Coronavirus

[jerry33]

Probably a stupid question, but if the flu can come back every year in mutated shape, killing hundreds of thousands of people, how is ‘herd immunity’ going to prevent mutations of covid-19 killing millions every year? Does it not mutate like the flu does?

My understanding is "no" because it has a lint-like built-in checker that vastly reduces the amount of mutations. Flu virus have no such checker so they are free to mutate.

 

[MXLRplus]

Dang Jackson Browne just announced he tested positive, but is doing better fortunately. Thinks he picked it up at NYC concert on March 12, so figure his incubation period being in the 5-12 day period. Loved his music back in the 80s. More and more celebs, musicians, actors are making the news. Maybe it will have some impact on the younger population to take it more seriously.

Jackson Browne tests positive for coronavirus

The way our social networking works today, if a lot of celebrities get the plague, the price of plague will skyrocket, China will be making lots of cheap versions, and every who gets it will post it up on FB/YT/Twits. We could run into a plague shortage even.

 

[sparcs]

Shouldn't POTUS be telling anyone with even the mildest of symptoms to just self quarantine at home? Limit visitors to hospitals and nursing homes nationwide. Cut all large gatherings nationwide. Same for anyone who traveled overseas.

What would testing even do at this point? They will eventually have a flood of patients and most will likely be positive anyways. Those patients are going to be told to self quarantine anyways.

looks like the US is steadily getting here in the hardest hit areas because testing capacity hasn't scaled enough. Rate of infections could eventually overtake all possible testing capacity.

The most vulnerable areas are the large population centers that have decided not to lockdown. You basically have no idea what's going on in your community without adequate testing capacity.

These articles don't give me a lot of confidence about testing nationwide:

Why Widespread Coronavirus Testing Isn’t Coming Anytime Soon

FACT CHECK: U.S. Testing Still Isn't Close To What South Korea Has Done

 

[cwerdna]

Hope this isn't a repost. I just watched it. It's about 5 minutes long. As someone else said earlier, I don't think seasonal flu does this at all/on a regular basis to healthcare systems of developed nations.

Singapore says it will make its contact tracing tech freely available to developers

China to lift lockdown on Wuhan, the epicenter of its coronavirus outbreak

Two months after Chinese authorities locked down the city at the center of the country’s coronavirus outbreak, the end is in sight.

Hubei province said Tuesday that travel restrictions on the capital city of Wuhan will be removed starting April 8, which would end a lockdown that began on Jan. 23.

The virus first emerged in the city in late December and has killed more than 2,500 people there. That means Wuhan alone accounted for nearly 80% of the country’s total deaths of more than 3,200.

 

[MXLRplus]

Tidbit: While I don't watch broadcast TV, I did observe a COVID-19 commercial by the Feds on Netflix. Simple, well done. Dr. Jerome Adams, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Leah Birx touch on social distancing, washing hands often, and where to get the latest news.

Tasteful, no Armageddon speeches, no hate, no threats. Very refreshing change from the rants in the media/celebrities. Some wingnut yesterday said 50% of America was going to die. Way to go Free Press! No wonder people in stores are panic buying, we are TELLING them to panic. We are our own worst enemies.

 

[mrdoubleb]

Moving our discussion with @avoigt to the appropriate thread...

So my point was, that a day or two of declines in a country is not enough to call it a trend reversal in terms of new infections. My source is coronavirus.app

Italy:
You may be tempted that the trend has reversed over the last few days, but then 3/24 happened. Is this an outlier and we will see further decrease going forward? I certainly hope so. But, I think it is too early to tell. If you check back to roughly a week ago, you saw the same pattern followed by a big increase.

Germany:
Sure, it looked like a big win until 3/22. But then 3/23 increased again and yesterday was really bad, ATH, 4600 new cases

France:
3/24 was better than the ATH of 3/23. Am I ready to celebrate a trend reversal? No, not yet.

 

[wdolson]

I've mentioned before that it appears my SO and I both had it in February, but we can't prove it because the antibody test is not widely available yet. I came across this today and it pinged
Lost Smell and Taste Hint COVID-19 Can Target the Nervous System

I normally have a great sense of smell. I often smell things other people don't. But around mid-February I noticed I had almost no sense of smell. I could smell really strong smells faintly, but most things didn't smell at all. It came back a few days later, but I was having the weird asthma-like symptoms and forgot about it until I heard this.

 

[EinSV]

Moving our discussion with @avoigt to the appropriate thread...

So my point was, that a day or tow of declines in a country is not enough to call it a trend reversal in terms of new infections. My source is coronavirus.app

Italy:
You may be tempted that the trend has reversed over the last few days, but then 3/24 happened. Is this an outlier and we will see further decrease going forward? I certainly hope so. But, I think it is too early to tell. If you check back to roughly a week ago, you saw the same pattern followed by a big increase.
View attachment 525478
Germany:
Sure, it looked like a big win until 3/22. But then 3/23 increased again and yesterday was really bad, ATH, 4600 new cases
View attachment 525479
France:
3/24 was better than the ATH of 3/23. Am I ready to celebrate a trend reversal? No, not yet.
View attachment 525481

I agree it is too soon to call a "top" for COVID-19 infections in Europe but it sure seems like we are getting close

Data below is from the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and includes EU, EEA and UK

https://qap.ecdc.europa.eu/public/extensions/COVID-19/COVID-19.html

 

[Causalien]

PPL should check out czech republic's story.

