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My summer go-to are athletic shorts and no underwear. Freaking game changer.
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G08 wrote: Mon Apr 20, 2020 3:25 pm My summer go-to are athletic shorts and no underwear. Freaking game changer.
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Things I'm thankful for...

- No one I know of has been infected, yet.
- Same comments many of you have had about your employer, I'm thankful mine has allowed me to work from home. I literally have been in shorts or sweatpants every day and my work assignments are pretty easy. That, and no one can really say that I'm not working 40 hours a week.... 8-)
- I'm living the life-long dream of being able to drink while I work. Nuff said on that.
- My local Wegman's for keeping everything stocked. Those people make minimum wage but they show up everyday and deal with A-holes like me.
- Not running out of toilet paper...and trust me, I've dropped some good ones the past few weeks.
- Same with Amazon. If I order something that we need, it's at the house quickly.



Things that I am NOT thankful for...

- My daughter's school system can't figure out the whole distance learning thing to save their lives. The first week, some 6th grader hacked it and f'd everything up (yes, I said a 6th grader), the second week it just crashed. I can't wait to see what F's up this coming week. I know we are not supposed to get political here but dang, I want to strangle the superintendent.
- My wife is online shopping, like every other hour. Yes, I'm thankful the shipping companies are still working....not happy that their costs are going on her credit card.
- I haven't seen the hot chick at work in over a month. You know the kind, she's hot as balls and somehow single, walks by my desk every day and gives me a nice direct eye f*ck, then continues on knowing that I'm married and can't/won't do anything, so she's safe...but I get a good enough visual of her each day in her tight as F clothing...and my memory is still good (at age 43) so I'm able to crank one out later to the "visual" I had that day because yet once again, the wife says no. Yeah, that girl at work.... :frustrated:
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That’s a lotta info, haha.
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I don’t know if that was so much a post as it was a therapy session.

I need to take a shower after that one.
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G08
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makaur wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2020 8:00 pm Things I'm thankful for...

- No one I know of has been infected, yet.
- Same comments many of you have had about your employer, I'm thankful mine has allowed me to work from home. I literally have been in shorts or sweatpants every day and my work assignments are pretty easy. That, and no one can really say that I'm not working 40 hours a week.... 8-)
- I'm living the life-long dream of being able to drink while I work. Nuff said on that.
- My local Wegman's for keeping everything stocked. Those people make minimum wage but they show up everyday and deal with A-holes like me.
- Not running out of toilet paper...and trust me, I've dropped some good ones the past few weeks.
- Same with Amazon. If I order something that we need, it's at the house quickly.



Things that I am NOT thankful for...

- My daughter's school system can't figure out the whole distance learning thing to save their lives. The first week, some 6th grader hacked it and f'd everything up (yes, I said a 6th grader), the second week it just crashed. I can't wait to see what F's up this coming week. I know we are not supposed to get political here but dang, I want to strangle the superintendent.
- My wife is online shopping, like every other hour. Yes, I'm thankful the shipping companies are still working....not happy that their costs are going on her credit card.
- I haven't seen the hot chick at work in over a month. You know the kind, she's hot as balls and somehow single, walks by my desk every day and gives me a nice direct eye f*ck, then continues on knowing that I'm married and can't/won't do anything, so she's safe...but I get a good enough visual of her each day in her tight as F clothing...and my memory is still good (at age 43) so I'm able to crank one out later to the "visual" I had that day because yet once again, the wife says no. Yeah, that girl at work.... :frustrated:
God I missed you, tupac! :lol:
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G08 wrote: Sun Apr 26, 2020 11:40 pm God I missed you, tupac! :lol:
I try to pop in every now and then but life gets in the way too often nowadays.

...and of course I spoke too soon I guess. My mother-in-law, who lives in a nursing home in NJ, just tested positive this weekend.

Hey Covid-19...... :flick:
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I thought this info may interest some. Obviously wide swaths of testing are going on around the country.

My work just did a mandatory test of every employee and inmate. It was over a 1000 people in total. We had 1 positive test from this group of testing. We have had over the course of this pandemic up to 13 positive tests from this population.

