I just got back from Costco and a young woman (I'd say mid 20's) had her mask around her chin. Just about every customer who passed her told her to put her mask up. She didn't.
COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...
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I just got back from Costco and a young woman (I'd say mid 20's) had her mask around her chin. Just about every customer who passed her told her to put her mask up. She didn't.
Both times I have been out in the last two weeks, the biggest offenders were the twenty-somethings...masks around chin, not SDing properly, etc. When asked to comply they completely ignored.
Cuomo just announced preliminary results from the ongoing antibody survey in NY. A total of 3000 people have been tested across the state, results show the following infection rates by area:
NYC: 21.2%
Long Island: 16.7%
Westchester/Rockland: 11.7%
Rest of state: 3.6%
Testing was done by randomly sampling people at grocery and big box stores.
NYC: 21.2%
Long Island: 16.7%
Westchester/Rockland: 11.7%
Rest of state: 3.6%
Testing was done by randomly sampling people at grocery and big box stores.
Stock market gave up its gains after reports that GIlead's Remdesivir flopped in its first trial. Trading in Gilead halted. Hmm.
The place where most people have a brain, but he evidently just has a hole.
It sounds like they're referring to the China trial that was halted early. That was another study that used seriously ill patients. While it would be nice to find a treatment that works for people who've reached that stage, I don't see any reason to expect that an antiviral would be the way to go. Still believe remdesivir (and HCQ for that matter) will need to be given to patients in the early stages of the disease when viral replication is high. Like when using tamiflu, you need to start taking it within the first 48 hours of symptoms or it really doesn't do much if anything.
Thanks for the reply and explanation. The science aspect of all this is way above my pay grade, so I appreciate it. I was watching my Thomson One quote screen and saw the market react so suddenly like it did, so I was curious what happened. Market has since regained some of its gains and GILD is trading again.
I wouldn't trust any Chinese study frankly. I'd rather see the conclusions of studies here and other developed nations. I'd take those results more seriously either way.
From CNBC:
But the major averages then rebounded after Gilead took issue with the report, saying: “Because this study was terminated early due to low enrollment, it was underpowered to enable statistically meaningful conclusions. As such, the study results are inconclusive, though trends in the data suggest a potential benefit for remdesivir, particularly among patients treated early in disease.”
The report and Gilead’s subsequent statement came a week after STAT News reported that Chicago patients taking remdesivir to treat coronavirus were recovering rapidly from severe virus symptoms. That report lifted market sentiment, sending stock sharply higher.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/dow...gest-oil-turbulence-await-jobless-claims.html
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/23...ent-show-no-benefit-for-coronavirus-patients/
So WHO "accidentally" publishes a "report" from a trial in China that was discontinued due to low enrollment? Note, discontinued is different from halted. Halted means there was a result - good or bad. Discontinued means the trial parameters could not be met.
Why would there be a report on a trial that was discontinued? And why does WHO have it? Also, Financial Times, who first published it has since retracted the story. Hmmm ...... indeed.
Wait for the one sponsored by Gilead. That's the one to watch.
Good chance I might be "that guy" with goggles lol. I've tested it at home and seem totolerate and I've done some yard work with them in the past and they're antifog too but when out and about not sure if my tolerance will be the same until I test it.
If you wear glasses it can be a challenge. Have to make sure you get the nose pinched just right and even then...
I've had that issue with other goggles I've used for yard work that's why I specifically got antifog ones when I saw them. These ones work great, it's basically for when I'm spreading/spraying anything that has chemicals in it and I have a mask on as well.
I think they're some antifog solutions you can get to help with the lenses. I can't verify this but on one of the tv news programs they said wash them with soap and water just before you go out and let them air dry. That supposedly gives them some anti fog protection for a little bit.
The China study def can’t be taken at face value, but definitely dampers expectations. They also increased the American Gilead trial which can be viewed as bad news since maybe they weren’t getting clear enough results from the original sample size. I guess we’ll know for sure any day now since the American trial will be done soon.
More on NY's outbreak and subways and testing
NY's outbreak was out of control already before they had enough testing to figure that out, as testing was almost non-existent until about 3/7 (when less than a few hundred tests had been run - NY testing wasn't even approved by the CDC until 3/2), well after the outbreak truly started; see the graphic below for the very few positives before about 3/10 really (when NY hit 100 new cases in a day), when testing really got going.
