wuhan - coronavirus

[Pen]

42 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

And a lot of what you learn in biology is tiny bits of information that later leave the brain.

 

Or, they may be bits that stay...but now are outdated.  

For example, I just discovered in the Spillover book that Rickettsia are now considered clearly Bacteria (not organisms partway  between bacteria and viruses ).

 I’m not sure which is worse.  Forgetting or remembering, but not having kept up as changes happened. 

42 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

 I took a few sample CLEP tests for various subjects to see how hard they were and see if there were any my daughter could pass with just a bit of study.  I did much better on the history one than the biology one thanks to SWB, just reading through her history to the kids made me score higher than my actual degree!  

 

That’s impressive! Good for SWB.  Though possibly if you had recently read through an up to date biology book that would have made a difference .

42 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

My degree in Biology was from 1991.  I got a masters in Industrial Engineering in 1994 and worked as a statistician in the Air Force for a while.  Both degrees come together nicely to easily produce vitamin D charts! Several people on twitter have complemented me on them.  I mention that they were crowdsourced by homeschool moms and that version 10 is much better! 

 

Your charts were already very good, and probably getting crowdsourced comments for improvements helps a lot too. 

It’s like advertisers or movie producers having test audiences.  

 I am very happy to help with any vitamin D chart you want feedback on.  There are several things I think may help CV19, but it is one of the easiest things we can do at home, and that I think our society would be the better for.  Not only the better for because I think it may help us get through CV19 with less bad morbidity and less mortality, but also I think it would help with other illnesses, emotional problems, cognition...

Have you ever read Barbara Reed Stitt Behavior and Nutrition?  (My links may not work today.) 

Food and Behavior: A Natural Connection https://www.amazon.com/dp/0939956098/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_zvXPEbGSB47SM

http://Food and Behavior: A Natural Connection https://www.amazon.com/dp/0939956098/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_zvXPEbGSB47SM

 

That book and subsequent work she and her husband did showed significant changes in behavior in prisons, schools, etc when nutrition improved, including vitamin supplementation. 

We as a society spend enormous amounts of not only money,  but also distress and angst over behavior troubles, from mild family stuff to criminal level — a lot of which might be able to be changed for the better with improved nutrition and supplements including vitamins, including (and especially because it is in some ways a master vitamin/hormone) vitamin  D. 

[JennyD]

So thrilled to see the fantastic news from New Zealand!

Israel update: 15,466 cases, 202 deaths.  The number of active cases is coming down fast and today we had the lowest number of new infections (68) in a month.  

True to form, the country pulled together beautifully during the lockdown but now that the crisis is juuuusssst starting to abate it's all back to normal and everyone is at each other's throats about the reopening, what's going to go first, etc.  The government's communication "strategy" has been, shall we say, in need of improvement from the beginning, but especially now.  

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, which is a very significant (and sad) day here, and cemeteries are closed to the bereaved families who usually visit.  Then Wednesday is Independence Day, when Israelis crowd parks to celebrate and barbecue en masse.  To prevent any such gathering, we will be once again under complete lockdown (no going more than 100 meters from home for anything except medicine) from tomorrow night through Wednesday night.   Then beginning Thursday I think some of the most significant restrictions on movement will start to be relaxed.  Fingers crossed.

I have been amazed, however, how people have taken to mask-wearing.  If you had asked me a month ago I would have said that it would have been impossible to get Israelis to act like HongKongers in this (or possibly any) regard.  But the masks are available in the pharmacy, we're required to wear them, and the storeowners won't let people in without them.  And people quickly figured out that you can scream into your cellphone through a mask, no problem.  So everyone is wearing masks.

Very good news from Gaza, too.  The only cases were in returnees from elsewhere and it looks like they avoided all community spread during this wave, at least.  Restaurants in Gaza reopened today. 

 

 

Edited April 27, 2020 by JennyD

[mommyoffive]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/serious-coronavirus-related-condition-may-114858433.html

[Pen]

18 minutes ago, square_25 said:

An estimate of an IFR of about a percent from Lombardy: 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.18.20070912v1.full.pdf+html

The fatalities are, of course, concentrated in the older population. Every place with a really bad outbreak is getting an IFR of around a percent. I'm going to guess the true IFR is between 0.5 and 1.5 percent, depending on how overwhelmed the healthcare system is. 

 

If this hits some places with little health care system hard (Africa, for example) global fatality rate may be much worse—but record keeping may be such that we won’t really know. 

18 minutes ago, square_25 said:

The Miami-Dade study seems to have used an antibody test with a 90% specificity to get a 6% positive rate. To put this in context... if everyone was negative, you'd expect them to still get 10% positives. That means their study is completely compatible with having LITERALLY NO ONE infected. I don't actually believe this is true, but next time someone reports something like this, I want them to say "and from this study we can conclude nothing." 

 

🙃

18 minutes ago, square_25 said:

NYC is now testing at 25% positive which... at least means it'll be easier to reopen, since that's actually enough to slow down spread all by itself, assuming immunity lasts. 

