17 ms·

TSA officers who tested positive for coronavirus did pat-downs at SJC airport

103 points by sahin-boydas 7y ago

Cyberdog 7y ago
If the entire NBA got suspended over one sick employee, could the same please happen to the TSA over two?
- mythrwy 7y ago
  Maybe when there are no flights they won't be needed anyway.
  - MegaButts 7y ago
    The TSA was never really needed for anything other than security theater and creating bullshit jobs for politicians. https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8701741/tsa-screenings-homeland-security-red-teams-95-percent-failure https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8701741/tsa-screenings-hom...
- leggomylibro 7y ago
  Probably not; it's basically a massive jobs program to employ the otherwise unemployable, and furloughing them all would twist the knife into the economy because most TSA agents are in income brackets that stop spending when their paychecks pause.
  - MegaButts 7y ago
    I've always hated how we don't create useful jobs for people that need work. There is so much infrastructure in this country that is deteriorating, why aren't we doing anything about that? Instead we create jobs that inconvenience everyone and provide no real value. In fact, they're harming the airline industry, so you could argue they're a net negative on the economy.
    - leggomylibro 7y ago
      I'm with you, it seems like it would be good for everyone if we created job programs with the simple stated purpose of employing people, instead of funneling busy-work jobs through pork-barrel spending. The people doing the work could feel more fulfilled, shared resources and services could be improved, and it could encourage social cohesion instead of discouraging it like the TSA does. Oh well.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > In fact, they're harming the airline industry TSA was created as a massive handout to the airline industry, in response to their request for relief in the wake of 9/11; they were previously responsible for security and the associated liability, but were relieved of the function and future liability by the introduction of TSA and at the same time given backward-reaching relief from liability.
      - sbuttgereit 7y ago
        This is a current day narrative cast in events drawn from the past. However, and I was plenty old enough at the time to be tuned into the political reality, was not that the airlines were begging to shift the costs of airport security to the government, but rather that proponents of expansive government responsibility insisting that something as important as airport security could not be trusted to the private sector. Consider this rather later statement from Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the early proponents of creating a public airport security agency: "Regrettably, some of my colleagues in the House and Senate are resolved to undermine TSA - and therefore airport security itself - by advocating for the pre-9/11 system of screening by private contractors. My response to that is: how quickly we forget. Mr. President, we have already tried an aviation security system run by private contractors. It very tragically did not work. The 9/11 attacks did not occur because of one, two, or three specific vulnerabilities. They occurred because a number of our defenses - including our system of airport screening - were simply inadequate. [...] It became clear to many of us that aviation security was inseparable from national security, and we could not, and should not, rely on the private sector to do the job. The security of our skies would have to become a government responsibility. Americans need to be safe and secure wherever and whenever they traveled. And while I would not want to cast blame or criticism on any one contractor, we've already witnessed the results of a system utilizing private security companies which were constantly pressured to focus on costs first, and security second.", Senator Joseph Lieberman, Tuesday, February 7, 2012 [https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/lieberman-dont-undermine_airport-security-by-privatizing-airport-screening https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/lieberman-...] While that statement came later, it was very much in line with the argumentation in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and was broadly supported by left and right. More at stake, reading between the lines, was much less to do with any corporate interests and more with congress just wanting to appear to be "doing something" in the wake of a national tragedy. Consider this more contemporary testimony from Rep. Nancy Pelosi: "Since the attacks, steps have been taken to realign federal agencies and change responsibilities, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security -- another brainchild of the senator from Connecticut, Senator Lieberman -- and the Terrorism Threat Integration Center being among the most notable. These may turn out to be worthwhile actions; however, my concern has been that these entities were instinctive responses -- although Senator Lieberman had suggested his department long before September 11th -- to general perception that things were not right, rather than a result of an exhaustive inquiry across the government with specific findings and specific recommendations for change", Rep. Nancy Pelosi, May 22, 2003, [https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-22.htm https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing2/9-11Com...] Trying to couch what happened with the nationalization of airport security as being a handout to corporate interests after the fact is like trying to demonize health insurance companies by saying that current day efforts to nationalize the health care system is really just an effort to give hand outs to big businesses involved in health. Given how historically my friends in various progressive movements are so often advocates of precisely this sort of government assumption of responsibility; perhaps if the parent comment is correct in their assertion, then maybe we should be discussing how easily duped those same progressives are. [EDIT: added Pelosi comment]
- B-Con 7y ago
  It wasn't suspended over the one, that was just the signal that they were doomed. The alternative was to wait a few weeks until a large fraction of the teams had incomplete rosters, owners and fans were furious at the asymmetrical competition, and there was social/legal pressure to stop sponsoring events drawing large crowds into social proximity, and then cancel. They knew that was coming and it's better to pull the plug early.