So, even though NY has now done more tests per capita than any country, massive testing was started too late to stop the exponential spread, especially since social distancing wasn't strongly in place before about mid-March, when it all started (NY gatherings were limited on 3/12 and schools were closed on 3/16, but the full stay at home order wasn't until 3/22) - especially on the very crowded subways and trains. Other states had later outbreaks than NY and had enough testing to keep better on top of that (like CA).
Speaking of NY, a cool paper from MIT (thanks @Knight Shift) just came out analyzing the NY outbreak data and the likely correlation to subway ridership and transmissions. Population density and the subways/buses have been discussed a lot in this thread, so was wondering when we'd see a paper like this. No doubt that the subways were the biggest transmission vector imaginable and should have been shut down first, before the schools or anything else, but that would have been a very hard sell before there were deaths. Nowhere else in the US has the population density or the commuter density that NYC does (and that also seeded the major outbreaks in NE NJ and SW CT).
And the first NY death wasn't until 3/14, so closing subways and the city before then would've been a hard sell, but it would've been the thing to do, in hindsight. There were 60 a week later and nearly 1000 by 3/28, which is not surprising since deaths lag infections by 2-4 weeks, which is why NY really needed to be shut down in early March. And as an aside, disinfecting the subways is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic - almost useless compared to keeping people from being on top of each other in the subways (and buses/trains, too), where the vast majority of infections occurs.
http://web.mit.edu/jeffrey/harris/HarrisJE_WP2_COVID19_NYC_13-Apr-2020.pdf
10,000 infections in NYC on 3/1?, more on Pueyo article, and why, again, testing is so critical...
More on the Pueyo "Learning to Dance" article in Medium and today's Times article showing a Northeastern University analysis that NYC likely had 10,000 infections as early as 3/1 (and the rest of the US was far more infected than thought, also); these dovetail with the NYC subway analysis above, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/...action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Feel like I've been screaming for weeks about how our lack of early, aggressive testing capability was the most important element in letting this outbreak get way out of control, especially in the the NYC metro area (<200 tests in NY through 3/6!). If NYC had 10,000 infections by 3/1, as per this new analysis of the data, that's roughly 1000 per 1MM in population and as I've noted a few times, some experts believe that aggressive interventions need to be in place before 200 cases per 1MM in order to control an outbreak.
And the only way to know if you have an exponentially growing outbreak is to have aggressive early testing (like South Korea and Taiwan had) and the US was so far from that it's sad, given the testing debacle. I have been saying we needed to be in lockdown starting early March, but this analysis probably says it should have been late February, when we weren't even testing and had no data and no way would anyone have supported shutting anything down without data. Yes, NY (and NJ) now lead the world in tests per 1MM, but that's only because we started so late in the outbreak and our testing was always playing catch up to the outbreak.
The graphic below from Pueyo's "Learning to Dance" Medium article shows how important early testing is to get ahead of an outbreak, as reflected in the low % of positive tests in countries like SK, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The US number is bad, but the NY/NJ area numbers are far worse as our area was in the 40-50% of tests being positive for weeks at the height of the outbreak, as we were so far behind. The second graphic shows where various countries are on the "hammer" (heavy social distancing to control major outbreaks) vs. the "dance" (relaxing harsh social distancing in a careful way to avoid a second outbreak) - and we're clearly nowhere near ready to "relax" social distancing yet, based on that curve, even in states with less of an outbreak, so far, vs. the worst states.
Coronavirus: Learning How to Dance
And one more time, but if we had done what South Korea had done (and Seoul is almost as densely populated as NYC, so don't say it's not possible), we could probably be near their 5 deaths/1MM and not the 144 deaths/1MM in the US - or sadly the ~1000 deaths/1MM we have in NY or ~500 deaths/1MM in NJ. Even at 10 deaths per 1MM, that would be 3300 in the US vs. the ~47,000 we have now (and 200 in NY vs. the ~20,000 we have now).
I know none of this solves the problem of what to do now, but it should at least shout at people/politicians to not repeat this mistake across the country by relaxing social distancing without having massive testing and efficient contact tracing/quarantining and a mask culture in place. Repeating the folly we just went through would be Einstein's classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.
