@ucbalumnus how does one self infect when even the chance of getting the virus from an immediate family member is 16 percent? Go to a march with no mask? I think most of the ways this virus was moving around have been shut down. Everything I know with a large group has been cancelled.
But that is when people are actively trying to avoid being infected, or at least not trying to get infected. I would imagine that someone trying to get infected who finds an infected person can do so with much higher probability than one who is trying to avoid getting infected (or not trying to get infected).
There is also a new one that you breath through your nose into the machine. It’s only 80% conclusive but they are tweaking the software to improve it. Exciting developments if they work and would be easy for schools to administer.
18 percent without a mask and 3 percent with a mask on. It’s a sizable difference.
That article says $400,000 for the device and $40 to $50 per test. Could be expensive if the college wants to test students (or employees) daily. 15 weeks * 5 weekdays * $40 would be $3,000 per student per semester or $6,000 per student per academic year (not including other days that the student may go on campus for final exams or other purposes).
It also says that both the false negative and false positive rates are 5% each.
I think it’s becoming abundantly clear that a lot of colleges have a pretty clear idea of what their capabilties are and that their boards of trustees are just mulling over the myriad PR downsides to having lots of kids testing positive on their campuses. What’s the tiping point before they are the lead story of their local news? Ten? Twelve? A hundred?
There are large swaths of the country where the average person would have to count three or four degrees of separaton before they find anyone who has been sick enough to go to an emergency room because of COVID-19 and that’s bound to affect their enthusiasm for college sports re-starting, or for sit-down dining hall meals. And, it could all change at any moment between now and the rest of the summer.
@Knowsstuff can you cite the research for the mask vs non mask differential? I am assuming that the 3% is for the N95 masks? If so, then almost everyone is exposed as no one is wearing N95 masks.
Encouraged to see recent studies quoted indicating that 80% - 90% of those infected do not spread it to anyone. H had covid and I would have put $ on one of us in the household or his small work group getting it but we all tested negative for antibodies. We actually thought about whether or not exposing myself and our kids might not be a bad idea (he isolated after symptoms) but we didn’t, reasoning that if one of us contracted it consciously and then needed hospital or other face to face med intervention, it would not be right for us to put the risk of our decision on docs/nurses/those who would have to care for us as patients. After H became more ill with passing days, he really feared any of us getting it anyway (no preexisting conditions and not old).
As for Alabama football…what are football teams going to do, quarantine everyone of the players that have been in close contact with covid positive ones for 14 days after the date of last contact? The recommended protocol would suggest that should happen. Maybe teams are just general conditioning right now and distancing. But once they start lining up shoulder to shoulder for hours on end, scrimmaging,etc. um, how will that work? I’ve wondered how this would play out during the actual season…starting lineman tests positive for covid on a Thursday, do you take out the entire starting line up for the game on Saturday? Even if you decrease the quarantine period to 7 days based on the data showing that vast majority of infected individuals show symptoms within 3 - 5 days of contact, I still don’t get how it’s going to work.
I would expect most players are trying to get COVID asap, in pre-season, so they do not miss any games… Playtime in games is very important to them.
. It’s a start not the end. The other test I heard was a few dollars each or something like that. But both are quick. It was just interesting to me what the possibilities are or could be.
Just curious here, do we know how long immunity lasts? Say if my kid had it in March, and got over it, does s/he have immunity from getting it again, or less severely?
Do we even know if one can actually get some immunity?
Seems to me there is just so little known that lots of these assumptions especially about immunity are just stabs in the dark…
Most* masks are more effective against outbound transmission (i.e. you wearing a mask protecting others from being infected by you) than inbound transmission (i.e. you wearing a mask protecting you from being infected by others).
*The exceptions are N95 masks. Those without a valve protect well in both directions, but are uncomfortable to wear. Those with an outlet valve, commonly used in dusty construction or demolition work, protect the wearer but not others from the wearer.
@ucbalumnus can you point to a study for that? Everything that I have read indicates that the surgical masks/cloth mask provide no protection at all. I haven’t found a peer reviewed study that says anything but an N95 mask offers any protection at all from covid 19. The virus particles are too small and get through surgical and cloth masks.
Exactly, we don’t know any of this yet. Whether being infected confers protection against re-infection, and if so, for how long, are unknown right now. The idea that people would self-infect to gain immunity in the absence of good data doesn’t make much sense right now.
With that said, colleges and other workplaces and such have to make sure they don’t incent people to have anti-bodies in order to live on campus, or go to work, etc. We know people on the whole behave as they are incented.
Sanjay Gupta… CNN… LOL but that is where I heard it but also 3% with self made mask. 58% surgical mask and 95 % N95 masks.
@SATXMom2 asked:
This is probably a good question for the other COVID-19 thread, but the short answer is, “No.” No one is really sure how long or even “if.” There’s just a general assumption that this thing is not so different from other SARS viruses and that antibodies induced by those viruses did confer some sort of immunity.
If the antibodies don’t last we can say good bye to any kind of vaccine.
I was under the impression that there was very good monkey data that people (or monkeys) do get antibodies and then aren’t reinfectable.
I would post your question on the inside medicine covid thread. But, yes, there seems to be some level of antibodies circulating in the blood after infection, but we don’t know the level of antibodies one needs to not be re-infected (or have a less severe course of disease if one is infected), and how long antibody protection would last.
We don’t know how long it last yet. But back to regular scheduled programming… LOL…