wuhan - coronavirus

[TracyP]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

What I wonder is, how representative is “conspiratorial thinking” ordinarily? Like, I wonder if the existence of social media, the rise in opinion-based “news” shows, and the factionalizing of the American public has made conspiratorial thinking much worse in this pandemic than in past...let’s call them “significant issues.” I guess there isn’t even very much to compare it to, because we haven’t had something that’s a BFD on this scale in...a long time? In my lifetime? Not that affected the entire world...

I know some people who always see a conspiracy... in everything. 🙄 But when I read through that article, I see confusion. 

This article talks about how 30% of people are wrong for believing there is a vaccine being withheld. Then it goes on to link to an article where volunteers are getting the second round of a COVID vaccine. This is not contradictory to me, but I bet it is to much of that 30%.

We have the perfect storm right now. A lot of reporting is sloppy and biased. (Funny enough, the linked article is a prime example, imo.) Factual information has been hard to come by because there have been so many unknowns. That is completely understandable in the beginning of an outbreak, but I think it leaves people unsure who to trust. Messaging from the top has been inconsistent, to put it kindly. 

In my bubble, the conspiratorial thinking people are the same ones as always. For the others (the ones who are straddling the line between conspiracy theory and plain old confusion) I think social media and opinion based "news" have made it so much worse. I think at the end of the day, though, these people accept facts when they become more established and those percentages go way down. So I guess I'm saying that while I think those things have made it harder for individuals to sort out the truth, the number of true conpiracy theorists remains about the same as always.

[Joker]

7 hours ago, MissLemon said:

 

It won't surprise me to hear that it was in many, if not most, US states in late December/early January. We knew a lot of people that were down with something really nasty in January.  One of my son's classes was cancelled for 3 weeks because the instructor's family was very ill with something they picked up during holiday travels.  I know that everyone says "it's a bad flu year" every year, but this year was one that I actually took notice of how many people were down with something really ugly.  Makes one wonder...

Yes, ds’ university has an awful flu after winter break but we’re now hearing how many didn’t actually test positive but were assumed to have the flu. The university even stepped in so professors would excuse the students’ absences it was so wide spread. I would not be surprised at all if it was there due to so many students traveling, including international students. 

[busymama7]

54 minutes ago, kdsuomi said:

Not surprising to most of us

Earlier on this board, the consensus seemed to be that there is no way it was around sooner because there wasn't a rush of hospitalizations and deaths.  Also,since so many negative test results came early on when they were only testing symptomatic or contacts, that was also pointing towards that it hadn't been here sooner.  

[Guest]

50 minutes ago, busymama7 said:

Earlier on this board, the consensus seemed to be that there is no way it was around sooner because there wasn't a rush of hospitalizations and deaths.  Also,since so many negative test results came early on when they were only testing symptomatic or contacts, that was also pointing towards that it hadn't been here sooner.  

I still think this. My husband is one of the people who fell ill at Christmas time. He was sick for ~3 days, mostly with a fever and fatigue. I am still of the mind that it makes no sense for that to have been COVID-19, in December, on the east coast of the US. Everyone in my household got varying degrees of sick - except me. Only dd and I had gotten a flu shot. My husband thinks he had COVID. I think he had the flu. (Also, my youngest also got sick and he is not in the category of people likely to get sick from COVID. Not saying it couldn’t happen, only that I think it improbable.) 

To me, if it had been COVID, why didn’t it spread in the community? Why was nobody going to the hospital with respiratory distress? Why didn’t the large majority of people we had Christmas parties with get sick? How did ~50 people come to my house for Christmas yet nobody/few people got sick? 

I just expect COVID to spread and behave differently from that. 

[Joker]

4 minutes ago, Quill said:

I still think this. My husband is one of the people who fell ill at Christmas time. He was sick for ~3 days, mostly with a fever and fatigue. I am still of the mind that it makes no sense for that to have been COVID-19, in December, on the east coast of the US. Everyone in my household got varying degrees of sick - except me. Only dd and I had gotten a flu shot. My husband thinks he had COVID. I think he had the flu. (Also, my youngest also got sick and he is not in the category of people likely to get sick from COVID. Not saying it couldn’t happen, only that I think it improbable.) 

To me, if it had been COVID, why didn’t it spread in the community? Why was nobody going to the hospital with respiratory distress? Why didn’t the large majority of people we had Christmas parties with get sick? How did ~50 people come to my house for Christmas yet nobody/few people got sick? 

I just expect COVID to spread and behave differently from that. 

I don’t see many thinking it was here in December but many don’t think it was really widespread in January either. The illnesses I heard of happening on campuses here after winter break sound very much like the virus. It makes sense especially with all the holiday travel, including international students and travel. I’ve definitely changed my mind on how early it could have been circulating and think by January it was definitely in many places.
 

I really wish we had widespread and accurate antibody testing. 

[SKL]

If it's true that symptoms were showing up in January, then to me, that suggests that the virus is even less dangerous than is currently believed.  Either it spread fast and most people didn't get noticeably sick, or it doesn't generally spread as easily as people think.  Or maybe it was just an "early strain" that didn't spread as fast as later ones.

