Coronavirus

[UnknownSoldier]

wow, bay area tech workers are getting ripped off. I don't know of a single person in silicon valley who makes less than $100k. to those that think that sounds like a lot, rents here for a 2BR apartment (not even a house) are in the $3800/mo range, rougly. when you do the math, you find that $100k in the bay area doesn't even come close to being 'rich'. you are just barely middle class, given the host cost of living here.

wonder why they didn't make it scaled by geography?

for middle of the country, $100k/year really is rich man's income, but that's absolutely not true on the coasts, for example.

what a ripoff. as usual.

You didn't learn from the Trump tax cuts which also screwed California and New York? Everything the Republicans do will always benefit their voting base and big corporations. If you are not either of these things, you can forget about getting anything from this administration or this government.

I'm salty too, I'm not getting any free money from Jerome Powell's money printer. But to be fair, in California and New York, getting $1200 would only be enough for half of a month's rent anyways.

 

[bkp_duke]

wow, bay area tech workers are getting ripped off. I don't know of a single person in silicon valley who makes less than $100k. to those that think that sounds like a lot, rents here for a 2BR apartment (not even a house) are in the $3800/mo range, rougly. when you do the math, you find that $100k in the bay area doesn't even come close to being 'rich'. you are just barely middle class, given the host cost of living here.

wonder why they didn't make it scaled by geography?

for middle of the country, $100k/year really is rich man's income, but that's absolutely not true on the coasts, for example.

what a ripoff. as usual.

Honestly though, tech workers are the group most likely to be able to work from home. You and I are doing it. All my (tech) employees are. There is some job security there that say restaurant workers (who likely make way less than 100k/yr) do not have.

 

[Norbert]

A. Their explanation for cutting the number in half in the German studies is: "Early IFR rates are subject to selection bias as more severe cases are tested – generally those in the hospital settings or those with more severe symptoms. Mortality in children seems to be near zero (unlike flu) which will drive down the IFR significantly. In Swine flu, the IFR was fivefold less than the lowest estimate in the 1st ten weeks (0.1%). Therefore, to estimate the IFR, we used the estimate from Germany’s current data 22nd March (93 deaths 23129) cases); CFR 0.57% (95% CI, 0.50% to 0.65%) and halved this for the IFR of 0.29% (95% CI, 0.25% to 0.33%) based on the assumption that half the cases go undetected by testing and none of this group dies."

As you note they have been criticized for basing the analysis on German data. They don't explain why they did that but I suspect it is because the Germans had tested more broadly than other European countries and therefore the CFR data was less susceptible to selection bias.

B. March 22 (the date of the German analysis) is not the latest update -- on March 26 they added the Icelandic analysis with an IFR estimate of 0.05-0.14%. They said the Icelandic data will likely provide an accurate estimate of CFR and IFR:

"Iceland’s higher rates of testing, the smaller population, and their ability to ascertain all those with Sars-CoV-2 means they will likely provide an accurate estimate of the CFR and the IFR. Current data from Iceland suggests the IFR is somewhere between 0.05% and 0.14%."

They could be right, could be wrong -- I'd like to see more info to make sure there are no confounding variables/country-specific effects -- but certainly think this is an interesting data point.

Apparently they are not taking the delay of the death numbers into account. As Alan and me predicted, german CFR, when ignoring delay, is going up and now close to 0.7%. It will go above 1%, and I think quite a bit.

According to worldmeters, Iceland has only 88 positives and 2 deaths today, so I don't see how you can draw any conclusions from that at all. Except maybe they are a late start.

 

[EinSV]

A new 80 patient observational study was released by Didier Raoult's group this afternoon regarding treatment with 600mg/d hydroxychloroquine+azythromicin for minimum of 3 days (up to 10 day)

Encouraging results -- summarized below.

The paper calls for other labs to repeat the studies -- seems worthwhile to me and should be able to be done quickly.

https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/COVID-IHU-2-1.pdf

Clinical course (Table 3)

The majority (65/80, 81.3%) of patients had favourable outcome and were discharged from our unit at the time of writing with low NEWS scores (61/65, 93.8%). Only 15% required oxygen therapy. Three patients were transferred to the ICU, of whom two improved and were then returned to the ID ward. One 74 year-old patient was still in ICU at the time of writing. Finally, one 86 year-old patient who was not transferred to the ICU, died in the ID ward (Supplementary Table 1).

Contagiousness as assessed by PCR Ct value and culture (Figures 1 and 2)

A rapid fall of nasopharyngeal viral load tested by qPCR was noted, with 83% negative at Day7, and 93% at Day8. The number of patients presumably contagious (with a PCR Ct value <34) steadily decreased overtime and reached zero on Day12 (Figure 1). A marked decrease was observed after six days of treatment. After ten days, two patients only were still presumably contagious with Ct values of 32 and 29 respectively. The proportion of patients with a Ct value >34 significantly decreased overtime (R2 = 0.9). Virus cultures from patient respiratory samples were negative in 97.5% patients at Day5. The number of contagious patients (with positive culture) early decreased after three days of treatment (Figure 2). After five days of treatment, two patients only were contagious. On Day8 post-treatment only one of these two patients was contagious and ceased to be contagious on Day9. The proportion of negative culture significantly decreased overtime (R2 = 0.8).

Length of stay in the ID ward

Of the 65 patients who were discharged from the ID ward during the study period, the mean time from initiation to discharge was 4.1 days with a mean length of stay of 4.6 days.

 

[SageBrush]

Can a make-shift vaccine by created by giving people a tiny viral load?