 

On what type of test? And what level of accuracy? 

How much slowing down?  

I’m trying to imagine my way through this.  In my mind, I am back living in NYC...  If 8 people are in a slow elevator, riding down in a high rise apartment building and one is infected and 2 are immune...     if the infected one got on at floor 52, and did a lot of breathing before an immune person and a vulnerable person both got on at floor 49...       

🤔

well, I guess the maximum possible R0 on that elevator can only be 5 not 7.    

🤔

[vonfirmath]

6 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

If this hits some places with little health care system hard (Africa, for example) global fatality rate may be much worse—but record keeping may be such that we won’t really know. 

 

🙃

🤔

 

🤔

 

Ecuador doesn't count?

[JennyD]

I also meant to add that Israel's overall mortality during this crisis has been *lower* than it was in previous years.  A health ministry official told a reporter that this is probably due to the decline in traffic accidents and elective surgery (!!).  

 

 

[Pen]

4 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

 

Ecuador doesn't count?

 

Yes. It counts. We see pictures of dead bodies in streets, but don’t have good statistics.   

[Pen]

19 minutes ago, square_25 said:

 

NYS is using a locally developed antibody test (they made it in the NYS health lab.) They didn't release details, but they said 93 to 100 percent specificity, which would NOT be enough in a place where the true answer is in the single percents, but is adequate for a place where a quarter of the population has antibodies. So an honest accounting of the result is "assuming a representative sample, 20 to 30 percent are infected with reasonable probability."  

Well, it's clear that it doesn't ALWAYS infect every person in the elevator, because otherwise everyone would be infected already. This virus has an R0 of 3 or 4, right? And people absolutely spend their time with more than 3-4 people in the time they are sick, especially if they think they just have a cold. 

Say the average number of people you would infect without anyone having antibodies is 1.5, because you're relaxed restrictions but not fully. Then having 25% with antibodies means you only wind up with an R0 of 0.75*1.5 = 1.125, which is considerably smaller. So... that's quite a difference! 

 

Has an R0 been calculated for New York City? Both with and without Closures and Distancing? 

I would think it would be higher than average because of density ... and hard to avoid for many people there things like elevators. 

I went in for shopping today and noticed how incredibly easy it was to Distance in a low density and automobile transport dominated  area, especially now as they have some new things better set up than last time I was in.      

It would be comparatively hard in NYC at least as I recall nyc back when I lived there. I am picturing places that may not even exist anymore, but Fairways market, or Zabars,  for example, in many ways much better than any stores I have here for selection range, for example, but usually packed.  Or even just the nearest Dagostino or A And P stores back then were tight .  

But...it has been years.  Maybe it is much changed.  

Edited April 27, 2020 by Pen

[Pen]

5 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Right now, Cuomo says New York R0 is below 1. Normally, I don't know. But hopefully with testing and contact tracing efforts, we can keep it down. 

ETA: Cuomo keeps saying 0.8 or 0.9% for R0, which is making my mathy brain groan every single time. He actually seems to know what an R0 of 0.9 means, more or less, but the word "percent" really, really, really doesn't belong in there. 

 

And when it is state as a whole that will include very low density areas like up by St Lawrence River.    

 

[Arcadia]

@mathnerd

as expected 

“ The extended orders affect Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties, as well as the City of Berkeley, which has its own public health department, until May 31.“

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/press-release-04-27-2020-joint-statement-on-extension-and-revisions.aspx

ETA:

expected as in people expected SIP to be extended many times so they are treating it as no end date.  My nearby Safeway has very few customers and produce was well stocked. No toilet paper and no flour.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Arcadia

[Pen]

6 hours ago, Wildcat said:

 

The wildly different ratios is what I found, too, and it's all so confusing to me. I can't keep the IU/MCG/MG stuff straight, so that adds to my confusion.

 

I think your question is good and I am reviewing this for myself currently as I raised how much D3 I am taking .  If you or anyone else would like me to share information as I go, let me know.  

I use a Life Extension SuperK which combines K1 and K2, plus some extra K2-4 from Thorne.  I have not determined an amount balance. 

By and large both D3 and K2 are taken in micrograms, not milligrams.   (There’s a bit of an exception in Japan for some mg use of vitamin K.)

There is more than one type of K2 (quite a lot of types exist, but mainly focus is on 2 types: K2-4 and K2-7).

 

MK4 and MK7 are both forms of natural vitamin K2. MK4 stops and reverse bone loss, grows strongerbones and reduces fractures more than 80%. MK7has never been shown to reduce fractures. The use of MK4 is supported by more than 28 clinical trials with over 7000 volunteers.

 

Vitamin K and Fractures - NBI

 

 

[mathnerd]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

@mathnerd

as expected 

“ The extended orders affect Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties, as well as the City of Berkeley, which has its own public health department, until May 31.“

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/press-release-04-27-2020-joint-statement-on-extension-and-revisions.aspx

ETA:

expected as in people expected SIP to be extended many times so they are treating it as no end date.  My nearby Safeway has very few customers and produce was well stocked. No toilet paper and no flour.