Then again, could it be a false positives situation ....

It wouldn't be the first piece of info the Ohio folks got wrong ....

[RootAnn]

I will link no news articles on this, but I have been informed that there are many (operating) nuclear plants throughout the country that have employees who have tested positive for COVID-19. No need to freak out because they are still operating safely.

I'm surprised there haven't been a bunch of news articles splashed all over. (There are some but I had to go looking.)

Carry on.

[EmseB]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

I still think this. My husband is one of the people who fell ill at Christmas time. He was sick for ~3 days, mostly with a fever and fatigue. I am still of the mind that it makes no sense for that to have been COVID-19, in December, on the east coast of the US. Everyone in my household got varying degrees of sick - except me. Only dd and I had gotten a flu shot. My husband thinks he had COVID. I think he had the flu. (Also, my youngest also got sick and he is not in the category of people likely to get sick from COVID. Not saying it couldn’t happen, only that I think it improbable.) 

To me, if it had been COVID, why didn’t it spread in the community? Why was nobody going to the hospital with respiratory distress? Why didn’t the large majority of people we had Christmas parties with get sick? How did ~50 people come to my house for Christmas yet nobody/few people got sick? 

I just expect COVID to spread and behave differently from that. 

So in my area, talking to the one doc I know at the local clinic (meaning anecdote, so grain of salt and all that) he said he *was* seeing a lot more respiratory patients than normal and they weren't testing positive for the flu (or at least not all of them). He said he *was* sending more people to the hospital for low o2 sats. He said the patients he sent to the hospital had broad panels run to try to find what bug they had and it wasn't a bug they could ID. So he has been wondering for months (since it was IDd) if that was it. Even in enclosed spaces, infection rate seems to be about 1 in 5 people, right?

Separate from that, another thing is that I have entertained a thought experiment where, what if we didn't know? What if we didn't know sars2 existed? What would things look like? What would restrictions look like? Would we be investigating a late, heavy flu season? If I knew there was a bad bug going around that really hit hard in NY but I didn't know it was THE Covid, would I be keeping my kids from playing with the neighbors? Would I be avoiding going in stores? I was already highly anxious all winter because of the bugs going around. From what I understand, all the extra field hospitals and ventilators even in hard hit areas went way under utilized. I'm not saying it wouldn't have been recognized as a public health crisis. I just wonder how it would have played out if it wasn't a specific thing. Would we have closed schools here based on what happened in Italy and NY? I kind of doubt it. I know the pushback I'm about to receive for posting this idea about how distancing and closings worked. I'm not sure if that's the case here because I don't think a large wave, if it is coming, is here yet, and I'm not saying we shouldn't have done what we did, I just wonder how much of what we (non medical general public) think and how we react is based on reporting and tracking every single case and death due to one specific cause daily. I'm not saying this is a conspiracy theory or not real, just for the record.

Edited May 12, 2020 by EmseB

[Pen]

2 hours ago, busymama7 said:

Earlier on this board, the consensus seemed to be that there is no way it was around sooner because there wasn't a rush of hospitalizations and deaths.  Also,since so many negative test results came early on when they were only testing symptomatic or contacts, that was also pointing towards that it hadn't been here sooner.  

 

For my area there were people with CV19 symptoms who had been in Italy etc. and may well have had it but could not be tested because only China qualified at that time. 

However, I think most of the people in my area who think they had CV19 already back in January probably did not.  

Our health department said there was a very bad strain of something else — an adenovirus perhaps — at that time. 

Edited May 12, 2020 by Pen

[mathnerd]

2 hours ago, busymama7 said:

Earlier on this board, the consensus seemed to be that there is no way it was around sooner because there wasn't a rush of hospitalizations and deaths.  Also,since so many negative test results came early on when they were only testing symptomatic or contacts, that was also pointing towards that it hadn't been here sooner.  

 

19 minutes ago, kdsuomi said:

Many were saying it was definitely here earlier. Some vocal detractors wouldn't listen, though, because we didn't have heavy ventilator use. My area still hasn't had high ICU admissions, so that isn't the end all be all number. (We had higher than normal hospitalizations in December and January, though. These people did not have flu, and many had "weird" chest x-rays.)

It was definitely here (in Santa Clara county) as soon as it got to epidemic proportion in Wuhan. There are tons of families from Wuhan who live here and their grandparents, cousins etc travel back and forth all the time. 

Because ICU's were not overflowing people are certain that we did not have it. 

[rebcoola]

17 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

I will link no news articles on this, but I have been informed that there are many (operating) nuclear plants throughout the country that have employees who have tested positive for COVID-19. No need to freak out because they are still operating safely.

I'm surprised there haven't been a bunch of news articles splashed all over. (There are some but I had to go looking.)

Carry on.

My DH works in a nuclear power plant.  I can tell you it is challenging but they also all have very specific protocols for everything!!!  Seriously they have a dozen backup plans.  I wouldn't worry about them much.  Our has thousands of workers in general but only about 2 dozen are actually essential to keeping the plant online.  Yes they have had a positive but it was non- essential personal.  The whole crew was sent home for two weeks and they will be looking at their protocols and adjusting as needed.  This positive was not a big surprise as they had just allowed non-essentials back on site.  I'm not worried in the slightest about the plant being shutdown.  My only worry is them going to crazy strict protocols that may keep my DH away from us. 

