Coronavirus

[bkp_duke]

Well what's done is done. We are going to open back up soon. Govt has no choice. They need the tax revenue.

New York is broke. I don't want to hear any state workers complain about not getting bonuses. You can't have it both ways. Reality will be sinking in real soon. If you shut down the economy then you (the state) will need to make cuts. Cut non-essential parts from the budget. Don't be a hypocrite. Yet, when they feel real pain, as main street has, then they'll get serious about turning things on.

Actually, it's a great opportunity to pare back some of the layers of government inefficiency. The rest of us are going to lose jobs or take pay cuts, gov employees should have to share that pain.

 

[heltok]

Korean expert answers listener questions:

 

[renim]

Yes it will. We will have a baby boom in 9 months.

What do you think people do when they have nothing else to do and are home?

Do women feel pandamic is safe time to fall pregnant? (Even if statistically, it is)

I agree many suburbs will have increased joyous occasions 9 months time, but i also expect even more won't. Depending on how finacially secure and health secure they feel. Should boost my country's fertility rate.

 

[bkp_duke]

Do women feel pandamic is safe time to fall pregnant? (Even if statistically, it is)

I agree many suburbs will have increased joyous occasions 9 months time, but i also expect even more won't. Depending on how finacially secure and health secure they feel. Should boost my country's fertility rate.

All I know is my wife's facebook groups are all abuzz about the "covid babies".

 

[Az_Rael]

That depends on the region. My wife's friend said she strolled through a bay area hospital. Everything was calm, and plenty of nurses standing around idle. Some places have let go of staff.

True, I think the Bay Area has seen fewer cases than we have down here in LA County. And I think in general CA was able to flatten the curve enough to avoid a NY situation. My mom is up in MI in a small town. While they haven’t been hit hard locally, they are now getting transfer COVID patients in their hospital from Detroit area hospitals that are overflowing.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Also, notably, I learned that Iceland has not shut down their elementary schools. I wonder how that experiment will go. It sounds like it is going well since they identified NO disease in their random sampling of children under 10.

It is quite remarkable but it does appear that children are less likely to become infected. However 6.7% of under 10 year olds in the targeted test group were infected versus 13.3% overall so it still seems risky. I guess it would depend on how well they spread it to others.
Anyway, it's a very well written paper. I'm also happy to know that they calculated the same confidence interval as me on their random population sample.

 

[EVNow]

The US NIH is collecting volunteers for a 10k large seroprevalence study of presumed uninfected people.

NIH Begins Study to Quantify Undetected Cases of Coronavirus Infection | NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Wonder what they are using. The tests they bought off e-bay don't work.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Wonder what they are using. The tests they bought off e-bay don't work.

"Investigators will analyze blood samples for two types of antibodies, anti-SARS-CoV-2 S protein IgG and IgM, using an ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) developed by researchers at NIAID and NIBIB."
There are ELISA tests that claim to have 100% accuracy. It's a lab procedure, not the same thing as the quick tests available online.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

However 6.7% of under 10 year olds in the targeted test group were infected versus 13.3% overall so it still seems risky.

Yeah, I was wondering about that too. I wonder whether it is just that children can become infected, especially in family settings, but are less likely to pass it amongst themselves?

Not sure if they broke down the young children's contact tracing in the paper to see where that 6.7% got their infections from.

 

[FoverM]

Don't know if this was already posted but I found it interesting ... and saved me work because I was thinking about how disentangle testing from actual infections:

Coronavirus Case Counts Are Meaningless*

 

[EVNow]

sneezing, runny nose gets two weeks probation.

Not common for Covid.

How do you deal with
- infectious before symptoms
- asymptomatic

The other issue is super-spreaders. We have seen events where one or two people were able to spread to a hundred others. Anything like that will force them to shutdown again.

Obviously Tesla needs to reopen Fremont - they can't wait for months. Its a hard problem. We should be prepared for setbacks like CA lockdown again or Tesla specific spreading events.

 

[EVNow]

Don't know if this was already posted but I found it interesting ... and saved me work because I was thinking about how disentangle testing from actual infections:

Coronavirus Case Counts Are Meaningless*

538 has been behind the ball on this. We have been saying this in this thread for weeks now.

Silver also tweeted that NY instituted measures before WA !

 

[renim]

Yeah, I was wondering about that too. I wonder whether it is just that children can become infected, especially in family settings, but are less likely to pass it amongst themselves?

Not sure if they broke down the young children's contact tracing in the paper to see where that 6.7% got their infections from.

Todays Oz

 

[EVNow]

I would hardly characterize that as dismissive of the analysis (which many here are doing).

Do you have anything to say about their method of using CFR from Germany when it had very few deaths ? Now that Germany is about to surpass China.

 

[DanCar]

...
How do you deal with
- infectious before symptoms
- asymptomatic

The other issue is super-spreaders. We have seen events where one or two people were able to spread to a hundred others. ....

