Positive Covid testing news
I’d like to start this post by saying black lives matter and there are much more important things than sports going on in the world. Sports are a great distraction from life sometimes and other times allowing people to get distracted is allowing the status quo to remain. We can’t let ourselves be distracted and that includes not having a space like Mgoblog be free of these discussions.
Now to the rest of this post, last night abbot was granted emergency use authorization for a 15 $5 dollar Covid test that requires no lab equipment. This is a massive game changer and the best news we can get short of a vaccine. For those who asked why postponing football a few months made sense this is the answer why. Football can be done safely with testing like this and the saliva test available. They expect to start rolling out in meaningful numbers in October. The chances of winter football just improved dramatically.
August 27th, 2020 at 9:46 AM ^
Based on the title, I naturally assumed you were posting to notify us all of the news that you had tested positive for Covid???
August 27th, 2020 at 10:09 AM ^
Funny, but you should feel bad for that comment. :-)
August 27th, 2020 at 11:36 AM ^
You'd like I would feel bad, but no... :-)
August 27th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
Funny is funny, even when feelings are hurt. Laughter is a great healer.
August 27th, 2020 at 12:57 PM ^
Can it heal...Covid???
August 27th, 2020 at 1:53 PM ^
No, but as this board demonstrates, it helps us deal with Covid
August 27th, 2020 at 2:00 PM ^
Pretty much could in a way. Laughter releases endorphins that make you feel good. It will also allow your body to relax and boost the nervous system helping your immune response.
In essence laughter can make you healthier and possibly help your body fight a Covid 19 infection efficiently and successfully
August 27th, 2020 at 2:11 PM ^
Yes, yes it can. If you can laugh.
August 27th, 2020 at 9:53 AM ^
Fingers crossed man! This sounds good. Go Blue!
August 27th, 2020 at 9:54 AM ^
Was talking with a buddy last night, it’s like the whole country forgot that the BIG10 can still have football in the winter/spring...it’s still a very real possibility. There will be no national championship this year thanks to the hard headed SEC/ACC/BIG12, but conference championships are still on the table.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:12 AM ^
If the SEC/ACC/BIG12 make it through their season there will be a National Championship played.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:25 AM ^
As it should be.
They tried, they overcame the obstacles (and I expect there will be more than a few) they should get rewarded. They didn't just quit before they even started thinking it would be too hard.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:35 AM ^
Re-organizing the season in the Winter/Spring at different locations would arguably be harder and potentially safer. The SEC/ACC/Big 12 haven't overcome any obstacles yet so maybe best to hold off judgment for a bit?
August 27th, 2020 at 10:43 AM ^
He specifically stated "if" they made it through the season.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:49 AM ^
I responded to you not to him. I'm not sure why the shot at the end of your comment was necessary. The Big 10 didn't quit because it was too hard. They postponed because they felt it was unsafe currently.
August 27th, 2020 at 1:14 PM ^
There were all sorts of things the BIG could have tried. In fact, I think the SEC and the others have made in too hard on themselves, but we'll see.
10 games. 2 every 3 weeks, no championship games, no divisions, postpone games if needed (no fans to worry about rescheduling hotels/travel), finish the season when you finish. I think if OSU is 9-0 and playing Purdue January 3rd on a makeup game the other leagues will wait to see the outcome of that game before deciding who's in the championship round. Nobody gives a shit about the bowls.
Players get to play, which is what they signed up for. And are probably safer then than now. What incentive does a Michigan player have to stay away from people now? No games depend on it. Take one look at any campus and tell me most of these kids are social distancing.
August 27th, 2020 at 11:05 AM ^
There is nothing stopping BIG10 and PAC12 to just announce the spring national champion after their season. Until recently, it was not uncommon to have multiple "national champions". It is not a big deal...
August 27th, 2020 at 9:55 AM ^
Daily accurate testing plus comprehensive cardiology clearance of all Covid infected athletes and it’s pretty hard to find a reason to not play football
August 27th, 2020 at 10:15 AM ^
I'd agree.
I'd say the risk to spreading the virus within gen pop would be low if teams maintain their protocols (as it seems many, though not all have).
I'm pro-mask, pro-social distancing since Day 0 (been following since December since I work a lot in Asia). At a certain point the risk to everyone is mitigated to a threshold that people should be able to go about their daily lives, and this would hit that threshold for me.