Thank you. 2 local tech companies told their employees that this will go on "for a while" last week.

[Arcadia]

27 minutes ago, mathnerd said:

 2 local tech companies told their employees that this will go on "for a while" last week.

My husband’s dept lab technicians have never stopped working but his dept lab is big enough to social distance pre-COVID19.  The lab technicians are doing work related to customer support. My husband has gone back to office to get stuff as needed. I am mentally prepared that Fall quarter/semester would be work from home/study online. 

I don’t see testing ramping up fast enough to meet the governor’s requirements to ease the stay at home order. 

On the bright side, our county’s test positivity rate has gone down steadily to 8.23%, and the average days turnaround time has drop to 1.75. Currently our county is at 2105 cases, 103 fatalities.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Arcadia
Autocorrect 🙃

[Kanin]

Johns Hopkins mortality rates. Of course we're not testing enough to know the true rate. I'm hoping there's a ton of asymptomatic transmission, so the rate's much lower. Or do I want asymptomatic? Ahh! So torn 😞 https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

 

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

Is there any chat about countries you might open your borders to first? They're still open to Pacific Islands, is that right?

(I know that's in the future, nothing to do with going to Stage 3 lockdowns)

We are not open to Pacific Islands right now, because most of them have no cases, and we didn't want to infect them. Auckland Airport is open to transit (max 10 hours) for people leaving the Pacific Islands and trying to get somewhere else like the USA (otherwise they would be stuck there).  There is some discussion about opening borders to Australian citizens but requiring 14 day quarantine.  This will continue in Stage 3 lockdown, but we may be moving to stage 2 in 2 weeks (or maybe 4 weeks).

[Pen]

Re Belgium:

https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/22/analysis-can-we-trust-belgium-s-covid-19-death-statistics

 

[AFwife Claire]

12 hours ago, Pen said:

If anyone needs a good book, I am enjoying http://Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393346617/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_45SPEbRQ0C4ZC

 

I have gotten to the SARS1 parts, and even though we know that SARS2  has many differences, it is fascinating. And eerie. 

 

Yes, I read that book a few years ago and thought it was excellent!  I've recommended it to a lot of other people also.

[Arcadia]

@Pen@ElizabethB

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3081772/coronavirus-why-so-few-deaths-among-singapores-14000

“Coronavirus: why so few deaths among Singapore’s 14,000 Covid-19 infections?

There are about 323,000 migrant workers living in specially dedicated dorms in Singapore. These workers are involved in jobs shunned by Singaporeans in industries such as construction, estate maintenance and manufacturing. On April 1, these dorms accounted for just 19 infections. By Sunday, April 26, they accounted for 11,419.

Because most of the infected people in these dormitories are exhibiting only mild symptoms, they are being treated in community isolation facilities instead of hospitals, freeing up beds for more severe cases.

...

Paul Tambyah, President of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection, said it would be problematic if there were more cases from nursing homes or among senior citizens as these people would require more medical care.

Five nursing homes in Singapore now have 20 Covid-19 infections among staff and residents. This compares to the 11,000 deaths in nursing homes across 36 states in the US, according to NBC News.

“Fortunately, we have a much smaller proportion of elderly people than Italy or Spain,” Tambyah said.

In Italy, almost a quarter of the population is over 65 and more than a third of the infections have been in people older than 70. Many Italian patients have needed critical care and 26,644 have died – a mortality rate of 12.9 per cent. For Singapore, the average age of the 12 deaths is 78.

Many experts believe the reason Belgium has such a high death rate – its rate of 55 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants is more than four times that of the US – is that unlike many other countries it has been including deaths at nursing homes in its statistics, even in cases where an infection wasn’t confirmed. Essentially, if a person dies in a nursing home and was showing coronavirus symptoms and had been in contact with an infected person, then they are included in the statistics.

...

Medical teams in Singapore had also learned from the experiences of other countries and adapted treatment methods, he said. For example, local media recently reported how the National Centre of Infectious Diseases, which houses most of the severe cases, was placing more patients in the prone position after a study found that patients lying face down on their stomach needed less oxygen support than those on their back.”

[lewelma]

23 minutes ago, square_25 said:

The infection fatality rates are looking like half a percent, give or take, using antibody testing. So definitely nothing like that chart. 

19 dead, 1450 cases here -- so 1.3%.  We believe that all cases (symptomatic and asymptomatic) and all deaths are known. 

However, the death rate is skewed because 10 of the 19 people are from a single nursing home that took care of very frail individuals, where some of the people were in hospice already. I believe that 7 of our 19 people were older than 90. I also believe that we have only had 3 deaths outside of nursing homes. Basically, small sample size problems. 

Edited April 28, 2020 by lewelma

[Ausmumof3]

2 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

@Pen@ElizabethB

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3081772/coronavirus-why-so-few-deaths-among-singapores-14000

“Coronavirus: why so few deaths among Singapore’s 14,000 Covid-19 infections?

