Immunity Certification? How long is it good for? We don't have any idea, do we?
When presented with these kind of scenarios I find myself thinking that it's good someone else is in charge, even when it seems likely that they will do an even worse job at it than I would.
I never had in immunity card, but the government did once fine me a PIV card.
I mean, by the time you have, say, 85% vaccination levels, you can just go back to the status quo ante.
Until then you can break it up into four phases, which will last, let's say, until July 2021:
1. What we are in at the moment. Lockdown, relatively high though declining daily rates of infection and death.
2. Death and new case rates have declined to single figures per day.
3. Rates start to increase again.
4. (possibly after multiple repetitions of 1-3). A vaccine has been developed and tested, but vaccination/immunity levels are still under 85%.
Assuming no vaccine yet:
If you have a reliable, cheap, fast serological test, you can require a positive test as a precondition for air travel, or for attending school. At present we have cheap, fast LFIA serological tests but they are not sensitive enough - they have about 30% false negative rates. They are very specific: so if you get a positive test, you are almost definitely immune. The UK has decided not to use any of them.
"Point estimates for the sensitivity of LFIA devices ranged from 55-70% versus RT-PCR and 65-85% versus ELISA, with specificity 95-100% and 93-100% respectively"
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066407v1
I would be inclined to deploy these tests on a wide scale to health care workers who have a high chance of having been exposed but have _not_ been diagnosed with COVID and subsequently recovered. The dangerous failure mode is people thinking they're immune who aren't. The converse is just inconvenient.
A very substantial increase in ELISA testing would be good as well.
Once we have identified immunes, we can segregate the hospital workforce into high-risk and low-risk occupations. If you're a nurse who's immune, you can treat potential COVID patients. Other nurses get put into the low-risk bit of the hospital where patients who have tested negative for COVID go.
Reopening schools: widespread serological testing in various areas show that it isn't just that children don't get sick when they catch COVID - they don't seem to catch it at all. Very few positive antigen tests come from kids, and very few positive serological tests do either. So reopening the primary schools sounds like a good move.
On the working assumption that a vaccine will be available by end 2021, anything that doesn't pay off by that time is pointless.
The exception to 3.last is that we need to keep up surveillance and vaccine development in case the bugger mutates on us, winter flu style.
2: Is that something they give out to heterosexuals? Maybe just if they have permission to reproduce?
They are very specific: so if you get a positive test, you are almost definitely immune.
This should of course read: if you are immune, you will almost definitely get a positive test.
5: They gave them to gay people too. You also needed them to access the computer system.
If the cap is 10 people, then do schools have to double their number of teachers, or stay online?
Nobody has the money to double the number of teachers but it doesn't matter because there isn't a pool of ready applicants to take those spots. The likely solution would be alternating days of in person and online to keep the classes at half their regular size.
Is the idea of an immunity certification totally insane?
No but it will definitely bring out the crazies who will be furiously typing "THE GOVT IS TRYING TO TRACK US MUH LIBERTIES" into a phone that already tracks their every move.
8: see 3 - there's growing evidence that kids barely ever catch COVID and when they do it's generally mild. So I would say reopening schools at full class size happens early.
On the one hand, I don't want to be a problem. On the other hand, being home all day with a teenager isn't helping either of us.
The things I would like to see the government doing/encouraging are:
1) Routine testing at various points of contact (I've seen the idea that anybody who sees a doctor or goes to the hospital should be tested for COVID-19 as a standard part of the interaction. I'd suggest the same for airports but that probably isn't practical). As the number of positive cases are declining it is import important (and more difficult) to be able to pinpoint risk.
2) Central quarantine (optional, but made as easy/non-threatening as possible): https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1252652967272030208
3) Hub for coordinating information and supplies. Our sense of appropriate treatment/response/understanding of the pandemic are changing so quickly, it would be good for the federal government to take some role is providing a repository of good information.
Have you considered that maybe the government should be issuing unhinged rants about foreigners and how the elderly should just go die rather than have corporations face a painful Q2?
And: start stockpiling supplies now on the assumption that we will go through all this again in October 2020 with similar case counts and hospitalisation numbers. By 1 October 2020 we should have those 20,000 ventilators, those 1,500,000 sets of PPE, those 5,000 ELISA testing rigs and so on, all sitting in storage ready to go. If we don't need them, all we've wasted is a couple of hundred million quid and a lot of cupboard space, and that is negligible in this context. Place the orders now, even for delivery only in September.
I'm not even sure how to order a ventilator.
I'm wondering if I can visit my mom over the summer without too much risking a catastrophy.
I guess I'll let the home decide. They know their business.
- start re-opening primary schools, dividing staff and pupils into groups that cycle through in-person and remote (1 week in-person, 1 week remote, or 1 week in-person, 2 weeks remote, etc., as needed to keep in-person density down), and study in a relevant variety of locations how this works by testing testing testing pupils and staff, understanding air flows in buildings, tracking mask usage indoors and outdoors, tracking hand hygiene and testing surfaces, etc., so that we understand how to run schools and not inflame the situation.
-much much much more of this: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/04/417206/covid-19-testing-mission-district-bolinas-inform-next-steps-fight-against
- keep people like me (desk worker with intensive outward focus on clients outside my home office location, courts/agencies/other institutions, etc.) working from home and via phone/video (ugh) interface with clients and courts/agencies/other institutions, developing strong social norms that employed upper- and upper-middle class people like me owe it to everyone else to stay at home as much as possible.
- in urban settings, cultivate very strong norms that transit capacity should be reserved for those unable to bike, and car use should be discourages as much as possible bc of the increased risks from air pollution, so massive investment in creating safe bike infrastructure, increasing transit capacity and converting existing transit to electric from renewable sources.
10: Definitely, and kids have also been a tiny fraction of the positive virus tests. But as you noted a lot of the tests are shit and I'd like more confidence as to what degree kids can be carriers. So far it does look promising.
oh and - masks, we need to rapidly cultivate very strong norms that everyone wears masks at all time when outside their homes.
oh oh and and - immunity certificates are inevitable and will be a depressing phenomenon particularly in places like the us with no social safety net bc a *lot* of desperate people are going to deliberately infect themselves on the chance they'll get a mild case so that they can go back to work as their other options otherwise are 1) lose their housing and starve, 2) lose their housing and starve, and 3) lose their housing and starve. so our super shiny rich shitty nation is going to have a shit ton of unnecessary deaths bc we are cheap ass shits with a broken political culture and viciously low trust.
also potential for bonus depressing bc we may well find out immunity is not strong or long lasting!
