8 ms·

A false sense of security

72 points by graeme 6y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
That whole article reminded me of “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Alan Poe. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Works_of_the_Late_Edgar_Allan_Poe/Volume_1/The_Masque_of_the_Red_Death https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Works_of_the_Late_Edgar... The people in the story, also tried to create a “bubble”
- jasonhansel 6y ago
  But the people in the Masque of the Red Death actually wore masks at all times.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
A well written and refreshingly honest account of mistakes to avoid while holding events during these times. Kudos!
- roywiggins 6y ago
  More informative, I think: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018374/peter-diamandis-covid-superspreader-a360-conference/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018374/peter-di... I personally find it baffling that someone organizing an event would not have realized, one year into this thing, that COVID tests are not 100% reliable. Part of me thinks that he knew full well it was a risk and just assumed he'd get lucky. The alternative is that he was badly misinformed and really didn't know what he was doing in the first place.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    In either case, this is further reinforcement that you cannot play dice with this thing. More honest stories like this will humble us.
vmception 6y ago
He tried, might be helpful for some covid/mask skeptics or for thwarting meticulous attempts like this
brundolf 6y ago
Typo in the title; if -> of
- vmception 6y ago
  Thats what made me read it
vmception 6y ago
The key takeaways: Antigen tests are trash, there is no such thing as a 15 minute rapid test for covid PCR tests cannot be relied on without specific controls (a test X number of days into exposure, no subsequent exposure, multiday quarantine after the test regardless). PCR tests and can only help with statistics but not your personal assurance of avoiding covid Don't trust anyone that says they have a covid safe solution for their gathering. Only consider the prevalence of covid in the area (really, LA? really?) and your mitigation strategies like wearing a mask. Even a respected figure with a vaccine company has no idea what theyre talking about. The county of Kuau’i has a mandatory 3 day quarantine no matter what the result, or port of prior-entry. This is down from 10-day quarantine. They have 0.2 cases per 100k now alongside the significant deterrent from going there There are a lot of examples that can function as control groups
- zby 6y ago
  I don't know what happened with his antigen tests - but there is scientific backed data on their efficacy - and it is pretty good: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Comparison-of-seven-commercial-SARS-CoV-2-rapid-Corman-Haage/685da6c3c320128231679e51ab2f8a846cc0dd23 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Comparison-of-seven-co...
  - esotericn 6y ago
    "Pretty good" isn't good enough for this sort of thing though. If you care about contracting coronavirus, if for you infection is a death sentence, then you need something daft like a 99.9999% certainty that people and things you interact with aren't carrying the virus, and that doesn't just include their nasal passages; it means them not having it on their hands, or on their clothes, or whatever else. In the real world, outside of these hyper corporate events, most people I know who aren't vulnerable just take basic measures because if we get the virus it'll probably be fine. But that's not good enough if you're selling snake oil.
    - zby 6y ago
      For everything you need a use case. You list those where antigen tests don't fit - but it does not mean they are trash.
esotericn 6y ago
This article is very bizarre to me. There is no way to completely avoid the coronavirus whilst interacting with other humans unless it's simply not prevalent in your area (e.g. Australia, NZ). Pretty much everyone has failed. Football teams, film studios, politicians, the lot. It's like trying to catch the wind. The way to eliminate it, if you want to, is to accept that it will infiltrate your group, slowly quarantine it out until there's none left, and then allow no-one into or out of the group. I don't understand how an intelligent person couldn't simply derive this from first principles, it's been eleven months or so now. Do they exist in a different world to the rest of us or what? Most people I know, unless they're barricaded inside, have pretty much accepted that they're going to get it, the last study I read indicated that 1 in 4 individuals in the UK have already been infected.
- xvedejas 6y ago
  I think you can avoid the virus without barricading yourself inside, if you understand its mechanisms correctly. There's a big difference in behavior between someone who mistakenly thinks the virus is primarily spread by surfaces, and someone else who realizes that dry, poorly ventilated enclosures are what to avoid based on the degree to which those places are dry and poorly ventilated/enclosed. Nobody is going to be 100% safe without choosing unreasonably cautious isolation. But there's a world of difference between being 10% safe and being 98% safe. I live in a group house and through shared risk concerns and a good understanding of the virus's mechanisms, I'm confident in saying we're successfully being 98% safe. (I think the larger group (30 people) in the article really makes this somewhat intractable though. They were closer to the 10% safe.)
  - esotericn 6y ago
    Sure. You can wear a helmet, and you can cycle safely, but given enough years, you'll eventually end up falling off. That doesn't make helmets or cycling proficiency pointless, but it does mean not making wild claims that you're "immune" to accidents.
    - hatch_q 6y ago
elliottkember 6y ago
