Elon Musk Confirms Saturday He 'Most Likely' Has Covid-19 (bloomberg.com) 200
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes:
SpaceX founder Elon Musk now says, in a new tweet on Saturday, "that he 'most likely' has a moderate case of Covid-19," according to Bloomberg. Though their article then also reports that Musk characteristically "continued to cast doubt on the accuracy of the tests, citing the 'wildly different results from different labs.'"
By late Thursday Musk had taken four different coronavirus tests, tweeting that he'd received two negative and two positive results. [The Washington Post reported that Thursday Musk then also announced he was turning to the more reliable polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, and he tweeted that he was getting "PCR tests" — plural -- "from separate labs," for which he'd need to wait 24 more hours to get the results.] But then he'd stopped sharing his results altogether, until pressed Saturday by one of his followers on Twitter, who had bluntly asked the SpaceX founder, "u got covid or nah."
After confirming that yes he "most likely" had Covid-19, Musk quickly added in the same tweet that "My symptoms are that of a minor cold, which is no surprise, since a coronavirus is a type of cold."
The fact that he'd even responded at all drew a surprised reaction from the follower who'd asked the original question. ("holy shit no way.") But the original positive/negative results had also drawn a surprisingly harsh reaction from former government official/current University of California Berkeley public policy professor Robert Reich, who couldn't resist tweeting a reminder that Musk "reportedly fired Tesla workers who were afraid of returning to work out of fear of contracting COVID. But when Musk thinks he might have the virus he takes 4 tests just to make sure. Billionaires aren't the answer."
Get well soon, Elon.
By late Thursday Musk had taken four different coronavirus tests, tweeting that he'd received two negative and two positive results. [The Washington Post reported that Thursday Musk then also announced he was turning to the more reliable polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, and he tweeted that he was getting "PCR tests" — plural -- "from separate labs," for which he'd need to wait 24 more hours to get the results.] But then he'd stopped sharing his results altogether, until pressed Saturday by one of his followers on Twitter, who had bluntly asked the SpaceX founder, "u got covid or nah."
After confirming that yes he "most likely" had Covid-19, Musk quickly added in the same tweet that "My symptoms are that of a minor cold, which is no surprise, since a coronavirus is a type of cold."
The fact that he'd even responded at all drew a surprised reaction from the follower who'd asked the original question. ("holy shit no way.") But the original positive/negative results had also drawn a surprisingly harsh reaction from former government official/current University of California Berkeley public policy professor Robert Reich, who couldn't resist tweeting a reminder that Musk "reportedly fired Tesla workers who were afraid of returning to work out of fear of contracting COVID. But when Musk thinks he might have the virus he takes 4 tests just to make sure. Billionaires aren't the answer."
Get well soon, Elon.
To be fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
From everything I've heard about the "rapid" tests, they have anywhere from a 10-15% false negative rate. There was a report a few months ago about these tests being rushed through, and not holding up well to scrutiny.
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And the same media outlets generally aren't skeptics in the case of this pandemic.
Some of those very same outlets also commented on Musk's tweet as being reckless.
Kinda like a smoke alarm - if two go off ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah the test, like most tests, can't actually say covid isn't present. Tests don't detect the absence of something. The two results you can get from the test are:
A) Detected fresh COVID antibodies
B) Did not DETECT fresh covid antibodies
Result B could be because you haven't been exposed.
Result B could be because you were exposed 30 minutes ago and haven't produced enough antibodies to detect yet.
Result B could be because you were exposed 10 days ago, you're almost better now, and the type of antibodies it detects are mostly gone now.
Result B is also the result you'll get from most failure modes - it'll fail to detect.
For Elon Musk, imagine if you have four smoke alarms in your house and two are detecting smoke. Two of the smoke alarms in the house aren't detecting smoke (yet). If two smoke alarms are going off, something is probably burning.
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Good analogy with the smoke alarms, The tests are accurate in that manner, False positives are rare (below 1%) but false negatives are as high as 16%. The company says test administrators should be trained because it's easy to get it wrong and cause a false negative.
https://www.fda.gov/media/1397... [fda.gov]
Re:Kinda like a smoke alarm - if two go off ... (Score:4, Informative)
A) Detected fresh COVID antibodies ... B) Did not DETECT fresh covid antibodies... you were exposed 30 minutes ago and haven't produced enough antibodies to detect yet. ... exposed 10 days ago, you're almost better now, and the type of antibodies it detects are mostly gone now.
An antibody test is for confirming that you've had the disease or are at least already in a more advanced stage of the disease. Antibodies are produced by your immune system and generally stay for months.
Antigen tests detect the presence of virus proteins. These tests are fast (15 minutes) but less sensitive (high false negative rate) than PCR. This is probably what you were thinking of. Antigens are foreign molecules that trigger an antibody response.
PCR tests detect viral RNA with a much higher sensitivity.