[Spryte]

Locally, mid-Atlantic east coast, I just read an article about a first responder who tested positive for antibodies and was very sick in Jan.  No idea if he was asymptomatic, or if he actually had it in our area in Jan.

It made me wonder.  We had some nasty bugs going around this winter, but I still don’t really think it was Covid.  I suppose it’s possible.  Our family was sick most of Dec (too early, though DH did travel internationally), and again in Jan.  By sick, I mean sick for weeks at a time with negative flu and strep tests and multiple trips to doctors for all of us, each time.

At one point, late Jan, I took DH to urgent care and we waited 3 hours to be seen.  I have never seen so many very sick people.    It’s all a blur, but I think we had another round of illness in Feb. It was a bad winter. 

[73349]

I was just playing with the numbers a bit on a spreadsheet with a hypothetical community with one infected person entering. Even if there's only one hospital (generally not true in cities), and all sick people have similar symptoms (which seem to vary a fair bit with this infection) and those severe enough go to that one hospital, I don't see numbers that would sound any alarm bells within the first month, even with > 350 people getting infected. You get *maybe* 3 or 4 deaths in that span unless there's a cluster of vulnerable people (e.g., nursing home)--by no means enough to get attention, especially in winter, especially with people over 60 most affected. But in a city of, say, half a million or a million people, this is such a tiny percentage that it's ridiculous to suggest this makes a difference in herd immunity, right?

It will be very interesting to see when cities can identify their earliest cases from retained samples.

[RootAnn]

31 minutes ago, rebcoola said:

  Our has thousands of workers in general but only about 2 dozen are actually essential to keeping the plant online. I'm not worried in the slightest about the plant being shutdown.  My only worry is them going to crazy strict protocols that may keep my DH away from us. 

My Dh works at one, too. The plan was originally to keep the essential workers onsite but that would have cost too much. I love the current way they are set up & will miss going back to normal. (I have DH home more this way.) They are talking about starting to go back to normal but haven't started the process yet.  DH's plant has had no official positives (and there has only been one official positive so far in my county) so I figured none had. 

I'm interested in how they are going to run a refueling outage -- which is coming up for DH's plant this fall. Hundreds of workers come in specifically to help with maintenance activities while the plant is shut down. Quarantine them for two weeks? I'm just not sure how it will work, but I know other plants are already doing it. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, EmseB said:

So in my area, talking to the one doc I know at the local clinic (meaning anecdote, so grain of salt and all that) he said he *was* seeing a lot more respiratory patients than normal and they weren't testing positive for the flu (or at least not all of them). He said he *was* sending more people to the hospital for low o2 sats. He said the patients he sent to the hospital had broad panels run to try to find what bug they had and it wasn't a bug they could ID. So he has been wondering for months (since it was IDd) if that was it. Even in enclosed spaces, infection rate seems to be about 1 in 5 people, right?

Separate from that, another thing is that I have entertained a thought experiment where, what if we didn't know? What if we didn't know sars2 existed? What would things look like? What would restrictions look like? Would we be investigating a late, heavy flu season? If I knew there was a bad bug going around that really hit hard in NY but I didn't know it was THE Covid, would I be keeping my kids from playing with the neighbors? Would I be avoiding going in stores? I was already highly anxious all winter because of the bugs going around. From what I understand, all the extra field hospitals and ventilators even in hard hit areas went way under utilized. I'm not saying it wouldn't have been recognized as a public health crisis. I just wonder how it would have played out if it wasn't a specific thing. Would we have closed schools here based on what happened in Italy and NY? I kind of doubt it. I know the pushback I'm about to receive for posting this idea about how distancing and closings worked. I'm not sure if that's the case here because I don't think a large wave, if it is coming, is here yet, and I'm not saying we shouldn't have done what we did, I just wonder how much of what we (non medical general public) think and how we react is based on reporting and tracking every single case and death due to one specific cause daily. I'm not saying this is a conspiracy theory or not real, just for the record.

Well, I do think your thought experiment is interesting to ponder. However, I am inclined to think if we weren’t looking for COVID and there was “just” a bad bug going around and also really effing up certain regions, it would simply *have* to be noticed. Seeing how even back in 1918, there were people who said, “woah. This is not normal.” (I am currently listening to The Great Influenza, so it informs some of my thinking.) 

So, say we didn’t close anything. Kids continued to go to school, people kept having birthday parties, weddings, funerals, St. Patrick’s Day parades. Baseball season had started as expected; people still flew all over and went to Disney and got on cruise ships. I just can’t see how this “bad bug” could stay under the radar. Chances are, nearly all of us would know someone - probably several people - who are/were quite sick. And most of us would probably know of at least a “friend of a friend” who died of COVID. 

I don’t know. I do wonder if it could be “mutating more deadly” or whatever. 

