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Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

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gypsyjackson said:
Countries do. That’s why they’re sending ventilators and masks around the world (even if it is substandard, in some cases), so they look like the good guys. Down the line, it’ll be easy to say ‘who helped you when the virus got bad? The US or us’?


Eh? I think I have missed something.


Oh, you thought I meant the US. Why would I suggest the US, having withdrawn funding, would put funding into the WHO to make political capital? That would make the US look like it didn’t know what it was doing.
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I think almost all of anything done out of China with the exception of the CCP leadership, is with one goal. Make Money. Just look at their GDP growth over the last 30 years. And the margins on PPE have got to be great right now. Supply and Demand!. Free Markets!
 
Another reason to send ventilators and masks around the world is to show your own people how great you're doing. "We have it so well under control that we're even helping other countries who have less capable leadership!"
 
marting said:
So right now I mostly used daily death counts. They tend to be pretty definitive. Well, aside from NY City apparently having about 200 deaths per day from COVID-19 that were never reported because they died at home and didn't have enough resources to test them.
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I think UK is doing the same. I think there's serious under-counting in lots of places. Russia by an order of magnitude.

marting said:
Death counts have an average of about 3 weeks from infection. But they also have a long tail since some are in ICU weeks before expiring.
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You've reminded about Diamond Princess. They're still showing 7 people in critical care, and they have to have been there over a month, if it's correct.
 
The Atheist said:
I think UK is doing the same. I think there's serious under-counting in lots of places. Russia by an order of magnitude.
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Yeah, they're in for a world of hurt. Especially with a large common border though I hear the big problem China has is imports of COVID-19 from their returnees across the Russia borde.

You've reminded about Diamond Princess. They're still showing 7 people in critical care, and they have to have been there over a month, if it's correct.
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And the death count from the Diamond Princess has increased to 12 out of 700 odd that tested positive. A lot of media is still kicking around the older number of 7.
 
To proofread or not to proofread

I found an article on coronaviruses that helped explain why remdesivir might work when other antivirals might not. TL/DR: Remdesivir is a delayed chain terminator that interferes with RNA-dependent RNA polymerase because it evades the proofreading enzyme.
 
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I just saw my first report on a lockdown protest. I doubt it will be the last. This is in Michigan where the (Democratic) governor imposed some more strict lockdown rules. Even I thought a couple of them were excessive, but not warranting blocking traffic with cars near a hospital so an ambulance couldn't get in.

I noted that several of them were carrying Trump/Pence signs and the like.
 
alfaniner said:
I just saw my first report on a lockdown protest. I doubt it will be the last. This is in Michigan where the (Democratic) governor imposed some more strict lockdown rules. Even I thought a couple of them were excessive, but not warranting blocking traffic with cars near a hospital so an ambulance couldn't get in.

I noted that several of them were carrying Trump/Pence signs and the like.
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Blocking hospital during state of emergence ? Guy here faced 8 years for stealing undies. State of emergency increases all penalties drastically here. Hope something similar works in US.
 
marting said:
Yeah, they're in for a world of hurt. Especially with a large common border though I hear the big problem China has is imports of COVID-19 from their returnees across the Russia borde.
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Not to mention the ambulance queues in Russia. While I'm deeply skeptical of YouTube "evidence" there are enough current videos being posted to make it fairly likely to be true.

Chris_Halkides said:
I found an article on coronaviruses that helped explain why remdesivir might work when other antivirals might not.
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I thought the same a while back, but the lack of positive news doesn't give me a great deal of confidence. Mind you, that could be evidence of well-planned and controlled trials.

Waiting...

alfaniner said:
I just saw my first report on a lockdown protest. I doubt it will be the last...

I noted that several of them were carrying Trump/Pence signs and the like.
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Excellent!
 
The Atheist said:
Not to mention the ambulance queues in Russia. While I'm deeply skeptical of YouTube "evidence" there are enough current videos being posted to make it fairly likely to be true.
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Yep. You're right to be skeptical. Lots of complete crap out there. From 5G nutters on down.
 
marting said:
Case numbers would be very valuable but only if there was consistency about who gets tested and when and the test results had the same delays.

