***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.”

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Fish

Those 2 Cali docs in scrubs in the video above are now facing some harsh criticism.

California doctors with dubious COVID conclusions debunked
Health experts were quick to say the doctors’ findings were misguided and riddled with statistical errors.

[...]

In a rare statement late today, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”

* Looks over at Bowser, and squints disapprovingly again *

[FloridaMan88]

Originally Posted by O.city

We're gonna end up getting lucky that this ****er isnt' worse than it is, but it's a ****ing shining light that people need to get healthier. Stop eating shit, exercise regularly etc.

This one isn't a world ender, but the next one could be.

This what I have been saying... the vast majority of people flooding the hospitals with COVID-19 complications are people who are obese, diabetic, and/or have hypertension.

Those are all primarily lifestyle driven conditions.

Those are the drains on hospital capacity.

[jaa1025]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

Take your conspiracy/political BS to DC, please.

My post was not political. My post was not conspiracy but factually and scientifically correct. My beliefs on this "pandemic" are inline with my family consisting of a doctor at one of the metro hospitals and 3 ER nurses in a few other metro hospitals.

[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by DaFace

It's like you can't tell the difference in a forecasting model and a clinical trial.

What you are saying isn't far off from saying that you're going to go for a walk outside during a softball-sized hailstorm because the weatherman had predicted there was a chance of a tornado that didn't materialize.

It's really surprising you keep returning to this analogy.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by KCChiefsFan88

This what I have been saying... the vast majority of people flooding the hospitals with COVID-19 complications are people who are obese, diabetic, and/or have hypertension.

Those are all primarily lifestyle driven conditions.

Those are the drains on hospital capacity.

Yeah, we should just let all the old people die because their kidneys, livers, hearts, bones and muscles begin to fail when they reach their 70's and 80's.

How dare we even allow those assholes to live!

[FloridaMan88]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

Yeah, we should just let all the old people die because their kidneys, livers, hearts, bones and muscles begin to fail when they reach their 70's and 80's.

How dare we even allow those assholes to live!

Age is a secondary factor... obesity, diabetes and hypertension are the primary characteristics of people who are destroying hospital capacity.

The healthy 75 year olds who take care of themselves are not the problem.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower

It's really surprising you keep returning to this analogy.

Do you have a better one you'd prefer? I use it because it's one of the few kinds of models that most laypeople interact with on a regular basis. If you'd like, I could instead expound on the virtues of economic impact modeling, price sensitivity modeling, conjoint studies, max-diff analysis, market mix modeling, and the like.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by O.city

That was kind of what I was wondering, they kind of skipped a step. It's a pre print so we can't really see..what they did at all.

I would assume some of these larger profile sero profiles they're doing full ELISA on but I haven't read that anywhere.

They claim that their test has a specificity of 99.5%. I haven't seen any external validation of that particular brand, and the lateral flow tests are highly dependent upon training the observer (which can result in interoperator disagreement that they address).

Overall, their methodology is good, but even they admit:

"The specificity was acceptable at 99.5% (98.7-99.9) but leads to a
low positive predictive value in low-prevalence areas."

The specificity is claimed to be 99.5%. So, if they test 1000 people, five of those will be false positives, but if 1.7% of the population actually has the disease, then over 1/4 of the positive tests are false positives. ((17/(17+5)) and they admit uncertainty over reactivity with other coronavirus antibodies.

They also admit to the lack of a gold standard test to weigh their test against.

This is actually a really well-designed study given their limitations that they rightfully acknowledge, but the low prevalence does throw quite a bit of potential skew into the numbers.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by O.city

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....24.20075291v1

So, am I reading this right? This would put IFR, around .1?

I can't get this to load for some reason. What exactly does it say?

[Monticore]

Originally Posted by KCChiefsFan88

Age is a secondary factor... obesity, diabetes and hypertension are the primary characteristics of people who are destroying hospital capacity.

The healthy 75 year olds who take care of themselves are not the problem.

Obesity is considers a chronic disease by the CDC. If you go with BMI a lot of people are obese

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by jaa1025

Were you spotting flaws in the doomsday models that your experts were pushing that have been completely wrong and responsible for the great overreaction by our governments?

The IHME model's flaw, which they acknowledged and I pointed out on here a week ago, was that they based resource utilization upon the initial data from China, which led them to overestimate ventilator use and hospitalizations.

That was further mitigated by changing clinical practice, wherein they ended up hospitalizing far fewer people than they normally would otherwise.

With that said those most likely to criticize these models are also those most likely to know the least about them. People assume that if a model predicts 64,000 deaths that 72,000 means that it was way off, and that simply demonstrates a lack of understanding of how confidence intervals and forecasting work. The creation of a predictive model is incredibly difficult, and given the information they had, they actually did a pretty good job.

Let us also not forget that almost 60,000 people are already dead in spite of mitigation efforts taken, those numbers will continue to increase, and that it is altogether likely that the tail of this curve will be far longer than the ascent was, which means that you're probably going to end up with around 80-100,000 dead by the end of next month, even without a spike, which could still come if other locations don't implement distancing measures wisely.

[tk13]

Originally Posted by Monticore

Obesity is considers a chronic disease by the CDC. If you go with BMI a lot of people are obese

That's the biggest flaw with the "just make people with health issues quarantine themselves" while the rest of the world goes back to normal. There's going to be a lot of people on the list that need to stay home.

[Fish]

78% of US citizens over the age of 55 have at least one pre-existing condition.

[stevieray]

Originally Posted by Fish

78% of US citizens over the age of 55 have at least one pre-existing condition.

Dang, I feel pretty blessed right about now.

[displacedinMN]

I have 2 retirement areas that I can see from my house.
They have somewhere around 50 deaths between the two places.