2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 2

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Ulf Nereng said:
A fairly recent meta-study supports the idea that vitamin D protects vs respiratory diseases (eg flu) by helping the immune system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5yVGmfivAk&t=652s
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The problem here is confusing the health effects of a vitamin D deficiency with extra vitamin D having positive protective effect.

In other words, we need vitamin D and our immune systems suffer if we don't have enough. But our immune systems suffer if we are malnourished as well.

You need adequate vitamin D, and in times of low sunshine, supplements are needed. But extra doses do not boost your immune system.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
You need adequate vitamin D, and in times of low sunshine, supplements are needed. But extra doses do not boost your immune system.
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I'm going to take a wild guess and say that old people at the end of winter in very cold areas - like Hubei and northern Italy - are short of vitamin D and never take supplements.

I love vitamin D in that we get told to sunscreen the hell out of ourselves, and lack it as a result. Hard to win.
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
Sir drinks-a-lot Prediction: We’ll be talking about Corona virus as much as we’re talking about fidget spinners six months from now.
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Let’s hope we at least learn something from Covid 19 so everyone isn’t caught flat-footed next time.

IANAE, but I think it would be helpful for the world’s organizations to look at what worked and what didn’t in terms of containment, testing and processing it.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Forewarning: There's a NYT's article and someone on Twitter signing on as a credentialed MD with a bunch of alarmist stuff and claims about no mild cases yada yada.

Skip it. Here's the actual WHO-China report: https://www.who.int/docs/default-so...na-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

The numbers are being wildly misinterpreted without consideration of the context.

There is one thing evidenced though: Almost no one was infected in Nov and Dec. That fits with what we know as the virus had barely begun to spread. And a mere 2 months later it is worldwide. There is no way that is consistent with only being spread to close contacts.
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This is something that I'm interested in too.

We're getting mixed messages in Australia:

1) You can't get it unless you've been in close personal contact with a person more than fifteen minutes; and,

2) Everyone who was on this flight/who was in this place/who has had any contact with this person, must immediately go into quarantine for 14 days.

These two things are not the same.

An article running today is from a Sydney Doctor (from an Emergency department) who is recommending that the whole of the Sydney metropolitan area goes into lock down quarantine now.

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/progra...de-quarantine-as-coronavirus-spreads/12041848
 
marting said:
Yep, that seems to be the case. Kids don't get near as sick as older adults, or even young adults. Seems reasonable they don't shed as much virii as adults. And their R0, while it didn't decrease, was much lower than adults. Hence they didn't keep overall population R0 from getting reduced. We are lucky.
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I'm pretty sure that the opposite is true.

The 'Typhoid Mary' stereotype, is a person that shows no symptoms, who infects thousands of people because their immune system has insufficient response to beat the disease.
 
The Atheist said:
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that old people at the end of winter in very cold areas - like Hubei and northern Italy - are short of vitamin D and never take supplements.

I love vitamin D in that we get told to sunscreen the hell out of ourselves, and lack it as a result. Hard to win.
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Hah. I've already hit this one.

Because my vitamin D levels had fallen to fairly low levels, my Doctor said:

"You need five minutes exposure, per day, to sunlight on your hands and face, if you're just going outside briefly, forget about the hat and gloves."
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
The problem here is confusing the health effects of a vitamin D deficiency with extra vitamin D having positive protective effect.

In other words, we need vitamin D and our immune systems suffer if we don't have enough. But our immune systems suffer if we are malnourished as well.

You need adequate vitamin D, and in times of low sunshine, supplements are needed. But extra doses do not boost your immune system.
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That is pretty much what the study says and also what the guy in the video says.

But it raises a question in my mind: How good is the general public really at taking the necessary supplements as needed? I myself have been taking a capsule of vitamin D every day since my doctor told me to. But is there a significant percentage of people who never do that, especially among the elderly?
 
‘Gratitude education campaign’ in Wuhan prompts furious backlash

Chinese government attempts to fall back on the old "Praise the party" indoctrination playbook in Wuhan, and unusually has to back down:

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...iefs-praise-citys-heroic-residents-after-plan

In short, they attempted to start an education initiative to get Wuhan residents to be grateful for Xi's leadership during the virus outbreak.
Prompts massive online backlash, as the people are well aware of what a cock up it actually was.
Government changes tune, describing those in Wuhan and Hubei as heroes.
Online discussion of the subject then completely censored.

