Coronavirus

[eevee-fan]

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.

They will literally doe for him and now gets to prove it.
Rural America faces higher coronavirus death rates due to age

 

[TEG]

Possibly a contentious subject, but I wonder how COVID deaths will be affecting the voter base in November...

 

[eevee-fan]

Possibly a contentious subject, but I wonder how COVID deaths will be affecting the voter base in November...

This describes it well.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Don't kill the messenger, man. This is the new world we live in, the one where total authority is the norm.

"And so - and then finally, you will see - and you've heard about it happening in the U.K. and other places - there's a series of antibody tests out there that have not been validated. We're working right now very closely with a series of companies that know how to make these tests, that have made these tests for us for decades, for HIV, for a rapid test. They're working on that technology to bring that quality of test, which is in the 90-plus percent sensitivity and specificity, to the American people for antibody tests.But before - until we get those, if you see them on the Internet, do not buy them until we can give you a test that's reliable for all Americans. And we are working very hard to have that happen and bring that to the American public. Some of the tests that may be available on the Internet may have very low sensitivity and specificity and give you a false reassurance that you either - give you a false positive or a false negative, implying that you may be protected.So please wait until we have those tests available and validated." Dr. Birx, April 7th.

"Siegel said he had contacted Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who told him the current approved tests, made by Cellex Inc., have a one in three rate of not getting it right."

Good news, the FDA is tightening enforcement on COVID-19 antibody tests. Hopefully Dr. Birx used her position to effect this change.
FDA tightens enforcement on Covid-19 antibody tests - CNN
Though in my opinion you really need 99%+ specificity for an antibody test at this point.

 

[SMAlset]

I saw a number of posts about pregnancy and thought this report from Forbes would be enlightening as to the results of COVID 19 tests that were given to all the women coming in. The study was conducted by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center and NY-Presbyterian Hospital.

"The study looked at 215 pregnant women, delivering between March 22 and April 4. Four of these women (less than 2%) had fever or other symptoms of COVID-19 and all four tested positive for the virus.

But this is the interesting part: Of the 210 who did not have symptoms and gave nasal swabs, 29 were positive for the virus. Looked at another way, of the 33 women total who tested positive for the virus, 29 (88%) did not have symptoms."

Small New Study May Provide Clues Into Asymptomatic Carriers Of Coronavirus/COVID-19

It didn't mention anything about the babies that were delivered. I have seen news reports of babies after delivery tested positive. Don't think I've seen any statistics however.

 

[SageBrush]

I saw a number of posts about pregnancy and thought this report from Forbes would be enlightening as to the results of COVID 19 tests that were given to all the women coming in. The study was conducted by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center and NY-Presbyterian Hospital.

"The study looked at 215 pregnant women, delivering between March 22 and April 4. Four of these women (less than 2%) had fever or other symptoms of COVID-19 and all four tested positive for the virus.

But this is the interesting part: Of the 210 who did not have symptoms and gave nasal swabs, 29 were positive for the virus. Looked at another way, of the 33 women total who tested positive for the virus, 29 (88%) did not have symptoms."

Small New Study May Provide Clues Into Asymptomatic Carriers Of Coronavirus/COVID-19

Natural immunosuppression.

 

[dhanson865]

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.

If they are warm and dry and well fed their emotions and instincts will say have more kids even if their intellect doesn't agree.

That's no disrespect to anyone, just an insight into the human condition. We evolved for a situation we don't live in.

 

[SageBrush]

My wife tracks our daily expenses, so I got around to taking a peek today to see what a (partial) Covid-19 month looks like

 

[EinSV]

Reminds me of the old joke ....

Why are academic politics so vicious? Because the stakes are so low.

Epidemiologist food fight.

 

[dqd88]

and where do you think the CV19 numbers would be for the sick, hospitalized, ICU, intubated, and dead if cities and states hadn’t taken the measures they have and which are still continuing? Remember this disease is highly infectious, carriers are asymptomatic or those with symptoms don’t show for days despite being contagious during that time, and the spread is exponential in short order. I guess how many dead per country is acceptable to you?

It depends on the city.

I know it sounds crazy, but I do believe that in the case of NYC, the curve would have been flatter had they done nothing / stuck with the status quo. The lockdown actually had the opposite of the intended effect. But I can't blame them; they had to act fast and didn't have time to really think and analyze all possible paths. And a shutdown seems on the face to be the most obvious answer. But, just like getting stuck in a rip tide, the "obvious" answer is sometimes the wrong one. Caught in a rip tide, the layman will attempt to swim to shore as the tide is pulling him out to sea. Natural instinct of course. But the wrong solution. A deadly one.

It also depends on how this: how much viral load is needed for an infection. If a nominal amount of virus will easily be fended off quickly by the immune system, with the virus unable to gain traction and cause problems, and, to get a material infection, one must be exposed to a high baseline viral load/quantity, then you can have many touch points as long as they are not prolonged. SAH is bad in this case because it minimizes touch points and maximizes prolonged contact between an infected and uninfected.