The only unanswered issue would be outside of COVID and that is the NCAA and our "student-athletes". Should they be allowed to bubble? Take online only if their university still has in person, etc. But that can get worked out.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:11 AM ^
Products that have hit the market under EUA (including previous Abbott tests) have been very inconsistent wrt accuracy and repeatability, but anything that improves turnaround times is in the right direction. This is a antigen lateral flow assay, which I'm sure you all remember from Covid Neck Sharpies Part II :)
Sage advice from Homer: "There are three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Homer Simpson way."
"Isn't that the same as the wrong way?"
"Yes, but faster."
The biggest problem with testing (other than choosing not to do it for political reasons) has been that the results are so delayed they make them useless for contact tracing and quarantining. If you'd told me this in March, I wouldn't have believed we'd be reaching Labor Day without a more effective national regime for this.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:24 AM ^
Thanks for the explanation? Now I'm gonna hafta go re-read that neck sharpie...
(Thank you for those, BTW...)
August 27th, 2020 at 11:26 AM ^
Yes, my earlier skepticism about the prior Abbott or other rapid tests was that the sens wasn’t good enough for wide spread testing unless it was cheap enough to repeat multiple times... I’m hoping that this test has reach the cost threshold that will make it a game changer (e.g. testing the entire student body a 2-3 times per week with immediately actionable data for quarantine etc.)
August 27th, 2020 at 3:18 PM ^
The *Max Power* way. He got it off a hair dryer.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:11 AM ^
I double posted to illustrate my point about repeatability.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:12 AM ^
This could be significant. It could also become another excuse for science-deniers.
As the past six months have reminded us, science isn't an absolute but a continuing process of testing and reassessing. Human bodies are complex. So is medicine.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:12 AM ^
Sounds good, assuming the test is accurate.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:29 AM ^
From what I read it has a false positive rate higher than the current testing, which is already pretty high. Which, I guess is better than a false negative rate, all things considered.
It also has to be administered by health care workers, which I assume will make the wait time a wee bit longer than 15 minutes.
Still, progress. Especially for sports, who have their own people to administer the test.
August 27th, 2020 at 12:57 PM ^
Plus it significantly increases testing capacity. This could make it easier to stop outbreaks before they get out of control and makes contact tracing much more useful
August 27th, 2020 at 9:30 PM ^
I hope the tests sent to OSU are of the "extra sensitive" variety.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:28 AM ^
Are people without symptoms still going to be discouraged from taking this test?
August 27th, 2020 at 10:31 AM ^
I mean, a lot of people won't even take the vaccine once it comes out because of...conspiracies.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:37 AM ^
I'm not sure how this relates to my question.
I've been minimally involved in developing vaccines, and am very pro-vaccine but it's very unlikely I'll be taking this one anytime soon.
August 27th, 2020 at 11:08 AM ^
I think a lot of the worry isn't from people that are anti-vaccine, but rather a concern that "if" a vaccine is rushed out it might mean that it doesn't have a long track record of knowing possible side effects.
August 27th, 2020 at 12:42 PM ^
Not at all the reason. Some want to 2nd guess an agency that still promotes the food pyramid as the best way to eat, marijuana is a scheduled 1 drug, opiates are safe but kratom isn't etc. Not to mention the fact that vaccines don't have the greatest track record after one year.
Some of us actually feel they have the right to question businesses especially when there's tremendous amounts of money behind many decisions being made. You want to call that conspiracy go right ahead but you my friend are very naive.
August 27th, 2020 at 1:27 PM ^
No way in hell I'm taking a vaccine that was rushed to the public as a re-election ploy by a bunch of Trump bootlickers. I'll happily wait for the German one.
August 27th, 2020 at 10:33 AM ^
Do we know what the Sn and Sp of the testing is?
August 27th, 2020 at 10:47 AM ^
I'd sort of argue the opposite .... as long as we have a zero tolerance policy of "anything more than zero cases, and we shut things down for a significant period of time", it seems like this test might make sporting events more unlikely.
August 27th, 2020 at 11:24 AM ^
One reason that (some) have a zero-tolerance policy is that we know we're not catching all the cases. Depending on the state of the outbreak where you are, it's a fair guess that for every positive you catch, you're missing 3-10 more (and it was even worse than that for those that experienced the spring outbreaks). Part of that is due to the lack of universal testing, and part of that is due to the turnaround for results. A positive result received for someone today who took the test two days ago means that there are likely dozens of exposures and some percentage of future positives from that group of exposures, and maybe some of that group have already started spreading it even further.
