Coronavirus

[KarenRei]

Airborne diseases include any that are caused via transmission through the air including droplets.

"Airborne spread has not been reported for COVID-19 and it is not believed to be a major driver of transmission based on available evidence"

Are you defining an airborne disease to be diseases that do not have airborne spread?

ED: That said, I'm not sure that this nuance / wording usage is worth squabbling over. Let it suffice to say that the disease spreads overwhelmingly from close contact (<2m) and touching contaminated surfaces, but not sustained drift over longer distances

 

[SageBrush]

disease spreads overwhelmingly from close contact (<2m)

This is the correct part of your post. Spread from touching infected surfaces is thought to be a minor route of transmission.

"sustained drift over longer distances" is not a prerequisite for transmission to be airborne. You have misunderstood the use of the term.

 

[EVNow]

The symptoms of chronic bronchities overlap covid-19. If she has worsening symptoms or her chronic symptoms with a new fever then she should put on a mask and call a local ER for instructions.

Her past and current tobacco abuse history would be informative. If she is an active smoker then the best advice she can receive would be to stop.

You missed the entire point.

Even when someone is conscious about the possibility of infection and wants to make sure the infection is not spread - they are not being tested.

In this scenario - the correct way to reduce the spread is to test her. Find all her contacts and patients she worked with - and test them. Put them in quarantine until the results come. Its not making her run from pillar to post and at the end to tell her - move along nothing to see here.

 

[EVNow]

COVID-19 has a 15 day avg mutation period. WA1 to WA2 had 3 mutations and 6.1 day period between infections. We should expect large scale infections in a couple of weeks.

https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/

We know that Wuhan went from an index case in ~Nov-Dec 2019 to several thousand cases by mid-Jan 2020, thus going from initial seeding event to widespread local transmission in the span of ~9-10 weeks. We now believe that the Seattle area seeding event was ~Jan 15 and we're now ~7 weeks later. I expect Seattle now to look like Wuhan around ~1 Jan, when they were reporting the first clusters of patients with unexplained viral pneumonia. We are currently estimating ~600 infections in Seattle, this matches my phylodynamic estimate of the number of infections in Wuhan on Jan 1. Three weeks later, Wuhan had thousands of infections and was put on large-scale lock-down. However, these large-scale non-pharmaceutical interventions to create social distancing had a huge impact on the resulting epidemic. China averted many millions of infections through these intervention measures and cases there have declined substantially.​

 

[UnknownSoldier]

I wonder if they will actually attempt to declare a quarantine here and lock the whole PNW region down. I hope they do, I wouldn't mind a couple weeks off work. I hope they declare it soon before I get infected.

I should probably stock up on different varieties of canned foods I like in anticipation of a 2-3 weeks lockdown.

 

[bkp_duke]

I blame the government for completely botched response. Read the below thread and tell me this is how you would expect a functioning government to respond. With obvious local transmission - still they are testing only those with known contact to infected patients / been to infected countries.

sketchy lady on Twitter

I live in Seattle, I have all symptoms of COVID-19 and have a history of chronic bronchitis. Since I work in a physical therapy clinic with many 65+ patients and those with chronic illnesses, I decided to be responsible and go to get tested. This is how that went.

I called the Corona hotline, was on hold for 40 minutes and gave up. So I looked at the CDC and Washington public health websites. They told me to see a primary care doctor, but there's no information about testing.

I called 2 primary care doctors. One told me they don't know where to get testing, and that I should not to seek out testing. The other one told me to go to an urgent care or ER. I called the Urgent Care, they also had no idea where tests are, but told me to call the hospital.

I called the hospital. They do not have tests, but transferred me to the COVID-19 hotline to "answer my questions". Since I was transferred on a medical provider line, I actually got through. Progress!

The lady with the hotline was very kind and professional and understood my concern about my own health and those at my clinic. (Which is currently being sanitized). However, I was told I do not qualify for testing. And I was not given a timeline or info on current resources.

So. Who does qualify? Those who have been out of the country in the last 14 days, and those who have had contact with one of the few people who have been tested and come up positive. That's it.

This is all incredibly frustrating because I am trying to do everything right in a system that punishes moments of "weakness" like taking days off. It's also scary to know that I won't be able to get help until I need life support.
​

In South Korea they have drive through testing. Which government do you think is functioning and which one is not ?

Almost a rhetorical question: what is testing going to accomplish?
1) We cannot contain the virus, at best we can slow it down
2) There are ZERO treatments with proven (Grade A or B evidence) efficacy
3) There is no vaccine

Great, we spend billions upon billions of dollars testing . . . to accumulate some stastical data that doesn't really help us and shows that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is about as bad as influenza in a bad year.

You think somehow statistical data from the US is going to be different than that collected elsewhere and will provide some insight into a method of treatment that the other data won't? Come on, give me a break. Resources are better spent elsewhere, like funding the companies working on vaccines and anti-virals that might have a REAL IMPACT.

