Coronavirus

[SageBrush]

Chinese CDC says animal to human transition did not happen at the wet market

The Chinese CDC now says the coronavirus didn't jump to people at the Wuhan wet market — instead, it was the site of a super-spreader event

I read that as meaning the first animal to human transmission has not been confirmed to have happened at the wet market. It really should not change our understanding and approach to reducing future events since close contact between humans and intermediates is the problem.

 

[FoverM]

Ex-Obama health care head. -- Andy Slavitt @ on Twitter
"COVID-19 may be under control in Florida but they have an unprecedented “pneumonia” crisis."

I'm not sure where the esteemed Obama Health Care head got his numbers ... but from the CDC:

National Center for Health Statistics Mortality Surveillance System

I get the following for pneumonia deaths in FL and GA for weeks 5-18 (Feb up to the beginning of May):

Slavitt's numbers for 2020 look OK but previous years' numbers are far too low.

Edit: Slavitt has apparently deleted his tweet because he found out the data was bogus. He has now retweeted a more realistic set of numbers from "FoxJust": Justin Fox on Twitter

 

[SimoRAV]

I wonder what percentage of people testing positive actually volunteer to use a contact tracing app and identify themselves as having been infected. Not just in RI, but across the country.

To be effective, IMO, a positive test should be automatically entered into tracing databases. But, of course, we have privacy advocates against such things.

GIGO.

The idea of contact tracing... That boat sailed with the unwarranted spying on yours and my privacy by NSA and GCHQ. Good luck wearing the ankle bracelet when you've been tested (false) positive..
At the root of the pandemic is the history, or more accurately, the lack of history. Few of us, myself included, knee anything about the Spanish Flu of 1918.
The "Bottom Line" rules, i.e. money before people's lives... I rest my case.

 

[Daniel in SD]

It isn't perfect but they said the following:

"The first recorded fever on board the ship was a febrile passenger on day 8. Isolation protocols were immediately commenced, with all passengers confined to cabins and surgical masks issued to all. Full personal protective equipment was used for any contact with any febrile patients, and N95 masks were worn for any contact with passengers in their cabins. The crew still performed duties, including meal services to the cabin doors three times a day, but rooms were not serviced. Expedition staff helped with crew duties at meal service."

Given that they were completely isolated from the outside world for 28 days and isolation protocols on the ship commenced on day 8, my opinion is that it is fair to assume (based on our knowledge of how the virus typically progresses) that most who tested positive would have developed symptoms by day 28 (after 20 days of isolation protocols) if they were going to develop them. Thoughts?

I agree unless they caught it after the isolation protocols or their symptoms cleared before testing (Was the question "do you currently have symptoms?" or was it "did you have symptoms?"). After 20 days I would guess most people would no longer have symptoms but I would also think they wouldn't test positive. I'm just confused...
I'm basing my assumed truly asymptomatic numbers off of Korean data where they say it's about a quarter or a third. In this Korean call center outbreak only 4% of people were asymptomatic (Coronavirus Disease Outbreak in Call Center, South Korea). It seems to be quite a mysterious virus.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Newsflash......Packing impoverished workers into a dormitory shack with no ventilation is going to spread covid19.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Every Single Worker Has Covid at One U.S. Farm on Eve of Harvest

 

[TheTalkingMule]

The idea of contact tracing... That boat sailed with the unwarranted spying on yours and my privacy by NSA and GCHQ. Good luck wearing the ankle bracelet when you've been tested (false) positive..
At the root of the pandemic is the history, or more accurately, the lack of history. Few of us, myself included, knee anything about the Spanish Flu of 1918.
The "Bottom Line" rules, i.e. money before people's lives... I rest my case.

Swine Flu was like 10 years ago. People would have tested and traced voluntarily IMO. At least enough to be regionally effective.

 

[Alfred]

More discussions now about Sweden in Europe: Todays press notice in the NZZ highlights a problem for them with the current efforts to open borders for the summer season (in German). Neighbouring and other countries are reluctant to accept Swedish guests as it is a country with a particularly high death rate. They are regarded as "not having the Coronavirus under control".

Die Schweden – Europas unwillkommene Sommergäste
Zypern öffnet demnächst die Grenzen für Touristen aus Staaten, die das Coronavirus «unter Kontrolle haben». Die Schweden werden nicht dazugehören. Selbst in der nordischen Nachbarschaft zögert man, Schweden einreisen zu lassen.

