wuhan - coronavirus

[mathnerd]

Just now, square_25 said:

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what fraction this is, sorry! Didn't check carefully. 

The data from these hospital systems have to be consolidated and drilled through to detect any patterns. Given the heterogeneous data storage options these systems make use of, the lack of an unified research body that will lead the effort, lack of budget, lack of prioritizing this effort, lack of vision in health officials, lack of political will etc. it will take a long time and many millions of dollars to make the data available to the public, unless someone with an active interest in preventing the next pandemic funds it (perhaps the Gates Foundation?).

[Ausmumof3]

2 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

BBC News - Scotland's Covid contact tracing app downloaded half a million times https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54098960

Eta Scotland has a population of 5.5 million

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/10/sturgeon-announces-covid-rule-of-six-for-social-gatherings-in-scotland?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Hopefully it works out to be more useful than ours has

[Ausmumof3]

Australia had a pretty bad flu season last year as well but I believe they were tested influenza cases.

[EmseB]

20 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Yeah, I'm just estimating the magnitude, nothing fancy. I'd also like something better, but at least they did the work with the UCLA data. 

OK, so the article said the following: 

"To look for signs of early COVID-19 patients, Elmore and her colleagues searched through more than 9.5 million outpatient visits, nearly 575,000 emergency room visits and almost 250,000 hospital admissions going back more than five years. Medical records that said a patient complained of a cough were included in the analysis." 

OK, let's see, they are looking back 5 years, so that means per year, that would be about 120,000 emergency room visits in their system from Dec. 1, 2019, and Feb. 29, 2020, or a quarter of the year. So that means that annually they have about 500,000 emergency room visits. All of Los Angeles has about 3 million such visits annually, apparently, so this them makes for a 6th of all of LA's system. 

So then I get something like an estimate of 120,000 COVID patients in LA in those times? Hmmm, that does seem high!! That's more than a few percent of LA... of course, it could also be largely confined to the Asian population. 

So it is weird because even given China's obfuscation they saw it ramp up quick. Posted link to Twitter thread about timeline below where I'm getting my dates and rise in cases.

I mean, that is a pretty much 100% Asian population and they had a problem, no? So I don't understand the Asians being less susceptible thing.

 

[Ausmumof3]

25 minutes ago, EmseB said:

So it is weird because even given China's obfuscation they saw it ramp up quick. Posted link to Twitter thread about timeline below where I'm getting my dates and rise in cases.

I mean, that is a pretty much 100% Asian population and they had a problem, no? So I don't understand the Asians being less susceptible thing.

 

There was a theory going round earlier about a China outbreak as far back as September.  I have to be honest even as someone who spent way too much time thinking about it   I’m finding it hard to remember what actually happened when.  
 

the other thing I was just thinking the other day is about the whistleblower who died from it:   Given how few younger people died are we actually really accepting that?  But then of course there’s the healthcare worker and viral load thing.

[cjzimmer1]

1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

the other thing I was just thinking the other day is about the whistleblower who died from it:   Given how few younger people died are we actually really accepting that?  But then of course there’s the healthcare worker and viral load thing.

In my head I've always questioned that and along with all the citizen journalists who were "being held in quarantine".  Like did any of them ever see the light of day again.  I've never even heard any speculations about them since the various posts when they were first taken.

China is hiding so much.  We know they are trying to protect their image but surely they have to realize that no one believes them so there really is no image to protect because right now the whole world pretty much thinks of them as liars and hiding data isn't improving any ones opinion of them.

[Ausmumof3]

1 hour ago, cjzimmer1 said:

In my head I've always questioned that and along with all the citizen journalists who were "being held in quarantine".  Like did any of them ever see the light of day again.  I've never even heard any speculations about them since the various posts when they were first taken.

China is hiding so much.  We know they are trying to protect their image but surely they have to realize that no one believes them so there really is no image to protect because right now the whole world pretty much thinks of them as liars and hiding data isn't improving any ones opinion of them.

