Children are spoofing Covid-19 tests with soft drinks
bbc.com
bbc.com
Zoom support should have been able to see "this account has been locked out due to too many login attempts" though, so that's a bit of a fail. And of course the login error should say as much.
My job here is done; Captain Hindsight, away!
And the AT set is still used (with extensions) in GSM modems! It's still relevant!
(The article just recaps this without linking to it.)
This is just what Google does now.
One day before class when the teacher wasn't at our school, one kid said, "when I cough three times, everyone freeze." About 20 mins into the lecture, he did just that and we all held our positions. The teacher noticed about ten second later, asked us a bunch of times if we could hear him, and then, with exasperation, said, "well looks like they froze up again..."
We had a good laugh for the two mins or so we were down and then continued on. I don't think anyone ever blabbed that we had faked it just for kicks.
The teacher lost connection one day and one of the kids said "she's gone!" and it was immediate chaos, everyone started talking and making noises, one kid was literally screaming the whole time, the kids were drawing on the screen and fighting over who was sharing their screen, everyone was laughing and having a good time until the teacher reconnected. Later my daughter fondly told me about it, but I had already overheard the whole thing from the other room.
There are ways to do it, but the fear that she could potentially not be in control of her classroom at ANY MOMENT was something to behold and says something about our education system's focus and beliefs. There was a lot of information from me and my siblings with her on how to do it and options she could pursue to make online PE class engaging...fun times
It speaks to our educational systems priorities and structure not its function
Edit: the scariest was when I was getting an early start on some dinner prep and my kid came sprinting through the kitchen in socks while I was going from one side to the other while holding a big knife. They were doing a scavenger hunt and each item would be announced and they’d have 60 seconds to go try to find it. I had to email the teacher about that one and ask them to be cognizant of the safety of what they are asking the kids to do, given that they have no clue what environment each kid is in.
and then black out the webcam (don't turn it off). Then the name shows up in the corner, and nobody will nominate you to speak. Heard this via a church group from a teacher at the International School of Geneva. Seems like word gets around fast!
"School is not a place for smart people" - Rich Sanchez
It is "easy", however, to make everyone suck equally as much at school. At least that is my experience.
I actually got diagnosed with a high IQ, which I got tested for because most classes were boring to me and thus I didn't really do well. As aresult of me not being challenged much if at all back then, I never really learned how to learn.
Thus I slid further and further down with learning until I dropped out.
IMO there should be more separation between kids with high and low abilities at school. Push the "better" ones much harder, while also providing specially trained teachers to the "worse" ones. Don't try to get everyone to the same level.
Also, you are probably older than I am.
And sure enough, in the age of everything-as-a-service, that was just about believable to the teacher.
Where learning happened via the pull of that curiosity and not via force-feeding.
Even in classical one to one mentoring, an element of curriculum is how learning is shaped and comfort zones broken down.
Another note of interest, my senior class at high school consisted of 4 people whom I attended Montessori with, of those four, three took IB classes and participated in clubs / extracurriculars above the average rate for my school. I can't help but wonder if even just those few years at a young age made a lasting impact.
All that being said when they administered the covid test on the way back to the US. I'm not even sure they stuck the Q-tip, what should qualify as, in my nose.
Point is, its not just children trying to spoof covid tests.
https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/07/18/5522-people-have-died-w...
Apparently that includes older club and party goers as well.
The fact literal retirees are known to still have occasional nightmares about exams goes to show there’s something deeply psychologically taxing about our schools that I think we’ll look back upon in a hundred year’s time as fairly barbaric, just as we look at corporal punishment in schools of the past as barbarism today.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMcUzvrn75E
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coca-cola-posit...
I find it very difficult to agree with that headline. We have lots of proof that putting coke on a covid test makes the test positive. Coca Cola unequivocally causes a positive result.
That's like saying " X vulnerability in our software doesn't actually exist, because if any would-be hackers just followed the rules then they wouldn't be able to exploit the vuln".
I don't think that's what's happening.
Otherwise why are you considering any of their other texts worth reading?
There are plenty of factually correct headlines they could have chosen:
"Putting cola on a covid test causes a false positive"
"Improper use of covid test causes positive result"
etc. You would hope that professional journalists would be capable of writing a clear and correct headline.
It's not a positive result (that implies the person has covid) it's that it damages the test. Like shorting the circuit of an electronic pregnancy test...
Gold appearing red when in small-enough particles is used to make stained glass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stained_glass#Red_glass
The downside to this is that it deprives their classmates as entire bubbles get sent home I think.
Assume probability of false positive is 1%. If you are tested weekly, there is a 41% chance you'll falsely test positive at least once in a year. If you are tested every workday, 93% chance. This is assuming there is no malfeasance.
If you assume a false positive probability of 5%, the probabilities go up to 93% and 100%.
The negative effects of false positives are the same whether kids are using soda or something else is causing them. At some point, the costs have to be weighed against the benefits.
Here is a false positive/false negative simulator I put together last year (thrice silently banned -- so I stopped trying to do more after restoring it one last time) helps you explore what happens with various scenarios of infection rates and false positive/negative probabilities.
