wuhan - coronavirus

[Pen]

46 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Although to be fair, I saw some protests in real life and they were not particularly distances.

 

Im losing track of when what happened—

 

When would be around 4-5 weeks from outdoor protests date?

and ditto for Tulsa rally to watch for possible increases that might be related?

I am going by Louisiana Mardi Gras Feb 25 to case surge around March 29, that surge comes a little more that 4 weeks after event...   deaths another several weeks beyond that

[Pen]

5 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I don't think that's how the case surge would work when there's actually enough testing. 

 

How do you think it would work  if Louisiana had had the sort of testing available in March that there is now? 

[Pen]

7 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I think there would be a positivity bump in a week or two. It's just no one was testing back then except for people coming in from a few places. 

 

How big a bump in the midst of other things and given how high the levels already are?

Would we really even notice 15 or 30 more cases per day in areas having hundreds?

[TCB]

3 hours ago, Pen said:

 

You probably can alter appearance with video, and can certainly completely change it in edit process. 

Do you disbelieve that what they said they did is what they did?

 

No I don’t disbelieve it. It makes sense and fits in with what I think is true from my research. I have been fooled by photos of crowded beaches and just wondered how much of a difference angles etc make in video.

[Pen]

30 minutes ago, square_25 said:

All the big spreading events are very noticeable. If it's really 15 or 30 cases in a place like New York, where thousands and thousands were protesting, then protests are not a big driver of spread! 

 

I’m looking at that differently in that 15 or 30 is only looking like a blip because the overall numbers are so staggering.

For a virus of this type of infectivity I consider it extremely important in terms of infectious disease spread, at least if the R0 is above 1. 

Each little stream of infection spread is likely to be significant.   No one source causes the pandemic River, but lots of little springs and rivulets together lead to 

 

[Pen]

24 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I am not sure what you're saying. NY has decreasing cases despite protests. 

 

I understand what you’re saying that you would expect a big spike if protests caused spread.

But NY according to my news, is still largely in a lock down in theory,  aside from protests , and despite the large number of protesting people that’s still small compared to the overall population doing things in a normal way.  Doing things in an opened up ordinary way seems clearly a bigger driver of spread, but I am not ready to conclude that outdoors is safe.

I think NY may still be experiencing decrease based on largely locking down, but that there’s perhaps, possibly, a new stream incoming making the situation fairly flat.  Sort of like a dam stopping most of a river, but there still being a flow happening along other spillways and a sidestream...

 

and Ive not been watching for if it has the same phenomena @Ktgrok pointed out for Florida, where statistics can look like cases and deaths are decreasing because of delays in reporting.  ????

possibly this view that I am not convinced that outdoors doesn’t spread SARS2  is because I know some people who were isolating and distancing extremely — and yet seem to have gotten sick from an outdoors exercise activity.

that said, I think if you need to do things outside, that well distanced and masked for own safety, it is probably much safer than indoor public activities 

Edited June 30, 2020 by Pen

[Pen]

@square_25 to be clear, I’m not advocating closing beaches, Parks, etc.   I think outdoors is safer than indoors from Covid POV transmission. 

I am advocating not getting complacent about belief that outdoors is safe.

I think outdoors plus masks plus 6 feet or more physical distance would be a good idea.   Not trusting in just one of those alone. 

[MEmama]

Randy Rainbow does it again ❤️

 

[Pen]

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/30/885053457/essential-worker-shoulders-1-840-debt-for-trying-to-get-tested-for-covid-19

 

[melmichigan]

We now have 107 cases linked to Harper's bar in East Lansing.  40% are MSU college students or recent graduates.  I can't believe they think sending teens back to college will go any differently as the health department determined they were abiding by all opening guidelines.  Those students come from 13 different counties around the state.

Edited June 30, 2020 by melmichigan

[Pen]

https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/30/u-s-could-see-100000-new-covid-19-cases-per-day-fauci-says/

 

[TracyP]

9 hours ago, Pen said:

 

Im losing track of when what happened—

 

When would be around 4-5 weeks from outdoor protests date?

and ditto for Tulsa rally to watch for possible increases that might be related?