- brudgers 7y ago
  The US sports industry shut down as soon as WHO declared pandemic. The declaration facilitates insurance claims for lost revenue and offers a sound defense in response to lawsuits for harm caused by cancelled events. I suspect the TSA as a potential transmission vector was a consideration in restricting travel from Europe. This is not a scenario without existing contingency plans. Within hours of the WHO declaration, Doctors Without Borders was outside my local Walmart. That wasn’t a phone call earlier in the day.
  - oillio 7y ago
    Almost all insurance policies specifically exclude pandemics. This tragedy won't hit insurance companies directly much at all.
    - brudgers 7y ago
      It won’t hit insurance companies because it’s the type of risk that’s offloaded into the reinsurance market. Extrapolating from retail insurance products to bespoke policies for sophisticated well capitalized businesses is an error. Pontoon boats on Lake Havasu aren’t insured for piracy. Lloyd’s covers container ships for it because that’s what they do.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    Does the WHO have any clout when it comes to declarations like that? Wouldn't it need to be a state or federal declaration?
    - brudgers 7y ago
      The global insurance industry players operate internationally. Lloyd’s of London is an example. Zurich Insurance Group is another. Insurance is a financial product. The terms of the policy are entirely negotiable and probably negotiated at the league level for the NBA because of merchandising, image, and TV rights. Those rights are sold internationally as highlighted by the NBA falling afoul of China with regard to the Ugars a few months ago.
  - 7y ago
ck2 7y ago
This is why the country is doomed because it's happening now at every workplace, school, store and club. Everyone is breathing the same moist air when studies are showing it can survive for up to three hours in the air AND that you can catch it more than once since for some reason the body doesn't fully make immunity. And people feel absolutely no responsibility to isolate themselves, everyone coughing and sneezing at any store I try to go to. They are just going to do whatever they want to do. Imagine the world by the end of this year. Possible literal decimation.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > studies are showing it can survive for up to three hours in the air What studies are these? All the info I have seen talks about transmission requiring close contact with an infected person or directly breathing in droplets from their cough or sneeze. > you can catch it more than once since for some reason the body doesn't fully make immunity Where are you getting this from?
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Not GP and not signing that content, but it does seem like there are two strains of it; if true, you can get it twice.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > it does seem like there are two strains of it Where are you getting that from?
      - bubersson 7y ago
        You can check out the mutations here https://nextstrain.org/ncov?branchLabel=aa https://nextstrain.org/ncov?branchLabel=aa
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      "it does seem like there are two strains of it" This has been debunked on the This Week in Virology podcast[1]: Vincent Racaniello: There are a series of articles here, where there have been some claims about different circulating lineages and what that means. Are you on this, Cathy? Cathy Spindler: Right. So, there was an article that I first saw in the LA Times "Chinese Scientists Say Second Coronavirus Strain Is More Dangerous"[2]. But in that there's a link to virological.org, which we talked about another article posted there a couple of weeks ago[3], and they really debunk this and think even that this Chinese article about a second Coronavirus should be retracted. Two of the key claims that are reached by misunderstanding and overinterpreation of data and an additional analysis suffers from methodological limitations. So this long thing on virological.org goes in to the reasons why there's no real evidence for two different strains, a more severe strain and a less severe strain. Rich Condit: It also provides a nice summary of this sort of variation in sequence that's being observed in the virus over time, which is good. Vincent: Yeah, it's a good aritcle. We'll put a link. It's worth reading, but as everyone should know, when these [indistinct] viruses, every replication cycle they sustain mutations in their genomes and the lethal ones are gone, the viruses don't reproduce, but some of them stay and if they're neutral they remain. So they can be characteristic. So the virus introduced in to the Washington area is a single introduction and then it's spread and you can tell that because it has a unique set of mutations compared to say, the Chinese isolate, but it doesn't mean anything biologically. It's just markers. Rich: And the markers are really interesting because they give you insight in to, I mean the insight that I got from observing what came out of the Washington cases is that from looking at the sequence of the virus they concluded that in fact it had been circulating for some time, and they could even get a very very rough estimate of how many cases might be out there based on the variation in sequence and the time at which the disease first showed up in a person. Vincent: I think there are some emails later about this. People are concerned that, and people suggest in these papers, at least the one here, that we're being critical of that it could be evolved to be more virulent or more transmissible. There's no evidence for that whatsoever. Rich: This is the kind of thing that... it just won't go away! Vincent: Oh, it doesn't go away... new outbreak and it comes back. Rich: Yeah, and there's no evidence. People have looked at this. We've gone over this for several.. Zika, Ebola, where's there's been variation and people point to a particular variation and they say, "This is going to make it more virulent" or something, and then the experiments ultimately get done and no. It hasn't made a difference. Vincent: And also the issue of increased transmissibility, I think this virus is already very transmissible as it is, and I think the mutations that made it effectively