We had a bit of discussion on the China and journalists thread.  I’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t much care about what the rest of the world thinks but they need to keep control of the information flow to their own people.  

[mathnerd]

1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

We had a bit of discussion on the China and journalists thread.  I’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t much care about what the rest of the world thinks but they need to keep control of the information flow to their own people.  

Yes, this! The communist party is afraid that they are losing control and they are trying to keep control of dissent inside china (and HK). Last I checked, their mouthpiece was lambasting the US and mocking it for its democracy because Covid is spreading rampantly due people disobeying government masking orders and police are attacking unarmed Americans. They were telling Chinese citizens that the Chinese government was far better than the American government... It is part of their propaganda aimed at controlling their dissidents.

Edited September 11, 2020 by mathnerd

[EmseB]

I am reading of anti-lockdown protests and government retaliation in Colombia. Hoping @Lanny is okay.

[Ausmumof3]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/health/coronavirus-brain.html#click=https://t.co/UAmPGzv0wN
 

On covid and brain cells

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.25.169946v2

Preprint only 

[Ausmumof3]

https://www.cleveland19.com/2020/09/10/covid-positive-miami-university-students-throw-party-oxford-police-department-says/
 

covid positive student at miami University helps to host a house party 

[Bootsie]

22 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://www.cleveland19.com/2020/09/10/covid-positive-miami-university-students-throw-party-oxford-police-department-says/
 

covid positive student at miami University helps to host a house party 

I am in no way condoning students having parties or a person who has tested positive not isolating, but there are several things about this article that raise questions.  If a police officer asks to see an ID of a person who is at their own residence, they can tell if the person has tested positive for COVID?  Do the police really have access to such medical records?   

[ktgrok]

2 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

I am in no way condoning students having parties or a person who has tested positive not isolating, but there are several things about this article that raise questions.  If a police officer asks to see an ID of a person who is at their own residence, they can tell if the person has tested positive for COVID?  Do the police really have access to such medical records?   

In some areas it is tied to the address. The idea is to warn police if they are going into a home that they are exposing themselves to a positive person. 

[Bootsie]

1 minute ago, Ktgrok said:

In some areas it is tied to the address. The idea is to warn police if they are going into a home that they are exposing themselves to a positive person. 

I have heard rumors of college students not getting tested if they think they have a mild case.  Hearing stories like this might encourage them not to test.  

[Ausmumof3]

10 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

I am in no way condoning students having parties or a person who has tested positive not isolating, but there are several things about this article that raise questions.  If a police officer asks to see an ID of a person who is at their own residence, they can tell if the person has tested positive for COVID?  Do the police really have access to such medical records?   

Well here the police door knock covid positive people to check they’re self isolating so they’d know for sure 

[ktgrok]

1 hour ago, happysmileylady said:

Oxford is a college town and I suspect that the person was *not* as his own permanent residence.

Also, it is my understanding (based on some bits on local news, thought I don't immerse myself in the covid news generally) that here in Ohio, most schools are working to put together a database (perhaps under mandate of the governer?) of positive tests.

So, it's entirely possible that the officer involved was campus police, the id presented was a student id, and therefore, the campus police officer had access to the college database of positive tests.  

They said he lived there - wouldn't have to be permanent address, just whatever he listed a week ago when he tested positive. 

[Bootsie]

1 hour ago, happysmileylady said:

Oxford is a college town and I suspect that the person was *not* as his own permanent residence.

Also, it is my understanding (based on some bits on local news, thought I don't immerse myself in the covid news generally) that here in Ohio, most schools are working to put together a database (perhaps under mandate of the governer?) of positive tests.

So, it's entirely possible that the officer involved was campus police, the id presented was a student id, and therefore, the campus police officer had access to the college database of positive tests.  

It depends on which report you read but the one linked says "Five of the six people cited lived in the home." 

