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gardenmom5

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Napa County, California https://abc7news.com/health/napa-co-allows-residents-to-return-to-golf-courses-but-not-without-new-guidelines/6123404/

“Coronavirus: Napa County allows residents to return to golf courses, but not without new guidelines

...

Napa County has clarified rules that will allow residents to play golf, and also for a resumption of construction work.

The county is also formally encouraging residents to wear masks anywhere outside, including on golf courses.

Still, the telephone at Vintners never seemed to stop ringing as word spread fast and desperate golfers scrambled for tee times, despite warnings that they'll be dealing with new rules.

Most California golf courses remain closed. Boldt sounded like a broken record talking to caller after caller. "You can't rent power carts, pull darts, and it's twosomes only."

...

For the sake of safety, golfers will play with no rakes in sand bunkers.

They will find no flags on the greens.

And the cups? Inverted. Sticking up.

"That way, nobody has to reach inside," explained superintendent John Kruger.

Expect more rules changes on the driving range.

"That's going to be another fiasco," he said with sarcastic mirth. "No hitting balls side-by-side in stalls. Practice ten feet apart."

And, the balls will get special treatment, explained Boldt. "We have to sanitize the balls. Wash and soap the balls. And we put them out every morning."”

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30 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://www.9news.com.au/world/coronavirus-causing-stroke-in-young-people-doctors-report/7890c285-fee7-4296-bec1-2ded051cd535
 

COVID 19 appears to be affecting the way blood clots and causing small strokes in younger patients

this could also be possibly related to the language thing the professor was asking about 

“Our report shows a seven-fold increase in incidence of sudden stroke in young patients during the past two weeks. Most of these patients have no past medical history and were at home with either mild symptoms (or in two cases, no symptoms) of COVID-19," he added.

 

There have been a number of reports like this in recent days.

SARS2 does not seem to be a “normal” respiratory virus.  

(It is has seemed so bizarre repeatedly that I am personally increasingly inclined to believe that it was laboratory modified.  Even if an “accident” rather than a “conspiracy”.) 

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2 hours ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

My daughter has an orthodontist appointment in 2 weeks. What do you guys think? I think I'm okay with it. Everyone there will wear masks. We'll wear masks but of course DD will need to remove it for the appointment. The appointment is her annual visit. She had an expander last year and now wears a retainer. She'll need braces in several years. So they won't be doing anything. Just checking to see if everything is going according to plan. 

 

I would carefully look at what seems to be going on in your area (not possible to know for sure, but get best facts you can), and weigh that as against the importance of the visit and how safely you think they can do it, and family risk factors.

 If I decided to do it, in my own area, I would have a two week quarantine after that. But probably would postpone if at all possible.  Or ask if a phone plus photos visit could be used instead. 

 

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16 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Here's a very small "data point": my in-laws are in a suburb of Boston, and they reported that everyone basically went about their normal life until the outbreak actually sped up. And you'd think in Boston, of all places, NY wouldn't feel very far (or very culturally different!)

I'm worried that's exactly what's happening in most of the country: people are going about their day as usual, whatever their government is telling them. And people will only really behave differently once the numbers take off. 

I am also in a suburb of Boston,  and I stopped going out halfway through the 2nd week of March. The first Friday in March NYC had only 44 cases - I know because dd had been planning on going down for the weekend for a hackathon, but cancelled. By Sat there were 89 cases.  It was only the following weekend that MA shut down (like my gym and a lot of other non-essential businesses were closed).  

Just checked - mass gathering restictions, schools and initial business closures in MA/NY were only off by one day - school closure in MA was actually a day earlier.

Edited by Matryoshka
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1 minute ago, square_25 said:

Yeah, they haven't been going out, either. But a lot of their neighbors were :-/. Was that not the case in your neighborhood? 

They are in Belmont; where are you based? 🙂

Farther out, near Lowell.  I probably was ahead of the curve on being cautious, likely because of this thread!  I suspended my gym membership on a Weds effective the next Monday and everyone looked at me like I was overreacting. Then on Weds afternoon I read something on here about how the droplets could stay in the air up to 3 hours and didn't go back after that.  But then by Monday the gym was closed and had suspended everyone's memberships!  So apparently everyone caught up with me just in time...

 

3 minutes ago, square_25 said:

As far as I can tell, basically the whole country shut things in a stampede around when NY did (plus or minus a few days.) NY was definitely the canary in the coal mine... 

Yeah, and things changed fast in NYC.  I was supposed to drive dd and friends to take a bus to NYC that 1st Friday morning.  On Thursday night, she called me and said, hey, there are some cases in NYC - should we cancel?  I said, hell yeah!  But I really hadn't thought specifically about NYC till then - like I said, on Friday, there were only 45 cases.  That Thursday when she called, there were probably half that, and only a dozen or two in the days before.  Didn't seem that crazy, but then it did.  Sooooo glad she didn't go - bus to and from, then spending the weekend staying up all night in close quarters with a bunch of college kids from all over?  Yikes, it was like a recipe for transmission!