transmissible among humans, which happened very early on, I don't know, either in animals or in humans early on, before we knew about it, they're done, and it's going to be hard to know what they were. MERS coronavirus has never acquired those high transmissibility changes and it keeps fizzling out and then you have another reintroduction from camels but this particular SARS-Cov-2 sustained them probably early on and it's a very good transmitter. It doesn't need to get better, at least from my anthropocentric view. We never really know what viruses are selected by, but I don't think there's eny evidence, and it's very hard to get that evidence. That paper tells you what you need to prove that mutations are doing something phenotypically. It's very hard to get that. Rich: It has occurred to me that people who don't think about this stuff every day might be a little confused by this discussion relative to the discussion that goes on all the time about variation in influenza virus strains, and new strains coming up and having to change the vaccine and stuff. But that's different. That's variation in the influenza virus that makes it evade the existing immunity, and those sorts of variations arise so you get circulation of viruses that you don't have as good an immune response to, but that's different than a virus making mutations that make it more virulent. It's a different story. [1] - at about 13 minutes in to episode 590 - http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-590/ http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-590/ [2] - https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-05/chinese-scientists-say-second-coronavirus-strain-more-dangerous https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-05/chinese-sci... [3] - http://virological.org/t/response-to-on-the-origin-and-continuing-evolution-of-sars-cov-2/418 http://virological.org/t/response-to-on-the-origin-and-conti...
paxys 7y ago
Meanwhile the government has its eyes and ears covered and is refusing to test people, just to keep the official numbers down.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- r00fus 7y ago
  Federal government. State governments are issuing executive orders and declaring state of emergency.
  - davidw 7y ago
    IDK, a lot of them still feel pretty much in the 'muddling' phase. Oregon seems to be taking a "wait and see" approach which is ridiculous because no one can "see" anything without adequate testing! We finally got bans on events over 250 people yesterday, but schools are still open, even if we pulled our kids.
    - halfmatthalfcat 7y ago
      Been very impressed with Cuomo (NY Governor) and for the most part, de Blasio (NYC Mayor) has been fine.
    - pengaru 7y ago
      > Oregon seems to be taking a "wait and see" approach which is ridiculous because no one can "see" anything without adequate testing! You still see fatalities and the symptomatic without testing. It's just not preemptive detection, "wait and see" in this context just strikes me as "wait til the hospitals are overwhelmed". Which is still dumb imho.
    - r00fus 7y ago
      Schools are open in CA also. There needs to be a stimulus that subsidizes paid time off or these organizations will go under.
wool_gather 7y ago
The part that's missing here: Public announcement of when exactly these folks were on duty in the last two weeks so that travellers who came into contact with them can self-identify and get tested. Or better, just announcement that any traveller that passed through their checkpoint recently can get tested, regardless of the timeframe. The virus has no interest in helping TSA or politicians save face. We have to start testing and publishing the results.
- heimidal 7y ago
  They aren’t testing most people with symptoms. No way will they start testing random people without.
  - jvm___ 7y ago
    They can't can they? I thought the US has a shortage of tests and lacks capacity to process them as well.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      I asked somebody today (union steward) and they suggested going to the hospital. If I decided I wanted to get tested, I think I would call my primary care doctor instead, or possibly an urgent care center and see what they said. I assume nobody wants you to waltz right in, even or especially the ER.
  - daniel_iversen 7y ago
    They aren't doing much of anything really are they? I love that Denmark, with only 400-500 cases took the drastic approach of suspending schools, kindergartens and a lot of public and private people are going home: https://www.thelocal.dk/20200311/denmark-to-shut-all-schools-and-universities-to-fight-virus https://www.thelocal.dk/20200311/denmark-to-shut-all-schools...
    - adventured 7y ago
      Only? That's more cases than the UK has. If you scale Denmark's 617 cases up to the US population, it's 36,000 cases equivalent. If you scale it to China, it'd be near 150,000. What's worthy of "only" about that? That's a shit show. A colossal failure, in the parlance currently being thrown at the US. How about Norway currently? 43,000 equivalent. How about Italy? 60,000 cases equivalent, with 5,500 deaths. Switzerland? 25,000 equivalent. Sweden? 20,000 equivalent. But I understand, America bad. It's the same obnoxious theme in every thread on HN right now. Europe's results - including Denmark - are not impressive at all. That's the actual situation.
ekianjo 7y ago
The other way to look at it is, are there TSA officers who don't have coronavirus by now?
- lolc 7y ago
  After two weeks they are immune!
throwawaycbxu 7y ago
At this point, I am concerned that politics is still taking precedence over saving lives. Australia seems to be doing the right thing, except for travel bans. The government swiftly imposed travel bans on China, South Korea and Iran, but inexplicably held off on Italy for more than a week (a cynic would say that it wasn’t that inexplicable, but let’s not get sidetracked). The United States seems to be a hotbed of undiagnosed infection, and Americans are still streaming in. Tom Hanks (who, to be fair might have been infected in Australia) could be the tip of the iceberg. Shutting down travel from the US to Australia might anger the US government, but it would seem to be a prudent action. The US Schengen travel ban, exempting the UK, also seems to be cynical geopolitics, that could cost the UK more than the rest of Europe. If geopolitics is a problem, then a full travel ban could be more palatable. The status quo is decidedly uncomfortable.

