Day: April 10, 2020

Unreliable COVID-19 tests might be a problem

benfell

Pandemic

Uh oh. South Korea is finding some patients thought to have been cured of COVID-19 have apparently been reinfected:[1]

Fear of re-infection in recovered patients is also growing in China, where the virus first emerged last December, after reports that some tested positive again – and even died from the disease – after supposedly recovering and leaving hospital. There’s little understanding of why this happens, although some believe that the problem may lie in inconsistencies in test results.[2]

The article does not make clear what sort of “inconsistencies” are being found in the test results,[3] however, false negatives, such as those anecdotally reported previously,[4] might account for the phenomenon.

“A patient is deemed fully recovered when two tests conducted with a 24-hour interval show negative results,”[5] but if the negatives are false—and repeatedly so—then the patient will have been incorrectly “deemed fully recovered” when s/he is in fact still sick and s/he indeed might die.

This is another reason you need reliable tests.

Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says

  1. [1]Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says↩
  2. [2]Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says↩
  3. [3]Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says↩
  4. [4]Christopher Weaver, “Questions About Accuracy of Coronavirus Tests Sow Worry,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/questions-about-accuracy-of-coronavirus-tests-sow-worry-11585836001↩
  5. [5]Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says↩

Money above human life

benfell

It is April 10 and it is snowing out and even beginning to stick on the grass outside my apartment.

I still have my snow tires on. I’ve been feeling this was fairly ridiculous with the warmer weather lately but locals have informed me it is wise to keep them on.

That said, the temperature is 33° F; the road surfaces will likely remain above freezing. Snow tires are likely not necessary under such conditions. Likely.

Pandemic

As I expected, Donald Trump is indeed pushing for an early re-opening of the U.S. economy. The ghost of the 1918 influenza pandemic, in which a premature re-opening led to a second peak in cases and deaths,[1] may haunt, but the capitalist god demands human sacrifice and soon.[2] This is how we run the world and never forget that money counts for more than human life.[3]

Matt Zapotosky et al., “Trump administration pushing to reopen much of the U.S. next month,” Washington Post, April 9, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-reopen-us-economy/2020/04/09/10d42b4a-7a7b-11ea-9bee-c5bf9d2e3288_story.html

  1. [1]Matt Zapotosky et al., “Trump administration pushing to reopen much of the U.S. next month,” Washington Post, April 9, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-reopen-us-economy/2020/04/09/10d42b4a-7a7b-11ea-9bee-c5bf9d2e3288_story.html↩
  2. [2]David Benfell, “The capitalist death cult,” Not Housebroken, March 27, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/03/27/the-capitalist-death-cult/↩
  3. [3]David Benfell, “Paying for money with human lives,” Not Housebroken, February 18, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/2015/02/18/paying-for-money-with-human-lives/; David Benfell, “The worst of times and the worst of humanity,” Not Housebroken, April 2, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/02/the-worst-of-times-and-the-worst-of-humanity/↩