Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

So our nanny tested positive. We informed work and all of my family went to get tested. The nurse said regardless of the results, we should quarantine for two weeks. Our results came in yesterday and we let HR know and that the nurse said to quarantine.

HR said that I was all good to come back to work today. I informed them that CDC says that if a person has definitely been in close contact with an infected person, they should quarantine for 14 days. HR thanked me for doing some research and said that they respect my decision to make my health decisions and they would respect my wishes although it will have to come out of my paid time off. All of which tells me that the biggest museum in Houston that has hundreds of employees and was determined to be the first major art museum in the USA to open does not have its shit together. When I do go back to work, I'm going to go there with the knowledge that my employer is not following proper quarantine procedures.

At the end of our quarantine we're all going to get tested again. The kids are the ones who have been in close contact with the nanny. In theory, they could get it but not be infectious or symptomatic for 2-14 days before they give it to us. We're also finding that a lot of testing sites don't test kids. Which seems so fucking crazy.

HR thanked me for doing some research and said that they respect my decision to make my health decisions and they would respect my wishes although it will have to come out of my paid time of

This is terrible
I'm sorry they are terrible

they respect your decision to sacrifice your vacation time in order to keep the rest of the company safe. big of them.

Arrange a face-to-face meeting with HR where you very closely show your respect for them

i'm so sorry wmc <3

is your company too small in terms of # of employees to be required by law to provide the COVID Sick Leave that was passed earlier this year?

if i were you, i would call a reporter at a local paper and offer them a story as an anonymous source on the record.

it's an extremely ethical thing to do! you may save lives if they are shamed into following the letter of the law.

I'd absolutely find a way to get the info out too.

Still unbelievable to me that the university where I've been teaching welcomed students to dorms this week... they'll be closed and online-only within a week, the school had an uncontrollable mumps outbreak in 2019, and there's no way things have gotten better.

Sorry to hear the news, WmC.

It's hard to think of any reason why it would get better. Brexit is going to crash in harder than anyone modelling options even conceived of, Lukashenko looks unlikely to stand down, fire season starts in Australia in a month and the entirety of the QAnon-believing PM's plan to beat COVID is to increase fossil fuel mining and consumption. Maybe Bolsonaro will die, but I dunno anything about who or what would replace him.

― poparse's eye (sic), Monday, August 17, 2020 8:01 AM (three days ago)

good news guys! After a major deployment of water bombers was called to the 702nd ground fire in six weeks,
fire season is officially being declared early

people are still unhoused after this year's previous devastating bushfires, and it is currently winter btw

Fire season has an early start on Cali, too. Lots of friends evacuated right now.

i want to extend my belated condolences to WmC (was avoiding the thread). how terrible.

Had no clue about the Families First Coronavirus Response Act! I need to look into it. Where I work is a nonprofit, I don't know if that has anything to do with it. But we're pretty damn big (600+ employees).

Oh. I just looked it up. We're too big. It doesn't cover places with more than 500 employees.

We're like a small city. It is crazy to me that HR is leaving it up to me whether I come back to work or not. They should be paying my ass to stay away.

Drove past a CiCi's pizza with a big sign about the buffet being open - you're guaranteed to get either COVID or diarrhea for $8.99 + tax, maybe both.

Apparently spotted at Trader Joe's:

https://i.imgur.com/HMY95wO.jpg

Sad lol

lol

well done

Our nanny who tested positive last week has had three more tests that came back negative.

So... was it a false positive? Or had it moved out of her system by the time she had the later tests? Her boyfriend that she lives with tested negative. She had no symptoms.

No way to know, so we continue to quarantine.

A nurse where we got tested told us that the CDC updated guidelines to quarantine for only ten days. This is not true. If you test positive and have to quarantine with mild to moderate symptoms, you only have to quarantine for ten days. This is not what our case was. If you come in contact with an infected person it's 14 days.

The amount of confusion out there is incredibly frustrating.

The lack of clarity must be infuriating. Here at least the message is clear, if heavy handed, it you test positive or are a close contact of a positive test you have to quarantine for 14 days. They check up on you, sending police and the army round, as well as phoning regularly. If you’re found not to be at home you get a $5000 fine. They also pay $1500 to people who have to quarantine and don’t get sick leave. But basically the message is stay home.

It's infuriating because I KNOW WHAT MUST BE DONE. But that's only because I did my own research and we have the means to hunker down. HR told me to come on in to work. A nurse practitioner told me 10 days would be fine. Another nurse told my wife on the phone that if we tested negative it was probably fine. No wonder the USA can't get its shit together.

We had a new nanny lined up for when I go back to work after the quarantine. The old nanny was on her way out anyway due to other commitments. That's falling through because she's a college student who is committed to only taking online courses. One of her online instructors caught COVID and the class is canceled so she may have to go to an in-person class. Which means we won't want her to be our nanny. Everything is so stupid. At this point I wish I could quit my job and stay home with the kids but the cost of insurance would be crazy.

one of my uncles just died of covid; I didn't really know him, only met him once when I was 10 or so but nevertheless it is infuriating

Sorry to hear about your uncle, katherine.