 

[Daniel in SD]

South Korea closes 251 schools again and postponed the opening of 117 more. Apparently they think it can spread in schools. There was a big outbreak in a distribution center. Sounds like this is a new cluster, the nightclub cluster has resulted in 266 cases so far. This is disheartening to me, it's crazy how quickly it can flare up again.
South Korea closes schools again as cases jump

 

[TheTalkingMule]

More discussions now about Sweden in Europe: Todays press notice in the NZZ highlights a problem for them with the current efforts to open borders for the summer season (in German). Neighbouring and other countries are reluctant to accept Swedish guests as it is a country with a particularly high death rate. They are regarded as "not having the Coronavirus under control".

Fair enough. Sweden is purposely allowing it to spread to the wider healthy population faster than other countries. Perfectly reasonable for them to limit Swedish travelers for now. What's the problem?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I'm not sure where the esteemed Obama Health Care head got his numbers ... but from the CDC:

National Center for Health Statistics Mortality Surveillance System

I get the following for pneumonia deaths in FL and GA for weeks 5-18 (Feb up to the beginning of May):
View attachment 545916
Slavitt's numbers for 2020 look OK but previous years' numbers are far too low.

Edit: Slavitt has apparently deleted his tweet because he found out the data was bogus. He has now retweeted a more realistic set of numbers from "FoxJust": Justin Fox on Twitter

Yes. It’s important with fairly confusingly presented statistics to not fall into the trap of confirming your priors because data says something you want it to. Seems like that is what happened here.

There has been a pneumonia surge in Florida, but nothing like what was stated originally; it’s on the order of what it is in other states, reflecting a very modest amount of underreporting of deaths. (There have probably been about 130k deaths nationwide at this point due to COVID, but to be clear, this is a wag. That data will be finalized much later after the epidemic is over. It’s quite normal for mortality data to be somewhat under counted, as Dr. Fauci has indicated. Nothing untoward is going on in this specific area, most likely...)

Nate Silver on Twitter

 

[TheTalkingMule]

South Korea closes 251 schools again and postponed the opening of 117 more. Apparently they think it can spread in schools. There was a big outbreak in a distribution center. Sounds like this is a new cluster, the nightclub cluster has resulted in 266 cases so far. This is disheartening to me, it's crazy how quickly it can flare up again.
South Korea closes schools again as cases jump

These articles are just blatantly trying to freak out parents.

Thousands of students had earlier on Wednesday returned to school as the country began easing virus restrictions.

But just a day later, 79 new cases were recorded, the highest daily figure in two months.

As if these new cases were children in schools. No, it's adults in a warehouse.

So how many children have tested positive to shut down these hundreds of schools? 1. Even have symptoms? Unreported.

One student in Seoul, whose mother worked at the Coupang warehouse, had been found to have the virus.

Is there any chance of that child dying from cv19? If they're even remotely healthy....no.

Korea is doing an admirable job, probably leading the world in covid response. And I have ABSOLUTELY no problem with them shutting schools for a 58 case outbreak since they've gone down the test/trace/ path so aggressively and infection rate is likely super low. What's annoying is the Western press spinning this to frighten Western parents. God forbid we not read/watch their news outlets 24/7 til the end of time.

"Cases Jump!" It's literally 1 in a million Koreans.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

YThere has been a pneumonia surge in Florida, but nothing like what was stated originally; it’s on the order of what it is in other states, reflecting a very modest amount of underreporting of deaths. (There have probably been about 130k deaths nationwide at this point due to COVID

I doubt that's the case. If anything, flu deaths and the few non-covid pneumonia deaths are all now being bundled into covid deaths so the hospitals can claim more relief money if and when Congress makes it rain. I would argue that there's considerable incentive to over-count, enough to negate the clear under-counting in other regions or situations.

It’s quite normal for mortality data to be somewhat under counted, as Dr. Fauci has indicated.

As in the denominator or just straightup deaths? Seems to be common for both. Swine Flu 2009/10....

The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the WHO is 18,449,[7] though this 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.

...the actual number of cases including asymptomatic and mild cases could be 700 million to 1.4 billion people—or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time.

 

[JRP3]

In the US at the beginning you had your choice of two types people. A POTUS in absolute denial or a whole bunch of people dead certain a million dead Americans was unavoidable and 2M+ very possible.

This is a false statement. There were always more nuanced perspectives which you continue to ignore.

 

[ram1901]

I have no cure for stupid, I could retire and my progeny for 100 generations would be set if I did. If the US population would exercise and not be fat, their death rates from cardiovascular disease would be gone (heart attacks are rare in countries not on a "western" diet). Cancer would see a reduction of about 50% (yep, obesity raises your risk for pretty much all types of cancer).