[73349]

It's the exponential growth that finally gets attention; it just takes quite a while (I'm still filling in hypothetical numbers, but it's not likely to be in the first 5 weeks in a city) to get to a level where the ER staff are like, "What the hell??" and some time after that before there's an organized response like closing schools, courts, community centers, libraries, etc.

Without widespread closures and travel limitations, though, more and more places would be getting there (well-run places deciding first that they've hit a tipping point with illness even if they don't know why or think it's a new strain of influenza gone wild).

The ease of communication (e.g., medical journals publishing online) ensures that once a certain number of areas are heavily affected, less-affected areas' leadership will see that something is going on. Even in 1918, newspapers and telegraph meant that people in Chicago could find out quickly that there was a situation in Philadelphia, even if many people had never traveled that far in their lives.

[Kanin]

1 hour ago, EmseB said:

Separate from that, another thing is that I have entertained a thought experiment where, what if we didn't know? What if we didn't know sars2 existed? What would things look like? What would restrictions look like? Would we be investigating a late, heavy flu season? If I knew there was a bad bug going around that really hit hard in NY but I didn't know it was THE Covid, would I be keeping my kids from playing with the neighbors? Would I be avoiding going in stores? I was already highly anxious all winter because of the bugs going around. From what I understand, all the extra field hospitals and ventilators even in hard hit areas went way under utilized. I'm not saying it wouldn't have been recognized as a public health crisis. I just wonder how it would have played out if it wasn't a specific thing. Would we have closed schools here based on what happened in Italy and NY? I kind of doubt it.

I wonder this, too. Add the 24/7 media to humans' pretty shoddy ability to accurately judge risk, and who knows! I would love to find out that this is a major overreaction, that would be the best outcome 🙂 

[Matryoshka]

8 minutes ago, Mainer said:

I wonder this, too. Add the 24/7 media to humans' pretty shoddy ability to accurately judge risk, and who knows! I would love to find out that this is a major overreaction, that would be the best outcome 🙂 

Sadly, I think the 'shoddy ability to accurately judge risk' is in the other direction.  The people doing the math, who are the ones good at accurately judging risk, are the ones sounding the alarms.  The folks leading the charge saying everything's fine are in the main part science and reality deniers (I'm not saying everyone leaning that way is, I'm talking the loudest voices, gun-toting, yelling, capital-invading, conspiracy-video making types) - so I tend to lean toward the mathy, reality-based, extensively trained folk over the ostriches.  The reason so many places aren't seeing the problem right now is because they got shut down before it got out of hand.  But that doesn't mean if things hadn't shut down that the numbers would have been wrong, or that if you go back to 'normal' that they won't end up there later.

Here's what's been passing through my mind with all this "people are done!" with being restricted in their movements - have none of them watched any zombie shows?  What if the folks on the Walking Dead said "I am so done with zombies!  I'm sick of sitting inside this boarded-up house!  I'm going out!"  Then we all scream at the TV that the zombies are still out there, and they get their brains eaten.  Yeah, it's like that.   The virus is still out there.  Except it's invisible - and you can't shoot it in the head.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Matryoshka

[rebcoola]

37 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

 

I'm interested in how they are going to run a refueling outage -- which is coming up for DH's plant this fall. Hundreds of workers come in specifically to help with maintenance activities while the plant is shut down. Quarantine them for two weeks? I'm just not sure how it will work, but I know other plants are already doing it. 

I'm super curious how they will handle an outage.  We had ours last year.  When they finally did some work last week for the first time since March they had 3 system outages.  

[EmseB]

39 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

Sadly, I think the 'shoddy ability to accurately judge risk' is in the other direction.  The people doing the math, who are the ones good at accurately judging risk, are the ones sounding the alarms.  The folks leading the charge saying everything's fine are in the main part science and reality deniers (I'm not saying everyone leaning that way is, I'm talking the loudest voices, gun-toting, yelling, capital-invading, conspiracy-video making types) - so I tend to lean toward the mathy, reality-based, extensively trained folk over the ostriches.  The reason so many places aren't seeing the problem right now is because they got shut down before it got out of hand.  But that doesn't mean if things hadn't shut down that the numbers would have been wrong, or that if you go back to 'normal' that they won't end up there later.

Here's what's been passing through my mind with all this "people are done!" with being restricted in their movements - have none of them watched any zombie shows?  What if the folks on the Walking Dead said "I am so done with zombies!  I'm sick of sitting inside this boarded-up house!  I'm going out!"  Then we all scream at the TV that the zombies are still out there, and they get their brains eaten.  Yeah, it's like that.   The virus is still out there.  Except it's invisible - and you can't shoot it in the head.

Yes, I'm not so much saying it isn't bad (my dh is a mathy type who was watching China and saying that it looked bad based solely on numbers), I'm just wondering what it would be like if our media was different or our country less polemicized. I do think those things have an influence in how this is treated and how we perceive the threat and not all in a good, prudently cautious sort of way.

Edited May 12, 2020 by EmseB

[Jean in Newcastle]

Had an CV19 antibody test done.  Have to wait 24 hours for results. 