103 points by sahin-boydas 7y ago

Cyberdog 7y ago

If the entire NBA got suspended over one sick employee, could the same please happen to the TSA over two?

mythrwy 7y ago
Maybe when there are no flights they won't be needed anyway.
- MegaButts 7y ago
  The TSA was never really needed for anything other than security theater and creating bullshit jobs for politicians. https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8701741/tsa-screenings-homeland-security-red-teams-95-percent-failure https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8701741/tsa-screenings-hom...
leggomylibro 7y ago
Probably not; it's basically a massive jobs program to employ the otherwise unemployable, and furloughing them all would twist the knife into the economy because most TSA agents are in income brackets that stop spending when their paychecks pause.
- MegaButts 7y ago
  I've always hated how we don't create useful jobs for people that need work. There is so much infrastructure in this country that is deteriorating, why aren't we doing anything about that? Instead we create jobs that inconvenience everyone and provide no real value. In fact, they're harming the airline industry, so you could argue they're a net negative on the economy.
  - leggomylibro 7y ago
    I'm with you, it seems like it would be good for everyone if we created job programs with the simple stated purpose of employing people, instead of funneling busy-work jobs through pork-barrel spending. The people doing the work could feel more fulfilled, shared resources and services could be improved, and it could encourage social cohesion instead of discouraging it like the TSA does. Oh well.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > In fact, they're harming the airline industry TSA was created as a massive handout to the airline industry, in response to their request for relief in the wake of 9/11; they were previously responsible for security and the associated liability, but were relieved of the function and future liability by the introduction of TSA and at the same time given backward-reaching relief from liability.
    - sbuttgereit 7y ago
      This is a current day narrative cast in events drawn from the past. However, and I was plenty old enough at the time to be tuned into the political reality, was not that the airlines were begging to shift the costs of airport security to the government, but rather that proponents of expansive government responsibility insisting that something as important as airport security could not be trusted to the private sector. Consider this rather later statement from Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the early proponents of creating a public airport security agency: "Regrettably, some of my colleagues in the House and Senate are resolved to undermine TSA - and therefore airport security itself - by advocating for the pre-9/11 system of screening by private contractors. My response to that is: how quickly we forget. Mr. President, we have already tried an aviation security system run by private contractors. It very tragically did not work. The 9/11 attacks did not occur because of one, two, or three specific vulnerabilities. They occurred because a number of our defenses - including our system of airport screening - were simply inadequate. [...] It became clear to many of us that aviation security was inseparable from national security, and we could not, and should not, rely on the private sector to do the job. The security of our skies would have to become a government responsibility. Americans need to be safe and secure wherever and whenever they traveled. And while I would not want to cast blame or criticism on any one contractor, we've already witnessed the results of a system utilizing private security companies which were constantly pressured to focus on costs first, and security second.", Senator Joseph Lieberman, Tuesday, February 7, 2012 [https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/lieberman-dont-undermine_airport-security-by-privatizing-airport-screening https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/lieberman-...] While that statement came later, it was very much in line with the argumentation in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and was broadly supported by left and right. More at stake, reading between the lines, was much less to do with any corporate interests and more with congress