In other words, by the time you find out you've got that first positive, you already could be heading to outbreak status, and thus it makes sense to shut things down until you find out otherwise. If you're testing everyone every day, and getting results back in minutes rather than multiple days, you likely don't have to quarantine dozens of people with each positive, and if you do quarantine, the length of quarantine can potentially be shortened.
August 27th, 2020 at 11:36 AM ^
Why do we need to catch all cases? Why exactly should that be the goal?
A good chunk of the nation has been out and about for several months now. In that environment, (1) the number of confirmed CV cases and (2) the positive rate on all tests has been consistently been dropping over the last month (yes, it did increase initially).
I'd argue that's (1) evidence that the chances of an outbreak is decreasing with time, and (2) evidence for a more tolerant policy as regards the virus.
I think we need a more serious discussion as regards the risk of incremental CV cases, as opposed to simply any CV cases. There's always going to be a baseline.
August 27th, 2020 at 12:02 PM ^
I think this is a pretty misleading take on what happened. Things re-opened, cases spiked and many of the places with those spikes put in new protocols. Florida closed bars, mask mandates were established in more places, behavior of individuals changed. We have probably reached a baseline of incremental increase given current behaviors and rules. Changing behavior and rules will change those things.
Not to mention the US baseline is a horrendous place, we have 1k deaths a day and 30-40k new cases. Compared to the rest of the world we are still in an outbreak. We know differences in behavior can get to a lower baseline, most of the rest of the world got there. Why should we accept a higher baseline with more deaths?
August 27th, 2020 at 12:46 PM ^
you have to put things in context though. The United States is not even ranked in the top 10 in deaths per million. We are not doing great but let's quit acting like it's the worst by far. Also other than Denmark the United States test the highest amount of people per 1000. No wonder why our cases are coming back at such a high rate.
One issue we probably have though is obesity seems to be bigger issue with deaths
August 27th, 2020 at 3:02 PM ^
"The United States is not even ranked in the top 10 in deaths per million."
Wrong! We are #10 right now and really #8 because Andorra and San Marino's 52 and 42 deaths shouldn't make the same list.
"Also other than Denmark the United States test the highest amount of people per 1000."
Wrong again. Again taking out the really small countries we are #5 behind Denmark, Russia, Israel and the UK.
Do you really think your obvious misinformation is just going to glide by here?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
August 27th, 2020 at 5:55 PM ^
We did (much) better than Europe (except Germany) in April, but since then they did what they needed to do while we're just wandering around at hundreds of deaths per day.
This caught everyone by surprise, and the US benefited by not having the outbreaks occur all across the country at once, while European countries got hammered during the initial spike. Unfortunately, during the window of time when other states (or the feds) could have been learning/preparing based on what they saw in the early affected states, we did ... well, not much.
We don't need to catch every single case, but we need to push the daily death rate below 1 per million and stay there. Michigan is hovering around 1 daily death per million, and we're one of the better states.
August 27th, 2020 at 12:05 PM ^
Students in classrooms and dorms will almost always see an outbreak locally, so that's why caution is being used there.
As far as the rest, it's been generally tolerant for a while, short of gyms and theaters and bowling alleys, etc. I think they said Michigan has like 87% of it's economy/production going right now. Completely opening would produce diminished returns at this stage.
August 27th, 2020 at 11:28 AM ^
Narrative, narrative, narrative, bullshit. Same post over and over.
August 27th, 2020 at 11:32 AM ^
Last week I provided an actual example of a zero tolerance policy as regards sports and CoronaVirus --- and your response was "Go talk about that on a Cincinnati Reds blog and cry at them. Fuck off."
Then, there were the Mets last weekend.
How about we discuss as opposed to hurling cuss words?
August 27th, 2020 at 11:57 AM ^
Half the posts on this board at least suggest there is a zero tolerance policy but no one is going to admit that because it's obviously ridiculous and would force a nuanced discussion that most of America is incapable of.
August 27th, 2020 at 12:00 PM ^
Ah - but you came here...that doesn't happen, especially if you are on the current "wrong" side of Hive-Mind think.
August 27th, 2020 at 12:23 PM ^
So the Reds and Mets represent every single person concerned about COVID in the country? You certainly don't make any effort to make a distinction.
Also, this is an awful line of argumentation anyway. A "zero cases" policy for a small group of people in close contact is smart, because one case can quickly spread to the whole group. As population scales up, the larger entities shouldn't be so stringent because their policies are more cumbersome and should balance the states of their subpopulations.
But I have quite literally never seen or heard of a single person advocating for a city, state, or nation to enforce a "zero cases" policy and yet you continue to bitch about it.