See also https://www.fda.gov/consumers/... [fda.gov] .
Thanks for the correction (Score:2)
Thanks for that.
I was focused on the point I was making (you can't detect the absence of something) and didn't pay attention to that.
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Two of the smoke alarms in the house aren't detecting smoke (yet). If two smoke alarms are going off, something is probably burning.
What this means at my place is that I'm making toast for breakfast.
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Yes you can detect the absence of something, at least within confidence limits that can be made arbitrarily small. That applies equally to positive detection.
Other posters have corrected your error conflating antibody tests with antigen tests, but have not pointed out that antibody tests typically have small false negative rates with high false positive rates. That is, they're pretty good at detecting the absence of antibodies, and less useful for detecting the presence of (specific) ones.
On snowy Texas summer (Score:2)
> Yes you can detect the absence of something
Care to provide an example any system that actually detects the absence of something? As opposed to failing to detect it's presence?
BTW you can tell the difference by thinking about what happens when the sensor is broken. If the detector being totally broken, such that the sensor is a null component, results in a reading of "not present" that means the system was expecting the sensor to detect the presence of the thing. It reads "not present" when the sensor
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Just another thought on that - any system that can report HOW MUCH was detected must by necessity be detecting the presence of something. It makes no sense to talk about how many virii molecules are not in the sample. You can only say how many WERE detected.
Re:Kinda like a smoke alarm - if two go off ... (Score:4, Informative)
and the "thing burning" is the toast you're making.
The manufacturer of the BD equipment says it has a 84% sensitivity rate (page 12). It also says that positive results do not indicate covid, as it can be triggered by other bacteria or viral infections.
Please stop repeating that. You interpreted what they said incorrectly. What that PDF says is that the test has 100% specificity (in the line RIGHT below the 84% sensitivity line you quoted), which means that if you have a positive test, barring contamination of the swab or reagent or similar, you DO have COVID-19. Period.
What the text you mention about bacterial infections actually says is that positive results do not preclude coinfection, i.e. having COVID-19 AND something else, and thus do not definitively prove that your illness is entirely caused by COVID-19 (which should be blindly obvious). In theory, it is also possible for some other very similar virus to be cross-reactive, triggering a false positive, but AFAIK, that is purely theoretical so far, apart from being unable to distinguish the different SARS-CoV-2 strains from one another. I suppose if somebody somehow came down with SARS-CoV-1 or MERS, it is possible that they would produce a false positive.... But the phrase "extrememely unlikely" doesn't begin to cover it.
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1) PCR - this looks for the presence of viral RNA. This has two major flaws, 1) it requires the virus to have replicated enough for the sample taken to have a high probability of getting the RNA in the sample collection, so it's most accurate when sample is collected between 5-14 days after being exposed, and 2) if your immune system defeated the disease, you could still te
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Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh-huh. You should be more worried about indoctrination than inoculation.
Even Trump's own DHS determined there was no evidence of anything resembling massive voter fraud. Even Trump says this was an incredibly secure election, which he'll take credit for, but it was terrible because of fraud (wh...?) which only affected the Presidential race, and only in states where he lost-- Florida, for instance, had massive quantities of mail-in ballots. Since they're untrustworthy, should we assume that Florida actually voted for Biden?
But your diatribe against Fauci sounds like you're listening to Steve Bannon, who makes his living manipulating people. You're actually contributing to the one REAL conspiracy, which is run by Bannon, Stone and Q. Well done! Keep up the good work, Comrade!
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Informative)
about not allowing observers in to see the counts somewhere
That's just another lie the con artist and his minions keep repeating. The issue was observers in Philadelphia were watching the counting going on, but the judge said they could be within six feet [go.com], but no closer.
In fact, when pressed on the question of whether there were observers present, an attorney for the con artist said [abajournal.com]:
In one of the most-cited examples, U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond of Philadelphia questioned campaign lawyer Jerome Marcus about claims that GOP observers weren’t allowed to watch the ballot count in Philadelphia. CNN had covered the hearing.
Under questioning, Marcus conceded there were “a nonzero number of people in the room.”
“I’m sorry, then what’s your problem?” Diamond responded.
But keep repeating the lie if it makes you feel better. The con artist still lost and Biden won by a landslide.
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and Biden won by a landslide.
Um ... if by "landslide" you mean "squeaker".
306 electoral votes is a landslide, the con artist said so [msn.com]. Also, Biden received the most votes for president than anyone in this nation's history. That makes it an even better landslide victory.
Re: To be fair... (Score:2)
No, that doesn't contribute to the landsliditude of the victory, because Trump got the second highest number of votes in the history of US presidential elections. For a victory to be landslide, the *difference* in number of votes needs to be high, not the number of votes.
Though you are right, if Trump's claims are considered, anything can be asserted. And 306 is respectable, close to landslide territory for anyone even slightly fond of hyperbole.