just wanting to appear to be "doing something" in the wake of a national tragedy. Consider this more contemporary testimony from Rep. Nancy Pelosi: "Since the attacks, steps have been taken to realign federal agencies and change responsibilities, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security -- another brainchild of the senator from Connecticut, Senator Lieberman -- and the Terrorism Threat Integration Center being among the most notable. These may turn out to be worthwhile actions; however, my concern has been that these entities were instinctive responses -- although Senator Lieberman had suggested his department long before September 11th -- to general perception that things were not right, rather than a result of an exhaustive inquiry across the government with specific findings and specific recommendations for change", Rep. Nancy Pelosi, May 22, 2003, [https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-22.htm https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing2/9-11Com...] Trying to couch what happened with the nationalization of airport security as being a handout to corporate interests after the fact is like trying to demonize health insurance companies by saying that current day efforts to nationalize the health care system is really just an effort to give hand outs to big businesses involved in health. Given how historically my friends in various progressive movements are so often advocates of precisely this sort of government assumption of responsibility; perhaps if the parent comment is correct in their assertion, then maybe we should be discussing how easily duped those same progressives are. [EDIT: added Pelosi comment]
B-Con 7y ago
It wasn't suspended over the one, that was just the signal that they were doomed. The alternative was to wait a few weeks until a large fraction of the teams had incomplete rosters, owners and fans were furious at the asymmetrical competition, and there was social/legal pressure to stop sponsoring events drawing large crowds into social proximity, and then cancel. They knew that was coming and it's better to pull the plug early.
brudgers 7y ago
The US sports industry shut down as soon as WHO declared pandemic. The declaration facilitates insurance claims for lost revenue and offers a sound defense in response to lawsuits for harm caused by cancelled events. I suspect the TSA as a potential transmission vector was a consideration in restricting travel from Europe. This is not a scenario without existing contingency plans. Within hours of the WHO declaration, Doctors Without Borders was outside my local Walmart. That wasn’t a phone call earlier in the day.
- oillio 7y ago
  Almost all insurance policies specifically exclude pandemics. This tragedy won't hit insurance companies directly much at all.
  - brudgers 7y ago
    It won’t hit insurance companies because it’s the type of risk that’s offloaded into the reinsurance market. Extrapolating from retail insurance products to bespoke policies for sophisticated well capitalized businesses is an error. Pontoon boats on Lake Havasu aren’t insured for piracy. Lloyd’s covers container ships for it because that’s what they do.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  Does the WHO have any clout when it comes to declarations like that? Wouldn't it need to be a state or federal declaration?
  - brudgers 7y ago
    The global insurance industry players operate internationally. Lloyd’s of London is an example. Zurich Insurance Group is another. Insurance is a financial product. The terms of the policy are entirely negotiable and probably negotiated at the league level for the NBA because of merchandising, image, and TV rights. Those rights are sold internationally as highlighted by the NBA falling afoul of China with regard to the Ugars a few months ago.
- 7y ago

ck2 7y ago

This is why the country is doomed because it's happening now at every workplace, school, store and club. Everyone is breathing the same moist air when studies are showing it can survive for up to three hours in the air AND that you can catch it more than once since for some reason the body doesn't fully make immunity. And people feel absolutely no responsibility to isolate themselves, everyone coughing and sneezing at any store I try to go to. They are just going to do whatever they want to do. Imagine the world by the end of this year. Possible literal decimation.