For a university to put together a database of positive tests may seem like a simple endeavor, but in most cases it is complicated.  Does the university even know if a student tests positive if they test at an off-campus site?  Does the off-campus site necessarily know that they are a student?  If the student isn't taking classes on campus, how far away can they be living and appear in such a database?  If it was a campus police officer, does his authority reach beyond the campus?  Even if it is a campus police officer, does any campus police officer have access to health records?  

[frogger]

2 hours ago, Bootsie said:

I have heard rumors of college students not getting tested if they think they have a mild case.  Hearing stories like this might encourage them not to test.  

 

If they are going to refuse to isolate even if they test positive, does it matter? 

[Corraleno]

2 hours ago, Bootsie said:

I am in no way condoning students having parties or a person who has tested positive not isolating, but there are several things about this article that raise questions.  If a police officer asks to see an ID of a person who is at their own residence, they can tell if the person has tested positive for COVID?  Do the police really have access to such medical records?   

The story in the Oxford Observer had more details, including this:

" The officer ran a report on Williams through the law enforcement automated data system (LEADS), which issued a public safety notification indicating he had tested positive for COVID-19 just six days earlier, according to the report."

[EmseB]

I wonder how HIPAA applies with personal medical information being shared with law enforcement.

Also given recent false positive news and being otherwise healthy, it seems like a recipe for a lot of problems.

Before anyone goes there, please don't read this post as condoning covid parties. I just wonder about giving law enforcement this info and civil rights.

[Corraleno]

2 hours ago, Bootsie said:

It depends on which report you read but the one linked says "Five of the six people cited lived in the home." 

For a university to put together a database of positive tests may seem like a simple endeavor, but in most cases it is complicated.  Does the university even know if a student tests positive if they test at an off-campus site?  Does the off-campus site necessarily know that they are a student?  If the student isn't taking classes on campus, how far away can they be living and appear in such a database?  If it was a campus police officer, does his authority reach beyond the campus?  Even if it is a campus police officer, does any campus police officer have access to health records?  

I don't know the answer to these questions as they apply specifically to Miami/Oxford, but I can describe how it works at DS's university. All on-campus students are required to test weekly, and all off-campus students living within a certain radius of campus (I think it's 100 miles) are subjected to random testing. Off campus students who are randomly selected are notified by email and have a certain window of time in which they must schedule a test. Testing is free on campus, and you swipe your student ID at the time of the test, so the results are linked to your account. If you test positive you're immediately notified that you must isolate. On-campus students who need to isolate are sent to a hotel that the university rents for that purpose. Close contacts of anyone who tests positive are notified to quarantine, and if they are in the dorms they need to pack up and move to the dorm that is set aside for quarantine. Meals are delivered to all students in isolation or quarantine. Off-campus students are asked to isolate or quarantine at home, but if that creates difficulties with roommates, they can request to be put in one of the university-designated isolation or quarantine rooms. If they choose to quarantine at home but need help with delivery of meals or OTC meds or whatever, student services can arrange that for them. Students who do not report for testing when required have their student account automatically locked for 10 or 14 days (I don't remember which). Instructors are notified that they are not allowed in class and their student ID will not let them enter any campus facilities; they are essentially locked out of dorms, the library, student union, recreational facility, all food service places, etc. I don't know if campus police have access to a student's Covid status, but I would assume that if they have the capacity to scan the student's university ID, they would get some kind of notification that the student is currently not allowed on campus.

[Bootsie]

48 minutes ago, EmseB said:

I wonder how HIPAA applies with personal medical information being shared with law enforcement.

Also given recent false positive news and being otherwise healthy, it seems like a recipe for a lot of problems.

Before anyone goes there, please don't read this post as condoning covid parties. I just wonder about giving law enforcement this info and civil rights.

In this case, it goes beyond the fact that the information was shared with law enforcement; the young man's name is now in the media along with health information.

