No COVID-19 detected!
COVID-19/SARS-CoV, PCR
Undetected
SARS-CoV-2 RNA absent. This result does not rule out
COVID-19 in the patient, as the sensitivity of the test
depends on the timing of the specimen collection and
quality of the specimen. Result should be correlated with
patient’s history and clinical presentation.
I have been a very good boy about masking up and avoiding people, and I will continue to do so.
You would hope that the bright young minds attending an excellent university would be smarter than this, but apparently there was an opportunity to party in a courtyard at the university, so everyone shed their masks and abandoned all pretense of social distancing to mill about and swap viruses.
I guess the campus police broke up the party (FASCISTS!) shortly after the photo was taken, but still…
I wonder if this kind of thing has anything to do with the Fall Surge in coronavirus cases we’re seeing?
Next Sunday, 27 September, we’ll be remembering the life of Ed Brayton in a conversation.
If any of you would like to share a few words, write to me and I can send you a link. If you’d rather not make a direct appearance, show up and leave a comment in the chat — I’ll read some of them into the record.
I got into the doctor’s office today. I was hoping for strep throat (what a thing to hope for!), and they ruled that out fast. Out came the inevitable COVID-19 test, and I got the stick up the nose and my olfactory lobe scrambled, and that’s being sent off for testing, which will take a few days.
Then, surprise surprise, the doctor informs me that while my test results are pending, I’m quarantined! And I’m supposed to teach a lab tomorrow! Frantic backtracking and trying to figure out alternatives ensues.
I really, really wanted this to be strep. I could clear that up pretty quickly.
This throat thing I’ve got made for an unpleasant weekend, and this morning I woke up with a mild headache and fatigue on top of a grisly meat tube that is oozing slime and sending rude signals to my brain. It better have cleared up by this weekend, and I’ve got enough of a challenge in having to give a one hour lecture this afternoon with a voice that wobbles in and out of the void.
I’m hoping to go in and get tested for the ‘rona this morning, just to get that possibility out of my mind. Also, Mary wants me to do a salt water gargle. This does not sound fun.
Next Sunday, our Carnival continues with a tour of the imaging side of my lab. I’ll just aim a camera at my microscopes and cameras and talk about how I put together a macrophotography and microscopy lab on a budget, and maybe put a few critters on the screen.
I might also remind you that this is a fundraiser, and you can optionally leave a tip at
I finally got the schedule for our Carnival of Curiosity fundraiser completed. Well, for all the Saturday events anyway (I’ll work on the Sunday events tomorrow). So now you know what you’re going to do a week from today! You’re going to be trapped at home, as usual, and you’ll be glued to a computer screen, doomscrolling through Facebook…no, wait, not that. We’ll have something better for you. We have events scheduled all day long! Look at the schedule! It really is all day Saturday! Instead you’ll be enlightened and entertained by the various freethoughtbloggers, and be intermittently inspired to click a link and send us money!
Remember, this is a fundraiser.
Of course, it’s also a voluntary fundraiser. You don’t have to donate a penny if you don’t have one.
Anyway, the new stuff I added this morning for our Saturday schedule:
See? You’ll almost be happy to be quarantined/on lockdown/bored to tears, because you’ll have us to turn to. And us to donate some of your shrinking funds to, if you can.
P.S. You managed to donate over a thousand dollars to us in the last week, which we appreciate very much, and which will significantly help reduce our legal debt. Thank you!
I have been very good about avoiding all human beings. All my classes are taught over Zoom (although my first in-person lab is scheduled for next week), I don’t go anywhere, when we do have to go public, like our biweekly grocery shopping, we shun stores that fail to practice basic viral hygiene and we go early in the morning when there are few shoppers, and I always wear my mask outside the house.
So how did I wake up in the middle of the night with a fiery sore throat and inflammation bad enough that I can barely swallow? I am assuming I caught some bug somewhere somehow, and if one bug can find its way past my defenses, so can coronavirus. May have to dig a moat around the house. May have to install a laser point defense system. May have to seal all the doors and windows with sheets of plastic. May have to wear a biohazard suit at all times. May have to re-read The Masque of the Red Death.
It really sucks to have your vulnerabilities exposed during a pandemic.
On Saturday, 26 September, we’re going to have a stellar discussion with a stellar bunch of panelists on the collision of science fiction with social justice, and how it made the field better. You’ll want to tune in to this one!
Featuring the minds of:
Abe Drayton
PZ Myers
Steve Shives
Joe Stevenson
TD Walker
And remember, this is a fundraiser.
Unaccountably, multiple people suggested this for our fundraiser: make me sit through some awful, atrocious bit of media while everyone watches me. The form was vague, I think the appeal was entirely in making me weep.
I’ve scheduled it, but we have to get the details down now, and I have questions.
Am I supposed to do this alone? Anyone else you’d like to drag down to hell with me? Company might make it more entertaining.
How? It should be streamed to YouTube for the greatest reach, but I could set up something with OBS and/or Discord, or even Zoom. Give me ideas!
This is definitely a rough work in progress, but here’s where you can watch whatever abomination we cobble together.
And remember, this is a fundraiser.
Hmmm. Maybe I should auction off the right to name the media, or to share a spot in the matinee with me?