Are other people wearing masks when just out for a walk? I just avoid going near anybody, partially by going out late.
18.4: yes. Give every key worker a free (or very cheap) bike if they want it. That's only a few hundred quid each - minimal.
I already put in notice that when I go back to working in the office, I'll be driving and not taking the bus.
The law, in its majestic equality, permits gays as well as straights to have PIV intercourse.
in urban settings, cultivate very strong norms that transit capacity should be reserved for those unable to bike, and car use should be discourages as much as possible bc of the increased risks from air pollution, so massive investment in creating safe bike infrastructure, increasing transit capacity and converting existing transit to electric from renewable sources.
Spoken like someone from a glorious climate.
I remember August in Dallas. My mom's brother lives there. It was just unbearable.
24: Yes, I guess I'll be doing that too, if/when I start going to the office.
22: I don't wear a mask when I'm just taking a walk. I haven't had any problem staying well over 6 feet away from other people.
Suburban Dallas was weird. Miles and miles of nearly identical houses. Nice houses with perfectly maintained yards and no piles of junk or peeling paint or cars parked in the street.
I probably should have seen it from a DC9 at night instead of from a GM van during the day.
Wait a minute, I haven't read through all the comments but my understanding is that we don't really know if people who've had it are fully immune or how long any immunity they have will last.
employed upper- and upper-middle class people like me owe it to everyone else to stay at home as much as possible
It's also spoken like someone with access to meaningful relationships within her home, family relationships no less (maybe that's part of the work "like me" is doing). I mean, I'm working on fixing my situation, but some thought about or accommodation for people who are by themselves really is necessary, whether they are rich white collar workers in high rises or poor isolated seniors. It is an absurd, fantastical expectation that people would willingly give up in person relationships for that long, akin to suggesting that they endure intense hunger while looking at a big meal on the table next to them, or pick up a cigarette and burn themselves, every day. People just won't comply, and already aren't really complying. People in stressfully crowded situations also need accommodating, although they are somewhat less likely to be covered by upper middle class (though in NYC that's not entirely true).
My roommate is going to officially move out this summer, and my qrp surprised me by saying maybe he'd move in, which at first I thought was bananapants, and then was like, well, in normal times it would be bananapants, but now? And my therapist and my roommate, who are the two people who've heard the most about it, both basically thought it would make sense. So maybe I'm just going to line up second wave bae.
I don't see why immunity certificates are inevitable. I thought the actual public health experts were warning the main use of sero tests will be at a statistical level for tracking.
Dq, it seems counterproductive to discourage transit use in favor of bikes given how many people that doesn't work for. If we're in charge, don't we just soak the rich enough to make enough transit service for all with the requisite distancing space?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-abortion-trfn/unsafe-abortions-could-skyrocket-as-coronavirus-closes-clinics-worldwide-idUSKBN21Y3D9
I don't see why immunity certificates are inevitable. I thought the actual public health experts were warning the main use of sero tests will be at a statistical level for tracking.
I think they're inevitable. Right now we have a small number of "protests" of morons waving assault rifles and small business owners demanding that their employees can go back to work because the virus is fake news or it hasn't gotten to their area yet so it never will. These people are not sympathetic yet they are getting tons of media attention and have been given lots of resources to get attention, seemingly to ensure that when restrictions are lifted these people can claim the credit.
Soon there will be a critical mass of people saying that THEY need to go back to work for the benefit of themselves and society because they are actually immune. These people will be harder to dismiss.
Wait a minute, I haven't read through all the comments but my understanding is that we don't really know if people who've had it are fully immune or how long any immunity they have will last.
Well sure, not enough time has passed to "really know". But we have knowledge based on everything we know about the immune system, and from doing vaccine trials, that you can find markers in the blood that correlate very well with being immune.
Anyway, if the point of this thread, and it is, that I'm in charge of solving the problem in 32, then I guess all property rights as of right now are frozen in place, there's both a total rent moratorium and protection for landlords for the cost of maintaining their property and a forgiveness of property taxes, and a bunch of caseworkers are trained and empowered to help people swap out their living situations, maybe? Any pied a terres in NYC are temporarily repossessed by the government to help create some breathing room on this. New construction should also be focused toward alleviating crowding at one end and reducing isolation at the other. I don't know; I don't know how to solve problems.
22: I am not wearing a mask to walk or run outdoors, and I'm not seeing many folks with masks unless it's in a grocery store (where they are required and usage really is universal).
18.4: yes. Give every key worker a free (or very cheap) bike if they want it. That's only a few hundred quid each - minimal.
Around hear flu season is also rainy season when biking is not very pleasant (I say as a seasonal bike commuter).
I also get depressed at the idea of immunity certificates -- I think they undermine social solidarity, encourage younger people to get exposed, and don't do much to solve the question of, "how do we reduce isolation while still having plans to protect people with increased vulnerability?"
The answer to the titular question is: Vote the sumbitch out of office.
I watch the 538 poll summary nowadays the way I used to watch baseball box scores when I was a kid. Trump has consistently been 8-13 points underwater on his approval rating, but after screwing up the Covid response, he rose as high as neg-4. (He was around neg-10 pre-crisis.)
This morning, 538 has him at neg-9: 43.5 percent approve, 52.5 percent disapprove.
"Fuck the elderly" turns out to be a bad campaign slogan.
Or, wait, maybe units of free socialization are established, like 300 households defined by proximity or something. These become like small villages. Every village must have a grocery store and a pharmacy. The government creates some kind of financial incentive to help people even out; like taxation of keeping a lot of physical space to yourself, and subsidies to people currently enduring crowding. In times of low case counts, people can socialize outside their village, but when case counts go up stay at home becomes stay in your village. But there are no rules against moving in or out of village unless someone in your village has recently had a positive test. Villages self organize to provide child and elder care, etc.
44 seems to be suggesting the complete reorganisation of the entire country, both physically, governmentally and socially, into a kind of nightmarish fragmented society. Like a cross between the kolkhoz system, CCP work units and the Napoleon of Notting Hill.
What's actually going to happen is the social distancing will be weak enough that only a vaccine will work. There's no chance of enough government support for enough people to stay home long enough for anything but partial improvement followed by rebounds.
