wuhan - coronavirus

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

Kristen Nordlund, a spokesperson for the CDC, told us that the inclusion of antibody data in Florida is one reason the CDC has reported hundreds of thousands more tests in Florida than the state government has. The agency hopes to separate the viral and antibody test results in the next few weeks, she said in an email.

But until the agency does so, its results will be suspect and difficult to interpret, says William Hanage, an epidemiology professor at Harvard. In addition to misleading the public about the state of affairs, the intermingling “makes the lives of actual epidemiologists tremendously more difficult.”
 

this quote from the article makes me wonder if there’s a link to this and the data science lady from Florida who was mentioned up thread as dismissed?  

[whitehawk 17,986]

11 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

So would previously including antibody testing and now excluding it make positivity rate seem to be lower now or higher now?  I guess that depends on how prevalent antibodies are and how many people who don’t have them are seeking testing?

I wonder if they tracked whether a person who'd had an antibody test had had an antigen test previously, and whether it had been positive or negative.

[vonfirmath 5,407]

42 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I found this on the Texas site.  If you can read the fine print it says positivity rate excludes antibody testing from 19th May.  So it looks like this was an issue that has been cleaned up as of Tuesday 

it also says on the bottom part below the screen shot something about being unable to de duplicate data from private labs . I’m not sure what’s meant but maybe that relates to where people have had follow up testing or something? 

 

 

The note about de-duplicating data from private labs has been there everytime I've checked.

I have been thinking it means -- sometimes two tests are given to the same person to verify results.  For public labs those are only counted in the count once. But they can't be sure private labs are only counting them once.

[Pen 25,245]

6 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Yes the thought of having to be completely isolated for that long was kind of freaking me out.  I mean we are social distancing etc but being that sick alone for that long and not knowing if it will end is scary.

 

Also, aside maybe from having been able to get a test with only a mild case when most people with non hospital level problems could not, she seems to be having typical difficulty getting good medical help despite working for the state health department. 

I wonder if she has tried any of the home self help approaches some of us are planning on.  And I noticed in a news picture that she has medium brown skin.  I wonder how her vitamin D level is. Zinc level. Etc. 

[EmseB 16,484]

5 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://m.timesofindia.com/world/china/covid-19-chinas-new-outbreak-shows-signs-the-coronavirus-could-be-changing/amp_articleshow/75845298.cms?__twitter_impression=true
 

not sure if source reliability but has anyone else seen anything related?

“BEIJING: Chinese doctors are seeing the coronavirus manifest differently among patients in its new cluster of cases in the northeast region compared to the original outbreak in Wuhan, suggesting that the pathogen may be changing in unknown ways and complicating efforts to stamp it out.

 

Patients found in the northern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang appear to carry the virus for a longer period of time and take longer to recover, as defined by a negative nucleic acid test, Qiu Haibo, one of China’s top critical care doctors, told state television on Tuesday.

I feel like maybe they are just covering. They clearly didn't want to admit how bad it was from the beginning. I mean, isn't it curious that they didn't report one instance of the inflammatory disease in kids? Not one kid in Wuhan had this happen? And the longer-lasting  cases of the virus popping up everywhere else, but China didn't have one case of that until recently? I don't buy it's a new mutation causing it, just like I don't buy that most new cases in China in the last few weeks were from people traveling in from elsewhere.

They are locking down a region of 100 million people now for a few hundred cases? Not likely either.

[Bagels McGruffikin 45,461]

1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

So would previously including antibody testing and now excluding it make positivity rate seem to be lower now or higher now?  I guess that depends on how prevalent antibodies are and how many people who don’t have them are seeking testing?

I don’t know about Texas but the antibody testing is pretty backed up around here for individuals, as employers are trying to do it to establish reopening of offices.

[RootAnn 13,565]

3 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

So would previously including antibody testing and now excluding it make positivity rate seem to be lower now or higher now?  I guess that depends on how prevalent antibodies are and how many people who don’t have them are seeking testing?

I'm thinking as I type. Assuming the usual level of serology results (less than 5% have antibodies), the state's % positive would have been looking better than reality because the higher % of current positives would have been lowered by the lower antibody levels. The actual # of cases would increase, though. If they are now no longer including them, the number of new cases would look lower, the number of tests performed would be lower, and the % positive would be higher.

I have been unable to find where Texas is reporting serology separately. I did see that at least one governor said their state wasn't combining the results but his staff said they were -- the governor didn't know it. Maybe Virginia?

