Impact of the new Coronavirus where you are?

[Mr. Japan]

22 hours ago, nino said:

Once again - well packed with idiots.

Game over. 

OMG!

What an "intelligentsia" showdown.

History has taught nothing about past mistakes.


Inviato dal mio iPhone utilizzando Tapatalk - Game over. - Mr.Japan  copyright -  ;-) -

Edited April 8, 2020 by Mr. Japan

[Ken Gargett]

11 hours ago, Riverstyx said:

Yesterday a close family friend passed.  ~70 yrs old.  He had a respiratory infection for a week that killed him.  Tested for COVID-19, and it came back negative.  They tested him again last Saturday but still waiting results.  I'm guessing the first one was a a false negative - how many people die from mysterious respiratory infections that take them out in a week? 

Rather than gain trust in the numbers over time, I lose it.  

very sorry to hear that. 

so much chaos and so many unknowns. still does not make it any easier if you lose someone. 

[OZCUBAN]

On 4/6/2020 at 2:55 AM, ayepatz said:

You need dark glasses. I can still tell it’s you, unfortunately. ?

The more he covers up the better he looks ?

[prodigy]

I work in construction, which has been deemed an essential business during the stay at home orders. We have had numerous existing jobs shut down at the order of the owner, and new work that was supposed to start up, get pushed back into next year. I was laid off earlier today. It seems all the big companies have a hiring freeze in place until the economy starts going back the other way, so I'm really going to be in a bad place for the foreseeable future.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk
 

[Nino]

Local village care home for the elderly has 5 confirmed Covid 19 cases - 3 staff, 2 residents. All in hospital.

 

[JamesKPolkEsq]

Army field hospital for Covid-19 surge leaves Seattle after 9 days. It never saw a patient

Great news, the first surge in Covid patients appears to have been effectively contained in Seattle.

Three cheers for an effective governmental response in the US! The model of how to control the arc of disease in the population has been effectively laid out in several places.

[bpm32]

1 hour ago, JamesKPolkEsq said:

Army field hospital for Covid-19 surge leaves Seattle after 9 days. It never saw a patient

Great news, the first surge in Covid patients appears to have been effectively contained in Seattle.

Three cheers for an effective governmental response in the US! The model of how to control the arc of disease in the population has been effectively laid out in several places.

Gotta love that Seattle Freeze. If only the extremely antisocial nature of your standard Northwesterner could be duplicated in other localities. Uff da!

[Fosgate]

South Dakota, one of the least populated states in the U.S., Just shot up the list on breakouts today. Started out as 80 at a meat packing plant and then they tested more employees and it hit 190 in that one company so far. I expect well see more.  https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2020/04/10/south-dakota-coronavirus-numbers-governor-kristi-noem/5130027002/?fbclid=IwAR34yR1TQ7iYCaMEcJMzRFutkumWXCakSm4k8F8LFkmkLWK0KjKMDLuev5k

[JamesKPolkEsq]

On 3/28/2020 at 10:36 PM, TheGipper said:

In Europe, excess deaths over the seasonally-adjusted baseline are tracked by an organization called EuroMOMO (European Mortality Monitoring Project).

I would commend to you to watch their reporting at https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html

Technology is giving us the tools to identify and respond to these kind of events with an accuracy and timeliness that people in 1918 could only have dreamed of.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/coronavirus-deaths-new-york-city.html

Seasonally adjusted, death rate in NYC was at least double for March. 

 

"The recent numbers are most likely an undercount. Even in normal times, death certificates take time to be processed and collected, and complete death tallies can take weeks to become final. This is especially true for cases involving coronavirus. “Covid deaths all have to be manually coded,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the C.D.C.’s National Center for Health Statistics, adding that death counts from New York City typically lag actual deaths by 10 or 11 days.

But even if the current count is perfect, roughly 9,780 people have died of all causes over the past month in New York City, about 5,000 more than is typical."

[smokum]

This is from a phlebotomist in Chicago. She puts a great perspective on this bug.  I am going to try and get tested once more tests for antibodies are available

My daughter the ER nurse says that people are coming in with many different symptom that are not on the list of symptoms to get tested. Many no fever, so e with abdominal pain, some with new onset arrhythmias. Good car buddy of mine reached out from the St Louis area to let me know he is getting over the CV. He told me he was very cautious in his day to day but one day he walked in the house and his teeth started chattering uncontrollably and then full uncontrollable body shivers. He told me he fully expected to die but didnt want to die in a cocoon at a hospital so he stayed home. I didnt ask what treatment he received if any. He has lung damage now but is glad to be alive. This is a nasty bug for sure. 
 

