Doctor solves mystery of Charlotte woman who tested positive for COVID-19 after claiming she never left the house

A keypad. That’s how easy it is to get this.

Damn.

When this first started, several people sort of mockingly commented (in real life) about me hitting the cross walk button with my elbow and wearing a glove (to protect my hand from) while holding a clorox wipe to touch anything with- including keypads.

the pharmacy I got my last prescription from a few weeks ago had no masks or gloves on the pharmacy staff, multiple workers behind the counter and the one ringing me up reached over with a bare hand and hit some of the buttons on the keypad I was using, didn't then use Sanitizer and continued to touch his keyboard. I switched pharmacies.

R1 Not in GA according to the idiot opening the state

Maybe, but I bet it was more than just touching the keypad. I don't trust Miss Sculpted Eyebrows von Makeup Face.

OP, couldn’t you have just added this to the thread we have about her already?

*scoffs*

It wasn’t a mystery in the first place.

How happy this attention-sucking cunt must be. She managed to make her particular illness the focus of breathless reports (and DL threads, you stupid suckers) and AN INVESTIGATION and follow-up stories. Not for anything special, either. She just caught the virus the way countless other (anonymous) people did; via a plastic surface others have touched.

This is news?

R3 Great observations Rescue Chick. It's been awhile, but last time I went through the Walgreen's drive-thru with my beau, we noticed one car behind how the lady at the window wore no gloves, and we saw her rub her nose vigorously twice, albeit with the back of her hand. We also observed her using a telephone with that same hand, and then another employee used that same phone. It was mounted high on a wall, so we could see perfectly well. Then they take your card... and potentially give you a bit of COVID with your Rx! I said "so much for the drive-thru"....

Technically, no one is 100% safe, unless they have absolutely no deliveries, no mail service, and don't take the papers.

Who the fuck wrote this?

[quote] Before Brummert closed herself off in her -- even secluding herself from her husband who grocery shops but is temporarily living in a separate room in their house -- she visited her local pharmacy.

Who is the epidemiologist and what exactly was done? This article is crap, just like the previous article about this woman.

Sick people go to drug stores! Bitch be idiotic!

Yeah, this story is still full of holes. How would the epidemiologist determine that the woman's infection came from a keypad? Has the keypad never been wiped down between the time the woman used it and the epidemiologist supposedly sampled it? Is North Carolina awash with epidemiologists who are tracking infection sources for individual covid cases?

Attention whores gonna attention whore.

R12 No to play devil's advocate here, and it's not important enough to tango so early in the morning, but contact tracing had probably revealed a previous customer. Perhaps they had not been wiping down the keypad, and they know both customers used it. It's not too hard to speculate really.

So...this germ-detective did some kind of samples from a pharmacy card-reader keypad, WEEKS after this one woman used it one time, and he was able to find traces of novel Coronavirus still on those keys? I call bullshit on this story. Could it be that no one in a drugstore had disinfected that keypad over several weeks, and in the midst of a pandemic? It's nonsensical The "explanation" is just as fishy as the woman's original sheep-eyed, know-nothing attitude.

I think the folks who doubt every motherfucking thing when it comes to COVID-19 are whackjobs. It must scare people so severely, the reality of how contagious this virus is, that they would rather find all of this to be impossible. If the woman never left her house, and this was her last stop, the timing makes perfect sense based on what we know about the incubation period.

People may think I'm crazy but, in addition to wearing a mask, if I have to venture outside, I carry around a pair of glued together chopsticks if I ever need to press anything smaller like a keypad. The only thing I'm still not able to avoid are those touch screens found on ATM machines. Those you have to touch with your bare fingertips.

No one here has said it's not possible to acquire the virus from a surface, R16. We're doubting the specifics of this woman's story because they don't add up.

R18 Energy leak. Too many saying too many things do not "add up". Too many times. It shows a mental problem on behalf the doubting Thomases. There seems to be a grand conspiracy behind everything related to the virus in some people's feeble brains. I have a degree in Public Health. With contact tracing, those in charge try to make educated guesses. It's more than likely this is how she came to be infected. She probably inadvertently touched her face shortly thereafter without remembering, or contaminated something else before washing her hands

Sheesh, it's not brain surgery.

[quote] OP, couldn’t you have just added this to the thread we have about her already?

I actually added this report to that thread yesterday. OP is too retarded to use the search function.

[quote] With contact tracing, those in charge try to make [bold]educated guesses[/bold]. [bold]It's more than likely[/bold] this is how she came to be infected. She [bold]probably[/bold] inadvertently touched her face shortly thereafter without remembering, [bold]or[/bold] contaminated something else before washing her hands

For someone who is in Public Health you make a hell of a lot of assumptions.