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1 hour ago, mathnerd said:

not wishful thinking. Northern California has very intimate ties to China that any epidemic over there would immediately show up here (there are tens of thousands of immigrant chinese living here, tourists on several daily flights from China and most of the local semiconductor tech sector setting up shop in china involving travel of employees on a day to day basis back and forth between the 2 countries).

There was a big wave of serious and "weird" respiratory disease here in January (coincided with people returning from China after visiting relatives during winter break), second wave in Feb coinciding with people returning after Chinese New Year celebrations with their family in China. Community spread is predicted to have happened in January and February with the first death due to community spread reported on Feb 6. This is earlier than the first death in Seattle. The local counties are trying to do autopsies to trace how far back deaths due to Covid19 could have occurred. They think that they have uncovered only the tip of the iceberg so far. If so, these deaths happened to people who went to regular places like grocery stores, mall, hospitals, schools and got the virus from there, as early as January. So, the rates of ~2-3% for the presence of antibodies are on the low side for the local population  We need more reliable antibody tests and mass testing for there to be enough data to make a good prediction about herd immunity. Since my area was one of the first to get the disease and it spread for several weeks before SIP directive, I guess that this area will be one of the first to achieve herd immunity whenever that happens (of course a reliable vaccine can do that also).

Still, the 3% just does not support anything close to herd immunity, even though it does seem like it was around, but it doesn't seem to have spread there. Unless that antibody test is complete rubbish.  But if it had gone through that many more people, you'd also have a lot more dead people.  

It seems like a lot of the places it got bad fast there was some kind of superspreader - often could be traced back to just one person or event - one guy in Italy, that woman in the church in South Korea, somebody at the Biogen conference in Boston, the person in New Rochelle.  Often before they were symptomatic.  One person or one event tied to hundreds of cases that then started the exponential spread.  Maybe some places have just lucked out that a superspreader wasn't among the early cases before things got shut down...?

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1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://www.9news.com.au/world/coronavirus-causing-stroke-in-young-people-doctors-report/7890c285-fee7-4296-bec1-2ded051cd535
 

COVID 19 appears to be affecting the way blood clots and causing small strokes in younger patients

this could also be possibly related to the language thing the professor was asking about 

“Our report shows a seven-fold increase in incidence of sudden stroke in young patients during the past two weeks. Most of these patients have no past medical history and were at home with either mild symptoms (or in two cases, no symptoms) of COVID-19," he added.

There was also that other study saying that the problems with oxygen levels could be starting in the blood rather than the lungs (which seems to be echoed by the fact that O2 levels drop before people realize it - hence the recommendation that we all get PulseOx monitors).   Did you hear about the Broadway star that had to have his leg amputated after a Covid-induced blood clot?   41 years old with a 10-month old kid.

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3 minutes ago, square_25 said:

 

DH pointed out that in the Bay Area, lots of companies went to working at home fairly early. Anyone know when that started? 

 

Unofficially in January. Around the time Washington announced its first case

https://www.doh.wa.gov/emergencies/coronavirus
On January 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Washington State Department of Health announced the first case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States in Washington state.”

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48 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Agree that many only take things seriously when it affects them personally so more in NYC are taking this seriously. 

My fear is that after things open up, there will be lots of cover up about the numbers. People will believe what they want to believe and I think most people want to get out in the world again. Businesses and the government want that too. I don't want to sound tinfoil hat but many of these deaths can fall into different categories. I've already seem several people alleging that people are really dying of x, y, or z. It's very important for them to believe that this is "just the flu" (even though they've never paid any attention to the flu before now). 

ETA that a lot of the deaths are of invisible people. People that we don't notice anyway. People in nursing homes, prisons, and homeless people. 

I think certain media outlets have been intentionally pushing the claim that death counts are being inflated/manipulated as a way to prime their audience to ignore the numbers as they continue to rise. It's interesting to look back at articles and interviews from just a month ago where people were saying "Only a few thousand people have died of Covid19, while tens of thousands die every year of the flu or traffic accidents, and we don't shut things down!" Now that CV19 deaths have surpassed, in a single month, the number of traffic deaths in all of 2019 (38,800), and the number of flu deaths in the entire 2018-19 season (34,000), they can either admit they were totally wrong, or they can claim the Covid19 numbers are fake. And they choose Option B.

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15 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Right, so I imagine that helped. Probably helped a lot. 

What probably help more is that we have a big Asian population that panicked once China had cases. Even my doctors panicked in January since they see plenty of Chinese, Japanese and Korean patients.

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1 hour ago, square_25 said:

Anyway, I get the sense you strongly believe you're near herd immunity. 