What will be interesting is we are scheduled to do the antibody testing here soon. I dont believe they will publish the antibody results to us, but I hope they do. If they dont I will be digging to find those results. I'm hoping that a lot of us have the antibody.

I'll post results if I get them. This is a group that socially dustance and lockdowns are not really a possibility. So it's a unique testing populace.
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No reason to start a new thread, so what has everyone been drinking during this social distancing, shelter at home bullshit?

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Had this bottle for about a year sitting in the pantry. Once it was opened after the shelter in place started, it didn't last long. Good stuff. I prefer it with Pepsi when not straight.
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Pendleton.
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I don't drink but as mentioned earlier in this thread, since I'm working from home I'm able to splurge on freshly roasted coffee. I usually like medium roasts since I find light roasts to be too "bright" but for my last purchase I went with a light roast that's considered a good bridge between the two and actually have really liked it.

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Xee wrote: Wed May 13, 2020 3:02 pm I don't drink but as mentioned earlier in this thread, since I'm working from home I'm able to splurge on freshly roasted coffee. I usually like medium roasts since I find light roasts to be too "bright" but for my last purchase I went with a light roast that's considered a good bridge between the two and actually have really liked it.

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Interesting! My wife got me some Bones Coffee to try during this whole business, and while I love their branding and like some of the flavors, I'd almost rather have, well, regular coffee.

https://www.bonescoffee.com/

My go-to is Starbucks Pike Place, but Eight O'Clock is pretty good too.
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I love my coffee as well. Strictly a Dunkin Donut guy. I buy the French Vanilla, Hazelnut and the regular. I have tried others, but I just prefer the DD. I have had some Black Rifle, a lot of their stuff is strong. I did the VitaCup, Genius Blend. Really liked it but it was cashy.

When not working I have to have a little Iowish Cream in my coffee. It is made by Mississippi River Distilling Company in Leclaire, IA. Good stuff. I used to use a liqueur called Cow Pie (another creamy liqueur) but cannot find it anymore in town.
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Wow, that packaging is pretty cool, @UOK. Might have to give them a try. I'm not big on flavored coffee but it looks like they have some unflavored stuff as well.
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for pretty good coffee you don't have to go out for, Bones Small Batch Coffee is a very nice option and they ship it right to you

https://www.bonescoffee.com/

you can order whole bean or ground ... they offer a wide variety of flavors, some that seem a bit off the wall, but you can order a 5 flavor sample pack so you won't be wasting a whole pound of coffee if it is one you end up not liking ... and the flavoring is a nice low key factor rather than a blast of something not even coffee like ... most all I have tried have that nice smooth subtleness

the Highland Grog and the Irish Cream are my 2 favorites
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Boris13c wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 9:00 pm for pretty good coffee you don't have to go out for, Bones Small Batch Coffee is a very nice option and they ship it right to you

https://www.bonescoffee.com/

you can order whole bean or ground ... they offer a wide variety of flavors, some that seem a bit off the wall, but you can order a 5 flavor sample pack so you won't be wasting a whole pound of coffee if it is one you end up not liking ... and the flavoring is a nice low key factor rather than a blast of something not even coffee like ... most all I have tried have that nice smooth subtleness

the Highland Grog and the Irish Cream are my 2 favorites
Yep, we did the variety pack. We got it chiefly because my wife wanted to try to get into coffee, as she doesn't like it, but in a shocking turn of events, flavored coffee STILL tastes like coffee, so now I've got 5 packs of random flavored coffee to power through.

I liked Carrot Cake (aka pumpkin spice, lol) and Irish Creme. The Fruit Cereal flavor was hot garbage.

There's a local place in Champaign that makes DAMN good coffee that I'll be ordering from next - Columbia Street.

https://csrcoffee.com/

Their house blend is outstanding, and they've got a wide variety of coffees for virtually everybody.
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Fruit cereal coffee? Oh good god no!!!!

Cannot drink coffee that has anything to do with fruit.