There are about 323,000 migrant workers living in specially dedicated dorms in Singapore. These workers are involved in jobs shunned by Singaporeans in industries such as construction, estate maintenance and manufacturing. On April 1, these dorms accounted for just 19 infections. By Sunday, April 26, they accounted for 11,419.

Because most of the infected people in these dormitories are exhibiting only mild symptoms, they are being treated in community isolation facilities instead of hospitals, freeing up beds for more severe cases.

...

Paul Tambyah, President of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection, said it would be problematic if there were more cases from nursing homes or among senior citizens as these people would require more medical care.

Five nursing homes in Singapore now have 20 Covid-19 infections among staff and residents. This compares to the 11,000 deaths in nursing homes across 36 states in the US, according to NBC News.

“Fortunately, we have a much smaller proportion of elderly people than Italy or Spain,” Tambyah said.

In Italy, almost a quarter of the population is over 65 and more than a third of the infections have been in people older than 70. Many Italian patients have needed critical care and 26,644 have died – a mortality rate of 12.9 per cent. For Singapore, the average age of the 12 deaths is 78.

Many experts believe the reason Belgium has such a high death rate – its rate of 55 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants is more than four times that of the US – is that unlike many other countries it has been including deaths at nursing homes in its statistics, even in cases where an infection wasn’t confirmed. Essentially, if a person dies in a nursing home and was showing coronavirus symptoms and had been in contact with an infected person, then they are included in the statistics.

...

Medical teams in Singapore had also learned from the experiences of other countries and adapted treatment methods, he said. For example, local media recently reported how the National Centre of Infectious Diseases, which houses most of the severe cases, was placing more patients in the prone position after a study found that patients lying face down on their stomach needed less oxygen support than those on their back.”

I heard an interview on bbc world here where the lady was on deaths door basically.  The husband and son got called in to say goodbye.  She was fairly young and he was desperate and asked if there was anything else they could try.  The doctor explain they could try placing her in prone position but there was risk that the move would actually kill her.  It didn’t and she started improving and eventually recovered.

[Arcadia]

Schools & grading https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/coronavirus/bay-area-school-districts-grading-in-different-ways-during-pandemic/2280247/

“No A’s, B’s or C’s for thousands of South Bay students. On Monday, students in the San Jose Unified School District received an email letting them know they will either pass or fail.

The grading decision is just one of multiple being decided on by Bay Area school districts as they try to handle the challenges of grading during the coronavirus pandemic.

Los Gatos High School is giving students a choice. They can take spring semester courses credit-no credit or opt to receive grades.

Simar Malhotra is a junior taking four advanced placement classes. She opted to receive grades.

“I've worked hard all year trying to maintain my grades this year, and I'd like the colleges I applied to to see that,” she said.

Other students who have found online learning to be challenging are opting for the credit-no credit option. 

Sequoia High School in Redwood City is offering the pass-no pass option.

“Everybody is subject to kind of life-altering change from forces that they have no control over, so whether you're grieving a canceled prom or a relative, there's struggle everywhere and there's no predicting where it's going to come from," Sequoia High School Principal Sean Priest said.

Priest said the University of California system has said it won’t penalize students during the admissions process if they receive a pass-no pass during spring semester.

In San Jose, the East Side Union High School District is planning to award grades, but students can’t fall below the grade they received March 13 before the pandemic closed schools.”

[Kanin]

50 minutes ago, square_25 said:

The infection fatality rates are looking like half a percent, give or take, using antibody testing. So definitely nothing like that chart. 

Phew!!!

[Acadie]

Not sure if this has been posted yet--

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3080771/coronavirus-mutations-affect-deadliness-strains-chinese-study

Coronavirus’s ability to mutate has been vastly underestimated, and mutations affect deadliness of strains, Chinese study finds

• The most aggressive strains of Sars-CoV-2 could generate 270 times as much viral load as the least potent type
• New York may have a deadlier strain imported from Europe, compared to less deadly viruses elsewhere in the United States

[Arcadia]

24 minutes ago, Acadie said:

Not sure if this has been posted yet--

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3080771/coronavirus-mutations-affect-deadliness-strains-chinese-study

Coronavirus’s ability to mutate has been vastly underestimated, and mutations affect deadliness of strains, Chinese study finds

I did but many days ago. The study 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20060160v2.full.pdf

I have a question for you ladies about a Michigan.gov public service announcement that has been running on tv lately and I have heard our governor quote the statistic repeatedly.  They say that one person with Coronavirus can infect 40 so therefore we should all stay home.  I get the contagious bit, but does anyone have an idea where the 40 comes from?  I can’t seem to find any support for that number, but I don’t really know the best way to search. 

[Pen]

5 minutes ago, Mom2mthj said:

I have a question for you ladies about a Michigan.gov public service announcement that has been running on tv lately and I have heard our governor quote the statistic repeatedly.  They say that one person with Coronavirus can infect 40 so therefore we should all stay home.  I get the contagious bit, but does anyone have an idea where the 40 comes from?  I can’t seem to find any support for that number, but I don’t really know the best way to search. 