This is the most galling account of COVID rule-flaunting that I've seen. The meeting they held was, as far as I know, illegal, and with good reason. They really wanted to hold it, and thought they would get away with it. Personally, I don't think this guy should pass GO on his way to jail.
- jasonhansel 6y ago
  From the MIT Technology Review article about the incident: > His blog post also did not acknowledge that public health orders had banned gatherings between December 3 and January 25 in California. Diamandis would not respond when I asked whether he was aware that he was violating state health rules by holding his event. “I knew that there were challenges. But I don’t know that I want to answer that on the record,” he said.
jasonhansel 6y ago
Summary: conference leader [edit: and wannabe vaccine manufacturer!] tries to DIY an illegal quarantine bubble, ignores basic safety measures, recklessly endangers dozens of people, writes blog post, is not held accountable. The absolute worst line is: "my deepest apologies to all for whom my actions may have caused suffering." Why the "may have"?
- jasonhansel 6y ago
  Also: the use of "Intravenous vitamins and minerals" to prevent Covid is so wrong I don't even know where to start.
  - tomhoward 6y ago
    From the article "We engaged a professional medical organization..." A dismissal with the phrase "I don't even know where to start" is just a content-free way of expressing contempt, and suggests the writer doesn't have any interesting or useful information to share. Plenty of research indicates that at the very least, Vit D, Vit A and zinc help protect against severe covid, and it's notable that the author reports that nobody who attended this event has developed a serious case and 90% have already recovered.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I know an older gay man who survived the AID's epidemic in the early days of San Francisco. He said people tried creating bubbles to wall off the virus. And they all died because once the virus got through everyone got infected. I also know someone that was part of a '12 person covid bubble' Half of them got infected in May.
  - alanfranz 6y ago
    > He said people tried creating bubbles to wall off the virus. Something like the porn industry? AFAIK very few actors and actresses got infected so far.
    - 6y ago
umvi 6y ago
Why not just buy 400 vaccines, vaccinate all attendants beforehand, and... you're good to go. I guess vaccine supply is on a tight leash right now, but in the future when it's widely available, it's on you to be vaccinated just like the flu (i.e. attend gatherings at your own risk if you choose not to be vaccinated)
croes 6y ago
So he didn't consider that Corona has quite a long incubation period, which is why you should normally quarantine for a fortnight.
- alanfranz 6y ago
  > So he didn't consider that Corona has quite a long incubation period, which is why you should normally quarantine for a fortnight. The one thing that I still don't understand (and that, probably, we don't understand at a scientific level) is: if the virus levels are that low that a PCR test is negative, can such patient infect others?
rurban 6y ago
This looks the US still cannot follow proper swabbing procedures. Such a lot of false negatives hints to simple oral swab tests, which have a huge miss rate. Swabs need to be deep nasal. There are no receptors in the mouth! Surprising is the spit test, which should be made official really soon.
known 6y ago
of misspelled as "if" in title
Smerity 6y ago
This is an opinionated source attempting to save face. The MIT Tech Review article[1] really points out the lunacy and details that slipped through his authorial cracks. tldr: - Paid event where attendees flew in from around the world and A360 membership costs upwards of $30k per year - Employees knew they should be seeking indoor filming permits (and shifted venue / accommodations multiple times) but decided to avoid / abandon the effort - Mask wearing was not enforced and there was no self quarantine required - Diamandis directed employees to be tested by a company he's intimately involved in, HIPAA violations occurred on a text chat, and they didn't report infections (as legally required) to California Extract from MIT Tech Review article: > His blog post also did not acknowledge that public health orders had banned gatherings between December 3 and January 25 in California. Diamandis would not respond when I asked whether he was aware that he was violating state health rules by holding his event. “I knew that there were challenges. But I don’t know that I want to answer that on the record,” he said. That anyone could believe such an immunity bubble could be maintained when the White House failed or that they claim to have provided "Immunity Boosting: Intravenous vitamins and minerals" or "Regenerative Treatments" to safeguard against COVID just highlights the lunacy of the entire enterprise. Their final infection rate was 43%[2] for those who were unmasked. That his surprise conclusion was "Bottom line again: Masks Work." when noting the 35 (!) AV employees that were there in person "isolated in one corner of the office" who walked away uninfected has not been a shock to nearly anyone for months. Yet this blog post makes it sound like they were completely blindsided and that even the most intensive analysis of the available medical literature (or common sense) would say otherwise. [1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018374/peter-diamandis-covid-superspreader-a360-conference/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018374/peter-di... [2]: From his own blog which may not be accurate given Diamandis noted to the MIT Tech Review regarding discrepancies in the count "“Someone is tracking,” he said, though he said he was not sure who."
z3t4 6y ago
Security should be applied in layers. Most common fail scenarios should be identified to make sure they are covered.

