Corona Virus, Covid and the future

[ivinsfan]

No such app in the US unfortunately.

If what I read is correct some people in the UK are deleting it from their phones....we'll see if that becomes a trend.


App like this in the US would most likely need to be state based but I don't know if any states implement this.

 

[Gumby]

I have an app on my phone that I downloaded last year. It tells me if I have been within 6 feet of someone who tested Covid positive for more than 15 minutes. I believe it is run by the state.

 

[harllee]

I have an app on my phone that I downloaded last year. It tells me if I have been within 6 feet of someone who tested Covid positive for more than 15 minutes. I believe it is run by the state.

The state of North Carolina also has this app and I downloaded it. In fact I think many states have the app but I don't think many people actually downloaded the app.

What I would like is an app to tell me when I get close to someone who is not vaccinated. I would pay good money for that app.

 

[ivinsfan]

The state of North Carolina also has this app and I downloaded it. In fact I think many states have the app but I don't think many people actually downloaded the app.

What I would like is an app to tell me when I get close to someone who is not vaccinated. I would pay good money for that app.

You should get right on that, you'd make lots of money. In my case when I leave my house the thing would just ping constantly..

 

[cathy63]

If what I read is correct some people in the UK are deleting it from their phones....we'll see if that becomes a trend.


App like this in the US would most likely need to be state based but I don't know if any states implement this.

Yes, lots of states have covid exposure alert apps. Just searching for "covid notification" in the Google Play Store, I see apps from CA, AZ, NV, CO, MN, WI, AL, NC, PA, WA, DC, NJ, NY, CT, RI. Also Guam, Palm Beach County, Miami-Dade County. There are probably more, those are just the ones that are near the top of the results list. The iOS and Android systems share the same tracking data, so there should be a matching set in the Apple app store.

I have had the CA app installed for several months, but it has never alerted me of an exposure. That may be because I am pretty careful and truly haven't been exposed, or more likely not enough people are using it. It only works if people install it and enter their positive test results in the app, and that's probably one of the last things you think about after testing positive.

 

[Gumby]

As of January 2021, about 1/3 of Connecticut residents had downloaded the app.

 

[tmm99]

I have an app on my phone that I downloaded last year. It tells me if I have been within 6 feet of someone who tested Covid positive for more than 15 minutes. I believe it is run by the state.

In my case, I have a similar app (provided by the province of Ontario) installed on my phone, but it doesn't matter. Evidently, only 4% of the people who got infected have reported their infections via this app, so it's pretty much useless.

 

[Ronstar]

I have an app on my phone that I downloaded last year. It tells me if I have been within 6 feet of someone who tested Covid positive for more than 15 minutes. I believe it is run by the state.

Does the app tell you the date that someone near you tested positive? To me, it would make a big difference if someone near me was tested positive yesterday or a year ago.

 

[tmm99]

Starting to look like a gamble regarding infections of vaccinated vs abstainers. At least in England.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...mber-people-falling-ill-virus-day-FALLEN.html

"Vaccinated Britons now make up almost half of Covid cases in the country, a symptom-tracking study suggested today — but there are signs the third wave may have already peaked."

Just reading the headline, it looks as if fully vaccinated Brotons make up almost half of Covid cases, but they're mixing one-dose and two-dose vaxxers without any breakdown, which makes the article useless IMO. Maybe a headline like this sells, but it is inaccurate.

 

[travelover]

Just reading the headline, it looks as if fully vaccinated Brotons make up almost half of Covid cases, but they're mixing one-dose and two-dose vaxxers without any breakdown, which makes the article useless IMO. Maybe a headline like this sells, but it is inaccurate.

Nor does the headline quantify the seriousness of that "Covid case". There is a pretty big range between asymptomatic and dead.

 

[brett]

I shudder when I hear about counties or large urban areas where the vaccination rates are 20-35 percent.

These are going to be disaster areas for covid D. Sooner, rather than later.

My hope is that this may actually cause some to reconsider and get the shot.

 

[Markola]

The one number that the anti vaxers and the conspiracy theorists will not discuss is 99.



99 percent of covid deaths over the past two months have been those who were NOT vaccinated.

Quote. of. the. day.

 

[Sunset]

One good thing now.. Masks are now cheap.

I tried wearing a KN95 mask and found I was coughing after wearing it for hours. After trying for a number of days when I went out over a couple of weeks, I suddenly thought maybe I'm inhaling fibers ?

So I wore it with a regular 2->3 layer cloth mask on my face, to filter out any fibers.
It worked for me.

So I just bought 6 more cloth ones (to have extras to wash and dry) for $4 from Gap, delivered !!
When I was at Sam's I saw they were selling a pack of 4 for kids at $1.48

I also got more KN95's (the ear loop this time) from OfficeDepot for $3.00 per pack of 10.

I'm ready for my plane ride

 

[Ronstar]

.....
I'm ready for my plane ride

I'm ready also. Got my mask and vaccine card ready. Flying to Alaska with 4 friends soon. 2 are Anti-vaxxers. Hopefully this goes smoothly.

 

[Closet_Gamer]

Sorry, that is not how mutations work, it's not a conscious act.

With more vaccinated people, the virus will have less places to live, and there will be less virus.

Every time a virus replicates, it has the possibility to mutate, so the larger the pool of non-vaccinated people so there can be larger amounts of virus will mean more mutations.

It's purely a numbers game as mutations which happen all the time are random and most are not effective.

You are correct there will be more mutations, as there have already been 100's identified, but only the significant effective ones get famous.

I understand the virus-mutation factory point about unvaccinated people, but all organisms adapt to overcome adversity -- or rather, to your point, things that work in a new environment expand while other things die out.

Potentially beneficial mutations are often present in a population but don't tend to advance due a lack of material advantage. But once the environment changes, latent advantages come to the surface and preference for those advantages accelerates.