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I like the one in Penn or Michigan where some pole watcher saw someone mark a birthday of Jan 1., 1900 on a ballot that had no birth date marked. Naturally, this was a Major Violation of Something and the R's peed on themselves bringing this to a judge's attention. The State then told the judge that if the voting machine software didn't have a date, it would croak. So the bogus date was entered so that it was easily recognizable later. The R's still haven't laundered their panties.
Re: To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, in this case, finger-pointing IS helpful. Who convinced that 40% that the elections were not trustworthy? As far as I can tell, it all started because one idiot started spouting that crap, and he's the guy who is sitting in the White House. The erosion of confidence is not based on reality, but rather based on the delusional rantings of someone who is off his rocker and lacks sufficient executive function to know that he is clinically insane (likely frontotemporal dementia).
It's time to put the blame for everything that is currently wrong in our country right where it belongs — on the guy in charge, and on every Republican legislator who kept him there.
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Finger-pointing is not helpful obviously.
As the lawyer for a defendant in a murder trial, who was caught in the act, might argue: "Let's not point fingers, and get all bogged down into who killed who. Isn't my client, in his own way, equally a victim?"
Malefactors always wants to "move past" looking at "who did what".
In all other situations identifying the root cause of a problem is essential in fixing it.
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Close, the R's are simply scared of their scared stupid voters. The alleged president is, as always, perpetrating yet one more scam. This time it is to fleece his voters while he still has their attention. The money is going to his PAC, which he controls and can spend it anyway he likes including on his family, and the RNC (roughly a 60%-40% split). This keeps his fingers in the RNC so that he can leverage that into more after he leaves office. He isn't difficult to figure out.
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So is what you're reading. The idea that BB or newsax or gateway pundit or wahtever are operating at some kind of higher plane of transparency, independence from profit motive, dedication to "the truth" is so ... so very sad for people. MSM is where the actual truth lies. You should be able to recognize some bias of principle, the MSM at least deals from a position of having to kowtow to at least some widespread accepted concensus. If you wanna fringe, do so at your own peril, because if you accept the idea
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The mainstream media does have a bias-- it tends towards truth, and when even Fox can't tolerate comments like McNinny saying Trump will be at his inauguration in January, it should tell you something.
But, here's a free tidbit. There was in fact, a massive conspiracy in this past election.
80 million people got together, and decided Trump needs to leave the White House. :)
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Funny)
You missed the latest whopper from the alleged president's press secretary. She claimed a million people turned out to the Support the Alleged President rally in Washington yesterday. Not even close, a few thou max.
The editor (might be a past editor) of Sports Illustrated wrote a golf book, he has a talk on Youtube. Apparently, the alleged president's nickname on the golf course is Pele, that joke writes itself.
Also, one time the alleged president meets Lee Trevino after Lee played a round on one of the alleged president's courses. He asks Lee what he shot and Lee responded with some score. So the alleged president squires Lee around to various people in the room announcing Lee to them to show what a Big Man the alleged president was for knowing him and announcing what Lee shot. Lee told the editor that he had to leave because if he didn't he was soon going to set a club record.
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I guess making shit up is the dues one pays to support the alleged president. Believing a lie is not generally a prescription for success.
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Oh, he's not the alleged President. He won in 2016 and nobody disputes that, even in 2016.
He sure as shit didn't win in 2020 though. He's done. Everyone knows this except for those so detached from reality as to actually believe anything coming from this soon-to-be-ex-President. There's only so much he can do in his remaining 65 days with an opposition Congress, and a Senate that recognizes his lame-duck status and knows they have to live in that town and run for re-election after January 21.
Anything he
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Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Informative)
Seeing all the BS that gets spread about Musk makes me understand Trump people's reaction to the media better, despite me being on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
Here's how Slashdot - and the linking article - decsribed the conversation:
Here's the actual thread, a discussion between Elon and Michael Mina (epidemiologist, immunologist, physician, Harvard Public Health/Medical School):
Link [twitter.com]
Michael Mina: "Antigen tests are positive when contagious and turn negative when infectiousness subsides Comparing Ag to PCR (which stays positive for weeks after infectiousness subsides) is NOT APPROPRIATE for evaluating a test meant to detect people who are infectious."
Michael Mina: "Maybe most important line in the paper: “Although many caveats remain, the point in the course of the first week of symptoms at which AgPOCT results turn negative may thus indicate the time at which infectivity resolves.” " YES exactly @c_drosten! Agree in full!
Michael Mina: "PCR CAN be used as comparator - but must be w extreme care. RNA presence does not = live virus presence. It’s like faulting a newly installed security camera for not detecting a crime that was committed - even though some DNA is left on the floor at which it points."
Elon Musk: "In your opinion, at what Ct number for the cov2 N1 gene should a PCR test probably be regarded as positive? If I’m asking the wrong question, what is a better question?"