I don't believe that we are near herd immunity levels at all. But, I believe that we are above the levels found by the Boston tests. There might be a lot of asymptomatic people in my area because we might have had the wuhan version of the virus and not the Italian version which was thought to be more lethal.

But, since nobody knows enough about this virus, nobody knows for SURE that having antibodies will prevent the recurrence of COVID. Since this virus is known to reinfect people who have had the disease (in South Korea) we will have to wait and see about herd immunity.

 

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20 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Right, so I imagine that helped. Probably helped a lot. 

 

To add on, what I saw in February was parents driving young adults to community colleges. The buses leaving from the community college were very empty, sometimes my kid and I were the only passengers. Much less use of Uber as parents were picking up their young adults. The light rail trains to my home were very empty, sometimes my kid and I were the only passengers in our train cabin. If public transport was crowded, my husband would have picked us up from community college instead. My husband dropped us off every morning to community college for DS15’s dual enrollment classes.

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2 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Asymptomatic people would still have antibodies, no? 

You think you will find levels above 30% even though the actual studies found levels of under 5%? All right then. I'm not sure I can argue with this belief with any evidence I could produce, so I'll bow out. 

Interesting question.  I think the China study that found low levels of antibodies it was linked to milder cases which may raise the question whether those without symptoms develop antibodies.  I wonder if there is any research on that yet.

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1 minute ago, square_25 said:

Wait, why?? The whole point of antibody testing is to test asymptomatic people. I'm sure most people in the Santa Clara study didn't have symptoms. 

It’s an opt in test by Facebook users. 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf
“This study had several limitations. First, our sampling strategy selected for members of Santa Clara County with access to Facebook and a car to attend drive-through testing sites. This resulted in an over- representation of white women between the ages of 19 and 64, and an under-representation of Hispanic and Asian populations, relative to our community. Those imbalances were partly addressed by weighting our sample population by zip code, race, and sex to match the county. We did not account for age imbalance in our sample, and could not ascertain representativeness of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in homeless populations. Other biases, such as bias favoring individuals in good health capable of attending our testing sites, or bias favoring those with prior COVID-like illnesses seeking antibody confirmation are also possible. The overall effect of such biases is hard to ascertain.”

“Study Participants and Sample Recruitment

We recruited participants by placing targeted advertisements on Facebook aimed at residents of Santa Clara County. We used Facebook to quickly reach a large number of county residents and because it allows for granular targeting by zip code and sociodemographic characteristics. We used a combination of two targeting strategies: ads aimed at a representative population of the county by zip code, and specially targeted ads to balance our sample for under-represented zip codes. In addition, we capped registrations from overrepresented areas.

Individuals who clicked on the advertisement were directed to a survey hosted by the Stanford REDcap platform, which provided information about the study. The survey asked for six data elements: zip code of residence, age, sex, race/ethnicity, underlying co-morbidities, and prior clinical symptoms. Over 24 hours, we registered 3,285 adults, and each adult was allowed to bring one child from the same household with them (889 children registered).”

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29 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I think if you had no symptoms, have no antibodies, and did not ever have a positive test, we should really classify you as "not having had COVID-19"... 

Oh but I mean the ones who had a positive test but no symptoms . Unless the test is inaccurate

Edited by Ausmumof3
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8 minutes ago, square_25 said:

 

No, no, I agree with you about the fact that it was badly sampled. However, people were almost certainly not symptomatic at the time of the test. That's all I meant. 

That’s the information I can’t find in the report. Whether they only took people who said they are symptom free or they took a mix.

Below is taken from today’s data for my county 

 

Race/Ethnicity

Percent of cases

Percent of population

White

19

34

Unknown

17

0

Other

4

3

Laying/Hispanic

36

27

Asian

23

33

African American

2

2

 

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3 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Ah, I see. Do we have anyone who had a positive test but didn't have detectable antibodies? I thought they detected "low levels" of antibodies in people, but nothing like "can't detect them at all"? 

Anyway, I'd be surprised if we had positive tests (that weren't false positives) and no antibodies. But I guess I could be wrong. 

Well that was what I was asking?  If low level of symptoms lead to low antibodies in some people (as far as I know we only have one study that raised that concern) has anyone check whether asymptomatic people are developing antibodies at all.  And whether they are all developing them or not.

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@square_25@mathnerd

Someone said this on Facebook for my county and since my husband and neighbors work in tech, I have heard the same thing during that time period.

“Many large tech companies put in place strict rules on quarantine during January saying that if an employee or anyone in the employees family had been to anywhere in China or interacted with anyone from China within 14 days then they had to report in and had to self isolate for 14 days no matter symptoms or not.”

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1 hour ago, square_25 said:

Asymptomatic people would still have antibodies, no? 

