The yellow tape was gone yesterday. Does that mean the playground is open?
After a few hours of research this morning all I can say is, probably not, but I’m impressed by all the levels of government weigh in on making this kind of decision. The levels were always there, of course, but there’s nothing like a pandemic to make you acutely aware of how many layers of regulation affect your everyday life.
Last December I wrote a piece called, “When Travel Plans Go Awry.” I had planned to go to France with my son and granddaughter, but because of widespread transportation strikes in France at that time, we changed to London with two days notice and no plans. We had a wonderful time.
That seems a lifetime ago.
A few weeks ago I described a new Coronavirus antigen test as a “game changer.” But day after day the game looked pretty much the same. Today, however, there is a new headline from the UK: “Coronavirus: ‘Exciting ‘ results of antibody tests show ‘100% accuracy’ in potential breakthrough,” Game changer or not, this new antibody test, developed by the Swiss company Roche and the first one approved for use in the UK, comes at a time of rapidly increasing antibody testing. It’s time to take a closer look at antibodies.
The surreal dance continues as we hear announcements of opening up, not opening up, and partially opening up. The take-home message this week is that all openings are partial. For example, Los Angeles County beaches are reopening today, but don’t bring your beach chair and ice chest. As long as you keep moving–surfing, paddleboarding, jogging, walking–you can enjoy the beach. Just yesterday, the Los Angeles County Public Health Director announced that the County’s stay-at-home orders are most likely to extend through July.
It’s very natural to compare COVID-19 to the flu.
But the coronavirus is a different animal. A different virus, that is, with a different family, genus, and species from the flu. Back on Day 59 we talked about seven of them: four coronaviruses that cause the common cold and three, previously found in animals, that are new to the world of human diseases. So new, in fact, that their first outbreaks are both in the 21st century. And this is their first pandemic.
“I have traveled a good deal in Concord,” says Thoreau at the beginning of Walden. I could do worse than to emulate him, I decided, so I’m learning to be a tourist in my own back yard. Yesterday I traveled to Dana Point Harbor.
The first headline I noticed this morning was the announcement of a new antigen test. You might think I’d write more about testing, after 25 years in the clinical laboratory. And I will, but the FDA has approved so many antibody and antigen test kits under emergency rules lately that I wanted to wait until some of them had a track record to review.
How do viruses get their names? I could ask, who names viruses? But that would be incorrect. WHO names diseases. According to the less-well-known ICTV or International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses, virologists name viruses and the ICTV names the virus species, based on its genetic structure. So already, it’s not simple.
But today I’m interested in the difference between influenza viruses and coronaviruses and why they have the names they do.