Linking to the discussion to provide context for the app:
https://www.covid2020.icu/false-positive-false-negative-simu...
The tests seem to have a high false-negative rate. Assuming independence and 25% FN rate, a second test will miss an additional 20% of infections of all people tested.
I think that the antibody tests are sketchy in the first place, but if they don't even stick to the protocol and don't follow up positive antibody tests with PCR tests, it's almost pointless.
Even when the rate of Covid infections in the UK was much lower than it currently is, retesting of people using PCR suggested that the large majority of positives were in fact true positives, at least amongst the adults retested. It's possible that the story is different for kids, but on the other hand they're not vaccinated in the UK whereas many adults are...
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n706
both make interesting reading.
It would have been the job of governments to actually govern, by transforming schools to work digitally. Just look at Denmark - their schools have been digitalized for over two decades (https://www.aktiv-online.de/news/digitale-schule-in-daenemar...). All they had to do was tell the kids to stay home and that's it. No deprivation, no negative effects.
The complete inaction (how many schools have bought and installed air purifiers vs. how many parliaments?) and incompetence that has been shown towards children all over the Western world in the coronavirus crisis is utterly utterly inexcusable.
The worse thing is: every person contracting the virus can develop a mutation that escapes vaccines - and children can spread it to their parents and grandparents.
You never had children I assume? Just look at your coworkers how often they fall sick because of some nasty flu or other bug their children caught in kindergarten or school.
And your "Wuhan coronavirus" naming ... the only people I've heard who call the virus by that name or its similar "China virus" are right-wingers and corona / vaccine deniers.
I don't doubt that there's some likely some fairly common short-medium term health impacts from a nasty flu that's relatively new and unknown. But I strongly wonder how much of these supposed "long-covid" symptoms may be wounds that are partially self-inflicted by society. I believe that natural (and already quite bad) activity patterns have been altered negatively since Covid started and this may have a wide-scale health impact that the establishment doesn't care about. These symptoms may partially stem from basically keeping people locked up inside for months, the media feeding them constant scare stories and stressing them out (stress can prevent good sleep and has many other negative health effects), people eating garbage food because there's not as much else to do, people not getting as much sun (Vitamin D exposure) and exercise as they should be getting, the depressions coming from the unnatural social life we've been forced to endure (covering faces, only communicating via video chats), etc.
> And your "Wuhan coronavirus" naming ... the only people I've heard who call the virus by that name or its similar "China virus" are right-wingers and corona / vaccine deniers.
May I ask what does an idealogical compliance check add to the conversation?
Better political action - e.g. following basic science by mandating and enforcing masks, enforcing actual lockdowns, making tests and sick days accessible, supporting poor people who don't have a realistic choice between working sick and not having something to eat, and now that there's vaccines available making them mandatory - would have saved a lot of these wounds!
The differences in coronavirus-caused interruptions between countries with solid leadership and a societal sense of solidarity (e.g. New Zealand, but also many Asian countries for the better part of the last year) and right-wing populist-led or -influenced countries such as the US, Brazil or most of Europe can't be denied any more.
We all need to hold our politicians accountable for their mismanagement and recklessness if we want a chance at restoring our societies and healing the rift.
> May I ask what does an idealogical compliance check add to the conversation?
Simple: I don't want to engage with right wing people and conspiracy myth spreaders in the meatspace and I want to do the same online.
I’m really glad that you’re not in charge.
I don't know if you read or understood my comment, but the self-inflicted wounds I describe such as stress, lack of exercise, bad diets, and other problems associated with "long-covid" may be at least partially due to lockdowns. If this is the case, your prescribed solution may exacerbate the problems. A controlled study on this would be interesting.
> The differences in coronavirus-caused interruptions between countries with solid leadership and a societal sense of solidarity (e.g. New Zealand, but also many Asian countries for the better part of the last year) and right-wing populist-led or -influenced countries such as the US, Brazil or most of Europe can't be denied any more.
Without getting into a full-on political debate about the merits of freedom and a good economy's role in preserving vulnerable peoples' lives, I'd like to point out that Covid's effects in different countries may have more than 1 variable that no leader could have solved.
For instance:
* As a relatively isolated island nation, New Zealand had the luxury to lockdown in a way that relatively few nations have.
* Compared to most of the world and especially Asia, Americans are heavier, which seems likely to negatively impact outcomes from this illness.
* America has large populations of people who suffer from Vitamin D deficiency that seems linked to Covid problems that other countries do not have.
> Simple: I don't want to engage with right wing people and conspiracy myth spreaders in the meatspace and I want to do the same online.
Fair enough. Personally, I believe in diversity and diverse ideas and would be interested in engaging with the left, right, middle, libertarian, communist, you name it. Even authoritarians too.
Activity patterns will no doubt have had some negative impact, but they are not even close to accounting for long-covid symptoms. A change in activity doesn't account for a sudden inability to breathe properly, fatigue so severe that walking is difficult, inflamed hearts, or many of the myriad of other symptoms that long-covid sufferers have reported.