 

[bkp_duke]

COVID-19 has a 15 day avg mutation period. WA1 to WA2 had 3 mutations and 6.1 day period between infections. We should expect large scale infections in a couple of weeks.

https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/

We know that Wuhan went from an index case in ~Nov-Dec 2019 to several thousand cases by mid-Jan 2020, thus going from initial seeding event to widespread local transmission in the span of ~9-10 weeks. We now believe that the Seattle area seeding event was ~Jan 15 and we're now ~7 weeks later. I expect Seattle now to look like Wuhan around ~1 Jan, when they were reporting the first clusters of patients with unexplained viral pneumonia. We are currently estimating ~600 infections in Seattle, this matches my phylodynamic estimate of the number of infections in Wuhan on Jan 1. Three weeks later, Wuhan had thousands of infections and was put on large-scale lock-down. However, these large-scale non-pharmaceutical interventions to create social distancing had a huge impact on the resulting epidemic. China averted many millions of infections through these intervention measures and cases there have declined substantially.​

As pointed out by others, that's normal, antigenic drift. It's the same rate of mutation for all RNA viruses. Nothing news-worthy here.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

This is the correct part of your post. Spread from touching infected surfaces is thought to be a minor route of transmission.

"sustained drift over longer distances" is not a prerequisite for transmission to be airborne. You have misunderstood the use of the term.

There are 3 things being thrown around, which I think are:

Airborne disease: a disease that can spread by material that has passed through the air.
Airborne transmission: transmission of disease by material suspended in the air
Airborne spread: spread of a disease by material in the air

The disease is airborne (e.g. by coughing) , transmission seems to be primarily airborne, but the material does not appear to be spread widely through the air, so close contact is necessary for the airborne transmission.

 

[bkp_duke]

Your disagreement with WHO is duly noted.

Oh, and FYI? COVID-19 is not an airborne-spread virus.

---
Routes of transmission COVID-19 is transmitted via droplets and fomites during close unprotected contact between an infector and infectee. Airborne spread has not been reported for COVID-19 and it is not believed to be a major driver of transmission based on available evidence; however, it can be envisaged if certain aerosol-generating procedures are conducted in health care facilities. Fecal shedding has been demonstrated from some patients, and viable virus has been identified in a limited number of case reports. However, the fecal-oral route does not appear to be a driver of COVID-19 transmission; its role and significance for COVID-19 remains to be determined. Viral shedding is discussed in the Technical Findings (Annex C)
---

Also:

---
Asymptomatic infection has been reported, but the majority of the relatively rare cases who are asymptomatic on the date of identification/report went on to develop disease. The proportion of truly asymptomatic infections is unclear but appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission.
---

Lastly, similar viruses, like SARS, have been eradicated. We may well have gotten past the point of being able to do that here, but containment efforts remain a good thing, as time is very much our friend. Time means:

• (Longer term, e.g. next winter's seasonal flu vaccine) More time for vaccine development /testing
• (Shorter term, e.g. a couple months) Antiviral approval, to treat people whose symptoms are anything worse than a cold (e.g. the elderly, people with preexisting conditions, etc).
• More time for medical systems to prepare
• More sunlight and warmth in the northern hemisphere.
• Perhaps most importantly, more time for artificial evolutionary pressures on the virus to select for the least virulent forms. E.g. pockets that send a lot of people to the hospital get quarantined early on, while those that don't get noticed last longer and seed more new pockets. The same thing happened with the 2009 H1N1 avian flu pandemic. When it broke out in Mexico, it overwhelmed the medical system with severe cases. By the time it had petered out, it was no deadlier than a regular seasonal flu. Indeed, it's exactly these evolutionary factors (severe cases keep people home (or worse, quarantine all their contacts), while people who get mild cases still go out in public) which put evolutionary pressure on seasonal flus to be mild in the first place. We're already seeing signs of increasingly low CFRs over time, vs. the initial high CFR in Wuhan.

This virus has a substantially higher rate of infectivity compared to SARS and MERS. Thank goodness it is not as lethal.

And nothing I posted disagrees with the WHO. Go look at posts by all the world-renown virologists out there. All of them are saying that the opportunity for containment has past. That's simply a FACT.

 

[KSilver2000]

Resources are better spent elsewhere, like funding the companies working on vaccines and anti-virals that might have a REAL IMPACT.

That is exactly what the US gov should be doing right now with the funds they just used to try and prop up the markets by reducing the rates.

 

[bkp_duke]

That is exactly what the US gov should be doing right now with the funds they just used to try and prop up the markets by reducing the rates.

They are. There was a multi-billion dollar emergency request put through for the CDC's budget for this very thing. It's substantially higher than anything approved for similar use during the Obama administration.

 

[SageBrush]

You missed the entire point.

