Coronavirus

[madodel]

And the falsehoods are in service of denying the facts to promote alternative reality conspiracy theories. It's an old formula for a totalitarianism actually, but I'm dismayed that it seems to get traction and actually may work. It's astonishing that such colossal mismanagement at the scale of the current Public Health crisis has not lead to rioting in the streets. But I guess we're used to bad governance. Even so, this is incompetence on a large-scale

My mother died in the middle of March in a nursing home in NJ. The death certificate said AHD, Alzheimer's and anemia. I thought it was strange that they didn't list pneumonia or hypoxia as a COD. She had chronic aspiration pneumonia and had been on O2 by nasal cannula for years. At that time no one was testing deaths outside of hospitals. I talked to my county coroner who said he had several nursing home deaths here (in PA) of pneumonia in February and March and neither the PA State Health Dept nor the CDC would provide tests as they said they didn't have enough for hospitals as it was. So the real death count should be higher. This was just after they closed all nursing homes in NJ and PA two weeks before because of COVID. The conspiracy theories prey on people who don't understand how healthcare and medicine works.

 

[TespaceX]

Hundreds protest new student flu vaccine mandate at State House

I’m confused about this one.
I’m pretty sure most, if not all, of these children have had their MMR, varicella, TDaP, and other vaccinations already to attend public school.
Or, have all of these children at the rally have been in homeschool all of their years, and now wanting to go to public?

 

[bkp_duke]

Hundreds protest new student flu vaccine mandate at State House

I’m confused about this one.
I’m pretty sure most, if not all, of these children have had their MMR, varicella, TDaP, and other vaccinations already to attend public school.
Or, have all of these children at the rally have been in homeschool all of their years, and now wanting to go to public?

Obviously they are not learning much science there in Boston.

There is a gigantic loophole in that legislation:
"Earlier this month, state health officials announced all students 6 months and older will be required to get the flu vaccine by the end of the year, unless medically or religiously exempt."

That last part will get used and abused. We saw it here in CA until the loophole was closed, then people got rip-roaring pissed about it.

 

[madodel]

Hundreds protest new student flu vaccine mandate at State House

I’m confused about this one.
I’m pretty sure most, if not all, of these children have had their MMR, varicella, TDaP, and other vaccinations already to attend public school.
Or, have all of these children at the rally have been in homeschool all of their years, and now wanting to go to public?

Are these the Zero Population Growth people protesting? Why would any sane person not want a Flu vaccine especially this year? Could Flu combined with 2nd wave COVID bump up those death rates?

EDIT: Of course then the Space Force Epidemiologists will say it isn't COVID19 but the Flu killing everyone.

 

[madodel]

FDA willing to fast track coronavirus vaccine before phase three trials end
FDA willing to fast track coronavirus vaccine before phase three trials end

Totally, not political.

Definitely don't look at the man behind the curtain.

Here's the transcript from Gottlieb's appearance on Face The Nation on CBS on Sunday.
Transcript: Scott Gottlieb discusses coronavirus on "Face the Nation," August 30, 2020 - CBS News

 

[Daniel in SD]

Are these the Zero Population Growth people protesting? Why would any sane person not want a Flu vaccine especially this year? Could Flu combined with 2nd wave COVID bump up those death rates?

EDIT: Of course then the Space Force Epidemiologists will say it isn't COVID19 but the Flu killing everyone.

I don't really understand this concern. Maybe it's part of the reason death rates were so much higher in New York as it got hit during flu season. However this season people are being way more careful and the flu is way less contagious (and some actual "herd immunity"!). Australia had no flu season this year.

Australia sees huge decrease in flu cases due to coronavirus measures

 

[madodel]

I don't really understand this concern. Maybe it's part of the reason death rates were so much higher in New York as it got hit during flu season. However this season people are being way more careful and the flu is way less contagious (and some actual "herd immunity"!). Australia had no flu season this year.
View attachment 582916
Australia sees huge decrease in flu cases due to coronavirus measures

Oh I'm expecting a mild Flu season this year with all the mask wearing and social distancing. But as has been seen at colleges with large outbreaks of COVID19, there will be Flu outbreaks and the combo of Flu and COVID19 won't be pleasant. My wife keeps telling me, our kids to get a flu shot. I'll get one. I'm having too much fun watching the TSLA ticker to chance dying in the near future.