The next paragraph in your link gives 14.5%:
The UK Office for National Statistics's latest report
estimates that 12.9 per cent of UK children aged 2 to 11,
and 14.5 per cent of children aged 12 to 16, still have
symptoms five weeks after their first infection. Almost
500,000 UK children have tested positive for covid-19
since March 2020.
Most medical bodies say it normally takes a few days or
weeks to recover from covid-19, and that most will make a
full recovery within 12 weeks.I think that kids are absolutely deprived of beneficial social interactions when they are sent to be schooled at home versus in-person. Schooling is not solely about academic achievement. Source: I have a 10 and 12 year old who lived this on and off for the last 16 months.
Thought about another way: if there truly was no negative effect, why isn't the education being done 100% remotely in normal conditions? Why have such expensive buildings and transportation needs if there's no benefit?
Because modern capitalism demands that children be kept at school for most of the day - in Germany we call the trend "Ganztagsschule"/"whole day school" - so that both parents can be exploited.
Decades ago, school days were far shorter and there were no such things as school lunches simply because 99% of children had a parent at home able to feed them. When children were sick, they were kept at home instead of spreading their germs at school.
We need to get working hours and wages under control. 20 hours of work a week should be more than enough, given the massive automation gains over the last decades.
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
Selfexploitation is a thing, yes. But that should not be a reason to immediately give uo hope of ever improving anything.
First, I would consider mandatory education a socialist policy, not a capitalist one. It's completely against the concept of a free market.
I would say it's the result of politics, namely a good part of 2nd wave feminism (but not all) and the destruction of family as an institution. Broken families dependant on welfare are golden for any centralised power who needs votes every 5 years.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure big businesses (who are in bed with the government) benefited plenty from having twice the workforce. More competition in the workplace, lower wages. AND you sound progressive, because you're giving women the privilege of being able to work like your husband.
But there is nothing capitalistic about big businesses profiting from centralised political propaganda. That's the opposite of capitalism.
Automation won't be enough to reduce the number of hours, you need to change people's minds: we don't need a technical solution to work less, we need a social, political one.
EDIT: I didn't realise you support Antifa in your bio (I really don't, couldn't be further away from supporting political violence), which is surprising given we actually agree on the premise, which is that people are working too much and we left government puppets growing our children instead of doing it ourselves.
If anything, we need more testing, not less, to contain earlier.
[1] - https://astranova.org/apply
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFOEyqqGuEI [video]
[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io3TiuJsfLc [video]
[4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO22X2AV2xg [video]
Yes, it has some advantages, but most of them come from the admission process and high budget. The main problem I see is that you are in a bubble, not like the other kids. It makes it difficult to reintegrate the regular school system if you ever need to. Obviously not a problem for Elon Musk kids, but it may be for middle class children.
Yes globally school systems need a massive rehaul, anybody can name easily 10 things that would improve schools for everyone, probably any school. No we shouldn't give up just because its hard and we already went through it.
Its one of the fuckin' most important things for human civilization, if not the #1 item long term. We don't need to strive for perfection, practically all major improvements would be worth it.
> One study conducted by California State University at Sacramento researchers outlined numerous theories and ideas prevalent throughout Waldorf curricula that were patently pseudoscientific and steeped in magical thinking.
Well, so much for that idea.
Your options are to "literally LOL" and consider making progress to be a "fool's errand," or you can recognize that eliminating these problems may be impossible but making significant progress is not.
Making a school nicer won't cut it. Reforming how kids learn may do that.
I added a drop of coke/sugar to my blood drop as a way to get out of school, as the blood sugar result would appear very high!
If I wanted it to appear low, I diluted my blood with an alcohol swab (used when testing your blood) or with a drop of water.
Public officials can easily do this in order to bust the kids.
Can't tell if you're serious or not, about licking a positive-indicating lateral flow test with potentially hot nasal mucus...
On the internet? Well, those are the people who eat Tide Pods...
Ironically, phrasing was a pure product of pre-coffee morning + living in a part of the US where anti-vax comments are a daily occurrence, but it delights me I was responsible for a few smiles. (Including my own, re-reading it)
And truth be told, "hot" emerged from morning fugue, after rejecting infected, live, and potentially hazardous as less accurate.
Sadly, "tainted" did not occur to me first.
What is this world coming to if we can't even discuss regional styles of humor?
Dan, may I suggest that you are taking this job too seriously. You are going to look back in the future and wonder why you spent so much time controlling others' speech on a Web site. You're so concerned about HN's value as a vessel, but so unconcerned with the value of what's inside it. You're a talented Lisper who seems to waste most of his time moderating, playing whack-a-troll and arguing with people about arguing (like me, here). You have more potential than you are fulfilling here, and you could be doing much more important things.
A slightly safer way is to wash them:
"Is there then a way to spot a fake positive test? The antibodies (like most proteins) are capable of refolding and regaining their function when they are returned to more favourable conditions. So I tried washing a test that had been dripped with cola with buffer solution, and sure enough the immobilised antibodies at the T-line regained normal function and released the gold particles, revealing the true negative result on the test."