[conspire] When to get a covid test, brains, and a weird case, and a cardiology vs. immunology joke

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> I flat out don't trust anything out of china.

Yeah, finally, _there_ ya go.  Isn't that what you really meant all
along when you suddenly said 'Don't believe it' about a full study in
the world's most prestigious medical journal?  You meant the fact that it
was written up by top medical researchers in _Shanghai_.

Because, you know, you can automatically assume that anything pretty
nearly _anyone_ in mainland China says is twisted and deliberatly
dishonest,  Or alternatively that it is incompetent.

Of course, you haven't worked very much on that narrative.  We're
supposed to believe that _either_ eleven researchers suddenly destroyed
their professional reputation in front of the entire world with fraud,
or that they did so through ineptitude and gross error.


> Do you really think they have contained WUHAN-19?  

Um, the _Lancet_ study nowhere even remotely so suggested.  It was
merely a 3-month follow-up study in cerebral micro-structural changes in
COVID-19 patients.  Thus the, y'know, title, saying exactly that.

Does this mean that you not only 'don't trust' this scientific paper
solely because of its authors' citizenship, but also that you never
bothered to read it and are now embarassing yourself making greatly
mistaken claims about it in public?

(I'm not going to take the bait on your childish renaming.)


Since you mention it, as I've repeatedly reminded you on the telephone, 
and you keep trying to ignore, the nation of New Zealand had an
outbreak, and responded to it by _competently_ doing all the things the
United States should have done, if the USA didn't have a lying,
incompetent crimelord occupying the Executive Mansion and thereby
preventing someone from being President.  PM Adern immediately ordered
stringent quarantining of new arrivals, and _actual_ contact tracing
of cases, and _actual_ serious testing, and _actual_ social distancing
measures, and the result was that all cases got concluded, and there is
no longer any SARS-CoV-2 in New Zealand, nor are there any remaining
restrictions on any business or other social activity.  They fixed the
outbreak.  Gone.

At this point, while waiting for the rest of the world to get its act
together, all they're needing to do, to keep it from coming back in, is 
strictly enforce the 2-week quarantine on all arriving persons -- plus
they keep doing basic medical surveillance just in case something pops
up some other way.  And they're not even a rich country.  They're a bit
shabby by US standards.

But that was a triumph of competent administration -- exactly the
opposite of how the United States became the world's laughingstock.

You keep reiterating the 'docs' mailing list mantra, the one I got so
tired of you guys blitzing each other with many times each day that I
muted the entire mailing list's delivery stream, that 'There are only
two possible ways forward, either herd immunity or a vaccine', and
keep missing the obvious point -- even though I keep mentioning it --
that New Zealand had neither herd immunity nor a vaccine, yet stomped
the infection completely out, nationwide.

Maybe the reason you 'docs' regulars (who by a _totally_ strange
coincidence seem to all be Trumpistas) keep reiterating the mantra
endlessly is so you can avoid thinking about the third obvious route
forward:  competence.