Slightly off topic but…
My County (Lake County Florida) is offering testing for the Virus or Antibody. I decided to have the Antibody test as my Wife was hospitalized back in October with something that seemed very close to what they say this crap causes. So, I was tested at 0845 yesterday (Friday) and got my results today (Saturday) at 0800. The test came back negative, my Wife will be getting tested next week.
The charge was $20 for county residents and $80 of non-residents.
My wife got very sick in late December with what in hindsight were the exact covid-19 symptoms. I got a bit of it but not nearly as serious. At the time, her doctor was stumped and was unable to diagnose.
A couple of days ago she was hospitalized for an unrelated issue and was tested for the virus. We thought about this when she came home and remembered that at the time she got sick in December, we had socialized with a couple who had just returned from an extensive tour of China. We’ll get results Monday.
That’s valuable news guys. I just did a search and found out that I can get an antibody test without a referral. $100
Leaders of the House and the Senate doing the right thing: turning down COVID19 tests, so that front-line workers can use them.
WAPO today:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a rare letter jointly rejecting the Trump administration’s offer to supply Capitol Hill with 1,000 rapid-result coronavirustests, asking that they be prioritized for front-line workers.
The decision by the leaders Saturday to turn down the Trump administration’s offer came as the United States neared 66,000 coronavirus-related deaths and at least a dozen states had their first weekend of loosened restrictions.
The Capitol’s attending physician, Brian Monahan, had told Senate staffers Thursday that limited testing capacity meant only lawmakers and staff with symptoms could get tested, and that they would need to wait several days for results.
“# White House Rattled by a Military Aide’s Positive Coronavirus Test
President Trump said he and Vice President Mike Pence, as well as the White House staff, would now be tested on a daily basis.”
“ the White House’s shift to more frequent testing validates the view of public health experts that exponentially more testing is needed nationwide to contain the virus’s spread.“
What about testing the health care workers regularly. They are more exposed and more important to the fight against Covid-19.
Politician are “a dime a dozen” and can easily be replaced.
They aren’t worth that much but they are very expensive to purchase and maintain.
There would be some poetic justice to see the Cretin in Chief hospitalized except for the fact that an equally dangerous stand-in would take over for the duration.
What might be really interesting is if both Trump and Pence were laid low for a month and Pelosi ran the show. That scenario must scare the bejeezus out of a lot of unindicted co-conspirators.
On both sides.
Well, looks like I’m getting both a COVID-19 test and an antibody blood test so they must have enough to go around. Last minute insurance company move.
Is is on-demand, part of an industry program, or based on symptoms?
I note University of Washington’s large scale testing program in conjunction with Alaska fishing companies and Discovery Health.
Industry screening program. Sounds like insurance company requirement.
Good to know. I will be hammering our insurance company based on that next week. I checked with Discovery Health last Monday and they said no on-demand tests for us. We weren’t part of the U of W study. But then to be part of the study, I believe you have to be part of a mandatory quarantine program, involving hotel rooms, etc. Pretty elaborate.
I’ll report the antibody results here if I get them before sailing.
Let us know how uncomfortable the nasal swab experience is, on a scale of 1 to 10.
With “1" being the experience of being flossed by a dental hygienist who is a former Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. 
“10" being a prostate exam by doctor who is a former offensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys. 
Wish you luck sir. So glad I am retired now. Stay in touch.
A word on taking medical temps:
As many captains have found out during this emergency, digital medical thermometers used orally often read about 97.4F +/- for a typical healthy adults, not the norm of 98.6F.
This is important because the CDC uses 100.4F as diagnostic of fever for COVID19. A rectal temp might show this, probably not an oral temp. When taking oral temps, use 99.6F as a diagnostic for possible COVID19.
A forehead infrared thermometer scanner usually reads 0.5°F to 1°F lower than an oral temperature. An ear temperature is 0.5°F to 1°F higher than an oral temperature.
Be careful about using infrared thermometers for taking medical temps. The typical infrared thermometer found in the engine room has an accuracy of +/- 3 degrees, making it inaccurate for medical use.
I reckon that’s because a) oral temps run IIRC about half a degree F less than rectal, and b) men are running about 1.1F cooler than they were in 1851 when the normal value was determined (difference is somewhat less for women).
In this study, we analyzed 677,423 human body temperature measurements from three different cohort populations spanning 157 years of measurement and 197 birth years. We found that men born in the early 19th century had temperatures 0.59°C higher than men today, with a monotonic decrease of −0.03°C per birth decade. Temperature has also decreased in women by −0.32°C since the 1890s with a similar rate of decline (−0.029°C per birth decade). Although one might posit that the differences among cohorts reflect systematic measurement bias due to the varied thermometers and methods used to obtain temperatures, we believe this explanation to be unlikely. We observed similar temporal change within the UAVCW cohort—in which measurement were presumably obtained irrespective of the subject’s birth decade—as we did between cohorts. Additionally, we saw a comparable magnitude of difference in temperature between two modern cohorts using thermometers that would be expected to be similarly calibrated. Moreover, biases introduced by the method of thermometry (axillary presumed in a subset of UAVCW vs. oral for other cohorts) would tend to underestimate change over time since axillary values typically average one degree Celsius lower than oral temperatures (Sund-Levander et al., 2002; Niven et al., 2015). Thus, we believe the observed drop in temperature reflects physiologic differences rather than measurement bias. Other findings in our study—for example increased temperature at younger ages, in women, with increased body mass and with later time of day—support a wealth of other studies dating back to the time of Wunderlich (Wunderlich and Sequin, 1871; Waalen and Buxbaum, 2011).
Resting metabolic rate is the largest component of a typical modern human’s energy expenditure, comprising around 65% of daily energy expenditure for a sedentary individual (Heymsfield et al., 2006). Heat is a byproduct of metabolic processes, the reason nearly all warm-blooded animals have temperatures within a narrow range despite drastic differences in environmental conditions. Over several decades, studies examining whether metabolism is related to body surface area or body weight (Du Bois, 1936; Kleiber, 1972), ultimately, converged on weight-dependent models (Mifflin et al., 1990; Schofield, 1985; Nelson et al., 1992). Since US residents have increased in mass since the mid-19th century, we should have correspondingly expected increased body temperature. Thus, we interpret our finding of a decrease in body temperature as indicative of a decrease in metabolic rate independent of changes in anthropometrics. A decline in metabolic rate in recent years is supported in the literature when comparing modern experimental data to those from 1919 (Frankenfield et al., 2005).
New test kit developed in Singapore:
I did a nasal swab test. It wasn’t as bad as some of you guys make out. lol