Minor comment: I do think the Northeastern study probably overstates SF's outbreak (9300 on 3/1) relative to NYC's (10,700 on 3/1), since the outcomes diverged so heavily after that, with SF having much less of an epidemic and far less deaths. I don't think their 3/15 shelter-in-place order (vs. NY's on 3/22, even though NYC had shut schools, restaurants, bars and such by 3/16) should have made that much of a difference in outcomes. But that's arguing minutiae vs. the big picture of there likely being major outbreaks underway by mid/late February. Also, as per the subway/mass transit study, the far greater population density and "mixing/contacts" of commuters in NYC would drive a much faster outbreak vs. SF, as has been seen.
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Interesting. In US most people north of age 55 probably didnt get MMR. I was born in 1964 and never got MMR Had measles and mumps back to back in 68. No rubella.
The MMR wasn't a thing, in the beginning, because as you point out the Rubella vaccine lagged the other two.
I had measles and mumps vaccines pre-school, but remember getting the Rubella vaccine administered by the school nurse in 1st or 2nd grade.
It's also worth noting that there was some talk, a few years back, about how those early measles, mumps and rubella shots - the ones that are 50ish years old - have "worn off", and may require a booster.
STAT seems to be scooping everyone these days. As per the linked article, an unintended posting of results from the discontinued (but largely complete) remdesivir trials in China showed little clinical benefit from remdesivir. Disappointing, assuming that's confirmed by the final paper and subsequent studies; still waiting on final release of the data (partially leaked early) from the study referenced above in the US.
The antiviral medicine remdesivir from Gilead Sciences failed to speed the improvement of patients with Covid-19 or prevent them from dying, according to results from a long-awaited clinical trial conducted in China. Gilead, however, said the data suggest a “potential benefit.”
A summary of the study results was inadvertently posted to the website of the World Health Organization and seen by STAT on Thursday, but then removed.
“A draft document was provided by the authors to WHO and inadvertently posted on the website and taken down as soon as the mistake was noticed. The manuscript is undergoing peer review and we are waiting for a final version before WHO comments,” said WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/23...ent-show-no-benefit-for-coronavirus-patients/
I keep saying it but really believe it's all going to come down to the underlined sentence. Treatments for viral disease must be started early in the disease course. By the time a person has reached week 2 or 3 the immune system has probably stopped most viral replication and the damage has been done, plus whatever over-active immune response (cytokine storm) is going to occur has been set in motion.
It will be interesting to see how this is dealt with. Eventually the NYC area will get the current wave beaten down enough so that doctors can focus on early stage cases. Right now people are told to stay at home and ride it out unless/until they start having trouble breathing. Problem is, treatments are much less effective at that point. Will the recommendations change, will people be encouraged to see their doctors for treatment as soon as they start symptoms (fever, cough, whatever)? What happens if something like remdesivir shows tremendous results for early cases, will that become the equivalent of tamiflu? Though I think it has to be given by IV.
The really tricky thing is the vast majority of people resolve the illness themselves without treatment so what percentage of people would be treated. Hopefully both remdesivir and HCQ show efficacy when given early...
Don't forget there are those who, even in a pandemic, need the "cool factor" and don't feel cool wearing a mask. Have had some colleagues say earlier on "i'm not going to wear a mask and look like an idiot, they can't make me"
So we got this goin' for us...which is nice...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028220303848
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028220303848
Took too much time, sorry. Have been doing every 3-4 days, as trends are easier to see in that timeframe vs. day by day. Will have one up later today...
They prevent you from spreading a virus but they really don't protect you from getting it
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I wouldn't say they are dreadful.
It is true that new cases reported are up, but test results reported are also up. Testing and new cases are very closely correlated in NJ. When more tests are performed, positive results increase proportionally. But the percent of tests returning positive results has decreased marginally, from around 56% last week to around 51% A move in the right direction, but still way too high to read anything into the positive case reporting. NJ needs to increase testing 4-5 fold to really keep track of new cases.
On the other hand, we've seen improvement in some lagging indicators:
- The number of hospitalized patients has dropped significantly, about 12% since last week.
- The number of patients on ventilators is continuing a gradual downward decline.
- The number of patients in ICU/CCU has leveled off, after previous increases.
