Infected by the Corona Virus

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jayakris
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by jayakris »

Dinesh wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:25 am despite having worn 2 masks all the time (clothed ones), and not eating out in restaurants or anywhere else, I caught it. Could it be that what I had was a common seasonal sickness and wasn’t covid at all? I’m curious to get an antibody test as soon as I’m back in the US.
I wonder if the cloth mask was an issue. They keep saying that cloth masks do not help much at all, and that N95 surgical masks are what we need to wear. The blue rectangular masks are also pretty good, and much better than 2 or 3 layer cloth masks, apparently. I went through a 4 day convention of 1000 Malayalees in Phoenix about 10 days ago (which included singing and acting on stage, small room practices, and packed banquet hall and all that) and survived... Right now I am at an academic conference of 6000 people at the Washington DC convention center. I am again using the N95 surgical mask very carefully. I will update next week if I survive this also. Have had a lot of talking in the hallways and all that, so I am not sure if I will. Going home today, and intending to isolate for the net 4-5 days. Will test and let you all know.

But, as said above, no need to wonder if you had Covid. The RATs are as good as RT-PCR on a positive result. So it is some 95% sure that you had Covid. Need to wonder about it only on getting a negative RAT result. Could be up to 30 or 40% chance that you might have Covid even on a negative test... But I am hearing informally that the Abbott labs' home nasal swab RAT tests are actually better than that, and that the negative tests are also probably 80% or so correct. If you keep taking a test each day for 2 or 3 days, it apparently turns positive at some point anyway, even if "low-level infection" may go undetected at first with a false negative. That is the layman's understanding of it.
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by Kumar »

Dinesh, stay safe. Please do be careful when u take your rt-pcr for travel back to US. You don’t want to be positive and then forced to institutional quarantine (which india may force for travelers from abroad) . If possible, push your trip back, so that there are no doubts. You may want to tread carefully and wait at least 14 days from your positive test

Jay, you are really brave attending those conferences. If you were wearing N95, i would assume u should be good. I would definitely recommend getting a booster where available . It is not preventing infection, but hopefully staves off bad covid. I know a colleague who got delta in June, got a booster and then now omicron(symptoms much milder)
suresh wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 10:11 am Given that genome sequencing is rarely done and it looks like Omicron is dominating the Indian case counts. Yet states continue to count the number of Omicron cases that have been found using sequencing. Utterly meaningless data, I think.

Also, without context (total number of cases), the count is absolutely meaningless. The dame way, they are forcing abroad travellers to institutional quarantine (sometimes days after their arrival) as if they bought a new strain from abroad. Just do something to show you are doing something.
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by suresh »

Tamil Nadu announced that they are no longer going to do genome sequencing to determine if it is Omicron. Good move. However, I hope that they continue sending a random sample for sequencing.
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by jayakris »

Kumar wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 3:58 pmJay, you are really brave attending those conferences. If you were wearing N95, i would assume u should be good. I would definitely recommend getting a booster where available
Yeah, I did survive the two big events safely. Had a booster shot in early December, 25 days before the two events in back to back weeks in early January. Masks and vaccination. Just do it!
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by suresh »

Starting this week, I started taking live lectures as most of the students have returned to campus. Only two weeks of classes remain though. At least the final examination will be an old-fashioned in-class exam. I also started going to my office every day as I used to in pre-covid times.
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by prasen9 »

Maybe this belongs to the English thread, but does anyone know why Indians say "take" lecture when you are actually giving the lecture?
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by Atithee »

Worse is “bring” vs. “take” in American spoken English. It drives me nuts. As in, “bring the umbrella, it might rain” when you’re going somewhere. To me, it’s clear—if you’re going somewhere you take it, if someone is coming to a place, you bring it.
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by jayakris »

prasen9 wrote: Thu May 05, 2022 1:21 pm Maybe this belongs to the English thread, but does anyone know why Indians say "take" lecture when you are actually giving the lecture?
Probably it comes from how it is said in Hindi? ... Because I remember hearing it and thinking it was weird when I first started haring English in India (after living for 17 years hearing only Malayalam). Just like I remember thinking the use of "even" was weird. Later I figured that it was directly from how it is said in Hindi. If I were to translate from Malayalam, it will all go correctly as in how it is said in USA and UK.

The same thing applies to "giving an exam", which in India is what the student does. It would be what a professor does, outside India. The students "take" the exam everywhere else.
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

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Atithee wrote: Thu May 05, 2022 8:44 pm Worse is “bring” vs. “take” in American spoken English. It drives me nuts. As in, “bring the umbrella, it might rain” when you’re going somewhere. To me, it’s clear—if you’re going somewhere you take it, if someone is coming to a place, you bring it.
Ah, an issue that bothers me too!

I don't think most Americans do this. Only EastAsian-Americans, right? They all invariably use "bring" in many circumstances when it should be "take". They also mix up "go" and "come". A student might tell me, "I will go to your office later today" when both of us are away from my office! For them if the office is away from where we are standing, it becomes a "go" but the logic in English and Indian languages would be to say "I will come" as long as it is to MY office, when talking to me. So there are some logical issues there.

I have seen Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, etc do this. Asian languages, perhaps all of them from east of India (probably influenced by Chinese) seem to have words that follow a different logic than English for "come/go" and "take/bring", which often makes them get it all wrong. What I find interesting is that even the Asians' kids who grew up in the USA are totally unaware of this issue, because they heard it wrong early in their lives and never noticed it to correct it. I guess people who hear "bring/go" where it should be "take/come" do not get too confused by it, and nobody tells anybody that it was wrong usage.

Indian languages (both Sanskrit-based and Dravidian) seem to use the same logic for come/go and bring/take, so I have not seen Indians getting it wrong

But I have not seen Americans of non-EastAsian origin ever getting this wrong though. Have you? (If so, then maybe WE have it wrong, and not the Asians!)
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by Atithee »

^^^
I think I’ve heard it among all Americans, not just East Asian Americans, but you’re making me think now. Even my daughter, who is born and brought up here in the US, does this. We are overwhelmingly surrounded with East Asian Americans though. I think it is universal in the USA. Still, I don’t think we (Indians who grew up in India) are wrong, but it is possible.
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

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I once had a discussion on this with my daughter, who was adamant that what we say as Indians is the correct usage, and that she too finds a lot of people doing it wrong (but most of her friends have been Asians in southern California). She didn't know the reason, till I told her that it may have to do with Chinese logic.
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by prasen9 »

Atithee wrote: Thu May 05, 2022 8:44 pm Worse is “bring” vs. “take” in American spoken English. It drives me nuts. As in, “bring the umbrella, it might rain” when you’re going somewhere. To me, it’s clear—if you’re going somewhere you take it, if someone is coming to a place, you bring it.
Exactly. I try to correct my daughter but to no avail. My daughter was born and grown up here and she does this all the time and she did not learn from me. She does not have that many Indian friends that it would override the normal American usage.

This is not Asian Americans Jay. This is Americans. Period. Americans clueless of bring vs take
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Re: Infected by the Corona Virus

Post by jayakris »

^^^ Hmmm... Interesting... So the disease has spread in the U.S.? I see somebody say that it is a northern thing that started from New York? Let me investigate more.
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