[Arcadia 22,887]

On 5/19/2020 at 9:25 PM, Ausmumof3 said:

I have been thinking about various issues with public transport and crowding and social distancing and I’m wondering if a long term solution to this is to move toward more of a two shift scenario.  So for an eight hour day we could have a 6am to 2pm cohort and a 2pm till 10pm cohort.  Even schools could potentially run morning and afternoon shifts although maybe with later start and earlier finish times.  It would also mean peoples free time is distributed more evenly meaning it may work better for cafes shops and even gyms to run with lower staff levels and smaller numbers of customers at one time.

is that kind of thinking realistic?  Or is it really too pie in the sky to think it could work?

Grocery workers locally have two shifts. Morning shift is 7am to 3pm, which is preferred by people with school aged kids. Afternoon shift  ends at 11pm, cashiers would come slightly earlier to take over. 

Schools were two shifts in Singapore before it became single session. Morning session ended by 1pm, afternoon session ended by 6:30pm.

[Pen 25,245]

 

speculative article -

with regard to CV19 effects on blood

https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173

 

[maize 75,795]

48 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

Grocery workers locally have two shifts. Morning shift is 7am to 3pm, which is preferred by people with school aged kids. Afternoon shift  ends at 11pm, cashiers would come slightly earlier to take over. 

Schools were two shifts in Singapore before it became single session. Morning session ended by 1pm, afternoon session ended by 6:30pm.

Some countries still do two school sessions, I think Serbia is one where children still go either in the morning or in the afternoon.

[Corraleno 32,248]

Nearly Half Of The Twitter Accounts Discussing ‘Reopening America’ May Be Bots

To analyze bot activity around the pandemic, CMU researchers since January have collected more than 200 million tweets discussing coronavirus or COVID-19. Of the top 50 influential retweeters, 82% are bots, they found. Of the top 1,000 retweeters, 62% are bots.

 

More than 100 types of inaccurate COVID-19 stories have been identified, such as those about potential cures. But bots are also dominating conversations about ending stay-at-home orders and "reopening America."

Many factors of the online discussions about “reopening America” suggest that bot activity is orchestrated. One indicator is the large number of bots, many of which are accounts that were recently created. Accounts that are possibly humans with bot assistants generate 66% of the tweets. Accounts that are definitely bots generate 34% of the tweets.

A subset of tweets about "reopening America" reference conspiracy theories, such as hospitals being filled with mannequins or the coronavirus being linked to 5G towers.

"Conspiracy theories increase polarization in groups. It’s what many misinformation campaigns aim to do," Carley said. "People have real concerns about health and the economy, and people are preying on that to create divides."

Carley said that spreading conspiracy theories leads to more extreme opinions, which can in turn lead to more extreme behavior and less rational thinking.

"Increased polarization will have a variety of real-world consequences, and play out in things like voting behavior and hostility towards ethnic groups," Carley said.

The research team cannot point to specific entities behind the orchestrated attempts to influence online conversations. "We do know that it looks like it's a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks, but it would take a tremendous amount of resources to substantiate that," Carley said.

[JadeOrchidSong 1,433]

13 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

The ccp are holding that big two sessions thingy so presumably they are feeling fairly confident about covid status in Beijing.

this tweet sounded kind of ominous (not virus related).  I’m assuming this is relating to Hong Kong /Taiwan issues.

Qingqing_Chen

 

@qingqingparis

·

21m

 

Just talked with several lawmakers and policy advisors. Big news to be announced tonight. It will show central government's decisive determination of safeguarding its core interests and won't tolerate secessionist & foreign forces to exploit on #HongKong special status.

Yes, the CCP 两会Two Big Conferences happening means things are really under control. Considering the tracking power they have, second waves won't really be waves, just very small outbreaks here and there. However, even 3 cases may put a place on "highest alert" and strict lockdowns of the immediate surrounding ensue. 

CCP wants full control of Hong Kong. They deem the ruling of Hong Kong's autonomy till 2047 to be not binding anymore 🤷‍♀️. Law is subjective in China. It changes according to whoever has the power, the money, the influence to change it to fit their needs. Just like Xi Jinping changed the law to make himself chairman for life. 

I saw the cluster of cases in Jilin and Heilongjiang today too reported by Bloomberg, WaPo, and Reuters. Longer incubation and longer sick time, Ug! 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-a-new-virus-cluster-in-china-is-triggering-alarms/2020/05/21/cfe13dc4-9b47-11ea-ad79-eef7cd734641_story.html

Edited May 22 by JadeOrchidSong

[RootAnn 13,565]

I saw that Texas is now listing 49k antibody tests on the desktop version of their dashboard.  They list just over 800k total tests. It wasn't super clear if they include the antibody tests in their total number or if they include the antibody positives in their 52k cases.