Anyway, I'm staying home as long as I can because there's no reason not to. But most people aren't in that situation.
OK, if we're in a glorious society where we can tax and do new things:
* The tried-and-true South Korean system of testing and tracing
* Some combination of widened sidewalks, bus-only lanes, and protected bike lanes on most streets at the expense of car lanes
* Raise gas taxes $1.50/gallon to make prices back up to pre-COVID level, but with the plan not to decrease them later if prices rise; distribute half the tax proceeds to the lowest-income via UBI or GMI, use the rest to invest in transit
* Abundant transit, 10-minute headways everywhere (including to suburbs - primarily buses until we can build more)
* Unions, $25/hour, and 30-hour weeks for all essential workers; $15/hour min for all other workers
* Decuple federal spending on public/affordable housing and Section 8, end exclusionary zoning
* Federal rent control and eviction/foreclosure freeze; transition homeownership to community-responsibility model so you can get smaller property tax only if you undertake to rent at cost-plus-5%, take Section 8, etc., or convert to CLT/co-op; otherwise you're a business owner taxed at full value and no hardship exemptions
* Guaranteed jobs - spread out the essential worker jobs, also the old standby of infrastructure, but also computer-based jobs people can do without physical exertion (data cleaning? transcribing? etc.)
* WWII-style national production strategy - (a) fully fund the emergency stockpile system we already have, (b) ensure capacity to switch manufacturing on short notice to needed supplies and equipment; (c) make distribution systems able to flex easily between supplying households and business, vs. the current silly problems we have with toilet paper, eggs, etc.
We can't really even stop Trump from shifting medical supplies away from areas where nobody votes for him.
45: I mean, I'm just sort of spitballing, but the spitballing is meant to be an alternative to "stay in your own home regardless of the circumstances of childcare or your degree of crowding or isolation." I have trouble understanding how that's less nightmarishly fragmented.
Looking forward to the inevitable market in counterfeit immunity certificates.
I think there needs to be a lot more testing, universal mask wearing, and also the workers should seize the means of production.
It's not. It's just that it's not nightmarish for people who are most likely to vote and have power.
49: Or even areas where people did vote for him but then voted out Governor/Plutocrat Rick Snyder.
make distribution systems able to flex easily between supplying households and business, vs. the current silly problems we have with toilet paper, eggs, etc.
We have those already. Just been down the supermarket - fully stocked with toilet paper, eggs, tinned food, pasta, pretty much everything except baking flour, and we just bought 25kg of that. There were a few weeks of wobble when lockdown started but even then no one was going to run short of food - just of some specific sorts of food.
The primary food whose total absence I've noticed is Peeps. Just Born is planning to open up Peep production again May 4. May have just been a ruse anyway since post-Easter must be their slow season.
Yesterday the store had no pancake mix or large eggs. I'll have to make pancakes from scratch and use jumbo eggs.
"My supermarket is fine, ergo we must not have problems"?
I mean, my shops are mostly fine too, but it seems a great chunk of our supply chain is only equipped to sell to restaurants, cafeterias, etc., resulting in milk being dumped and so forth. The problem may not have made a macro difference yet, but it's a distinct lack of resilience when future disruptions come.
6 is incompatible with a 30% false negative rate. 30% false negative means 30% of the people who are in fact immune tested negative. False positives would be more concerning - that would be people who are not in fact immune coming back with a test result saying "You're safe, all's good." So I think the way it was worded originally is correct.
You can see that disruption at our Whole Foods. They had no chicken breasts and great big packs of chicken wings. I don't know how many chicken wings they sold before, but I'm sure they never had half of the chicken display being wings.
encourage younger people to get exposed
I hadn't even thought of that but I'm sure you're right. Like fake accent, I was thinking about forged certificates.
The answer to the titular question is: Vote the sumbitch out of office.
Sure, assuming we're able to vote.
In the real world I think 46 is right. There are some interesting regional/density divisions in people's utopian proposals in this thread.
If somebody has a certificate and a cough, there's no chance anybody is going to believe them in public.
I saw something saying that the cancellation of March Madness left an oversupply of chicken wings.
Before high blood pressure, I used to get them when I went to the bar. It turns out they're delicious but I can readily cook them at home.
I just clicked the link in the OP. It's a great picture.
I of course think 46 is right in the real world, too. I typed as much a couple times and didn't get around to posting the comment.
60: I read that there is (was?) an excess of wings because everyone was stocked up to supply March Madness-watching crowds, and that of course didn't happen.
Having watched transit planning up close (now, whenever I feel like walking to the other side of the attic) I'm skeptical about the ability to make things frequent enough to keep passengers sparse. The heavy rail could maybe double in frequency, but at best that might mean that everyone could sit down at rush hour. Bus service here was also very crowded at peak, and there were major constraints in terms of the number of buses, the number of places to park/maintain buses, and then the number of bus drivers. A single thing that might help a lot on that last front would be relaxing the Federal rules that require clean drug tests of drivers, at least in states where pot is legal.
False negatives are much more likely in antibody tests. There are billions of variants of antibodies so it's entirely likely that some people will have antibodies that don't react with the antigen set used in a given test.
False positive seems pretty unlikely short of a test production problem (contamination with the wrong antigen.)
encourage younger people to get exposed
Yay!
False negatives are much more likely in antibody tests. There are billions of variants of antibodies so it's entirely likely that some people will have antibodies that don't react with the antigen set used in a given test.
False positive seems pretty unlikely short of a test production problem (contamination with the wrong antigen.)
Is that true? There was a comment on Brad Delong's blog which said the opposite (and sounded plausible).
There are a great many coronaviruses circulating in the human population. They cause similar antibodies, and specifically distinguishing SARS-CoV-2 from the others on the basis of antibody response isn't trivial. The problem is not just sensitivity and specificity of the test -- how many false positives verus what portion of the actual cases -- but "are we testing for what we want to test for by selecting these antibodies to testg?" and the current answer is "working on it!"
I thought there were only four coronaviruses, actually. I don't know where I got that impression, but I literally thought that there weren't many, and old SARS and MERS were two of them.
My understanding is that 31 is correct. People have had it, gotten over it then got it again and died. Hopefully that's false information, but I've been reading about it for months.