[Arcadia]

LA County https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-12/coronavirus-beaches-reopen-los-angeles-county-move-toward-new-normal

“Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will “with all certainty” be extended for the next three months, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.

Ferrer, though she didn’t issue an official order, said that timeline would only change if there was a “dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand.”

“Our hope is that by using the data, we’d be able to slowly lift restrictions over the next three months,” she said. But without widely available therapeutic testing for the coronavirus or rapid at-home versions that would allow people to test themselves daily, it seems unlikely that restrictions would be completely eased.”

[EmseB]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

Well, I do think your thought experiment is interesting to ponder. However, I am inclined to think if we weren’t looking for COVID and there was “just” a bad bug going around and also really effing up certain regions, it would simply *have* to be noticed. Seeing how even back in 1918, there were people who said, “woah. This is not normal.” (I am currently listening to The Great Influenza, so it informs some of my thinking.) 

So, say we didn’t close anything. Kids continued to go to school, people kept having birthday parties, weddings, funerals, St. Patrick’s Day parades. Baseball season had started as expected; people still flew all over and went to Disney and got on cruise ships. I just can’t see how this “bad bug” could stay under the radar. Chances are, nearly all of us would know someone - probably several people - who are/were quite sick. And most of us would probably know of at least a “friend of a friend” who died of COVID. 

I don’t know. I do wonder if it could be “mutating more deadly” or whatever. 

I don't think it would have stayed under the radar. Pandemics don't, usually speaking. I just wonder if those closures would have happened more locally and surgically based on when the bug arrived. I do think it's possible many places closed too early. People here have quarantine fatigue from being at home for the last two months, but we lag behind every major city in our state for waves of illness in *every* season. So it feels like it would have been more prudent to lock down two weeks ago instead of eight, on the actual cusp of cases arriving here. And we are pretty lowly populated and rural so I don't know what a wave looks like here compared to LA or SF or NY. As it is, it seems neighbors were celebrating with a large party over the weekend and I'm watching the numbers thinking now is the time we should be staying in, and a month or six weeks ago would have been fairly low risk if the major cities were SIP at that time when they were having their waves.

[ElizabethB]

3 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Had an CV19 antibody test done.  Have to wait 24 hours for results. 

What type of percentages have they been seeing in your area?  Are they reporting that?

[Pen]

2 hours ago, EmseB said:

So in my area, talking to the one doc I know at the local clinic (meaning anecdote, so grain of salt and all that) he said he *was* seeing a lot more respiratory patients than normal and they weren't testing positive for the flu (or at least not all of them). He said he *was* sending more people to the hospital for low o2 sats. He said the patients he sent to the hospital had broad panels run to try to find what bug they had and it wasn't a bug they could ID. So he has been wondering for months (since it was IDd) if that was it. Even in enclosed spaces, infection rate seems to be about 1 in 5 people, right?

Separate from that, another thing is that I have entertained a thought experiment where, what if we didn't know? What if we didn't know sars2 existed? What would things look like? What would restrictions look like? Would we be investigating a late, heavy flu season? If I knew there was a bad bug going around that really hit hard in NY but I didn't know it was THE Covid, would I be keeping my kids from playing with the neighbors? Would I be avoiding going in stores? I was already highly anxious all winter because of the bugs going around. From what I understand, all the extra field hospitals and ventilators even in hard hit areas went way under utilized. I'm not saying it wouldn't have been recognized as a public health crisis. I just wonder how it would have played out if it wasn't a specific thing. Would we have closed schools here based on what happened in Italy and NY? I kind of doubt it. I know the pushback I'm about to receive for posting this idea about how distancing and closings worked. I'm not sure if that's the case here because I don't think a large wave, if it is coming, is here yet, and I'm not saying we shouldn't have done what we did, I just wonder how much of what we (non medical general public) think and how we react is based on reporting and tracking every single case and death due to one specific cause daily. I'm not saying this is a conspiracy theory or not real, just for the record.

 

We have had local schools close several times in recent years due to high levels of sickness several times without knowing what the sickness was (once I think was known to be pertussis despite high immunization rate).  “Some virus” and too many especially teachers and staff (and also kids) sick to function.  

Some Systems had already changed due to a previous outbreak of who knows what.  Hand sanitizer was available in several locations particularly cafeteria.  Lots of notices about staying home if ______.  Water dispenser cups system changed (can’t recall exactly how), to avoid drinking fountain contagion.  Doctors offices in nearest city had masks and hand sanitizer readily available for several years now. 

So I guess it would look somewhat like that.  Or maybe somewhat how I recall things when I lived in South America—boiling water, sunning bedding, and other protocols.

There would be less knowledge about what sort of virus, so less knowledge about what cleaners might be effective and so on.  

Possibly the older and more medically vulnerable of our local teachers and staff would have had several die... 

I personally expect that with less knowledge about what was happening there would probably be more fear amongst people I know.  

 

I think that if rumors of illness killing people had circulated even if no knowledge of what the virus was, staying home, Distancing, etc, would have started happening in many areas of West Coast (much as it did happen anyway prior to government guidelines) and without knowledge of name for disease.  

