I know a 90 year old who was on a respirator was treated with remdesiver and recovered.
COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...
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So then this pandemic is a drop in the bucket if we are to believe your posted totals ...You realize the current death rate from covid19 is 17% less than was first anticipated. The OP was stating an opinion that this is overblown hype . ..In 3 years I will be accepting your apologies... Mr. Merck ( as you also did ) was quite livid attacking my claim that in 20 years this will not be the worst of pandemics or catastrophes that we as a nation have encountered ....Mr. Merck and some others believe I am completely wacky and an idiot ...I assure you I am as sane as Mr. Merck who listed Covid19, WWII, the pandemic of 1918, the Vietnam War and 9/11 as the worst events in the past 100 years... He should have mentioned the 1967-1968 world wide pandemic which I believe killed probably more by it’s end...I doubt either of you served in Vietnam ... some of us actually did and remember this factoid Vietnam for many years was being described as a police action not a true war ... a protracted and wasted war ... If Westmorland had been able to move across the DMZ it would have been over real fast...you can’t fight a war when your leaders won’t let you cross an imaginary line and that was Viet Nam...I’m sure many professors fed their students plenty of untruths mixed in with their own personal agendas... I go back to the walk out at Rutgers Newark in 1967... the media and our ultra liberal educators will certainly see to it that these historical events will be slowly cast aside and forgotten... just as covid19 will ...here is the good part though ... today Gilead’s remdesivir appears to have some therapeutic benefit more than what China claims... Personally I think we as a country need to stop the large number of students entering from Mainland China until we get some answers as to exactly what happened...Instead of Cal ,Harvard , Rutgers, MIT etc. recruiting foreign Nationals maybe we can give our US students an opportunity to earn those spots. Maybe even lower the costs of getting a chance at a debt free education.
You do realize that state colleges recruit foreign students to try and hold down costs for their in state students, right? And world class institutions are world class because they attract world class talent and/or money. Also, name a pandemic between 1918 and now that held the world hostage? This will be remembered.
You're an idiot.
Also, in 3 years, you'll be dead.
So ya got that goin' for ya... which is nice.
Now we just need the weather to start cooperating. Saw a thread on americanwx forums yesterday that April in the northeast US has been exceptionally cloudy compared to our normal climatology, and temps have been at or below normal. Now another 2 day rain event coming...yay
About those who test positive a 2nd time....like suspected here they believe it's more of testing issue than actual reinfection...viral remnants rather than living infectious virus. Some animal testing suggests some sort of immunity for about a year.
From the article:
But the head of South Korea's Central Clinical Committee on New Infectious Diseases (KCDC) has downplayed concerns that those 292 test results suggest a worrying trait of the disease. Dr. Myoung Don Oh and his team say there's a "high possibility" the new positive tests are due to the limitations of the tests themselves, rather than COVID-19 reinfections.
The widely-used "PCR" tests are designed to detect even tiny quantities of virus in a patient's nose or throat, but they can't differentiate between dead virus and live, infectious virus particles.
Myoung, who spoke at a conference Wednesday, said tests on animals have suggested COVID-19 patients could have some immunity to the virus for at least a year from the time of infection. The KCDC has repeatedly said more research is required, but it isn't sounding alarm bells.
"The virus can be detected (even in discharged patients) but this does not mean it is an infectious level," Dr. Jeffri Choi, Division Chief of Infectious Disease at Seoul Medical Center, told CBS News recently.
Choi added that some recovered patients may even continue to show some respiratory symptoms and test positive for the disease, but that "does not mean reactivation" of the virus: "We think it is a reconfirmed case, not reinfection or reactivation."
He said in such cases, the virus lingering in a patient's body appears not to be at an "infectious level."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-experts-arent-too-worried-164704772.html
From the article:
But the head of South Korea's Central Clinical Committee on New Infectious Diseases (KCDC) has downplayed concerns that those 292 test results suggest a worrying trait of the disease. Dr. Myoung Don Oh and his team say there's a "high possibility" the new positive tests are due to the limitations of the tests themselves, rather than COVID-19 reinfections.
The widely-used "PCR" tests are designed to detect even tiny quantities of virus in a patient's nose or throat, but they can't differentiate between dead virus and live, infectious virus particles.
Myoung, who spoke at a conference Wednesday, said tests on animals have suggested COVID-19 patients could have some immunity to the virus for at least a year from the time of infection. The KCDC has repeatedly said more research is required, but it isn't sounding alarm bells.
