Covid testing trauma

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

It made the news up here last year when the Florida State Police started pulling over vehicles on Interstate 95 with NJ and NY license plates and booting them out of the state. Further, personally know people who have vacation homes in Florida who entered the state before the lockdowns, and were harassed for no other reason than they had NJ plates on the car. I don't know if this and the NY/NJ/CT/FL restrictions ever got to court, I believe the Department Of Transportation pressured all the states involved into backing down.

As for vaccinating against C19, I think it should be compulsory regardless of religion and with the only exception being if the likelihood of a medical condition would make the vaccine more lethal than the virus.

On this we 100% agree.

[Leo Enticknap]

Steve,
The accepted abbreviation for the Supreme Court of the United States has become "SCOTUS".

The President is "POTUS"

The Congress is "COTUS"

Perhaps all of these originated as texter's shortcuts.

POTUS is used frequently in Tom Clancy's novels from the 1980s, before SMS text messages existed. Text messaging may have popularized and expanded the use of these acronyms, but I doubt if it inspired their invention.

[Ed Gordon]

OTUS, the shortened version of the phrase "of the United States," was an unlikely addition to our language, as it is both a suffix and an acronym (or, if you prefer, an initialism). Yet this collection of letters has managed to be quite successful. We began using -OTUS in the late 19th century, and we're still finding new ways to use it today.

The earliest recorded use any variant of -OTUS is from 1879, when SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) appeared in a book titled The Phillips Telegraphic Code for the Rapid Transmission by Telegraph. This work, by Walter P. Phillips, was one of a large number of code books which allowed people to send inexpensive or secret messages via telegraph. Telegraphs were priced based on length, so one wanted to use as few words as possible.

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/word...s-potus-flotus

[Frank Cox]

https://books.google.ca/books?id=zw9...page&q&f=false

Now that's an interesting book.

I wonder if anyone uses this sort for texting or tweets.

[Steve Guttag]

I believe the kids would say: TLDR

[Marcel Birgelen]

TL;DR also sounds like the next hyped app for half-second video loops.

And let me guess... COITUS is for when the Government screws up so much, it's all FUBAR?

[Leo Enticknap]

...and we are all required to BOHICA.

Incidentally, I arrived at Cinemacon yesterday to work on booth prep. Despite signs up all over the hotel stating that masks must be worn at all times, I would estimate that a quarter to a third of people walking around are ignoring them, and hotel staff appear to be making no attempt to enforce the rule. It's the vacation crowd over the weekend, so maybe the convention crowd next week will be a little more compliant. We'll see.

[Steve Guttag]

I suspect that in the hallways, probably...on the convention floor...check people's hands to see if they have food/drink to avoid the mask.

[Lyle Romer]

Ask them if you can expense the cost of a commercial test?

I went through a similar hassle going to Hawaii last month to service a theater. The state requires you to obtain a negative test result, from a sample taken within 72 hours of the scheduled departure time of your flight that leaves the mainland, which has to be done by a vendor approved by the state. I managed to find several vendors close to where I live that offered reasonably priced tests (as in, $30-40) that meet Hawaii's requirements, but none that guaranteed to produce the result within the required time window. In the end, I had to go to a place in Echo Park (70 miles from home and 50 from work) and pay $150. The cost was passed along to the customer, but I managed to combine the journey to get the test with a planned maintenance call at a post house nearby, so we didn't have to pass along those travel costs to the theater in Hawaii.

But if the festival hiring you is insisting on this test in this timescale, it seems to me entirely reasonable that they should cover the cost of you getting a pricey, but low hassle test. It can't hurt to ask.

When I was at Dulles Airport a few weeks ago waiting out a delay, I overheard a couple who missed their connection to Jamaica which had the same test requirement as Hawaii. After the gate agent figured out a flight to get them there the next day, they realized that they couldn't go because their negative COVID test would be out of date. It's a huge inconvenience because you have to get tested enough in advance to get the result in time but then you lose flexibility if there are travel issues.

[Leo Enticknap]

I cut it fine. My flight was scheduled to take off four hours before that time window expired, and was delayed for two. So my heart was in my mouth a little! The airline checked my paperwork at the gate in Seattle before boarding and gave me a wristband that allowed me to bypass the checkpoint in Honolulu, so I don't think it would have mattered if that flight had missed the deadline by an hour or two. But if they'd canceled it and had to rebook me on a different plane with a different, formal departure time, I'd likely have timed out.