I am going by Louisiana Mardi Gras Feb 25 to case surge around March 29, that surge comes a little more that 4 weeks after event...   deaths another several weeks beyond that

It has now been 5 weeks since protests started in Minneapolis. I have tracked the Hennepin County numbers from June 3 until today. They have remained relatively unchanged despite a significant increase in testing. Hospitalizations and deaths in Minnesota have also been decreasing over this time. I think we are to the point that we can say that the protests did not cause a spike here.

[Pen]

26 minutes ago, TracyP said:

It has now been 5 weeks since protests started in Minneapolis. I have tracked the Hennepin County numbers from June 3 until today. They have remained relatively unchanged despite a significant increase in testing. Hospitalizations and deaths in Minnesota have also been decreasing over this time. I think we are to the point that we can say that the protests did not cause a spike here.

 

I hope that’s so.  

 

This doesn’t look awful compared to a lot of other places in USA. Though it’s worse than many whole countries. 

 

 

Watson AI from weather.com:

Minneapolis, MN

Hennepin County

As of Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 8:29 PM EDT

CONFIRMED CASES11,796

+6.6%Since last week

DEATHS776

+3.1%Since last week

[Pen]

@TracyP 

what I’d like to see is the results of thorough contact tracing to show all cases have been traced and none came from protests...   or none came from whatever is being asserted as _____ does not result in case spread 

[Ausmumof3]

73 cases in vic

12 in nsw

vic is fairly consistent.  That’s an increase for nsw on the kind of numbers they’ve been having for the last week.  I can’t find any info on whether they are locally acquired or have come in from overseas.  It’s somewhat concerning the speed of increase once restrictions relax if they’re local.  
 

my dh was complaining about a sore throat but then went to work.  I wish he’d stayed home and really hope he doesn’t share any bugs around 😬

[Ausmumof3]

https://news.ki.se/immunity-to-covid-19-is-probably-higher-than-tests-have-shown
 

good news on immunity

 

[Pen]

1 minute ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://news.ki.se/immunity-to-covid-19-is-probably-higher-than-tests-have-shown
 

good news on immunity

 

 

That’s wonderful!!!

[Corraleno]

In the Swedish preprint, they report that 30% of the control group (blood donated between July & Sept 2019, n=25, so ~8 people) had the response quoted below. Can someone explain what this means:

""We detected potentially cross-reactive T cell responses directed against the membrane and spike proteins in healthy individuals who donated blood before the pandemic, consistent with previous reports (Grifoni et al., 2020; Nina Le Bert, 2020), but nucleocapsid reactivity was notably absent in this cohort (Figure 3A and S6A, S6B)."

 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Corraleno

[Laura Corin]

17 hours ago, MEmama said:

Thank you. He will be quarantining upon arrival, assuming he’s allowed in to the country at all. That’s the part that he seems unsure about at this point. 

I should have said: my university is setting up so that people who can't get here can study completely online for the first semester at least. All lectures will be online, as will all assessment. There will be online and in-person options for all small group teaching.

[TravelingChris]

17 hours ago, Kanin said:

I saw Andrew Cuomo on Meet the Press the other day, and he was talking about how the surge in cases in other states may delay opening in NY and other places. It only makes sense... but I wish we had a national response to this! If NYC is doing really well and is capable of opening restaurants, but they can't because they're afraid people from Florida will come spread the virus, it's just nuts. Perhaps the governors will create a national plan on their own. 

Wth would you have a national plan? What does rural WY have to do with NYC and why should the same rules apply?

[TravelingChris]

2 hours ago, Pen said:

@TracyP 

what I’d like to see is the results of thorough contact tracing to show all cases have been traced and none came from protests...   or none came from whatever is being asserted as _____ does not result in case spread 

In  NYC< tthey aren't allowed to ask if you have been in a protest.  Maybe some other areas are also doing that.