No epidemiologist would speculate as to how someone was infected and state it as fact. That’s not scientific in the least.

That’s what we’re disputing. We’re not theorizing on some grand conspiracy here.

She shouldn’t have licked the keypad.

R21 What EXACTLY are you going on about? Yeah, nevermind; you're just another nutter.

R21 You cannot read properly, and make far too many inferences to be criticising anyone. First, I'm not "in" Public Health, as you put it. (many of us have attained degrees which are not related to our chosen careers, and many of us happen to be RETIRED) I said those public health workers who do contract tracing make educated guesses... Never did I say epidemiologists were guessing at ANY BLOODY THING. However, a working hypothesis can be construed as an educated guess of sorts, semantically. Get your ugly head out your arse.

You still are not clear on what isn't scientific enough for you.... You ought to learn to write better in addition to working on your reading comprehension skills.

R21 is a huge hypocrite! Talk about making assumptions....

She took anonymous bareback loads behind the pharmacy dumpster.

For R21. This is a great overview for someone to understand the process. The article is brief, and in laymen's terms.

R26 Correct, and only THEN did she lick her fingers. Yes, we all knew she had to have been lying about something... "It just doesn't add up"!

frightening

R23, r24; r25 and r27

For someone who is retired you’d think you’d have time to take that giant stick out of your ass.

R30 You still fail to explain what was undertaken in a [italic] non-scientific [/italic] manner. For the life of me, and the love of Pete, I do not comprehend just what exactly it is that you are objecting to...

Be mindful too: say what you mean, and mean what you say. There is no stick up my arse, I simply do not suffer fools well, and you're a fool to try twisting my words in such a juvelile and uneducated manner.

^ juvenile

A doctor is claiming he knows definitively what allegedly caused this woman’s virus with absolutely no scientific data, merely guesswork.

That’s what I object to.

Sorry you think me a “fool” for being suspicious of this woman and her doctor friend.

For a bit of enlightenment, it is perfectly acceptable, AND customary for epidemiologists (and a other public health officers, or fourth year med students performing contact tracing) to phrase statements such as "She more than likely acquired transmission of the virus from...." This does not imply madness, negligence, lack of thoroughness, or mere wild guesses. It simply leaves a bit of room for the possibility of doubt, or an alternate mode.

Once the genetic signature is sequenced, people can be a bit more confident, but in our eager desire to find someone to blame, I think we're being misguided by the sort who doubt everything and cry foul. They foment paranoia, and unrest.

We don't even know if there really is a doctor/epidemiologist -- the reporter is relying on the word of this woman. Very odd that a reporter wouldn't follow up with a call to the doctor.

One can believe that the virus is capable of being transmitted via a keypad and also believe that the reporting here seems shoddy.

I don't understand how questioning a poorly sourced study "foments paranoia and unrest," but I'm obviously looking at this from a different perspective than you are.

And this is why “contact tracing” is bogus. It’s an impossible knot to untangle.

Right now my unemployed SIL is sending her resume to apply to be a “contact tracer” for the Bloomberg initiative. So now we are going to have totally unqualified people being crash-tested and privy to all kinds of private data, connecting imaginary dots. Privacy nightmare waiting to be unleashed because people are whipped into a paranoid frenzy.

I don't believe a word of this article.

R37 - Good. YOU have critical thinking skills.

Everyone - the only evidence in this article is that Rachel contacted the reporter and said an epidemiologist called her. The reporter did not verify the call or checked with the doctor.

The NC Governor JUST created a task force LAST WEDNESDAY to do testing and tracing - but would need time to ramp it up. AND - they can only trace humans in contact with other humans.

1) There is NO way they could have traced it that quickly even if they did have all of the staff and resources - which they do not currently

2) They cannot trace to devices - tracing is only human contact.

Rachel got shit over her previous reach-out to the media. She learned about the NC task force and then contacted the reporter and said - yes, that's how she got it.

SHE'S A FUCKING LIAR! I don't trust that she even has COVID19.

The reporters in these articles should lose their jobs. The only evidence in any of these reports is what came out of this woman's mouth - and she is a real attention whore on social media.

R7, you are the reason I love this site.

R36 Much of the job endless phone calls asking very basic mundane things regarding one's whereabouts... Not so much "personal data". For the most part it isn't a very glamourous or rewarding job, but if your heart is in the right place, I suppose that is reward enough, on top of being gainfully employed, if your SIL is finding herself out of work presently.