 

Yes. “Superspreaders” do that.  I can’t recall exact numbers typically for “superspreaders”— but clearly a lot has to do with how many people they are able to interact with.  Social people clearly tend to be superspreaders more than hermits.

For example: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/coronavirus-westport-connecticut-party-zero.html

 

[Lecka]

I saw a graphic showing that one person might only directly infect two people, but those two people will infect two more people, etc, so one person not being infected could lead to a lot of people not being infected.  
 

That is what I would think of.  

[Lecka]

Like this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/health/coronavirus-distancing-transmission.amp.html

Edited April 28, 2020 by Lecka

[Ausmumof3]

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/nhs-warns-of-rise-in-children-with-new-illness-that-may-be-linked-to-coronavirus?__twitter_impression=true
 

I’m not 100pc today (headache and sore throat that hopefully isn’t anything to do with COVID19) but wondering if anyone can make sense of this.  I think I could work it out if I was feeling better 

i can’t figure out if it’s saying Kawasaki syndrome is something the kids already had and that COVID made it more complicated or if the COVID is causing it.

1 minute ago, square_25 said:

It's definitely not the average number, but there are absolutely people who have infected that many... I think the woman in South Korea who really started the major outbreak did that. 

I get the idea of a super spreader and if you are constantly hanging out in big groups you will naturally have the potential to infect more people than a hermit.  But for a government public service advertisement say 1:40 and then they will infect others (I don’t know that they explicitly said those would each infect 40, but graphics implied it wasn’t just some rare person infecting that many) seems like something that should have some data behind it.

[Arcadia]

2 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/nhs-warns-of-rise-in-children-with-new-illness-that-may-be-linked-to-coronavirus?__twitter_impression=true
 

I’m not 100pc today (headache and sore throat that hopefully isn’t anything to do with COVID19) but wondering if anyone can make sense of this.  I think I could work it out if I was feeling better 

i can’t figure out if it’s saying Kawasaki syndrome is something the kids already had and that COVID made it more complicated or if the COVID is causing it.

 

I am also reading about this but on CNA. It seems that the Kawasaki-like symptoms might be because of COVID.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/doctors-explore-covid-19-link-child-inflammatory-kawasaki-12682562

“LONDON: Italian and British medical experts are investigating a possible link between the COVID-19 pandemic and clusters of severe inflammatory disease among infants who are arriving in hospital with high fevers and swollen arteries.

Doctors in northern Italy, one of the world's hardest-hit areas during the pandemic, have reported extraordinarily large numbers of children under the age of nine with severe cases of what appears to be Kawasaki disease, more common in parts of Asia.

 

In Britain, doctors have made similar observations, prompting Health Secretary Matt Hancock to tell a coronavirus news briefing on Monday that he was "very worried" and that medical authorities were looking at the issue closely.

In the United States, a leading paediatric society says it has yet to see something similar.

England's national medical director, Stephen Powis, told the British briefing he had become aware of reports of severely ill children with Kawasaki-like symptoms in the past few days but stressed it was too early to determine a link with the coronavirus.

"I've asked the national clinical director for children and young people to look into this as a matter of urgency. ... We're not sure at the moment," Powis said.

In Italy, paediatricians are also alarmed.

A hospital in the northern town of Bergamo has seen more than 20 cases of severe vascular inflammation in the past month, six times as many as it would expect to see in a year, said paediatric heart specialist Matteo Ciuffreda.

Ciuffreda, of the Giovanni XXIII hospital, said only a few of the infants with vascular inflammation had tested positive for the new coronavirus, but paediatric cardiologists in Madrid and Lisbon had told him they had seen similar cases.

He has called on his colleagues to document every such case to determine if there is a correlation between Kawasaki disease and COVID-19. He aims to publish the results of the Italian research in a scientific journal.”

2 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Well, does it say "you will infect 40 people" or "you may infect 40 people"? 

Oh it says may, but I want to know how they came up with 40...not 35, not 50, etc.  It is just airing frequently and she quotes 40 all the time so I was wondering if there was some study that someone was aware of that I can’t locate.  It sends you to the state website, but I can’t find anything in regards to the numbers they are quoting, just symptoms and that sort of thing about the virus.

[Corraleno]

11 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/nhs-warns-of-rise-in-children-with-new-illness-that-may-be-linked-to-coronavirus?__twitter_impression=true
 

I’m not 100pc today (headache and sore throat that hopefully isn’t anything to do with COVID19) but wondering if anyone can make sense of this.  I think I could work it out if I was feeling better 

i can’t figure out if it’s saying Kawasaki syndrome is something the kids already had and that COVID made it more complicated or if the COVID is causing it.

The way I read it is that they believe at least some of the cases may have been caused by CV19, and in the cases where the test was negative, they thought the children might have already cleared the virus. Kawasaki syndrome is basically a just constellation of symptoms that appear together, they don't really know what causes it. So it seems likely that the inflammatory response may be in reaction to CV19 in these cases.

