***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.”

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by O.city

1/ Covid (@UCSF) Chronicles, Day 149

Grand rounds today: https://t.co/U99r1lFQOR. As we hit Covid’s 6 month mark in the U.S., we’re desperate for innovative approaches. Today, I decided to focus on 3 impressive ones – across a range of disciplines: testing, epi, & narrative.

— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) August 14, 2020

Here's a great thread breakdown for you guys from a couple interesting guys. Mina and Bedford are good follows as well.

That's really interesting - especially the part about the FDA not being set up to approve a high-error test. But they're right - that's exactly what we need right now.

Also interesting the combo-theory for herd immunity. If we do jack shit, it's probably around 60%, but in combination with distancing it's more like 20-30%. That's the first time I think I've seen data that shows the impact of both in combination.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath15

That's why all of the "look at XYZ city, they've had a mask requirement for months and look at their case numbers skyrocket!" comments are stupid.

A mask requirement means nothing if:

It's not enforced;
People aren't wearing them properly

Based on what I've seen, no one is enforcing it, and there are a lot of people not wearing at all, or wearing/using improperly.

I don't entirely agree that it "means nothing." Very little of this situation is driven by a single, individual's actions. It's all about moving the behaviors of large portions of the population. Based on what I see in the data for my county, the mask requirement took compliance from about 60% to about 90% (caveats about proper wear acknowledged) even though they aren't actively enforcing anything. Even if 10% of people are still not doing it, that 30% jump is definitely impactful at the population level.

It's why I think the vitriol and angst about masks is a little overblown. Some people are gonna be stubborn about it, and that's annoying, but outliers aren't the main drivers of spread of this thing. It's all about getting as many people as possible to do things based on the recommendations.

[OnTheWarpath15]

Originally Posted by DaFace

I don't entirely agree that it "means nothing." Very little of this situation is driven by a single, individual's actions. It's all about moving the behaviors of large portions of the population. Based on what I see in the data for my county, the mask requirement took compliance from about 60% to about 90% (caveats about proper wear acknowledged) even though they aren't actively enforcing anything. Even if 10% of people are still not doing it, that 30% jump is definitely impactful at the population level.

It's why I think the vitriol and angst about masks is a little overblown. Some people are gonna be stubborn about it, and that's annoying, but outliers aren't the main drivers of spread of this thing. It's all about getting as many people as possible to do things based on the recommendations.

Compliance where you live is a LOT higher than where I live.

[Donger]

New case decline has plateaued. I hope it's just a pause.

[jd1020]

Originally Posted by DaFace

That's really interesting - especially the part about the FDA not being set up to approve a high-error test. But they're right - that's exactly what we need right now.

Also interesting the combo-theory for herd immunity. If we do jack shit, it's probably around 60%, but in combination with distancing it's more like 20-30%. That's the first time I think I've seen data that shows the impact of both in combination.

Even 30% is an insane number. That's 98.5M people recovered. At the current rate of recovered to dead that's 5.9M deaths.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath15

Compliance where you live is a LOT higher than where I live.

Sure, I get that. And I'm not saying that it wouldn't be great if everything was enforced. It's just that the situation is REALLY complicated, and there are no good answers. For example, you could ask cops to enforce it, but some of them are hardcore against it, so you're just going to cause a lot of angst within the ranks, and it's not like cops don't already have shit to focus on right now. You can ask employees to enforce it more strictly, but then you end up with some of them being assaulted or even shot.

At some point, it's just not worth the fight. But even then, the mandates DO move the needle some - even if not as much as we'd like.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by jd1020

Even 30% is an insane number. That's 98.5M people recovered. At the current rate of recovered to dead that's 5.9M deaths.

Once all the old people are dead, that number would drop dramatically.

[OnTheWarpath15]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Sure, I get that. And I'm not saying that it wouldn't be great if everything was enforced. It's just that the situation is REALLY complicated, and there are no good answers. For example, you could ask cops to enforce it, but some of them are hardcore against it, so you're just going to cause a lot of angst within the ranks, and it's not like cops don't already have shit to focus on right now. You can ask employees to enforce it more strictly, but then you end up with some of them being assaulted or even shot.

At some point, it's just not worth the fight. But even then, the mandates DO move the needle some - even if not as much as we'd like.

How awesome would it be to have stores hire out of work bar bouncers to man their doors?

Holy hell, that would be entertaining as ****.

[suzzer99]

Originally Posted by jd1020

Even 30% is an insane number. That's 98.5M people recovered. At the current rate of recovered to dead that's 5.9M deaths.

Recovered known cases? In general I multiply known cases by 10 to get actual cases. It's obviously not super-accurate, but nothing is.

[jd1020]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

Recovered known cases? In general I multiply known cases by 10 to get actual cases. It's obviously not super-accurate, but nothing is.

In general I just go by what is known and not making shit up.

[suzzer99]

Well it's clearly not correct to assume everyone who got covid has been tested, if you're going to try to use deaths to extrapolate to some number of deaths based on a percentage of actual (as opposed to confirmed) cases.

There have been a bunch of studies of entire populations of towns etc. where actual cases come in around the ballpark of 10x confirmed cases.

[jd1020]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

Well it's clearly not correct to assume everyone who got covid has been tested, if you're going to try to use deaths to extrapolate to some number of deaths based on a percentage of actual (as opposed to confirmed) cases.

There have been a bunch of studies of entire populations of towns etc. where actual cases come in around the ballpark of 10x confirmed cases.

Most of those studies are using the ****ing cruise ship as their model and come out with a 25% MOE. Excuse me for not taking those models seriously.

[Marcellus]

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.

Glad he is doing better. We have a maintenance guy with heart issues and diabetes thats struggled to recover completely.

Locally we had a perfectly healthy 24 year old teacher's aid die from Influenza B in January and her brother also in his 20's spent 3 weeks in ICU at KU med for it.

There are extreme examples of every illness it doesn't change the fact that the vast vast majority of people do not end up in these post severe scenarios and we know at this point that number as to be < 1% looking at the known cases vs unknown asymptomatic cases.

[O.city]

Yeah, all the serology stuff has us undercounting cases by alot.

If it's only gonna take 20-30 percent to get there with what we're doing, we're probably getting close.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by DaFace

That's really interesting - especially the part about the FDA not being set up to approve a high-error test. But they're right - that's exactly what we need right now.

Also interesting the combo-theory for herd immunity. If we do jack shit, it's probably around 60%, but in combination with distancing it's more like 20-30%. That's the first time I think I've seen data that shows the impact of both in combination.

There's some interesting data about the 20-30 percent going around. I think or atleast hope it's correct. We'd be closer to the end of this than we think.

It doesn't mean we can open wide back to normal, but it would allow us to ideally get pretty close to it.