Wuhan Coronavirus

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Penn

I read this as a settlement for China to accept/admit culpability, as long as the "work" on the virus excludes the genetic engineering part of the virus structure.

They may be hoping it works out that way. Frankly, I believe they would say anything, even a partial mea culpa, to avoid the world calling for their head. There are still too many holes in the wet-market story (numbers of people & when). Also, from what I've read, the recombination (of 2 or more types) necessary to make this virus would've had to occur virtually simultaneously and accidental animal jump to human doesn't seem to fly. Also because... Communist China.

[Pete]

This article includes the Chelsea tests.

So we have the Stanford study in CA, pregnant women, homeless shelter and now Chelsea.

All point to a far wider spread of the virus but also means a much lower CFR.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...have-covid-19/



"...Nearly one third of 200 Chelsea residents who gave a drop of blood to researchers on the street this week tested positive for antibodies linked to COVID-19, a startling indication of how widespread infections have been in the densely populated city.

Sixty-four residents who had a finger pricked in Bellingham Square on Tuesday and Wednesday had antibodies that the immune system makes to fight off the coronavirus, according to Massachusetts General Hospital physicians who ran the pilot study.

The 200 participants generally appeared healthy, but about half told the doctors they had had at least one symptom of COVID-19 in the past four weeks....."

[Airbornelawyer]

In looking at the latest COVID-19 situation report as of 19 April, it seems that the anomalously high case fatality rates in certain Western European countries persists. They exceed 10% in France, Belgium, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, with Hungary at 9.9%. Meanwhile their neighbors are in the 1-5% range which we see in other countries and which we have seen in several previous virus epidemics.

Do you think the problem is the denominator, and there are far more cases in these countries than have been reported, for whatever reason? Or is the issue with the numerator, and these particular countries may be attributing to COVID-19 deaths which might not be directly due to the virus (like New York City and their recent adjustment)?

Or do you think that is this information basically accurate, and reflects something seriously wrong with the health care systems in these particular countries and how they reacted to the crisis? There has been a fair amount of anecdotal evidence, including reports of elderly patients and nursing home residents left to die in Italy, Spain, France and the UK, that might support that thesis.

Some of the differences might be demographic. Some news reports have noted Italy's aging population, The death rate is much higher among the elderly, so countries with more older people might expect a higher CFR. However, the country with the highest median age in Europe, outside of micro-state Monaco, is Germany. So that does not necessarily correlate.

Any thoughts?

[Old Dog New Trick]

Everyone who died today, died of coronavirus if the local government’s/administrator’s can get more money and free things from the federal governments.

Governments that don’t have any money or stockpiles of equipment don’t have high numbers of coronavirus deaths.

JMHO-YCFRMD

(Don’t mean to make light of the situation, it’s a serious problem and many good people will needlessly die because of lots of reasons...including incompetence and failure to prepare. That dagger has a very large target.)

[Pete]

I think the denominator - at least in the US - is way too low. Here in NC they are only testing the 65 or older crowd who come in, hospital and first responders and those who are really sick and got to the hospital.

Younger and with mild symptoms? No test, you're told to go home and shake it off.

That also doesn't count those who just shake it off and those who didn't even know they had it.

Only large scale antigen testing will tell how widespread it is. NY is fixing to launch a large scale antigen test, around 3,000 IIRC. The Gov was talking about it this afternoon.

[PSM]

After hearing one of the 'survivors' of the virus who met with the President last week, it's possible that I may have had it. I never get sick. Really. The last time I had the seasonal flu was 1971. I got mild colds when my wife was substitute teaching for a couple of years.

About the time this broke, and roughly the time I pooh-pooed mugwump's post about it, I woke up one morning feeling achy, chilled, and had a loss of apatite. I have no idea if I had a temperature because I never felt the need to check it. This lasted about 3 days. This is exactly what the guy with the President described. I rarely come into close contact with others but my wife does so, if I did get it, I got it from her. She had no symptoms at all. It would be nice if we could get tested just to find out since I'm almost 70 with slightly high blood pressure and, reportedly, in the target zone.

ETA: I left out the cough! I would cough so hard that I almost threw up twice and got light-headed once to the point of having to lie down. There was a slight tightness in my chest but I chalk that up to the coughing. I slept well but my wife asked me one night if I got any sleep at all do to my coughing all night. It didn't wake me at all.

[Pete]

As of yesterday NY's numbers have dropped to 627 deaths. NJ 132, Mass 146 and Penn 135.

Everybody else was single or double digits. Those states will see an increase but it's been 6 weeks since the alarm bell was rung.

New cases have been 30K +/-for the last 18 days. 25,040 yesterday.

Deaths have been 2K +/- for the last 13 days (discounting NY's dump of 3,700 in one day to pad their numbers). 1,561 yesterday.

We will never have "0" deaths.

Time to get back to work.

[Badger52]

Denominator wrong. This is either a problem with the reporting mechanism, or intentional manipulation of figures, and the problem is widespread. The use of a case fatality rate is of little value really except to briefers who want to get you to behave in a way they wish. Mortality rate (using potential affected population as the denominator) would be more accurate, because those asymptomatic people don't walk around with a sign over their head.

