Yes, Daniel Griffin. It was either episode 632 or 635. I am leaning toward 632.

It was randomized. Now, preliminary results from the RECOVERY trial conducted in the United Kingdom are showing that the agent reduced mortality by approximately one-third in patients with COVID-19 who were on ventilators (rate ratio [RR] 0.65; 95% CI, 0.48-0.88; P = .0003).2 Moreover, for other patients who received oxygen only, dexamethasone reduced deaths by one-fifth (RR 0.80; 95% CI, 0.67-0.96; P = .0021). Link to the preprint https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.22.20137273v1

Of course bugs and grass. They eat table scraps on occasion - rice, bread, veggies. Oh, and leftover air-popped popcorn. We eat it as a snack several times a week. The chickens recognize the bowl with leftovers and they track us down when we bring it out, lol.

He said this had made huge improvements. It should be given for anybody severe enough to be hospitalized. If dexamethasone is unavailable, he listed 2 other steroids and the dosage that should be given.

OMG I was almost done and lost my post!! !#*%&@* First off this is NY specific. He is hoping other hospitals hear this, but he says hospitals can be slow to change. Understanding the disease progression is key. WEEK 1: typically mild symptoms; WEEK 2: most recover but this is where severe respiratory symptoms show up in some; WEEK 3: risk of blood clots becomes significant in those who haven't recovered This is important because the treatment you get is dependent on where you are in the progression. WEEK 1: self care at home, a certain number of people should be on an anticoagulant at this stage but they haven't pinpointed who (personally I wonder if adults would benefit from a low dose aspirin at this point?); WEEK 2: most recover but those that don't should have a pulse ox to watch for numbers under 90, those that are hospitalized should start a blood thinner and dexamethasone (or an equivalent steroid); WEEK 3: patients at home should continue as before, those that are still hospitalized should be startes on tossilites (ok, I'm sure I have that wrong and will try to edit. I'm not risking leaving this page...) This is combined with what we know about proning and using low flow oxygen which has also improved outcomes. They also said that antibiotics were being used inappropriately at first. They were actually causing more problems so they should be an absolute last resort even if blood work indicates a bacterial infection. Whew, I think I covered most of it... ETA: to the "tossilites" I can't find anything that fits the word I recall. I got the impression that it was a family of drugs, not a specific drug. He said there was "low quality evidence" that they improved the most severe cases. He defined low quality evidence as anecdotal evidence that he and his colleagues were seeing, he emphasized that studies would need to be run to verify their effectiveness. Dang, I wish I could remember the name. ETA 2: I believe the drug is tocilizumab. Thanks @Pen

Ok, it'll take me a little time. I'm typing on phone... The population could be making a difference. That is what I wondered with the MN numbers. But I don't think Oregon ever had a significant nursing home problem. The NYC doc deals solely with covid patients, you think he'd know if there was a huge difference in the population.

The NYC doctor said it is directly related to better treatments. He went very specifically into what they are doing now and how it is changing outcomes. Let me know if you are interested and I'll try to summarize what I remember.

That sounds very close to Oregon's numbers, and definitely much lower than earlier. I agree - very good argument for keeping this slow and hopefully continuing to see better outcomes!

Does anybody want to talk about declining mortality rates around covid? I brought this up a couple weeks ago because it appears from my state's data that outcomes are improving. Since then I have heard a NYC doctor (on TWiV) say that outcomes are vastly improved. He said that 65% of people on vents would end in death in March. Now most people never get put on vents and when they do 29% die. This seems like such positive news, I'm wondering why nobody is talking about it. Here is an article I found detailing the difference Oregon hospitals are seeing. https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2020/07/covid-19-survival-rate-improves-significantly-at-local-hospitals.html Of the 900 patients hospitalized in all Providence facilities in March, 20% died. Of the 1,200 hospitalized in May, 14% died, Robicsek said. Oregon Health & Science University showed even steeper declines. The mortality rate fell from 23% in March when six of the hospital’s 26 COVID-19 patients died to 3% in May (one of 37) and 4% in June (two of 52). At Legacy Health, the mortality rate was 40% in March, when 12 of the hospital’s 30 patients died. By May, the rate had declined to 13% when five of 37 patients died.

I don't think anybody knows yet whether they will be transparent with the numbers. If they are not, that will be very concerning. (Although, since states are still putting out their own data, I don't know how much they could hide.) As usual in the partisan world we live in, a large segment of people will say this is a negative with no other information than it is coming from the Trump administration. And believe me plenty did the same to Obama so this is not a political statement. I find it all sickening. I will reserve judgment for now. We need a better data collection system. I'm hoping this is it.

I haven't heard anything outside this article which clearly paints this new data collection attempt as a bad thing. My thoughts... The U.S. needs a better data collection system. This seems to fill this need. The article talks about politicization and transparency being issues. Pffft, as if those aren't already issues within the CDC. So for now, I think this is a positive step.

Y'know my pessimist side thinks of the saying, if it seems too good to be true it probably is... My optimistic side, however, thinks that looks very promising. 🤞 If it is already FDA approved hopefully they can move quickly to human trials.