Has that ever been done? I know about a live attenuated virus vaccine, is giving just a tiny viral load any easier?

Attenuated is the way to go.

Medical history however remembers inoculation with cowpox instead of smallpox. That is an exercise in virulence.

 

[deonb]

Honestly though, tech workers are the group most likely to be able to work from home. You and I are doing it. All my (tech) employees are. There is some job security there that say restaurant workers (who likely make way less than 100k/yr) do not have.

Keep in mind that in the bay area you qualify for low income housing at $118000.

So someone could be in a rent controlled BRU or ARU unit and not qualify for federal assistance.

I have no doubt that there are people in the food service industry there who would fall in this bracket.

 

[linux-works]

mask is printed and seems to be a usable design.

some notes:

- I had some rubber tubing on-hand; I split it with a knife (carefully!) and clinched the split side along the edge of the mask

- printing the mask took over 10 hours with .4mm nozzle (I'll use a bigger size next time) and at slow speed; printing the small plastic insert was about 2 hours (maybe less).

- I recommend using a brim when printing the mask; but since the square push-style insert is small, that one can go with no raft or brim, just a heated bed. reason, with a brim, you have to trim off and sand the excess plastic and since I'm *breathing* thru this thing, I really don't want to have to use a scraping tool or burnisher on this part.

- I had some surgical masks lying around (yeah..) and so I cut a square from one, just like the instructions say; cut it larger than the square insert since it has to cover and form a seal. I'm still not sure the seal is as good as it could be (white material meets the black PLA plastic) and maybe another small rubber gasket could be made around that.

- still need to locate head straps, some kind of stretch material. I want this to be comfortable so some more design work is needed on the 'straps'. I'm thinking along the lines of a baseball catchers-mitt kind of strap system, sort of (minimal but with good support).

 

[Bigjet]

I humbly stand corrected. 7.4% of the total deaths that occurred in the past week were due to Pneumonia and Influenza. The death rate for Influenza A and B is less than 1%.

 

[SageBrush]

The paper calls for other labs to repeat the studies -- seems worthwhile to me and should be able to be done quickly.

The pronounced effect of Azithromycin on PCR test results is a BIG RED FLAG that should make you skeptical of the HCQ efficacy.

 

[EinSV]

A problem with drawing conclusions from the US trajectory of tested cases, is that it is too much determined by testing capacity.

The model I referred to in the post that you were responding to was based on fatality rates, not diagnosed cases.

 

[SageBrush]

I've long said 1%, but South Korea is making a case for 1.5-2.0%. And their cases supposedly skewed toward young and female.

No, it is bi-modal

 

[Bet TSLA]

But to allow the government to take it all over and dictate everything would be a colossal blunder.

And yet, all the world over, it isn't. The big difference is that doctors and other providers get paid much less. But they like their jobs more, especially the part where they aren't wasting time arguing with morons. I'll leave it at that. You are arguing from a position of extreme weakness, as a cog in a system you admit is broken and that you don't like.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I humbly stand corrected. 7.4% of the total deaths that occurred in the past week were due to Pneumonia and Influenza. The death rate for Influenza A and B is less than 1%.

Pneumonia and/OR influenza.
BTW pneumonia is also what kills COVID-19 patients.

 

[Daniel in SD]

No, it is bi-modal

Where is this data?

 

[SageBrush]

Where is this data?

kcdc

 

[Norbert]

The model I referred to in the post that you were responding to was based on fatality rates, not diagnosed cases.

You are right, I didn't notice that. My comment does stand on its own, though.

 

[adiggs]

...

Of course, we're still not doing it. Hooray. So much winning. 100k!

Are you getting tired of the winning yet?

(I apologize for my content free contributions to this thread - it's already cycling too fast; I'll do better).

 

[Mimas HQ]

The population of Iceland is genetically very homogenous, so the effects of the virus may be very different from the rest of the world.

 

[bkp_duke]

And yet, all the world over, it isn't. The big difference is that doctors and other providers get paid much less. But they like their jobs more, especially the part where they aren't wasting time arguing with morons. I'll leave it at that. You are arguing from a position of extreme weakness, as a cog in a system you admit is broken and that you don't like.

Actually, you are not correct, especially on your (biased) anti-doctor pay point.

Doctors in other countries have about the same take-home pay as in the US. Their salary is sometimes lower, but when it is in those systems they don't have the INSANE medical dept most physicians do here.

You are also not correct in the implied assumption that Doctor salaries are the cause of the rapidly rising costs of care in the US. They are not. Doctor salaries have tracked with inflation for over 2 decades. The increasing costs of care in the US are due to A) rapidly increasing hospital charges and B) rapidly increasing prescription costs. Physician billing is simply a tiny fraction of medical costs.

Did you know that when you are hospitalized, your insurance company gets TWO separate bills? One is from the hospital for their services. The second (and much much smaller) is from the physician for his/her services. Insurance companies almost NEVER fight over the doctor bill because it is so small.

Two counterpoints to your "all the world over, it isn't" argument are the Canada and the UK systems, since those are the two the politicians like to talk about and the lay person likes to get behind because they sound "good.". The care in those systems is very different care than it is here. It's RATIONED CARE. If a Dr. there writes an order for you to go have an MRI or CT scan, that doesn't give you the right to go to the hospital and DEMAND it be done in a certain time frame. There is a hospital administrator that schedules that.

You and everyone else cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot have the nearly on-demand services of the US system with the price controls of a socialized medicine system.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I don't think we're going to be changing the national healthcare system before this pandemic is over.