72 points by graeme 6y ago

That whole article reminded me of “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Alan Poe. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Works_of_the_Late_Edgar_Allan_Poe/Volume_1/The_Masque_of_the_Red_Death https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Works_of_the_Late_Edgar... The people in the story, also tried to create a “bubble”

jasonhansel 6y ago
But the people in the Masque of the Red Death actually wore masks at all times.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

A well written and refreshingly honest account of mistakes to avoid while holding events during these times. Kudos!

roywiggins 6y ago
More informative, I think: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018374/peter-diamandis-covid-superspreader-a360-conference/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018374/peter-di... I personally find it baffling that someone organizing an event would not have realized, one year into this thing, that COVID tests are not 100% reliable. Part of me thinks that he knew full well it was a risk and just assumed he'd get lucky. The alternative is that he was badly misinformed and really didn't know what he was doing in the first place.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  In either case, this is further reinforcement that you cannot play dice with this thing. More honest stories like this will humble us.

vmception 6y ago

He tried, might be helpful for some covid/mask skeptics or for thwarting meticulous attempts like this

brundolf 6y ago

Typo in the title; if -> of

vmception 6y ago
Thats what made me read it

vmception 6y ago

The key takeaways: Antigen tests are trash, there is no such thing as a 15 minute rapid test for covid PCR tests cannot be relied on without specific controls (a test X number of days into exposure, no subsequent exposure, multiday quarantine after the test regardless). PCR tests and can only help with statistics but not your personal assurance of avoiding covid Don't trust anyone that says they have a covid safe solution for their gathering. Only consider the prevalence of covid in the area (really, LA? really?) and your mitigation strategies like wearing a mask. Even a respected figure with a vaccine company has no idea what theyre talking about. The county of Kuau’i has a mandatory 3 day quarantine no matter what the result, or port of prior-entry. This is down from 10-day quarantine. They have 0.2 cases per 100k now alongside the significant deterrent from going there There are a lot of examples that can function as control groups

zby 6y ago
I don't know what happened with his antigen tests - but there is scientific backed data on their efficacy - and it is pretty good: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Comparison-of-seven-commercial-SARS-CoV-2-rapid-Corman-Haage/685da6c3c320128231679e51ab2f8a846cc0dd23 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Comparison-of-seven-co...
- esotericn 6y ago
  "Pretty good" isn't good enough for this sort of thing though. If you care about contracting coronavirus, if for you infection is a death sentence, then you need something daft like a 99.9999% certainty that people and things you interact with aren't carrying the virus, and that doesn't just include their nasal passages; it means them not having it on their hands, or on their clothes, or whatever else. In the real world, outside of these hyper corporate events, most people I know who aren't vulnerable just take basic measures because if we get the virus it'll probably be fine. But that's not good enough if you're selling snake oil.
  - zby 6y ago
    For everything you need a use case. You list those where antigen tests don't fit - but it does not mean they are trash.

esotericn 6y ago

This article is very bizarre to me. There is no way to completely avoid the coronavirus whilst interacting with other humans unless it's simply not prevalent in your area (e.g. Australia, NZ). Pretty much everyone has failed. Football teams, film studios, politicians, the lot. It's like trying to catch the wind. The way to eliminate it, if you want to, is to accept that it will infiltrate your group, slowly quarantine it out until there's none left, and then allow no-one into or out of the group. I don't understand how an intelligent person couldn't simply derive this from first principles, it's been eleven months or so now. Do they exist in a different world to the rest of us or what? Most people I know, unless they're barricaded inside, have pretty much accepted that they're going to get it, the last study I read indicated that 1 in 4 individuals in the UK have already been infected.

xvedejas 6y ago
I think you can avoid the virus without barricading yourself inside, if you understand its mechanisms correctly. There's a big difference in behavior between someone who mistakenly thinks the virus is primarily spread by surfaces, and someone else who realizes that dry, poorly ventilated enclosures are what to avoid based on the degree to which those places are dry and poorly ventilated/enclosed. Nobody is going to be 100% safe without choosing unreasonably cautious isolation. But there's a world of difference between being 10% safe and being 98% safe. I live in a group house and through shared risk concerns and a good understanding of the virus's mechanisms, I'm confident in saying we're successfully being 98% safe. (I think the larger group (30 people) in the article really makes this somewhat intractable though. They were closer to the 10% safe.)
- esotericn 6y ago
  Sure. You can wear a helmet, and you can cycle safely, but given enough years, you'll eventually end up falling off. That doesn't make helmets or cycling proficiency pointless, but it does mean not making wild claims that you're "immune" to accidents.
  - hatch_q 6y ago

elliottkember 6y ago

This is the most galling account of COVID rule-flaunting that I've seen. The meeting they held was, as far as I know, illegal, and with good reason. They really wanted to hold it, and thought they would get away with it. Personally, I don't think this guy should pass GO on his way to jail.