You think you will find levels above 30% even though the actual studies found levels of under 5%? All right then. I'm not sure I can argue with this belief with any evidence I could produce, so I'll bow out. 

Yes, the 32% of Chelsea people who came back positive for antibodies were pretty much asymptomatic. That was the whole point - to see how much of the asymptomatic population had been exposed. Not sure why pp thinks the CA test was so far off unless the argument is that test was completely useless (as in missed almost everyone who'd actually had it)

Edited by Matryoshka
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1 hour ago, square_25 said:

Asymptomatic people would still have antibodies, no? 

You think you will find levels above 30% even though the actual studies found levels of under 5%? All right then. I'm not sure I can argue with this belief with any evidence I could produce, so I'll bow out. 

Yes, asymptomatic people will still show antibodies, which is why I think that a well run study (including male and female Latinos and Asians who comprise 35% of the local population) using a test which is accurate will show higher numbers in the bay area. But, I cannot argue that a future study that will be run will result in higher antibody numbers as well. I am using phrases like "I believe" and "higher than" etc because I too don't have evidence to support what I am saying.

Now, the county is saying that the first death due to community spread happened on Feb 6th and they are looking even further back to see if the spread was there in Dec/Jan timeframe. If I ever see any testing data coming up from local employers, I will be sure to post it here.

Edited by mathnerd
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@mathnerd@sassenach

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/california-to-resume-scheduled-surgeries-amid-outbreak/2277522/
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom loosened the state’s stay-at-home order on Wednesday to let hospitals resume scheduled surgeries, the first step toward reopening the nation’s most populous state that has been shut down for more than a month because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Newsom gave no date for when businesses could reopen and people could return to work, saying that would depend on the state’s ability to build a more robust testing system “that is more inclusive.” So far, California has tested more than 465,000 people, or just over 1% of the state’s nearly 40 million residents.”

 

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Japan https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/japan-covid-19-cruise-ship-italian-costa-atlantica-12669080

“TOKYO: Fourteen more coronavirus infections have been confirmed on the Italian cruise ship Costa Atlantica docked for repairs in Japan, a local official said on Thursday (Apr 23), bringing the total to at least 48.

Half of them were cooks and the other half were staff members in charge of serving food to the crew, the official told a livestreamed news conference.

 

The Costa Atlantica infections come after the cases on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama two months ago, where more than 700 passengers and crew were found to be infected, although this time only crew members were on board the Costa Atlantica.”

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2 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

Japan https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/japan-covid-19-cruise-ship-italian-costa-atlantica-12669080

“TOKYO: Fourteen more coronavirus infections have been confirmed on the Italian cruise ship Costa Atlantica docked for repairs in Japan, a local official said on Thursday (Apr 23), bringing the total to at least 48.

Half of them were cooks and the other half were staff members in charge of serving food to the crew, the official told a livestreamed news conference.

 

The Costa Atlantica infections come after the cases on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama two months ago, where more than 700 passengers and crew were found to be infected, although this time only crew members were on board the Costa Atlantica.”

Isn’t that the same cruise line that had the first cruise ship scare that turned out to be nothing?

i think cruise ships really will struggle to come back from this.

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Idaho's treasure valley (mainly Ada County, 600 cases, 481,000 population) did antibody testing, no idea how random it was.  They used the highly accurate test from Abbott, UW Virology.  

"In its first 48 hours of testing, Crush the Curve tested 1,946 patients for antibodies. 34 patients, or 1.75%, of those tests came back positive."

https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/crush-the-curve-idaho-announces-first-wave-of-antibody-testing-results/277-7fd9dd38-06a7-4859-b081-c32141d3e69a

They plan to do more extensive antibody testing in Blaine County, the ski county, 477 cases, 23,000 population.  

They also test people with lower level symptoms than regular testing.  That's what I think these numbers are:

"Crush the Curve also tested 1,598 patients for the novel coronavirus. Of those, 49 patients, or 3.1%, came back positive."

Of the people who go through normal testing in Idaho with a stricter criteria, 10 percent consistently turn up positive.  

 

 

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5 hours ago, Arcadia said:

@square_25@mathnerd

Someone said this on Facebook for my county and since my husband and neighbors work in tech, I have heard the same thing during that time period.

“Many large tech companies put in place strict rules on quarantine during January saying that if an employee or anyone in the employees family had been to anywhere in China or interacted with anyone from China within 14 days then they had to report in and had to self isolate for 14 days no matter symptoms or not.”

Just sorta using this as a jumping off point... It seems possible that CA limited the spread by taking small steps very early on.

This supports what I see in my own state. Our cases slowed drastically after schools closed and social distancing measures were put in place. The shutdown has had no impact on the numbers as far as I can tell. The state modeling shows the same: the number of covid deaths remains the same whether we shutdown or social distance. That seems bizarre on a common sense level, but it does make me wonder if a shutdown is really that effective or necessary. 

