***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.”

[TLO]

Originally Posted by O.city

https://twitter.com/iamtheactualet/s...878119427?s=21

Here’s a breakdown of that heart study. No clue on the validity of this guy so don’t shoot the messenger

Someone's digging into his past right now in an attempt to discredit him. I guarantee it.

He mentions a larger German study in his tweets. Can't get it to load on my phone though.

[suzzer99]

Originally Posted by O.city

https://twitter.com/iamtheactualet/s...878119427?s=21

Here’s a breakdown of that heart study. No clue on the validity of this guy so don’t shoot the messenger

Well he's comparing to men-only for the blood pressure. The heart study is not men-only.

Also as I've said about a dozen times on here - this is a pool of people who somehow got on the hospital registry. It doesn't even seem to claim to be representative of the population at large.

Presumably most of the people in the study pool got on the registry because they were sick enough to go to the hospital. Although some maybe worked there? I can't find anything in the study other than "on the hospital registry". Which is vague and a much better reason to bash the study imo.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

Well he's comparing to men-only for the blood pressure. The heart study is not men-only.

Also as I've said about a dozen times on here - this is a pool of people who somehow got on the hospital registry. It doesn't even seem to claim to be representative of the population at large.

Presumably most of the people in the study pool got on the registry because they were sick enough to go to the hospital. Although some maybe worked there? I can't find anything in the study other than "on the hospital registry". Which is vague and a much better reason to bash the study imo.

I want to see a larger study done and look at data from that.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by Pants

Just feels like we, as humanity, are on the cusp of turning the corner on this Chinese curse.

I felt this glimmer of hope today too after reading several articles today.

[suzzer99]

Me too. They are doing a huge one in England now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...381_story.html

We desperately need larger, more comprehensive studies, and, thankfully, they’re in the works — one of the largest and the best will follow 10,000 British patients. But these take time to set up, and as genetic epidemiologist Louise Wain, a researcher on the British study, told me ruefully, “No one warned us a year ago that we were going to have a pandemic.” She hopes to have the 1,000th patient enrolled by September, which is amazingly fast, but still not quick enough for policymakers and individuals who have to decide whether to leave our hermitages.

Also notice the wording when they talk about the Germany study. They don't know if it's representative either. No one does.

A recent study from Germany followed up with 100 recovered patients, two-thirds of whom were never sick enough to be hospitalized. Seventy-eight showed signs of cardiac involvement, and MRIs indicated that 60 of them had ongoing cardiac inflammation, even though it had been at least two months since their diagnosis.

If these results turned out to be representative, they would utterly change the way we think about covid-19: not as a disease that kills a tiny percentage of patients, mostly the elderly or the obese, the hypertensive or diabetic, but one that attacks the heart in most of the people who get it, even if they don’t feel very sick. And maybe their lungs, kidneys or brains, too.

But still - absent good data and with plenty of anecdotal data, I'm not going to gamble with my long term heart/lung function until we know more. I'd happily gamble a 1 in 1000 chance of dying to go back to normal life now. 1 in 10? chance of never being able to hike again is unacceptable to me. Also it's not like there's much covid-risky but otherwise normal fun out there you can do right now anyway - at least not in CA.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/935865#vp_1

This may be the scientific publishing version of "the operation was a success, but the patient died."

The retraction of a Trojan horse paper on the novel coronavirus has called into question the validity of another article in the same journal which found that hydroxychloroquine is effective against Covid-19.

The sting article, "SARS-CoV-2 was Unexpectedly Deadlier than Push-scooters: Could Hydroxychloroquine be the Unique Solution?" — was the brainchild of graduate student Mathieu Rebeaud, aka "Willard Oodendijk" and Florian Cova, of "The Institute for Quick and Dirty Science" (no, not really) in Switzerland. Their goal: to highlight a concerning paper in the Asian Journal of Medicine and Health, which they and others suspect of being a predatory publication — one that is happy to take money to publish anything, while pretending to perform peer review.

That paper was a 2020 article titled "Azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine accelerate recovery of outpatients with mild/moderate COVID-19," whose authors included several hydroxychloroquine partisans, among them a member of the French parliament called Martine Wonner.

The paper prompted an outcry on social media, and led to a critical piece in the French press about the dangers of predatory publishing and the concerns about the article. According to the outlet:

Dominique Costagliola, deputy director of the [Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health, home to co-author Pierre Levy], had spotted the pre-publication at the beginning of June. According to her, the study contains errors of analysis, raises regulatory questions and sometimes misunderstands the appropriate terms. Finally, only part of the patients in the study were tested for Covid. "We wrote to the author to chat with him, but he never responded, nor did the head of his hospital department." Contacted by franceinfo, he points out that the AJMH , in which this study was published, is absent from one of the (non-exhaustive) lists of predatory journals.