[Pen]

4 hours ago, Corraleno said:

In the Swedish preprint, they report that 30% of the control group (blood donated between July & Sept 2019, n=25, so ~8 people) had the response quoted below. Can someone explain what this means:

""We detected potentially cross-reactive T cell responses directed against the membrane and spike proteins in healthy individuals who donated blood before the pandemic, consistent with previous reports (Grifoni et al., 2020; Nina Le Bert, 2020), but nucleocapsid reactivity was notably absent in this cohort (Figure 3A and S6A, S6B)."

 

 

What aspect is the problem?

There are immune responses to various parts of a virus potentially, so that spike protein can be recognized and an immune response mounted to that and or other parts of the virus can be recognized and immune response lodged against those parts (making a vaccine that works against relevant parts and enough parts of virus can be important to vaccine effectiveness).  

So the T cells they found are apparently able to direct immune response toward the SARS2 spike protein and also the SARS2 membrane (Iirc that means outer membrane of the virus which fuses with the cell membrane when the virus attaches as its RNA enters the cell).   But they didn’t detect T cell reactivity to the nucleocapsid (which is to a virus sort of like the nucleus is to a cell) — it’s the inside part with the RNA in it and iirc it enters the cell of the host after the spike protein has split and attached  to receptor and cell membrane. 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Pen

[Melissa in Australia]

5 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

73 cases in vic

12 in nsw

vic is fairly consistent.  That’s an increase for nsw on the kind of numbers they’ve been having for the last week.  I can’t find any info on whether they are locally acquired or have come in from overseas.  It’s somewhat concerning the speed of increase once restrictions relax if they’re local.  
 

my dh was complaining about a sore throat but then went to work.  I wish he’d stayed home and really hope he doesn’t share any bugs around 😬

only 1 of the new cases in Vic was from an overseas traveler, the rest were community spread

[TracyP]

6 hours ago, Pen said:

 

I hope that’s so.  

 

This doesn’t look awful compared to a lot of other places in USA. Though it’s worse than many whole countries. 

 

 

Watson AI from weather.com:

Minneapolis, MN

Hennepin County

As of Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 8:29 PM EDT

CONFIRMED CASES11,796

+6.6%Since last week

DEATHS776

+3.1%Since last week

Cases and deaths are down in Hennepin county.  It has been by far the hardest hit part of the state, and yeah the numbers still aren't great. That, of course, made the protests there all the more worrisome. I'm not sure what those % increases mean. Deaths are way down over the last week. I'm wondering if they reflect a cumulative change in which case they would always increase. 

6 hours ago, Pen said:

@TracyP 

what I’d like to see is the results of thorough contact tracing to show all cases have been traced and none came from protests...   or none came from whatever is being asserted as _____ does not result in case spread 

Well, I'm not sure you'll ever get that. But my state saw this as a data gathering opportunity. They went out of there way to look for spread that came from the protests. They say (and the numbers verify) that they haven't found evidence of that.

On the other hand, Minnesota opened bars and restaurants on June 10. Already 2 clusters of cases have been linked to bars. If there had been any clusters linked to protests, I'm confident we would have seen it by now.

[MEmama]

4 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

I should have said: my university is setting up so that people who can't get here can study completely online for the first semester at least. All lectures will be online, as will all assessment. There will be online and in-person options for all small group teaching.

Thank you. I did read in an article on yesterday’s EU's decision to ban Americans that students are exempt. Understandably, he would much rather be in Scotland than here, for all the reasons. 🙂 

[Kanin]

5 hours ago, TravelingChris said:

Wth would you have a national plan? What does rural WY have to do with NYC and why should the same rules apply?

Why wouldn't I?

There actually IS a national plan, put out by the White House. Almost no states are following it, though.

Rural WY and NYC are very connected. We are all in the same pandemic! A national plan can be flexible, but every state should be held to the same standards. If you meet X standards, you're fully opened up. If you meet Z standards, you're still in phase 3 until things improve, etc. 

New York State has a state plan. The criteria for moving from phase to phase are clear, and regions are held to the criteria. If a region backslides, they'll be put back into an earlier phase until they get things under control. In the NY State plan, the rural North Country has been reopened for weeks, while NYC is still in phase two. 

