Coronavirus

[Right_Said_Fred]

I have heard of vitamin C boosting immunity during cold/flu season. My family did start taking 1 vitamin C tablet a day this week.

They are not alone. My company sells food supplements and our vitamin C sales have gone up 500% this month. Most orders are coming from Italy.

 

[deonb]

You may be right. If you are, this chart lines up the numbers accordingly. Amber boxes show deaths that existed in that country before first one was actually reported in order to exponentially get to the numbers they have today.

That's only applicable if you start from a single point of infection. That only applies to Wuhan. Other places had multiple concurrent origination points.

 

[CanadaEV]

You may want to review the last 309 pages. Probably the last 100 pages or so are a good primer. Turns out there are also a lot of websites out there tracking (and plotting) this stuff. Who would have thought?

Thanks for the pointer... I'm new to this page. Spent most of my time at TMC at Investors Roundtable.

Maybe you could save me 300 pages if you remember any post that shows how an exponential progression, working backwards, shows the probable beginning in that region/country, as I roughly tried to do. It's obviously important information, so it should be covered here. Thanks

 

[CanadaEV]

That's only applicable if you start from a single point of infection. That only applies to Wuhan. Other places had multiple concurrent origination points.

True. And China seems to report accurately, which has often been questioned. But their numbers do not explain the world numbers. Maybe it actually started somewhere else.
BTW, I am not at all in favour of conspiracy theories on it. But someone here suggested math... so things should add up.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Thanks for the pointer... I'm new to this page. Spent most of my time at TMC at Investors Roundtable.

Maybe you could save me 300 pages if you remember any post that shows how an exponential progression, working backwards, shows the probable beginning in that region/country, as I roughly tried to do. It's obviously important information, so it should be covered here. Thanks

Here's just one of many tracking sites which provides you the ability to plot on a semi-logarithmic scale, which will do roughly what you want. You can Google it. There are several other tracking sources as well.

Coronavirus Update (Live): 464,683 Cases and 20,942 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer

To determine the exact time of the beginning of the outbreak, it's best to rely on sample viral genomes and phylogenetic analysis: auspice

Note that the genomes are heavily undersampled, so it's not clear for every locality when the outbreak began or where it was imported from.

 

[CanadaEV]

Here's just one of many tracking sites which provides you the ability to plot on a semi-logarithmic scale, which will do roughly what you want. You can Google it. There are several other tracking sources as well.

Coronavirus Update (Live): 464,683 Cases and 20,942 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer

Yeah, I've been following that every day for months, thanks. I'm looking for reasons of the variation in spread. It's an important question.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Thanks for the pointer... I'm new to this page. Spent most of my time at TMC at Investors Roundtable.

Maybe you could save me 300 pages if you remember any post that shows how an exponential progression, working backwards, shows the probable beginning in that region/country, as I roughly tried to do. It's obviously important information, so it should be covered here. Thanks

As @AlanSubie4Life said there are plenty of charts. It's more accurate to look at deaths than number of cases since number of cases is highly dependent on how much testing is done and who is tested.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Yeah, I've been following that every day for months, thanks. I'm looking for reasons of the variation in spread. It's an important question.

Culture, weather, population density, demographics, etc. just like any other virus.

 

[SageBrush]

More and more cities/counties are bypassing Governor inaction and issuing stay-at-home orders.

In NC, Mecklenberg County (Charlotte) starts tomorrow with Durham County (Durham) & Wake County (Raleigh-Cary) order to start shortly. There are a laundry list of exceptions so perhaps not enough but a very good start. Durham's order: https://durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter...ayor-Emergency-Dec-Second-Amdmt-3-25-20_FINAL

In FL, Orange County (Orlando) also issued one so in addition to Miami, two of the largest cities will have orders in place. There is discussion that Collier (Naples-Marco Island) and it's adjacent county Lee (Ft. Myers) may soon enact one as well.

The epidemiologist did not have a rolling lock down in mind. That is just asking for failure

 

[SageBrush]

In other news, San Miguel county in Colorado will test all 8000 residents for antibodies using United Biomedical equipment. They'll repeat the test in a couple weeks. This test sucks at early detection, but should give some clues about penetration in SW CO.

