Perhaps #LIBERATE was not the brightest tweet.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/17/north-dakota-covid-positive-health-workers-coronavirus?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

North Dakota has finally issued a mask mandate. Of course the toll on its residents and healthcare workers is devastating. In oil industry terms, it is like trying to stop a gusher with Tupperware lids. Borrowing from Freud, sometimes communal responsibility is just that, and not socialism. Meanwhile as ICU beds are filled, PPE runs short and frontline workers fall ill, thoughts and prayers will have to do.

Published by lenrothman

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12 thoughts on “Perhaps #LIBERATE was not the brightest tweet.”

  1. At least 95% of the time I have seen #LIBERATE it has been in one of your posts.

    So, nurses who are Coronoavirus positive but asymptomatic are being asked to treat COVID patients. That makes perfect sense. They can’t catch it and the patients already have it. Along with recovered nurses that exactly who should be treating them.

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    1. “At least 95% of the time I have seen #LIBERATE it has been in one of your posts.”

      Yeah, but Len does not have 80 million followers. Nor is he responsible for leading the nation out of this pandemic. Duh!

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      1. Hey, wait a minute. Fake news! Who told you I don’t have 80 million followers.

        I have billions and billions.

        If you count my microbiome that is truly dependent upon my care and feeding.

        MAGA: My Amiable Gut Animals. 😇

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    2. #LIBERATE was a call for insurrection. Consider the death threats, the kidnapping plans, the storming of the statehouse by armed gangs. Such a message from a sitting president is at best foolhardy, at worst treason.

      An addendum to Trump’s messaging about the election are the death threats to Secretaries of State, both Democrat and Republican.

      We know that the severity of symptoms is dependent upon volume of viral elements, among other variables. That is the danger that has sickened and killed thousands of nurses, doctors and other frontline workers. If a nurse test positive, to put him or her back into a COVID ward is a danger both to patients on the cusp and the worker.

      The point is we should not even be here. The hard hit areas like The Dakotas ignored the virus until it is too late. And rural areas can’t handle the number of hospitalizations.

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      1. “We know that the severity of symptoms is dependent upon volume of viral elements, among other variables. ”

        Uh, no.

        You utterly misunderstand viral infections.

        The intensity of your exposure may well help determine if you become infected, or not,but once you are infected, your viral load is an internal matter.

        Viruses must link to a cell, enter it, and then take it over to make copies of itself until the cell’s resources are exhausted and the cell ruptures and releases the new virus particles.

        Your viral load grows exponentially, like compound interest. The rate of growth is fast enough that it does not really matter where you started. What does matter is how long the growth goes on without resistance from your body or antiviral agents.

        Your body will vary in the response of your immune system based on your age and health and also your prior exposure to similar viruses. It appears that recent prior exposure to coronaviruses that cause colds can trigger a fast enough response that you would have mild or no symptoms hence the high rate of asymptomatic cases.

        Early intervention with antivirals like convalescent plasma and monoclonal antibody preparations can also shut it down.

        Once your body’s immune system is fully engaged, viral replication effectively stops. Antibodies block virus entry into cells and cellular elements kill infected cells before they can make new viral particles.

        Once the antibody and cellular response are in place, further exposure to the virus is irrelevant to viral load.

        President Trump, and other survivors, like those nurses, can no longer be infected nor can they pass the infection to others.

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        1. One of the concerns is that the infected nurses could still infect co-workers, if not necessarily the patients. If someone tested positive, you seem to indicate they cannot do so.

          One of the doctors in ND said the best solution is a mask mandate to cut the number of patients. This would take the pressure off of positive tested medical st

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          1. I’m not commenting on masks. that’s a local issue. I really don’t know what the right thing is in ND, and it probably varies by locality.

            Currently positive HC workers can infect others who are negative for about 6 to 10 days, after that they can’t. Recovered HC workers cannot.

            But again, segregating patients and HC workers by positive tests makes sense.

            Let the HC workers who are negative so far treat NON-COVID patients and let those who are currently positive but asymptomatic or recovered treat COVID patients.

            When the HC system is stretched in a sparsely populated state, you can’t send positive but healthy workers home and leave your remaining negative workers to get exposed treating infected patients. HC workers are a finite resource.

            Let the recovered and positive but well HC workers protect the remaining negative workers.

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          1. I know that, I have been making that point for months, as the reason that it is so important to employ antiviral measures early, on an out patient basis. But the viral load at the time a patient gets hospitalized has no relationship to the initial infection, nor to subsequent added exposures.

            If you inhaled 1000 virus particles, better than 900 will simply get hung up in snot and swallowed and inactivated. Of those that actually came into contact with nasal tissues, the virus particle has no motive ability, it has to randomly bump its spike protein against an angiotensin receptor to get into cell. Not all will ever make contact. But those that do get into the cells will take over those cells and make copies. That first generation of new copies will be hundreds of times the number of the particles in the initial infection, or any subsequent exposure, and they will already be on the inside of the mucus defense. Multiplication from that point is exponential .

            So, once the infection has taken hold, viral load from then on is unrelated to any new exposure.

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