"The virus can be detected (even in discharged patients) but this does not mean it is an infectious level," Dr. Jeffri Choi, Division Chief of Infectious Disease at Seoul Medical Center, told CBS News recently.
Choi added that some recovered patients may even continue to show some respiratory symptoms and test positive for the disease, but that "does not mean reactivation" of the virus: "We think it is a reconfirmed case, not reinfection or reactivation."
He said in such cases, the virus lingering in a patient's body appears not to be at an "infectious level."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-experts-arent-too-worried-164704772.html
Posted about this yesterday, including a link to a conversation you and I had about it weeks ago, where we were discussing how the "reinfection" scenario was very unlikely, based on what virologists were saying, and much more likely a testing artifact. There are probably about a dozen important posts like this that should be made every day, lol...
A few thoughts on the meatpacking industry we're seeing so many issues with, with regard to infected workers. With regard to the workers, I understand the importance of the industry and most of the recent CDC guidance for meat/poultry workers is well done in its recommendations around engineering controls (design of the workplace/flow to achieve better distancing, use of barriers, etc.) and administrative controls (staggering breaks, visual cue reminders, discouraging carpooling, etc.). However, the CDC guidance calls for cloth masks, which provide minimal protection when working very closely with someone.
IMO, it's ridiculous that the CDC (and OSHA) are not calling for supplying them with N95 respirators (even though in short supply - it's not the job of CDC/OSHA to fix the supply issue, so they shouldn't be making suboptimal recommendations for health/safety) for when they have to work in very close quarters with others, as these actually protect the wearer from others with the virus (like we provide them to medical personnel when working very closely with infected patients), unlike surgical/cloth masks, which only provide minimal protection from others and are mainly to prevent the wearer from spreading the virus. Even faceshields, which should not be in short supply, would be better than cloth masks.
https://wach.com/news/coronavirus/trump-order-keeping-meat-packing-plants-open-worries-unions
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/201...eat-poultry-processing-workers-employers.html
The fact that we're still having shortages of N95 respirators is much more of a reason to invoke the Defense Production Act than forcing workers to work in unsafe conditions with substandard protective gear. We needed to invoke that act 6 weeks ago to force manufacturers (especially of the specialized woven filter at the heart of the mask) to figure out a way to make a lot more N95 respirators (and not just for health care workers). It also goes without saying that we should have stockpiled a lot more early on.
In addition, only people in public-facing jobs should be allowed to buy them/use them in the first place (regular folks simply don't need them if they wear regular masks and practice social distancing) and those people using them should be reusing them either by rotating 3-4 of them (after >72 hours viable viruses should be gone) or disinfecting them (heat or vapor phase H2O2 in industrial settings that have it).
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/n95-mask-shortage-melt-blown-filters/
As an aside, there's extremely low risk of being infected from meat that has some virus particles on it from an infected worker. Like every other refrigerated package you might receive, it needs to be disinfected (disinfecting wipes or washed with soapy water if water tight) when you get it home and then after handling the meat prior to cooking, simply wash your hands.
IMO, it's ridiculous that the CDC (and OSHA) are not calling for supplying them with N95 respirators (even though in short supply - it's not the job of CDC/OSHA to fix the supply issue, so they shouldn't be making suboptimal recommendations for health/safety) for when they have to work in very close quarters with others, as these actually protect the wearer from others with the virus (like we provide them to medical personnel when working very closely with infected patients), unlike surgical/cloth masks, which only provide minimal protection from others and are mainly to prevent the wearer from spreading the virus. Even faceshields, which should not be in short supply, would be better than cloth masks.
https://wach.com/news/coronavirus/trump-order-keeping-meat-packing-plants-open-worries-unions
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/201...eat-poultry-processing-workers-employers.html
The fact that we're still having shortages of N95 respirators is much more of a reason to invoke the Defense Production Act than forcing workers to work in unsafe conditions with substandard protective gear. We needed to invoke that act 6 weeks ago to force manufacturers (especially of the specialized woven filter at the heart of the mask) to figure out a way to make a lot more N95 respirators (and not just for health care workers). It also goes without saying that we should have stockpiled a lot more early on.
In addition, only people in public-facing jobs should be allowed to buy them/use them in the first place (regular folks simply don't need them if they wear regular masks and practice social distancing) and those people using them should be reusing them either by rotating 3-4 of them (after >72 hours viable viruses should be gone) or disinfecting them (heat or vapor phase H2O2 in industrial settings that have it).