jasonhansel 6y ago
From the MIT Technology Review article about the incident: > His blog post also did not acknowledge that public health orders had banned gatherings between December 3 and January 25 in California. Diamandis would not respond when I asked whether he was aware that he was violating state health rules by holding his event. “I knew that there were challenges. But I don’t know that I want to answer that on the record,” he said.

jasonhansel 6y ago

Summary: conference leader [edit: and wannabe vaccine manufacturer!] tries to DIY an illegal quarantine bubble, ignores basic safety measures, recklessly endangers dozens of people, writes blog post, is not held accountable. The absolute worst line is: "my deepest apologies to all for whom my actions may have caused suffering." Why the "may have"?

jasonhansel 6y ago
Also: the use of "Intravenous vitamins and minerals" to prevent Covid is so wrong I don't even know where to start.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  From the article "We engaged a professional medical organization..." A dismissal with the phrase "I don't even know where to start" is just a content-free way of expressing contempt, and suggests the writer doesn't have any interesting or useful information to share. Plenty of research indicates that at the very least, Vit D, Vit A and zinc help protect against severe covid, and it's notable that the author reports that nobody who attended this event has developed a serious case and 90% have already recovered.
Gibbon1 6y ago
I know an older gay man who survived the AID's epidemic in the early days of San Francisco. He said people tried creating bubbles to wall off the virus. And they all died because once the virus got through everyone got infected. I also know someone that was part of a '12 person covid bubble' Half of them got infected in May.
- alanfranz 6y ago
  > He said people tried creating bubbles to wall off the virus. Something like the porn industry? AFAIK very few actors and actresses got infected so far.
  - 6y ago

umvi 6y ago

Why not just buy 400 vaccines, vaccinate all attendants beforehand, and... you're good to go. I guess vaccine supply is on a tight leash right now, but in the future when it's widely available, it's on you to be vaccinated just like the flu (i.e. attend gatherings at your own risk if you choose not to be vaccinated)

croes 6y ago

So he didn't consider that Corona has quite a long incubation period, which is why you should normally quarantine for a fortnight.

alanfranz 6y ago
> So he didn't consider that Corona has quite a long incubation period, which is why you should normally quarantine for a fortnight. The one thing that I still don't understand (and that, probably, we don't understand at a scientific level) is: if the virus levels are that low that a PCR test is negative, can such patient infect others?

rurban 6y ago

This looks the US still cannot follow proper swabbing procedures. Such a lot of false negatives hints to simple oral swab tests, which have a huge miss rate. Swabs need to be deep nasal. There are no receptors in the mouth! Surprising is the spit test, which should be made official really soon.

known 6y ago

of misspelled as "if" in title

Smerity 6y ago

This is an opinionated source attempting to save face. The MIT Tech Review article[1] really points out the lunacy and details that slipped through his authorial cracks. tldr: - Paid event where attendees flew in from around the world and A360 membership costs upwards of $30k per year - Employees knew they should be seeking indoor filming permits (and shifted venue / accommodations multiple times) but decided to avoid / abandon the effort - Mask wearing was not enforced and there was no self quarantine required - Diamandis directed employees to be tested by a company he's intimately involved in, HIPAA violations occurred on a text chat, and they didn't report infections (as legally required) to California Extract from MIT Tech Review article: > His blog post also did not acknowledge that public health orders had banned gatherings between December 3 and January 25 in California. Diamandis would not respond when I asked whether he was aware that he was violating state health rules by holding his event. “I knew that there were challenges. But I don’t know that I want to answer that on the record,” he said. That anyone could believe such an immunity bubble could be maintained when the White House failed or that they claim to have provided "Immunity Boosting: Intravenous vitamins and minerals" or "Regenerative Treatments" to safeguard against COVID just highlights the lunacy of the entire enterprise. Their final infection rate was 43%[2] for those who were unmasked. That his surprise conclusion was "Bottom line again: Masks Work." when noting the 35 (!) AV employees that were there in person "isolated in one corner of the office" who walked away uninfected has not been a shock to nearly anyone for months. Yet this blog post makes it sound like they were completely blindsided and that even the most intensive analysis of the available medical literature (or common sense) would say otherwise. [1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018374/peter-diamandis-covid-superspreader-a360-conference/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/13/1018374/peter-di... [2]: From his own blog which may not be accurate given Diamandis noted to the MIT Tech Review regarding discrepancies in the count "“Someone is tracking,” he said, though he said he was not sure who."

z3t4 6y ago

Security should be applied in layers. Most common fail scenarios should be identified to make sure they are covered.