Condolences to WmC and katherine

The testing situation remains perplexing, no matter the country. I took an antibody test in May and tested negative. I donated blood in June and tested positive for antibodies, and I trust the Red Cross over some pop-up clinic. I'm donating blood again tomorrow so will (eventually) be automatically tested for antibodies again. Curious what I come up this time, because I have no idea. My wife and one of my kids, when tested, came up negative for antibodies. It would be really weird if I test positive for antibodies again, which means it's more or less a sure thing that I have them, but no one in my family does. Extra weird because if I had covid in early March it was the most mild case of covid imaginable, and if it wasn't that (and I do have antibodies) then I was 100% asymptomatic.

Not as weird as it sounds - 80% of cases are between mild and asymptomatic

At the same time, iirc when they test (relatively) big populations for antibodies, I want to say the positive rates hover somewhere in the 20% range or something. Or regardless, indicate that while the majority of cases may be mild or asymptomatic, the majority of people are not getting covid unknowingly.

I think the antibody tests have quite high false positive rates (much higher than the active virus tests) so statistically the most likely explanation for a positive antibody test, absent symptoms, is a false positive.

similarly, there's a high amount of false negatives with the swab tests. that's why it worries me when people treat a negative test like 'clean bill, i'm good'. I tried a few times to get tests on consecutive days so I could get two negative tests, and both times, the second test (taken at a separate place from the first) took 2+ weeks to arrive. one still hasn't and it's been 3 weeks.

also, Monday I have a meeting with a physicial for a Covid study I signed up for. not 100% sure if this is a vaccine study or what but.....shall see.

"We're replacing this so-called 'blood' of yours with Listerine."

keep reminding myself I gotta let my friends fight their own fights without wanting to constantly jump in and kick ass. managed to do that today.

good friend of mine, teacher who just started live classes on Friday, made the mistake of wading into a comment thread debate about the appropriateness of re-opening classes (keeping in mind there have been threats made that teachers who don't show up due to COVID concerns will be fired made by officials in the state).

my friend, who compared to someone like me, is actually the type who will argue passionately, but without throwing barbed insults or leaving the arena of respectability, basically got called a 'Karen" by a bunch of nasty parents.

she held her own but i'm just angry on her behalf, cos i know the abuse some teachers are going to take is likely to get much worse. and I hope it doesn't leave the figurative abuse arena.

I think the antibody tests have quite high false positive rates (much higher than the active virus tests) so statistically the most likely explanation for a positive antibody test, absent symptoms, is a false positive.

I don't know, it seems kind of irresponsible for anyone to call the antibody test "pointless." For example, if I come up negative this time (which I'm expecting), I'll be more confident that I had a false positive. But if I come up positive again I'll be more confident it was a true positive, and if so will be more inclined to participate in antibody/vaccine/plasma tests/donations, which they seem to still want. When the Red Cross gave me my positive result after the last time I donated blood, they immediately/automatically asked me to start donating antibody-positive plasma. I had to wait the required 54 days or whatever first, regardless, but I also wanted to be more confident of the results before I volunteered myself.

I mean if you have the option to take a test with a high failure rate lots of times then go for it, but they’re making public health recommendations in the context of constrained resources.

xp that's a fair point-- here, as in so many things, opinions depend upon the questions presented. i did find the article helpful to diagram out my understanding the types of tests, varieties available, and what they may tell us. the relatively fast fading accuracy of antibody tests over time seems more pronounced that i had understood, def, though i had been aware that they are mostly not very accurate to begin with.

I didn’t realise that false *negatives* are a problem that increases with time until the information you get from a negative result a few months after a possible infection is almost nothing.

If the question is “am I immune”, and you’re doing this more than a few months after infection, then it seems like a positive result actually means “probably” and a negative result means “no idea”.

Yeah, exactly. But that's still helpful in some ways. And for the record - and this goes for everyone - afaict the Red Cross currently, automatically tests *everyone* for antibodies (and right now sends you a $5 Amazon gift certificate, too, which you can just donate back), so since donating blood is *always* helpful and *always* a good idea, it's a pretty easy way to get a nice premium (antibody test) in the process. So ... donate blood!

Would love to but I’m not allowed to donate blood in the US!

Check back! My wife lived in Germany for a few years and hasn't been allowed to donate for decades (mad cow, etc.). However, that rule is apparently changing any day now, if it hasn't already.

Yeah I’ve been following. The uk is a special case apparently.

Sounds fine

FT: “The Trump administration is considering bypassing normal US regulatory standards to fast-track an experimental coronavirus vaccine from the UK for use in America ahead of the presidential election, according to three people briefed on the plan.”https://t.co/fBHgfi1pHV

— Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) August 23, 2020

it's behind a paywall, but just curious: what is the expected timeline for that vaccine in the UK?

it doesn't say, it's still in testing

Phase iii started in July iirc. Not sure when it’s due to finish, but the implication of that article is: not in time for the US election.

I think fast tracking something that has been fully approved by another country’s equivalent of the FDA is not an insane thing to do (although I would prefer a country other than the UK tbh). But the concern here is that the oxford vaccine won’t have even that.

Apparently trump announcing fda fast tracking of plasma therapy at his press conference tonight.

Beautiful American Plasma

Plasma to be taken from random civilians via Selective Plasma Service