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/n95-mask-shortage-melt-blown-filters/
As an aside, there's extremely low risk of being infected from meat that has some virus particles on it from an infected worker. Like every other refrigerated package you might receive, it needs to be disinfected (disinfecting wipes or washed with soapy water if water tight) when you get it home and then after handling the meat prior to cooking, simply wash your hands.
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My understanding is that the order will allow the government to supply the workers with PPE.
Trump’s executive order was aimed at relieving the situation. He’s mandated the plants stay open, using the Defense Production Act. The government is supposed to provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will ask meat processors to submit written plans to safely operate packing plants and review them in consultation with local officials.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ecord-with-trump-ordering-plants-to-stay-open
Thanks, I missed that detail. Let's hope they can come through with the appropriate PPE. If they can't get N95 respirators, I would think the next best thing would be full faceshields with maybe a plastic liner around the edges to the head/neck area (to further reduce likelihood of airborne viruses from a close by coworker getting into one's eyes/nose/mouth) would be a huge improvement over simple cloth masks.
Many industries use faceshields (either the one-piece type or the two-piece type with a disposable plastic insert, which could also be washed) and they're easily cleanable at the end of the day - at work our guys simply drop them in a drum for later cleaning - probably need to be a little more careful with the virus though)
In terms of NJ, I wonder what the breakout of the cause of new cases are.
In other words, I wonder how many of the new cases are people doing all they can to avoid exposure and are still drawing a short straw. Or are these primarily front line and essential workers and extended care homes driving new positives.
In other words, I wonder how many of the new cases are people doing all they can to avoid exposure and are still drawing a short straw. Or are these primarily front line and essential workers and extended care homes driving new positives.
Or idiots that still don't think social distancing or wearing a mask matters, or those who simply believe it won't have any impact on them because they aren't 80 years old or that it's like getting the Flu.
The deaths reported on Thursday show are an increase of 460 residents from the previous day, the highest single-day death toll in the outbreak. The numbers also include 2,633 new cases, the fourth consecutive day that less than 3,000 new positive tests were confirmed.
Murphy has cautioned that the number of deaths reported Thursday does not necessarily reflect those who died from coronavirus in the last 24 hours as there are sometimes delays in confirming the deceased had the illness. Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli said officials have been reviewing death records and adding past cases to the totals as part of the reason for the increase.
New Jersey health officials reported 6,137 patients at New Jersey’s 71 hospitals being treated for confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases as of 10 p.m. on Wednesday. That’s the lowest number of hospitalizations since the state began reporting that information on April 4 and down 26% from the peak of 8,293 patients on April 14. Patient deaths, however, also account for some of the decline in hospitalizations.
Murphy has repeatedly held up the hospitalization numbers as a key real-time indicator of the coronavirus outbreak and made it a benchmark he plans to use in weighing when to start rolling back near-lockdown restrictions he ordered to slow the spread of the virus.
https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020...announced-in-highest-single-day-increase.html
No, I get that, they're not exactly 460 deaths in the last 24 hours, but that really isn't much comfort.
:cry:
Yea it's always lousy to see hundreds of people dying, it's not just a statistic. I wasn't sure if you were wondering about the cases plateauing and maybe decreasing a little now so just wanted to point out that it still does seem like that is happening.
Not sure what your point is. Swine flu killed only 12K, far less than a typical flu year, although people didn't know it would be less deadly when it broke from Mexico - we just got lucky with the low fatality rate, since it infected huge numbers of people. Fortunately, the CDC/Administration did a pretty good job on H1N1.
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...re-are-the-details.192282/page-4#post-4455125
It's easy to say NY/NJ should have been shut down sooner and I could see about 3-4 days sooner as per below (and as I said awhile back). However, to have made a big impact in the trajectory of the NYC Metro (including especially NE NJ), the shutdown really should've come about 2 weeks sooner and there's just no way that could've happened without cases or deaths, due to lack of testing and understanding that coronavirus had been circulating and growing quickly since February in our area (and killing people). Below is what I just posted elsewhere on this...
On NY vs. CA with regard to shutdowns and outbreak growth rates (and a few Cuomo comments)...
Lots of chatter about Cuomo's comments the past few days. I thought Cuomo was being much more critical of the WHO, the Administration/CDC/NIH, China and others normally in charge of pandemics and he just kind of threw the media in there too. Fundamentally, his comment that "Governors Don’t Do Global Pandemics" is spot on, especially in light of the fact that the HHS ran a pandemic exercise last year and the CSIS think tank had issued an in-depth bipartisan pandemic playbook late last year, neither of which was followed at all by this Administration, especially with regard to early aggressive testing which is, by far the most important element in detecting and controlling an outbreak.