Local place here does a mean Butterscotch Toffee flavor. I try and stick with the French Vanillas and Hazelnuts. Bakery the other day had Maple Pecan Crunch that was pretty damn awesome. I like Highlander Groggs and the Irish Crème, I just make regular and put the real thing in.
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Otis Day wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 10:52 am Fruit cereal coffee? Oh good god no!!!!

Cannot drink coffee that has anything to do with fruit.

Local place here does a mean Butterscotch Toffee flavor. I try and stick with the French Vanillas and Hazelnuts. Bakery the other day had Maple Pecan Crunch that was pretty damn awesome. I like Highlander Groggs and the Irish Crème, I just make regular and put the real thing in.
Yeah, it was bizarre/ick. There's only so much gooftacular flavor stuff you can do with coffee before it comes some other lesser drink altogether.
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I 9nly drink kopi luwak coffee. Seriously worth the price.

https://www.1stincoffee.com/kopi-luwak- ... rm=Gourmet
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The only coffee I drink is between 7 AM and Noon, and pretty much constantly to the tune of about 2 full 12 cup pots. Then it hands off to ice water - a good 64 ounces of that between noon and 4:30-5 PM. Then regardless of whether there are a few more meetings or not that day, I'm switching to beer until around 9 PM. Often a margarita or two, if my wide and stepdaughter are drinking (which is pretty much every single day, in captivity). Then another 64 ounces of ice water all night long until the alarm goes off at 6:45. Rinse; Repeat.

My step daughter (AKA "our hostage") is 20 and we're letting her party with us, because it would be inhuman not to. Plus, I'm no hypocrite we were all big drinkers by the time I was that age in LaSalle-Peru IL... we started going to bars at 16-17. Anyway... she's not super academic but full of charisma, and I think now she wants to become a bartender. LOL

My wife is a Speech Therapist at Sinai Grace in the D. For about 8 weeks she was doing a lot of other stuff helping out during the giant peak of C19 mayhem here. But it has settled down now. They gear up heavily with PPE but several of he coworkers got exposed early on and sick. A few died. She's been tested and negative. I've barely left the house - just to Costco, the local grocery and liquor store. And Home Depot because I gutted and am rebuilding my basement from scratch.

Our quarantine routine during the week is work and drink. Then weekends projects and drinking. Every day we end up sitting out in the garage, drinking, me grilling something, and listening to music and playing with the dog and stuff. My go-to lately has been listening to Gumbo 94.9 streaming from Louisiana outside of NOLA. I got hooked on it when I worked down in Baton Rouge for a year 5 years ago. Classic country with a local flare (a lot of swampy stuff and zydeco). Perfect quarantine drinking music. A lot of the classic country and a lot of pop country that was all over the airwaves and television in the '70s when I was growing up. Check it out if you like that sort of thing.

We had a "distancing" cookout yesterday, and there were 12 of us here. Mostly family (we have 6 kids - all adults and 5 were here). Then a few others including a future son-in-law, his cousin, a wife's co-worker and my wife's ex who is actually a decent dude. Everyone stayed 6+ feet apart, and we stayed out in the driveway and garage. Everyone wore masks if they had to go in to use the bathroom. Lots of handwashing and bathroom cleaning. But it was really nice and we pulled it off. Going to be that way for a while. And it is particularly hard when you have a big family and circle with exes and kids that spend time in both places plus a few essential workers thrown in there. But so far so good, and we're all being careful it seems. Even the kids are taking it seriously.