Michael Mina: "Great question! It’s more complex question and depends on why the test is being used - ie: do you want to know if you are currently contagious/risky to others or if you have any remnants of RNA? The difference may sound trivial but it is massive"
Michael Mina: "If the question is "Am I currently infectious right now when the swab is collected" then on *most* instruments/labs, data suggests a Ct value somewhere around 30 or below is needed. (Different instruments/labs are different - but that's a decent generalization)..."
Elon Musk: "It would be great if labs could give people this level of granular feedback in their results"
Now let's double back to how this was being described by the media:
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Uncertainty over whether or not you have Covid is common in the rather long incubation period. That is how it spreads so far, despite all of our attempts to isolate patients.
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Here's the actual thread that was the basis of the reporting [twitter.com], which you ignored in favor of a subsequent thread with Dr. Mina. You'd recognize it because almost all of the reporting quoted it.
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Informative)
Verbatim quoting an entire conversation is "revising history"?
You linked a single tweet, the first one, which said:
Being frustrated by getting four identical tests at the same time give two completely different sets of answers (e.g. either two false positives or two false negatives) is out of line? Responding to said frustration by asking experts to explain the implications of different test results is inappropriate?
I'll repeat: I disagree with a number of Elon's views about COVID, but this is BS. He had every reason on earth to be frustrated with conflicting test results, and he asked the right questions to the right people.
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Yes, because the reporting wasn't referring to that conversation, which happened later.
He replied to comments under that tweet. At least you acknowledge that he made it.
Being frustrated by getting four identical tests at the same time give two completely different sets of answers (e.g. either two false positives or two false negatives) is out of line?
YES [cdc.gov], there's a reason that rapid tests in this situation are labeled
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What you're calling "my desperately wrong pronouncements" is simply me repeating verbatim advice from the CDC and WHO at the time, who - at the time - were declaring that asymptomatic transmission does not exist.
I stick with experts in their respective fields. Always have. Always will.
You're free to hate on experts and declare yourself an armchair expert all you want.
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Yes, it's amazing how you pick sides and speak so authoritatively and certainly about this topic. The Chinese and Germans reporting asymptomatic transmission were wrong because you found one administrative source at the WHO who disagreed.
Re:To be fair... (Score:4)
He was given four rapid tests in the same day. You think Elon is out there going, "Hey, I'd like to take a whole bunch of COVID tests at once!"?
And he DID CONFIRM ANY POSITIVE USING THE GODDAMN ACCURATE PCR TEST.
Are you upset that he bothered mentioning the contraditory results? Or that getting contraditory results was frustrating? Are you upset that he asked experts to explain the limitations of the different tests? Or that the conversation was public? Exactly what the bloody heck is so offensive to you here?
And Neil Ferguson (the "Imperial College Report" guy) said the US would have up to 2,2 million deaths if it didn't lockdown until vaccination. The difference is that Elon never claimed to be an expert and used the word "probably", while Neil presented himself as the unfallable source of truth, got his claims widely spread the world over, and personally designed lockdowns, only to break his own rules to sleep with his mistress.
Should we bother mentioning the fact that the very thing Elon was advocating for last spring is now standard practice? Remember when everyone virulently dug into Elon for arguing that rational control measures like masks (which Tesla was using long before they were required to) and personal distancing are fine, as well as science-backed targeted restrictions, but you shouldn't shut down your entire economy? Well, guess what 90% of the world has been doing since last summer to deal with their second and third waves? Rational control measures like masks and social distancing, targeted science-based restrictions, and not shutting down their entire economies. What Elon was excoriated for is now standard practice. Remember how everyone was furious at him for trying to reopen Tesla (the last US automaker to announce reopening, it should be mentioned)? Hey, have you seen any car factories getting shut down in subsequent waves? By and large, most of the world has realized that full shutdowns of all activity is not an appropriate response to COVID. By and large, the world is now agreeing with what Elon was so viciously attacked for.
(Obvious implication of the Pareto principle [wikipedia.org])
There's plenty I disagree with him about. Specifically, he thinks there's too much mixing up of "died with covid" and "died because of covid" in the case of multiple causes of death, while I trust authorities to make the right judgement in this regard. But this sort of "any time Elon mentions the word COVID, even if to ask medical experts about the implications of tests he had to take, launching into extensive attacks against him for it", is sheer and utter BS.
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A one term President like Trump is a reason to celebrate. The man is no leader, can't keep his delusional "facts" straight either. And unreliable as international business-partner.
Those qualities made him a poor businessman (figuratively and literally). If you (as a nation) didn't want a new career politician at the helm in 2016, you had (and still have) a pool of much more capable heads of business to choose from.
Biden is not ideal. Far from it actually. But there is no way he can be worse than Trump. Whet
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That's just insulting to all the people who've busted their nuts over the past 8 months to figure out this virus.
You sir, have an excess of whack.
Get help soon.
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How do you think we have the vaccine so fast, in under a year? Because IT ALREADY EXISTED.