Usually children have mild cases and get over it, but sometimes they just die.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/21/coronavirus-detroit-girl-dies-covid-19-youngest-michigan-victim/5170070002/
I guess there are seven big ones.
In Colorado and Montana, where Jammies' mother is paying attention, she's taking the virus seriously, but also keeps reporting on hospitals that are furloughing doctors and nurses, and are in danger of shutting down altogether, because their patient count is so low. It's just a bizarre form of our national incompetence that hospitals would close because they can't pay for themselves with non-urgent patients during a national pandemic.
In Colorado and Montana, where Jammies' mother is paying attention, she's taking the virus seriously, but also keeps reporting on hospitals that are furloughing doctors and nurses, and are in danger of shutting down altogether, because their patient count is so low. It's just a bizarre form of our national incompetence that hospitals would close because they can't pay for themselves with non-urgent patients during a national pandemic.
I've been hearing that the local hospital is also cutting shifts for nurses. Part of what contributes to that dynamic is (a) there's no (generally accepted) effective treatment, so people who are suffering but not in life-threatening danger are encouraged to stay home and (b) when people do go to the hospital because of COVID-19 they are likely to stay for a couple weeks, so the line between "near capacity" and "overwhelmed" is narrow.
And also, if the Covid cases are not that many to fill up the hospital's capacity, but people are still delaying treatment for strokes, appendicitis, heart attacks, etc, because they're trying to avoid hospitals. Along with postponing tonisllectomies and non-urgent care.
71- Hmm, I guess that's possible although I don't know about cross-reactivity of the more common coronaviruses to SARS-2. SARS and SARS-2 are pretty close I think. Unfortunately they can be cross-reactive but not neutralizing, that has been demonstrated for a neutralizing SARS Ab vs. SARS-2. So we're totally screwed with antibody tests.
interesting, intelligent discussion! the kind we need to have a lot more of, in all kinds of situations/contexts.
the value of everyone wearing masks all the time when outside their homes is so that you are wearing a mask when you *can't* keep a safe distance (and this is very likely to occur at some point in time when you are just out for a walk, e.g., the gate at the trail head/bridge to the other side of the stream/waiting for the light to change at the corner), and even more when you pop into a shop briefly, enter a building, etc. it's adopting as shared habits low cost relatively small individual interventions that in the aggregate create a lot more space for all of us to interact more in lots of areas of our lives. as i understand it, viral load counts. masks reduce the population wide burden of viral load folks are exposed to.
also, people not wearing masks when they go to our local corner store while out on their walk/run piss me off frankly because the family that owns/runs the store and staffs it are all wearing masks, gloves and face guards and they are completely reasonably freaked the fuck out. the last time i was in there another customer without a mask started coughing and coughing - probably just a smokers cough, he turned away and coughed into his elbow, but he was about 3 feet from me before he moved away. i was not happy but the dude at the register right across the counter from us - really? it's such an imposition to wear a mask? so wear masks for them, my god it is the least we can do.
on transit-transportation in urban settings - more transit capacity everywhere! enthusiastic yes and absolutely soak the rich to do it! but also, boost wherever you can people's capacity to maximize their physical liberty via bikes rather than cars, because if everyone gets into a car then hello increased congestion and pollution. the biggest constraint to increased bike mobility in san francisco is lack of safety.
re: bikes and physical gegraphical constraints, hello from san francisco with material changes in elevation. electric assist solves this for otherwise reasonably fit people. if you have severe enough physical constraints that electric assist doesn't make biking available to you, then it's you who the bicyclists are out there for, creating your safe physical transit capacity. electric assist also can soften the impact of heat and humidity, plus ditching/softening norms that everyone arrives everywhere looking perfectly unmussed/unhumid. re: cold and wet - let me introduce you to the netherlands and scandinavia.
lastly - loneliness. yes, "people like me" includes those who have sufficient - but not too much! - social interaction within our homes. just like with what i've written above, we all need to participate where we can safely and at tolerable personal cost to reduce our population wide risk sufficient to create space for others to live within their own band of economic, physical, social, mental tolerable risk.
Haven't read all the responses, but I don't see how an immunity card plays well with employment law, and also, it seems kinda like it sucks? We've been social distancing for five weeks. Odds are pretty good we avoided it. So, my reward for not being an asshole is the destruction of my career? Fuck that.
I don't remember--have we talked about fall higher ed options on the blog yet? I don't think my institution is going to make any decisions until June at the earliest, but I just can't imagine having students come to a big residential campus in August. There's no way we can sufficiently protect everyone, especially the faculty, campus workers, and community (assuming that most of the students themselves are at lower risk, which still leaves too many of them at high risk).
It's really easy to stay away from people on the sidewalk while out for a walk here (unless you walked in a retail district). Mostly I either cross the street or go walk in the middle of the street if I need to pass and people do the same for me. Once I was to stop and wait because they're was traffic on the road, a guy walking a dog on one side and two joggers stopped conversing with each other on the other. But that's once in several weeks.
The park is nuts. I stay out of it except during the rain.
81: I'm pretty scared of the impact on higher ed. I don't know what to think. I'm dreading a real semester of online learning where I need to actually cover serious amounts of content.
We currently have 13 active hospitalizations, statewide. Adding in the two counties closest to us, we have just of 10% of the total number of cases -- I would imagine that our two big hospitals are not overly taxed by this. So, it's working.
We're doing phased re-opening beginning on Monday. People still have to distance, and a bunch of things won't be re-opening. I haven't decided when I'll start going downtown every day.
81: Tatsu is due to start university in September, and we have no idea in what form that will happen. UK universities are already talking about bankruptcy since so much of their income comes from international students, and if they can't rent out their halls of residence they will been in an even worse situation. Apparently students who've applied for self-catering accommodation at Tatsu's university have already been asked to pay the deposit for the coming academic year. Tatsu has applied for a catered hall and hasn't been asked for money yet; but like J. Robot, I can't imagine how they will be able to have a majority of students resident on campus from September.
ll
-- scene from a middle welsh translation seminar --
haltingly, via zoom: "bloodbath ... and death ... to the ... opponent"
confidently, encouragingly: "good - to his enemies."
i honestly am going to really miss it when the kid's classes move back to campus.
l>
The make him translate the driver's license test prep booklet?
So, my reward for not being an asshole is the destruction of my career? Fuck that.
I think I was smarter than you about this. I'm all sequestered and everything, but I didn't stop being an asshole.