 

[NikolaACDC]

Florida cuts ties with Quest for failing to report 75,000 COVID-19 tests

"Florida health officials reported a jump in positive coronavirus cases Tuesday but say the increase is because of a large data dump from private laboratory Quest Diagnostics, as a result the state has severed ties with the lab.
According to the Florida Department of Health, Quest violated Florida law when it failed to report COVID-19 results in a timely manner, including nearly 75,000 cases dating as far back as April."
...
"On Tuesday, the DOH reported 7,569 new cases, bringing the state’s overall total to 631,040 since March. Department of Health officials said had it not been for the testing dump from Quest, there would be 3,773 new cases. Prior to Tuesday, Florida had not reported more than 5,000 new cases since Aug. 16.

According to the DOH, Quest did notify all individuals who tested positive prior to this data dump."

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More incompetence, this time not from politicians.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Good news from Iceland and an answer to the question about how long IgG antibodies last. They found 90%+ remaining seropositive after 120 days (no observable decline). Iceland did a huge amount of PCR testing, 217k tests with a population of 341k, so it's likely that they caught a large number of asymptomatic infections. Whether or not that changed the chance of a positive antibody test does not appear to be in this study.

BACKGROUND
Little is known about the nature and durability of the humoral immune response to infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

METHODS
We measured antibodies in serum samples from 30,576 persons in Iceland, using six assays (including two pan-immunoglobulin [pan-Ig] assays), and we determined that the appropriate measure of seropositivity was a positive result with both pan-Ig assays. We tested 2102 samples collected from 1237 persons up to 4 months after diagnosis by a quantitative polymerase-chain-reaction (qPCR) assay. We measured antibodies in 4222 quarantined persons who had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and in 23,452 persons not known to have been exposed.

RESULTS
Of the 1797 persons who had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection, 1107 of the 1215 who were tested (91.1%) were seropositive; antiviral antibody titers assayed by two pan-Ig assays increased during 2 months after diagnosis by qPCR and remained on a plateau for the remainder of the study. Of quarantined persons, 2.3% were seropositive; of those with unknown exposure, 0.3% were positive. We estimate that 0.9% of Icelanders were infected with SARS-CoV-2 and that the infection was fatal in 0.3%. We also estimate that 56% of all SARS-CoV-2 infections in Iceland had been diagnosed with qPCR, 14% had occurred in quarantined persons who had not been tested with qPCR (or who had not received a positive result, if tested), and 30% had occurred in persons outside quarantine and not tested with qPCR.

CONCLUSIONS
Our results indicate that antiviral antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 did not decline within 4 months after diagnosis. We estimate that the risk of death from infection was 0.3% and that 44% of persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Iceland were not diagnosed by qPCR.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2026116?query=featured_home

 

[Daniel in SD]

Q2 YoY GDP vs. COVID deaths per million. Not sure how to interpret this except to say that east Asia is way better at handling pandemics than us.
It's fitting that Sweden is right next to us.
I'm still confused how a 10% GDP drop is "shutting down the economy", it seems more like shutting down 10% of the economy.
Which countries have protected both health and the economy in the pandemic?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Australia had no flu season this year.

Yeah, that's literally the least surprising thing I've heard on this thread so far. I'm not sure what all the hubbub about getting your flu shot is. Obviously for healthcare and elderly, as usual, it is super important. The main reason I see to get it is in the event you get sick for some other reason, you will want the protection against flu if you have to enter the hospital or some other care facility. The last thing you want is to come down with the flu when you're struggling with an illness of age, etc.

That being said, it seems very likely that flu will be seriously suppressed as long as Trump doesn't convince the country coronavirus is over.

If you're sheltering at home, and you're healthy, getting the flu shot doesn't seem that important (though probably I'll get mine assuming I can do it safely - should be able to with my 3M full-face P100 respirator - that thing is a godsend, @Daniel in SD - so glad I got one). Skews these sorts of risk/reward calculations heavily towards reward, reward, reward.

 

[CatB]

my 3M full-face P100 respirator - that thing is a godsend, @Daniel in SD - so glad I got one). Skews these sorts of risk/reward calculations heavily towards reward, reward, reward.

Apologies if this has been discussed at length, I’ve fallen behind on my reading (and other elements of life, but we don’t need to go there). Does that P 100 mask protect you only? Or does that also help you protect others in case you were asymptomatic?

I had an industrial respirator left over from some Insulation work, and was using that when I visit my elderly parents, until I heard they only protect the wearer. I am struggling to figure out the best mask to wear when with them - they are hard of hearing so respirator style mask is difficult, also wondering about face shields...
Thx in advance. I have learned a lot from this forum and really appreciate the insights.

 

[bkp_duke]

@dfwatt - you will probably like the following article.

A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged

Very good summary of the molecular pathway progression, and a great example of molecular computing put to good use.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Does that P 100 mask protect you only? Or does that also help you protect others in case you were asymptomatic?

I rubber band a surgical mask securely over the exhaust, so it’s probably a bit better than me wearing a surgical mask on my face (better seal).