Americans can't travel to Europe because we've bungled this situation so badly. That's pretty telling. Why wouldn't we want a national plan that would finally get this situation under control?

 

[Laura Corin]

26 minutes ago, square_25 said:

We were talking about the possibility of my sister finding some sort of study abroad option, since her school (University of Chicago) is likely to be online and it may make sense to take a year off. 

Fwiw UK universities, if that might be a goal, will probably be partly online in order to facilitate social distancing.  Social contact may be limited too. Here's one

https://warwick.ac.uk/coronavirus/students/teaching/

 

[73349]

Texas Tribune: Covid is spreading in daycares. https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/23/texas-coronavirus-child-care-safety-rules/

Quote

The state reported 576 positive cases of the coronavirus — 382 staff members and 194 children — in child care facilities as of Tuesday. That’s up from 59 cases in mid-May.

As of mid-June, state-licensed child care centers were no longer required to comply with a list of safety precautions that had been in effect since mid-April. That meant centers could decide for themselves if they wanted to check staff temperatures, require parents to drop off their children outside or stop serving family-style meals, according to a previous notice from the state Health and Human Services Commission.

 

[73349]

1 minute ago, square_25 said:

More staff members than kids, interestingly.

Yup. So is this because adults are more likely to get symptoms and therefore get tested, or are adults able to infect each other at a rate that small children can't? Hard to say until somebody starts swabbing kids en masse, I guess.

[Kanin]

4 minutes ago, whitehawk said:

Yup. So is this because adults are more likely to get symptoms and therefore get tested, or are adults able to infect each other at a rate that small children can't? Hard to say until somebody starts swabbing kids en masse, I guess.

This is what needs to happen. I can't stand assuming that kids don't get it/spread it... the CDC should start doing some research in instances like this.

[73349]

North Carolina will require masks for students aged 11 and up: https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/masks-part-of-pandemic-dress-code-for-nc-middle-high-schools/19168428/

That will be tricky for 5th grade, where most students will be turning 11. I'm glad to see it, though, if schools open in person.

[vonfirmath]

12 minutes ago, whitehawk said:

North Carolina will require masks for students aged 11 and up: https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/masks-part-of-pandemic-dress-code-for-nc-middle-high-schools/19168428/

That will be tricky for 5th grade, where most students will be turning 11. I'm glad to see it, though, if schools open in person.

I expect a lot of families will choose to do it earlier and not wait for the kid's 11th birthday. Both of my kids wear masks when appropriate (age 8 and age 12)

 

[MEmama]

1 hour ago, square_25 said:

We were talking about the possibility of my sister finding some sort of study abroad option, since her school (University of Chicago) is likely to be online and it may make sense to take a year off. Are you worried about the unstable border situation at all and getting stuck somewhere? 

It’s not my son (though we are looking into overseas for him next year), but one of his friends. 🙂 
My impression is that his family would rather have him over there; I would feel the same (not just for COVID reasons).

[TracyP]

44 minutes ago, Kanin said:

This is what needs to happen. I can't stand assuming that kids don't get it/spread it... the CDC should start doing some research in instances like this.

I'm so frustrated that we don't seem to be using these opportunities to research!! It should be very simple to track whether those kids spread it to their families. It should be feasible to test entire daycares if they have cases. At least I think we now have enough testing for that?

To me the daycare situation does not look like horrible news. Google tells me that Texas has 12,176 childcare centers serving over 1 million kids. 194 kids infected is a very small number and it looks like the adults are passing it to the kids, not vice versa. This makes me assume that kids are not major spreaders. However, I completely agree that I don't want to assume!! We should be able to track this better by now and start to get some solid answers.

[Arcadia]

@Pen
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/coronavirus/la-apparel-which-has-been-manufacturing-masks-shut-down-after-covid-19-outbreaks/2388776/

“The prominent garment manufacturer LA Apparel confirmed it is the unidentified company the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said it shut down over the weekend, after testing found more than 100 workers had tested positive for COVID-19.”