I don't remember--have we talked about fall higher ed options on the blog yet?
My son is finalizing his college decision. It's a very strange time ...
I just had the thought that College Admissions committees are going to be reading about Covid-19 for the next 15 years, because it's going to be the most significant departure from the norm of life for the vast majority of kids.
60: priorities?
anyway my first answer would be this, but bigger, in more depth: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdf+html
Let's find out where the transmission actually happened and how, so we can stop doing stupid shit. For example: in 318 documented outbreaks in China outside Hebei province, exactly one, with 2 cases, happened outdoors. 79% were at home but the typical size was small. A lot were in public transport, but the biggest concentration of big outbreaks was shopping malls, possibly because of poor ventilation.
||
Do Brits actually say "fascia" for "dashboard" / "glove compartment"? Found it in, of all places, stage directions for the Alien screenplay.
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but I just can't imagine having students come to a big residential campus in August.
I'm assuming my son's fall semester will be online only. I can't even imagine the financial impact of this: residence halls sitting empty, and the university no longer collecting housing fees; no revenue from conferences and other events; declining enrollment (including, probably, significant decline in international students)...
So the thing I wonder more about is if we are approaching the point where the standard treatment protocol for serious cases would be very effective in preventing death or grievous injury in people who were treated quickly and aggressively enough. Obviously, a very effective vaccine would be great too, but it seems like there's kind of a hard limit on just how soon that would be available, whereas, one can imagine that some combination of therapies might be found that would significantly mitigate the risk.
I suppose we should all get used to wearing cloth masks all the time, even if they are just immunity theater. But that would still leave a huge chunk of the economy closed -- all the jobs where close quarters and contact with bodily fluids and exhalations are unavoidable. I just don't see how I would be comfortable going to a bar or restaurant until the whole deal is under pretty strict control.
On a personal note, my podiatrist is apparently doing some kind of rolling furlough deal, but his replacement feels I should be fine with putting weight on my foot, if I wear the big plastic boot. No doubt we will see many more previously face to face economic interactions being devolved to video, email and voice communications.
Looking at the supply chains for food, of course, we should probably all try to develop a taste for squirrel meat.
I like squirrels and seagulls,
I like pigeons and jam,
That's what my baby feeds me,
Cause we just ran out of Spam
92: I think Zoomer is the best name, now that they're living on Zoom instead of real life.
even if they are just immunity theater.
I had no idea that community theater stood for "Covid immunity" theater.
They're not immunity theater though. They're useful and we were lied to when we were told they weren't. Link
Apparently, Trump is on the TV wondering aloud if injecting disinfectant isn't a good way to fight COVID-19. There's just no way any of this ends well.
I sometimes wonder if he knows that he's the king of the suckers and he just wants to see how far he can go convincing people to do stupid shit just because he says it. But he's not self aware enough, it's all authentic stupidity.
All the Tide Pods are going to be gone from red state stores before they close tonight.
You can just swallow bleach to kill the coronavirus, is going to be the takeaway for many of his followers ...
It's horrifying. And it won't move the needle on the national conversation one bit. The only people who are horrified are the ones who already were.
Yeah, I think its the wurlitzer of Fox news etc repeating stuff endlessly -- rather than the man himself babbling -- that really gets the followers believing stuff. And here, I think they'll shrink from going to Full Moron.
Did you guys see the thing where Sean Hannity viewers have a measurably higher mortality during Covid than Tucker Carlson viewers?
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Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court issued 3 decisions today. (1) a surprisingly coherent result in a Clean Water Act case -- discharging your bad stuff into ground water where it eventually ends up in the ocean requires a discharge permit. This turned on the meaning of the word "from." (2) in an unsurprising case, Justice Kavanaugh wrote the 5-4 opinion upholding the deportation of a green card holder based on his criminal convictions. It turned on which crimes count for depriving you of the chance to argue that the judge should cancel his otherwise lawful deportation (answer: more than count for deportability generally). Sotomayor wrote the dissent. (3) They clarified the showing you have to make in a trademark infringement suit to make the infringer pay over its profits: a lower standard than was in effect in some circuits.
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107: Oh yeah, I saw that. Sean Hannity is such an active force for actual evil in this world, and just a true and genuine POS. I truly loathe and despise his smug, stupid face...
Isn't part of that because nobody under 70 watches Hannity?
That said, I don't doubt for a minute that a Hannity viewer would be more likely to drink bleach than a Carlson viewer. I'm guessing that they put it more nicely in the brochure, but raise the same issue as a positive when selling ads for Hannity's show.
I keep seeing the post title and thinking "Hang everyone".
#nothelping
Isn't part of that because nobody under 70 watches Hannity?
The over 70s are most at risk, though, and many of them are genuinely clueless and ignorant. Hannity is willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of his ratings.
So, we're in fantasy-reopening land, right? Where the tests work and get administered and we have a functioning government? Here's my wishlist: no immunity status cards. Broad use of the ADA to allow anyone who might be in a high-risk group to have appropriate accommodations (most likely working from home if possible, maybe as part of a skeleton shift. Continued use of liberal work from home policies where possible. Skeleton staffing and split shifts where possible to minimize number of staff on site at a given time. Broad use of OSHA requirements to create new workplace protections, eg any workplace that can create 6' workstations will do so, hand sanitizer stations every so many feet, mandatory breaks to use it, masks provided for all on site staff. Employers would be encouraged to follow liberal leave policies, and somehow we'd get the federal government to pay wages for people taking sick leave so no one needs to work sick. Expand short-term disability definitions to include COVID-19.
Quarantine sick people at designated locations, eg dorms, hotels, etc. (I am so sorry about this one) with trained staff if case rates start to increase, since most transmission occurs within a household. Make sure to continue diagnostic testing on random population samples. Make testing free. Do antibody testing on representative populations and keep testing. Take everyone's temperature as a condition for entry into airports, train stations (Amtrak, not subway), and bus terminals. That's gonna suck, but travel already kind of sucks.
Get kids out of the house - I can see skipping sleepaway camp, and kids are gross and germy, but there's no way for anyone to work with their kids at home. I don't see a way to make reopening work without this. I don't see a way to drop class size (and I'm not sure it would help, really, with kids) or so basically anything but test and send kids home. Maybe test a sample of kids, a few per class, on a random basis every day. Federal grants to cover costs. Kids can return to school for retests, and families would be eligible for testing at schools, too if a kid came back positive (since someone's gotta pick the kid up, might as well).