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On 4/21/2020 at 1:05 PM, TracyP said:

I can't find numbers like this anywhere. Neurological effects (headache/loss of taste or smell) are definitely covid symptoms but I'm not seeing where they linger for such a vast percentage of patients after recovery. Same with heart damage. There is going to be lasting lung damage in serious cases. I see estimates of 3-12 mos for how long it will take for the most severe covid patients to recover lung function. But again I can't find anything that supports the idea that 40% of symptomatic people will have that kind of lung damage. Please cite some sources for these numbers.

I will look up the stats later in the day.  I am still catching up with the thread from two days ago.  I believe that some of these stats came from studies posted on this thread in February or March.  The 40% rate of lung damage was decrease in lung capacity----considering COVID viciously attacks the lungs like pneumonia and many do have pneumonia with it and lung infections usually cause at least a slight drop in lung function for a period of time.  Most people who suffered from something like pneumonia do not feel like normal for a period of a month to years.  I suspect that all the studies of damage are related to the people who are followed more by medical staff than just the people who have a test and then quarantine at home for 14 days.  But anecdotal reports of problems with all these systems are also all over the place.

As to neuro-- yes, the side effects that continue include headaches.  But if someone didn't get headaches before or got the very rarely and now is getting them frequently, that is a at least a semi-permanent condition.  Obviously we have no idea how long any of the damage will last. 

 

 

 

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CNN. - Nearly all coronavirus patients who needed ventilators in New York's largest health system to help them breathe died, a study found.

Overall, about 20% of Covid-19 patients treated at Northwell Health died, and 88% of those placed on ventilators died, according to the study. A ventilator is a device that forces air into the lungs of patients who cannot breathe on their own because of severe pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Other, smaller reports have indicated that patients who need ventilation are unlikely to survive.

Hospitals consider changes to do-not-resuscitate situations amid coronavirus pandemic

Just 12% of the patients in the study needed ventilators, Dr. Safiya Richardson at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Northwell Health, and colleagues found.

But this study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows how dire the outlook is for patients with severe Covid-19 disease.

The team looked at the electronic health records of 5,700 patients with coronavirus disease hospitalized at Northwell Health. Final outcomes were known for 2,634 of them.

He was on a ventilator, fighting for his life. A stranger sent reinforcements

The records support what doctors have been saying about the coronavirus: most people who become severely ill have some sort of so-called underlying condition. More than half, or 57%, had high blood pressure, 41% were obese and 34% had diabetes.

"Of the patients who died, those with diabetes were more likely to have received invasive mechanical ventilation or care in the ICU compared with those who did not have diabetes," the researchers wrote.

They also confirmed that men were more likely to die than women, and no one under the age of 18 died.

The symptoms of infection were far from clear-cut. About a third of all patients showed up with fevers, 17% were breathing too fast and just under 30% needed extra oxygen. On average, patients were sent home after four days.

But 14% were treated in intensive care, 3% needed intensive dialysis and 21% died.

Since final data was only available on about half of the patients, it's possible that more of those on ventilators survived, the researchers said -- something that would drive down the 88% fatality rate for that group.

"This study reported mortality rates only for patients with definite outcomes (discharge or death), and a longer-term study may find different mortality rates as different segments of the population are infected," the Northwell Health team wrote.

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20 hours ago, SKL said:

Similar happening here.  The news said a bunch of our health workers are going to help out in NYC.  This could be part of why people locally are wondering why we are still on lockdown.  People would like to go back to getting their non-emergency health services for example.

I had my first appointment with the ortho doc who will be doing treatments for me yesterday on a video call on my cell phone.  I was fascinated that he was wearing his scrubs and hat considering he can\t be doing injections (and I don't get why injecting steroids is more dangerous COVID wise than taking blood samples.  By this Friday, I will  have had three occasions where I had blood drawn in a little over a week.

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4 minutes ago, TravelingChris said:

I will look up the stats later in the day.  I am still catching up with the thread from two days ago.  I believe that some of these stats came from studies posted on this thread in February or March.  The 40% rate of lung damage was decrease in lung capacity----considering COVID viciously attacks the lungs like pneumonia and many do have pneumonia with it and lung infections usually cause at least a slight drop in lung function for a period of time.  Most people who suffered from something like pneumonia do not feel like normal for a period of a month to years.  I suspect that all the studies of damage are related to the people who are followed more by medical staff than just the people who have a test and then quarantine at home for 14 days.  But anecdotal reports of problems with all these systems are also all over the place.

As to neuro-- yes, the side effects that continue include headaches.  But if someone didn't get headaches before or got the very rarely and now is getting them frequently, that is a at least a semi-permanent condition.  Obviously we have no idea how long any of the damage will last. 