You missed the point. It will not be possible to test every person every day just because. There has to been a degree of selection, based on objective criteria. Chronic stable symptoms are not a good reason to test, and that goes ten fold when tests are in short supply.

 

[EVNow]

Almost a rhetorical question: what is testing going to accomplish?
1) We cannot contain the virus, at best we can slow it down

I don't know how much of what you are writing is political and how much fact based.

You are ignoring the obvious. Social distancing can severely cut down the infections - as demonstrated in China. Since that kind of lock down is not possible in US - the next best is to quarantine people who have infections - and people they were in close contact with. You can't do that if you don't test.

You missed the point. It will not be possible to test every person every day just because. There has to been a degree of selection, based on objective criteria. Chronic stable symptoms are not a reasonable argument.

Same as above.​

 

[uselesslogin]

Almost a rhetorical question: what is testing going to accomplish?
1) We cannot contain the virus, at best we can slow it down
2) There are ZERO treatments with proven (Grade A or B evidence) efficacy
3) There is no vaccine

Great, we spend billions upon billions of dollars testing . . . to accumulate some stastical data that doesn't really help us and shows that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is about as bad as influenza in a bad year.

You think somehow statistical data from the US is going to be different than that collected elsewhere and will provide some insight into a method of treatment that the other data won't? Come on, give me a break. Resources are better spent elsewhere, like funding the companies working on vaccines and anti-virals that might have a REAL IMPACT.

Testing allows us to know where the disease in and at what number. That can be used to determine what measures to take to slow down the disease. Slowing down the disease means ventilators and hospital beds are available for those who need them. This all has A REAL IMPACT.

 

[SageBrush]

The disease is airborne

My wife is not native English speaking and did not understand what I meant by aerosolized from cough/sneeze so I went to the kitchen and came back with a spray bottle filled with some water. You can guess the rest.

 

[bkp_duke]

I don't know how much of what you are writing is political and how much fact based.

You are ignoring the obvious. Social distancing can severely cut down the infections - as demonstrated in China. Since that kind of lock down is not possible in US - the next best is to quarantine people who have infections - and people they were in close contact with. You can't do that if you don't test.

Completely fact-based. Let's test, go for it. I guarantee you that there are thousands of cases of COVID-19 in the US already. The symptoms in most people are just like a cold, or if severe, like the flu. Both the cold (guess what, before this hysteria, coronaviruses were know to cause the common cold, along with adenoviruses and rhinoviruses) and influenza can progress to at-risk individuals to pneumonia.

We should be doing social distancing for everyone that has cold symptoms, and should have been for decades. That's just common sense (which unfortunately is not common).

 

[SageBrush]

You can't do that if you don't test.

Are you trying to be obtuse ?

I said testing should not be wasted on people with chronic stable symptoms

 

[KSilver2000]

Testing allows us to know where the disease in and at what number. That can be used to determine what measures to take to slow down the disease. Slowing down the disease means ventilators and hospital beds are available for those who need them. This all has A REAL IMPACT.

Not saying your argument has no merit. But just want to point out that an assumption in your argument has to be that ALL potentially infected individuals seek immediate care before they exhibit symptoms and shed the virus. One reason why there is community spread is because not every affected individual goes to seek medical attention until it is too late to keep it isolated to just that individual.

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

Trump’s ignorance was on public display during coronavirus meeting with pharmaceutical execs

The World Health Organization (WHO) has already said it will take up to 18 months to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus— a time frame much shorter than the usual two- to five-year window....
But Trump didn’t want to hear it, and kept pressing the executives to come up with something before November’s election.“I mean, I like the sound of a couple months better, if I must be honest,” Trump said....
“So you have a medicine that’s already involved with the coronaviruses, and now you have to see if it’s specifically for this. You can know that tomorrow, can’t you?” he said....Trump also wondered aloud why the flu vaccine can’t just be used for coronavirus, asking, “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

 

[EVNow]

Are you trying to be obtuse ?

I said testing should not be wasted on people with chronic stable symptoms

LOL.

Its a cheap test. Do as many as needed to catch infections - and also put people's fears at rest. Anyone with symptoms needs to be tested. You are not "wasting" a test. You are just proving health care service.

But - do you know what they are actually doing ? Things like this.

Fears over coronavirus exposure close immigration office in Tukwila
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Tukwila is closed Tuesday due to concerns about COVID-19 after an employee who’d visited Life Care Center in Kirkland got sick, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The office will be closed for 14 days.​

And this.

Michelle Kalehzan, Ph.D. on Twitter

This is what happened to me. I was exposed & checked out at ER Friday but with a fever of 100.1 I did not meet the criteria for 100.4 fever to be tested. Today the county called me because my direct contact tested positive, & now they will come to my home tomorrow to test me.​

BTW, if anyone wondered what a home quarantine could be - yes it can be a legal quarantine, failure to maintain it can result in legal action.

They read me a notice that said I would be charged with a misdemeanor if I leave my property and possibly detained.​