 

https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospital-phlebotomist-30-of-those-tested-have-coronavirus-antibody

[Habana Mike]

I hope that those who live through the virus build up immunity and not recontract it.

Pretty scary proposition if not.....

[Ken Gargett]

2 hours ago, Habana Mike said:

I hope that those who live through the virus build up immunity and not recontract it.

Pretty scary proposition if not.....

Mike, that has been something i've been keen to learn.

from fauci and others, it seems that the prevailing thought is that if you have had it, you are likely (not guaranteed but it is usual with most of these viruses) to build up some sort of immunity and/or antibodies. but they have no way of knowing, without testing and experience, whether that will last a few weeks or a year. 

like everything else, so much we do not know. 

[La_Tigre]

Coworker at the hospital with progressive body aches, chills the past three days and then diarrhea today tested positive.

Getting extra pissed about the “open back up the economy” Aholes pleading to kill more of us. 

[Mr. Japan]

https://www.google.it/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/world/1269746/EU-coronavirus-news-Ursula-von-der-Leyen-apology-Italy-European-Parliament-update/amp

Never too late my friend.

We are all European ? I hope so.


Inviato dal mio iPhone utilizzando Tapatalk

[captaincaveman]

Both my parents had it but were not hospitalized.  Counting my lucky stars since they are both ok now.  Doctors told them they "should" be immune to it for at least the next month, but to also be worried about a resurgence in September.

[SigmundChurchill]

9 hours ago, Habana Mike said:

I hope that those who live through the virus build up immunity and not recontract it.

Pretty scary proposition if not.....

 

6 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

Mike, that has been something i've been keen to learn.

from fauci and others, it seems that the prevailing thought is that if you have had it, you are likely (not guaranteed but it is usual with most of these viruses) to build up some sort of immunity and/or antibodies. but they have no way of knowing, without testing and experience, whether that will last a few weeks or a year. 

like everything else, so much we do not know. 

 

1 hour ago, captaincaveman said:

Both my parents had it but were not hospitalized.  Counting my lucky stars since they are both ok now.  Doctors told them they "should" be immune to it for at least the next month, but to also be worried about a resurgence in September.

South Korea is reporting a 6% re-infection rate, but they are not sure if it is actual re-infection or if the virus never left the body, and this is actually a re-activation of the existing virus.  We are having individual reports of that here in the United States.  People getting over the disease a month ago, and getting sick and again coming back positive for the virus.  Scary stuff.  We don’t really know.  Fauci says you wont get it again for at least a month, but he is not taking about re-activation.

[helix]

Not to go all conspiracy theory but if  this virus was developed in the lab in Wuhan , and is as such, a virus developed to be a form of  weaponized biological agent and not a naturally occurring pathogen ,  it may explain its unusually potent and contagious nature . 

https://nationalpost.com/news/its-possible-a-wuhan-disease-lab-is-the-focus-of-suspicion-and-conspiracy-theories-about-covid-19s-origins

Formerly being an accredited NSF 49 Biological Safety Cabinet Certifier  (https://www.nsf.org/services/by-industry/pharma-biotech/biosafety-cabinetry/biosafety-cabinet-field-certifier-accreditation) and having worked in BSL level 3 containment labs , I suggest It being near impossible for an accidental release of a pathogen from such a facility .

[JamesKPolkEsq]

1 hour ago, helix said:

Not to go all conspiracy theory... 

Immediately proceeds to go conspiracy theory ?

There's a reason why this exact scenario, coronavirus focused, was the subject of a global pandemic tabletop exercise last year.

Coronaviruses have been spread exactly this way twice in the past, MERS and SARS. It just happens that this particular strain is different than previous outbreaks in that it has a long incubation period and asymptomatic spreaders. 

[helix]

The British government knew last November it would be bad when 007 failed to report in from Wuhan...... 

[Nino]

Could get worse than it already is :

The Coronavirus Is Mutating. What Does That Mean for a Vaccine?

By Nathaniel Lash and Tala SchlossbergApril 16, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/16/opinion/coronavirus-mutations-vaccine-covid.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Around the world, hope for a return to normalcy is pinned on a vaccine, the “ultimate weapon,” as it’s been called by officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But it’s still unclear how successful a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can be.