 

 

 

I would not at all dispute that severe covid cases will be left with decreased lung function. We know they will. Perhaps the number you meant was more like 40% of ICU patients, not 40% of symptomatic cases.

And again with headaches or other neurological effects, I am sure they *do* linger for some people. No argument there. To say that they linger for 40% is very disturbing if true. That is the part I question, not whether it ever happens.

Sorry if I sound like a jerk, I don't mean to be. It's just there is so much misinformation out there - partly because there is so little we know. I rely on this thread to keep me grounded, and I have a need to see it to believe it. 🙂

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17 hours ago, square_25 said:

 

Oh, I agree that it makes sense to have region-specific policy. Especially now that our testing numbers are much higher and it's clear that most of the country doesn't have a huge problem yet. 

I think there are probably ways to replicate the spread in NY in other places, sadly, although it won't be via public transport. But there are other situations which could lead to super-spreading events. 

I think this situation is going to require really nimble handling, basically. In NY, they are talking about opening up upstate first, which absolutely makes sense to me. And it makes sense to me for some of the states to open up before others (although I worry about travel between states.) However, I do think maintenance is going to require really robust testing and serious care. 

I am tentatively starting to plan a 35 year anniversary trip in September to Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota.  Those are areas of the country we have barely seen (we did spend a few days in SD about 27 years ago when we were moving across the country).  We figure if our area isn't a hot spot and theirs isn't either, and it stays that way, we should be good.

We were originally taking a Reformation tour to Germany and Switzerland in May but that was cancelled (and we are still waiting for refunds).  It is rescheduled for 2022 when the Oberammergau Passion Play will be held--- that was why we were travelling there this year.

Edited by TravelingChris
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6 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Some People in China still testing positive 70 days after first contracting the virus

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN2240HI?__twitter_impression=true

I wonder if people who have been sick with coronavirus in the United States are being retested at the end of their illness. I haven't heard of us doing that here.

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8 minutes ago, square_25 said:

What counts as “the shut down”? I think in places with high spread, closing schools/restaurants/bars is a good idea. And then you’re immediately facing serious economic impact, whatever else you do...

Well in my state the shut down mostly meant going from limited gatherings to no gatherings and closing all nonessential businesses. If those changes don't seem to have an impact on deaths and limiting the surge, then I think we need to be reconsidering whether they are worthwhile. There is no way to avoid all the economic impact, but it could be eased if more businesses were allowed to open. Not going to a concert or sporting event? Whatever. But not being able to visit my family is hard for me. If we are going to continue these measures, I want to know they are making a difference. 

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4 hours ago, TracyP said:

Just sorta using this as a jumping off point... It seems possible that CA limited the spread by taking small steps very early on.

This supports what I see in my own state. Our cases slowed drastically after schools closed and social distancing measures were put in place.

 

I have been curious about Hawaii — and your state, if I recall correctly Minnesota seems like a good comparison. (ETA or a good comparison even if not your state 😊)   Both have confirmed case rate in 400’s per 1000 population. (And no reason afaik to think that MN is more underreported than HI.) But MN has 32 deaths per thousand population compared to HI with 8 deaths per thousand population.   (According to worldometer.info a few minutes ago.) 

And yet MN is known for having some of best medical hospitals in USA.  So one would think that with roughly same number of cases per thousand and hospitals not overwhelmed it would have an on par or perhaps even better death rate. 

What’s up with that do you think? Why a four times higher per 1000 death rate for MN than HI? 

Maybe in reality closures do work and HI closed earlier? 

Or maybe it’s a weather or sunshine for vitamin D thing?

Or maybe MN has more people with underlying health conditions (and why would that be)? 

 

Quote

The shutdown has had no impact on the numbers as far as I can tell. The state modeling shows the same: the number of covid deaths remains the same whether we shutdown or social distance. That seems bizarre on a common sense level, but it does make me wonder if a shutdown is really that effective or necessary. 

 

 

Did your state try  “Social Distance” prior to shutting down?

My impression is that really well done Distance (Physical more than Social) can theoretically have a significant effect, but that too many people in many places would not do it.  

In my state, citizens and our past physician Governor were clamoring for shut downs because we were about 2 -3 doublings  from medical system overwhelm.  

As with anything that is doubling it still seems pretty good (1/2 full) at the end of the last doubling before crisis.  

As with much of west coast USA many people in my state started self Distancing or self isolating when Washington state announced its first case. But that was not enough. And a significant number of people were still doing a lot of social and physical closeness.  

In reality, rather than in theory, Stay Home rules, with substantial closings, stopped the doubling of hospital requiring cases and that was what was critical to avoid crisis situation like in New York City, Lombardy, Italy etc. 

If hospitals go into overwhelm mode, then the models I have seen show that a lot more of the 20% needing hospital care would be likely to die.  (Different apparently than models you have seen.) 

