CORONA Harris County plans to fight Covid by randomly knocking on your door — and asking for blood

xtreme_right

Veteran Member
Harris County plans to fight COVID by randomly knocking on your door - and asking for blood

Harris County Public Health will survey residents for COVID-19 antibodies in an effort to determine how many people already have been infected with the novel coronavirus, the department said.

Beginning Sunday, health workers will visit randomly selected homes and ask residents to answer questions and provide blood samples.

Humans produce antibodies, proteins in the immune system, to fight infections from viruses and other pathogens. It can take days or weeks for antibodies to develop following exposure to the coronavirus, and it remains unclear how long they remain in an individual’s blood.

The Houston region has recorded 236,704 COVID-19 cases since the virus arrived here in March, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis, but health officials estimate this is only a fraction of the total number of infections.

Health officials hope the antibody tests will help the county determine how COVID-19 spread in certain communities, how transmission rates differ between neighborhoods, how effective containment strategies have been and how many residents contracted the virus but never exhibited symptoms.

“This survey is a very important way that local residents can help public health workers fight this virus,” Harris County Public Health Executive Director Dr. Umair A. Shah said in a statement. “By finding out how widespread the illness is, we can develop strategies that will help us control the spread of COVID-19.”

Participation in the program is voluntary, and only selected households are eligible. Teams of health workers wearing yellow vests will make their rounds from Nov. 15 through Dec. 15, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Antibody testing is different than common nasal swab tests, which can detect active infections. The health department is encouraging residents to participate so they can determine if they contracted COVID-19 in the past.

The pandemic steadily has worsened in the Houston area since October. The region reported 1,079 COVID hospitalizations on Wednesday, the highest since before Labor Day. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo warned that if the trajectory continues, Harris County likely will need a stay-home period like the spring.
 

hunybee

Veteran Member
No I think it's that the comon antibody test sucks balls is the issue.


i'm not arguing about them sucking, but doesn't that just prove the point? if the are not reliable, then why would they be trusted to accurately get the antibody counts?
 

wvstuck

Only worry about what you can control!
We still haven't reached the point where we surround them? You could not have convinced me a few years ago that any of this was true, nothing makes sense anymore and as was already mentioned, some people will just let them take blood. I wouldn't let them have my blood if they had a warrant, what constitutional judge would ever grant a fishing expedition that could involve DNA and be invasive to your body? Fight or sign up for the new summer camp they are planning! Just WTF?
 

Mprepared

Veteran Member
We still haven't reached the point where we surround them? You could not have convinced me a few years ago that any of this was true, nothing makes sense anymore and as was already mentioned, some people will just let them take blood. I wouldn't let them have my blood if they had a warrant, what constitutional judge would ever grant a fishing expedition that could involve DNA and be invasive to your body? Fight or sign up for the new summer camp they are planning! Just WTF?

All this DNA send off stuff, I think they are looking for something. Ancestors to somebody or people with long lives in their bloodline. They are obsessed with DNA.
 

TammyinWI

Talk is cheap
They are lying. Probably want blood with antibodies to go make some other vaccine to sell or Dracula formula to drink to live forever.

That is very possible. Every day is like Halloween as of late, one big fat long-running horror film.

But the real motive is fear, compliance, and loss of freedoms, not to mention the destruction of the ZUSA. And they want everyone's DNA.

O tried to speak out a curse over the land, when he said that America is no longer a Christian nation.

I pray against this curse and the evil agenda he and all of his comrades are trying out.
 

thompson

Certa Bonum Certamen
get off my friggin lawn
TlMkC2t.jpg
 

Walrus Whisperer

Hope in chains...
All this DNA send off stuff, I think they are looking for something. Ancestors to somebody or people with long lives in their bloodline. They are obsessed with DNA.
I am CERTAIN they know something about bloodlines. But of course it's fun and get your family too, sometimes a surprise happens when a mama wandered. They ain't getting me sending in dna. My whole family has done it and keep getting updates.
 

WalknTrot

Veteran Member
Bwahaha! They tried that last fall in Minnesota. Sent health workers around to randomly knock on doors and solicit samples for a Coronavirus study in sections of outstate. Idiots sent a couple of black nurses in unmarked cars with California plates to some uber-tiny burg where everybody-knows-your-name in S. MN and wondered why the locals refused and called the authorities to find out WTH was going on. OBTW...then claimed intimidation and accused the population and small town MN in general, of being racist.