The only real bad news is that daily new hospitalizations moved up (although it was offset by a climb in discharges). The daily new hospitalization and discharge data seems to be somewhat spiky for some reason, so I wouldn't get too concerned over a one day spike.
Daily reported deaths is down today, but the trend seems to be somewhat higher. But deaths are a real lagging indicator, typically occurring weeks after the onset of illness. And in NJ, deaths aren't reported until a positive test result is received, so deaths reported today may have occurred some time ago, but got reported today because that is when the test result was reported.
Ideally we would want a huge ramp up in testing, so we could see if new infections are actually decreasing. But failing that, the look at hospitalizations is the best measure we have ... and it is moving in the right direction.
Surgical masks are actually pretty good at keeping virus-laden droplets in, preventing spread, but are not great at keeping smaller droplets with viruses out, as they're really not filters, per se, unlike N95 masks which would trap the vast majority of viruses (and is why health care workers use them and not surgical masks when in close contact with patients who are positive).
I left out a big word in my post..made the edit...they don't protect at least the ones the average person is wearing. I think there is some false thinking from peeps that they are protected
I thought people are not supposed to wear surgical or N95 masks? Instead we're supposed to be using cloth masks, and I think bac is right that they do better at protecting others than at protecting the wearer. Am I way off base?
Ahhh.. no there are not all having dialysis in a hospital. Her company has set us special clinics to treat covid positive patients.
Biggest news from Cuomo's presser...
21.2% in NYC are positive for antibodies and should now be immune and not contagious (preliminary data, though). I had been guessing 15%. Here's the data...
21.2% in NYC are positive for antibodies and should now be immune and not contagious (preliminary data, though). I had been guessing 15%. Here's the data...
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Because naturally when you wear a mask you think you're protecting yourself...you're not thinking of yourself as being the possible problem but something from the outside.
The main reason to wear a mask for the pandemic is for the herd protection it can offer if you got a lot of compliance. I've said that and agree with it. Your eyes are exposed and they're not all that great at filtering all particles. But in the same token it doesn't mean it offers you no protection. Depending on what type you may be wearing the percentage of particles filtered is still higher than 0 which is what it would be if you were wearing nothing.
Lol... Im not sure our population is disciplined enough to achieve 80%. It seems to me our nation has a high percentage of people who don't confirm to logical life decisions no matter what. When you combine that with a abundance of general ignorance...well you get lots of people not wearing masks in certain segments of the population. However, making them readily available may swing that number close to 80%..
We are protecting each other by wearing them, but no, I don't think anyone believes they are ironclad protection.
I dunno- in my daily travels I see most people complying. I am out most days because I still have to go into work. You're always going to have the knucklehead factor. I did see one guy walking with mask on top of his head - um, doesn't quite work that way.
Here is a good site detailing South Korea's response. There is a timeline at the bottom.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/timeline-south-koreas-response-covid-19
SK started banning flights from China at the beginning of Jan. and ramped up their testing beginning of Feb. They seemed to take this very seriously almost immediately at the beginning of Jan, obviously we did not. They started the public / private partnership with testing very early. We had the issue with the CDC and testing. But, I believe most of their cases came form China, where the majority of our cases were traced back to Europe.
Also on Feb 1st. :
FEBRUARY 1, 2020
THE KOREA OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH AGENCY BEGINS SUPPLYING 720,000 MASKS TO WORKPLACES THAT MAY BE MORE VULNERABLE TO INFECTIOUS DISEASES DUE TO LARGE NUMBERS OF FOREIGN EMPLOYEES.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/timeline-south-koreas-response-covid-19
SK started banning flights from China at the beginning of Jan. and ramped up their testing beginning of Feb. They seemed to take this very seriously almost immediately at the beginning of Jan, obviously we did not. They started the public / private partnership with testing very early. We had the issue with the CDC and testing. But, I believe most of their cases came form China, where the majority of our cases were traced back to Europe.
Also on Feb 1st. :
FEBRUARY 1, 2020
THE KOREA OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH AGENCY BEGINS SUPPLYING 720,000 MASKS TO WORKPLACES THAT MAY BE MORE VULNERABLE TO INFECTIOUS DISEASES DUE TO LARGE NUMBERS OF FOREIGN EMPLOYEES.
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