***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.”

[Pitt Gorilla]

Do masks help slow spread of COVID-19 in Kansas? One study says ‘Yes,’ by as much as 50%

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/coro...#storylink=cpy

The study found that counties with a mask mandate saw a decrease in their 7-day rolling average of daily cases per 100,000 population starting 14 days after the mandate, according to Ginther. Moreover, cases have remained flat, despite some spikes.

Counties without mask mandates have seen the 7-day rolling average of daily cases per 100,000 steadily increase. And in September, those counties started to have higher case rates compared to counties with a mask mandate, she said.

[BWillie]

Im gonna eat so much gross healthy shit when I get Covid. If I cant taste it...well then broccoli down the hatch.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by BWillie

Im gonna eat so much gross healthy shit when I get Covid. If I cant taste it...well then broccoli down the hatch.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by BWillie

Im gonna eat so much gross healthy shit when I get Covid. If I cant taste it...well then broccoli down the hatch.

Seems legit.

Might as well throw in spinach while you're at it.

[sedated]

Originally Posted by Coach

Might as well throw in spinach while you're at it.

IMHO, spinach doesn't taste like anything anyway.

I'd probably pull a Lewdog and just eat chicken breasts all the time.

[Perineum Ripper]

Originally Posted by sedated

IMHO, spinach doesn't taste like anything anyway.

I'd probably pull a Lewdog and just eat chicken breasts all the time.

Don’t let that sum bitch lie to you, he wasn’t eating chicken breast. That ****er was eating asshole for 3 meals a day and again as a late night snack.

[TLO]

How are you feeling, Pete?

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by TLO

How are you feeling, Pete?

Doing okay, I guess all things considered. My swollen gland is finally starting to go down and that was painful. I started breaking out in hives early this morning which I tend to do when I get really sick so been eating Benadryl all day which has kept me down. Still cannot taste or smell anything. I don't think that's returning any time soon. The hardest part is staying away from my Son. We were going to let him sit outside and watch kids come up and get candy but now we decided otherwise. His Halloween is ruined.

My Wife took him outside to let him get some fresh air and stuff and some girls from down the street came running down when his buddy from across the street came running over screaming "NO! HIS DAD HAS CORONA!!"

It's like thanks, kid...iittle shit. LOL

[TinyEvel]

US will top 100,000 new cases today per Johns Hopkins figures. Already at 101,000

[Fish]

Shitty, but useful data....

Sewage testing shows a country flush with coronavirus cases

When Rosa Inchausti and her colleagues started testing wastewater in Tempe, Arizona, it was 2018 and they were not looking for coronavirus. They were tracking the opioid epidemic.

But because they were set up to sample the city sector by sector, they were able to switch gears and begin sampling sewage for evidence of coronavirus.
"We were ready for this," Inchausti told CNN.
Now the city is regularly sampling sewers to keep an eye on the pandemic. And things are not looking good in parts of Tempe.
And they're not looking good in Boston, or in Reno, Nevada, or in many other cities across the country.

Biobot Analytics has been analyzing sewage, looking for evidence of coronavirus, for dozens of customers, including Boston.
As daily coronavirus counts top 70,000 as measured by standard testing, sewage testing suggests things are going to get a whole lot worse.

"It's a leading indicator," Inchausti said. "The proof is in the poop."
Across the country, cities and universities are testing sewage to monitor the virus. Studies suggest it's a useful way to augment standard person-by-person coronavirus testing and while a sewage sample cannot point to an infected individual, it can give an indication that infections are circulating in an area, a neighborhood or even in an individual building.
Early on in the pandemic, it became clear that Covid-19 virus makes its way into the digestive system and could be found in human feces. From there, it's just a quick flush into the sewers.

Mariana Matus, co-founder and CEO of Biobot Analytics, which is analyzing sewage for dozens of customers, said sewage testing can show virus is starting to circulate even before people start showing up at hospitals and clinics and before they start lining up for Covid-19 tests.
"People start shedding virus pretty quickly after they are infected and before they start showing symptoms," Matus told CNN.
The results are clear on the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority website, which displays Biobot's analysis of data covering 2 million MWRA customers in the Boston area. It shows a spike in viral samples in April and May, falling back through the summer. Now the virus is showing up again, with samples at levels close to what was seen at the height on the pandemic in the spring.
"We are seeing an upturn in the wastewater data which I think broadly matches what we are seeing across the country," Matus said. "It's been interesting seeing this almost second wave."