I see it all the way down to my county. The "important" number is total cases, even though that has no relevance to actual number of cases CURRENTLY or the number of people who tested positive but who have RECOVERED. And at many levels, the number of this last category isn't even published. Why is that?

[1stindoor]

Originally Posted by Pete

We will never have "0" deaths.

Time to get back to work.

I was just having this same argument yesterday. We're not going to cure death. It happens to everyone.

[Ret10Echo]

I dropped this back in post #676....

You would think we would have a better sense of things in the information age but just as an example of "too early". The question is what exactly does that mean and whose opinion is the right one?



Philadelphia Threw a WWI Parade

With summer, the Spanish flu seemed to subside. But the killer was merely laying in wait, set to return in the fall and winter—typical peak flu season—more lethal than before. As Philadelphia planned its parade, bound to be a large gathering, director of public health Krusen had ignored the growing concerns of other medical experts and allowed the parade to proceed, even as a deadly outbreak raged on nearby military bases.

[Pete]

The point of the lock down was not to stop the virus but to flatten the curve.

That was to keep the hospitals from becoming overrun with virus patients and give them a chance to bring in equipment.

Right now in NC we have 465 hospitalized for the virus. 3,223 ICU beds - 784 empty. 16,508 hospital beds - 6,304 empty. Ventilators in hospitals 2,906 - 684 in use.

It's been a number of weeks and I'd say we've flattened the curve.

Our new cases (covered our problems with testing many times) have been pretty much under 200 per day but did have a few in the 300's and a 500 + on Friday.

Time to get back to work - with maybe the "gatherings over 50" still in place.

[Pete]

What was that Scrooge said about "..decrease the surplus population.."?

"Cuomo didn’t know coronavirus patients are being sent back to nursing homes"

https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/cuomo-...nursing-homes/

".....“That’s a good question, I don’t know,” the governor said.

Cuomo’s startling admission came days after the state revealed last week that at least 3,316 people in nursing homes and adult care facilities had died of coronavirus at their residences or in hospitals across the state...."

If it was Trump.....

[Pete]

Good set of tests just starting in CA

Two different communities not that far apart. One mostly rural and one mostly urban. Testing for both the virus and antigens.

"California researchers test everybody in one town for coronavirus"

https://news.trust.org/item/20200420214536-n2156

"BOLINAS, Calif., April 20 (Reuters) - Researchers began testing an entire town in northern California for the novel coronavirus and its antibodies on Monday, one of the first such efforts since the pandemic hit the United States.

Bolinas, a wealthy beach town in Marin County, near Silicon Valley, raised funds to test all 1,680 of its residents, in partnership with University of California-San Francisco (UCSF).

Dr. Aenor Sawyer, an assistant professor at UCSF and a Bovinas resident, said the town is uniquely situated to teach the medical community about how the disease spreads because it lies two miles (3 km) from a highway with no through road.

"So we're fairly isolated, rural, and (with) stable ecosystems right now for the last several weeks. So it will be very interesting to see the footprint of the virus in this arena," Sawyer said....."

and

"...Researchers have chosen the Mission District, a vibrant inner city neighborhood with Latino roots in San Francisco, for the second location. Testing will start there on Saturday.

"There are two paired sites that are going on right now: One here in Bolinas, which is very rural and people are quite separated and it's isolated. And another, less than an hour's drive away, in the Mission District of San Francisco, where it's very densely populated, people live very close to each other, and it's very connected," said Dr. Bryan Greenhouse, an assistant professor at UCSF and one of the study's researchers....."

About time

[Pete]

An interesting piece on a worker forgotten in all this.

"...There are few high-traffic businesses more densely populated than grocery stores. In fact, within the U.S. economy retail supermarkets have the highest foot traffic of any business sector in the entire economy; that’s just an empirical fact…. and the coronavirus impact increased that foot traffic by an average of 40 percent. Now, stop and think about this logically & apply a large dose of common sense. Think about human-to-human interface...."

More at the link

https://theconservativetreehouse.com...H0#more-189620

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Pete

An interesting piece on a worker forgotten in all this.

"...There are few high-traffic businesses more densely populated than grocery stores. In fact, within the U.S. economy retail supermarkets have the highest foot traffic of any business sector in the entire economy; that’s just an empirical fact…. and the coronavirus impact increased that foot traffic by an average of 40 percent. Now, stop and think about this logically & apply a large dose of common sense. Think about human-to-human interface...."

More at the link

https://theconservativetreehouse.com...H0#more-189620

Indeed. At either the grocery store on my end of town, or the Walmart out at the interchange it's not hard to avoid folks and keep the .Guv determined distance. Except for the 5 teen-age stockers in a single aisle gabbin' as they put in new shelves of Ramen. And ACTIVE case load declining, and new case rate declining. Tiny numbers relatively speaking in my AO but the math is what it is. Then again, we're not Madison, starved for our Starbucks. Cookie-cutter diagnosis = fail.

I wonder how much of the stay-hidden approach is from those that have the ear of the statehouse and would be jealous if some deplorable county was allowed to return to more of their productive life.