Wow, just wow... You can't even place internet cookies on an EU computer without permission here. Could be this is some leftover from 9/11. When Bush gave extended power to authorities to track the culprits. Perhaps it has never been rescinded?
I found an article that explains what they did:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/coronavirus/article243694062.html
Apparently, they put an option in place for tracking but you both have to give it permission to track you and download an app that would do so. So, while it is strange, it is not tracking anything unless you activate it.
So, this is some of the info on what has been happening recently from an iPhone perspective. Much of this just happened with the past 3 days too. Apparently my state is one of the few that will support this feature right now.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/01/how-to-turn-on-off-covid-19-contact-tracing-iphone-ios/
@tgraf66 Totally agree. I don't trust Trump. I wouldn't trust Pfizer. I worked on a Pfizer-funded study while a researcher at Harvard Medical School and it was a shoddy study designed to convince policymakers to allow them to continue making billions with their antibiotics. That was decades ago, and if anything, the situation in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and the federal oversight is worse now for public health. I can't speak for Moderno.
But pharmaceutical companies need to be tightly monitored because they have been shown to place their profits above human health. The FDA is also influenced by the pharmaceuticals and has been shown to be more lax than its European counterparts. With Trump in charge, and now refusing to be part of the WHO vaccine effort, I also wouldn't trust the CDC any more either. This is a sorry state of affairs.
I guess we have to go to Canada for a safe vaccine? Or wait until the vaccine news looks better and quarantine.
I think Trump's plan is to fast track clinical trials and the ultimate clinical trial will be an experiment on the American people.
Here is information from Apple about the COVID Tracking app.
Welp, @triciact and @tgraf66, they say "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" meaning running the world begins at home. But running the rest of the world, we ain't there yet. Our current situation totally reflects what happens when men rule the world. My Sis, who is ex military and nearly got mobilized for the Iraq War, said, referring to Sadaam Hussein, "Geez, if women were in charge, we would have just found someone to go over and poison Sadaam instead of starting a f***ing war!"
Since this is the Covid-19 sub-forum, ladies, I'll add, don't forget to mask up, maintain social distance, and wash your hands. A fascinating recent article (link below) from UCSF summarized several studies that showed that wearing a simple surgical or cloth mask was extremely efficient in preventing severe COVID cases. Examples came from healthcare workers, a cruise ship, a seafood processing plant, and a Tyson chicken processing plant, showing that when cases were transmitted despite mask wear, a large proportion were mild or asymptomatic. In the seafood and chicken processing plants, nearly 95% of cases were asymptomatic. And asymptomatic is as good as it gets with Covid!
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/07/418181/one-more-reason-wear-mask-youll-get-less-sick-covid-19
Interesting confluence of biology and computer science in this article:
New COVID Theory Thanks to Supercomputer
Wearing a mask can potentially reduce the severity of the infection
I hope it's okay to post a link to a YouTube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DANEqOPcDwc
In the video description there are links to references, arcitlces and medical studies that support wearing a mask not only to protect others but to protect yourself from a more severe infection.
@fajm. Thanks for posting Paul Campbell who has an International reputation for excellent medical reporting. I like what he is saying, except I had thought wearing a mask kept me protected, and now I see it isn't really for that at all. When I shop for groceries, I double mask, thinking I'm protecting myself but maybe not so much as protecting others from me.
We started Paul Campbell back in January when someone, maybe it was @lovendures, discovered him for us. He's been one of the most articulate and reliable sources on covid from the beginning.
(The YouTube issue on this site is that we ask people to stick to reliable sources, so we don't end out passing along disinformation)
I had thought wearing a mask kept me protected, and now I see it isn't really for that at all.
As I understand it, the mask type that offers the maximum amount of protection from agents such as Covid-19 is one that belongs to the FFP3 class, although Wikipedia states that for Covid a mask meeting FFP2 standards would be sufficient. See FFP standards on Wikipedia.