A lot of people nowadays, especially in scientifically “advanced countries” do have a sense of how diseases tend to be transmitted even without being told specifically. 

 

[Arcadia]

Crosspost 

https://abc7news.com/education/csu-campuses-to-remain-closed-through-fall-semester-chancellor-announces/6176229/

“SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The California State University (CSU) system said it plans to cancel all in-personal classes for the fall and to continue instruction online, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
CSU Chancellor Timothy White made the announcement Tuesday, which will affect all 23 of its universities, including San Francisco State, San Jose State and Cal State East Bay and Sonoma State.

"This virtual planning approach for the next academic year is necessary because of the evolving data surrounding the progression of COVID-19." White explained to CSU trustees.

White said non-partisan researchers and health experts forecast additional waves of infection coupled with the flu season in the fall. He added the public immunity rate is very low, and it is not likely a vaccine will be developed during the academic year.”

[Pen]

Symptoms of adenovirus— which was apparently the main other thing known to be  in my area that was not flu, but got people very sick this past year, and overlapped both possible time of arrival and symptoms of CV19:

quote on symptoms from CDC: 

Adenoviruses can cause a wide range of illnesses such as

• common cold or flu-like symptoms
• fever
• sore throat
• acute bronchitis (inflammation of the airways of the lungs, sometimes called a “chest cold”)
• pneumonia (infection of the lungs)
• pink eye (conjunctivitis)
• acute gastroenteritis (inflammation of the stomach or intestines causing diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and stomach pain)

Less common symptoms of adenovirus infection include

• bladder inflammation or infection
• neurologic disease (conditions that affect the brain and spinal cord)

Adenoviruses can cause mild to severe illness, though serious illness is less common. People with weakened immune systems, or existing respiratory or cardiac disease, are at higher risk of developing severe illness from an adenovirus infection.“

[Jean in Newcastle]

1 hour ago, ElizabethB said:

What type of percentages have they been seeing in your area?  Are they reporting that?

https://www.massdevice.com/abbott-touts-study-showing-nearly-100-accuracy-of-its-covid-19-antibody-test/

[TCB]

2 minutes ago, kdsuomi said:

That's great. Doctors would be familiar with this, yes? If so, that's not was going around here. 

It's fine. We can all just stick our heads in the sand and say that it wasn't here before the first confirmed case if that's what people would prefer. 

I would imagine the preferable thing would be sound evidence either way, otherwise we're all speculating.

[kbutton]

Weren't there some studies cited much earlier in this thread about how some cities that were experiencing outbreaks had experienced a "third peak" in Influenza Like Illnesses? It would be interested to see if antibody testing correlates with that third peak. I am not sure if the third peak idea was followed up on regarding surges in more populated areas (not sure it would correlate with outbreaks that were due to a super spreader), but if so, it could be used to compare with antibody testing patterns.

If average infection time to symptoms is 5-6 days (obviously there are outliers), early infections that happened on another continent might have allowed incubation/asymptomatic spread to occur in a country where people were already exposed vs. the traveler's home country. If they were good about hygiene (as lots of hard core travelers are), and were tired but not yet coughing all over, they might have slept in transit vs. doing lots of talking and coughing. If they didn't return to work because they were sick, or they voluntarily quarantined (more on that next), they might have spread it to very limited people at first or only to housemates who also isolated.

Also, I am not sure about other states, but Ohio had around 500 people (IIRC) voluntarily quarantining in February--many were international travelers who didn't feel well. They were asking about travel history to China in late January or early February--I took a friend to a post-surgery appointment, and they were asking at the front desk. We didn't have a lot of testing at all, but people who had the "right" travel history were asked to stay home. Some with the right travel history tested negative (college students not far from where I live were some of these folks), and I am guessing most were NOT tested (I don't know if we got the faulty tests initially, which is also part of the timeline). It wouldn't account for people traveling to Italy or Europe during that time because they weren't asked to quarantine or eligible for the very limited testing, but maybe they quarantined themselves or just felt so bad they didn't go to work. 

The timing of travel/symptoms might be a totally silly guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if people who travel a lot were concerned, or that people who traveled to China and came back here were also concerned, and maybe the hardcore travelers took precautions that didn't get public attention. 

[Pen]

19 minutes ago, kdsuomi said:

That's great. Doctors would be familiar with this, yes? If so, that's not was going around here. 

It's fine. We can all just stick our heads in the sand and say that it wasn't here before the first confirmed case if that's what people would prefer. 

 

I think it clearly was in my area well before first confirmed case.  Since first confirmed in my area was a death and with no travel history that seems definitely like it has to be the case not just my opinion. 

 

And I am sure that is also true for many other places too. 

 

 I went into my own hygiene, Distancing, and mostly Stay at Home mode in February before first and I think it was already here.

But given the large number of people I know who think they had it already in January I think quite a few are wrong about that in many cases. These were either people who did not seek medical care at that time, or only the minimum to get a doctor note to be allowed not to go to school or work.   