This doesn't yet exist. Hopefully it will at some point and rapid result tests will also become the standard. A 6 to 10 day wait for a test result is not real useful.

So right now I mostly used daily death counts. They tend to be pretty definitive. Well, aside from NY City apparently having about 200 deaths per day from COVID-19 that were never reported because they died at home and didn't have enough resources to test them.

Death counts have an average of about 3 weeks from infection. But they also have a long tail since some are in ICU weeks before expiring.

Availability of more expansive, and rapid, PCR testing as well as serological surveillance will be critical to selective re-opening of counties and/or regions. This will allow tightening when required w/o runaway cluster growth.
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Some of those testing stats are available, and I'll be looking at them. I don't think there will be any way to gauge changes in the mean test result turnaround time, but if for instance they've gradually changed from something like 3 days to closer to 16, 24, or 36 hours, that wouldn't change the character of a 3-week data series very much.

Deaths are definitive once accounted for (with unknowable delays involved in reporting). But (fortunately) it's a much smaller and noisier data set to try to make sense of. In any case, the deaths per day peak will be significantly delayed from the new cases per day peak. Unlike the new cases per day, the deaths per day in MA are currently rising faster than ever. I'm more interested in the new cases per day because I'm doing all this to estimate the daily risk level of my wife's workplace and other still-open public places of business.
 
The Atheist said:
I thought the same a while back, but the lack of positive news doesn't give me a great deal of confidence. Mind you, that could be evidence of well-planned and controlled trials.
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The Chinese discontinued a trial of Remdesivir today because they didn't have enough patients to test.
 
Last night MSNBC was reporting over 30,000 US deaths because New York had revised their numbers upwards to add in “likely” Covid 19 deaths. But World-o-Meter is currently showing 28,529 deaths. I wonder why the discrepancy and if we can expect those numbers to eventually agree on an “official” number.

Edited to add: the chyron on Rachel Maddow’s show is now showing “32,000+” US deaths.
 
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TellyKNeasuss said:
The Chinese discontinued a trial of Remdesivir today because they didn't have enough patients to test.
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Yep, same here, looks like we won't be able to recruit sufficient patients for our trials. Damn those public health physicians and their quarantining. Still with a bit of luck the politicians will stop the lock down and we'll have a new generation of research subjects coming through the doors in a few weeks.
 
Given the large impact of COVID-19 in NY City, are there any investigations into environmental factors?

Like incidence in high rises with common ventilation v apartments without central air? Elevators may be a transfer point too, both touch and droplets/aerosols. Might also vary with floors.

Also workers using subways v living locally and walking.

Would be interesting to compare against small apartment groups and single family homes.

There's a lot of great data there waiting to be mined.
 
Regional MA media have been reporting this evening on tests performed at a Boston homeless shelter.

Then the clinicians realized that a cluster of the people who had come up positive were staying at Boston's Pine Street Inn [homeless shelter]. So the state made testing kits available, and just over a week ago, Health Care for the Homeless tested everyone coming into that shelter.

The results? Out of 397 people tested, 146 (36%) came up positive. But even more surprising, they weren't showing any signs of sickness.... "Every one of these [146] folks were asymptomatic. None of them had a fever, and none of them reported symptoms."
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https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/14/coronavirus-boston-homeless-testing
 
Planigale said:
Yep, same here, looks like we won't be able to recruit sufficient patients for our trials. Damn those public health physicians and their quarantining. Still with a bit of luck the politicians will stop the lock down and we'll have a new generation of research subjects coming through the doors in a few weeks.
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I have (perhaps irrationally) been worried that the testing of drugs has been slowed because of studies often being limited to a single hospital. An individual hospital might have a limited number of patients who are both willing and able (not on a bunch of other medications, not so sick that an adverse reaction would kill them) at a given time so that it is taking months before enough pass through the hospital to constitute a sufficient number to get statistically significant results. I hope that I'm wrong (or moronically impatient).
 
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