***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]

You’ve got people with severely inhibited oxygen that are sitting there in the Er on their phone

That’s not normal. They should be struggling a lot more.

Again, someone much smarter than I should probably interpret this stuff

[BleedingRed]

Originally Posted by BigCatDaddy

It was a huge failure worldwide but I agree.

This is on China & The WHO more than any other world leaders. The information they were providing in Jan-Feb was garbage.

That would have been the time to stunt this virus. They really screwed the rest of the world.

[POND_OF_RED]

Originally Posted by penguinz

A novel virus is one that has never been seen in humans before. Has nothing to do with how much knowledge there is about the virus, it will always be novel. Now if this strain mutates into a new virus it won't be novel as its origin in humans was already known.

So exactly how did we have a team of experts for something we’ve never seen before? It’s completely wrong to call Fauci an expert if the virus is something that’s never been seen.

It would be like calling Jane Goodall an expert on jungles even though she only studied the primates in those jungles.

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by O.city

Well, there’s some scant evidence that it’s attacking Heme molecules in blood ( I’m admittedly out over my skis here in reading some of these papers, they’re unreal and I’m just a damn dentist). So if I’m reading it right there is some thought that it actually inhibits our ability to load oxygen into our blood, not necessarily our ability to inhale oxygen

Again grain of salt

Don't know if it is related but reading quite of accounts from doctors on Twitter that they are noticing alot of pulmonary embolism's with hospitalized patients infected with the virus.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by POND_OF_RED

So exactly how did we have a team of experts for something we’ve never seen before? It’s completely wrong to call Fauci an expert if the virus is something that’s never been seen.

It would be like calling Jane Goodall an expert on jungles even though she only studied the primates in those jungles.

Huh?

There are experts in the fields of Virology and Epidemiology. What are you asking exactly?

Are you expecting there to be experts for each of the millions of viruses out there in the wild?

[RunKC]

Originally Posted by O.city

We’ll need a vaccine

But we can mitigate it until then. We’re smart enough

What do you think? Mass antibody test and recoveries? Social distancing at places still?

I just know that we literally can’t afford to have this lockdown to last into the fall, of even after May IMO. The economy just can’t take that and we’ll have to keep giving out stimulus payments.

[penguinz]

Originally Posted by POND_OF_RED

So exactly how did we have a team of experts for something we’ve never seen before? It’s completely wrong to call Fauci an expert if the virus is something that’s never been seen.

It would be like calling Jane Goodall an expert on jungles even though she only studied the primates in those jungles.

Fauci is an expert in infectious diseases. Pretty sure COVID-19 is an infectious disease. He was/is not an expert with this particular virus but he is an expert in how viruses like this tend to spread and mutate.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by RunKC

What do you think? Mass antibody test and recoveries? Social distancing at places still?

I just know that we literally can’t afford to have this lockdown to last into the fall, of even after May IMO. The economy just can’t take that and we’ll have to keep giving out stimulus payments.

Antibody testing will help you know where the virus has been. Antibody prophylactic will help you keep those who are susceptible to this able to function until there’s a vaccine. It’s basically a monthly vaccine

You can’t stay locked down forever, you need smart people figuring out a way back to normal situations. Luckily we have a lot of smart people we just need to listen to them on all fronts and formulate a plan

[O.city]

Infectious disease docs are pretty much the top of the intelligent food chain. They’re know their shit

[O.city]

So apparently they’re gonna have to start burying people in New York parks

**** that’s not gonna be easy

[ghak99]

Originally Posted by jerryaldini

Missouri is one of seven remaining states with an F grade for distancing using cell phone data. The others are Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Wyoming. Jackson County has a D grade. That's why there's so much upside in their data if they improve quickly.

https://www.unacast.com/covid19/soci...ing-scoreboard

Originally Posted by Bugeater

Wyoming?



How the hell can Wyoming get an F? Hell, there are 31 US cities that have a higher population than the entire ****ing state. As I just mentioned in another thread, you would be practicing social distancing simply by being there.

That app or grading system is absolutely dog shit for rural areas.

