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Months-long lockdowns. Entire city populations herded through the streets for mandatory testing. The people of China could be forgiven for thinking they had seen it all during the coronavirus pandemic.
But now they face a new indignity: the addition of anal swabs — yes, you read that right — to the testing regimen for those in quarantine.
Chinese state media outlets introduced the new protocol in recent days, prompting widespread discussion and some outrage. Some Chinese doctors say the science is there. Recovering patients, they say, have continued to test positive through samples from the lower digestive tract days after nasal and throat swabs came back negative.
Yet for many, it seemed a step too far in government intrusions after a year and counting of a dignity-eroding pandemic.
"Everyone involved will be so embarrassed," one user in Guangdong province said Wednesday on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. In a Weibo poll, 80 percent of respondents said they "could not accept" the invasive method.
[...] The new protocol comes just over a year after the virus began spreading rapidly in the country. Chinese officials are worried about the approach of Lunar New Year next month, often called the world's largest annual migration. Some 3 billion trips are made over the holiday during a non-pandemic year, which means even a single silent coronavirus case could rapidly leapfrog across the nation.
Journal Reference:
Mei Sun, Dong Guo, Jing Zhang, et al. Anal swab as a potentially optimal specimen for SARS-CoV-2 detection to evaluate hospital discharge of COVID-19 patients [open], Future Microbiology (DOI: 10.2217/fmb-2020-0090)
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday January 28 2021, @11:52PM (13 children)
actually "ouch" is the nose procedure.
There is an antigen procedure where they take your blood. Then there's the stick up your nose one - they shove it deep, they shove it far, it hurts, and they let it sit there to absorb the moist stuff. You can numb the pain of this second test if you do a line first, but you can put that in your ass too on a finger, so no difference. The issue with the test is you don't get a lot of virus.
After they get the sample, they dump it in a bath of food-chemicals which makes the covid RNA replicate hundreds of millions of times. Then they get a sample big enough for testing. If you get a large initial sample, the test is ready in hours - if you get a small one, they need to grow it in a test tube for days to get you the results. The problem is, RNA fragments are fragile (the reason the mRNA vaccines need to be stored super-cold and get destroyed in the body in a day). So if you don't have a lot of covid in you yet, possibly because you just got it, the test may come out negative. The more you get in the initial sample, the faster you get your results, and the more accurate those results are.
It appears they're able to get a larger initial sample from the ass. Simply because the nose hole fits a finger, while the ass hole fits something dick-sized, so they can put a really big cotton ball up there.
Here's the funny thing - why is anyone complaining? Women have no issue with something dick-sized in the ass, and men get a camera shoved up there to test for cancer. Ah, you say, but the cancer test is a choice, and they're trying to make the covid ass-test mandatory. I agree with that, but you get those from police and airport security when they check for drugs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday January 29 2021, @12:51AM (8 children)
I agree with that, but you get those from police and airport security when they check for drugs.
There's a couple of really big differences here between anal drug tests in the US and anal Covid tests in China:
1) Americans love their War on Drugs and are willing to suffer just about any injustice or indignity in support of this War. So, no-knock warrants that result in people in the wrong house being brutalized or shot dead, that's OK. Pulling people over for minor traffic infractions and then destroying their car to look for drugs, and possibly shooting them in the back because they were reaching for--their wallet, that's OK. Armed cops in schools to brutalize kids because they might have drugs on them, that's OK. For-profit private prisons where people get sent for decades for non-violent drug offenses, that's OK.
2) Those actions listed above in support of the War on Drugs only happen to "those people" (i.e., black and brown people), and that's OK. If it happens to a white person, they must have deserved it after all.
But asking people to wear a mask to prevent the spread of Covid, that's an infringement of their Freedumz! And so is getting an anal test for this disease that's killed 400,000 Americans and counting. We can't possibly stand for this injustice!
(Score: 1, Informative) by fakefuck39 on Friday January 29 2021, @01:13AM (6 children)
>Americans love their War on Drugs
you've never been to china... to give you an idea - you know how you get thrown in jail a few years for having a bag of heroin on you? it's punishable by death in china.
and no, the american people do not support no-knock warrants, civil forfeiture, or being shot. the other stuff you speak of seems to be from some hipster blm handbook with talking points. when you're detained for a violent crime, and the police have a gun on you and tell to put your hands up and freeze, you do not get shot for reaching for your wallet. you get shot because you did not comply. because the cop doesn't need to decide if you're reaching for wallet vs gun. you need to put your hands up.
and yes, when you are suspected of robbery with a gun, and the police tell you to freeze and put your hands up, and you start to run away instead, they should shoot you in the back. to prevent you shooting someone. and if you want to prove you're not the suspect, you put your hands up, freeze, and let the cop take your wallet from your pocket.