Wait. If you click further, they are including all types of tests in the 800k. They have 2,114 positive antibody tests out of 49,313 total antibody tests. In small print on their positivity rate graph, it says "Starting May 19th, antibody tests are excluded from the denominator." So, it sounds like they had been including antibody tests in their % positives (and likely all other data) from May 13-18th or so.

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

Autopsy results study from 7 covid patients lungs

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2015432?query=featured_home

“In our small series, vascular angiogenesis distinguished the pulmonary pathobiology of Covid-19 from that of equally severe influenza virus infection. The universality and clinical implications of our observations require further research to define. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health and others.)”

RESULTS

In patients who died from Covid-19–associated or influenza-associated respiratory failure, the histologic pattern in the peripheral lung was diffuse alveolar damage with perivascular T-cell infiltration. The lungs from patients with Covid-19 also showed distinctive vascular features, consisting of severe endothelial injury associated with the presence of intracellular virus and disrupted cell membranes. Histologic analysis of pulmonary vessels in patients with Covid-19 showed widespread thrombosis with microangiopathy. Alveolar capillary microthrombi were 9 times as prevalent in patients with Covid-19 as in patients with influenza (P<0.001). In lungs from patients with Covid-19, the amount of new vessel growth — predominantly through a mechanism of intussusceptive angiogenesis — was 2.7 times as high as that in the lungs from patients with influenza (P<0.001).

Edited May 22 by Ausmumof3

[Joker 13,570]

My doctors office called to schedule me for antibody testing but I have no idea yet which test it will be. They said new testing was starting here next week that would be completely outdoors. I schedule, drive up to tent, have blood drawn there, and leave. So, I like that much better than being in an enclosed space in a lab but I also want it to be a reliable test. I guess I’ll figure out which one it is when I schedule and decide what to do then. I wish there weren’t so many of them and so many unreliable ones!

[Plum 14,593]

Why is it so hard to find a stream of the WH Press Conference that show the slides?! How hard is it really?

[TCB 3,552]

We were able to Zoom with my cousin and her husband today. He is the one who spent 13 days on a vent with Covid. He looks fantastic! It was wonderful to see and talk to him! He is taking part in a study to evaluate the after effects of Covid.

[Terabith 13,358]

Wow!  Apparently Mongolia had a textbook perfect response and has ZERO local transmission, despite relatively high poverty rates, decent sized cities, and being geographically close to China and Russia.  https://medium.com/@indica/covid-underdogs-mongolia-3b0c162427c2

Edited May 23 by Terabith
wrong link

[Sneezyone 25,232]

3 hours ago, TCB said:

We were able to Zoom with my cousin and her husband today. He is the one who spent 13 days on a vent with Covid. He looks fantastic! It was wonderful to see and talk to him! He is taking part in a study to evaluate the after effects of Covid.

 

My uncle is being released from the 'care home' he was discharged to after a week of inpatient care. He was admitted to the hospital on 3/28 and was only released last week. It's a freakin' miracle and we're all SOOOOO stinking excited. He's lost a lot of weight but his sarcastic (family characteristic) humor is intact. LOL.

[Pen 25,245]

5 hours ago, Plum said:

Why is it so hard to find a stream of the WH Press Conference that show the slides?! How hard is it really?

Haven’t been keeping up on the wh press conferences. What slides?

 

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

Anyone watching spain at the moment?  They had a week roughly of really low cases and it’s jumped back up today.  They also just posted 688 new deaths when they have been posting under 200 since the start of May.  I’m not sure if it’s some kind of backlog of deaths that have just been proven to be COVID or what?

edited to add I found the answer to my question 

“The high death toll is due to Catalan reporting an additional 632 deaths that had previously occurred.”

Edited May 23 by Ausmumof3

[Corraleno 32,248]

2 hours ago, Terabith said:

Wow!  Apparently Mongolia had a textbook perfect response and has ZERO local transmission, despite relatively high poverty rates, decent sized cities, and being geographically close to China and Russia.  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/22/trump-slams-governors-demands-they-open-houses-of-worship-right-now.html?fbclid=IwAR1_dXieonHdwudziFADaD973n5mXKWXDqXo924MEJFA82UrB7yENub8FY8

Do you have another link? When I click that one, it goes to a completely different story (no mention of Mongolia).