Said differently, rabbit runs as fast as they do because they don't have to run faster. Send out faster foxes and you will get faster rabbits because the ones that are already marginally faster than average get to reproduce while the others become fox-chow. But right now, faster rabbit genes don't convey a material advantage, so they languish.

The vaccine evading variants don't have an advantage in most of the world right now. There is no need for the Covid-rabbit to run faster around the Vaccine-Fox...so vaccine-evading genes languish while sheer transmissability in unvaccinated populations (delta) takes off.

But vaccine-evading mutations will now convey a material advantage in Israel, England, the US and other growing parts of the world.

The Vaccine-Fox is picking up speed.
The faster Covid-Rabbit will not be far behind.

The beta variant (which may evade the vaccine) is now on the rise in France. Enough so that the British government just freaked out and went backwards on travel rules to France...except for commerce...which is covid ground hog day all over again. This will be ineffective just as it was ineffective against delta. The new variant will get into the system (I would bet anything its already here) and if it really can elude the vaccine, it will spread quickly.

The good news is that the world's drug companies are hard at work on faster foxes. This cycle will likely continue for a very, very long time.

My $0.02.

 

[Gumby]

Does the app tell you the date that someone near you tested positive? To me, it would make a big difference if someone near me was tested positive yesterday or a year ago.

I think the basic idea is that once you test positive, you immediately notify the app and it anonymously notifies all the people who were exposed to you and recommends that they go get tested. So if an infected person delayed notification for a year, then it would be unhelpful. But I would assume anyone who cared enough to download the app would be a good citizen and report a positive test ASAP, so that it would be helpful to others.

 

[Aerides]

Mod Note:

Multiple posts were removed, including those that quoted others. The intersection of Covid and partisan politics is not appropriate fodder for discussion in this forum.

 

[Chuckanut]

The beta variant (which may evade the vaccine) is now on the rise in France. Enough so that the British government just freaked out and went backwards on travel rules to France...except for commerce...which is covid ground hog day all over again. This will be ineffective just as it was ineffective against delta. The new variant will get into the system (I would bet anything its already here) and if it really can elude the vaccine, it will spread quickly.

The story I read indicated the French variant can out-fox the the AstraZenica vaccine. No mention was made of the mRNA vaccines. I assume this means some rabbits are better at evading some foxes than other rabbits are.

Also, have most citizens of the UK had their previously delayed 2nd shot?

Answered my own question:

The government says easing restrictions is possible because almost 90% of British adults have received one dose of a vaccine, and more than two-thirds have had both doses.

Epidemiologist John Edmunds, a member of the U.K. government’s scientific advisory group, said there is good evidence that beta “can evade the immune response generated by the AstraZeneca vaccine more efficiently.”
The AstraZeneca shot has been used for a majority of British vaccinations.

 

[Alan]

The UK Health secretary has just tested positive for Covid. He felt a bit groggy on Friday night so did a home lateral flow test today (Saturday) and it showed positive. He is self isolating awaiting the results of a PCR test. He has been double vaccinated with AZ. So far it is only mild symptoms.

The symptoms for the Delta variant are different in the early stages which is why a lot of folks don’t realize they have it and go about their normal business.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57874744

 

[tmm99]

The story I read indicated the French variant can out-fox the the AstraZenica vaccine. No mention was made of the mRNA vaccines. I assume this means some rabbits are better at evading some foxes than other rabbits are.

Also, have most citizens of the UK had their previously delayed 2nd shot?

Answered my own question:

This is not a new article. I read it a few weeks ago and posted here a couple of times before for different reasons. According to this article (New England Journal of Medicine), Pfizer works well against the Beta variant. (97.4% effectiveness against severe/fatal illness with two doses > 14 days - Look at the table on the right.)

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2104974

 

[audreyh1]

Oh boy!

 

[audreyh1]

The beta variant (which may evade the vaccine) is now on the rise in France. Enough so that the British government just freaked out and went backwards on travel rules to France...except for commerce...which is covid ground hog day all over again. This will be ineffective just as it was ineffective against delta. The new variant will get into the system (I would bet anything its already here) and if it really can elude the vaccine, it will spread quickly.

The beta variant is currently only 3.4% of cases in France according to this article.
https://www.thelocal.fr/20210717/how-widespread-in-france-is-the-beta-variant-of-covid/

 

[Alan]

Does the app tell you the date that someone near you tested positive? To me, it would make a big difference if someone near me was tested positive yesterday or a year ago.

The way the app works in England is that phones that have been in the vicinity of the infected person a few days before he entered the positive test result will alert. The length of time the person is asked to isolate varies depending on when they were in contact. e.g. We had been close to our son on a Saturday, and when he tested positive on the following Wednesday our phones alerted and said we had 7 days to isolate because the 10 day isolating countdown started from the last day we had been close to him.

The data tokens on the app are erased once they are two weeks old so I’d someone put in a positive test result weeks after the test then no one would be alerted.

 

[audreyh1]

The way the app works in England is that phones that have been in the vicinity of the infected person a few days before he entered the positive test result will alert. The length of time the person is asked to isolate varies depending on when they were in contact. e.g. We had been close to our son on a Saturday, and when he tested positive on the following Wednesday our phones alerted and said we had 7 days to isolate because the 10 day isolating countdown started from the last day we had been close to him.

The data tokens on the app are erased once they are two weeks old so I’d someone put in a positive test result weeks after the test then no one would be alerted.

Unfortunately I don’t think enough people in the US would use the app to make it worthwhile, and it seems to be implemented on a state by state basis. So some states have chosen to do so, others not.

 

[rodi]

I've got the California version of the app loaded. The app complains if I turn off blue tooth, because that is how it detects other people with the app.