[Bootsie]

2 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

I don't know the answer to these questions as they apply specifically to Miami/Oxford, but I can describe how it works at DS's university. All on-campus students are required to test weekly, and all off-campus students living within a certain radius of campus (I think it's 100 miles) are subjected to random testing. Off campus students who are randomly selected are notified by email and have a certain window of time in which they must schedule a test. Testing is free on campus, and you swipe your student ID at the time of the test, so the results are linked to your account. If you test positive you're immediately notified that you must isolate. On-campus students who need to isolate are sent to a hotel that the university rents for that purpose. Close contacts of anyone who tests positive are notified to quarantine, and if they are in the dorms they need to pack up and move to the dorm that is set aside for quarantine. Meals are delivered to all students in isolation or quarantine. Off-campus students are asked to isolate or quarantine at home, but if that creates difficulties with roommates, they can request to be put in one of the university-designated isolation or quarantine rooms. If they choose to quarantine at home but need help with delivery of meals or OTC meds or whatever, student services can arrange that for them. Students who do not report for testing when required have their student account automatically locked for 10 or 14 days (I don't remember which). Instructors are notified that they are not allowed in class and their student ID will not let them enter any campus facilities; they are essentially locked out of dorms, the library, student union, recreational facility, all food service places, etc. I don't know if campus police have access to a student's Covid status, but I would assume that if they have the capacity to scan the student's university ID, they would get some kind of notification that the student is currently not allowed on campus.

But, what happens if a student tests at an off-campus facility?    

[Corraleno]

8 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

But, what happens if a student tests at an off-campus facility?    

They have to submit a copy of the test to Student Health Services.

ETA: Students who have tested positive within the previous 90 days are exempt from further testing; they just have to provide a copy of the test or letter from their HCP confirming the diagnosis.

Edited September 12, 2020 by Corraleno

[Bootsie]

9 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

They have to submit a copy of the test to Student Health Services.

ETA: Students who have tested positive within the previous 90 days are exempt from further testing; they just have to provide a copy of the test or letter from their HCP confirming the diagnosis.

But what happens if a student who lives off campus (and isn't subject to weekly testing) voluntarily tests off campus (not as part of a random requirement).  How does the university know about the testing then? 

This has come up in my local neighborhood and has led to a lot of confusion (with different information coming out daily--or even several times a day).  Some thought that a non-university related health clinic could/should report to the university that Jane Doe came in and tested positive and seemed like she might be within the range of a typical college student.  

[Katy]

I don't know anything about which university or how private or not publicly reportable health information is, but earlier on the news a young woman at a college party was bragging to a news camera that she was covid positive.  I was too distracted by cleaning up dinner to hear the details but I don't think the Miami University one was an isolated incident if it involved a young man.

[Bootsie]

Just now, kdsuomi said:

 

The lab would contact the health department with the result, who would notify the school in the proper way. I wonder if schools are making students sign waivers saying that this diagnosis can be shared with the school.

But there is no way for the health department to know if an individual happens to be enrolled in a particular school.  It isn't like students go around with their school enrollment tattooed on them.  And, if the student has not been on campus (lives in off campus housing and has not attended in person classes) there would be no contact tracing through the unviersity

[Ausmumof3]

Did anyone see the Dr Lo Meng Yan interview?  I’m trying to figure out what I think about it.   I still think the lab origin is a possibility but something about her didn’t feel quite credible.  But maybe that’s a language and culture difference thing or something.  For one thing it sounded like she called it a very mutant or mutated virus whereas I thought from most reports at this stage it seems to be fairly stable?  But maybe she means it has previous mutated a lot.  And she seemed a little evasive about the thing about being disappeared like it was more of a professional reputation attack than a threat to her life.  But then maybe that is how things work in China/Hong Kong? 

[Pen]

6 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Did anyone see the Dr Lo Meng Yan interview?  I’m trying to figure out what I think about it.   I still think the lab origin is a possibility but something about her didn’t feel quite credible.  But maybe that’s a language and culture difference thing or something.  For one thing it sounded like she called it a very mutant or mutated virus whereas I thought from most reports at this stage it seems to be fairly stable?  But maybe she means it has previous mutated a lot.  