This is fairly useless, other than to the testing company.
If they wanted clinically useful data they would also perform RNA tests concurrently ... or just RNA test everybody and dispense with the antibody test.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Yeah, I've been following that every day for months, thanks. I'm looking for reasons of the variation in spread. It's an important question.

Yeah, the unmodified spread rate depends on a lot of factors. It's exponential in basically all cases (so your chart above is in error since you assume the same exponential growth rate for all the countries as far as I could tell). But in every country to date, the rate of spread appears to be unacceptably high without targeted actions taken to modify it.

 

[MXLRplus]

having personally worked for the likes of cisco and intel - I can tell you, firsthand, that they entirely and completely abuse the h1b program, hire more contractors than f/t employees (all to avoid paying healthcare and benefits; plus firing them at the end of projects becomes legally trivial compared to f/t employees) and do all they can to depress wages, while giving their execs bigger and bigger bonuses.

in short, the really big companies have been abusing their power for decades and we have let them get away with it.

money is now in short supply (compared to how much we're going to need to reboot the econ) and regular people are going to need it, just to keep afloat.

fairness was not in our vocabulary. but its time we re-add it.

It's time for you to hang out your shingle. Start your own business. You can do it with $0. When you get to the point where you are hiring, you will finally understand why successful employers treat their staff well. It's an investment that you are reluctant to abandon. Few employees are 'plug-n-play', they are not commodities. You train them and give them goals. You let them know they are appreciated and that the work they do is important not just to the company but to civilization.

It will change your entire perspective of life.

 

[Daniel in SD]

This is fairly useless, other than to the testing company.
If they wanted clinically useful data they would also perform RNA tests concurrently ... or just RNA test everybody and dispense with the antibody test.

But the RNA test wouldn't catch people who had already been infected and recovered, right?

 

[linux-works]

Don't disagree re: H1B.....my wife worked in IT starting in the early 80's and no question it's been abused by IBM and others such as the ones you mentioned.

what I would hope for is the total removal of all programs like h1b.

instead, make them citizens! they will have the same expenses as the rest of us, they will care more about the future of our country, the pay will equalize, the collective bargaining will be more balanced and we'll end up KEEPING the good people instead of keeping them in perpetual fear of being sent home if they dare disagree with bossman.

most people who are guest workers here would LOVE to be citizens, but we mostly deny them that, and treat them like dirt. its very unbecoming of an advanced society, which we supposedly are.

 

[wdolson]

I encountered something similar yesterday. The following card showed up in the mail. I was surprised by the thoroughness of the recommendations and the complete lack of political one-sidedness.

View attachment 525495 View attachment 525497

This is probably for the Market Politics thread, but it stating it is "Donald Trump's" recommendations is kind of politicizing it. Though the content was factual. I left it on the counter and my SO tossed it as soon as she saw the president's name on it.

Definitely a chance you did contract it. Sure you would like to know. I just saw a TV story of a local SF woman who lost her sense of smell before getting feverish etc. She wears perfume every day and she said she thought it was weird when she went to spray it on her wrists that she couldn’t detect it. She even held bottle up to her nose but nothing. She also noticed when her husband served her a plate of food saying that maybe he made it too spicy, that she said it was bland and he knew he had put in a lot into it. I tried looking for video but don’t see it. Either on KPIX5 or ABC7News.

Anyway thought I would relink to my earlier post to the UK letter the ear, nose and throat doctors wrote about this observation last week and how it might be an early marker for those already infected but asymptomatic otherwise:
Coronavirus

Hopefully my doctor can get the antibody test soon. The one she's trying to get is like a pregnancy test you put a couple of drops of blood into (instead of urine). She can probably mail them to us. This is an unusual symptom that differs from any other disease (at least anything more common) and is a good indicator whether you had it or not.

Speaking of Intel, I would not mind working in the chip lab right about now... think bunny suits, masks, dust free rooms.

I work for a company that makes support equipment for the IC industry. I'm a contractor, but about 2/3 of my pay comes directly from a contract they have with their biggest customer. I've been working at home for 10 years, so little has changed for me, but I have been nervous about losing my gig in a bad economic crash, but it appears the IC industry is holding together better than most.

The extreme clean room conditions needed for manufacturing probably helps. Those places are cleaner than an operating room.