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, square_25 said:

I also don't think you have any young people dead at all, right?

of the 19 dead:  2 in their 60s (one of these was very ill already). 8 in their 70s. 5 in their 80s. 4 in their 90s.

[Corraleno]

5 minutes ago, Mom2mthj said:

Oh it says may, but I want to know how they came up with 40...not 35, not 50, etc.  It is just airing frequently and she quotes 40 all the time so I was wondering if there was some study that someone was aware of that I can’t locate.  It sends you to the state website, but I can’t find anything in regards to the numbers they are quoting, just symptoms and that sort of thing about the virus.

Early reports about the super spreader in SK used the phrase "nearly 40" a lot — the initial reports were 37-38, although the total ended up being much higher. The choir meeting in Washington state infected 45 people. There have been several other cases in that same ballpark, so I think 40 was a nice round number with multiple cases clustering around it.

[Ausmumof3]

31 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

 

I am also reading about this but on CNA. It seems that the Kawasaki-like symptoms might be because of COVID.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/doctors-explore-covid-19-link-child-inflammatory-kawasaki-12682562

“LONDON: Italian and British medical experts are investigating a possible link between the COVID-19 pandemic and clusters of severe inflammatory disease among infants who are arriving in hospital with high fevers and swollen arteries.

Doctors in northern Italy, one of the world's hardest-hit areas during the pandemic, have reported extraordinarily large numbers of children under the age of nine with severe cases of what appears to be Kawasaki disease, more common in parts of Asia.

 

In Britain, doctors have made similar observations, prompting Health Secretary Matt Hancock to tell a coronavirus news briefing on Monday that he was "very worried" and that medical authorities were looking at the issue closely.

In the United States, a leading paediatric society says it has yet to see something similar.

England's national medical director, Stephen Powis, told the British briefing he had become aware of reports of severely ill children with Kawasaki-like symptoms in the past few days but stressed it was too early to determine a link with the coronavirus.

"I've asked the national clinical director for children and young people to look into this as a matter of urgency. ... We're not sure at the moment," Powis said.

In Italy, paediatricians are also alarmed.

A hospital in the northern town of Bergamo has seen more than 20 cases of severe vascular inflammation in the past month, six times as many as it would expect to see in a year, said paediatric heart specialist Matteo Ciuffreda.

Ciuffreda, of the Giovanni XXIII hospital, said only a few of the infants with vascular inflammation had tested positive for the new coronavirus, but paediatric cardiologists in Madrid and Lisbon had told him they had seen similar cases.

He has called on his colleagues to document every such case to determine if there is a correlation between Kawasaki disease and COVID-19. He aims to publish the results of the Italian research in a scientific journal.”

Thank you.  

[Arcadia]

@mathnerd

video in link. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/local-3/broadcom-employees-return-to-work-during-shelter-at-home-order/2280349/

“Broadcom Employees Return to Work During Shelter-at-Home Order

Defying the stay-at-home order. That’s what non-essential employees at a prominent Silicon Valley tech company said their bosses are telling them to do.”

Edited April 28, 2020 by Arcadia

[Ausmumof3]

Anyone seen the video by the two doctors floating around social media claiming its all wrong and way more widespread with a death rate close to flu.  It’s making me more cranky than I already am with the headache!  They took the percentage of positive tests from their er and extrapolated it to the entire population.  And everyone is nodding along and saying see we need to open up now.  

[Paige]

On 4/26/2020 at 10:39 PM, lewelma said:

Well, it is done. Elimination in NZ.  Just listened to the conference, and the PM and Director of Health said that on the eve of lifting the level 4 lockdown and moving to level 3 tomorrow, we have eliminated Covid19. Elimination from an epidemiological standpoint is not eradication (the extinction in a region), rather it is where *all* cases are known, tracked, and managed. For the past week, we have had all new cases in known clusters and in single digits (today it was 1 confirmed). Zero positive cases in 6000 tests each day of asymptomatic people for the past week.  Borders locked with all returning kiwis in guarded quarantine facilities for 14 days. Contact tracing ramped up to be able to handle 10,000 calls/day.

So tomorrow we loosen our lockdown.  We will now be able to shop on line and have carry out!  Whoo Hoo!  However, for 2 more weeks at least, we will all be working from home unless you cannot work from home (construction workers, cooks, plumbers, gardeners, online-shops filling orders etc). And now we will be allowed to swim, surf, mountain bike, play tennis, golf, hunt! But still no boating, quad bikes, or driving out of your locality. Schools have opened for essential workers or families who need them.  But the PM has asked for anyone who can keep their kids home to do so.  My 1st-grade teacher friend helped her school call all the families and they will have 8 kids out of 210 attend next week.  All other families are doing as asked, and continuing to stay home! We are allowed to enlarge our bubble now to include a caregiver, isolated individuals, or partners who live separately.  But it must stay exclusive. We have been asked to track all people we come in contact with each day to help with contact tracing if required.  These rules are for our LOWER level lockdown!

In 2-4 weeks, we will completely open back up but with restrictions on the size of gatherings and continued border closure. 