pdonis 7y ago
> studies are showing it can survive for up to three hours in the air What studies are these? All the info I have seen talks about transmission requiring close contact with an infected person or directly breathing in droplets from their cough or sneeze. > you can catch it more than once since for some reason the body doesn't fully make immunity Where are you getting this from?
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Not GP and not signing that content, but it does seem like there are two strains of it; if true, you can get it twice.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > it does seem like there are two strains of it Where are you getting that from?
    - bubersson 7y ago
      You can check out the mutations here https://nextstrain.org/ncov?branchLabel=aa https://nextstrain.org/ncov?branchLabel=aa
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    "it does seem like there are two strains of it" This has been debunked on the This Week in Virology podcast[1]: Vincent Racaniello: There are a series of articles here, where there have been some claims about different circulating lineages and what that means. Are you on this, Cathy? Cathy Spindler: Right. So, there was an article that I first saw in the LA Times "Chinese Scientists Say Second Coronavirus Strain Is More Dangerous"[2]. But in that there's a link to virological.org, which we talked about another article posted there a couple of weeks ago[3], and they really debunk this and think even that this Chinese article about a second Coronavirus should be retracted. Two of the key claims that are reached by misunderstanding and overinterpreation of data and an additional analysis suffers from methodological limitations. So this long thing on virological.org goes in to the reasons why there's no real evidence for two different strains, a more severe strain and a less severe strain. Rich Condit: It also provides a nice summary of this sort of variation in sequence that's being observed in the virus over time, which is good. Vincent: Yeah, it's a good aritcle. We'll put a link. It's worth reading, but as everyone should know, when these [indistinct] viruses, every replication cycle they sustain mutations in their genomes and the lethal ones are gone, the viruses don't reproduce, but some of them stay and if they're neutral they remain. So they can be characteristic. So the virus introduced in to the Washington area is a single introduction and then it's spread and you can tell that because it has a unique set of mutations compared to say, the Chinese isolate, but it doesn't mean anything biologically. It's just markers. Rich: And the markers are really interesting because they give you insight in to, I mean the insight that I got from observing what came out of the Washington cases is that from looking at the sequence of the virus they concluded that in fact it had been circulating for some time, and they could even get a very very rough estimate of how many cases might be out there based on the variation in sequence and the time at which the disease first showed up in a person. Vincent: I think there are some emails later about this. People are concerned that, and people suggest in these papers, at least the one here, that we're being critical of that it could be evolved to be more virulent or more transmissible. There's no evidence for that whatsoever. Rich: This is the kind of thing that... it just won't go away! Vincent: Oh, it doesn't go away... new outbreak and it comes back. Rich: Yeah, and there's no evidence. People have looked at this. We've gone over this for several.. Zika, Ebola, where's there's been variation and people point to a particular variation and they say, "This is going to make it more virulent" or something, and then the experiments ultimately get done and no. It hasn't made a difference. Vincent: And also the issue of increased transmissibility, I think this virus is already very transmissible as it is, and I think the mutations that made it effectively transmissible among humans, which happened very early on, I don't know, either in animals or in humans early on, before we knew about it, they're done, and it's going to be hard to know what they were. MERS coronavirus has never acquired those high transmissibility changes and it keeps fizzling out and then you have another reintroduction from camels but this particular SARS-Cov-2 sustained them probably early on and it's a very good transmitter. It doesn't need to get better, at least from my anthropocentric view. We never really know what viruses are selected by, but I don't think there's eny evidence, and it's very hard to get that evidence. That paper tells you what you need to prove that mutations are doing something phenotypically. It's very hard to get that. Rich: It has occurred to me that people who don't think about this stuff every day might be a little confused by this discussion relative to the discussion that goes on all the time about variation in influenza virus strains, and new strains coming up and having to change the vaccine and stuff. But that's different. That's variation in the influenza virus that makes it evade the existing immunity, and those sorts of variations arise so you get circulation of viruses that you don't have as good an immune response to, but that's different than a virus making mutations that make it more virulent. It's a different story. [1] - at about 13 minutes in to episode 590 - http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-590/ http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-590/ [2] - https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-05/chinese-scientists-say-second-coronavirus-strain-more-dangerous https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-05/chinese-sci... [3] - http://virological.org/t/response-to-on-the-origin-and-continuing-evolution-of-sars-cov-2/418 http://virological.org/t/response-to-on-the-origin-and-conti...

