Q: China’s ahead of the rest of the world in terms of responding to COVID-19, so a big question outside of China is how do we best control this without lockdowns?
A: You have to do early finding of cases, which means measuring temperatures all the time, and you have to do an epidemiological investigation and contact tracing of each case within 24 hours. Prevention has to focus on old people and nursing homes, key personnel, larger factories, pregnant women, and university and school campuses. Scale up testing: Testing is going up in China, even though there are no more cases. In order to guarantee a safe opening, you need to test more people.
In other words,
Nowadays, conventional war is not the top danger of mankind anymore. Emerging and re-emerging epidemics are. Prevention is the most effective way to fight epidemics, not the rescue plan afterward. We have to get ahead of viruses, and today, we’re behind them.
Doing away with mass testing is a huge mistake. The sources for the AP article about the CDC relaxing testing is totally lopsided. I'm surprised this guy made it to Yale:
“At this point we really should be asking ourselves whether the benefits of testing outweigh the costs — which are lots of disruptions, lots of confusion and very little clinical or public health benefit,” said Dr. A. David Paltiel of Yale’s School of Public Health.
And where did they find this guy?
“The vaccines overperformed, which is the best news possible,” said Dr. Jeffrey Engel of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “So now you can begin to peel back some of these other layers of mitigation like mask use and screening.”
I bet he voted for Trump.
There are still 30,000 new cases a day in this country, and only 40% of adults are vaccinated. Yet the CDC has changed its tune to rely on evidence that seems more anecdotal than scientific.
Even when vaccinated people do contract COVID-19, their infections tend to be milder, shorter and less likely to spread to others.
....As a result, the CDC says vaccinated people can generally be excluded from routine workplace screening for COVID-19.
It's absurd to call the vaccine a "success" when less than half the country has been vaccinated, there are new variants every day,and there are plenty of breakthrough cases of vaccinated people getting infected.
What is the science behind the claim that vaccinated people who come down with COVID or a variant won't transmit it?
Melbourne, Australia just imposed a partial lockdown today due to new cases. New Jersey reported 10 deaths today.
The India variant has made it's way to the U.S. A new study in England says the Pfizer and Astro Zenaca vaccines have proven effictive against it. The study hasn't even been peer-reviewed. I sure wouldn't take this statement by the study author to the bank: "We expect to see even higher levels of effectiveness against hospitalisation and death.” How about waiting until you have some results that show that?
Another variant (from dogs?) was disclosed this week. Memorial Weekend is just around the corner. The crowds will be huge. I think last year was a grain of sand compared to the scenes we will see this year. We're going to get gob-smacked again but maybe a fourth surge is needed to to get people realize that beating this virus out of existence is far better than learning to live with it. What if people had taken that attitude towards smallpox and polio?