[Jean in Newcastle]

54 minutes ago, TracyP said:

I'm so frustrated that we don't seem to be using these opportunities to research!! It should be very simple to track whether those kids spread it to their families. It should be feasible to test entire daycares if they have cases. At least I think we now have enough testing for that?

 

I can’t find it at the moment but I read an article just yesterday saying that as cases surge they are going to start running out of test kits again. 

[TracyP]

14 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I can’t find it at the moment but I read an article just yesterday saying that as cases surge they are going to start running out of test kits again. 

I suppose that makes sense 🙁

[Selkie]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

@Pen
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/coronavirus/la-apparel-which-has-been-manufacturing-masks-shut-down-after-covid-19-outbreaks/2388776/

“The prominent garment manufacturer LA Apparel confirmed it is the unidentified company the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said it shut down over the weekend, after testing found more than 100 workers had tested positive for COVID-19.”

We bought a lot of masks from LA Apparel for our employees.🙁

[Jean in Newcastle]

8 minutes ago, Selkie said:

We bought a lot of masks from LA Apparel for our employees.🙁

Washable ones?  Then just washing them should make them safe from any potential contaminants.  I always wash the masks I receive anyway. 

[Pen]

3 hours ago, square_25 said:

Interesting. Would this imply 40% of NYC have already had COVID exposure? At this rate, we ain’t far from herd immunity, if such a thing exists...

 

It needs to have the same type of study done as wS done in Sweden.  

It was good news, but “imply” isn’t a good way to deal with it. 

 

2 hours ago, whitehawk said:

Yup. So is this because adults are more likely to get symptoms and therefore get tested, or are adults able to infect each other at a rate that small children can't? Hard to say until somebody starts swabbing kids en masse, I guess.

This also needs to be dealt with by science not guessing.  

It may not take en masse swabs.

And swabs May be misleading. 

If children have it in feces rather than respiratory, workers, especially ones who are dealing with diapers and pottying may get exposed via feces — yet nasal swabs may be negative. 

[Pen]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

@Pen
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/coronavirus/la-apparel-which-has-been-manufacturing-masks-shut-down-after-covid-19-outbreaks/2388776/

“The prominent garment manufacturer LA Apparel confirmed it is the unidentified company the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said it shut down over the weekend, after testing found more than 100 workers had tested positive for COVID-19.”

I stopped recommending them when I read about problems and that workers reported bad work conditions—not the glowing pictures on the website.

4 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Washable ones?  Then just washing them should make them safe from any potential contaminants.  I always wash the masks I receive anyway. 

I agree that the masks themselves should be fine just from washing them. 

 

But I was not happy about the work conditions I saw described.  

[vonfirmath]

1 hour ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I can’t find it at the moment but I read an article just yesterday saying that as cases surge they are going to start running out of test kits again. 

This is why Austin is limiting testing to symptomatic only at the moment.

[ktgrok]

12 hours ago, Corraleno said:

In the Swedish preprint, they report that 30% of the control group (blood donated between July & Sept 2019, n=25, so ~8 people) had the response quoted below. Can someone explain what this means:

""We detected potentially cross-reactive T cell responses directed against the membrane and spike proteins in healthy individuals who donated blood before the pandemic, consistent with previous reports (Grifoni et al., 2020; Nina Le Bert, 2020), but nucleocapsid reactivity was notably absent in this cohort (Figure 3A and S6A, S6B)."

 

It means that people had some immune response to coronaviruses in general, not COVID 19 / SARS CoV-2 in particular, before the pandemic. And that those T-Cells, which recognize a generic spot on coronaviruses in general may help fight off this particular coronavirus. 

3 hours ago, Kanin said:

This is what needs to happen. I can't stand assuming that kids don't get it/spread it... the CDC should start doing some research in instances like this.

The only reason I keep coming up with for NOT studying this closely is that there are people in power who don't want the answers. As long as you can't prove kids are spreading it, you can plead ignorance and open schools. If you test it and find out they are, you are screwed. 