paxys 7y ago

Meanwhile the government has its eyes and ears covered and is refusing to test people, just to keep the official numbers down.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
r00fus 7y ago
Federal government. State governments are issuing executive orders and declaring state of emergency.
- davidw 7y ago
  IDK, a lot of them still feel pretty much in the 'muddling' phase. Oregon seems to be taking a "wait and see" approach which is ridiculous because no one can "see" anything without adequate testing! We finally got bans on events over 250 people yesterday, but schools are still open, even if we pulled our kids.
  - halfmatthalfcat 7y ago
    Been very impressed with Cuomo (NY Governor) and for the most part, de Blasio (NYC Mayor) has been fine.
  - pengaru 7y ago
    > Oregon seems to be taking a "wait and see" approach which is ridiculous because no one can "see" anything without adequate testing! You still see fatalities and the symptomatic without testing. It's just not preemptive detection, "wait and see" in this context just strikes me as "wait til the hospitals are overwhelmed". Which is still dumb imho.
  - r00fus 7y ago
    Schools are open in CA also. There needs to be a stimulus that subsidizes paid time off or these organizations will go under.

wool_gather 7y ago

The part that's missing here: Public announcement of when exactly these folks were on duty in the last two weeks so that travellers who came into contact with them can self-identify and get tested. Or better, just announcement that any traveller that passed through their checkpoint recently can get tested, regardless of the timeframe. The virus has no interest in helping TSA or politicians save face. We have to start testing and publishing the results.

heimidal 7y ago
They aren’t testing most people with symptoms. No way will they start testing random people without.
- jvm___ 7y ago
  They can't can they? I thought the US has a shortage of tests and lacks capacity to process them as well.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I asked somebody today (union steward) and they suggested going to the hospital. If I decided I wanted to get tested, I think I would call my primary care doctor instead, or possibly an urgent care center and see what they said. I assume nobody wants you to waltz right in, even or especially the ER.
- daniel_iversen 7y ago
  They aren't doing much of anything really are they? I love that Denmark, with only 400-500 cases took the drastic approach of suspending schools, kindergartens and a lot of public and private people are going home: https://www.thelocal.dk/20200311/denmark-to-shut-all-schools-and-universities-to-fight-virus https://www.thelocal.dk/20200311/denmark-to-shut-all-schools...
  - adventured 7y ago
    Only? That's more cases than the UK has. If you scale Denmark's 617 cases up to the US population, it's 36,000 cases equivalent. If you scale it to China, it'd be near 150,000. What's worthy of "only" about that? That's a shit show. A colossal failure, in the parlance currently being thrown at the US. How about Norway currently? 43,000 equivalent. How about Italy? 60,000 cases equivalent, with 5,500 deaths. Switzerland? 25,000 equivalent. Sweden? 20,000 equivalent. But I understand, America bad. It's the same obnoxious theme in every thread on HN right now. Europe's results - including Denmark - are not impressive at all. That's the actual situation.

ekianjo 7y ago

The other way to look at it is, are there TSA officers who don't have coronavirus by now?

lolc 7y ago
After two weeks they are immune!

throwawaycbxu 7y ago

At this point, I am concerned that politics is still taking precedence over saving lives. Australia seems to be doing the right thing, except for travel bans. The government swiftly imposed travel bans on China, South Korea and Iran, but inexplicably held off on Italy for more than a week (a cynic would say that it wasn’t that inexplicable, but let’s not get sidetracked). The United States seems to be a hotbed of undiagnosed infection, and Americans are still streaming in. Tom Hanks (who, to be fair might have been infected in Australia) could be the tip of the iceberg. Shutting down travel from the US to Australia might anger the US government, but it would seem to be a prudent action. The US Schengen travel ban, exempting the UK, also seems to be cynical geopolitics, that could cost the UK more than the rest of Europe. If geopolitics is a problem, then a full travel ban could be more palatable. The status quo is decidedly uncomfortable.