is Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne where she earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1974. Subsequently she went to Cambridge to do post-doctoral work."

I've not got any credentials at all in immunology, but I do know quite a bit about it. You may have mastered more snippets, but you don't seem to understand all that much.

I understand enough to know that the proposal to use the antibody test as an "immunity passport," allowing immune people to break isolation, return to work, travel and other normal pre-corona activities, will not work. The reason being the very small fraction of the population that has actually been exposed to the virus. The U.S. for example /may/ end up with a few million exposures, which is only 0.25% total population per million exposures, meaning hardly anyone is going to get a "passport." Why bother. The antibody test is useful as medical diagnostic, it is worthless as a tool to inform policy for ending this lockdown state. They're going to have to think of something else, and good luck with that!

There is some irony in that while you insist that the antibody test would be worthless to forming public policy, you give exactly a reason why it is useful. Knowing the total number of infected in regions sized to show the distribution across the country would both provide information indicating there aren't enough exposures to provide either a workforce much less herd immunity but also show when a region has enough exposures to provide a workforce and possibly herd immunity.

The important part is to collect results in relatively homogeneous regions, most likely at the county level.

I'm not as optimistic as you in thinking the total number of infected/exposed will only be a "few" million. I'm pretty sure that by summer we will be looking at tens of millions "exposed". My concern is more about how to not turn them into carriers. I don't see how they can be treated any differently than the rest of the unexposed population. As I've said before they can still carry the virus from infected people in the same way as a doorknob which seems to be a pretty common site of conveying the infection.

--

Rick C.

+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, April 12, 2020 at 12:36:41 AM UTC+10, Ricky C wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 6:46:16 AM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 1:09:53 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:


"biochemist is Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne where she earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1974. Subsequently she went to Cambridge to do post-doctoral work."

I've not got any credentials at all in immunology, but I do know quite a bit about it. You may have mastered more snippets, but you don't seem to understand all that much.

I understand enough to know that the proposal to use the antibody test as an "immunity passport," allowing immune people to break isolation, return to work, travel and other normal pre-corona activities, will not work. The reason being the very small fraction of the population that has actually been exposed to the virus. The U.S. for example /may/ end up with a few million exposures, which is only 0.25% total population per million exposures, meaning hardly anyone is going to get a "passport." Why bother. The antibody test is useful as medical diagnostic, it is worthless as a tool to inform policy for ending this lockdown state. They're going to have to think of something else, and good luck with that!

There is some irony in that while you insist that the antibody test would be worthless to forming public policy, you give exactly a reason why it is useful.

It's not going to be much use right now. In the long term it will provide useful information, but if you want to spend money on testing right now, this isn't the way to spend it.

> Knowing the total number of infected in regions sized to show the distribution across the country would both provide information indicating there aren't enough exposures to provide either a workforce much less herd immunity but also show when a region has enough exposures to provide a workforce and possibly herd immunity.

Getting herd immunity any way but via vaccination would kill too many people.

The clowns who appear to take the approach seriously haven't though it through.

The important part is to collect results in relatively homogeneous regions, most likely at the county level.

I'm not as optimistic as you in thinking the total number of infected/exposed will only be a "few" million. I'm pretty sure that by summer we will be looking at tens of millions "exposed".

With Trump in charge, you might do that badly, but he's already got the US performing abysmally, and if he lets the US number of infections get up to a million, even his most rusted-on supporters might start to notice.


> My concern is more about how to not turn them into carriers. I don't see how they can be treated any differently than the rest of the unexposed population. As I've said before they can still carry the virus from infected people in the same way as a doorknob which seems to be a pretty common site of conveying the infection.

You need a real infected person spreading millions of virus particles to get the two or three new infections per infected person which has characterised the unrestrained epidemic spread so so far.

Absent the infectious person, there aren't going to be any virus particles around to spread.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 10:36:41 AM UTC-4, Ricky C wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 6:46:16 AM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 1:09:53 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:


"biochemist is Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne where she earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1974. Subsequently she went to Cambridge to do post-doctoral work."

I've not got any credentials at all in immunology, but I do know quite a bit about it. You may have mastered more snippets, but you don't seem to understand all that much.

I understand enough to know that the proposal to use the antibody test as an "immunity passport," allowing immune people to break isolation, return to work, travel and other normal pre-corona activities, will not work. The reason being the very small fraction of the population that has actually been exposed to the virus. The U.S. for example /may/ end up with a few million exposures, which is only 0.25% total population per million exposures, meaning hardly anyone is going to get a "passport." Why bother. The antibody test is useful as medical diagnostic, it is worthless as a tool to inform policy for ending this lockdown state. They're going to have to think of something else, and good luck with that!

There is some irony in that while you insist that the antibody test would be worthless to forming public policy, you give exactly a reason why it is useful. Knowing the total number of infected in regions sized to show the distribution across the country would both provide information indicating there aren't enough exposures to provide either a workforce much less herd immunity but also show when a region has enough exposures to provide a workforce and possibly herd immunity.

The important part is to collect results in relatively homogeneous regions, most likely at the county level.

I'm not as optimistic as you in thinking the total number of infected/exposed will only be a "few" million. I'm pretty sure that by summer we will be looking at tens of millions "exposed". My concern is more about how to not turn them into carriers. I don't see how they can be treated any differently than the rest of the unexposed population. As I've said before they can still carry the virus from infected people in the same way as a doorknob which seems to be a pretty common site of conveying the infection.

If things go wrong, and they will, all your data will be obsolete in 2 weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZuLAyZlams

--

Rick C.

+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209