[Pen]

7 minutes ago, kbutton said:

Weren't there some studies cited much earlier in this thread about how some cities that were experiencing outbreaks had experienced a "third peak" in Influenza Like Illnesses? It would be interested to see if antibody testing correlates with that third peak. I am not sure if the third peak idea was followed up on regarding surges in more populated areas (not sure it would correlate with outbreaks that were due to a super spreader), but if so, it could be used to compare with antibody testing patterns.

If average infection time to symptoms is 5-6 days (obviously there are outliers), early infections that happened on another continent might have allowed incubation/asymptomatic spread to occur in a country where people were already exposed vs. the traveler's home country. If they were good about hygiene (as lots of hard core travelers are), and were tired but not yet coughing all over, they might have slept in transit vs. doing lots of talking and coughing. If they didn't return to work because they were sick, or they voluntarily quarantined (more on that next), they might have spread it to very limited people at first or only to housemates who also isolated.

Also, I am not sure about other states, but Ohio had around 500 people (IIRC) voluntarily quarantining in February--many were international travelers who didn't feel well. They were asking about travel history to China in late January or early February--I took a friend to a post-surgery appointment, and they were asking at the front desk. We didn't have a lot of testing at all, but people who had the "right" travel history were asked to stay home. Some with the right travel history tested negative (college students not far from where I live were some of these folks), and I am guessing most were NOT tested (I don't know if we got the faulty tests initially, which is also part of the timeline). It wouldn't account for people traveling to Italy or Europe during that time because they weren't asked to quarantine or eligible for the very limited testing, but maybe they quarantined themselves or just felt so bad they didn't go to work. 

The timing of travel/symptoms might be a totally silly guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if people who travel a lot were concerned, or that people who traveled to China and came back here were also concerned, and maybe the hardcore travelers took precautions that didn't get public attention. 

 

The third peak is supposed to largely represent CV19, but I believe it was more recent than January. 

[kbutton]

Just now, Pen said:

The third peak is supposed to largely represent CV19, but I believe it was more recent than January. 

Thanks! I still wonder if there is information to be gleaned, but it sounds like it's not likely to be explanatory then. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

I can't find a print source but on the radio today was a story about how they thought that they knew the first case and did all the contact tracing etc. hoping to end it right there.  And then they discovered someone who had it even before that from no known source.  So no way to contract trace (?) back to where it came from.  Most bodies from that time along with any samples from them are now gone so some things are going to remain speculation, aren't they?  But educated speculation by epidemiologists. 

[SoCal_Bear]

3 hours ago, Quill said:

And most of us would probably know of at least a “friend of a friend” who died of COVID. 

 

I already know a number of them myself. I'm thinking that's not uncommon now?

[Joker]

2 minutes ago, calbear said:

I already know a number of them myself. I'm thinking that's not uncommon now?

I don’t even know anyone who’s tested positive and for sure no one who has died.

 And it’s odd since our family and friends are so spread out. I actually had a BIL and nephew in China and they returned on New Years. I do know a couple that was on the California cruise ship and they were quarantined on a military base. But I know no one who has tested positive.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Joker

[Pen]

15 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I can't find a print source but on the radio today was a story about how they thought that they knew the first case and did all the contact tracing etc. hoping to end it right there.  And then they discovered someone who had it even before that from no known source.  So no way to contract trace (?) back to where it came from.  Most bodies from that time along with any samples from them are now gone so some things are going to remain speculation, aren't they?  But educated speculation by epidemiologists. 

 

I’m not sure what is kept or for how long.  I would think a fair bit might still be available from post Mortem, pathology, or lab test samples.    Especially for cases that stumped doctors in hospitals. 

[Terabith]

I mean, even if we didn't know what covid-19 was, once we saw what was happening in Italy and NYC, alarm bells would have been going off pretty much everywhere, even if nobody had any idea what the infectious agent was.  They'd know it was something and it was deadly.  Whether there would have been a nationwide shut down or not, I don't know, but I wouldn't think just not knowing what it was would cause people not to panic when health care systems are collapsing and there's nowhere to store dead bodies.  

Edited May 12, 2020 by Terabith

[Wheres Toto]

I agree that it might have been better if some areas didn't quarantine until they knew it was in that area, but without widespread testing, there was no way a rolling stay-at-home was going to work.     I think many places that are acting like it's come and gone, just haven't been hit yet. 

IF there was Covid-19 here earlier than January/February, I think it was likely to be one of the less virulent strains. 

[Pen]

13 minutes ago, Where's Toto? said:

I agree that it might have been better if some areas didn't quarantine until they knew it was in that area, but without widespread testing, there was no way a rolling stay-at-home was going to work.     I think many places that are acting like it's come and gone, just haven't been hit yet. 

IF there was Covid-19 here earlier than January/February, I think it was likely to be one of the less virulent strains. 

 

Since there are apparently some quite good antibody tests now, even though we don’t know for sure that antibodies do give protection nor for how long, I think that it would be a good idea if people who think they had it go and get antibody tests now.  If they test as **not** having antibodies, either they didn’t have it in first place, or not enough to have produced antibodies—so either way they are presumably not immune now. 

[73349]

Questions for speculation: What is the "What the hell?" number of an emergency room (i.e., how many excess patients with a cluster of overlapping symptoms would get the doctors in charge to start inquiring urgently what's going on)?