I'm an F, no doubt about it, and I can eliminate 99% of contact to contact for days on end without even seriously adjusting my habits in the next 2 months.

Go to a county that doesn't even have visit data and see if it makes sense. In my county, for every person that's sitting on their ass at home there is one who increased his distance traveled by a factor of 4 just because of what month it is and what months it's being compared to. For every one of these people there are 2-3 making multiple daily deliveries just trying to get anhydrous tanks everywhere they're needed. None of these people are required to have person to person contact, yet they're all graded as an F.

The system just doesn't understand how rural areas function.

[2112]

I thought this was interesting. So I’ll share it

https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/...-bad-news.html

For most of March, confirmed coronavirus cases in New Jersey were doubling every two to three days. Just two weeks ago, that rate suggested we already would have more than 200,000 cases today.

But for the past week those eye-popping spikes in new cases reported daily by Gov. Phil Murphy — once 50, 60 and 74% — have given way to rates under 20%.

In the battle against this unrelenting enemy, the numbers feel like a glimmer of hope. Even Murphy said so himself Wednesday.

“The rate of increase on positive tests is diminishing. But in fairness, that’s a little bit of an imperfect assessment," Murphy told Bloomberg News. “Because as much as I want to test everybody, and that was our hope from Day 1, we just don’t have the materials from the feds to be able to do that. … But the rate has been flattening, percentage-wise.”

He’s right that it’s an imperfect assessment.

New Jersey has not significantly increased the number of test results it’s reporting each day, averaging about 5,500 over the past week, according to NJ Advance Media analysis of the state’s daily numbers. So while it may feel like the number of cases is evening out, that’s only because it’s capped by the number of tests that can be given, reviewed and then reported.

In truth, it is impossible to know how fast and how far the disease is spreading because of that limit and the state’s rightfully high bar for those who can be tested in the first place.

“We really have no idea of just how many people are infected,” said Henry F. Raymond, associate professor of epidemiology at the Rutgers University School of Public Health. “Yes, we know that we are trying our best to identify those who are in need of care. But we don’t know about the overall prevalence or distribution ... i.e. geographically, by race, by age, by gender.”

Worse yet, most test results are delayed by seven to 10 days, and sometimes even 14 days, as the governor and Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli suggested Thursday. So by the time Murphy is announcing numbers at his daily news briefing, the disease is already a week or two ahead.

What’s the impact of that?

Well, on Thursday the state reported 25,590 known cases. If getting test results is seven days behind, New Jersey could actually have more than 90,000 infected individuals, based on a modest 20% daily increase. The state’s daily increase of confirmed cases has been 21% over the past week.

And those numbers don’t account for a much-needed increase in the number of people being tested.

And those numbers don’t account for a much-needed increase in the number of people being tested.

Put another way: If the state had access to more testing and faster results, it’s likely there would be hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases today. That, in turn, likely would lead to more acceptance of social distancing guidelines the governor enacted two weeks ago.

“In places where there’s widespread testing ... you’re going to see higher incidence of the disease,” said Stephanie Silvera, a professor of public health at Montclair State University.

Faster turnaround on test results also would help overrun hospitals deal with the patient load and treatment requirements. For example, knowing a symptomatic person was not infected would allow a hospital to use different treatment protocols, or even send that patient home.

Public health experts say wider testing is needed to get a grasp of when the spread of coronavirus might start slowing, both in New Jersey and the country.

Across the state every day, people with symptoms of the coronavirus have been told to stay home rather than get tested or have been unable to get tested at one of the large-scale testing sites that have been established in multiple regions of the state, multiple people said in interviews.

Only testing those with obvious symptoms means that health officials aren’t able to get a full picture of the epidemic, according to World Health Organization officials.

“We would certainly like to see countries testing at the level of 10 negative tests to one positive, as a general benchmark of a system that’s doing enough testing to pick up all cases,” Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Recently, New Jersey is running 1:1 in positive to negative tests, and the overall state rate of positive tests is 43%.

