Not at all. Only the few that seem to not understand any boundaries. Go ahead with your rebuttals. In the long run, even the short run, you will be shown as the person you are. Intelligent but absolutely and emphatically misdirected and woefully uninformed.

Here's the thing son, I've been on the streets for 50 years. Make it 60 if you count my individualistic enterprises at a young age. You seem to not have one clue as to what living in this society is about.

Read that again and take it seriously. If there was anyone who matched the glittering generality of someone who lives in his mother's basement, you fit that bill so well.

Fvking grow up and get some kind of life beyond your medical appliance work, or whatever it is you do, and get out in the real world, Shovel some goddamn dirt, climb 30 feet up on a shaky ladder so you can make 5 bucks an hour like I did too long.

Show me some callouses that bleed for days. Cough in the dust so thick that you can't see your truck 200 feet away. Go to college and tell the dumb fck instructors that they are bullsiht because they are. Get married to a great woman that has 2 kids 5 and 12 and take that responsibility, build 30 cars, build 30 houses, take a comprehensive general contractor's test and obtain a license. Do 100 estimates a year for 100 different individuals and families of ALL walks or life, and most of all, do this in the 5th poorest city in the State of CA and come back an tell me you know what the fcuk life is.

And that is only the beginning of my experience. I did get a college degree witch I immediately repudiated. I did get a 2nd degree in marketing which I find to be the basis of what's really wrong with this society. I grew up in the "Mad Men" household which was about as false of a family as you can imagine.

So I broke loose and have been out there doing all that since I was 18 and I'll be goddamned if some piece of crap like you is going to impress me with his 'life' experience and take on how society actually works from the ground up.

You want to pontificate about life, go out an live a bit of the real life before you make yourself look more ignorant that you are.

That would be the scientific thing to do. The irony here is that the lockdowns, the masks, distancing, etc. are being done, supposedly, because they are scientific and data-driven. Our governorette is constantly reminding us that the data clearly shows the crack...sorry...lockdown is saving lives.

What data? Nobody is even asking her how many people have had the virus.

Don't hold back, Zeke. Let it out!

Zeke's a wimp. He doesn't even live in Michigan.

I would have never thought "go to Vegas and suck a dick" would be a phrase, let alone one with such self inflicted irony.

Zeke I will give you the rant of the year award. Having said that it is no good for your blood pressure.:eek:

Serious question here: for those of you WFH, do you think you and your coworkers will continue to WFH after this? Will your employers want you to, will you want to?

Big debate in real estate and other fields about this. Will companies shift to WFH, will demand for office space decline, will demand for larger houses and apartments increase, will commuting traffic decline, etc.

I have not been WFH so I don’t have a sense of how it’s gone.

WTF is WFH?

Work From Home.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/25/844939777/no-evidence-that-recovered-covid-19-patients-are-immune-who-says

Oh gee, lets believe what the WHO says. They are the same folks who said
China has everything under control
Believe China's #s
The virus came from the wet market and can't be transmitted from person to person
(should I continue?)

I agree, WHO effed up. Too political.

However: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/health/south-korea-coronavirus-retesting-positive-intl-hnk/index.html I We are going under the assumption we will build a herd immunity. Hope that is the case, but this virus seems to be breaking the rules....

A friend (active fireman) told me today a fellow fireman retested positive(after having it, then cleared back to work).

False positives? False negatives? Too big of a margin of error rushing the tests?

Who knows? (certainly not WHO)

Was the fireman symptomatic none, once or twice?

I don't know. Will ask.

Thank you.

WFH= Work From Home

I've been WFH for about six weeks. No issues - prefer it, actually. Have had my home office set up for a long time (used to do some consulting out of the house - am considering doing that full time).

I think employers where micro-management is the norm will pull people back into the office as soon as they can (maybe sooner than they should, depending on local guidelines). I know my employer wanted everybody back at their desks at work last week.

Other companies where it's convenient or "proving more productive" (if you're not commuting two hours, you can be working two more hours...) will probably maintain WFH.

Something that's not really been discussed much - How secure is all the "home" IT? I think a lot of companies put ad-hoc policies in place quickly and didn't think a lot about data security. (Just look at Zoom and the mess that's been...)

Something I do expect to see a shift in is office design for "desk jockeys". I think we'll see a move away from cubes toward micro-offices (floor to ceiling partitions, doors, filtered ventilation to keep contamination in a confined space - makes it easier to decon if you have a virulent employee).