The iPLESP distanced itself from the article:

The management of the IPLESP as well as its supervisory bodies (Inserm, Sorbonne University) and the AP-HP refute the methodology and the conclusions of the manuscript entitled "Azithromycin and Hydroxychloroquine accelerate recovery of outpatients with mild / moderate COVID-19" published in Asian Journal of Medicine and Health and one of the co-authors is affiliated with the research center. This article published in a predatory journal does not allow us to conclude that azithromycin administered alone or with hydroxychloroquine has any favorable impact on the course of the COVID-19 disease. Finally, the regulatory status of the study as described in the paper raises questions and should be clarified.


But the other authors have stood firm. According to Rebeaud:

The goal was indeed to focus attention on predatory journals and also on the scientists using these methods to make the general public believe that their studies are serious because they are published.

Cova added:

Among the authors were a member of the French parliament, and members of the "Laissons les prescrire" collective – a political association who has been pushing the use of HCQ and the right for doctors to freely prescribe it. Members of the collective (including the member of the parliament) have been brandishing their publication as proof of the efficacy of HCQ, and have argued that the journal it was published in was "as serious as the Lancet".

So, we decided to show that the journal was not that serious and that it would accept anything against money.

To prove their point, they wrote a paper with an author whose name is, literally, "pangolin" — Manis Javanica — Nemo Macron, a thinly veiled reference to France's president, Emmanuel Macron; Otter F. Hantome — "ghost author"; and some inside Gaul jokes.

Which, to the delight of the authors was accepted and published, and has now earned this notice:

This article was retracted after reporting of serious scientific fraud.

The paper, which is the 32nd one about COVID-19 to be retracted, by our records. has such nuggets as:

Studies 1 and 2 were conducted in the authors' office chair (Ikea) in France (multicentric), on July 20th, 2020.

Study 2 was excluded from analysis and from this paper, as it did not results (i.e. the results we wanted).

Unfortunately, the peer reviews for the paper — if they in fact exist — are not yet available, according to the journals.

Cova told us that:

the reaction of the scientific community has been very positive overall, and that's nice (it was also very pleasant to hear that we actually succeeded in making people laugh). We are still waiting for reactions regarding the political side of the affair. Authors of the previous AJMA paper have been quite silent, but papers discussing the hoax are planned to appear in national journals during the week, so we will see.


Rebeaud, aka "Oodendijk," told us:

yes the article deserves to be withdrawn – but it should NEVER have been published in the first place, that's the beauty of the story.


This article originally appeared on Retraction Watch.

[Why Not?]

Originally Posted by BigBeauford

Yeah, specifically Mill Valley (De Soto District). Apparently all the superintendents got together on it, so I'm guessing this is all of JOCO.

If that’s the case in the Blue Valley district, they’ve certainly not informed the parents.

[Mr_Tomahawk]

Originally Posted by TLO

I felt this glimmer of hope today too after reading several articles today.

Has there been an updated on the/a Vaccine?

[Why Not?]

Originally Posted by BigBeauford

Yeah, specifically Mill Valley (De Soto District). Apparently all the superintendents got together on it, so I'm guessing this is all of JOCO.

I watched the BVSD Board meeting. Blue Valley schools will resume in person learning as scheduled on 9/9. On top of that, high school sports and activities will be allowed.

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by Why Not?

If that’s the case in the Blue Valley district, they’ve certainly not informed the parents.

Same with Olathe....no one has said a thing about remote only

[petegz28]

So as I understand it, Shawnee, De Soto and Gardner-Edgerton are doing remote only. The rest appear not to be. Also from what I understand the "red zone" status supposedly means only middle and high school goes remote not elementary.

[Why Not?]

Originally Posted by petegz28

So as I understand it, Shawnee, De Soto and Gardner-Edgerton are doing remote only. The rest appear not to be. Also from what I understand the "red zone" status supposedly means only middle and high school goes remote not elementary.

That’s my understanding as well.

[petegz28]

Here is the frustrating part with some of this shit....% positive in JoCo has been pretty steady since the end of June. We had a small spike at the end of July but there have been 0 deaths of anyone under 70, 1 70-80 and unfortunately about 10 or so 80+. Again no one under the age of 29 has died in JoCo even though the 20-29 age group has the most cases .

I don't see any data that says don't open schools.

You know, there may actually be a point in all of this where getting the virus doesn't mean the world will end.

I mean pre-covid if a child got say pneumonia you would be concerned but the fear of death would be rather remote even though it has killed more kids than Covid.

By the same token if an elderly person or even someone in their 60's got pneumonia you would be very worried.

But we didn't shut down schools in either case and the data doesn't show we need to now.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

Well he's comparing to men-only for the blood pressure. The heart study is not men-only.

Also as I've said about a dozen times on here - this is a pool of people who somehow got on the hospital registry. It doesn't even seem to claim to be representative of the population at large.

Presumably most of the people in the study pool got on the registry because they were sick enough to go to the hospital. Although some maybe worked there? I can't find anything in the study other than "on the hospital registry". Which is vague and a much better reason to bash the study imo.

A couple cardiologist broke down the study as well and it wasn’t very good

Not sure what to think

[TLO]

Originally Posted by O.city

A couple cardiologist broke down the study as well and it wasn’t very good

Not sure what to think

They came to the conclusion that the study wasn't very good?