For visiting your parents (if you can’t robustly quarantine in advance), I would definitely focus strongly on a very well sealed exhaust.

I’m visiting my parents right now but I’m not worried (I don’t wear a mask around them) because I wore the respirator (and took lots of other precautions like not using public restrooms or going inside), whenever there was even a marginal exposure risk, in the weeks leading up to my visit. My dad is at far far greater risk from his grocery stores trips with an N95.

So the advantage of proper PPE is it can help improve the quality of your pre-visit quarantine (even if it is not better at protecting them directly from you than a surgical mask, it reduces your chance of being an infection source).

Don’t take any risks though. Be strict. Follow your own risk tolerance level and don’t listen to me.

 

[JRP3]

Has this study been covered?
Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Nationwide Observational Study of 8075 Participants - ScienceDirect

Compared to supportive care only, low-dose HCQ monotherapy was independently associated with lower mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 diagnosed and treated early or later after symptom onset.

We conducted a retrospective analysis of in-hospital mortality in the Belgian national COVID-19 hospital surveillance data. Patients treated either with HCQ alone and supportive care (HCQ group) were compared to patients treated with supportive care only (no-HCQ group) using a competing risks proportional hazards regression with discharge alive as competing risk, adjusted for demographic and clinical features with robust standard errors.

Discusses the paper:

 

[bkp_duke]

Has this study been covered?
Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Nationwide Observational Study of 8075 Participants - ScienceDirect




Discusses the paper:

Retrospective, not-blinded, study.

Needs to be RCT to answer this question.


Authors discuss this at the end:
"The evaluation of HCQ efficacy in this population was therefore not the primary objective of the data collection itself. Also, the actual HCQ dosage was not systematically checked"

 

[N5329K]

Three minutes of that rare commodity, common sense:

Too much to expect? With the clowns running the circus, probably.
Robin

 

[Daniel in SD]

Too much to expect? With the clowns running the circus, probably.

This seems like the obvious solution. As far as I know no other country is using these fast tests either though.
I wonder how well the new Abbott test works when self administered with saliva? Seems like that could be determined in an afternoon at COVID testing site. It's maddening how slow the rollout of these has been.

 

[SteveG3]

Has this study been covered?
Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Nationwide Observational Study of 8075 Participants - ScienceDirect




Discusses the paper:

you may want to watch this video first hand.

Dr Campbell, a PHD, has over 735k subscribers to his medicine focused YouTube channel, and that’s not on the back of his youth or good looks, lols.

anyway, the man focuses on data, and provides reasoned analysis from there. he provides links to all his data and is very careful in his choice of words, particularly in regard to the nature of any interpretation he makes of the data. he doesn’t mistake suggestions, likelihood’s, etc, for ‘certainty’ in any regard.

I found two things very interesting about this video

- Dr Campbell who has for months repeated the publicly aired consensus that HCQ does not help in C19 has soundly changed his mind. He directly addresses the issue of RCTs being better than retrospective, but the sheer number of patients in the HCQ data of this Belgian study, over 8,000, combined with the difference in survival rate vs non-HCQ in this study, has led Dr Campbell to reverse his opinion and find HCQ a viable treatment option in C19.

- Dr Campbell also spends sometime discussing what he sees as a glaring and puzzling flaw in the Oxford Recovery and WHO Solidarity trials. Both trials gave 5X the daily dosage of HCQ on day 1 to patients as the top standard dosage according to the British official formulary he describes as the bible for British doctors, prescribing nurses and pharmacists. He not only shows live the dosing from that formulary, he shows from the Recovery trial the day 1 dosage and in a subsequent video he shows the Solidarity day 1 dosage (2000 mg for day 1 in both studies).

that is my synopsis of the main points of the video. the only opinion I’ve expressed is that Dr Campbell is thoughtful, careful, strives to be objective and is therefore this video is worth a look at first hand.

I’ve expressed no other opinions here... not even re whether I agree with his assessment of HCQ.

I therefore ask that if you disagree with my suggesting people look first hand at a video of a PHD looking at data from a large study or my choosing to give a very brief summary of such a video, please leave your disagreement at that, as I’ve done nothing more.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Has this study been covered?
Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Nationwide Observational Study of 8075 Participants - ScienceDirect

What stands out to me is how different the HCQ and non-HCQ group were. 45% of the non-HCQ group was over 80 years old vs. 23% for the HCQ group. On the other hand 17% of the HCQ group had ARDS vs. 9% of the non-HCQ group. Obviously they try to correct for all that with multivariate analysis but they can only account for differences that they quantify. There could always be some factor they're not accounting for. That's why randomized control trials are so important.