However, if just a nominal quantity of virus is needed for material infection, then you'd want to minimize # of touch points (SAH optimal). We just don't know the answer to this yet.

 

[SageBrush]

Better than a Choir, if you have enough money for a fat political donation

Pro wrestling 'essential' under Florida governor's order

 

[Daniel in SD]

It depends on the city.

I know it sounds crazy, but I do believe that in the case of NYC, the curve would have been flatter had they done nothing / stuck with the status quo. The lockdown actually had the opposite of the intended effect. But I can't blame them; they had to act fast and didn't have time to really think and analyze all possible paths. And a shutdown seems on the face to be the most obvious answer. But, just like getting stuck in a rip tide, the "obvious" answer is sometimes the wrong one. Caught in a rip tide, the layman will attempt to swim to shore as the tide is pulling him out to sea. Natural instinct of course. But the wrong solution. A deadly one.

It also depends on how this: how much viral load is needed for an infection. If a nominal amount of virus will easily be fended off quickly by the immune system, with the virus unable to gain traction and cause problems, and, to get a material infection, one must be exposed to a high baseline viral load/quantity, then you can have many touch points as long as they are not prolonged. SAH is bad in this case because it minimizes touch points and maximizes prolonged contact between an infected and uninfected.

However, if just a nominal quantity of virus is needed for material infection, then you'd want to minimize # of touch points (SAH optimal). We just don't know the answer to this yet.

Please look at the chart of daily hospitalizations in NYC. What would it look like in your alternate timeline?

 

[dqd88]

In the past 6 weeks we've seen as many deaths from COVID-19 as we did from influenza in the past 12 months.

That's with ZERO social distancing for influenza, and nearly nationwide social distancing for SARS-CoV-2.


But please, continue your arm-chair quarterbacking. Those of us with M.D.'s in this thread are getting a great chuckle.

There's a wide spectrum of opinion amongst MDs and PhDs; some of whom I side with.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Korean expert answers listener questions:

Another excellent interview.
I LOLed at his comments about the “thesis pandemic.”

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

but being alone in your home and collapsing and dying before you can call for help is much worse

It's a tough call, but I think I would prefer to collapse and die alone at home rather than die alone in a hospital.

I know it sounds crazy,

It sure does, but believe it or not, you're not the only one who thinks your solution would have worked!

The only merit to your argument that I see is that it is possible that the % of people acquiring their infection from in-home transmissions might have been reduced (see the Iceland data). However, that's the %. The absolute number of people acquiring infections in the home would have gone way, way up.

I am curious about how the charts would have looked in your alternative timeline, too. Perhaps you could sketch it out for us?

 

[eevee-fan]

Better than a Choir, if you have enough money for a fat political donation

Pro wrestling 'essential' under Florida governor's order

Wrestling in a pool of purell and wearing face masks?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

If you guys really want to add some good material to your quarantine bedtime reading, and want to focus on a particular area, check this out. You can even filter by level of pedantry (the +5 stuff is hyped up nonsense for the layman, the -5 stuff is the dry scientific stuff, perfect for late night reading):

COVID-19 Preprint Index

Kelley Harris on Twitter

 

[dqd88]

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.

Probably one way is to require all workers to disinfect and change into PPE on site in a special holding area.

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?

At a min, I would line up the younger teachers with younger students. 5 yr olds probably have a hard time remembering to cover their mouth when sneezing, but a 16 yr old should be able to handle that.

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... )

I have a couple invention ideas to achieve this; but I doubt I'll have the time to get to it. A "quick and dirty" solution would be to require people to sneeze into plastic bags. Then the bag would be tied up and disposed of.

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.

Yeah prob hard to enforce, but that doesn't mean we should try right? It would require a big behavior change. Prob would take a while to get used to.

Admittedly some of these ideas are unlikely to be implemented; perhaps are too "far fetched" as you say. They are just ideas that to me sound rational and effective.

 

[dqd88]

It's a tough call, but I think I would prefer to collapse and die alone at home rather than die alone in a hospital.



It sure does, but believe it or not, you're not the only one who thinks your solution would have worked!

The only merit to your argument that I see is that it is possible that the % of people acquiring their infection from in-home transmissions might have been reduced (see the Iceland data). However, that's the %. The absolute number of people acquiring infections in the home would have gone way, way up.

I am curious about how the charts would have looked in your alternative timeline, too. Perhaps you could sketch it out for us?

I think it would have basically flipped the curves. You know that "flatten the curve" chart with the high one and low one. For NYC really they got the high one, though they were shooting for the low one. Letting things go per usual (with some non-disruptive measures like good hygiene) would have stretched out the curve. Peak would have come later, as is happening in Sweden. Or like in UK as opposed to Italy.

 

[TEG]

Better than a Choir, if you have enough money for a fat political donation
Pro wrestling 'essential' under Florida governor's order

N95 Luchadore anyone?