Link? 

I heard an interview with a Dr from China a couple of months ago. (I can’t recall name, but that sounds familiar.) Probably same person, but different interview. Her English was not very good.  I don’t recall word “mutated” from what I had heard. 

  My recollection is that she said SARS2 was a laboratory virus, and one that was altered from normal bat virus. Her statement came from having worked in China.  Idk how reliable.  Personally, I do believe similar assertion by Luc Montagnier  based on study of the genome. I think what he says, that he is an old man and has nothing much to lose by speaking the truth is true. Further, Montagnier being French isn’t so much a part of the current US political climate.   I think a younger dissident wanting a place in a new country might have more reason to be untruthful, but I gave it more of a listen because it jived at least in part with what Montagnier had said.  It also had a small amount of support from the Australian researcher who, iirc, (at Flinders? I cant keep his name in my head) you had given links to, who said that SARS2 could have been out of a lab.

. Montagnier, iirc, had explained some about how a virus can be human altered such that ithe alteration does not look obviously unnatural .  It did have important implications as to effects on people and vaccines etc.   IIRC Dr. Montagnier suggested possible positive reason for the altered virus as being a search for an HIV vaccine.  

OTOH Dr Yan tended, iirc, to suggest nefariousness as reason for the altered virus such as biological/germ warfare research. 

 

I believe I have heard that laboratory induced mutation can be a way to alter virus (that doesn’t show up as manmade if WHO or CDC are looking at it) and maybe that’s where the word “mutate” came from in interview you heard? 

And Dr Luc Montagnier said that it could be expected to lose the HIV sequences fairly quickly? Maybe that type of change could lead to word “mutate”? 

 

 

 

Quote

And she seemed a little evasive about the thing about being disappeared like it was more of a professional reputation attack than a threat to her life.  But then maybe that is how things work in China/Hong Kong? 

 

The person I heard had family left behind and my understanding was that besides English being a problem, she was trying to avoid endangering them with what she said. 

If I can find interview you heard, I’ll listen and try to tell you what I understand from it. 

[EmseB]

Don't exactly know where to put this but it provides some context re cardiac stuff seen on MRI after the common cold (edema, inflammation). The study is from 2009.

https://jcmr-online.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1532-429X-11-S1-O3

[EmseB]

32 minutes ago, square_25 said:

So, I don't know about you, but I have no clue how to evaluate this, because I don't know the lingo. What I really want to know is whether the things they are seeing with COVID are the same kind of thing or different, and whether the magnitude is the same or different. I had the impression that COVID would actually infect various organs, as opposed to just causing systemic inflammation, but again... I'm not a doctor. I have no clue. 

Well, I was assuming (perhaps wrongly) that terms like edema,  inflammation, myocarditis, etc., were medically standard terms used by cardiologists. So what I got from that paper is that those things are seen after common colds and even sometimes before in the baseline images. The cardiologists who posted this posted it because it's the same stuff, is my understanding.

I do rely on cardiologists explaining these things because I don't know what everything means, but I can read the data and conclusions fairly easily and compare with other literature.

In any case, given the errors in the previously discussed papers that caused alarm, and the couple of studies like this where athletes have these things show up on MRI, I thought it might be somewhat of a better context, certajnly better than the first headlines about heart damage that had a lot of people here very worried.

Also, I know about as much how to read this stuff as I do the original paper that led to a lot of people really being convinced and/or concerned and scared that covid caused heart damage (which I've since learned is a specific term in cardiology) even in healthy asymptomatic people.

Here are two interpretations from cardiologists (fair warning of heavy sarcasm, if you can read past that I find all of this very helpful specifically as to your post above about how to evaluate these things).

 

[EmseB]

This one is a much better explainer, minus sarcasm.

 

[EmseB]

6 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Are all cardiologists in agreement on this one? I haven't gone down this rabbit hole at all, but I'd want to see what the consensus is. 