Most people believe however once community transmission is widespread, the role of contact tracing becomes pointless, or unnecessary. It is only truly valuable in communities with little or rare spread. Once the genie is out the bottle so to speak, there is diminishing returns.

^ entails endless calls

When this first escalated, around early-March, I was already wearing a mask and gloves when running errands. I got such weird looks everywhere. Who's sorry now?

R42 I'm with you, and we have much delivered. I try to stay out of public places as much as possible. When I do go out, it's a scarf over mask, and wrap-around sun glasses.

R43 Some of us want live and not end up with damaged lungs! Am I right??

[quote]wearing a glove (to protect my hand from) while holding a clorox wipe to touch anything with- including keypads.

I'm the same - even before this. Thousands of people touch the keypads along with the ATM screens. I always had a tissue as a buffer and I'd sanitize my hands right after. Even pumping gas, I'd use paper towels and again, sanitize my hands right after. It isn't OCD, it's common. People are fucking disgusting. They think nothing of taking a shit or a piss or picking their nose and not washing their hands.

I carry a few tissues in my pocket now at all times when out and about. Use it for touching touchpads and screens and opening doors, etc. Any card I use and insert or slide in a machine gets sanitized as soon as I get back to my car.

How this guy can say that she definitely got it from a touchpad idk, but it confirms that touchpads and payment points are a popular means of potential transmission.

[quote]I don't trust Miss Sculpted Eyebrows von Makeup Face.

I don't either. Her Twitter was full of "omg what if I get the virus" and suddenly went to "omg I got the virus."

My guess is the touchpad has infected multiple people already, or there was an employee at the pharmacy that day who was diagnosed and also touched the keypad.

I've been joking for years that Redbox kiosks were going to be the vector for a plague and I guess I wasn't too far off.

[quote]You cannot read properly, and make far too many inferences to be criticising anyone. First, I'm not "in" Public Health, as you put it.

You said you had "a degree in Public Health." It's perfectly reasonable for him to have assumed you worked in the public health sector, based on what you said.

That is bullshit, it's only a guess, there is no way to know which particular person you get it from or where.

R49 In the beginning, it is possible. If the lady hadn't been anywhere else, and a customer was discovered who is infected was shedding virus in line before her, AND paid with a card, that is how the process makes connections. Every such recept has a time stamp. I don't see what is so incredulous here? Whatever am I missing?

If you're suggesting she lied to a contract tracer, what is the motive? I just cannot comprehend the " that is bullshit" take on all of it, no more than I can fully understand why R48 assumes I'm doing contract tracing, and somehow fucking up, merely because I said I received a degree in Public Health... Said I was "making a lot of assumption" for someone working in public health.... I'm simply drawing on my education to do my level best to explain how the process works. There seems to be much misconception about the process, and also who performs it.

R49 I should be mindful to add that swabs would most definitely be taken from that keypad as well. The virus can live up to twenty-seven days maximum. Even when the virus is deemed "inactive", meaning it lacks the ability to attach its spike proteins and replicate, it doesn't however mean all traces of its RNA signature have been erased.

Then this sample is put through the BLAST computer, and the genetic sequence is analysed. If it is the identical strain, and possibly even has picked up the DNA of that previously infected individual, it's fairly clear a connection to scientists, MDs, and Epidemiologists...I wish one of you could explain better how you declare it all "bullshit".

... and just for the record, and to muddy the waters here, I am remiss using the terminology "the virus can live..." I should have said the virus can remain infective, or active for.... There is much recent debate whether viruses are living things actually. It would be best to consider them as dormant seeds metaphorically... the seeds of a parasitic trojan horse.

I believe I had it in late December but I doubt anyone would believe me? While I was ill, I stayed home. I wish we could get some answers.

R53 I would encourage you to have one of the antibody tests. It may just set your mind at ease a bit... perhaps not, as no one is certain of how long the immunity lasts, or whether it confers immunity to the other strains. I would still have it though if I were you; it would give me a bit of security knowing I had fought it off successfully.

REALITY CHECK, DLEGS:

Highly likely this was the scenario: Charlotte Woman, having claimed to have never left her house, suddenly remembers "that time I went to the pharmacy."

Epidemiologist asks her if she used a keypad while she was there.

"Why yes, I do declare I did use a keypad!" she exclaims.

"Then it is highly likely that is how you contracted the virus."

Point being, the epidemiologist only has her say-so to go on.

Given the distance between Charlotte Woman and Sanity, it is also likely she shook someone's hand that day, hugged someone, encountered other pharmacy patrons at close range, forgot that she'd also stopped in at Starbucks on the way to the pharmacy, forgot to mention her trip to the bank... she is not a very reliable witness.