Asymptomatic spread is definitely a problem for schools and well, everything. I think maybe what the CDC is saying might be misunderstood. The 75% is in relation to a symptomatic individual which they consider 100%. I'll stick the quote below. So my understanding is that asymptomatic individuals are still considered less likely to transmit the virus. (Of course, that is subject to change in either direction...) Infectiousness of asymptomatic individuals relative to symptomatic individuals: The contribution to transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from asymptomatic individuals compared to the contribution to transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from symptomatic individuals. A parameter value of 50% means that an asymptomatic individual is half as infectious as a symptomatic individual, while a parameter value of 100% means that an asymptomatic individual is just as likely to transmit infection as a symptomatic individual.

I have been searching for weeks for a good breakdown of hospitalizations by age in children/teens. Thank you!!

Oh, I don't doubt for a minute that stories influence most people.

I'm not offended at all. I added the 'lol' in an attmept to convey that. No worries. 🙂 It seems like common sense that eating high fat will make you fat, but that isn't actually borne out by science. Common sense doesn't always make good decisions either. Fwiw, I agree that we all should wear masks. I disagree that schools shouldn't open. (Though not in some states.) The thing is, I could pull up a number of stories right now where kids, teens, and healthy adults died of the flu. We all have willingly accepted that for our whole lives. Some people are still okay accepting the risk and the death count associated with covid. I am not. It is too high, imo. But I'm not sure that they are intent on "running us off a cliff" just because they see this differently than you or me. I think that type of thinking is too simplistic.

Hmm, this is an interesting take. I can't imagine a story, no matter how heartbreaking, carrying much weight in my decision making. I mean there are logical reasons for arguing against the character you describe in your first paragraph. Logic and facts always beats emotion in my mind. I hope that doesn't say anything about my "black heart" lol.

So what did they do? They must have had a reason for going in for a test. Did they go ahead and quarantine or did they assume they didn't have covid? Was this discrepancy picked up by contact tracers or did this happen in areas without contact tracing?

Hahaha👍

We have chickens. Do they count? 😋

It seems to me like the warning from the Michigan health department is that you could have been exposed by one of these people on the 4th. Not that they believe these people were exposed on the 4th. I'm seeing it presented both ways on different news sites, but I'm leaning toward the former. Based on the typical timeline of showing symptoms and getting test results I would guess these people were already infected by the 4th. Also, I'm paraphrasing, but the health department said that since these people do not know who they were in contact with, they put this release out for everyone who was there to be on the lookout for symptoms. That again leads me to believe the thinking is that these people were potential spreaders on the 4th. That makes this another interesting place to watch over the next week or two. Considering we know that several infected people were in this group, unmasked, no doubt yelling it will be interesting to see if anything comes of it. I hope the health department puts this information out there.

I pulled this quote from the article. I hope this means it is covid, but they are unable to get verification. That could be due to not enough testing capacity or false negatives. That seems more likely than a new pneumonia causing virus circulating. In a statement on Friday, the Kazakhstan health ministry acknowledged the presence of "viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology," but denied that the outbreak was new or unknown. .... It added the "unspecified" pneumonia classification followed World Health Organization guidelines "for the registration of pneumonia when the coronavirus infection is diagnosed clinically or epidemiologically but is not confirmed by laboratory testing."

I appreciate that. I have anxiety and a lot of my drive to learn more comes from the fact that in my head information = control over the situation. I definitely don't want to contribute to any doom and gloom thinking, but I'm a realist. I absolutely hate the unknown, I deal better with bad news than no news. Ok, personal tangent aside... 😉 thanks for that additional info. That does sound like the risk of ADE is low. I hope time and more information bears that out.

The only sources I can find say that it is too soon to tell. This one discusses the possibility of ADE with covid. It says it will take until fall to get a better picture. This is new to me so I'm learning as I go, but it sounds like even if they did see ADE with reinfections it doesn't mean you necessarily would with vaccines. And we don't even know for sure if these are reinfections, it could be a very extended progression of the disease. The doctors in the podcast were emphasizing the need to take time to watch for this possibility as we develop a vaccine. Do you have any sources that rule this out? (I feel like this sounds snarky... not my intent. 😋 This is new to me and I'd like to understand it better. Plus I'd love to see this possibility ruled out!)

I have gotten hooked on this virology podcast that 8FilltheHeart linked yesterday. I was listening to another episode this morning and found a couple things interesting. The reinfection debate is still very open. I think we all knew that, and it does seem (anecdotally) that the second time is worse than the first. This too is probably not surprising, for one you might not be recovered from the first bout. Secondly, other viruses like dengue fever work this way. The part that got me was the question this raises for vaccines. There is the possibility that the vaccine could introduce the virus thereby increasing the risk of severe infections, like the dengue fever vaccine. They stressed that it is too soon to worry so I'm going to try not to, but ugh that'd be awful. Then to schools and kids... studies are mixed with some showing increased viral load by age but most showing no significant difference. They discussed what this means in light of the fact that schools (where open) and childcare centers have not been a major source of spread at any time during this pandemic. Until we get a definitive answer on if kids spread covid at a lower rate than adults, they propose that the precautions put in place do work. That in itself is very good news. They suggest that opening schools seems low risk if precautions are taken and testing is widely available. They were less than optimistic about whether the country would make these things a priority. Some states of course will, others likely will not.