[Kanin]

Just now, Ktgrok said:

The only reason I keep coming up with for NOT studying this closely is that there are people in power who don't want the answers. As long as you can't prove kids are spreading it, you can plead ignorance and open schools. If you test it and find out they are, you are screwed. 

Yikes. I didn't think of that. Although it does seem like people reaaaaaaaally want to believe that kids don't get it/spread it. 

[Selkie]

59 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Washable ones?  Then just washing them should make them safe from any potential contaminants.  I always wash the masks I receive anyway. 

We've had the masks for a few months, so I'm not worried about getting sick from them. Just feel bad for the workers who made the masks and are now sick themselves.

[Pen]

2 hours ago, square_25 said:

Yes, hopefully NY will do this in their state lab. However, in the meantime, I have to make my own decisions and think for myself. What's the likely outcome of this study? Does it make it relatively likely than many more people have been exposed than I thought? What does that mean for our decisions in the fall? 

And @Corraleno

No.

It is really

good news imo that some people may have useful T-cell immunity that might help to fight off SARS2 or to have milder cases.

but there is too much that’s unclear

maybe they had it from a coronavirus cold or some other coronavirus that is close enough as to membrane and spike protein to SARS2 to show  cross reactivity to SARS2, or maybe because more SARS2 was present earlier in country than realized so that blood samples from “before the pandemic “ already included people who had been exposed and had Asymptomatic cases.

(Cross reactive tends to suggest the former.)

 

 I personally would not make any conclusion about NY and immunity based on the Swedish study.  I would not change plans or behavior based on it. 

It could very well indicate that a cold that went through a lot of the population in Sweden last winter or 2 winters ago has been helpful in giving 40% or so of people some degree of immunity to SARS2.    Maybe that applies to NY. Maybe it doesn’t.

I would for now assume that what we are seeing as to severe versus mild versus people who seem not to get it at all already is with whatever cross reactive immunity any population has .  

The 40% with T-cell cross reactivity May be subsumed within the 80% who tend to have mild or Asymptomatic cases— which we already know about.  Unless more information showed otherwise, that would be my personal working hypothesis.

I’d assume That it has little to do with new levels of exposure. 

(ETA, but I still think it is excellent news in many ways—and it might also explain some of what we are seeing in regard to mild and Asymptomatic cases.) 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Pen

[Pen]

Total musing speculation.

The Karolinska Institutet study that showed cross reactive immunity to some parts of the SARS2 coronavirus May also relate to the March 12 2019 Barcelona waste water sample— maybe there was a coronavirus, not SARS 2, with a few sections of same RNA sequences.  

Interesting that the March 12 19 Barcelona samples didn’t show positive for any N sequences, and neither did the Karolinska Institutet study show nucleocapsid cross reactive immune reaction 

(I’d have to go back and look at the March 12 related study, but I think the March 12 sample was also negative for M membrane and E envelope test sequences... whereas Karolinska has found T-cell reactive to membrane as well as S spike proteins. ) 

 

again just musing...

more scientific studies needed

Edited July 1, 2020 by Pen

[melmichigan]

They just closed down all indoor bars in the lower portions of Michigan.  I posted yesterday about the current outbreaks related to indoor bars.  It needed to happen.  In my hometown they aren't following the rules, at all.  The local owner and manager of one bar doesn't "believe" in masks, therefore no one on the premises wears them. 

Edited July 1, 2020 by melmichigan

[Shoeless]

5 hours ago, Kanin said:

Yikes. I didn't think of that. Although it does seem like people reaaaaaaaally want to believe that kids don't get it/spread it. 

 

I can't think of any biological reason why a child would be able to spread every other type of respiratory disease, but not *this one*. Thinking that kids aren't capable of spreading this is wishful thinking, IMO. 

[Pen]

6 minutes ago, MissLemon said:

 

I can't think of any biological reason why a child would be able to spread every other type of respiratory disease, but not *this one*. Thinking that kids aren't capable of spreading this is wishful thinking, IMO. 

 

I would agree.  I would assume children can and do spread it unless proven otherwise.