***NON-POLITICAL COVID-19 Discussion Thread***

[JakeF]

A couple of reminders...

Originally Posted by Bwana

Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.

Originally Posted by Dartgod

People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.

We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.

Thanks!

Click here for the original OP:

Spoiler!

Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.

California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”

The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”

Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.

The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.

The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.

A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.

Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.

“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”

It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.

“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”

On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”

According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.

More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.

“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”

CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.

Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.

“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”

[O.city]

Originally Posted by petegz28

Has it though? We keep hearing there are more and more and exponentially more cases than we knew\know of yet the death tolls are what they are. We can't assume someone died, right? They died or didn't. So really is it worse than we think if exponentially more people have or had the virus but the death tolls have stayed where they are for the most part?

That seems to me that is not as deadly as we thought though it can still be deadly.

If we didn't know people had it then, some of the people that died then likely died from it as well without it being known. Works both ways.

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by O.city

A well fitting n95 is gonna keep you from getting or giving. If worn right.

As I understand it an N95 allows for exhalation to a point that is not as effective in that aspect. The respirator does not filter out the virus, correct?

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by sedated

I've seen almost 100% of people wearing masks at places like the grocery store and other retail places, but then drive by bars that are packed with people (not wearing masks, because they are drinking). Then check FB and see pics of groups of people standing side by side not wearing masks.

Even when 100% of people are wearing them, at least 10% aren't covering their nose, or are wearing types that are ineffective (gaiters, ones with vents, etc)

Bars are a likely contributor for sure. But these are largely small businesses...how long can we keep them shut down?

As far as the smaller gatherings you're referencing, people were cooped up and isolated all spring, at some point we are going to socialize again. It's human nature. And no one is going to wear a mask in their own home.

Again, we're at the limit of what the general public will reasonably accept. It's an inconvenient truth.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by petegz28

As I understand it an N95 allows for exhalation to a point that is not as effective in that aspect. The respirator does not filter out the virus, correct?

All comes down to the fit IIRC. They're actually supposed to be sized and fitted to you. If thats the case, IIRC, yes they would work both from getting the virus or transmitting.

But it's been a while since i read the study. I don't know for sure.

[Donger]

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told lawmakers during his June 23 Congressional testimony.

“We can say very clearly that wearing a mask is definitely helpful in preventing acquisition as well as transmission,” he said.

“It is always better to have a mask on than to not have a mask on, both for acquisition and for transmission,” Fauci added.

[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by TLO

Early Spread of COVID-19 Appears Far Greater Than Initially Reported

Featured Wednesday, 12 August 2020 Esther R Robards-Forbes Statistics Integrative Biology

Patients with undiagnosed flu symptoms who actually had COVID-19 last winter were among thousands of undetected early cases of the disease at the beginning of this year. In a new paper in The Lancet's open-access journal EClinicalMedicine, epidemiological researchers from The University of Texas at Austin estimated COVID-19 to be far more widespread in Wuhan, China, and Seattle, Washington, weeks ahead of lockdown measures in each city.

In the U.S., about a third of the estimated undiagnosed cases were among children. The researchers also concluded that the first case of COVID-19 in Seattle may have arrived as far back as Christmas or New Year's Day.

Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of integrative biology and statistics and data sciences who leads the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, worked with her team of researchers to extrapolate the extent of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan and Seattle based on retested throat swabs taken from patients who were suffering from influenza-like illnesses during January in Wuhan and during late February and early March in Seattle. When the samples were analyzed later in each city, most turned out to be flu, but some turned out to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

"Even before we realized that COVID-19 was spreading, the data imply that there was at least one case of COVID-19 for every two cases of flu," Meyers said. "Since we knew how widespread flu was at that time, we could reasonably determine the prevalence of COVID-19."

When the Chinese government locked down Wuhan on Jan. 22, there were 422 known cases. But, extrapolating the throat-swab data across the city using a new epidemiological model, Meyers and her team found that there could have been more than 12,000 undetected symptomatic cases of COVID-19. On March 9, the week when Seattle schools closed due to the virus, researchers estimate that more than 9,000 people with flu-like symptoms had COVID-19 and that about a third of that total were children. The data do not imply that health authorities were aware of these infections, rather that they may have gone unseen during the early and uncertain stages of the pandemic.