It is also still lagging other states in per-capita testing, with about 593 tests per 100,000 residents as of Wednesday, according to an analysis of data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project. New Jersey ranks 11th in the nation, behind New York, Washington and other hard-hit states.

Murphy said Thursday he would love to test everyone, but widespread testing isn’t possible here, like it has been in some other countries.

“In a perfect world, I’d love to be South Korea. I’d love to have unlimited supplies of that which we need to collect these specimens,” he said at his daily news conference. "We don’t live in that world. We live in a world of limited resources, particularly coming out of the federal side.

We’re grateful for what we’ve got, but it’s a fraction of what we need.”

Some 500 tests a day can be done at the FEMA testing sites at Bergen County Community College and the PNC Bank Arts Center, and thousands more are done daily at the county level or through private labs.

Murphy did say on Wednesday that Bergen County would soon get a test that returns results in about five minutes, drastically shorter than the seven to 10 days it is currently taking for results.

Lab capacity is a factor,” said Murphy spokeswoman Alexandra Altman on Thursday about why testing hasn’t noticeably increased. “This will be addressed as more laboratories develop rapid turnaround tests.”

Altman added that testing people who are asymptomatic or those who are well, but worried, would be “an inappropriate use of our testing supplies and would not provide us with the critical data we need to get out front.”

With limited resources, the state may not be able to currently test the asymptomatic, but epidemiologists say that testing people without symptoms is important in stopping the spread of the coronavirus.

We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. We’re not seeing the bottom of the iceberg,” Silvera said. She added it would take a continued decrease in the number of daily cases for her to think the New Jersey epidemic was slowing.

“It tells me we’re still in this acceleration phase. Unless there’s a consistent decrease in the number of cases day-to-day, I wouldn’t get too excited about these types of numbers.”

NJ also had 45,000 people test negative for covid-19

[O.city]

33% of those negatives are likely false negatives

We don’t really know if we’re flattening it or if we just aren’t testing enough

[O.city]

https://twitter.com/marklevinenyc/st...171741696?s=21

Pretty rough thread

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by RollChiefsRoll

So let’s say we finally get the curve flattened out. Then what? If we’re released back into the wild without easy access to rapid-results testing, won’t there be another spike?

Originally Posted by Mecca

Yea that is actually a good possibility, some places that did well early like Taiwan started to open things up and then they get hit with a second wave.

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, patience. It's not just about getting past the peak of the curve. You have to completely descend the other side. Otherwise, you're just going to end up creating a second peak.

Originally Posted by dirk digler

All you have to do is look at China for that answer. The started opening things back up then had to turn around and close them again. Same thing now with South Korea. Probably going to be that way until a vaccine is ready.

This. We already have data that when you reopen too early, outbreaks reoccur.


Because of fear, they can open everything back up, but people are not going to go out and spend money until they feel safe.

Originally Posted by penguinz

Not sure I trust Sunday numbers. Deaths for las Sunday were significantly lower than the day before as well.

The numbers on Sunday were down last week. It was not the beginning of a trend. This week is going to be bad by every single model out there.

Originally Posted by Monticore

Unfortunately the list of underlying condition would included a large portion of the population.(heart disease, lung disease, asthma, COPD, cancer, immunocompromised , GI and liver disease, hypertension , diabetes, obesity)

82 million Americans have a pre-exsisting condition.

Originally Posted by Donger

Update on the plasma donor in California:

On April 1, Garcia donated his plasma for experimental transfer into three patients.

As of Sunday, he said, doctors told him that all of his plasma has been donated. The patient who was in the worst condition has since improved, Garcia said doctors told him.
The patient was taken off some medication, is healthier in terms of oxygenation and is doing incrementally better day by day, a spokesperson for the hospital told CNN in an email late Sunday night.

Now that's something that could give hope to people.

Originally Posted by O.city

There’s some recent papers written that are starting to show some interesting stuff

Maybe this is more of a blood issue than a true respiratory one.

True, it just uses the Respiratory system for easy access to the blood. It's a good assumption that the patients that are previously without a pre-existing conditions. They present to the ER and within 72 hours are dead. No way that happens on the scale its happening without the virus being in the blood.