I would guess not because wouldn't cardiologists have written the original paper? I have not looked for a response from the original authors to critiques.

There seems to be disagreement and a discussion with a cardiologist who disagrees in that third twitter thread I linked.

Edited September 12, 2020 by EmseB

[Corraleno]

The most recent paper, the one that compared in vitro results with results from autopsies, found serious, potentially permanent, and clearly sometimes fatal, structural damage to heart muscle fibers, not just a "subclinical" and likely temporary level of swelling or inflammation. Comparing what these cardiologists found in athletes after a cold to what happens with Covid is kind of like comparing a mild, subclinical level of reduced breathing efficiency in people who recently had a bad chest cold, to people who actually died of respiratory failure from Covid. 

Edited September 12, 2020 by Corraleno

[frogger]

15 minutes ago, EmseB said:

This one is a much better explainer, minus sarcasm.

 

 

I have been curious whether it was fairly common to have heart damage after illnesses but am struggling to make heads or tails of it. I don't have a twitter account so I can't read the arguments farther down. 

 

I really don't know what to think of potential long lasting consequences in kids still via lung damage or other things. I also can't figure out if it is a tiny percentage of younger people who test positive or a larger portion. When I read about strokes it was about 20 people, in NY, where the numbers had exploded. 20 seems a pretty small fragment.  

 

 

[frogger]

11 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

The most recent paper, the one that compared in vitro results with results from autopsies, found serious, potentially permanent, and clearly sometimes fatal, structural damage to heart muscle fibers, not just a "subclinical" and likely temporary level of swelling or inflammation. Comparing what these cardiologists found in athletes after a cold to what happens with Covid is kind of like comparing a mild, subclinical level of reduced breathing efficiency in people who recently had a bad chest cold, to people who actually died of respiratory failure from Covid. 

 

But results from autopsies would be the worst case secenario, right?  It is not really obvious to me that the huge number of asymptomatic cases would have the same damage. Is there something that shows that this is the type of damage being done in the mild cases?

[EmseB]

30 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

The most recent paper, the one that compared in vitro results with results from autopsies, found serious, potentially permanent, and clearly sometimes fatal, structural damage to heart muscle fibers, not just a "subclinical" and likely temporary level of swelling or inflammation. Comparing what these cardiologists found in athletes after a cold to what happens with Covid is kind of like comparing a mild, subclinical level of reduced breathing efficiency in people who recently had a bad chest cold, to people who actually died of respiratory failure from Covid. 

Can you cite which one you're discussing?

NM, I figured it out. Yes, there is quite a difference in damage to organs on autopsies of people who died from the disease and healthy asymptomatic patients.

The in vitro thing makes me feel meh because we can also destroy the virus itself with a lot of compounds in test tubes but those things are not effective as treatments in the human body. In other words, I could damage or destroy (in this case) heart tissue or cells in a test tube with a substance that wouldn't damage my heart cells if it were injected or ingested into my body.

Edited September 12, 2020 by EmseB

[EmseB]

9 minutes ago, frogger said:

 

I have been curious whether it was fairly common to have heart damage after illnesses but am struggling to make heads or tails of it. I don't have a twitter account so I can't read the arguments farther down. 

 

I really don't know what to think of potential long lasting consequences in kids still via lung damage or other things. I also can't figure out if it is a tiny percentage of younger people who test positive or a larger portion. When I read about strokes it was about 20 people, in NY, where the numbers had exploded. 20 seems a pretty small fragment.  

 

 

I think part of the issue is layman's understanding of terms like "damage", "inflammation", "dysfunction," etc., which are all very specific terms in medicine that headlines don't necessarily parse out.

You shouldn't need a Twitter account to read the threads.

[frogger]

4 minutes ago, EmseB said:

I think part of the issue is layman's understanding of terms like "damage", "inflammation", "dysfunction," etc., which are all very specific terms in medicine that headlines don't necessarily parse out.