A lot will depend on how the virus mutates. Broadly, there are two ways mutations can play out.

Scenario 1: The coronavirus is unable to evade a vaccine

A successful vaccine could stop the virus dead in its tracks, but only if the virus doesn't mutate its way around the shot. Here's what scientists are watching for:

Like all viruses, SARS-CoV-2 is mutating as it passes from person to person. A “mutation” is just a change in a virus’s genetic code. Most mutations don’t really change how the virus functions.

Below is a glimpse at an imaginary virus. It’s doing what all viruses do: entering a cell, hijacking the cell’s machinery and using it to make many copies of itself.

Sometimes, small errors — or mutations — can show up in that replication. Those errors accumulate over time as the virus spreads from cell to cell and person to person.

 

Vaccines work by prompting the body to develop antibodies, which neutralize the virus by binding to it in a very specific way. Scientists are watching to see if mutations will affect this interaction. If they don't, then there is hope that a vaccine won't need constant updating.

 

That same process has played out with our most effective vaccines, including the one against measles.

“Measles mutates just as fast as flu and coronavirus, but the measles vaccine from 1950 still works today,” said Trevor Bedford, a biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

To enter a cell, the measles virus uses certain of its proteins that are unable to mutate even slightly without breaking. The vaccine targets those parts, so any mutation that would evade the vaccine would mean that the virus can’t infect other cells.

The vaccine has the measles virus cornered.

Scenario 2: Mutations make vaccines less effective over time

But what if the virus doesn’t get cornered like measles? If the virus mutates in a way that prevents antibodies from binding, it could make a lasting, universal vaccine difficult to create.

Antibodies, which the body produces in response to a vaccine or an infection, work by binding to specific spots on a virus called antigens. If random viral mutations alter the shape of an antigen, it can make a vaccine less effective against the virus.

"What will happen in many viruses is you'll get infected by Strain A; your immune system learns to recognize that surface protein, but then the virus is able to mutate in such a fashion that it still performs its function but make it so that your antibodies against Strain A no longer recognize Strain B," Dr. Bedford said.

Here’s that scenario playing out on our fictional virus: The antibodies produced by the vaccine work on one strain but can’t bind to the other, rendering the vaccine ineffective.

That’s what happens with the flu: The virus’s antigens mutate so much that they evolve into different strains, each requiring a slightly different vaccine. Scientists continuously develop vaccines to target those new strains. In spite of that, the vaccines offer only partial immunity to the various flu strains that spread each year.

If that happens with the coronavirus, researchers will have to rush to produce and administer new vaccines as novel strains of the virus naturally arise.

It also reveals another quirk with how viruses behave: Some can respond to the immunity in the population they’re trying to infect. Over time, for example, many people develop immunity to at least some strains of the flu — either through fighting off infections or by getting vaccinated. But the virus keeps spreading. Here’s how.

For a brand-new virus like SARS-CoV-2, there is no widespread immunity. This virus is encountering few immune hosts who could halt its spread. Since the virus doesn’t need to change to survive, mutations that could modify the shape of the antigens — if they exist at all — are likely rare, and will stay rare.

But if people become immune to the dominant strain, either by fighting off the virus or through vaccination, the game changes. Versions of the virus with mutations that get around the population’s immunity are more likely to spread, and can then develop into new strains.

 

The takeaway: We’ll have to wait and see

Scientists know that SARS-CoV-2 is mutating.

Among the thousands of samples of the long strand of RNA that makes up the coronavirus, 11 mutations have become fairly common. But as far as we know, it’s the same virus infecting people all over the world, meaning that only one “strain” of the virus exists, said Peter Thielen, a molecular biologist with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Only one of those common mutations affects the “spike protein,” which enables the virus to infect cells in the throat and lungs. Efforts to produce antibodies that block the spike protein are central to many efforts to develop a vaccine. Since the spike protein has changed little so far, some scientists believe that’s a sign that it can’t alter itself very much and remain infectious.

There’s still a lot about the virus we don’t know. We don’t even know if people are immune to the virus if they’ve caught it already, nor how long that immunity could last, though work is well underway to understand these things.

Mr. Thielen says it is still unclear how those mutations in the genome will ultimately affect countermeasures like a vaccine.

“We just have to keep looking,” he said.