No, because in the current state of emergency all of the leading candidate manufacturers have taken the unusual step of pre-manufacturing vaccine doses before approval. This is partially subsidized by the Operation Warp Speed program.
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Let me ask you: what's your threshold for fatality rates before you take a disease seriously?
If a pathogen kills 1 out of every 1000 people?
1 out of 100?
1 out of 10?
1 out of 5?
At what point do you, personally, decide that the disease is harmful enough to be worth fighting?
Ha ha (Score:4, Insightful)
Karma is a b*tch.
This is the same Elon Musk whose factory didn't need to socially distance because rules for regular people don't apply to boy genius.
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Karma is a b*tch.
Not really. Musk is rich enough that his Covid-19 infection isn't likely to be any worse than a minor nuisance to him. Most of these people who think Covid-19 is NBD aren't going to have a change of heart by going through any ordeal less than dying from it - but then, what's the point?
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So one of your family members isn't one of the over 245K who went tits up, then. Of any of many who knock on effects that won't go away. The alleged president: the virus will magically disappear. The alleged president: a vaccine will be a'comin' 'round the corner any day now. I guess the vaccine will be the magic, presuming his CDC can be trusted to field effective vaccines and not by companies paid off by the alleged administration to deliver one before he leaves office.
Re:deplorable! (Score:4, Insightful)
I know... I just can't understand why the uneducated deplorables aren't scared witless by a disease with an overall 99.7% survival rate, and a 99.93% survival rate for non-elderly cohorts. I guess they're just too stupid.
No one at Elon's age and health level should be very worried about dying if they contract Covid-19. They should be a little worried though about the long term health consequences we still don't fully understand yet (but what we do know so far is somewhat alarming).
But Elon should be very worried about how many people he has possibly infected through his reckless behavior and how many others those people infected. Add to that the number of people his actions as a public figure and business owner have put at risk. Those who are taking proper precautions aren't doing it out of fear (not most anyway), they are doing it out of a sense of civic responsibility and general decency.
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I know... I just can't understand why the uneducated deplorables aren't scared witless by a disease with an overall 99.7% survival rate, and a 99.93% survival rate for non-elderly cohorts. I guess they're just too stupid.
<sarcasm>I know. I just can't understand why people get mad when somebody goes into a high school with 10,000 students and shoots seven of them. After all, most of the students didn't die.</sarcasm>
Even if your numbers were correct, any virus that kills seven healthy young people out of every 10,000 isn't anything to sneeze at. And that's not even considering all the people who suffer from permanent lifelong disabilities as a result.
Unfortunately for your rant, the actual CFR numbers for COVI
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Here's your citation [nih.gov]. 0.3 to 0.7% CFR.
Now begone, troll.
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The study you cite is outdated, and addresses specifically Covid syndrome in children. The CFR measured in the study involves actual cases of disease who present at hospital for care; not "cases" of PCR+ the Official Media like to report. You knew that, right?
The study uses very early data collected Jan-Mar 2020, with a very small sample set of 381 children. All children who presented at hospital with serious symptoms. Immediately following the CFR you cite, the authors write: "We found no evidence of excess mortality in children."
I saw that line, and I cringed, because every child that dies of COVID is excess mortality. Children don't just randomly die. There's not enough crack in the world for that line to make sense except in a "this should not be taken as proof" sort of way, i.e. a CYA line. The reason for the lack of excess mortality in aggregate is that kids aren't doing the sorts of activities that they previously did, hence the huge reduction in deaths from other causes is masking the deaths from COVID-19, to the point tha
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Now there is a number fresh from an ass. If this was true, the US would have already suffered 80 million cases, and we'd be well on our way to burning out as all the high-risk pockets would have been infected. Maybe you meant to say 97%, which is much more accurate. If you're in the US, that means contracting covid is roughly 15 times as likely to kill you as receiving a venomous snakebite.
Re:Ha ha (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the same Elon Musk whose factory didn't need to socially distance because rules for regular people don't apply to boy genius.
It's a car factory not a rock concert. If social distancing isn't implied then you've really fucked up the design of your factory.
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You really do seem to have a fixation there. Projecting again?
TBC and MMR Vaccines (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: TBC and MMR Vaccines (Score:2)
Two studies have looked into and the TBC vaccine has not exhibited any serious protection except maybe if it was recently given since that wasn't investigated.
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How come Eastern Europe has a shitloads of deaths now?
I have repeatedly asked you that and asked you to explain France as well, but to no avail, because people like you are unable to admit being wrong - especially to themselves.
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Slovakia actuallyhas over 500 deaths. But let's take Poland, where both MMR and BCG are mandatory to thisday: over 500 deaths just yesterday, 300+ deaths every day this week. Czech republic:150+ deathsevery day this week (they have a third of the population), both vaccines are mandatory. Bulgaria, 60+ daily deaths, even smaller population, both vaccines mandatory. Russia: both mandatory, 300+ daily deaths. Hungary: both mandatory, 80+ daily deaths. Romania: BCG is mandatory, 100+ deaths every day this week.