I can't read the full story, but how fucking ridiculous. The woman contracted the virus in one of the few ways everyone else does. Curious to her and her doctors, maybe, about the how and when, but not too curious.

It's like asking someone how they got HIV. Think for a second. How does anyone get HIV? There are fewer than a handful of reasons that account for 99.99% of all cases, and it was pretty clearly one of those.

There's no reason to Miss Marple this mystery.

R55 "Witness" are you friggin' kidding me? It's not a trial. This attitude and insistence that things must be something other than what they appear is bonkers. I still don't know why you're so convinced she's lying.

Why do you suspect no other infected individuals could be traced to a bleeding pharmacy, where the chances of coming into contact with sick people being present is a given?

Why is she (perhaps) lying to the tracer about visiting Starbucks, the bank visit, and the hugging of someone in your hypothetical scenario? Sorry, but again, what is her motive?

For realz? R57?

Because she'd lied before.

R56 By focusing on the inadequacy of such tracing, or others deeming it "bullshit" you are undermining the value of it to identify and isolate those individuals who MAY have been exposed. It's not perhaps flawless 100% of the time, especially after widespread community transmission has already taken place, as I have mentioned upthread, but the process and the people performing contact tracing are valuable, and I don't believe it is fair to say it's all "bullshit". That's a very uneducated way to look at this I'm afraid.

It's important to have faith in this process, or tool. It's also good to be fair-minded and positive about the people doing this sort of work. II HO, I find it's disrespectful and angry to these healthcare workers to argue "It's all bullshit". Maybe it's fair to think they're not "real detectives" or heroes of sorts, and the article is glossy copy, but putting them down and declaring the process useless, or impossible to tell us about any modes of transmission is wrong, and unnecessarily negative. It reeks of misplaced blame to my nose.

R58 I thought she "plum forgot" she had stopped at the chemist's... We know this is a boldfaced lie? That's why I have asked for more information here to make sense of all this.

[quote] It reeks of misplaced blame to my nose.

R59 is writing to us from Victorian England

This thread is hysterical. Next she is going to claim she has fibromyalgia as an underlying condition.

R61 Be nice now...sorry, but I am a fifty-one year-old British man.

Same as R45 and R46, for the past few years I’ve become careful (or 'paranoid' in DL parlance) about touching any type of public button and door handle. I would use a kleenex but have switched to clorox wipes since corona started.

R59, I appreciate the value of contact tracing, but I also have doubts about the ability to determine, with certitude, that more than three weeks earlier, before her seclusion, she could pinpoint exactly what surface she touched and thus contracted the virus.

That's the bullshit part, not, perhaps contacting the pharmacy and every place and every surface she might have touched more than three weeks before her seclusion and how long before her condition became known.

If I were to get gonorrhea symptoms and test positive, I may be able to contact my potentially affected sex partner/s. I would remember having sex days, a week, two weeks ago.

I could not, however, reliably give you an accounting of every surface, every doorknob, every key pad, every item in a shop and every space I had touched or traversed more than 3+ weeks ago, even had I been limiting my excursions to the.outside world.

ElderBrit-- I don't think anyone is questioning the value of contact tracing, but rather questioning this particular instance, given that the woman in question seems to be more than slightly insane, which would make her self-reporting of her activity suspect.

Touching the keypad in itself would not give her COVID, nor would just touching anything infected with COVID - it was the fact she TOUCHED HER FACE afterwards that gave it to her.

I think I touch my face a hundred times an hour. I'm doomed.

For crying out loud people, did you read the article? The only proof that she got it from a keypad is that she called the reporter and said an epidemiologist traced it to there.

So far there has been 1) no proof that she has COVID19 and 2) no proof this doctor's phone call ever happened and 3) no confirmation with doctor that they were able to trace it to the keypad.

As I said before - NC just launched a testing and tracing team last week. They said they were going to have to ramp up resources. There is no way they would be able to trace this in a week - let alone to a keypad. They only track human contacts - not surface contacts.

She is lying because she got called out on media about her 'immaculate' infection. She then found out about the NC task force and called the reporter.

If any of you believe this (without verification of any 'facts' in this story), then you need to stop reading on the internet.

She is an attention-seeking deranged human being, based on her social media and all her prior claims. The reporters fell for it. What's so hard to understand about this?

R69 = The Voice of Reason

R69 Well thank you for pointing out that she's already been proven a liar on her social media accounts. No one had mentioned any of that business. One cannot assume we all engage with Facebook, or other social media. ( I certainly do not) I only read the linked article in OP's heading.