How did someone recover from the virus, if their body did not develop antibodies, and fight it off? How is that not immunity?

And if they have antibodies, and the test basically is to check for antibodies, then of course it's going to come back positive if they have gotten it and recovered. The issue is do you have both antibodies and are you sick (COVID-19), as in are you actually showing dire symptoms such as "you are in actual danger of dying" + test positive for antibodies.

These are cases where the person tested positive for active virus infection, not just for antibodies, after having previously been sick and recovered with negative test for virus. There have been a number of these situations in China and Korea. I don’t think it is yet understood what is happening - if the people weren’t actually recovered before, or if they have actually been reinfected.

^ Honest question, so don't get upset with me. What is the difference between testing positive for virus infection and positive for having developed the antibodies? If they have the antibodies, then that is a very conclusive test that they have had the virus and had an infection. If you're a carrier of the antibodies but asymptomatic, then you are recovered, right?

I can see companies being a lot more careful about encryption, data security, secure email, etc if more employees WFH, but there’s plenty of experience - e.g. IBM’s consultants have WFH for many years.

I’m interested in the air filtration thing. I figure most office buildings have shared air systems to some degree. Would a HEPA filter in your office, presuming you have an office instead of a cubicle, help if someone upstream in the HVAC system is coughing and sneezing SARS-COV-3?

A little bit of virus enters your body, enters your cells, multiplies. When it multiplies enough, you will test positive for the virus. Test positive for virus means a swab from wherever the virus is present (for this one, they stick long swabs down your throat) shows the “live” virus that is multiplying in your body. You’re infected, and you’re shedding virus so you’re contagious. You may be symptomatic or not.

After a delay, your immune system starts recognizing the virus as something foreign and starts fighting it. As part of this process, you create antibodies to the virus.

After you recover, the virus is no longer present in your body. You will test negative for the virus. You’re not infected anymore and not shedding virus thus not contagious.

However, the antibodies will remain in your body, ”on guard” as it were. If a little bit of virus enters your body, your immune system will attack it right away, not giving it a chance to get established and start multiplying. You’re immune. And you’ll test positive for antibodies, which usually involves taking a blood sample.

(Assuming you do actually become immune to this virus, which has been thought or hoped to be the case but is not really known).

Yes, if you test positive for antibodies but negative for virus, then you are a recovered case. Being asymptomatic doesn’t mean much, it seems 50% or more of people who are infected are asymptomatic.

^ Apologies in advance for going all Mahler on you guys.

But "test positive for the virus" how exactly? What are they detecting, if not the presence of antibodies? It's not like they smear blood plasma on a plate and hope to find .000000001 one actual tiny virus among all of the red blood cells. That would be ridiculously absurd.

The viral DNA or RNA is detected by the test usually by the ( fancy word warning!) reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test.

Ah the ol' RTPCR test.

Overview of the different tests is here

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-how-coronavirus-tests-work-and-who-offers-them/

The technology of virus testing is indeed pretty impressive. The sample is swabbed from where the virus is most found, in this case the respiratory system. Then - well, read
https://www.emedicinehealth.com/pcr_polymerase_chain_reaction_test/article_em.htm#what_is_pcr_polymerase_chain_reacti on_used_for Something got a Nobel Prize for inventing this.

For antibody testing, here is an article https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30788-1/fulltext

Its maybe unappreciated that these tests are not simple, quick, or infallible. Often people think a task or service is easy and should be fast, cheap and perfect, while people actually doing the work are having to apply a bunch of judgment, steps, and technology to get something even sort of serviceable.

We’ve had a bunch of discussion about antibody studies, for example, with people going ape over is it 1% or 4% of the population, but most engaging in the discussion don’t seem to realize how fallible the tests used in the study are.

Common terms are sensitivity (what % of positive samples will be correctly reported as positive by the test) and specificity (what % of negative samples will be correctly reported as negative by the test).

For antibody tests, a given manufacturer’s test might be (typical example) 95% sensitivity and 97% specificity. That means 1 - 95% = 5% false negative (test 1,000 persons with antibodies, test will incorrectly report 50 lack antibodies) and 1 - 97% = 3% false positive (test 1,000 persons without antibodies, test will incorrectly report 30 have antibodies). So, if you get “3% of population has antibodies!”, are you seeing the truth or false positives?

I get them impression that the decision makers have a hard time getting their heads around this. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/health/coronavirus-antibody-tests-scientists/index.html

yep, we used it a lot back in the 80's at J&J.