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TracyP

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Everything posted by TracyP

  1. It looks like you guys have really good testing so I started digging into Ohio's numbers. I'm thinking maybe something got lost in translation. The overall hospitalization rate for your state is 11%. I found 235 hospitalizations for under 18yo there. I can't find the number of cases for this group. I found a newspaper article that said 13% of cases were from this group, but I couldn't tell if that was cumulative or for the month of July. Anyway if I go with 10% to be safe, that gives us 10,500. 235/10500 gives a 2.2% hospitalization rate in the under 18 crowd. That makes it really close to the 2.9% MN is seeing. Of course, I can't be sure. Maybe they meant 8% because they are seeing a new trend or something. Hopefully that's not the case...
  2. MN is 83% white yet around 50% of our cases are in people of color. Hispanic and Black Minnesotans have been hit particularly hard by covid. (This gets a lot of news coverage here because that is such a huge disparity.) So I would say no, that does not seem to explain the difference Sorry, not sure what you're asking here.
  3. I don't think that is it. That increase has been going on since June. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fox9.com/news/covid-19-cases-among-minnesota-children-and-young-people-surged-in-june.amp There can definitely be a gap when MIS becomes an issue. This could become an issue going forward. Otherwise, I've heard that cases in young people often become severe more quickly than older people. This was due to cytokine storm causing more issues in younger people and pneumonia impacting older people. I don't remember where I heard that so feel free to correct me if you have a source for the opposite being true. Yeah, that'd be great but I don't think that's the case. I definitely could be wrong, but I suspect that places with these lower rates will eventually be shown to be much closer to accurate. It comes back to the number problem we have always had - we just aren't working with a good denominator yet. When places not experiencing outbreaks are doing a decent job on testing we start to get a clearer picture.
  4. To expand on what I just posted, we are doing a lot of testing in MN. Pretty much every location that has a healthcare facility has testing. The state has a site that lets people know each location's guidelines, about half of the sites test symptomatic people. The other half tests both symptomatic and anyone asymptomatic with suspected exposure. It seems like most people get results in 3-5 days and we have decent contact tracing as far as I can tell.
  5. It really does seem like there can be vast differences depending on location. My own theory is that the big difference is testing. I think these low numbers 0.87% - 2.9% reflect what it looks like when you are finding say 30-50% of the cases. I think in hotspots that number looks more like finding 10-20% of cases at best, and that really skews the numbers.
  6. MN numbers are a lot lower than this too. 2.9% of under 20 yo cases are hospitalized. 0.5% have needed care in ICU.
  7. I have wondered the same thing. My state is apparently providing them to teachers and other school staff, but I've wondered how fast they get results and how accurate they are.
  8. What?!?! I can't even begin to wrap my head around this.
  9. True but not my point. Many people are reacting with surprise that someone hospitalized with pneumonia could take months to recover. Yeah, and my personal experience is the opposite. I definitely look forward to more data on how often this occurs. Ooh, love them! I recommended that podcast earlier in this thread. I am having a hard time telling how to read this post. I feel like you are lecturing me to not make light of covid. Trust me, I would not be one to do that. I just don't want to see it overblown either. I'm so sick of having to defend myself every time I point out that the media is making this virus look worse than it is. Not your fault (how could you know?) but you struck a nerve, so I'm feeling a bit raw at the moment. My dd went bald at 14yo due to alopecia. A virus could very well have been the trigger for her autoimmune condition. That is a well established fact. We probably actually agree. Listen to scientists, not media. That's good advice.
  10. This is so true. I just talked my mom down yesterday after she called going, "Oh no! Now they say covid can cause a rash. What next!?!?!" And I have to say, "Mom, a rash/hives has always been a side effect of viruses. This is no big deal." It always takes 3-6 months to recover from pneumonia. This is not new. The inflammatory syndrome seen in kids is concerning, but it is only impacting 0.16% of diagnosed covid cases so far (meaning the actual percentage is far lower.) With treatment it is rarely fatal. That risk really needs to be put in perspective. I hate the way the media is latching onto every worst case story. This is frustrating for so many reasons, but as someone who already struggles with anxiety, my biggest frustration is that it makes my fear of covid out of line with my actual risk. So then I have talk myself down... sigh.