You may be right. If you are, this chart lines up the numbers accordingly. Amber boxes show deaths that existed in that country before first one was actually reported in order to exponentially get to the numbers they have today.
This kind of indicates China, Korea and Canada reported accurate numbers, and the US, Italy and the World had far more existing deaths before they came to light.
View attachment 525658

Our local NPR has the BBC news a couple of times a day and back when this was mostly in China only someone who had been analyzing the numbers coming out of China said the numbers were too regular to be real. She suspected they were reporting numbers from an algorithm and not real numbers. We may never know exactly what did happen and what is happening now in China. It could be spreading again in China, but we won't know unless it breaks out into epidemic proportions again.

This is fairly useless, other than to the testing company.
If they wanted clinically useful data they would also perform RNA tests concurrently ... or just RNA test everybody and dispense with the antibody test.

Gathering data on the spread is a good thing in the name of understanding this better. But to be thorough, people should be getting both the antibody test and the active virus test. That will tell them how many people have it now and how many have recovered. They will probably find very tiny and possibly zero positives for the antibody, but an active virus test may find cases. At this point there will be very few people in rural areas who had it and got over it.

 

[CanadaEV]

Yeah, the unmodified spread rate depends on a lot of factors. It's exponential in basically all cases (so your chart above is in error since you assume the same exponential growth rate for all the countries as far as I could tell). But in every country to date, the rate of spread appears to be unacceptably high without targeted actions taken to modify it.

Agreed. China and South Korea being the best examples so far of disciplined, targeted actions. Canada also is doing well, especially if you exclude one particular Nursing home which skews the numbers.

But Canada also does quite well with the seasonal flu. And as noted in my first post on this thread today, when targeted action is taken, both seasonal and Covid 19 seem to have about the same progression/results. Deaths in Canada are actually greater for seasonal flu for the current year.

 

[linux-works]

It's time for you to hang out your shingle. Start your own business. You can do it with $0. When you get to the point where you are hiring, you will finally understand why successful employers treat their staff well. It's an investment that you are reluctant to abandon. Few employees are 'plug-n-play', they are not commodities. You train them and give them goals. You let them know they are appreciated and that the work they do is important not just to the company but to civilization.

It will change your entire perspective of life.

everyone I know that tried to start a small business, failed. its mostly going to fail.

I know so few people who can AFFORD to quit their day job and take that kind of risk. in fact, I tried once, myself (long story, not going into it here, lol).

 

[linux-works]

This is probably for the Market Politics thread, but it stating it is "Donald Trump's" recommendations is kind of politicizing it. Though the content was factual. I left it on the counter and my SO tossed it as soon as she saw the president's name on it.

same here. I saw it posted on a common area, near our mailboxes and just laughed. the guy has such an ego problem, he insists on plastering his name on things that simply are WORSE for being associated with him. there was no need to add his name. he had nothing to do with any of these rules (in fact, he blocked every one of them, when he could, until he was told NO!)

again, info was good - but it did not need his name on it. especially not when he's advocating a 'fully packed church' on every corner, come easter. sorry, but he gets no free pass from me; one good step forward and about 100 backwards does not get praise from me.

 

[bkp_duke]

To attempt to convince the medical establishment that has ignored previous studies such as this one:
The effectiveness of vitamin C in preventing and relieving the symptoms of virus-induced respiratory infections. - PubMed - NCBI

Not double-blinded. That's why it got a "D" grade on the actual study.

I.e. the enrollees were told what they were getting, and in studies like this there is an incredible "placebo effect".

Basically, to take anything away from this, someone would need to redo the study and double blind it.

Also, the "end point" was basically "do you feel better". That's a really poor scientific metric. I would had more faith in the study if it measured inflammatory factors or something. But as-is, there is a reason this study didn't get much press.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Agreed. China and South Korea being the best examples so far of disciplined, targeted actions. Canada also is doing well, especially if you exclude one particular Nursing home which skews the numbers.

But Canada also does quite well with the seasonal flu. And as noted in my first post on this thread today, when targeted action is taken, both seasonal and Covid 19 seem to have about the same progression/results. Deaths in Canada are actually greater for seasonal flu for the current year.

Yes with the proper actions COVID-19 can be contained to be as deadly as the seasonal flu. Though all of those actions would also lower the number of seasonal flu cases too. Anyway the issue is that right now it is not contained in many countries including the USA.