Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[Skeptic Ginger]

IgM can work, I've heard that it appears after 5 days.

But isn't that only in ~half of infected people?

 

[William Parcher]

Washington Post: Bodies lie in the streets in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the emerging epicenter of the coronavirus in Latin America.

 

[Mader Levap]

What I find interesting is how different people go through it so differently, even in same age group and otherwise healthy.

Makes me think there is some genetic roulette in play. I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years someone releases paper claiming x % of population is relatively resistant thanks to some epidemic in past long, long ago.

 

[William Parcher]

New York Times: Governor Cuomo allows State of New York to seize vital equipment.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Washington Post: Bodies lie in the streets in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the emerging epicenter of the coronavirus in Latin America.

Sounds more like the epicenter of failing to deal with the disease..

According to some, this would indicate the passing of the baton.

 

[William Parcher]

Sounds more like the epicenter of failing to deal with the disease..

These bodies in the streets may just be normal everyday deaths from heart attacks, cancer, garden-variety flu, etc.

 

[JesseCuster]

You must be joking.

I don't even know what he's saying.

Can someone explain what this is supposed to mean?

50,000 pneumonia deaths per year, is 4,000 per month. Only when Covid passes that can there are doubtless actual covid deaths, not "Deaths attributed to covid".

 

[Delphic Oracle]

The most recent estimate for deaths in the US from the government health authority Fauci was between 100 to 200k in one calendar year.



The model Fauci is referencing to make that statement was from the CDC and it estimates that 160 to 240 million people could become infected in one calendar year. Combining Fauci's statement about the total number of deaths and that same models assumption on how many could become infected:



If 100k die and 160 million were infected, the mortality rate would be 0.125%.

If 200k die and 160 million were infected, the mortality rate would be 0.25%.



If 100k die and 240 million were infected, the mortality rate would be 0.042%.

If 200k die and 240 million were infected, the mortality rate would be 0.083%.



This same model has been used to predict a higher amount of deaths, however, that higher amount of deaths has been dismissed as less likely since social distancing has become more normal. Although, social distancing is not being utilized equally across the entire US, the extent of these social distancing changes are difficult to quantify as precisely as we would hope.

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

Google location data is actually helping here.

You can at least see mobility reductions in each seperate state.

 

[The Atheist]

That paper indicated that gathering at events such as football matches will not significantly increase the infection rate.

I agree with that entirely, being the drum I've been beating for weeks.

But, it only takes one super-spreader to potentially hit hundreds in a crowd, so do we bother taking the unlikely but known risk for the sake of a game?

I'd vote no, but I imagine fans must be going through severe withdrawal by now.

Turning nursing homes into veritable fortresses against infection should also be part of the plan.

Yeah, that too!

 

[Ulf Nereng]

I don't even know what he's saying.

Can someone explain what this is supposed to mean?

He is saying that the number of deaths must surpass 4000 per month before he will be convinced that it is more than the usual pneumonia mortality. But as we know the number of deaths in USA has already overtaken that. And it won't be many days now before 4000 is the number of -daily- deaths.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Potential treatment that could help early stage infection. Since they only claim early stage benefits I'm skeptical it could be rushed though testing though.

https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/products/coronavirus/CELL_CELL-D-20-00739.pdf

How about this one then?

https://globalnews.ca/news/6772049/coronavirus-trial-drug-ubc-covid-19/

Led by UBC’s Dr. Josef Penninger, the team published peer-reviewed findings on April 2 in the journal Cell, saying the trial drug, called APN01, can “significantly block early stages” of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There is no evidence for overloaded ICU’s in China. Just the opposite in fact. Even China isn’t going shut down the temporary facilities it build when regular hospitals are still overloaded. Even if they did, why would it matter to the US? I don’t see anything here but a desire to distract from their own mishandling of the pandemic with “but… but… but… China!!!”

Have to answer this is the incompetrumpetty thread but you are exactly right.

 

[xjx388]

The Abbott point of care test has emergency FDA approval.

I'm going to guess the little machine you need to run the test strips is going to be $5-10K. And the test strips, let's just say Abbott will make a profit on those too. Not sure which insurers if any are going to pay for the test but many probably will.

I'd be shocked if it is less and not surprised to see it even more.

Probably going to be another month but for larger clinics that can pay for the diagnostic machine, I predict this will be a success.

I went through a page after page search for the sensitivity and specificity and it looks like you have to call and talk to a rep to find out.

I finally found this:
IN190000 v1.0 ID NOW COVID-19 Test Product Insert IN1.pdf


So they mostly tested molecules from surrogate organisms in their trials like a proof of concept. It doesn't look like that did a lot of field trials.

Abbott offered us a deal: commit to purchasing X number of tests and the machine is free. They sent us 15 machines. We are ready to test a good chunk of patients as soon as they release the test. That probably won’t be until at least a month, according to McKesson because they are prioritizing hotspots. They did halt all production of Flu,RSV and Strep tests in order to make as much Covid as possible, so maybe it’ll be soon.