the war on drugs is not ok, most people don't support it. but then you go and mix in bullshit with that, making your whole point false.
cops kill more white people than blacks. blacks kill the most blacks. 7.5 times more murders per capita than whites. you think maybe a population statistically likely to murder more, gets incarcerated more? wow, what a surprise.
asking a person to wear a mask is fine. enforcing it with fines and violence if they don't comply is not fine. but this goes for clothes too - the government is indeed overstepping its authority for arresting you if you're walking naked in public. yes, the government overstepping its authority is an infringement of freedom. A law saying I have to use pink toilet paper would be also. So would a law saying I have to look up at the sky once per day. The triviality or ease of doing something does not mean someone has the right to force me to do it, no matter how beneficial it is. And I say this as someone who wears an n95 everywhere I go.
What you have with masks is people protesting against a government grab for authority it doesn't have, not against wearing masks. But it's cute that you sound like a 14yo edgy kid from /r/politics. You're so cool and fresh!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday January 29 2021, @06:22AM (5 children)
when you're detained for a violent crime, and the police have a gun on you and tell to put your hands up and freeze, you do not get shot for reaching for your wallet. you get shot because you did not comply. because the cop doesn't need to decide if you're reaching for wallet vs gun. you need to put your hands up.
Wrong. Philando Castile [wikipedia.org] was shot for reaching for his wallet.
the war on drugs is not ok, most people don't support it
Most people do support it, at least implicitly, or else it would be a big enough political issue that it would get fixed.
But it's cute that you sound like a 14yo edgy kid from /r/politics. You're so cool and fresh!
And you sound like a total asshole. Your posts here are so full of bile, you really should get some counseling.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by fakefuck39 on Friday January 29 2021, @06:56AM (4 children)
Castille was told not to reach for his firearm, immediately proceeded to reach for his wallet, and was shot. At least read your own damn link.
ah, so most people don't support it, so you say 'implicitly by electing lawmakers' guess most supported trump too in 2016, since he won? nice strawman.
and guess what. the drug laws are slowly getting removed and people let out of jail. because people vote for lawmakers that fix them. so there goes even you stretched strawman of an argument.
i sound like an asshole because i am an asshole to you. an idiot spreadng misinformation and false narrative to keep your anger flowning. because let's face it -if you don't have this quest in your life, you literally have nothing else. because you're stupd, and you're a loser.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2021, @11:42AM (3 children)
"because people vote for lawmakers that fix them."
We should also insist on having better voter integrity laws than what we currently have. Otherwise it may not even matter who we would like to vote for.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Friday January 29 2021, @06:42PM (2 children)
i agree with this, but even if we fix the districts and nuke the ec, it doesn't fix it. many times people do vote to support bad things. hell, we put japansese americans in camps. just that the war on drugs and corrupt cops aren't examples of that. and many bad things caused by voters are because of blatant misinformation and lies. like the post i replied to. the guy complaining about the problem -literally the cause of the problem. and too stupid to know it. he also doesn't really care about the problem -it's just a quest he picked to fill a hole in his life. because he's a loser.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday January 30 2021, @12:20AM (1 child)
Why don't you tell me your home address, and we can talk about how much of a loser I am in person.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Saturday January 30 2021, @12:34AM
Yep. In addition to not having the social skills and conversational experience to understand a basic joke, you are also a keyboard warrior and /r/iamverybadass. How about instead of posting my address on the internet, I just laugh at you some more, you absolute social reject loser?
(Score: 3, Funny) by stretch611 on Friday January 29 2021, @03:23AM
Well, tbh, If I were you, I surely wouldn't expect to sit for that one.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2021, @12:13PM
You make a good point. Anyone travelling to the US via airplane must be either prepared for a prod up the ass or will get a shock when it happens but ether way knows it is coming. Same difference, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2021, @01:01PM
Fecal plumes are the primary route of transmission. The virus reproduce in the epithelium of the intestine.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday January 29 2021, @10:16PM (1 child)
Nope... Contrary to what's depicted in porn, statistically speaking, about 2/3rds of sexually active women don't have anal sex (as it's either painful or too distasteful), and most of the ones that do are young adults.
Men get a finger up there to check the prostate; both men and women have colonoscopies to check for cancer or polyps every few years.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Friday January 29 2021, @10:55PM
going on the fact that you replied with statistics and facts to an obvious joke, I'm gonna go on a limb and say you have zero experience with anal or any other kind of sex, but you do have a lot of experience with your finger up your ass. if you find anal sex distasteful, you probably shouldn't put the dick in your mouth afterwards. give that a try.
now, statistically speaking, pretty much every normal woman has had anal sex at some point, and the only way it hurts is if some social reject virgin like yourself does that. with a hooker in your case.