Have a good weekend, gentlemen.
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The big talk I’m hearing near me is trying to gear up antibody testing to see how many people have actually been exposed to c19.
What % of the population near you (region not necessarily by state), would have to have been exposed to just go back to normal?
My county has ~47,000 residents with just shy of 200 confirmed cases and 22 deceased (with 87 cases and all but 2 deaths coming from 1 nursing home).
If testing shows that a significant portion of the population has been exposed how long do you feel we need to drag out the social distancing? What’s your personal threshold for no longer fearing covid?
When I though up to 20% of the total population could overwhelm the hospitals, I was terrified. Now I’m completely meh about the whole thing
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Atkins&Rebel wrote: Sun May 24, 2020 5:07 pmIf testing shows that a significant portion of the population has been exposed how long do you feel we need to drag out the social distancing? What’s your personal threshold for no longer fearing covid?
I'm not a scientist so I have no idea what the significance of people having antibodies has on anything. I'll go out when the all clear is given by the people with the background to decide that.
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Xee wrote: Mon May 25, 2020 8:24 pm
Atkins&Rebel wrote: Sun May 24, 2020 5:07 pmIf testing shows that a significant portion of the population has been exposed how long do you feel we need to drag out the social distancing? What’s your personal threshold for no longer fearing covid?
I'm not a scientist so I have no idea what the significance of people having antibodies has on anything. I'll go out when the all clear is given by the people with the background to decide that.
Antibodies simply means that you were exposed and got well, or were never sick enough to notice. After 4 days of testing, reports significantly have increased the number of people who have had it in NY state (from 263 thousand up to 2.5 million). Low estimates are now at 14% of the 19.5 million NY population have been exposed to Covid. That percentage just statistically reduces how deadly the disease is overall (NY reported 19.5 thousand fatalities). The % could level out or increase significantly, as they have only tested for 4-5 days as of the report I read today.

When the numbers first came out, it was assumed that "up to 20% of the whole population would need hospitalization with 6-7% dying despite treatment. If that 20% hit hospitals all at once, the death totals could have doubled."

Now we will be nowhere near those numbers.
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Hey Atkins. It was about 15% originally that looked to need hospitalization. And then about 20% of those would need vents. Those numbers actually held pretty well and it is still the case. We HAVE learned that there are more asymptomatic people than originally understood. So I guess it would be more accurate to say 15% of the people "with symptoms". Regardless, the distancing has worked so well that the projections about needed ICU and vent capacity were way high. That's overall - in some places (e.g. in NYC and in the D at my wife's hospital) it hit so quickly that a lot of people died quickly due to a lack of care during just a couple of week surge. But after that the distancing kicked in and the cases spread out and never threatened the capacity of the system. In some places they're still having capacity issues (e.g. they're moving ICU patients from Montgomery to Birmingham in AL right now as their cases have risen).

To answer your question about herd immunity - the right answer is we don't know. We can definitely test for antibodies, and find them. But it is a new (novel) virus and we don't know much about it. It may offer full immunity having had it once. It may offer just short term immunity like the flu, only to dissipate after several months. It may offer little or no immunity, like HIV. We really don't know - and the speculation about immunity due to antibodies is just that - speculation. There are studies going on and we're learning more about it. One or two studies on their own doesn't offer a conclusive story though - like what we saw with that hydroxychloriquine debacle. We need more time and more thorough experience to know what "having antibodies" means.

That is a partial answer to your question about how many people need to get it. Another important dimension is the R naught/R0 (how many people one person infects, on average). For a pathogen with a low R0, the herd immunity threshold can be lower (maybe in the 50-60% range) because it isn't as communicable. This one is *thought* to have an R0 of between 3-6... which is highly communicable. I've seen estimates that 75-80% of us would need to have immunity to get to herd immunity levels with C19. For comparison, SARS had a relatively low R0 of 1 or even less... thankfully, because it was far more deadly.

So yeah... right now the averge penetration of the virus in the US is probably at 5% or less in most places. In NYC I understand it is as high as 20% given antibody test results. But again - we don't yet know how immune that really makes people at this point.
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I got my 20% from extrapolating the early reports from Fauci and nys health commissioner Mendoza stating that they believed that 80% of the population should be able to self recover with no hospitalization.

So if antibody testing showed that 90% or more had it with no life threatening issues, then without a mutation that makes the disease more deadly we should be able to drop the social distancing to a degree.

I get the whole, we don’t know, but at some point we’re all going to have to look past our fears, especially if the total death to infection rates are on par with the flu, even if the infection rates themselves are higher with covid.
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Atkins&Rebel wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 1:33 pm I got my 20% from extrapolating the early reports from Fauci and nys health commissioner Mendoza stating that they believed that 80% of the population should be able to self recover with no hospitalization.

So if antibody testing showed that 90% or more had it with no life threatening issues, then without a mutation that makes the disease more deadly we should be able to drop the social distancing to a degree.