Colleges are tricky. I'd say that students living in the dorms should be tested at move-in, then probably random sampling of a few per floor or something. Increased cleaning of public areas. Cafeterias serving prepackaged food take-out style. Liberal policies for withdrawal due to medical reasons, tuition refundable, student loans forgivable, and bans on class attendance policies (sorry). Maybe all lectures recorded and archived to enable the option of remote learning? Same deal with liberal accommodations for students in high risk groups as with employers. Federal grants for all student health centers to buy rapid test equipment and consumables.
Partitioning of hospitals - regional designated treatment sites for coronavirus patients vs other hospitals reopening for elective procedures and routine care. All comers get their temp taken at minimum, rapid tests preferred. Waiting rooms with masks and good separation until test results come back.
Businesses that do personal care or need audiences are the trickiest, I think. I'm not sure how to keep hairdressers safe. There's a lot of discussion about reopening sports, but there's also love theater and concerts. Masks for everybody and call it good enough? I have no idea.
Oh, and quarantine enforcement/contact tracing. If you have an incredibly aggressive testing regimen, I am not sure how much privacy you need to give up. I think the phone trackers are fine, but I can see big objections, so maybe there should be an opt-in incentive, like maybe another tax rebate check? $250 if you opt in? I'm not sure of the logistics, but it seems like an OK way to get a reasonable number of people to do it, and it seems like it would target less affluent folks who are (sadly) most at risk.
I can see some kind of contract-tracing app working better with college students than with the general public.
Unfortunately, I have very little faith in our students' willingness to maintain physical distancing.
They make up for it by eating Tide Pods.
116.2: My workplace has lots of college age staff. I can assure you they are totally unable to maintain distances, even with reminders and institutional help, like spaced chairs in the cafeteria, and don't wear masks. (FREE ONES THAT WE ARE BEING PROVIDED.)
They're probably going to do much better avoiding disease transmission than my college class would have done, because less chewing tobacco.
Maybe the moral of the story is that the don't-sleep-with-the-students training doesn't just protect the students and the liability insurance policy of the school, but also the faculty and staff.
Surely chewing tobacco brings its own form of social distancing. I am pretty certain that if I could import a few tins of snus and ostentatiously roll and stuff pellets under my lips, occasionally spitting out a pill for emphasis, no one, not even Ume, would come within two metres of me.
Do Brits actually say "fascia" for "dashboard" / "glove compartment"? Found it in, of all places, stage directions for the Alien screenplay.
We do, but not very often - the fascia is basically the term for that whole component (normally plastic, wood in posh or old cars). I don't know what else to call it. It's not something you normally refer to very often. The dashboard is the instrument panel, the glove compartment is what you call the glovebox, and the fascia is all the stuff surrounding them. The inside skin of the front of the car. A sort of big curvy plastic sheet thing with holes in it for vents, instruments, etc.
121: entirely behind NW making the full transition to Grizzled Prospector in Old Western Film while maintaining current job. "Ya see, boy (ppttt.... DOING!) thing about yer Archbishop of Canterbury, he's th'inheritor of centuries of ecclesiastical tradition... (pppt... DOING!)"
I call it "the dashboard," which includes an opening to what I call "the glove compartment." I don't think I've ever had occasion to refer to anything that is apparently sometimes called "the fascia."
But I don't know cars.
Ah, OK. Fascia is a bit of a technical term. We tend to use dashboard to mean either a) the instrument panel or b) the flat bit on top under the windscreen ("his car park permit is lying on the dashboard"). Most people don't really ever talk about the fascia.
It's there to cover the working parts of the ventilation system and steering column, which would otherwise be SHAMEFULLY on display.
Historical note: Victorians (probably) did not cover the legs of their furniture because they thought to do otherwise was indecent. This is (probably) a joke told by the British writer Nicholas Marryat about Americans in 1839 - so, Victorian, but just barely - because at the time Brits were fairly relaxed and bawdy and thought that Americans were ludicrously prudish and obsessed with avoiding any hint of indecency. From his "Diary in America":
"I cannot conclude this chapter without adverting to one or two points peculiar to the Americans. They wish, in everything, to improve upon the Old Country, as they call us, and affect to be excessively refined in their language and ideas: but they forget that very often in the covering, and the covering only, consists the indecency; and that, to use the old aphorism--"Very nice people are people with very nasty ideas."
"They object to everything nude in statuary. When I was at the house of Governor Everett, at Boston, I observed a fine cast of the Apollo Belvidere; but in compliance with general opinion, it was hung with drapery, although Governor Everett himself is a gentleman of refined mind and high classical attainments, and quite above such ridiculous sensitiveness. In language it is the same thing. There are certain words which are never used in America, but an absurd substitute is employed. I cannot particularise them after this preface, lest I should be accused of indelicacy myself. I may, however, state one little circumstance which will fully prove the correctness of what I say.
"When at Niagara Falls I was escorting a young lady with whom I was on friendly terms. She had been standing on a piece of rock, the better to view the scene, when she slipped down, and was evidently hurt by the fall: she had, in fact, grazed her shin. As she limped a little in walking home, I said, "Did you hurt your leg much?" She turned from me, evidently much shocked, or much offended,--and not being aware that I had committed any very heinous offence, I begged to know what was the reason of her displeasure. After some hesitation, she said that as she knew me well, she would tell me that the word leg was never mentioned before ladies. I apologised for my want of refinement, which was attributable to having been accustomed only to English society; and added, that as such articles must occasionally be referred to, even in the most polite circles in America, perhaps she would inform me by what name I might mention them without shocking the company. Her reply was, that the word limb was used; "nay," continued she, "I am not so particular as some people are, for I know those who always say limb of a table, or limb of a piano-forte."
There the conversation dropped; but a few months afterwards I was obliged to acknowledge that the young lady was correct when she asserted that some people were more particular than even she was.
I was requested by a lady to escort her to a seminary for young ladies, and on being ushered into the reception-room, conceive my astonishment at beholding a square piano-forte with four limbs. However, that the ladies who visited their daughters might feel in its full force the extreme delicacy (see note at end of chapter) of the mistress of the establishment, and her care to preserve in their utmost purity the ideas of the young ladies under her charge, she had dressed all these four limbs in modest little trousers, with frills at the bottom of them!