[Terabith 13,358]

3 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

Do you have another link? When I click that one, it goes to a completely different story (no mention of Mongolia).

Oh man.  Sorry.  https://medium.com/@indica/covid-underdogs-mongolia-3b0c162427c2

ETA:  Fixed it in original post, too.  So sorry.  

Edited May 23 by Terabith

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(20)30183-2/fulltext
 

@Pen

@ElizabethB

[TCB 3,552]

1 hour ago, Sneezyone said:

 

My uncle is being released from the 'care home' he was discharged to after a week of inpatient care. He was admitted to the hospital on 3/28 and was only released last week. It's a freakin' miracle and we're all SOOOOO stinking excited. He's lost a lot of weight but his sarcastic (family characteristic) humor is intact. LOL.

That’s wonderful! It’s such a great feeling isn’t it! So thankful they made it through!

[Sneezyone 25,232]

1 minute ago, TCB said:

That’s wonderful! It’s such a great feeling isn’t it! So thankful they made it through!

Absolutely! It was touch n’ go for weeks. When the nurses finally woke him from the induced coma and he laughed at my text I knew the worst was over. His first stop post-discharge...a local burger joint. Lol.

[Pen 25,245]

23 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(20)30183-2/fulltext
 

@Pen

@ElizabethB

 

I think getting D levels around optimum makes sense.  Other things too if they can be figured out.

 

Campbell has been afraid to say anything beyond the official NHS status quo.  This Dr Shelton had more guts!!! 

 

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

https://www.ozarksfirst.com/life-health/coronavirus/sgchd-announces-covid-19-public-health-exposures-covid-19-case-update/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

[Plum 14,593]

2 hours ago, Pen said:

Haven’t been keeping up on the wh press conferences. What slides?

 

Dr. Brix showed a bunch of slides today showing the trends and surveillance graphs for hot spots and hospitalizations. The WH YouTube stream was the only one where o could see the graphs. It’s not the only time. It seems like there’s usually only one stream that is capable of showing graphs. I got screenshots of some of them. 

[TCB 3,552]

21 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://www.ozarksfirst.com/life-health/coronavirus/sgchd-announces-covid-19-public-health-exposures-covid-19-case-update/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Oh my goodness that is not far from me! If no one catches it from her that’s a pretty good endorsement for mask wearing!

[vonfirmath 5,407]

1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://www.ozarksfirst.com/life-health/coronavirus/sgchd-announces-covid-19-public-health-exposures-covid-19-case-update/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

WHY was she working symptomatic!

 

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

1 hour ago, Plum said:

Dr. Brix showed a bunch of slides today showing the trends and surveillance graphs for hot spots and hospitalizations. The WH YouTube stream was the only one where o could see the graphs. It’s not the only time. It seems like there’s usually only one stream that is capable of showing graphs. I got screenshots of some of them. 

I’m trying to figure out how to interpret that top graph.  Seems like it would be more useful to graph number of visits than percentage?  Also why it it so high for younger people?  Is that because they are less likely to be hospitalised for other causes?

either way it looks like a dramatic drop from second week of April.  How does that relate to when lockdowns kicked in? 

Edited May 23 by Ausmumof3

[Pen 25,245]

27 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

WHY was she working symptomatic!

 

 

Good question!  

Disbelief that she had it? 

 

 

[Plum 14,593]

31 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I’m trying to figure out how to interpret that top graph.  Seems like it would be more useful to graph number of visits than percentage?  Also why it it so high for younger people?  Is that because they are less likely to be hospitalised for other causes?

either way it looks like a dramatic drop from second week of April.  How does that relate to when lockdowns kicked in? 

I think this is what you were looking for? 
 

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

5 minutes ago, Plum said:

I think this is what you were looking for? 
 

Yes although the bottom one is covid specific whereas I think the other was all Influenza like illness.  

[Melissa in Australia 13,047]

9 hours ago, Terabith said:

Wow!  Apparently Mongolia had a textbook perfect response and has ZERO local transmission, despite relatively high poverty rates, decent sized cities, and being geographically close to China and Russia.  https://medium.com/@indica/covid-underdogs-mongolia-3b0c162427c2

I really enjoyed that link

so so disappointed that Australia didn't do something similar. We had the potential  to eliminate it

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

4 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I really enjoyed that link

so so disappointed that Australia didn't do something similar. We had the potential  to eliminate it

I just saw that in NSW restaurants and bars are now going to be open to up to 50 people.  We are sitting only just below R0 of 1.  This seems like a really bad decision.  I’m also depressingly sure that the push to open up sooner came when they started thinking the jobkeeper package was going to be ridiculously expensive.  Well it’s still expensive but much less so than we thought and we could maybe pace ourselves a bit longer.  But the powers that be really don’t want elimination and long term border closures.