 

Your loosening of the lockdown seems tighter than our regular lockdowns. 

1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/nhs-warns-of-rise-in-children-with-new-illness-that-may-be-linked-to-coronavirus?__twitter_impression=true
 

I’m not 100pc today (headache and sore throat that hopefully isn’t anything to do with COVID19) but wondering if anyone can make sense of this.  I think I could work it out if I was feeling better 

i can’t figure out if it’s saying Kawasaki syndrome is something the kids already had and that COVID made it more complicated or if the COVID is causing it.

Kawasaki is pretty unusual right? I read it as it's likely related to covid, and maybe the covid testing is giving false negatives in kids, or it could be an unrelated cause (but that's really unlikely). 

[mathnerd]

29 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

@mathnerd

video in link. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/local-3/broadcom-employees-return-to-work-during-shelter-at-home-order/2280349/

“Broadcom Employees Return to Work During Shelter-at-Home Order

Defying the stay-at-home order. That’s what non-essential employees at a prominent Silicon Valley tech company said their bosses are telling them to do.”

I have friends who work there who have been complaining about it for a few days now. Apparently, if they do not show up, they will be considered to be on PTO.

[SoCal_Bear]

43 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Anyone seen the video by the two doctors floating around social media claiming its all wrong and way more widespread with a death rate close to flu.  It’s making me more cranky than I already am with the headache!  They took the percentage of positive tests from their er and extrapolated it to the entire population.  And everyone is nodding along and saying see we need to open up now.  

Youtube pulled that video as fake news. Though it has really gone viral. Their math is driving me nutty and irritated as well. They also tried to extrapolate the postiive test rate from testing being done to be the infected population, then they took the total number of deaths and divided it by their extrapolated infected population to tell people that was the risk of dying from Covid 19. Math and understanding math is so important! 

[SoCal_Bear]

This was a really good look at Sweden. I especially liked the more detailed information regarding population density compared to other Nordic countries. 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/28/europe/sweden-coronavirus-lockdown-strategy-intl/index.html

[Arcadia]

29 minutes ago, mathnerd said:

I have friends who work there who have been complaining about it for a few days now. Apparently, if they do not show up, they will be considered to be on PTO.

My husband’s dept (other than the lab technicians) are working longer hours to get less work done just because it’s less efficient for them to work from home. So I won’t be surprised if the “performance bonus” portion of their pay gets decreased or eliminated. 

However, that is different from Broadcom asking non essential employees to work. https://coloradosun.com/2020/04/23/broadcom-colorado-covid-coronavirus-work/

[Ausmumof3]

14 minutes ago, calbear said:

Youtube pulled that video as fake news. Though it has really gone viral. Their math is driving me nutty and irritated as well. They also tried to extrapolate the postiive test rate from testing being done to be the infected population, then they took the total number of deaths and divided it by their extrapolated infected population to tell people that was the risk of dying from Covid 19. Math and understanding math is so important! 

Yes this was what was making me crabby!  Also given that they are doctors presumably that have a decent education in math.  I’m trying hard to think they just got it wrong but I’m afraid they were being deliberately deceptive.

[Ausmumof3]

16 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

People keep sharing this on the neighborhood FB group. I've seen some discussion about it on Twitter. Consensus is that it's flawed. I think it might have been pulled from Youtube today which will end up giving more credence to it. 

I haven't watched it though. 

And yes.  As soon as it is censored and the medical community comes out to critique it it’s going to achieve gospel status that it’s all a conspiracy to cover up.  But if you fight it with better information people will just shut off with “well all the experts disagree, so we just listen to the ones that we agree with”.

[SoCal_Bear]

Critique about those two doctors:
https://calmatters.org/health/2020/04/debunking-bakersfield-doctors-covid-spread-conclusions/?fbclid=IwAR0AKTAdyUUaFIW97rjPGv5eNsb0ebXLZUIqs5clHFix8eSK7blXrfDsA9E

 

[TravelingChris]

18 hours ago, Pen said:

If anyone needs a good book, I am enjoying http://Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393346617/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_45SPEbRQ0C4ZC

 

I have gotten to the SARS1 parts, and even though we know that SARS2  has many differences, it is fascinating. And eerie. 

 

When we lived in New Mexico,  from 99 to 03, there were many weird diseases reported (hanta virus, plague, tuleremia, Rocky Mountain Spotted fever, etc, etc) and I read a lot about the infectious diseases.  And then, of course, that was the era of the anthrax attacks. 

[Ausmumof3]

In SA - 6 days of 0 cases.  14 active cases left in the state.

[Ausmumof3]

12 new cases in all of Australia and only 1 of them community transmission today.

at this point I kind of home we go for elimination and longer term border closures.