CDC coronavirus testers pulled from MN after hostile and racist encounters

Teams working on COVID-19 study reported being traumatized by slurs and threats

By Christopher Magan | cmagan@pioneerpress.com | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: September 25, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. | UPDATED: September 27, 2020 at 9:39 a.m.
CDC coronavirus testers pulled from MN after hostile and racist encounters



This story has been updated to include a response from the mayor of Eitzen.

Federal health workers have been pulled out of Minnesota after what officials describe as repeated threatening and racist encounters with residents while conducting a random COVID-19 testing study.

In one instance, two cars boxed in the health workers’ vehicle and three men, one of whom had his hand on a holstered gun, confronted the team of testers who were asking randomly selected households to participate in the coronavirus study.

State health officials said little about the encounter with the group when it first came to light a week ago. In interviews Thursday evening they revealed the confrontation occurred Sept. 15 in the small town of Eitzen, along the Iowa border in Houston County.

“The team felt the intent was clearly to intimidate and scare them,” said Stephanie Yendell, who supervised Minnesota’s role in the testing survey. “Unfortunately that wasn’t the only incident.”

Eitzen Mayor Jeffrey Adamson disputed health officials version of events in a statement released late Friday.

In a statement, Adamson said concerned residents alerted city officials to the presence of an unmarked vehicle with California plates going door-to-door offering coronavirus testing. Two vehicles, driven by a resident and city official, parked near the testers vehicle, but didn’t box it in; one of the men had a large fire department radio, not a gun, in a belt holster.

“In a very small town where everyone knows everyone, a group of unfamiliar people with out of state plates is unusual, and to some residents is cause for concern,” Adamson’s statement said. “This situation was handled professionally, courteously, and unbiased with no racial slurs, threats or inappropriate comments made.”

Several of the 15 teams conducting random coronavirus testing around the state said they encountered threatening and hostile residents, some of whom repeatedly used racial slurs. The survey effort was a partnership between the Minnesota Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to understand more about how the coronavirus has spread.

Survey teams were accosted when they approached homes selected for random, voluntary testing and by neighbors and dog walkers, state health officials said. It’s unclear whether any laws were broken, but state officials said the way survey teams were treated was “untoward.”

“Over the past week there was clear pattern that the (survey) teams that contained people of color reported more incidents than the teams that had only Caucasian people,” Yendell said. “We had a Latina team member who said she’d been called a particular epithet more times in the last week than in her entire life.”

The testing teams were working in southern and northeastern Minnesota as well as the Twin Cities metro when the threatening encounters occurred. Most of the hostile interactions occurred in smaller communities in the southern part of the state, none happened in the metro.

After it became clear they were not isolated incidents or simple misunderstandings, CDC officials decided to pull their workers from the state. None of the workers were physically harmed, but they described the hostility as mentally and emotionally disturbing.

“The teams were really traumatized by some of these experiences,” Yendell said.

“Given the uncertainty of the situation and the impact of the incidents on team members, CDC decided to demobilize the entire team.”

Dan Huff, assistant health commissioner, said he understood people were frustrated by the pandemic and the restrictions in place to slow its spread. But that no excuse for being hostile to test teams.

“We are all tired and worried,” Huff said. “There is a difference between disagreeing with a policy or elected official and taking out frustration on public health persons trying to do their job and help the community the best they can.”

Dr. Ruth Lynfield, state epidemiologist, said ending the study early was a lost opportunity. The Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response, or CASPER survey, the teams were conducting is designed to help public health officials better understand how the coronavirus is transmitted.

Teams planned to test random households in 180 predetermined communities through the end of September for active COVID-19 infections as well as antibodies that would signal a previous illness. Minnesota asked for federal assistance from the CDC to conduct the study because state and local health departments lacked enough personnel to complete it.

Before the work was abandon, testers collected samples from about 400 residents around the state. Those tests will still be processed and analyzed, but will not present a complete picture of coronavirus transmission.

“We did encounter many people when we were surveying who were very interested in talking to us and very happy to participate and supportive of the study,” Lynfield said.

“We hope people can understand the enemy is the virus and not the public health workers who are trying to help.”
 
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