I have heard nothing about her on the TV or radio. Nothing in the newspapers I take either. So this isn't about contact tracers as rubbish then. People should stop saying that here then! I do hope for the sake of fairness there is ample proof she's lying. I still don't see what she has to gain, pity to attempt to generate a bit of sympathy on her FB page by doing this.

I would like to point out, just because the article had a certain date, does not disprove the possibility of contact tracing being viable. If someone was shopping there, and known to be infected, the keypad still would more than likely be the vector, especially if she was wearing a mask. If she was actively shopping, and touching several items rather than merely picking up an Rx, then I will concede any number of items touched could also be vectors, and yes, she would need to rub her eyes, nose, or mouth realistically to have become infected. (breaks in her skin could allow transmission, but not very likely)

Cheers for the kind and encouraging words for the contact tracers!

[quote] So this isn't about contact tracers as rubbish

As has been pointed out in many of the prior 70 posts, but hey, welcome to the party!

R59 - I don't know how the thread got derailed about contact tracers. They are important and needed.

For some background, this woman recently was working on a film about sexual assault and then, in the process of research, was sexually assaulted in a bar. Ok - could it happen? Possibly - but it probably did not. There were a lot of posts about her various illnesses and freaking out about COVID19 and then bam, she got it.

She contacted the reporter about how she had 'immaculate' infection of COVID19, then said on social media - Hey Everyone, Check me out on the 6 o'clock news!

This whole article is based on a tweet by the original reporter saying that she had contacted him AGAIN and told him the story about the epidemiologist. Again, no verification - everything has been what she has said. And, again, tracers would not make some statement about getting it from a keypad - they have no way of confirming that. Tracing is just individuals to individuals. Plus, they didn't have the time or resources to even do this yet in North Carolina.

R72 No, certain posters were indeed claiming contact tracing was "bullshit" as it couldn't prove that. Unless I Have helpful posters on block, who dropped clues, I was getting that argument loud and clear.

It's yetvanother DIFFERENT argument that no contact tracer was involved, and it's been proven on FB that she's made it all up, and isn't infected. Please don't make me go back and list all the posts which had attempted to disprove the process....they're there. Perhaps you have them blocked?

[quote] So this isn't about contact tracers as rubbish then. People should stop saying that here then!

Please point to one post that said this. Not that this woman’s story was bullshit or the doctor’s story (if there was one). Specifically contact tracing was.

[quote]no more than I can fully understand why [R48] assumes I'm doing contract tracing, and somehow fucking up,

What the fuck? I said no such thing.

I told you these hedge fund owned stores are disgusting and dangerous. They should be cleaning checkout areas, floors, doors, windows and shelves regularly.

They would rather save a buck on labor. They are spreading this thing everywhere

I don't know about everywhere else, but I know a professional cleaning service comes in every night to clean a Key Food in Ditmas Park owned by people I know.

[quote]ElderBrit-- I don't think anyone is questioning the value of contact tracing, but rather questioning this particular instance

The fake Brit who keeps going on and on about how people are falsely accusing him of being a contact tracer has also weighed in on going through the Walgreen's drive-thru pharmacy... but there are no Walgreens in the UK.

He's inventing a conflict about the value of contact tracing because he's a troll, or maybe just a little off-kilter, who knows. But you're right, no one is questioning the value of contact tracing, only talking about how it works.

R78, we must be neighbors, I know that Key Food.

When I first read this I thought it was just a Charlotte ruse.

Yet it turned out to be Charlotte’s Web (of lies).

Like that whore, Kimberly Bergalis.

This woman is clearly an attention whore who got it some perfectly explainable way, like everyone else.

She should have washed her hands.

R79 Just as the poster who had wrongly assumed I not only WORK in a public health capacity, and do a lousy job of it by making too may guesses, you wrongly assume anyone who happens to be British, must necessarily live in Britain.

Brainless daft cunts most of you are! Stop and think next time , rather than assuming you can infer so bloody much! I live the States, have done so for nearly twenty-two years now, and DO shop at the Walgreen's.

The only "mystery" about this story is why the press treated it as a mystery in the first place.

Bitch was out licking doorknobs so she could get in the news cycle for the day.

Guess this bitch’s story doesn’t hold up too well given the new CDC Guidelines.

This is why they tell you not to use the tip of your tongue when pressing in your pin number on a credit card machine.

Just a trial run for her real tricks that will begin with Münchhausen syndrome by proxy

Bet she turned a few tricks in the pharmacy parking lot.

When it comes to sex, people lie.

[quote] by making too may guesses, you wrongly assume anyone who happens to be British, must necessarily live in Britain.

I thought Brexit meant that British people couldn't exit the country?