"An English lady, who had long kept a fashionable boarding-school in one of the Atlantic cities, told me that one of her earliest cares with every new-comer, was to endeavour to substitute real delicacy for that affected precision of manner. Among many anecdotes, she told me of a young lady about fourteen, who, on entering the receiving-room, where she only expected to see a lady who had inquired for her, and finding a young man with her, put her hands before her eyes and ran out of the room again, screaming 'A man, a man, a man!' On another occasion, one of the young ladies in going up stairs to the drawing-room, unfortunately met a boy of fourteen coming down, and her feelings were so violently agitated, that she stopped, panting and sobbing, nor would she pass on till the boy had swung himself up on the upper bannisters, to leave the passage free."--Mrs Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans [1832].
125: That's exactly the American usage. Especially when talking about the flat area on top, sometimes it'll be shortened to "the dash," as in "put it on the dash."
Found it in, of all places, stage directions for the Alien screenplay.
But Dan O'Bannon is American.
I like Yd's plan in 114. It addresses most of my biggest fears for the fall.
This sort of antibody test would address the issues above- it tests not just for binding but for blocking of the key interaction required for infection.
The NYT has gone full self-Onion.
Here's their tweet:
At a White House briefing, President Trump theorized -- dangerously, in the view of some experts -- about the powers of sunlight, ultraviolet light and household disinfectants to kill the coronavirus
Injecting Bleach a Hazard? Views Differ.
It's like they're trying to asymptotically approach the "Shape of Earth? Experts Disagree" joke headline.
But they didn't even mention the swallowing it part! It's worse than "Shape of Earth" - this just makes it look like Trump was talking about disinfecting surfaces, and the experts are pearl-clutchers for unclear reasons.
130: Nice!
129. Shame we don't have anything like a functioning government. My essential business employer has done most of the things I suggested for business (they had a preexisting pandemic plan!), and it's weird but surprisingly functional in terms of getting work done. I'm not sure whether the lack of compliance is going to hurt or whether the actions taken will be sufficient to keep us from turning into a hot zone like the poor meat processing workers.
Although I think this one from a few days ago is the best of the genre I've seen so far.
The internal light thing was also totally bananas and somehow it's not getting as much play as the lung bleach bronchoalveolar lavage.
"So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you're going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way," Trump said, adding it "sounds interesting."
I think because the bananapants part of internal light is that it's impossible to figure out what he actually means. Swallow lightbulbs? Laparoscopic surgery with LEDs? Anything concrete is obviously stupid enough that you can't attack him with it because he couldn't possibly have meant exactly that. Swallowing bleach is swallowing bleach.
He's thinking of the light bullets in Underworld, because everybody likes to remember Kate Beckinsale in leather but some people can't remember movies aren't real.
I think he's actually talking about inhaling bleach.
I think because the bananapants part of internal light is that it's impossible to figure out what he actually means.
Oh come on we were literally talking about what it means yesterday. He means taint sunning.
I guess that explains why Pence is looking so pained when he walks.
Have you not seen Bloodshot? Nanobots in the bloodstream with tiny torches!
If the Democrats were trying to be good centrists, we could have a compromise of drinking just a little bit of bleach.
138/9: I thought he was imagining a really powerful tanning bed.
Can't we just butt-chug bleach and check all the boxes?
The NYT has gone full self-Onion.
They're all shit. A mix of click bait garbage and whatever hobby horse the writer and/or owner is on. Then they clutch their pearls when Trump calls them the enemy of the people. There's a reason that resonates with a lot of people and they brought it on themselves.
Thanks for the info on "fascia". The full text is Kane grabs emergency headlamp from facia (sic).
The only Brit of those several men with script/story credit for Alien is Ridley Scott. But it doesn't seem to be a better usage in British English since in context it's a compartment. Unless the headlamp was hanging from a hook or something.
The NYT has gone full self-Onion.
should be
In Continued Self-Beclowning, Gray Lady Misreports Errant President, Misleads Readers
and then a subhead of
Infuriated Utahn Mulls Comparison: Times Newsroom vs. Writhing Eight-Foot Pile Of Crack-Smoking Shaved Weasels
Headline style is important.
Colleges are tricky. . . . Same deal with liberal accommodations for students in high risk groups as with employers.
Kraabniece was saying last night that as devastated as she is by the idea of another virtual semester, if her college were to reopen she doubts she would go back on campus before there's a vaccine because she's very high risk and there really aren't accomodations that would make her safe. (She's more likely to get covid because she's on immunosuppressive treatment for one condition and more likely to die because of her other, unrelated condition). She said she would probably just save the money and take courses at the community college.
In terms of the internal light (I guess he ain't tried to read inside a dog) I was envisioning something like the internal ultrasound that goes down your throat -- that wouldn't work either, but it seems slightly more in line with consensus reality.
Then they clutch their pearls when Trump calls them the enemy of the people
Yeah, Trump pretty much has them there. If you can't tell your readers, "Do not drink or inject Lysol," then you are pretty much acknowledging that you don't have the people's interests at heart.
Every time there's a circus like this, I wonder what specific thing Trump is trying to distract from. I'm not sure what it is this time beyond, you know, all the dead people.
Looks like JPS and his ilk ahve successfully shamed the NYT into a minimal level of professional integrity:
We've deleted an earlier tweet and updated a sentence in our article that implied that only "some experts" view the ingestion of household disinfectants as dangerous. To be clear, there is no debate on the danger.
Close! But we're not quite there yet. Actually, the president of the United States has initiated a debate on that matter.
Next up, the dentist who doesn't recommend Trident goes on the rack.
154: He's distracting from the last crazy thing he said/did, whatever that was. I don't remember.
I don't think this is a conscious strategy on his part, though he has stumbled onto something that works for him. The sonofabitch is every bit as dumb and repugnant as he appears to be.
The conscious strategy part is the part about immigrants.
147: The Times many real crimes against journalism and the public interest have precisely no relationship to the fancied crimes against Trump he alleges in so doing. It is not pearl-clutching to observe that attacking the vestigial remnants of a free press for their actually accurate reporting is a dangerous if ongoing development.
147: The Times many real crimes against journalism and the public interest have precisely no relationship to the fancied crimes against Trump he alleges in so doing. It is not pearl-clutching to observe that attacking the vestigial remnants of a free press for their actually accurate reporting is a dangerous if ongoing development.