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Russia's CFR (chosen because it's a big enough country for the results to be statistically significant) is 1.7%. India's is 1.5%. Contrast that with countries that don't require it, e.g. the U.S. at 2.3% or Italy at 3.9%, and there's certainly reason to study it further to determine if it has an effect.
Of course, there are other differences in the age distribution, genetics, and who knows what else, so that's all it is — grounds for further study.
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Very true. That said, I'm assuming that the studies that looked at this actually compared countries with similar rates of testing for that reason, or attempted to adjust for those sorts of differences, rather than just picking big countries to reduce noise. The problem isn't a single difference, but rather the sheer number of differences between countries, each of which can affect the data in unexpected ways.
For example, countries that vaccinated against TB later than others probably did so for a reason
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Primary health care in the Third World is better than in the 1st and 2nd World. Musk was born in SA and should have gotten the TBC and MMR vaccines as a child. So he won't get seriously ill.
Um, what? First worlder here, definitely got the MMR vaccine like everyone around me did.
As for TB vaccine, https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publica... [cdc.gov]
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Turned out my problem was significant stress due to a bad relationship and poor fitness causing significant shoulder and neck clenching. Solved with eati
Who cares? (Score:2)
And more importantly, has that blabbering idiot made enough tests to gather proper statistical data?
Honesty (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, over the past 4 years since he became a closet Trump supporter .. his delving into anti-vaxxer level territory BS is terrible. Of course he has the virus! He is harping about PCR cycles being a thing. What is he stupid? I have been doing PCR in labs AND at home in my workshop (I have a PCR machine, though all you really need is a hot plate, some ice, and a thermometer.) it is no big deal. It works. Cycles donâ(TM)t matter as much as these fools have made it out to be. You run a gel to confirm your result. While I get non-specific results sometimes .. I have NEVER been fooled by a false result. If I see a band of the expected size, call it luck but there has never once been of a wrong sequence. Usually when you F up and run too many cycles you will see multiple bands or smears (caused by shitty primer design, not number of cycles most of the time) â" ie, the fuckup is obvious. Nevertheless to keep peer review idiots happy you have to sequence it. Easily doable at home. People who talk about how they canâ(TM)t trust labs are bona fide idiots â" not because of their mistrusting nature but because they are too dumb to do their own experiments. I am sorry but Elon falls in that category. I thought he was better than that I really did. Any number of videos are out there on how to do rt-PCR at home.
The other thing is the BS narrative about infectiousness. There is literally no answer to that. If you have even one copy of the virus in you, you are infectious given the right sequence of events. Some people are more susceptible to the virus than others. To infect someone a virus has to pass from one host to another while escaping the innate and adaptive defenses of the receiving host. First it has to get breathed in, then it has to not get trapped in eewy mucus. Then it has encounter the right receptor on a cell usually found deep in the lung. So think about it some people may have more cells with more receptors on it and less mucus .. that would make them more susceptible than others. So even if you shed a small amount you might be able to infect them. Itâ(TM)s a probability game really. So the question of infectiousness is dependent on whether what you do brings you very close to potential hosts. This is like virology 101 that has to keep being retaught to superspreaders of misinformation. If you have the virus in any detectable amount, you are positive. If you are positive you are potentially fucking infectious, and that is assuming the virus doesnâ(TM)t flare up and down.
MID (Score:2)
Re: MID (Score:2)
My point is that infectiousness depends on too many things to be able to state minimum infectious dose. It depends on the person infected, it depends on the virus surface properties, it depends on the host being targeted. And NO, human situations are too random to come up with an average situation.. itâ(TM)s dangerous and misleading. Asking about infectiousness is like asking how many beers it takes to get too drunk. There is not enough information to have a valid answer. Is the beer drinker fat? And
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, it's complicated and hard to capture in a single number for infectious dose But maybe you can clarify what mechanisms play a role. The way you described it sounds like it's simple statistics: each virus particle has a probability of successfully initiating an infection. The probability is affected by the receiving person and by the method of delivery. You could still declare an infectious dose (ID50) to be the number of virus particles that needs to be inhaled (with specified droplet sizes) for 50% o
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, over the past 4 years since he became a closet Trump supporter ...
Oh well, Wernher von Braun supported worse, and we forgave him.
Flip the argument (Score:3)
People are not the answer. This anecdote is all you need to see that automation and elimination of human labor is the only way. You want the job done with no excuses and no ethical dilemmas? Don't hire humans. Automate.
The cure... (Score:2)
I hear that taking methane and oxygen in the right ratio can increase your energy.
Worth a try. Just sayin'.
Re: (Score:2)
I hear that taking methane and oxygen in the right ratio can increase your energy.