What I heard at the time was that a FFP2/3-type mask will protect you but won't protect others from you, which is why some people who suspect they might be infected would wear a FFP2/3 mask on top of a surgical mask to protect both the wearer and others.
The YouTube issue on this site is that we ask people to stick to reliable sources, so we don't end out passing along disinformation
This is a huge problem today. I have seen people posting links to very questionable sites (on other forums) that purport to offer scientific evidence that masks are not necessary, whereas these are just snippets of data taken out of context.
The problem is that some groups are weaponizing several social platforms to spread misinformation and create chaos, which is why you're absolutely right that people should only refer to trusted sources.
Individuals who test positive for Covid 19 are twice as likely to have dined at a restaurant in the 14 days before becoming ill than those who tested negative, according to a new study from the CDC.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/health/restaurant-dining-covid-19-cdc-study-wellness/index.html
Pfizer proposes expanding Covid-19 vaccine trial to include more diversity as race for a vaccine continues. The phase 3 trials will now expand from 30, 000 participants to 44,000.
So... my first thought is: Why does this need to be news? Why isn't diversity in testing vaccines commonplace? M/F, a rainbow of colorful backgrounds and all sorts of ages and health conditions?? AKA testing a real world population of subjects??
Why do we need to be having this discussion????
I guess that drug companies have come to this realization (finally) is a positive result of all that 2020 has become.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/13/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/index.html
@lovendures I'm guessing that what is going on is this: In early clinical trials, they use fewer subjects. Once the vaccine does well with early trials, they expand to larger trials with more participants. When they conduct empirical tests, they have to have a certain minimum number people from various demographics -- a certain number of subjects in each age group, race, gender, pre-existing conditions, and lord knows what other factors will effect how people respond to the vaccine. So in early tests, which are smaller, the subject pool is less diverse.
I can’t for the life of me figure out WHY they didn’t distinguish between outdoor and inside dining. Seems like that was a crucial question to askIndividuals who test positive for Covid 19 are twice as likely to have dined at a restaurant in the 14 days before becoming ill than those who tested negative, according to a new study from the CDC.
"In addition to dining at a restaurant, case-patients were more likely to report going to a bar/coffee shop, but only when the analysis was restricted to participants without close contact with persons with known COVID-19 before illness onset," the researchers wrote.https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/health/restaurant-dining-covid-19-cdc-study-wellness/index.html
@tybin. I agree with you about indoor-outdoor restaurant distinction, but this kind of study was throwing a lot of feelers out to covid-positive people trying to find patterns of transmission. It wasn't specifically a covid restaurant study. You can only ask people so many questions when you are trying to get data. It is important that they even got the restaurant correlation at all. Also even when you are eating outdoors with people, you have to remove your masks to eat, so it's a largely massless operation even when outdoors. Sounds like they have a case for a covid restaurant study.
To add to what Jeanne said - Depending on where you are, outside dining regs are different. Where I live, the majority of outdoor tables for restaurants are measured incorrectly - from the center of the table to the center of the next one, rather than the proper way, which would be to measure from the back of a pulled out chair to the back of a pulled our chair at the next table. So the 6 foot rule we have results in diners actually only being about 2 feet apart, at best.
It would be impossible to collect the necessary data to determine if outdoor dining causes as much COVID as indoor.
Twelve children who became infected with the coronavirus at three child-care facilities in Utah passed it to others despite having mild or no symptoms, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As a result, the researchers recommended testing people who have been in contact with coronavirus cases in child-care settings, including those who are asymptomatic. That advice comes weeks after a controversial shift in the CDC’s testing recommendations saying that people without symptoms “do not necessarily need a test.”
The children transmitted the virus to 12 of the 46 people they were in contact with, including a parent who required hospitalization. Two of the children who spread the coronavirus had asymptomatic cases, showing that even those who are not displaying symptoms can transmit the virus.
Oh no no no! Poor dear little ones! May the angels of love and goodness surround each and ever single one and all their contacts with great healing love, light and gentle mercies.
I fear these stories will become as common as the day is long and our prayers and care be unceasing!
God bless and keep them all !