If the people of your state are capable of and willing to Physical Distance, and if your buildings and spaces work for that there may not be a difference for your particular state between Distance and closures.  

For most places I am familiar with there *is* a difference.  Too many shops are too small.  Too many offices have people too close together, too many people congregate in ski chalets...or on beaches as case may be...at funerals, birthdays, weddings, in churches and in bars and restaurants, in hotels, and at business meetings...

Too many people say I’ll stop _____ if my state government tells me I have to stop, but not otherwise.  I have read that a lot right on various WTM chat threads. 

 

 

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19 hours ago, EmseB said:

I'm not envisioning a contingency plan. Like I said, I'm not an expert here, nor am I responsible for managing a major city during a disaster. I would say, off the top of my head more buses, more subway cars so people could at least sit further apart. A lot of cities in other countries limit who can travel on which days in order to limit things like pollution or traffic congestion. But this sentiment that you're expressing above is common with what I've been seeing from NY'ers on my social feeds. That is, there's no way for people in NY to social distance and also go anywhere, so whatareyagonnado? Nothing, I guess, is the current answer. Just keep packing people in train cars, sadly enough. Which, as @Arctic Mama was talking about above, presents a unique problem in NYC lifting SIP and lockdown precautions that other cities do not have to consider. Not that other cities don't have other issues to contend with, but not the same apparently unsolvable problem of the subway.

Personally, I would be trying anything at all to get out of a urban area where I couldn't had to use public transportation and had no alternative way to travel=== I mean like moving.  I liked public transportation before--- and my dd who is also high risk like me was also a big fan of trains--- neither of us can see using public transportation until we are not at risk.  Since she may very well have had it,  once a proper antibody test is developed and given, she may find out she can do that kind of travelling. 

>According to my dh, we should plan to travel on airplanes in September but I am less worried about airplanes than I am about subways and public transportation buses.  I think I will be wearing masks on those types of conveyances forever since tb people travel, all types of nasty airborne disease infected people travel those since they tend to cater to lower income people who are more likely to have poor health care and poor health. I know I will be wearing a mask on the airplanes in September.

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2 hours ago, Storygirl said:

I wonder if people who have been sick with coronavirus in the United States are being retested at the end of their illness. I haven't heard of us doing that here.

I had read that you have to test negative 2x in order to be declared cured.  Not sure whether that is the protocol everywhere though.

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4 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Here in Adelaide they are going to expand the offering of at home chemotherapy so cancer patients can keep treatment going with reduced risk.  I didn’t even know that would be possible but glad it is.

My mom got her chemo at home about 15 years ago.

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16 hours ago, mlktwins said:

 

14 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://www.9news.com.au/world/coronavirus-causing-stroke-in-young-people-doctors-report/7890c285-fee7-4296-bec1-2ded051cd535
 

COVID 19 appears to be affecting the way blood clots and causing small strokes in younger patients

this could also be possibly related to the language thing the professor was asking about 

“Our report shows a seven-fold increase in incidence of sudden stroke in young patients during the past two weeks. Most of these patients have no past medical history and were at home with either mild symptoms (or in two cases, no symptoms) of COVID-19," he added.

 

13 hours ago, Pen said:

 

There have been a number of reports like this in recent days.

SARS2 does not seem to be a “normal” respiratory virus.  

(It is has seemed so bizarre repeatedly that I am personally increasingly inclined to believe that it was laboratory modified.  Even if an “accident” rather than a “conspiracy”.) 

Could be CAPS or DIC, both of which might be triggered by cytokine storm.

CAPS = catastrophic antiphospholipid antibody syndrome 

DIC = disseminated intravascular coagulation (has a bleeding component in addition to clotting)

Both can occur in people with severe flu as well. 

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5 minutes ago, SKL said:

I had read that you have to test negative 2x in order to be declared cured.  Not sure whether that is the protocol everywhere though.

It depends on where and when you were infected. At the beginning of this, WA nursing homes were not accepting COVID19 patients back even if hospitals said they were cured unless they had two negative tests. But lack of tests and PPE has changed that, I think. 

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18 hours ago, mlktwins said:

I can't even go on some of the other threads (ex. should states open back up) on this forum anymore.  So discouraging and people talking about level of risks and just wanting to get it and be done with it.  There is still so much unknown about this virus - even for people in the lower risk categories.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-patient-thought-recovering-then-173800979.html

I'm just going to stay holed up in my house for awhile until the powers that be have more time to figure out what the he!! this virus is all about.  

 

Gee, now there are three ways I am protected maybe- Hydroxychloroquine, taking a Coumadin equivalent (blood thinner) and apparently the gene I have that is linked to my Ankolysing Spondylosis and to others- Crohns, Psoriasis and Reactive arthritis's HLA -B27 has the benefit of protecting against the flu (which is maybe why I have never had it) and may also confer protection against this too.

