COVID-19: Scrimmage games | July 23 (NBATV), 26 (NBATV), 28 (FSSW) for DAL

[Jannemann2]

Do we have any other medical workers on this board? What is your experience?
In my hospital in Berlin things are still normal. We have seperate ERs and ICUs for COVID-19 patients. If possible workers from the COVID unit are separated from the remaining nurses and physicians. As of now the situation is still under control and we don´t have any shortages (well maybe gloves). Maybe it´s just the calm before the storm. The case numbers are still growing exponentially.
Before I started working I moved out of the house. My fiance and her sister (plus child) are living together and I moved into my soon to be sister in law´s apartment. Sucks to be alone but it´s better to be safe than sorry.

Watching from europe the situation in the US is really concerning. I don´t think we will see any basketball in the summer. It seems like testing started way to late and the virus spread all over the east and west coast. Only a matter of time before the virus will shut down the rest of the country as well.
Delayed peaks in different states make it even more difficult. NY could be over the worst in a few month (just like Wuhan) but at the same time other states will probably see a peak or just enter lockdown mode.

Two of my closest friends are physicians working in german hospitals in Hamburg and Hessen; sister in law is a nurse engaged with a nurse. Last updates from a few days ago were: things relatively quiet but overall numbers of patients and number of patients with severe conditions slowly increasing. I think Germany does a relatively good job in identifiying the cases with harmless symptoms, explaining the low number of fatal cases compared to the overall known cases.
I'd expect a jump in patients who need intensive care during the next days even so we could have done enough to avoid a breakdown of the medical system for know. Things still fine at your site?

Thumbs up for protecting your family (and the rest of us )!

Greetings from the homeoffice of a stressed IT guy with a 3 year old who tries to ensure all the remoteworkers acutally can access the company resources at home, have new ways to communicate, etc ...

Sucks to have to cancel summer holidays the one year in recent memory I managed to book it early and still pay part of the rent ...

But family is healthy so far, jobs are relatively safe compared to others.

Keep working, keep breathing, keep laughing, guys!

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Doesn't it all depend on the work going into testing for the virus? I look at it as if everyone is tested going into (closed game with no fans) and out of the arena, then there isn't much harm in it. 

Testing is far from perfect. Data at this point estimates the sensitivity of the available testing may be as low as 70% meaning there are many false negatives.

My neighbor, who is a hospital nurse, says they are seeing some false negative results.  To the extent that is true, it could mean that more people have contracted the virus, which would in turn mean that the denominator is larger, which would in turn mean that the actual mortality rate is lower.  Also, the new serology tests will help clarify how many people have actually contracted the virus.  My opinion is that, as the actual mortality rate in the US approaches that of the seasonal flu, momentum will build for at least partially opening back up the economy.  As to how soon contact sports could resume, that's a tough question, and may take a lot longer.

There's testing and testing.

I think the PCR based tests (detecting virus RNA) which are the main tests used up to now are quiet good (highly sensitive, highly specific), but I hear the number of viruses in the throat is heavily reduced while the disease proceeds (even in bad cases) because the main activity of the virus travels down into the lungs. So the probes for testing need to be taken the right way.

Some of the new Antibody based tests that come up now are probably fine (while a lot are not scientifically validated so far), but to detect antibodies against the virus, antibodies need to be there. It takes time for an infected person to develop antibodies so there's a period up to about 10 days where this antibody based tests are completely blind and cannot detect the disease. They could be useful to detect already developed immunity to the disease so.

From what I hear, people are waiting for antigene based tests (detecting the virus proteins). These could be specific, sensitive, cheap and easy enough to take for more widespread testing and would offer quicker results than the PCR tests done in specialized testing facilities/laboratories. But these are probably at least few weeks away (4-6 weeks is the hope for Germany if I remember correctly).

Still need the tests to be available in high quantities to do extensive testing. For Germany, the estimate is we do about half a million tests a week with the PCR based tests. Tests are only taken when people show typical symptoms AND had contact with an infected person or have been in high risk areas. Still only a low percentage of the tests taken are postive so far, suggesting that it doesn't make sense to test the whole population at the moment balancing the necessary resources  and what you could learn from the results. That might be different in other countries where the fatality rate suggests a 10fold higher number of undetected cases.