  11. Here is an angle of treatment I don't remember reading about yet. Our Natural Killer (NK) cells are a first line of defense against viral infections. They have been shown to not function properly in severe covid patients. (This is a good summary.) They are known from past studies to not function well in the elderly and obese. Also studies have shown a gender and race difference in the expression of NK cells with white women having the strongest expression and AA men having the weakest NK cell expression. Interesting to me since this fits with the populations that seem to be most at risk for severe cases of covid. I was digging into this after reading about a trial the U of MN began last Wednesday to give covid patients an infusion of NK cells to fight covid. It is a treatment they have been developing for use in cancer patients, but they think it could have the potential to benefit covid patients as well. You can read more about it here.
  12. Yeah, that theory would definitely make that likely wouldn't it?
  13. @EmseB @square_25 Thinking about the crossover immunity from other coronaviruses... I wonder if this is where some of the "kids don't spread covid" as easily information could be coming from. It could be that they do transmit the virus just as easily as anyone BUT the population they have the most contact with (other kids, parents of young children, teachers) have a certain amount of immunity already. This all needs to be looked at further, but it would help explain why outbreaks seem less likely with young kids.
  14. I could be wrong about this, but like a pp mentioned it gives that impression of "we tried." I doubt many schools will enforce it, especially in the younger grades. Still many parents want their kids to wear masks and those kids will be following the rules so there should be at least partial compliance which is better than nothing.
  15. Masks will be required at my dd's community college campus. Most classes are online, but lab based classes and skill programs (nursing, mechanics) will be in person. The state is requiring masks for all K-12 students and staff. Families have the option to choose distance learning and districts decide whether to open up to in person classes (unless you are in a county that is over a certain threshold, then distance learning is required). It looks like my district will have face to face classes in the fall. The state is also providing at home saliva tests for all teachers and staff, although I am not clear on how often they are supposed to test.
  16. I'd love to see this looked into further. I've been wondering the same thing.
  17. Convalescent plasma is looking promising. I can't access the article but Mayo Clinic twitter feed says it is reducing mortality rate by about 50% https://mobile.twitter.com/MayoClinic/status/1291031413156917251
  18. Huh, I don't know. I think the idea that the cases came from quarantine seems likely.
  19. I agree that there is not yet any evidence to support the idea that this strain is more severe. It could be hitting a different population this time - that will obviously make a big difference. Here is the quote from the article that brought the severity to my attention. However, Marc Choisy, a biomathematician from the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Hanoi, told the Associated Press that many of the new cases in Vietnam right now seem worse than prior ones. "One big difference I've noticed between this wave and the previous one is that the cases we have right now, a lot of them are severe," he said.
  20. This is not great news. I find it especially worrisome that they believe this strain is more severe. Considering that they had at least 400 cases and zero deaths with their first round, hopefully a worse strain in their view is more like a normal strain to the rest of us. Although, I just reread this. I think it is worth noting that it is the media reporting that this strain is more contagious and severe. The Vietnamese health minister said they could not comirm that, which makes this headline very misleading. The change in infection rate is a fact but could be attributed to behavior just as easily as mutation. From the article: Long [Vietnam's health minister] said he could not confirm reports in local media that it was more contagious, or more dangerous, than its predecessor.
  21. Because everybody and their brother decided to raise chickens this year. My family and friends had a hard time getting our normal chick orders this year, it's been so frustrating. My kids work for a family farm that processes chickens and they are insanely busy. It is not a bad thing but it is crazy. Most of these newbies are fine but there is plenty of ignorance out there too. My dd's employer just bought posters to hang on the wall since so many customers struggled to make their order because they didn't know things like that chickens have necks or wings have multiple parts. A customer brought chickens in plastic bags and was upset that some died and then further upset when my dd's employer refused to process the dead chickens. I could go on... Anyway all that to say nothing surprises me right now. I love to see this new enthusiasm for raising your own meat and backyard chickens, but geez people need to use their brain.
  22. It is depressing on some level, but I'm so glad Osterholm is saying it. He has been my most trusted source of information during this pandemic. Like he said, it will get easier to live with over time. We will continue to get better treatments and vaccines will come along. But I hear about the things we have to do "until this is over" so often and I wonder why people keep saying that. I like his lightswitch analogy - a vaccine will not be like flipping an on/off switch but more like slowly moving a dimmer switch. He didn't say it here, but I have heard 10 years as an estimate for how long it will take to get a handle on this and even then it will probably never completely go away. As hard as that is to hear, I think it needs to be acknowledged so that we can think realistically about how to move forward.
  23. Last time I bought wormer for my horses there were signs all over warning "not for human consumption."
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