 

[ServiceSoon]

R0 is normalized to a population where everyone is susceptible. The R0 value for Measles is MUCH higher than COVID. The reason we are not getting millions of people infected with measles is because the chances of an infected person coming in contact with someone who has little of no resistance is typically quite low.

While early estimates suggest COVID may have an R0 value a little higher than typical seasonal flu strains, IMO it's a more reasonable explanation for the extremely high number of cases is that there is a lot more contact between carriers and people with no resistance.

I still disagree with your original claim that the rapid spreading of COVID may be attributed to lack of immunity because:
1) People in our population are immune to COVID. Coronavirus is not a new disease.
2) The existence of immunity has no bearing on how viruses are spread (Per the CDC reference I previously posted); People who have immunity can still spread the disease.

The reason more people don't have measles is because every year 98% of the population are incapableof suffering the symptoms of measles because they received a vaccine. More than 1,000 cases of measles were reported in the US last year. The people who contracted measles did NOT receive the vaccine.

Comparing two diseases, one with a vaccine and another without, is too dissimilar to draw useful conclusions on how they spread in a population.

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

Google location data is actually helping here.

You can at least see mobility reductions in each seperate state.

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal used similar/same? data to create maps of the US depicting where movement of cellphone data has decreased. That is an indication of which areas are following shelter in place guidelines.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

That paper indicated that gathering at events such as football matches will not significantly increase the infection rate.

Isn't that counterintuitive?

It seems highly unlikely to be a supportable conclusion.

For example how can they support this premise?

... even if we assume that people make the equivalent of their mean daily physical contacts at such events (i.e. 5 contacts per person)...

So if you don't go to the game you would have had contact with the same number of people? It's absurd.

Then they go on to claim this:

... We estimated that stopping spectator sports would have little direct effect on the number of cases (Fig. 4a, Table S4)

Well d'uh. If you start with such a faulty premise.


I'll keep reading.

 

[JesseCuster]

I still disagree with your original claim that the rapid spreading of COVID may be attributed to lack of immunity because:
1) People in our population are immune to COVID. Coronavirus is not a new disease.

COVID-19 is the disease and it is a new disease. Before the virus was given the name SARS-CoV-2, it was provisionally called 2019-nCov, meaning "2019 novel Coronavirus". The word novel meaning new. It's new to humans and the disease it causes is new to humans also.

Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that includes the viruses that cause COVID-19, SARS and MERS, as well as a bunch that don't infect humans and a handful that cause typically very mild upper respiratory infections (the common cold).

There isn't a single infectious disease that encompasses COVID-19 and the common cold (the common cold is more often caused by rhinoviruses than coronaviruses, but that's by the by).

I'm a bit confused by what you're saying and what you mean by this not being a new disease.

People who have immunity can still spread the disease.

Is this true? I didn't know that people immune to an infection can be contagious.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

He is saying that the number of deaths must surpass 4000 per month before he will be convinced that it is more than the usual pneumonia mortality. But as we know the number of deaths in USA has already overtaken that. And it won't be many days now before 4000 is the number of -daily- deaths.

Yesterday saw nearly 6,000 and today looks to be on track.

 

[crescent]

Is this true? I didn't know that people immune to an infection can be contagious.

"Immune" is being used in the popular press (and in this forum) to mean a wide variety of conflicting things.

Some are reporting that immune people can be contagious. That's not true, but gets reported anyway. What happens instead is that some people are asymptomatic but infectious. Some develop symptoms later, some never develop symptoms.

But - never developing symptoms is not the same as immunity. The body still gets infected and needs to develop the antibodies for the immune response to fight off the virus. While the body is busy doing this, the person may still become infectious, regardless of whether or not they develop symptoms. This compares to an immune person who either already has the antibodies such that any infection gets destroyed before the virus has much chance to replicate throughout the body.

 

[alfaniner]

Are we going to hit a point where it really turns and society goes *******? So far most people have been fair about following guidelines and such, and I haven't heard about massive looting of stores or rioting, even in countries other than the U.S. Will there be one event that sets everything off?

 

[JesseCuster]

"Immune" is being used in the popular press (and in this forum) to mean a wide variety of conflicting things.

Some are reporting that immune people can be contagious. That's not true, but gets reported anyway. What happens instead is that some people are asymptomatic but infectious. Some develop symptoms later, some never develop symptoms.

But - never developing symptoms is not the same as immunity. The body still gets infected and needs to develop the antibodies for the immune response to fight off the virus. While the body is busy doing this, the person may still become infectious, regardless of whether or not they develop symptoms. This compares to an immune person who either already has the antibodies such that any infection gets destroyed before the virus has much chance to replicate throughout the body.

Thanks for the clarification. That's pretty much what I thought.