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“A team of 21 doctors and nurses from UCSF are headed to the Navajo Nation to help a population that has seen one of the highest rates of coronavirus infection in the country.”
 

ETA:

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/coronavirus/team-of-ucsf-medical-workers-heads-to-navajo-nation-to-help-population-overwhelmed-by-virus/2277815/

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/04/417236/ucsf-health-care-workers-serve-navajo-nation

Edited by Arcadia
Removed non-working link
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57 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

I have been curious about Hawaii — and your state, if I recall correctly Minnesota seems like a good comparison. (ETA or a good comparison even if not your state 😊)   Both have confirmed case rate in 400’s per 1000 population. (And no reason afaik to think that MN is more underreported than HI.) But MN has 32 deaths per thousand population compared to HI with 8 deaths per thousand population.   (According to worldometer.info a few minutes ago.) 

And yet MN is known for having some of best medical hospitals in USA.  So one would think that with roughly same number of cases per thousand and hospitals not overwhelmed it would have an on par or perhaps even better death rate. 

What’s up with that do you think? Why a four times higher per 1000 death rate for MN than HI? 

Maybe in reality closures do work and HI closed earlier? 

Or maybe it’s a weather or sunshine for vitamin D thing?

Or maybe MN has more people with underlying health conditions (and why would that be)? 

 

 

Did your state try  “Social Distance” prior to shutting down?

My impression is that really well done Distance (Physical more than Social) can theoretically have a significant effect, but that too many people in many places would not do it.  

In my state, citizens and our past physician Governor were clamoring for shut downs because we were about 2 -3 doublings  from medical system overwhelm.  

As with anything that is doubling it still seems pretty good (1/2 full) at the end of the last doubling before crisis.  

As with much of west coast USA many people in my state started self Distancing or self isolating when Washington state announced its first case. But that was not enough. And a significant number of people were still doing a lot of social and physical closeness.  

In reality, rather than in theory, Stay Home rules, with substantial closings, stopped the doubling of hospital requiring cases and that was what was critical to avoid crisis situation like in New York City, Lombardy, Italy etc. 

If hospitals go into overwhelm mode, then the models I have seen show that a lot more of the 20% needing hospital care would be likely to die.  (Different apparently than models you have seen.) 

If the people of your state are capable of and willing to Physical Distance, and if your buildings and spaces work for that there may not be a difference for your particular state between Distance and closures.  

For most places I am familiar with there *is* a difference.  Too many shops are too small.  Too many offices have people too close together, too many people congregate in ski chalets...or on beaches as case may be...at funerals, birthdays, weddings, in churches and in bars and restaurants, in hotels, and at business meetings...

Too many people say I’ll stop _____ if my state government tells me I have to stop, but not otherwise.  I have read that a lot right on various WTM chat threads. 

 

 

Argh, I wish I could break up quotes on my phone...

My guess on the death rates - 70% of our deaths are coming from nursing homes. That's that. 🙁

Yes, we did social distance and that's my point. That showed success; taking further steps does not seem to be showing even more success. Those first steps seem like they might have been enough.

Will that vary by area? For sure. We have had pretty good compliance from what I understand. 

NYC is going to have a somewhat unique problem. The high population and subway system are issues that I don't have an answer for.

I am musing right now more than suggesting what should be. I would like to see more evidence based ideas being put into the reopening of states. A shop being too small, for example, might carry a risk. But if it is not a statistically significant risk, then maybe that should be left up to the owner and customers.

I'm also not sure if everyone is on the same page. I thought the goal was to move on with life as much as possible while not overwhelming hospitals. I'm starting to think that for some people the goal is to *stop* the spread. I know there's a thread discussing this, but I'm scared to look. 😋 

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16 hours ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

My daughter has an orthodontist appointment in 2 weeks. What do you guys think? I think I'm okay with it. Everyone there will wear masks. We'll wear masks but of course DD will need to remove it for the appointment. The appointment is her annual visit. She had an expander last year and now wears a retainer. She'll need braces in several years. So they won't be doing anything. Just checking to see if everything is going according to plan. 

I think it really depends on your area.  If one of the hot spots or soon to be hot spot- no.  But they may be able to do the check via some online way .

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@square_25 what are you actually doing now?  Have the children not been out since the day you tried to go to park and found it horrendously crowded? Are you all able to get exercise and fresh air in your apartment? (I assume you’re in an apartment.) Are you going out to buy groceries or are they delivered?  

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11 hours ago, square_25 said:

 

Wow. And I know I saw something saying restaurants were reporting lower levels of business, too. 

Restaurants were probably affected by the big reduction in China tourists and by reduction of business trips travelers. We didn’t see the big tour buses at Premium Outlets. Chinatown was also shunned due to fear. 

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