"Given that COVID-19 appears to be overwhelmingly mild in children, our high estimate for symptomatic pediatric cases in Seattle suggests that there may have been thousands more mild cases at the time," wrote Zhanwei Du, a postdoctoral researcher in Meyers' lab and first author on the study.

According to several other studies, about half of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, leading researchers to believe that there may have been thousands more infected people in Wuhan and Seattle before each city's respective lockdown measures went into effect.

"We can go back and piece together the history of this pandemic using a combination of investigative techniques and modeling," Meyers said. "This helps us understand how the pandemic spread so quickly around the globe and provides insight into what we may see in the coming weeks and months."

The new technique for estimating the amount of unseen COVID-19 based on the ratio of influenza cases to COVID-19 cases has also been used to determine how many children were actually infected in each city and the pace of the early pandemic in the U.S., Meyers said.

The finding in the new paper is consistent with work that Meyers and her team have done on the virus's early spread. Using travel data, she and her team estimated how far the virus had spread and concluded that there were as many as 12,000 cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan before the lockdown.

In addition to Meyers and Du, graduate students Emily Javan and Ciara Nugent at The University of Texas at Austin and professor Benjamin J. Cowling of the University of Hong Kong contributed to the research. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health

Wastewater samples from March suggest Boston cases were massively unreported.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by Bugeater

Bars are a likely contributor for sure. But these are largely small businesses...how long can we keep them shut down?

As far as the smaller gatherings you're referencing, people were cooped up and isolated all spring, at some point we are going to socialize again. It's human nature. And no one is going to wear a mask in their own home.

Again, we're at the limit of what the general public will reasonably accept. It's an inconvenient truth.

As i said the other day, this is where all the political capitol and communication comes into play.

You have a finite amount of rope with stuff like this. They blew their wad and here we are. When your messaging is inconsistent, people are gonna say **** it. Right or wrong.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Well yeah this thing isn't lethal at all (in the grand scheme) unless you are severely immune compromised.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower

Wastewater samples from March suggest Boston cases were massively unreported.

The wastewater thing is pretty interesting to me. It would be a good way for future use of monitoring this kind of stuff before it gets wild.

[O.city]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...tes-face-masks

Germany having issues again. **** this thing.

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

https://www.businessinsider.com/who-...e-masks-2020-4



This article does not support your claims that they lied initially to protect the number of masks available and there is no proof to support that theory except you being told that by people who changed their story multiple time.

The WHO was not concerned about the US mask supply and apparently neither was the CDC in April when this article was published.

Bugeater is 100% correct.

It’s August and I’m still concerned about the mask supply. Rehabs and hospitals, even nurses on the COVID unit, are wearing N95 masks for an entire week. The supply still isn’t there and price gouging is still happening.

[lewdog]

My coworker was 4 weeks in the hospital. He’s now in acute rehab. Still on oxygen but up and moving with a walker. He’s doing much better but permanent pulmonary damage is still very likely.

/only deaths matter though.

[stumppy]

Originally Posted by lewdog

My coworker was 4 weeks in the hospital. He’s now in acute rehab. Still on oxygen but up and moving with a walker. He’s doing much better but permanent pulmonary damage is still very likely.

/only deaths matter though.

I take it he was severely immune compromised before he got CV. JK, hope he comes through alright.

[Donger]

WHO raised the alarm on PPE shortages in early March. It sucks that it's still going on:

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail...kers-worldwide

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by petegz28

Of course you don't, Dirk. Because the excuses always seem to lend themselves towards the narrative of "things are a lot worse than we think".

Nah

California reported more than 6k backlogged cases. The state has now committed to assigning those cases to the correct date. We'll adjust our values as soon as the state makes the correct date figures available. This will shift many positive cases reported today to earlier dates.

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) August 12, 2020

Florida also had a major problem with a case backlog in Miami, which added 4,000 cases to the state's totals. https://t.co/drHk80BHve

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) August 12, 2020