What is the "Whoa" number of deaths or hospitalizations that gets a city council or similar level of local leadership to feel the need to act?

Obviously it will relate to population: 10 or even 5 unexplained deaths in a small town in a month, if typically 0-3 people die of all causes in one month, would get people talking; 10 excess deaths in a larger metro area wouldn't fall outside the typical range. But with doubling times at 3, 6, even 12 days, and deaths 2-3 weeks behind infections, by the time you get them counted, it's quite late.

If they are all going to one hospital, I can see WTH around day 35, surely by day 40, if infection is doubling every 6 days or less. But deaths are a lagging indicator. So if people are saying "We had only one death, so we should've stayed open longer," I'm not sure that fits with the numbers. If a town or fairly interconnected county waits until they've reported ten or twenty deaths, you're going to have a very hard time getting infections down enough to re-open. (My little model has 881 cumulative infected people by day 40; they're not all still infectious that day, but a lot of them are, because the new infections increase daily.) Infection is widespread, and once in lockdown you can't get zero new infections for perhaps a week, because people infect household members. Then you have another lag until their symptoms emerge and another lag for recovery or death. And of course, some essential workers are still out there.

[Pen]

4 minutes ago, whitehawk said:

Questions for speculation: What is the "What the hell?" number of an emergency room (i.e., how many excess patients with a cluster of overlapping symptoms would get the doctors in charge to start inquiring urgently what's going on)?

What is the "Whoa" number of deaths or hospitalizations that gets a city council or similar level of local leadership to feel the need to act?

Obviously it will relate to population: 10 or even 5 unexplained deaths in a small town in a month, if typically 0-3 people die of all causes in one month, would get people talking; 10 excess deaths in a larger metro area wouldn't fall outside the typical range. But with doubling times at 3, 6, even 12 days, and deaths 2-3 weeks behind infections, by the time you get them counted, it's quite late.

If they are all going to one hospital, I can see WTH around day 35, surely by day 40, if infection is doubling every 6 days or less. But deaths are a lagging indicator. So if people are saying "We had only one death, so we should've stayed open longer," I'm not sure that fits with the numbers. If a town or fairly interconnected county waits until they've reported ten or twenty deaths, you're going to have a very hard time getting infections down enough to re-open. (My little model has 881 cumulative infected people by day 40; they're not all still infectious that day, but a lot of them are, because the new infections increase daily.) Infection is widespread, and once in lockdown you can't get zero new infections for perhaps a week, because people infect household members. Then you have another lag until their symptoms emerge and another lag for recovery or death. And of course, some essential workers are still out there.

 

I don’t think there is a precise number.

 I think different doctors reach WTH mode at different degrees of problems, notice different things, have different backgrounds. 

And doctors are like other people in range from deniers to super cautious.  Someone would probably have been an American Dr Li, calling for investigation early. While others would be saying nah, it’s just normal. I expect. 

And sometimes it isn’t doctors who notice — as when numerous cases of “juvenile arthritis “ raised some mom’s attention as not normal.  (Lyme)

 

[Kanin]

So do we think the overall trend in many places is getting better? I look at numbers for Italy, France, Spain, Germany, for example, and it gives me hope. Denmark seems to be managing even with schools reopening. In Maine, we had 15 new confirmed cases today. Presumably there are more like 150 (a guess) because people aren't getting tested. But that's not too many. And maybe we can keep it that way... 

Just looking for (needing) some positives, I guess! 

[Frances]

Forgive me if this article was posted previously on this thread. Here’s a possible early super spreader event.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-04-24/ces-convention-may-have-spread-coronavirus-throughout-us-and-world

 

[Ausmumof3]

on herd immunity 

[73349]

.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Carolina Wren

[Ausmumof3]

4 hours ago, EmseB said:

Yes, I'm not so much saying it isn't bad (my dh is a mathy type who was watching China and saying that it looked bad based solely on numbers), I'm just wondering what it would be like if our media was different or our country less polemicized. I do think those things have an influence in how this is treated and how we perceive the threat and not all in a good, prudently cautious sort of way.

I think the fact that it’s playing out similarly in many countries regardless of media or political status probably gives you an answer to some degree.  

[Ausmumof3]

47 minutes ago, Mainer said:

So do we think the overall trend in many places is getting better? I look at numbers for Italy, France, Spain, Germany, for example, and it gives me hope. Denmark seems to be managing even with schools reopening. In Maine, we had 15 new confirmed cases today. Presumably there are more like 150 (a guess) because people aren't getting tested. But that's not too many. And maybe we can keep it that way... 

Just looking for (needing) some positives, I guess! 

Well those countries have been in lockdown for a significant amount of time.  We now get to watch what happens as they slowly open up to figure out how that goes.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, calbear said:

I already know a number of them myself. I'm thinking that's not uncommon now?

I don’t know anyone personally, or even friend of a friend, who has died of COVID. I do know people currently or in the past several weeks sick, either confirmed or presumed to be COVID. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

I know people who have died.  And I know of even more (ie. friends of friends or coworkers of friends - not just strangers on the news).