I get the whole, we don’t know, but at some point we’re all going to have to look past our fears, especially if the total death to infection rates are on par with the flu, even if the infection rates themselves are higher with covid.
I get what you're saying. I'd ask you to replace the term "fears" with "prudence in the face of uncertainty", and ask yourself if you feel the same way about it. The term fear is a bit provacative, and paints people with different risk tolerances as somehow weak. People with immune deficiency aren't weak just because they have less risk tolerance. Hope that makes sense.

Plus, we really don't know, and that is super-important. There may indeed be a lot to avoid that we don't know about. For the same reason we don't call it "fear" when someone chooses not to just pick up anything we see & eat it, or open up random unlabled bottles and take a drink, we don't just accept the results of this thing until we understand what it is. Protected sex with a NOLA hooker? Is it "fear" to use a condom? There is nothing weak about being smart.

Think about what you're saying with the numbers. There are 360-ish million people in the US. 10% with "life-threatening" conditions means 36 million people. Our healthcare system absolutely cannot support treating 36 million people in even a year or even two. So us not being able to handle the throughput of demand means more people die -and why NYC, Detroit, and many places in Europe have a much higher fatality rate. Then we go from 1-2% fatality rate to 3-4%. Times 36 million. It's just math.

This is actually the reason we've enacted these shitting stay at home and distancing/mask measures... to "even out" the cases while it goes through the population (and minimize death). It is going to eventually get through and infect 60-70-80% if we don't get a vaccine (which is possible). So we need that to happen across several years. I know you know that. We all want to get out & resume normalcy. I know I do - I just canceled a trip to Aruba in 4 weeks. And about to cancel our annual trips to LA and NOLA (no hookers lol). This fucking sucks. But it doesn't change the math.
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Sometimes this thing feels like it's just never gonna end. I know it's first world stuff and probably selfish in a way, but I just want to go to a movie or have a BBQ or go out to eat or take my kids to the zoo or not feel weird about letting one of their friends come over.

Anywho...
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wab wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 9:39 am Sometimes this thing feels like it's just never gonna end. I know it's first world stuff and probably selfish in a way, but I just want to go to a movie or have a BBQ or go out to eat or take my kids to the zoo or not feel weird about letting one of their friends come over.

Anywho...
My in-laws are happy to finally be able to go to the zoo again in TN, and lots of bars/restaurants downtown here in Champaign are re-opening tonight, which should be interesting.

I think eventually the risks will simply become a way of life. I mean, if you go into any place with crowds there's always the possibility of getting somebody else's illness, COVID or otherwise. Even if a vaccine is created within a year (which is very unlikely), it won't perpetuate for another 6 months to a year. This is very realistically going to last a good while, but the point of common sense (masks, distancing, restrictions) is to let our hospitals not be overrun, let manufacturers get more respiratory equipment available, and hopefully buy time until there's a legit and available vaccine.
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So my work bought these anti body tests. Supposedly they have them, but are no longer going to test us. I think it's really odd. My conspiracy mind set is spinning.
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mmmc I understand the antibody tests are being found to be pretty sketch in terms of their accuracy (e.g. near a coin flip chance of being right/wrong). And then that is compounded by the reality that we don't know if antibodies are protective, or in what way. We'll know the extent of immunity fairly soon, as they'll be looking for people who are re-infected and trying to determine the factors that go into that. After enough of that data comes in, we'll know what it means to have antibodies. HIV patients have antibodies... that do absolutely nothing to fight the disease.

I agree on the increase in risk tolerance UOK. It HAS to happen. It actually WILL happen because there's really know way to prevent it. This is a unique problem because the nature of this virus outright dismisses the concept of individual freedom of choice. In this situation the people with the highest degree of risk tolerance by default they set the bar and dictate OTHER people's safety environment. As a parent of freaking 6 20-somethings I can assure you even most of the ones that pretend to get it & care... do not practice distancing when the old folks aren't around. That's just how people that age are. But the result is, they take away other people's freedom to be safe unless they literally almost imprison themselves. There really is not safe shelter other than preventing gatherings outright. And since that really can't happen for any long duration...
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