Musk is going to try weed and nitrous oxide instead.
If that doesn't cure Covid, at least he will be spacing out so much that he won't even care that he has it.
Bummer (Score:2)
Billionaires aren't the answer (Score:2)
No shit Sherlock. Money is the answer... for 99 percent of most questions. Otherwise, the masses will be expected to think, and we can't be having that crap [it makes no money].
Re: (Score:2)
Why are we here: money? Why are relativity and quantum theory at odds: money? Why does the universe exist: money? Why are the aliens not already here and talking our ears off: money? Does G-d exist: money? Why do the cosmological constants in the Standard Theory have the values they do: money? Why do R's believe the alleged president doesn't lie: money?
Ya, you must be genius.
SARS was a just a cold with 15% mortality rate. (Score:2)
A***h*** gets covid (Score:2)
news at 11....
Non sequitur (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean there's plenty to be critical about, but common professor what kind of a non-sequitur point are you making that he fires people who are afraid of the virus and then makes damn certain if he has it or not. One doesn't follow the other. Hell one possible (unlikely) outcome is that he's testing conclusively to ease fears of his fellow workers.
I'm all for a Musk bashing, but professor Robert Reich really needs to learn to make an argument.
Re: (Score:3)
Musk claimed he doesn't think the virus should be taken seriously and ordered his workforce back to work, yet he is taking it very seriously now that he might have it. If he didn't take it seriously he wouldn't have tested for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Musk claimed he doesn't think the virus should be taken seriously and ordered his workforce back to work
Is that why he had his company prepare a 49 page Coronavirus management plan when bringing his workforce back to work?
Yeah that sounds like someone who doesn't take something seriously.
Mole hill out of a Billionaire (Score:2)
Waaay tooo much emphasis on the mole hill.
People have different trust in science and medicine. Musk is not one to take *anything* at face value. His first principle is to verify and validate. NBD yet.
So that settles it (Score:2)
gift of thhe gods (Score:2)
the gift given to you when the gods want to f you up
Elon's rhetoric and how far he'll go for effect (Score:2)
"since a coronavirus is a type of cold"
That's exactly backwards, what we know as colds is a subset of coronaviruses, not the other way around.
His symptoms (Score:2)
His symptoms are that of a major dickhead. No vaccine for that.
Re:Why would Musk think any differently now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because annecdata is not data. We're trying not to kill all the old people or people with other health complications. If we all had covid tomorrow, a pretty good chunk of us would die. Taking is seriously is why that's not happening, although tons of people are still dying - and crossing the threshold of being able to handle all those tons of people in hospitals would precipitate a lot more deaths.
Like, I get the position. On paper, why worry? But when it's people you know, people who had years left in them or people who you probably wouldn't feel comfy telling them that they're on their own.
Re:however (Score:4, Interesting)
False equivalence, because COVID-19 kills about ten times more than flu, which is why we are taking unprecedented measures to avoid its spread.
False equivalence, because AIDS isn't as easily transmitted as COVID-19. Keeping people who are infected with AIDS distanced would only harm them and would do no good to society, and this is why science suggests a different policies for them. AIDS is transmitted by sexual intercourse, so science recommends wearing condoms. COVID-19 is transmitted by breath, so science recommends wearing masks. Yes, the recommendations of science tend to be more coarse at the beginning of a new phenomenon, but they're still the best thing we can have.
PCR tests are extremely accurate when they give a positive result, less so when they give a negative one. But there are numbers that surely do not lie, however, and they're the number of people who die and who end up in ICUs. These numbers are skyrocketing worldwide, even if, for some reason, extremely polarized persons, especially but not exlusively on the right wing, tend to look the other way.
Lockdowns - if lawful, limited in time and scope, driven by results, and with due compensation to those getting damaged - are like a family getting a loan in order to pay for the medical expenses for an ill family member, who would die otherwise. It will temporarily harm the financial status of the family in exchange for the well-being of its members. The economy will recover after, while life can't be recovered once it's lost.
"Focused protection for the vulnerable" is not possible, so putting it as an alternative for more intrusive measures is a false dilemma. Not only it is impracticable in theory, it is shown not to work in practice: right wing governments all over the world have tried that approach and it didn't slow down the number of deaths. In fact, the highest number of victims was found in places where already the vulnerable live in isolation.
Re: (Score:2)
Thw WHO estimates 10% of the world population have had it, and something around 1 million people globally died. Giving it a death rate 50% higher than flu. Whatever the truth of that, its not "ten times more deadly". (except maybe when statistics are skewed by government policy that sent infected and hospitalised people off to care homes to infect the other residents).
With due respect, CFR is not to be calculated by peppepz or gbjbaanb, but by scientists, who use much more complex and dynamic approaches than picking numbers that confirm our biases, as I would do. In the USA, the CFR of COVID-19 has ranged between 6% and 3%, which is more than ten times higher compared to the 0.1% of regular flu. So approximating it as "ten times higher" in a regular conversation is not only appropriate, but even conservative.