You shouldn't need a Twitter account to read the threads.

I could read the thread but not the comments under each post r maybe Ijust don't know how twitter works. 

[frogger]

I will say that a lot of confusion comes with looking at this under a microscope while we ignore other illnesses.

I typically never take my kids to the doc but when I saw strep colonies I did because of potential heart damage. So it isn't that I don't know other illnesses can cause heart damage. I just honestly don't know what it means in this context.

 

[ktgrok]

2 hours ago, square_25 said:

So, I don't know about you, but I have no clue how to evaluate this, because I don't know the lingo. What I really want to know is whether the things they are seeing with COVID are the same kind of thing or different, and whether the magnitude is the same or different. I had the impression that COVID would actually infect various organs, as opposed to just causing systemic inflammation, but again... I'm not a doctor. I have no clue. 

Well, the paper about the cardiac damage in Covid was by cardiologists who had a lot of experience and said they had never seen that kind of damage before...so I'd say it is different. 

[frogger]

14 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Yeah, I don’t know what anything means, really. Except that my personal sample is definitely much worse off than they are with the flu, and the death rates/hospitalization rates are much higher, so I’m pretty nervous about assuming that this is all just coming from overly focusing on this illness.

 

I'm not claiming that it isn't worse. We are totally in agreement there.  I think personal experience affects our viewpoint too. Everyone I know that has had it, has had a mild case. My friend that knows 5 people who've had it and three are dead and one is in a wheel chair is going to view this differently and I totally respect that. 4 of them were in the same extended family though, so genetics could have been the difference. The strain of virus could be different. 

 

I just don't know how this compares to other things due to ignorance on my part.

[frogger]

1 hour ago, Corraleno said:

The most recent paper, the one that compared in vitro results with results from autopsies, found serious, potentially permanent, and clearly sometimes fatal, structural damage to heart muscle fibers, not just a "subclinical" and likely temporary level of swelling or inflammation. Comparing what these cardiologists found in athletes after a cold to what happens with Covid is kind of like comparing a mild, subclinical level of reduced breathing efficiency in people who recently had a bad chest cold, to people who actually died of respiratory failure from Covid. 

 

Are you referring to the one done by a team at LSU or a different one. I see that one was done in July.

[Corraleno]

On 8/30/2020 at 10:41 PM, Corraleno said:

Although I agree that preprints should be taken with a grain of salt, there are several aspects of this study that, to me, add credibility:

(1) There is no doubt that Covid is causing heart damage in a significant number of patients, even those who were asymptomatic or had very mild cases, but the how/what/why have not been understood. This research provides a clear, specific, elegant (in the scientific sense) explanation of not only the nature of the damage and how it happens, but why the evidence has been missed until now.

(2) These guys specialize in research on cardiovascular disease, virology, and immunology using a type of stem-cell derived tissue that was developed there at Gladstone (and for which the developer won a Nobel prize). They are experts in this area, and the lead investigator said that in his entire career of looking at cardiomyocytes he had "never seen anything like it before." If this was the sort of damage that could easily be caused by in vitro treatment with many types of toxins or viruses or whatever, then they would presumably have seen it, or at least something similar, before.

(3) The in vitro results were confirmed by examination of autopsy tissue from three patients, only one of whom had been diagnosed with myocarditis. "[E]xamination of myocardium specimens from COVID-19 patients revealed striking similarities to our in vitro findings, including localized regions of severely disrupted sarcomeric structure and numerous cells lacking nuclear DNA."

The full paper can be downloaded here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.25.265561v1.full.pdf+html

 

 

18 minutes ago, frogger said:

Are you referring to the one done by a team at LSU or a different one. I see that one was done in July.

The one linked above ^^^^

[EmseB]

39 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

Well, the paper about the cardiac damage in Covid was by cardiologists who had a lot of experience and said they had never seen that kind of damage before...so I'd say it is different. 