 

[Madjul28]

Im stuck at my job site in canada for 32 days lol...that is it..kind of a long quarantine

[helix]

6 hours ago, JamesKPolkEsq said:

Immediately proceeds to go conspiracy theory ?

There's a reason why this exact scenario, coronavirus focused, was the subject of a global pandemic tabletop exercise last year.

Coronaviruses have been spread exactly this way twice in the past, MERS and SARS. It just happens that this particular strain is different than previous outbreaks in that it has a long incubation period and asymptomatic spreaders. 

right after If   LOL. 

[Ken Gargett]

9 hours ago, helix said:

Not to go all conspiracy theory but if  this virus was developed in the lab in Wuhan , and is as such, a virus developed to be a form of  weaponized biological agent and not a naturally occurring pathogen ,  it may explain its unusually potent and contagious nature . 

https://nationalpost.com/news/its-possible-a-wuhan-disease-lab-is-the-focus-of-suspicion-and-conspiracy-theories-about-covid-19s-origins

Formerly being an accredited NSF 49 Biological Safety Cabinet Certifier  (https://www.nsf.org/services/by-industry/pharma-biotech/biosafety-cabinetry/biosafety-cabinet-field-certifier-accreditation) and having worked in BSL level 3 containment labs , I suggest It being near impossible for an accidental release of a pathogen from such a facility .

i don't buy the lab theory for an instant. 

in the first place, unless the chinese are so much more hopeless at this sort of thing than we think, is that really the best they could do? if they were developing 'weaponised biological agents', does anyone really think that they could not make a more effective one? this one is severe but if it was intended as a weapon, it is hardly as powerful as they could make it.

as you say, near impossible for an accidental release. in other words, this is all nonsense or they deliberately released it. again, does anyone really believe that they would release something like this in their own country to kill their own people and put themselves in a situation where control gets out of their hands. they'd know every chance it could sweep through their country. that makes no sense at all. if one did subscribe to the conspiracy theories and believe that this was a chinese weapon, why on earth, if they wanted to test it, would they not release it elsewhere? they are all over places like africa. how much easier to start there. zero chinese casualties and plenty of animals/markets/people on which to blame it. we'd all think it was something like ebola. it makes zero sense to release it in your own country. 

also, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that a naturally occurring pathogen can't be this potent and contagious. assuming it must be a weapon is a massive leap. 

this out-of-a-lab theory came out in the very early days. my understanding was that it was completely dismissed by all relevant medical and intelligence bodies. now it has come up again because it is nice to have someone to blame for any shortcomings in our own countries and govts. 

[Deeg]

The lab theory is being pushed as part of a political narrative in order to distract from mistakes being made on the ground - same as "Kung Flu" and "Chinese Virus".  It's BS.

One thing has become increasingly obvious in recent years - narrative is a powerful weapon in the court of public opinion, and it's the enemy of truth.  Whenever consuming information on something like a pandemic one should be on high alert for the presence of the former, because anything filtered through it is going to be unreliable.

[helix]

26 minutes ago, Ken Gargett said:

i don't buy the lab theory for an instant. 

in the first place, unless the chinese are so much more hopeless at this sort of thing than we think, is that really the best they could do? if they were developing 'weaponised biological agents', does anyone really think that they could not make a more effective one? this one is severe but if it was intended as a weapon, it is hardly as powerful as they could make it.

as you say, near impossible for an accidental release. in other words, this is all nonsense or they deliberately released it. again, does anyone really believe that they would release something like this in their own country to kill their own people and put themselves in a situation where control gets out of their hands. they'd know every chance it could sweep through their country. that makes no sense at all. if one did subscribe to the conspiracy theories and believe that this was a chinese weapon, why on earth, if they wanted to test it, would they not release it elsewhere? they are all over places like africa. how much easier to start there. zero chinese casualties and plenty of animals/markets/people on which to blame it. we'd all think it was something like ebola. it makes zero sense to release it in your own country. 

also, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that a naturally occurring pathogen can't be this potent and contagious. assuming it must be a weapon is a massive leap. 

this out-of-a-lab theory came out in the very early days. my understanding was that it was completely dismissed by all relevant medical and intelligence bodies. now it has come up again because it is nice to have someone to blame for any shortcomings in our own countries and govts. 

tongue in cheek,,,,,,,,if the country that developed such a bio weapon were to unleash it on there own population first, get herd immunity first , get back up and running economically first , new world order..... where's 007