However, that doesn't excuse NY from being probably 3-4 days late in closing up the state, as NY formally closed on 3/22 at ~800 cases per 1MM, while CA formally closed on 3/19, at 25 cases/1MM. On the other hand, NY's outbreak was far larger/faster than anyone's including CA, with an estimated 10,000 cases in NYC, alone, on 3/1 by retrospective analyses (but unknown to anyone in NY without any testing at all until 3/1 and <200 tests run through 3/7), so it's a bit more understandable that NY probably was several days late, as they were behind CA in early March to at a similar point to CA around 3/10 to being 10X more on 3/14 and 30X more on 3/19. Just to illustrate how much faster NY's exponential growth was,
- NY went from first case on 3/1 (first day of testing) to 9 cases/1MM on 3/10 to 27 cases/1MM on 3/14 to 271 cases/1MM on 3/19 to 800 cases/1MM on 3/22, which is roughly a doubling every 1.5-2 days, which is an extremely high growth rate.
- CA went from first case in late January to 4 cases/1MM on 3/10 to 9 cases/1MM on 3/14 to 25 cases per 1MM on 3/19 to 35 cases/1MM on 3/22 to 75 cases/1MM on 3/26, which is roughly a doubling every 4 days, a far slower growth rate.
- Another way to look at it is NY's rate went up by 10X over about 5 days, while CA's rate went up by 10X over about 12-13 days.
- The graphic below also shows the differences, with Day 0 being 3/10 in NY and 3/15 in CA (when they hit 10 cases per 1MM); NJ didn't reach 10 cases/1MM until 3/15 (and had no deaths until 3/10).
- The early outbreak and far faster growth rate in this area were fueled by: i) 2.2MM visitors from Europe (where 2/3 of our cases came from) prior to the 3/16 travel ban and ii) the very high population density and regional commuter density in this area.
NY (and most of this applies to NJ too) closing even 3-4 days earlier would've likely cut 15-20% off the total deaths in NY./NJ As per the Times article and graphic below, which I posted on a couple of days ago, generally speaking for each week earlier the US could've been shut down, deaths would've decreased by 1/3, so shutting down 2 weeks earlier would likely have resulted in nearly 90% reduction in deaths (assuming effective aggressive social distancing); this also applies to NY/NJ. This is obviously based on a model in hindsight, so there's certainly some error in it, but I think it conveys the point well. Would've been a nearly impossible sell though, without aggressive early testing - can anyone imagine Cuomo (or Murphy) trying to shut a state down with <100 cases and 0 deaths on 3/8 instead of on 3/22? If we had had proper testing in place and had detected several thousand cases by then (and probably attributed many of the late Feb/early March deaths to coronavirus), perhaps he could've made that case.
It is interesting that the actual cases and deaths in NY/NJ ended up being far worse than anyone thought, as NY has over twice the death rate per 1MM as Italy and Spain, the two worst countries (and NJ is worse too), but the hospitals somehow were never completely overwhelmed, but it was damn close and there were short periods where they truly were overwhelmed and supplies/vents ran out. In hindsight, it looks like the hospitalizations as a fraction of cases were a lot lower than expected, which was good, but it looks like the deaths per hospitalizations and per cases were much greater than expected, which is bad. Again, locking down earlier would've made a huge difference.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/covid-social-distancing.html
Friggin Cuomo, Murphy and DeBlasio are responsible for thousands of deaths.
Are you trying to derail the thread? Do you really think governors are responsible for National Security during a pandemic, which knows no borders? You really should read up on how the government is supposed to work. The Administration had access to both the CSIS/GHPC Pandemic Playbook, "Strengthening America’s Health Security," which was put together by the Global Health Policy Center, operating under the Center for Strategic International Studies (the most respected and bipartisan think tank on National Security in DC) during 2018-2019 (first link, below) and they had the HHS's own "Crimson Contagion" simulation from last year of a new flu pandemic gone wild (2nd link).