Continued:

Spoiler!

Massachusetts still has a low percentage of coronavirus tests coming back positive at 1.5%. But the growing number of positive hits from the sewage indicate more positive tests are to come, Matus said.
"I think that it is pretty good evidence that we need to pay attention. Communities need to pay attention," said Matus, a biologist who started the company with a small group of colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The little startup has been deluged with requests to test wastewater systems, she said. "Who doesn't like a poop story?" Matus asked.
Testing the sewage for evidence of Covid-19 is like preparing a weather forecast, said Krishna Pagilla, chair of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno and director of the Nevada Water Innovation Institute.
"This is something that we should have concentrated on from the beginning in every community," Reno's Pagilla told CNN.

The coronavirus breaks down fairly quickly once it's flushed. Wastewater testing doesn't recover whole virus, but instead pulls out two specific pieces of viral material called RNA. It can no longer infect people, but is easy to identify.
Finding this RNA in the sewage tells researchers someone infected is using the system. The more RNA is there, the more people are infected.
"We will know a few days in advance. We can inform the health authorities," Pagilla said.
It's especially useful in a college town, Pagilla said
"People are reluctant to get tested now," he said. "Or we have students who say 'hey I am having symptoms but I am going to hang out at home.' They don't get seriously ill, so they don't get tested. But then maybe they decide to go to the gym."
In Tempe, Inchausti said the city makes even more direct use of the information.

"The relationship is never just to have the data and look at it and say, 'that's nice,' she said.
Instead, Inchausti, who is the city's Strategic Management & Diversity director, said her team publishes the data on a public website and has used it to target low-income neighborhoods heavily populated by minorities who are most at risk of dying from Covid-19.
One, designated Area 6, abuts the Arizona State University campus. Its 8,100 residents are largely low-income. When coronavirus RNA counts went up in the sewage there recently, Inchausti said, "we spent $15,000 blitzing it with masks."
"We met people where they are," she added. "We understood they were going to the laundromat, so we helped them understand how to stay safe in the laundromat. We provided Covid-19 saliva testing in the school, in the neighborhood." Now they're analyzing test data to see if the intervention made a difference.
"I believe what Tempe is doing is the right way to do it," Pagilla said.
Cresten Mansfeldt says he thinks it made a difference on the campus at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The school has coordinated saliva tests for on-campus residents with regular wastewater monitoring conducted by students.
"They look at the data daily," said Mansfeldt, an assistant professor of environmental engineering, who normally studies how microbes interact with the chemicals people excrete in their waste.
"There is a lot of information that people flush down the toilet," Mansfeldt said.
Numbers shot up in the weeks after students returned to campus in late August, peaking at 130 positive PCR tests on September 17. But they plummeted to just a few a day after the city and county of Boulder instituted restrictions on college-aged residents that prevented gatherings of any size -- not even two people -- for two weeks. Officials relented after a week when students complained of safety issues, allowing those age 18 to 22 to travel in pairs.
Currently, 18- to 22-year-olds are no longer restricted any more than any other age group in Boulder county.
Now campus cases are ticking up again, from one case on October 16 to five on October 22 and eight on October 26. But Mansfeldt said the wastewater indicators look good. "Most sewers are testing negative," he said.

Inchausti and Pagilla both said they hoped state and federal officials would pay attention and start using sewage data to monitor the pandemic across the country as a whole -- and to respond.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set up a website and is hoping state, tribal, local and territorial health departments will submit wastewater testing data for a national database.
"At this time, point estimates of community infection based on wastewater measurements should not be used," the CDC advises.

[KCUnited]

[notorious]

Sewage testing shows a country flush with coronavirus cases

Great pun.

[Hog Rider]

Driver with coronary issues has a massive heart attack while driving.
Vehicle veers and hits a concrete barrier.
Collision kills him before heart attack.
What 'caused' the drivers death?

[loochy]

Originally Posted by Hog Rider

Driver with coronary issues has a massive heart attack while driving.
Vehicle veers and hits a concrete barrier.
Collision kills him before heart attack.
What 'caused' the drivers death?

Corona of course

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Hog Rider

Driver with coronary issues has a massive heart attack while driving.
Vehicle veers and hits a concrete barrier.
Collision kills him before heart attack.
What 'caused' the drivers death?

Newton