Was everyone willing to learn? Not in this area! It seems like to truly make progress, even the unwilling must learn AND then to comply. Resistance against acting to stop this virus is futile. No masks, no vaccine, no social distancing, no hand-washing. Yeah, real soon.
Good point. I always see those "get moving" public health billboards and I wonder how many people start exercising because of those.
In theory, there would be fewer people in ICUs if a massive operation to identify & protect the high-risk were successful. That's what I was getting at. We knew early on that it was the elderly & those with certain medical conditions. That's where our laser focus should have been. I believe much of the collateral damage was unnecessary.
Was that possible at the time though? At the start there weren’t enough tests or contact tracers and there wasn’t anything close to guidance on a national level. Things always look more doable in hindsight.
Years ago I took my teenage niece to Disneyworld and at one point I said, "Let us go on It's a small world."
I wish the song would end, so we can get back to signing our Disney favorites again. And not in that muffled singing-behind-a-mask voice, either!
And when you actually start figuring out who is in your isolation group you get to a majority of people. The concept doesn’t work which is why nobody who keeps pushing this idea can explain all of the details.
Just stop please. I have a friend who died who was not high risk. Another super fit young friend 4 months out of work. Friends in the ER struggling because of selfish attitudes. It's not just elderly and high risk dying or suffering from this. Our laser focus should have been on the pandemic and instead we have people ignoring it and posts like this. Our government failed us greatly. And your supposed collateral damage comment? Nope, we didn't do enough.
No country successfully implemented the protect the high risk plan because it’s virtually impossible to do. 20 million people are unemployed due to the pandemic. If you isolated all of the high risk people that would amount to a whole lot more than 20M people who could no longer work. There are estimates into the hundreds of millions if you include medical conditions and age. Retired people may not be heavily impacted but the rest would. Some may be able to move to work from home jobs but many, many people with health conditions also have to work. So the plan is to not allow them to work or even leave their homes so that another 20 million people may not be unemployed. That seems kinda flawed.Remember this graph from last March?
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There was a line of thinking that once the curve was flattened (this would take a few weeks, we thought), and hospital overload was no longer a concern, then our next logical step would be: Protect the vulnerable, and get back to normal. We knew by then that the most vulnerable were those age 75+, and those with certain health conditions.
There was a lot of support for this line of thinking, but it did not win out. Governors, rather than warning the vulnerable to stay away from restaurants and shops, closed them to everyone instead.
Was this the right move? I say no. So what could have been done differently?
A concerted, world-class operation to identify & protect those at highest risk of death from covid-19 should have been the priority. Most of these would have been in nursing homes & hospitals. We could have provided them with protocols & funding to keep those residents & patients as safe as possible. All others in the high-risk category should have been warned to avoid public gatherings (a la "expecting mothers should not ride").
As you do that, keep everything open. Would there be an economic slowdown anyway? Sure, but 20 million people wouldn't have lost their jobs in a month either.
In addition, immune health 101 should have been taught to every person willing to learn. There are certain actions you can take to boost your immune system (broccoli sprouts FTW), although you'd never know it by listening to our elected officials.
Instead, we crashed the economy, sent millions into unemployment & despair, creating a ripple effect that will damage the fabric of our society for generations, and told everyone to hide under their beds until a vaccine is ready. And now that the vaccine is ready, that's still not good enough to get back to normal because it's only 95% effective.
The continuous goal post shifting tells me that we are searching for a zero-risk world, which simply does not exist.
Because we now live in a country where even suggesting anyone do something about their own health - or even that they are capable of controlling their own health - is taboo.
U.S. strikes $230 million deal for over-the-counter Covid tests
"Making easier-to-use tests available to every American is a high priority with obvious benefits," White House Covid-19 adviser Andy Slavitt told reporterswww.nbcnews.com
"$30"
"available over the counter in pharmacies, drug stores and online"
"95 percent accuracy within 15 minutes"
"ship 100,000 test kits per month to the U.S. from February through July"
"$230 million deal"
"Thanks to this contract, they’ll be able to scale the production to manufacture over 19 million test kits per month by the end of this year, 8.5 million of which are guaranteed to the U.S. government."
"appropriate for people ages 2 and older,"
"They can be used if you feel symptoms of Covid-19 and also for screening for people without symptoms, so they can safely go to work, to school and to events."
Those are the bullet points. At that cost, it's to expensive to just do one every day. Plus there wouldn't be supply, at least for a long time. Hopefully as they ramp up scale, the unit cost will go down. Still, it'll be something that could be done every week. In a K-6 school, first grade on Monday, second Tuesday, ..., fifth and sixth on Friday. That kind of surveillance testing should give an early warning before an outbreak get's huge.
I don't think it's likely for every guest at the front gate. There probably isn't $30 of profit in every ticket that they're willing to just give up. But, test every park employee every week is certainly possible. They could test every resort guest on check in. It's not full proof, but some early surveillance testing to even catch a few.
We just had several pages of worries that since we killed the flu and other viruses this winter, we'll be forcing people to wear masks in the years to come.
Moderna looking for ways to boost capacity of doses delivered. They are proposing adding additional doses to each vial from 10 to 15 which would allow them to ship 50% more doses in the same number of vials and since it takes time to fill each vial they would be able to crank out more doses each day. Under the current setup they are approaching manufacturing a million doses a day but this would help grow that number even larger.
Moderna proposes filling vials with additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine
Moderna Inc said on Monday it is proposing filling vials with additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to ease a crunch in manufacturing as the company approaches the manufacturing of almost a million doses a day. "The company is proposing filling vials with additional doses of vaccine, up to...www.yahoo.com
I couldn't tell from the article what all is happening in the analyzer. It's very possible that parts of it are consumed, probably likely from the description.