And many other cardiologists have debunked that paper over and over, or at least called it out for significant errors and it has been revised. And it was a preprint.

I honestly don't understand the sentiment that we want fully vetted RCTs for something like HCQ but a preprint with a lot of errors should be taken on, "Well, the authors said..."

[EmseB]

11 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

 

The one linked above ^^^^

Did you read any of the cardiologists who have asked for revisions, questioned the conclusions, etc.? Who are also experts in their field? Above you seem to be saying this should be taken at face value because the authors said it should because they personally had never seen this before (which in and of itself seems to be a simple appeal to authority, not science or systematic review of literature).

[maize]

2 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I mean, I didn’t want a full RCT when people first reported that HCQ worked — it seemed plenty to go on to justify trying it. Now that the results have been unimpressive, I’d need more evidence.

The heart stuff still seems very new and I don’t have a good understanding of it at all. They keep finding new organs than COVID seems to directly infect (which doesn’t happen with the flu), which is freaking me out in general. 

I’m going to be totally delighted if it turns out that we’re over-focusing on rare effects, but given the limited data, I’m pretty uncomfortable assuming it’s not a big deal.

And with something this new and clearly more harmfull than your average flu (a fact that is very well established at this point) it just makes sense to err on the side of caution while continuing with the research that will ultimately give us answers.

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, EmseB said:

Did you read any of the cardiologists who have asked for revisions, questioned the conclusions, etc.? Who are also experts in their field? Above you seem to be saying this should be taken at face value because the authors said it should because they personally had never seen this before (which in and of itself seems to be a simple appeal to authority, not science or systematic review of literature).

Are you talking about the German paper that claimed 80% of patients had some level of heart damage? I read a lot of criticism of that and the authors made revisions. The article I linked is from researchers at UC San Francisco and was only released about 3 weeks ago. The only criticism of that research that I have seen so far has been generic arguments that in vitro studies don't mean anything (although in this case the in vitro findings were matched by the autopsy findings). If you know of any serious, thorough, expert critique of this research, I would very much like to read it.

Edited September 12, 2020 by Corraleno

[EmseB]

1 minute ago, square_25 said:

Is that the same paper? Who debunked it?

Sorry that was an imprecise term. I should say questioned the conclusions based on the data in the paper. I will have to go back down my rabbit trail to find those articles/threads, but at least a few cardiologists questioned the assumptions and methodology and I'm not even remembering right now if there was a control arm. These are people who are fully on board with distancing/masking/think covid is definitely bad/etc.

It's also important to note that we're making societal changes/decisions with real costs based on these preprints and headlines and alarmist stuff associated.

And I get a general sense that it is right and good to be skeptical about something like HCQ but not okay to be skeptical about other non-randomized papers with no control arm in the same way. That the doom and alarm (but not proven) papers carry more weight than anything potentially (but not proven) helpful papers around here. Just my feeling, not a scientific statement. 😉

[EmseB]

9 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I mean, I didn’t want a full RCT when people first reported that HCQ worked — it seemed plenty to go on to justify trying it. Now that the results have been unimpressive, I’d need more evidence.

The heart stuff still seems very new and I don’t have a good understanding of it at all. They keep finding new organs than COVID seems to directly infect (which doesn’t happen with the flu), which is freaking me out in general.

I’m going to be totally delighted if it turns out that we’re over-focusing on rare effects, but given the limited data, I’m pretty uncomfortable assuming it’s not a big deal.

It infects any organ with ACE2 receptors, right? Aren't there a lot of viruses that do that (other coronaviruses at least)?

Again this isn't an argument that covid isn't worse, but I don't know that flu or other viruses don't do this.

And it is hard to find out if we're overfocusing because it feels like anyone who is trying to have this discussion is labled a denier or accused of wanting to downplay the virus for political purposes. That is absolutely not my intention in posting these different twitter discussions, but I've seen more than one doctor/virologist/epidemiologist/cardiologist in my feeds disappointed with the volume and rate of literature publication and state of review.