Hopefully masks, gloves, distancing, cleaning common surfaces, training, temperature testing, etc... will have an affect.

 

[byeLT4]

We had our first death for our county of 92k. 3 new cases, 89 total. 38 already recovered, 43%, which I find unusual. The gentleman that passed was in his 80s. According to our health department he was at a hospital outside our area (where he was at previously), contracted the virus from there, and also passed away there.

 

[SageBrush]

Korean expert answers listener questions:

This is the second interview of a series. Both are excellent.

One of the topics discussed today is the finding of ~ 60 relapsed cased in S Korea out of ~ 10k cases.
These cases were PCR positive, then PCR negative and symptom free, and about a week later develop symptoms and tested PCR positive again.
The presumption is that these are not new infections but rather a re-emergence of the original infection.

It was unclear from the interview if the patients were originally symptomatic, if they took immunosuppressives, or whether the Covid-19 course was affected by therapeutics. It is also possible that the second PCR test was a false negative. I think the most intriguing would be if patients go from symptomatic to asymptomatic to symptomatic again. That would suggest to me that the virus finds a safe harbor somewhere in the body and re-emerges later. Left unexplained though would be how the immune system was triumphant the first time around but not up to the task the second time. Perhaps these patients will be found to have mounted primarily a cytotoxic rather than neutralizing, humoral immune response the first time. Corticosteroids during the acute infection may also be a key part of the story since they are both immunosuppresants and they tend to reduce symptoms.

Mostly it is an interesting academic question if it stays at 6/1,000 cases.

 

[SMAlset]

Given NYC (only City not State) updated their CV19 death records by 3,700 individuals today pushing them over 10,000 deaths, that undercounting is a relatively huge percentage I think people would say for this. And much more deadly. I still think there are probably single individuals dead in their homes/apartments all over the U.S. that haven't been looked in on for a well-fair check that will add to that count. Bad dying in the hospital with no loved ones around you but being alone in your home and collapsing and dying before you can call for help is much worse. Read a sad story today about a beautiful nurse, 33, that wasn't given even a face mask when she showed up at a hospital she was assigned to and worked that day. Subsequently she stayed home, quarantined separately in the house from her husband and young child and when he went to check on her found her dead on the floor. Read a few too many of those account already. Very sudden and severe.

NYC death toll jumps by 3,700 after uncounted fatalities are added

 

[TEG]

If I were in charge, I would tell everyone they need to walk/bike/etc at least a total of 1 hour a day. If people exercise and lose weight they will be less susceptible. More adipose tissue makes it harder to breathe and steals oxygen.
I would close indoor events with close contact, like nightclubs, but I would leave all outdoor events open.
I would leave open all stores and shopping malls as long as people can spread out.
I would leave indoor events open (eg NBA, NCAA) if they maintain one empty seat between people.
I would seal off elderly facilities.
Leave all schools open. Retire old teachers, use young teachers, esp for kindergarten where kids are yucky.
Invent new tools to capture and remove sneeze aerosol from air.
Make it illegal to sneeze into the open air. 1 warning, $500 fine.

Even though I agree with many of your sentiments, I have trouble with some of your suggestions.

I think it has been proven that outdoor events can spread this, particularly if there are close proximity areas like grandstands, bull-pens, etc.
Also any large gatherings tends to have busy restrooms, and I have read that public restrooms are a scary place when it comes to getting exposed to this virus.

About the stores and shopping malls... Same thing with the public restroom virus exchange center. Along with touching stall doors, I read that flushing can spit up wet globs of virus.

Same thing with indoor events even if you tried to keep empty seats in the stands. People tend to line up together at ticket gates, food stands, restrooms, etc.

"Seal off elderly facilities"? How do you propose to do that? They tend to have necessary care workers come and go. They need deliveries for things like food and medicine.

Retire all old teachers because of this virus? Then let the younger ones take over? Umm, that is very extreme. Do you think you will find enough qualified young teachers willing to run these classes now if you tell the older ones to just retire and stay home? Do we have a financial net to let all these old teachers retire early, or are you OK with sending some of them out on the streets?

Tools to capture sneeze aerosol from air? That sounds a bit far fetched, but OK... Are they going to be hovering about everywhere we go just in case someone happens to sneeze?
( I think this is basically called wearing a mask... )

Make it illegal to sneeze into open air? That sounds difficult / impossible to enforce... Sneeze patrols watching everyone? Cameras with sneeze sound detectors to catch people in the act of sneezing?
Besides, I think sometimes people get caught by surprise and sneeze suddenly before they have a chance to stop or direct it. Yeah, having virus spread via sneezes sucks, but I don't think you can regulate that away.

 

[SageBrush]

Does this mean that our stable genius was wrong?

I doubt it.

I'm not talking about HCQ itself, I mean trump's decision to pump an uncertain therapeutic. To his supporters this was either genius if he is right, or an act of bravery if he gets it wrong. As I have said before, trump understands his base quite well, and he manipulates them like a master.