[Ausmumof3]

google translate of an article on a preprint is a study from VO Italy.   Shows 43pc asymptomatic but just as contagious as symptomatic.  Estimates around 4.4 pc have been exposed to the infection and it arrived in late January.  No infections in kids under 10

https://www.infodata.ilsole24ore.com/2020/04/26/covid-19-43-dei-positivi-asintomatico-lo-studio-vo/

the link to the original article is here - it’s in Italian but there’s some graphs etc 

google translate has tampons but tampon is test in Italian 

 

On April 16 the "Vo study" was published in preprint (ie as a draft, not in a scientific journal that provides for Peew Review), which reports the results of the analysis conducted by a large team of epidemiologists from the Veneto Region on the country Padua of Vo 'Euganeo, the first country in Veneto where the first case of death was officially detected with / for Coronavirus on 21 February 2020. Vo' experience is interesting to analyze because it allows you to study a closed community, since that the country was quarantined well before the various regional and national lockdowns almost three weeks later.

In Vo 'swabs were performed on almost all citizens (85.9% in the first Survey and 76.1% in the second), which means having a well-defined denominator on which to then report on the number of symptoms, asymptomatic, hospitalizations, ICU hospitalizations.

We know well (even if we are sometimes led to forget it) that in the rest of Italy the data, starting from those on cases, must be taken with pliers precisely because we do not have the data on how widespread the virus really is among the population. This is because first of all no region has been able to perform tampons on almost the entire population, and in any case the difference in the rate of tampons per population between regions is enormous. The Veneto Region, for example, performed the same number of swabs as Lombardy despite having half the inhabitants. Piedmont has fewer inhabitants than Veneto but has made just over a third of the swabs.

Prevalence

Scientists collected information on demography, clinical presentation, hospitalization, contact network and presence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in nasopharyngeal swabs on a total of 2,812 and 2,343 people respectively, homogeneously with respect to age groups.

In the first survey 73 out of 2,812 people were positive, in the second 29 out of 2,343 subjects, with only 8 people new cases. Keep in mind that as of today (April 20) the sum of Vo 'positives has stopped at 87 total cases, a sign that the containment measures have paid off. In percentage terms, these are prevalences of 2.6% and 1.2% respectively. The authors estimate that the virus's R0 reproduction rate corresponded to 3 in the first week and then dropped to 0.14 (much less than the fateful threshold value of 1, which means that each positive infects another) at the end of the lockdown.

The model therefore estimates that 4.4% of the Vo 'population must have been exposed to the infection and that the virus probably arrived in Vo' in the second half of January.

43% were asymptomatic, but equally contagious

A central finding that emerges from the study is that almost half of the infected, 43.2% in the two surveys were asymptomatic. Furthermore, no statistically significant difference in the viral load of infections was identified between those who presented symptoms and those who did not. In short, it does not seem that those who present symptoms are more contagious than those who do not present them, on the contrary: even the symptoms were contagious well before the symptoms presented themselves.

How did the "new infected" get infected during the lockdown?

A crucial aspect in this sampling was the tracing of the contacts of the new infected cases by reconstructing the transmission chain. It emerged that most of the new infections in the second of the two revelations were infected in the community before the blockade or asymptomatic infections living in the same family.

The study details the characteristics of the 8 cases of new infections between the two surveys (5 of which are asymptomatic), thanks to the tracing of the transmission chain:

Case 1: it was not possible to understand where the infection occurred;

Case 2: had contact with four non-symptomatic family members before the lockdown;

Case 3: had contact with two symptomatic people before the lockdown;

Cases 4 and 6: lived with symptomatic positive family members;

Case 5: reported contacts with asymptomatics before the lockdown;

Case 7: it was not possible to understand where the infection occurred;

Case 8: lives with two asymptomatic positive family members.

Children and the elderly

234 children aged 0 to 10 were tested and none of them tested positive for the virus even though only 13 of them lived in families with positive people. "This does not mean that we can conclude that children do not risk getting sick," the authors specify in the conclusions. "Nasopharyngeal swabs test the virus in activity in the individual, but not if they have been exposed to it. For this, serological tests are needed, which will also better clarify how the infection develops in children. "

In the under 50 group the prevalence of positives is slightly lower (1.2% and 1.7%) while in the older population groups the percentages are higher.

Of the 81 positive cases between the two surveys, 14 people requested hospitalization, that is 17%. The small sample does not allow for particularly significant analyzes with respect to the impact by age group or comorbid conditions. In fact, the authors specify that they have not found statistically relevant correlations in this regard.

We generalize the measures, rather than the estimates

How far can we generalize Vo 'results? At the moment we do not know, because the transmission chains are not yet clear in the most affected regions. The authors make this clear in the opening disclaimer: "This article reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and therefore should not be used to guide clinical practice."

What we can say is that the incubation period observed in this community (average of 6.9 days) is in line with what was found in Lombard models and in other areas of Italy, as well as estimates on the rapidity of evolution of R0, confirming a doubling time of 3-4- days, both among the symptomatic and among the asymptomatic.

"Our analysis suggests that at least 4.4% of Vo 'citizens have been exposed to the virus and that the measures we have introduced have shown an effectiveness never recorded in other areas of Italy, showing that the infection can be stop. How? Enhancing the early detection of cases where there still seems to be no contagion ".