100% Home made masks and it works.

State mandate mask wearing NOW!

 

[mrdoubleb]

@flabellina here are the 3 sources i am using and they show the same figures - though these may have the same original source.
Johns Hopkins
Coronavirus.app
Worldometer

 

[JRP3]

One of my mother's friends is a quilter and each day she makes masks and leaves them on her porch where they get picked up. I don't now if it's a statewide effort or just something the locals are doing.

 

[flabellina]

@flabellina here are the 3 sources i am using and they show the same figures - though these may have the same original source.
Johns Hopkins
Coronavirus.app
Worldometer

Yeah, I agree with your arguments. Trends look promising in Italy but we need the rest of the week to see. The numbers I had were from some italian media, that apparently had the wrong numbers.

Also I think it's important to note that recorded cases are a minority compared to the actual numbers. Health ministery said they think the actual number of infections are between 4x and 10x the ones been recorded.

 

[ZeApelido]

 

[bkp_duke]

I have personal experience with Hep C, so I'm going to take your point that it's possible, but not certain. Furthermore, all 3 are transmitted by intimately close transmission of bodily fluids, not air-borne.

Anyway, have the other [known] strains of coronavirus exhibited this same characteristic of remaining in the body long past the infection stage? I ask, because wouldn't the vulnerable be better protected by only interacting with people who can't be carriers (e.g. the folks who have the antibodies already)? I know of some elderly couples who go out to do their own grocery shopping regularly (because their children don't live with them and must shelter-at-home), and if someone else could do it for them, that would minimize their exposure even further. Since the grocery stores aren't hospital grade sanitary.

Edit: waiting for year-long studies to be done before acting isn't a solution in these cases.

There are reports of SARS-CoV-2 taking up to a month to clear, in asymptomatic patients. These are all case studies, but the data is sound.

This guy was in quaratine, felt fine, but kept on shedding the virus (i.e. that's an active infection):
33 Days In Coronavirus COVID-19 Quarantine, Carl Goldman Continues Chronicles: Part 24

 

[bkp_duke]

I don't believe any of the other corona virus family leaves someone contagious after they have gotten over it. That's probably a good long term sign for COVID-19, though there is no proof that this won't be an exception.

Honestly, we don't know. Coronaviruses are not well studied, because in the past (aside from the prior SARS and MERS), they only caused the common cold. This is a question I'm not sure anyone can answer definitively at this time.

Coronavirus | Human Coronavirus Types | CDC

 

[iPlug]

Nice short article on what we can surmise about COVID-19 immunity after recovery at this point:

Do You Get Immunity After Recovering From A Case Of Coronavirus?

 

[deonb]

Controlled study on chloroquine showing that it is not effective:

New study casts doubt on hyrdoxychloroquine’s effectiveness in treating coronavirus – TechCrunch

 

[bkp_duke]

Tidbit: While I don't watch broadcast TV, I did observe a COVID-19 commercial by the Feds on Netflix. Simple, well done. Dr. Jerome Adams, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Leah Birx touch on social distancing, washing hands often, and where to get the latest news.

Tasteful, no Armageddon speeches, no hate, no threats. Very refreshing change from the rants in the media/celebrities. Some wingnut yesterday said 50% of America was going to die. Way to go Free Press! No wonder people in stores are panic buying, we are TELLING them to panic. We are our own worst enemies.

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.

 

[X Fan]

Louisiana has the third highest number of cases per capita and it's increasing exponentially.
They've tested 1852 (EDIT: Oops! 8603 I didn't include private labs) people with 1388 positives. Seems bad.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) | Department of Health | State of Louisiana

A million plus visitors during Mardi Gras was a bad mixer.

Money over smarts prevailed....now they’re paying the price.

 

[SageBrush]

Now, I'm not a doctor (either) -- but it is absolutely clear to me that you are very busy shedding dangerous nonsense here. Please stop.

IF there is ANY support for that claim of immunity you must share it. Certainly the several actual medical professionals who post here would have told us about it long ago. And if you happened to have access to such proof, surely you would have already provided it. No?

So far as I know, throat and nasal swabs turn RNA negative soon after symptoms pass in the vast majority of cases. A person who is nasal and throat swab RNA negative is not infectious via respiratory droplet (presuming accurate testing.) I can think of one well described case (an American from the cruise ship) who does not fit that pattern since he continues to test positive. He would fit what physicians call a 'carrier' although it is unknown if he is infectious. One thing is for sure: that person is seropositive.

This layman notion that seropositivity (antibody positive) is equal to cure is wrong. Perhaps the confusion occurs because the converse is true: a person exposed to covid who became infected and then cleared the virus IS seropositive.