Edited May 23 by Ausmumof3

[EmseB 16,484]

https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-coronavirus-nursing-homes-illinois-20200523-lgfa6k6htvdzpig6n2fa3g7wiq-story.html?outputType=amp&__twitter_impression=true

NY is doing this too so people can't see nursing home deaths. 

Minnesota is having a serious nursing home problem too. More serious than elsewhere, I mean.

Edited May 23 by EmseB

[Acadie 2,070]

Imperial College estimates current reproduction numbers greater than 1 for 25 states, page 8.

And local news reports the greatest percentage of ICU beds in use in my county since the coronavirus outbreak began 😞

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-05-21-COVID19-Report-23.pdf

Edited May 23 by Acadie

[whitehawk 17,986]

15 hours ago, Plum said:

I think this is what you were looking for? 
 

 

Um, why did they skip April 8-20 and then count the 24th through 27th twice??

That is not how to bar graph. I would make DS redo it, if he brought me a math page that looked like that. He's 12.

Edited May 23 by whitehawk

[elroisees 3,713]

33 minutes ago, whitehawk said:

 

Um, why did they skip April 8-20 and then count the 24th through 27th twice??

That is not how to bar graph. I would make DS redo it, if he brought me a math page that looked like that. He's 12.

Goodness gracious. 

[elroisees 3,713]

That's just... ok, do they have interns doing the math? I'm trying to think of a reason an adult would do this. Perhaps if you were very inexperienced with statistics, didn't have a handle on how ethics interact with statistics, and were told the trend was downward? 

Even so. Good grief.  That's so clumsy.

[EmseB 16,484]

53 minutes ago, whitehawk said:

 

Um, why did they skip April 8-20 and then count the 24th through 27th twice??

That is not how to bar graph. I would make DS redo it, if he brought me a math page that looked like that. He's 12.

So I don't understand the graph but was it part of a presentation where someone talked about the slide and explained it?

Also, if rolling 7 day totals are being reported, won't there be overlap? Maybe I misunderstand what rolling means, but that might explain at least some of the info.

Edited May 23 by EmseB

[Bootsie 6,984]

1 hour ago, whitehawk said:

 

Um, why did they skip April 8-20 and then count the 24th through 27th twice??

That is not how to bar graph. I would make DS redo it, if he brought me a math page that looked like that. He's 12.

I think this has to do with differing reporting time frames of hospitals in differing states--that they don't simply have data for each day that they are able consistently to add up for a week's worth of hospitalizations.  I can't find the original for this chart.  Does someone have a link to where this chart can be found?

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

[MissLemon 5,267]

4 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I know one of the people on that list.  Dr. Peter Sakas was an exotics animal vet in Niles, Illinois. He was a fantastic veterinarian. This is a huge, huge loss to the veterinary community there. Everyone knew and respected Dr. Sakas. 😞

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

https://www.9news.com/mobile/article/news/local/next/denver-public-health-orders-a-closure-of-facility-that-handles-all-mail-for-colorado-and-wyoming/73-6d22b731-8092-43e3-aeee-f37e69f6da0e
 

mail facility for Colorado and Wyoming has five positive cases.  Lucky we are no longer overly worried about surfaces 

[EmseB 16,484]

In case anyone was interested about the woman in FL who claimed she was fired for not censoring data.

I don't know anything about the person who wrote this, just saw it linked in my feed.

https://polimath.substack.com/p/a-long-one-about-the-florida-data?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter

[Pen 25,245]

47 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://www.9news.com/mobile/article/news/local/next/denver-public-health-orders-a-closure-of-facility-that-handles-all-mail-for-colorado-and-wyoming/73-6d22b731-8092-43e3-aeee-f37e69f6da0e
 

mail facility for Colorado and Wyoming has five positive cases.  Lucky we are no longer overly worried about surfaces 

 

Wow.  

 

[Ausmumof3 19,754]

https://apple.news/AirW803NnSnGfEThYFA28Uw
 

not sure if this link will work but basically it’s an article saying length of time exposed is likely to be an important part of whether people get infected or not.