Two Friday news items.
On the COVID watch, Los Angeles Times has an interesting story about COVID at USC. Both UCLA and USC are having only virtual classes for fall semester. Nonetheless, USC has quite a few students living in its environs and has had 147 positive cases in a week or two. USC reports that most of its cases come from small gatherings - literally a 4-person study group or a 4-person Monopoly game. Most of the students in a small group become positive and then carry COVID back into their multi-student apartments nearby. See the article here.
Their ratio of symptomatic to asymptomatic cases is running 70:30. No comment on a key fact, how many of the symptomatic cases have a sore throat and how many are really sick.
Separately, much ink in the past week over the abrupt HHS announcement that FDA could not regulate lab developed tests (at least, not without notice and comment federal rulemaking. See entry point here.) Turna Ray takes a one week perspective on what's been happening in a deep dive (subscription) article - here.
Re FDA, see also an August 26 letter from Sen. Murray to Alex Azar raising concerns about LDT quality - here.