Then again, if we are to invent our own science because we don
Re: (Score:2)
Musk questioning these tests is essential as he is high profile enough to see that question actually debated, verified and brought to everyone's attention.
This is essential to no one and, even if it were, there is no reason to believe Musk is remotely qualified to do it either because of who he is or that he demonstrates any qualifications to do so. All Musk is doing is fueling additional distrust, he is doing no one a service and does not intend to. Musk wants to make money, not see questions "debated, verified and brought to everyone's attention." The only think he's interested in bringing to everyone's attention is how great he is.
Re: (Score:2)
84% sensitivity rate and the manufacturer says not to take any result as definitive.
Just to be clear, positive results are considered definitive unless you have reason to suspect contamination (e.g. a 100% positivity rate from one particular test center), which does happen every so often. Otherwise, the specificity on this test is 100% (presumably when compared against the PCR test).
Re:however (Score:5, Interesting)
...yet we go about our normal activities as tens of thousands die of the flu.
The flu doesn't overwhelm our healthcare system, COVID does. The goal is not just to save lives but to prevent our healthcare system from collapsing. If the flu posed the same kind of threat, we would wear masks and quarantine over it and vaccinations would be mandatory.
When we first became aware of AIDS, a 100% fatal disease, the political classes encouraged the public to learn about it...
This is false. When we "first because aware of AIDS", Reagan refused funding for it because he believed that it was only killing gays and that was a good thing. There was no encouraging the public to learn about it, why should the public care what happens to fags, right? Also, it was quite a long time before the virus causing AIDS was identified and the nature of the illness was understood, it wasn't even called AIDS for quite some time, but since the only ones affected, as far as we knew, were immigrants, drug users and gays, Republicans delighted in the "no quarantines and contact tracing" answer. They had no interest in preventing its spread, kind of like COVID and the current administration having no interest in preventing COVID spread in "democrat states".
With COVID-19, the political classes took a very different approach - they peddled fear, encouraged contact tracing, quarantines, lockdowns, masks, gloves, Fauci has talked of goggles, etc.
Horseshit. Half the political classes supported science while the other took the Reagan approach and cheerleaded the virus killing off people they hated. Win win, according to the Trump family. Push the economy, kill the opposition, cruise to re-election. That was literally the plan.
and, yes, although it SOUNDS callous the question society must wrestle with is: Are the actions proposed worth the damage to the civilization? Would it be better to keep society running and put resources into focused protection for the vulnereable?
And we're gonna rely on trumpists to make these informed, thoughtful, complex evaluations? How about society rely on experts to make these evaluations and trust them to do their jobs like all functioning societies do? You can't even get history right, you won't get these answers right on your own either.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess you haven't looked at the recent dashboards that show a lot of the hospitalizations are hitting 18-30 year olds. They're assuming they're invulnerable (after all, I was at that age).
A number of people are also experiencing long-term ailments post-covid. You wanna gamble with something that could damage your lungs for the rest of your life?
Re: (Score:3)
If all Musk has is what feels like "a mild cold" then why would he still not feel like it was absurd for workers to not go back to work over this?
Well, if he were a normal person the answer would be because medical experts say otherwise. He's not a normal person, though, he's a malignant narcissist, and even if he had a much more severe illness "why would he still not feel like it was absurd for workers to not go back to work over this?" You cannot dismiss arrogance, greed, irrationality and hypocrisy.
If you had even the slightest self-awareness, SuperKendall, you would know this. Instead, as an ignorant tribalist you assume that anyone who suppor
Re: (Score:2)
there's not really a need to fear Covid as much as some people seem to.
You are confusing fear with civic responsibility. People doing the right things aren't doing it because they fear a virus which almost certainly won't kill them even if they contract it. They are taking precautions because if enough people don't they will be collectively responsible for the death of millions.
It is similar to voting. Almost no voters actually think their vote is going to be the one which elects their candidate, just like most people don't think they will die of Covid or cause the death of a
Re: (Score:2)
Someone asked me the other day if I'm afraid of COVID-19. I said yes. Not because I think it's likely to kill me, but because I'm a reasonably well adjusted human being who doesn't want to be responsible for the deaths of others.
If you someone can't muster the civic responsibility to give a shit about strangers, consider that most of us have relatives or friends in a risk category where they'd be safer if forced to play a round of Russian roulette than be infected with COVID-19.
Re: (Score:2)
In the olden days Slashdot had a lot of general science articles, but it was always pretty IT focused, and grew more so over time. Then they discovered that US political stories got more hits than anything else. Combine an aging, cynical IT crowd with political posting and a non-censorship policy, and you get this.
Also, IDs jumped up by millions in the last decade, some of which are probably shitposting sock puppets, but many are likely professional trolls. You seem to be one of the rare genuine new users.