Still, all this inconvenience and expense doesn't seem to have deterred tourists from trying to go to Hawaii. Hospitalizations are increasing, in response to which the Governor is asking people not to come, but it doesn't seem to be having any effect. Writing personally, if I were traveling on my own dime, the testing requirement would be a deal breaker, mainly because it would be an extra $450 on the cost of the vacation right there (state approved pre-departure tests for the whole family).

[Lyle Romer]

It made the news up here last year when the Florida State Police started pulling over vehicles on Interstate 95 with NJ and NY license plates and booting them out of the state.

This information is 100% FALSE. They did have a checkpoint of sorts. All they did was asked where you were coming from. If the answer was NY, NJ or any of the other "hot zone" states at the time, they informed you that you had to isolate for a certain number of days (I can't remember if it was 3 or 10). Nobody was booted out of FL as that would have been unconstitutional.

Imagine the world we would be living in today if our grandparents generation believed it was a "right" to endanger others.

This absurd narrative is based upon the premise that it is very likely that I am currently carrying SARS-CoV-2 and am contagious. The statistical fact is that even if I wasn't vaccinated there would be a less than 1% chance that I (or any other random individual) is currently a potential "threat" to spread the virus. I live in FL so the chance is even less right now for residents of other States.

If I know I'm infected or if it is highly likely that I am infected due to close contact with known cases then it is my responsibility to ensure that I do not spread it further and that responsibility will temporarily usurp my rights. In that case, there is "probable cause" to restrict my rights.

[Lyle Romer]

I cut it fine. My flight was scheduled to take off four hours before that time window expired, and was delayed for two. So my heart was in my mouth a little! The airline checked my paperwork at the gate in Seattle before boarding and gave me a wristband that allowed me to bypass the checkpoint in Honolulu, so I don't think it would have mattered if that flight had missed the deadline by an hour or two. But if they'd canceled it and had to rebook me on a different plane with a different, formal departure time, I'd likely have timed out.

Still, all this inconvenience and expense doesn't seem to have deterred tourists from trying to go to Hawaii. Hospitalizations are increasing, in response to which the Governor is asking people not to come, but it doesn't seem to be having any effect. Writing personally, if I were traveling on my own dime, the testing requirement would be a deal breaker, mainly because it would be an extra $450 on the cost of the vacation right there (state approved pre-departure tests for the whole family).

The recent spike in Hawaii seems to illustrate that these testing requirements and all of the other mitigation being done there are mostly pointless. With all this stuff in place, there is zero chance I would even consider spending money to "vacation" there right now. Same with going on a cruise. Needing to be tested for diseases and following all kinds of medical protocols is more akin to a hospital stay than a vacation.

[Leo Enticknap]

If I know I'm infected or if it is highly likely that I am infected due to close contact with known cases then it is my responsibility to ensure that I do not spread it further and that responsibility will temporarily usurp my rights. In that case, there is "probable cause" to restrict my rights.

The gotcha with that approach is that people actively won't want to know if they're infected or not, especially if asymptomatic. During the height of the first round of the pandemic, my British relatives told me that there was a great reluctance by people with mild symptoms, or who had been in contact with someone who later had, or was suspected to have had, covid, to get tested, because a positive result would mean a 14-day house arrest. Now, an increasing proportion of the UK's population appear to be deleting the National Health Service's "track and trace" app from their phones, or simply not taking their phones with them when they go to large gathering events (e.g. parties), to avoid being "pinged" (receiving an automated message telling them to quarantine).

Personal responsibly only works when a critical mass of the population exercises it; but the alternatives tend to punish the innocent along with the guilty. There is no easy answer.

[Lyle Romer]

The gotcha with that approach is that people actively won't want to know if they're infected or not, especially if asymptomatic. During the height of the first round of the pandemic, my British relatives told me that there was a great reluctance by people with mild symptoms, or who had been in contact with someone who later had, or was suspected to have had, covid, to get tested, because a positive result would mean a 14-day house arrest. Now, an increasing proportion of the UK's population appear to be deleting the National Health Service's "track and trace" app from their phones, or simply not taking their phones with them when they go to large gathering events (e.g. parties), to avoid being "pinged" (receiving an automated message telling them to quarantine).

Personal responsibly only works when a critical mass of the population exercises it; but the alternatives tend to punish the innocent along with the guilty. There is no easy answer.

I agree with you that people will try to get around the rules but that doesn't justify a system where everybody is treated as "guilty" when the percentage who are is incredibly low.

[Steve Guttag]

I wonder if CinemaCon will have any statistics of any COVID19 being traced to the 2021 convention.