158: Yeah, I do agree about that. He has real intellectual commitments there. On trade, too.
159-160: It bears repeating! One thing that liberals are finally getting over is this idea that we have to be sensitive in our language when we're talking to or about the special snowflakes who advocate the drinking of bleach, the eradication of competence from government and the crippling of democracy. These tendencies really are deplorable, and the borderline deplorables are rightly dismissive when people are too cowardly to distinguish between right and wrong or between truth and falsehood.
Further regarding immunity certificates being inevitable: I am right now watching the "town hall meeting" for all NIH employees & associates and contractors where Francis Collins and others answer questions from employees. The first question answered was "will there be serologic testing of people to approve people to go back to work?" This represented 79 of the total 740 questions submitted. The answer was that the serologic test needs to have a sufficiently low number of false positives, and it needs to actually be associated with "durable immunity". No suggestion that people will be confirmed as being immune and still not allowed to go back to work. On the other hand there's no way to know whether people actually have "durable immunity" for years so maybe the idea that there will be no such test for years was implied.
I've started to think of Trump like a hype man for a band. Except in this particular band, the hype man *is* the front man. Which is why the songs suck so much.
On the "really bright light" I figured Trump hadn't ever considered whether humans were transparent/whether it's too dark to read inside of a dog. Or consensus reality for that matter. "Why wouldn't a really bright light reach all the way inside? No? Well, then a REALLY bright light."
If standing on front of a 5G cell tower fixes the virus, it would be so funny.
What is light that reaches all the way inside the body? X-rays. We tried using X-rays to cure tuberculosis in the 1890s and we can try them now. Get everyone a full set of skiagraphs! What have you got to lose?
If you love America, you'll encourage people to drink mercury as a potential cure.
I have started watching the Ohio Governor's Press Conferences. I find them weirdly soothing. I like his Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. DeWine is pretty much a straight shooter for a Republican, and he's been really strong on the Coronavirus, but he just won't criticize Trump and pretends not to know things. If he's asked about Trumps criticisms of voting by mail, he'll say "Well, I didn't hear the President criticizing our system in Ohio. I have faith in our ability to conduct a fair election by mail. We've done that for a long time." Today, he was asked about whether he was worried about disinformation from Trump's press conferences that had been challenged by medical experts harming Ohioans. He kind of danced around it and said he doesn't watch all of the President's press conferences...blah..blah. "There are a lot of different ideas out there in the marketplace, and he had faith in the common sense of Ohioans to sort these things out."
163: We had a town hall on this too. IgG and IgM and when you can both have antibodies and still be shedding virus. I'm sure I got that wrong, but it sounded like YOU could have antibodies during a period when you were still infectious.
I spoke too soon on the bleach thing. Apparently Alan Keyes in on the case.
ProPublica put up a good Twitter thread on next steps: https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1253351877787467779?s=21
I linked the whole article in 100! Should have made that more explicit.
What the fuck is this? Is McMegan trolling for responses about how stupid she is so she can complain about how mean and uncivil everyone is?
Wow. That is so creatively dumb. What if it's caused by magnets???
Someone pointed out that retirement homes aren't loud and she said... old people can't hear well so there's a lot of yelling. No one is that dumb, it's got to be an act.
In the future everyone will be the old man yelling at the cloud got fifteen minutes.
178: Also that's why kids are immune. Because they're so quiet.
There's a good article in the Washington Post on how younger adults are dying of strokes common only in the elderly and then testing positive for Covid. I strongly recommend not reading it.
Aha, we've reached the inevitable "You were the stupid one for not understanding my brilliant writing."
Sorry, to be clear: noise is a problem because when it is noisy, people raise their voices to be heard, which facilitates droplet transmission. I'm not suggesting that, like, noise gives you covid.
The idea that noise itself causes covid is so obviously insane it never occurred to me even to discount it. We regret the error.
I do think noise is a problem in cities. One of the reasons I like my street is because it's about as centrally located as you can get for a street that is dead quite at night.
Are talking here dead at civil twilight or astronomical twilight or what.
Stupid,or.... Prescient? We report; you decide.
No one is that dumb, it's got to be an act.
Have you seen our president lately?
WHO throws cold water on the idea of immunity passports, at least until a lot more validation studies have been done.
Coincidentally, throwing cold water on the sick people is Trump's newest COVID treatment idea.
TMZ is reporting that Kim Jong-un is dead.
Paparazzi won't leave any family in peace.
If Trump had guys, he'd claim Kim drank bleach.
I've been typing very poorly lately. I blame the stress of lockdown.
I'll no doubt quickly get counter-pwned, but anyway:
#59 is correct to the extent that: "if you are immune then you are very likely to test positive" (i.e. "the proportion of immune people who would test positive is high") isn't high specificity but high sensitivity (to immunity), so #6 is in fact incompatible with the low sensitivity mentioned in 4. A 30% false negative rate (probability of negative test given positive condition) means that the proportion of immune people who would test positive is only 70%, which is not high sensitivity.
But I don't think the original version in #4, "if you test positive to you are very likely to be immune" (i.e. "the proportion of people who test positive who are indeed immune is high"), is right either, as a definition of high specificity. So the second half of #59 is wrong.
High specificity here actually means "if you aren't immune then you are very likely to test negative" ( i.e. "the proportion of people who in fact don't have the positive characteristic you're testing for, immunity, that test negative is high"). And this doesn't guarantee "if you test positive, then you are very likely to be immune", either on its own or even combined with high sensitivity, for base-rate-fallacy reasons.
(E.g. if 100 people out of a million really have immunity, and you have a test with 99% specificity and 95% sensitivity, and test everyone, you get about 95 true positives due to the 95% sensitivity and about 990 000 true negatives due to the 99% specificity, but that still leaves 10 000 false positives, so the proportion of people who test positive who are indeed immune is only about 95/10 000 i.e. about 1%. So it still wouldn't be true that if you test positive you are very likely to be immune.)
What I'm guessing ajay did in #6 was remember that specificity is a probability of a test result given a hypothesis about the underlying condition, whereas his original version in #4 couldn't be right because it was the conditional probability of an underlying condition on a test result, and quickly just switched without checking. Happens to the best of us.
Can't stick around, unfortunately.
Hope you're feeling better, Walt.