***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.”

[staylor26]

Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat

Scientists believe cannabis could help prevent and treat coronavirus https://t.co/8vGvGEfh5a pic.twitter.com/Tenblyj98u

— New York Post (@nypost) May 21, 2020

Then I’m good

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by Eleazar

I think the internet has actually made our culture stupider.

There is a ton of truth in this comment.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat

Scientists believe cannabis could help prevent and treat coronavirus https://t.co/8vGvGEfh5a pic.twitter.com/Tenblyj98u

— New York Post (@nypost) May 21, 2020

Wonder what the uproar will be about unsupervised consumption. . . .

[TLO]

There's a ton of information here. If anyone cares to break it down a bit that would be awesome.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...scenarios.html

[dirk digler]

World wide study of HCQ and the results aren't good. Unfortunately time to put HCQ as a viable option to treat covid 19 to rest for now.

A study of 96,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients on six continents found that those who received an antimalarial drug had a significantly higher risk of death compared with those who did not.

People treated with hydroxychloroquine, or the closely related drug chloroquine, were also more likely to develop a type of irregular heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, that can lead to sudden cardiac death, it concluded.

The study, published Friday in the medical journal the Lancet, is the largest analysis to date of the risks and benefits of treating covid-19 patients with antimalarial drugs. It is based on a retrospective analysis of medical records, not a controlled study in which patients are divided randomly into treatment groups — a method considered the gold standard of medicine.

But the sheer size of the study was convincing to some scientists.

“It’s one thing not to have benefit, but this shows distinct harm,” said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “If there was ever hope for this drug, this is the death of it.”

David Maron, director of preventive cardiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said that “these findings provide absolutely no reason for optimism that these drugs might be useful in the prevention or treatment of covid-19.”

[Mecca]

http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-spec...pkin/?t=33m30s

US Director for the Center for Infection and Immunity admits withholding evidence in JANUARY that even simple masks reduce community spread by 60%, in order to protect supplies for healthcare workers (including his wife). @33:30

Speaker is Ian Lipkin, US Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity.

Excerpt...

So people who use facemasks in a consistent way had a 70% reduction in community transmission and if they used them intermittently it was 60%. I found that impressive and we talked about it but there was no access to facemasks and so I was I thought a long time about trying to publish this because if I did that, if we did that, it would have deprived you know people on the front lines because there weren’t sufficient facemasks from getting access to those and it would have made things worse, so I didn’t proceed with that. So that’s something that unfortunately is going to go in the memoirs rather than in the written record.

So there ya go.

[WhawhaWhat]

Children and older adults to be included in second phase of vaccine trials to protect against coronavirus https://t.co/wS8AEXBwSx

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) May 22, 2020

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by Mecca

There is a ton of truth in this comment.

To expand on this...


https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...tion-epidemic/

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by TLO

Another outbreak in a meat packing plant in North Carolina. 500 something out of over 2000 employees tested positive. Most had no symptoms.

More good news but that sort of thing doesn’t get much play here.

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by Mecca

http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-spec...pkin/?t=33m30s

US Director for the Center for Infection and Immunity admits withholding evidence in JANUARY that even simple masks reduce community spread by 60%, in order to protect supplies for healthcare workers (including his wife). @33:30

Speaker is Ian Lipkin, US Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity.

Excerpt...

So people who use facemasks in a consistent way had a 70% reduction in community transmission and if they used them intermittently it was 60%. I found that impressive and we talked about it but there was no access to facemasks and so I was I thought a long time about trying to publish this because if I did that, if we did that, it would have deprived you know people on the front lines because there weren’t sufficient facemasks from getting access to those and it would have made things worse, so I didn’t proceed with that. So that’s something that unfortunately is going to go in the memoirs rather than in the written record.

So there ya go.

wtf? They could have said use or make cloth masks. This is almost criminal.

[POND_OF_RED]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

I don't really give a shit about what you feel; that's the problem: some of us are trying to debate facts, and others act like uninformed opinions have equal validity as data-driven research.

This is just an elaborate rationalization for ignorance and intellectual laziness. It reminds me of a bad student paper wherein the writer doesn't attempt to construct a counterargument because, "everyone has a bias."

There are a lot of things we don't know, but there are also a lot of things we can say definitively.

*We know that social distancing works. This has been proven in the past and with studies of the virus' spread after the initiation of lockdowns.
*We know that the virus is spread primarily through respiratory droplets and that fomite transmission is much less likely
*We know that mask wearing reduces transmission of the virus
*We have learned a lot about the pathophysiology of the disease, which allows clinicians to treat it better (proning, coagulopathies, cytokine storm)
*We know that risk is correlated with age and comorbidity

We don't yet know if we'll have a vaccine, and there are no therapeutic silver bullets, but to say that nobody knows anything speaks to a gargantuan level of ignorance that you're projecting onto the rest of the scientific community when it's really just your own.

Why didn’t you include the fact that the flu is twice as deadly in anyone younger than 24? Seems like that would be vital information when berating someone for comparing it to the flu. I agree that overall this is much worse than the flu, but you can’t argue that for certain ages that’s just not true. So, yeah, younger people have a right to think the flu is more dangerous because it is for them.

[limested]

Originally Posted by Mecca

http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-spec...pkin/?t=33m30s

US Director for the Center for Infection and Immunity admits withholding evidence in JANUARY that even simple masks reduce community spread by 60%, in order to protect supplies for healthcare workers (including his wife). @33:30

Speaker is Ian Lipkin, US Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity.

Excerpt...

So people who use facemasks in a consistent way had a 70% reduction in community transmission and if they used them intermittently it was 60%. I found that impressive and we talked about it but there was no access to facemasks and so I was I thought a long time about trying to publish this because if I did that, if we did that, it would have deprived you know people on the front lines because there weren’t sufficient facemasks from getting access to those and it would have made things worse, so I didn’t proceed with that. So that’s something that unfortunately is going to go in the memoirs rather than in the written record.

So there ya go.

Going to be another fun day arguing about masks with idiots that think they cause more harm than good.

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by limested

Going to be another fun day arguing about masks with idiots that think they cause more harm than good.

I'd have more respect for the opinion if they'd just start it with "I'm a selfish twat that doesn't care about anything but what I want."

Cause that's at least an honest take as opposed to trying to argue stupidity.

[POND_OF_RED]

Originally Posted by Mecca

I'd have more respect for the opinion if they'd just start it with "I'm a selfish twat that doesn't care about anything but what I want."

Cause that's at least an honest take as opposed to trying to argue stupidity.

You’re not going to be able to convince some of these neurotic healthy people walking around in N95 masks that they’re doing anything wrong though. I wish we’d make them wear a shirt that said that though!

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by limested

Going to be another fun day arguing about masks with idiots that think they cause more harm than good.

I wonder where people initially got the idea that masks aren’t helpful?