36 Abilene Fire Department Members

https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/...department-self-isolating-with-covid-19/

I’ve seen the same thing happen in other workplaces locally, I’m beginning to believe it truly is VERY contagious

So is flu A and B.

I am an Abilene Firefighter.

Most have zero symptoms and those who do have symptoms are very mild.

Also, when you go to get tested the do a blood test which tells you that you either have the virus or HAD the virus. This is still counted as a positive test.

They then do another test (swab) that takes a few days that will tell you which it is.

I've spoken with or heard indirectly about every fireman that has tested positive on our dept and not one is even running a fever.

Zero symptoms or at worse light body aches and light headaches.

Sounds like good news.

So the sky is not falling. Thanks Brady

Duh.

Yes it’s a shame this didn’t occur in places like this first, instead of nursing homes, this economy would of NEVER been shut down!!!!!!

That is great to hear!

The salient point is that most people are fully/partially asymptomatic with Covid 19. Another large group of people come down with a nasty flu-like illness but spontaneously heal.
Others, with underlying health problems, can die.

Yes, it can be serious, but it is not the doomsday virus.

These positive number just keep going up which leads me to thinking this has been here allot longer than we thought and more wide spread. Let me add, not near as fatal as the MSM has been claiming. Wouldn't surprise me if 40 to 50 percent of the US tests positive.

Sounds like only doomsday for some, but highly contagious. I believe what the feds and doctors were worried about was a majority of Americans being infected at the same time and over-running the medial system. Who knows what would have happened if the shutdown orders had not been issued, but thirty-six fire fighters in one medium size city sounds like this virus is very contagious.

^^^^Pretty much my take on it. I’ve been outa the loop at deer lease a few days but last I heard at least a couple testing studies indicated that NOT a high percentage of US are testing positive. Going to other lease now so outa the loop some more.

DFR is way above 36. Last I heard, it was several hundred.

Did they blood test the entire department to figure this out?

So they randomly just tested to test?

A larger department in a major metropolitan area has more cases. Get out.

Very contagious, but not very deadly. We need to use what it does best against itself. The more that are infected the better. The question I have is what are the conditions of the firefighters?

Cool, nobody in the ICU, or worse. This is a good thing. I wondered how the virus and the lungs of a firefighter would interact.

No, the health department will not test unless you have symptoms. However, a local walk-in clinic offered testing to all the fire department for free.

Thus the reason for the recent spike in cases...

It's voluntary only.

If that clinic did not offer that then the majority of the positive cases would have never even been tested as they do not have any symptoms.

The more logical explanation for this is that the is simply not that accurate. Remember we have had COVID virus outbreaks in the U.S. for the past 18 years. (COVID-2 - SARS outbreak of 2002-03, COVID-12 MERS outbreak of 2012 just to name a couple) My guess is that if you came in contact with any version of COVID in the past, the blood antibody test will pop positive even if you never had any exposure to COVID-19.

Shhh , the truth will make some break. Logic is not used, only what the media talking points of the day can be used.

Did you see this somewhere? I would think they would be able to differentiate. Or is this just speculation?

Im not sure about that or not.

My understanding is they know the specific antibody for this strain?

We will learn more once these guys start getting their swab test back that will tell them if they actually have the active virus or just the antibodies.

But for now they are being reported as positive for COVID with zero symptoms and not actually knowing if they really have it.

Im not getting tested unless I actually get sick...which it sounds like won't happen even if I have it...

So I'm just going to jump on all this OT!!!

41 now positive ---> Fire Chief

" Fire Chief Cande Flores. They believe the department is ok for now. If more firefighters get the virus, they have a contingency plan. But he would not go into detail about it.

" Many, if not most are experiencing mild to no symptoms, which will hopefully translate to a speedy recovery process."

All with zero symptoms, is not accurate.

Who said All have zero symptoms?

We must remember that these COVID-19 test are still in Beta-testing. There has been no time for rigorous clinical trials. The good news is ... that by administering all these tests, they now have the clinical data to make them better. The bad news is ... sucks being the guinea pig.

It appears that the current "good" antibody tests need a two-pass approach in order to achieve a high percentage of accuracy. With this particular strain, we will invest the time and money to get one that is 90+% accurate on the first pass - maybe. The fact that we are using Chinese supplied antibody tests is a problem because many (most) of these are based on the fingerprints of previous Coronavirus strains. Yes, all Coronaviruses are related but the RNA of Covid 19 is not the same. The cheap/fast tests can't reliably decern that. Hopefully, we will soon have an antibody test that is both fast and accurate. Antigens are tricky, so we do not know how long individual immunity will last.

I'm sure that that this statement will draw the ire of many people, but: As I see it, our country is undergoing the most costly overreaction in history.

Get a damn clue already man. This is at least 3 times more contagious than the mother effin flu.

Wow. Some of us actually do have a clue. Yes, it is contagious but the mortality rate is the key.

We're supposed to have our temp checked at shift change, coming and going. Anything over 99. (can't remember) go home. Get tested, wait.

So far, so good.

Many of us believe this came through our FD in Nov. Dec.

I hope those Abilene FD fellas go through this without so much as a light cough.

Flu kills more though. Just sayin

Mortality rate is not what he was posting that into response to, he posted that in response to a comment on how contagious COVID is. Go back and read before you chime in

Maybe, but again that isn’t true point of what he posted that in response to. Again go back and read. From people who have recovered from this it doesn’t sound anything like any flu I’ve had and if you have heard from anyone who had even a mild case much less severe believe me you don’t want this crap.