So it didn't happen, right? We've always been grateful to Wuhan!
 
Tero said:
I have books and articles on viruses on hand and none of them give a good explanation of what mechanism or condition ends an epidemic. Climate moisture etc are hinted at.

That link just above by Planigale seems to assume that the entire adult population is exposed to it. But that would not actually happen, as there are people with little contact to others.

If all are is exposed, then yes, the epidemic wkuld end, as there are no more new bodies to enter.

Unlike flu (could get more virulent if it went past 12 months) SARS/Corona type is not thought to mutate much, so that would not end it.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-coronavirus-isnt-contained/

leaves only transmission slowed down by a lot (at say summer) as a mechanism to stop it suddenly, or by July in the best case.
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Epidemic is just medical jargon for "lots more people have the disease at the same time", and it is really an arbitrary label.

Environmental factors can lower infection rates, but not 100%.

From what I've read this is likely to become endemic unless we can develop an effective vaccine and have very high take up of the vaccine.
 
Planigale said:
[...] I find it unbelievable that the US has issues with testing weeks after Europe has it available. [...]

Not everywhere in Europe, the UK and Germany, yes. Here in Spain you have to call a certain number, you´re put on hold for 4 hours (seriously) and they only test you if you´ve had direct contact with someone already infected or if you´ve come from a risk area. So we have 30 deaths and 1200 cases, in Germany 2 deaths and 1200 cases. One would think we have at least 30 times as many cases as Germany, don´t you think?

I live 30 minutes away from Alava, a red zone where they are beginning to close schools etc. Sloooooowly applying social distancing measures etc. Still, someone at work (an engineer no less) was telling me today this is just like the flu... we´re doomed...
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Abooga said:
Not everywhere in Europe, the UK and Germany, yes. Here in Spain you have to call a certain number, you´re put on hold for 4 hours (seriously) and they only test you if you´ve had direct contact with someone already infected or if you´ve come from a risk area.
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Well, that's more or less how it is here (UK) as well. Only people who meet the criteria are tested; that is basically contact with a known patient or return from a specified area. If a patient is in a Critical Care area from one of 8 sentinel hospitals with a respiratory illness they will also be tested. As of today, any hospitalised patient with pneumonia, acute respiratory distress or influenza-like illness will be tested, regardless of augmented care needs or hospital.
 
A major problem for making inferences about morbidity and mortality from the statistics being presented is that they are NOT based on random samples and use tests that can only detect if an individual is currently infected.

Having said that, as the infection is transient it doesn't make sense to do random sampling with the present test and resources available; only a small number of positives would be detected even in areas where the number of symptomatic cases is relatively high.

We're only going to get a reliable idea of what the true situation is once unbiased sampling is performed using tests sensitive to both current and historic infection, or next year, whichever comes first.

Looks like it's going to more or less screw up my wedding though!
 
Darat said:
From what I've read this is likely to become endemic unless we can develop an effective vaccine and have very high take up of the vaccine.
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[aside]Finally caught up with this thread (and its predecessor). Sheesh! [/aside]

I'm pretty confident that we* will develop a vaccine and that it will be widely used in the developed countries, but it probably won't be available for another 18 months, and the disease will be very widely distributed by then.

Frex, in the US, if we assume
R0=1.2
a new round of infections every week (not sure what the term is for this)
1000 people actively infecting others as of today, including udiagnosed and unquarantined people

. . . after a year, there will have been about 78 million infections in the US alone, with 13M active cases.

FWIW, I think simplistic models like I just ran are almost useless. First, they're extremely sensitive to the initial assumptions, and none of those numbers are well-understood. Put in R0=1.15 and 10 days and the number of cases drops from 78M to ~1M. Also, R0 is not consistent but will vary wildly with season, culture, etc., and the simplistic model doesn't account for the fact that populations are 'clumpy' and finite.

*I know there's been discussion of the US schedule for developing a vaccine, but of course other countries are working feverishly (pardon the pun) on it, too.
 
All gatherings of 2500 people or more banned in Travis County (Austin), state of emergency declared, total number of cases 0.
 
In other news, UCSD has announced that, starting in Spring quarter (in a few weeks), all ordinary classes will be conducted online. Labs and studio classes will still meet in person. I assume the rest of the UC system is doing something similar; I only know about UCSD because I have a stepson there.
 
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