We are a country of idiots, as proven over and over. Anyone that has watched how we have on average treated our bodies for the past 30 years should not be surprised at all by how people are in denial about SARS-CoV-2.

Sorry, but many of these conditions are ... in some cases, hereditary. Eventually, regardless of exercise and diet, people die of these diseases. That is not to say that some folks are too sedimentary and over eat and eat the wrong things which are not helpful. I suppose that you are one of the few that are not among the idiots. How arrogant to make such a statement.

 

[madodel]

Let's get complicated. Say the above patient dies on a vent from hospital acquired pneumonia. Now a reasonable completion of the death cert might be

1. Nosocomial Pnemonia (specified agent if known)
2. Myocardial infarction
3. ASCVD, Diabetes, Obesity
4. (other): Covid-19, toenail fungus

Florida would probably put that death in the Toenail Fungus column.

 

[ram1901]

What's your point? There is no definitive treatment for covid-19. There's no vaccinations, and a significant percentage of elderly patients particularly those with classic comorbidities are going to die. Are you suggesting that we shouldn't treat them? In other words anyone over say age 60 who gets ill from covid-19 we should just consider them a lost cause?

Perhaps you are not aware that the vast majority of those getting Covid-19 are treated and recover and go home. The majority who die, do so, because of pre existing conditions. NY Gov. Cuomo clearly believed you might as well let them die by sending infected people back into the most vulnerable population, but I am not among those who believe that as you attempted to suggest.

 

[bkp_duke]

Sorry, but many of these conditions are ... in some cases, hereditary. Eventually, regarding of exercise and diet, people die of these diseases. That is not to say that some folks are too sedimentary and over eat and eat the wrong things which are not helpful.

Where is your MD from? No, seriously.

While there is a hereditary component to pretty much every disease, heart disease and diabetes have GIGANTIC environmental components (i.e. what and how much we eat). Cancer has a much larger environmental component than most people realize.

 

[shinytop]

I doubt that's the case. If anything, flu deaths and the few non-covid pneumonia deaths are all now being bundled into covid deaths so the hospitals can claim more relief money if and when Congress makes it rain. I would argue that there's considerable incentive to over-count, enough to negate the clear under-counting in other regions or situations.

The official Florida Covid-19 deaths as of 10 AM are 2364. Note that the pneumonia deaths listed above are over 4000 more than in recent years. So, no, the pneumonia deaths are not bundled into the Covid deaths.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

South Korea closes 251 schools again and postponed the opening of 117 more. Apparently they think it can spread in schools. There was a big outbreak in a distribution center. Sounds like this is a new cluster, the nightclub cluster has resulted in 266 cases so far. This is disheartening to me, it's crazy how quickly it can flare up again.
South Korea closes schools again as cases jump

Don’t get discouraged. But it is important to not underestimate the virus, for sure! Going to be a while before things are normal! We can only approximate normal.

As in the denominator or just straightup deaths? Seems to be common for both. Swine Flu 2009/10....

Both, of course. I fully expect the denominator to expand by about a factor of 10, to 14 million or so (obviously that is as of right now - the final number will be much higher presumably, but we have not got there yet - I’m talking about what it would be if we virtually “paused” right now). While the numerator will expand a bit as well, but not nearly so much. (Perhaps by 30%.)

Note we have a bit more real-time visibility into the denominator in this pandemic, because we have been doing serology tests (which are usually done after the fact, or at least much later, to figure out the denominator). That’s where the 10x number (which is an estimate) is coming from.

 

[dfwatt]

Perhaps you are not aware that the vast majority of those getting Covid-19 are treated and recover and go home. The majority who die, do so, because of pre existing conditions. NY Gov. Cuomo clearly believed you might as well let them die by sending infected people back into the most vulnerable population, but I am not among those who believe that as you attempted to suggest.

I've been a doctor in the healthcare system for 40 years. You are completely out of your depth if you think you're going to educate me about covid-19. 60% of American adults have a so-called pre-existing condition or comorbidity, placing them at elevated risk. The fact that the majority of people recover does not in any way prove that covid-19 is a minor issue that has been blown out of proportion, which seems to be the message you're trying to deliver. If you want to sell that crap please go somewhere else. And especially don't talk to anyone who is a healthcare professional because it's offensive, to have someone outside the field who is plainly and transparently ignorant about the realities of covid-19, telling you nonsense about your own field and acting as though they're some kind of authority. Your patronizing of people who know more than you do and who have been in the trenches in Hospitals and Clinics for decades is really tough to take. Take it somewhere else please.