I can only speak for the 41 people I know that have it.

Every one of their experiences has been that it was less severe than the flu.

Then you factor in the large percentage with zero symptoms who would never have been tested if it wasn't for the fact they were fireman and were offered free testing without symptoms.

There are most likely millions of people who will have it and never know.

I've been in direct contact with 5 people who have tested positive. I spent 24 hours with one of them.

I have no symptoms but I bet if I went and got tested I would be positive.

Make me wonder how good the test is, and how many strains there are. It shows that people have Covid, but do all of the strains show up on the test. How many strains, and what are the strengths of each one as far as killing people. Or is this crap mutating and these fireman had some of the first cases and now the strength factor is way up?

I hate to chime in as Negative Nancy but asymptomatic doesn't always mean you get off scott free.

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryct.2020200110

Chest CT Findings in Cases from the Cruise Ship “Diamond Princess” with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Results
Of 104 cases, 76 (73%) were asymptomatic, 41 (54%) of which had lung opacities on CT. Other 28 (27%) cases were symptomatic,22 (79%) of which had abnormal CT findings. Symptomatic cases showed lung opacities and airway abnormalities on CT more frequently than asymptomatic cases [lung opacity; 22 (79%) vs 41 (54%), airway abnormalities; 14 (50%) vs 15 (20%)]. Asymptomatic cases showed more GGO over consolidation (83%), while symptomatic cases more frequently showed consolidation over GGO (41%). The CT severity score was higher in symptomatic cases than asymptomatic cases, particularly in the lower lobes [symptomatic vs asymptomatic cases; right lower lobe: 2 ± 1 (0-4) vs 1 ± 1 (0-4); left lower lobe: 2 ± 1 (0-4) vs 1 ± 1 (0-3); total score: 7 ± 5 (1-17) vs 4 ± 2 (1-11)].

Conclusion
This study documented a high incidence of subclinical CT changes in cases with COVID-19. Compared to symptomatic cases, asymptomatic cases showed more GGO over consolidation and milder extension of disease on CT.


FYI, GGO = Ground-glass opacity & consolidation = fluid in the lungs.

Hopefully there's an RT or MD here that can chime in but if I read that correctly, you won't show symptoms but your lungs can get still take damage.

Regular flu season is around 39,000,000 to 56,000,000 cases in the US. So we are going to see around 120,000,000 to 168,000,000 cases of corona this year?

That's not how it works, that's not how any of this works!

Sounds like you have the right idea, stay safe and have fun!

Yes, appears to be attacking the weak and so far kids do not seem to be at high risk of serious symptoms (At least what the media if saying). I hope this is behind us soon, it is dividing our country even more if that is possible.

Just my opinion.
We were firing blindly at CoVid 19. Now we have data to make better, maybe not good , but better decisions.
The flu has been around a while. We are making good decisions with the flu.
Because CoVid 19 is new. We are afraid of it. I know, I am afraid of CoVid19 due to lack of vaccine or proven treatments.
Notice , I said proven. Anyone here old enough to remember time before Nyquil, Daquil or Tylenol?

We suspect CoVid 19 is 3 times more contagious than the flu. Maybe due to being new to us. Maybe because we are testing, testing , testing. I qustion our data.

Our flu data is based on REPORTED test. Is every test, positive or negative, reported? Is every person with flu like symptoms tested? Is every person exposed to flu tested? How many people just self medicate and ride the flu out at home, never to seen by a doctor?

Factor in media feeding frenzies, baited stupid questions by media, politics, a scramble for government funding, attention whore celebrities and the fear of the unknown, one needs a BS detector to find accurate data.

Please understand, I fully understand the severity of this event, emotionally and financially.

We must maintain a calm head in this event.

No it doesn't!!

The US COVID deaths in three months have passed the flu deaths for all of last year!

And it is good for the Fire Fighters show little to no symptoms, it is bad for everyone that they have been around not knowing they were contagious.

You are confusing people with facts.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

There are a few angles here..

If there are this many firefighters that have no symptoms there are lot out in the general public that are the same. There are potentially millions of people out in the general population with zero symptoms who will never be tested.

The data is going to be very skewed because of this,

You also need to take in the consideration that many patients who are dying with COVID were on deaths door step to begin with. If you have the flu and die of a heart attack they list the cause of death a heart attack not the flu.

More than a few angles, the pump up the drama mantra continues.....

Heck at this point it looks like hospitals and retirement homes are cleaning house, I believe getting paid while doing so.

You would think the DEATH RATE from the china flu would be far greater than 207 in Chile, since they are a third world country and rioting shoulder to shoulder for the last 5 months. I know random testing to see if you are positive is inaccurate, but hospital testing and counting deaths should be very accurate.

Chile's form of social distancing.

Anti-Rona water in those trucks. We should invade them and take it.

How accurate are Chile's numbers? Does the goverment really care?

Same here, we check ours at 0700 1900 and 0700 again and if it is 99.6 or higher you go home. A good bit of our dept had a hacking cough back in Nov Dec and went to their drs and were negative for strep and flu

Same thing went through our yard in Jan/Feb

We started checking ours 3 times a shift even before our first case.

But I only know of one person with it who is actually running a fever...

My dad has a friend who works in Houston, he talked to him today and 35 people at their facility tested positive for the WuFlu, 33 have no symptoms.

Have either of you seen the curve and the pretty graphs and pictures? If it was flu with potential (that is the key here) Covid symptoms it is covid death. Hell, flu deaths fell off drastically when this crap started.

CNN didnt tell them that part