These were not wild eyed liberals looking to make social justice - these were consummate professionals (co-chaired by Merck's own Julie Gerberding, former CDC head and infectious diseases expert, and Kelly Ayotte, former Republican Senator from NH) looking to prepare the US for the inevitable next pandemic - which it turns out was already brewing in China when the report was issued in Nov-2019. The director of the GHPC had some choice comments in an interview on 4/9 about what he's seen since the pandemic broke here in the US (3rd link). If you read any of this, you ought to be able to know who has primary responsibility and accountability for pandemics.
https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/...8qNWY_2gKvjrX7Z3MXhJ8uCi1d83jqxxPgXp10ssMopfM
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthe...bd797500ea55be0724/optimized/full.pdf#page=18
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/...1Dmb-tMusFxYEnIwG0uA7YkTtRc-G20WdBxE4Y81aR0B0
Interesting article for those who are still comparing this to the flu. Claim is that CDC estimates of flu deaths are way too high, that most doctors rarely if ever see anyone die of the flu. I know, my doctor uses the "50,000 Americans die of the flu every year" line to try to talk me into a flu shot. I'm 57 and can't say that I know of anyone who has died from flu or flu complications.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...u-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/
Also Martenson has been presenting some interesting arguments about why remdesivir is being promoted while HCQ is being dismissed. I don't know where the truth lies on all this stuff; we need some real study data to come out. I've read enough accounts by now that make me think HCQ might be effective if given early, perhaps even before symptoms.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...u-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/
Also Martenson has been presenting some interesting arguments about why remdesivir is being promoted while HCQ is being dismissed. I don't know where the truth lies on all this stuff; we need some real study data to come out. I've read enough accounts by now that make me think HCQ might be effective if given early, perhaps even before symptoms.
I have to ask - why does this YouTube guy keep popping up in this thread. Who the hell is that?
I've been following this for a while... Yet still took friends to B1G wrestling champonshiops without a thought in the world at that time that things would turn to this!! Stop the Blame game and live in the reality that very, very few saw this actually coming!!… And no... I've been at work, dealing with a people who haven't been able to work since then. Hasn't been easy.. But ive referred to an earlier post on here that highlighted Dr. DAvid Price.... Very inspiring, and I have followed that advice... i'm still here, along with the rest of my store!!! Still serving our community as best we can!!
I promise I'm not singling you out by replying to your post -- which I agree with -- but I just want to remind everyone that our moderators, especially @DJ Spanky , have urged us to keep politics out of this thread so that we can instead focus on the scientific issues. Otherwise this thread will end up leaving this board, which would be a great loss.
FWIW, I intend to take a break from this thread and the board generally. The amount of repetition is tiresome, and some posters don't know their ass from their elbow. The best way to go through this thread is to focus on @RU848789 because he seems to know *much* more than anyone else, and he actually thinks about what he knows.
The Sweden Experiment with Limited Social Distancing...
It's certainly not "over" yet, but they're doing far worse than their similarly situated, similarly low population density Nordic neighbors, Norway and Finland, especially in deaths, which is what really matters; these neighbors are also doing much more testing per capita (and tracing) and practicing much more aggressive social distancing. Cases per 1MM are less different, likely because of far less testing. I threw Denmark, Iceland and Germany in, too, even though their densities are a bit different. And Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which are just a bit above Sweden in density are also doing much better than Sweden, with all of them below 40 deaths/1MM.
Sure Sweden is doing better than some of the much more densely populated countries, but on a density basis they're pretty much a very bad outlier. Ireland, though has about 3X the density as Sweden and has similar deaths/1MM and Spain at 4-5X the density of Sweden has 2X the death rate per 1MM as Sweden. Germany is an outlier in the other direction with 10X the density of Sweden (and is more dense than all the major EU countries other than the UK), but has a death rate of only 79/1MM - they've been the model country with regard to early/aggressive testing, tracing/isolating and social distancing (along with Denmark).
Country......Cases/1MM.......Deaths/1MM........Tests/1MM.....Density (per sq mi)
Sweden..........2088......................256.....................11K.....................56
Finland.............902.......................38.......................17K....................43
Norway............1427......................39.......................31K....................41
Iceland............5266......................29......................141K.....................8
Denmark.........1580......................78.......................33K...................345
Germany.........1945......................79.......................30K...................576
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
...and What It Might Mean for Sweden and the US (and more)
Some from Sweden also recently said they thought they'd be at "herd immunity" in several weeks. My guess is that's a pipe dream. Sweden has 1800 positive viral cases per 1MM, which is 0.18%, while NY has 15K cases per 1MM, which is 1.5% viral cases and NY's antibody sampling shows 15% actually with antibodies right now (were infected) or about 10X the level of cases. If Sweden had a similar ratio, they'd have 1.8% of their population with antibodies (10X 0.18%), which is almost nothing compared to herd immunity estimates of 54% if the transmission rate, R0, is 2.2 (as thought awhile back) or 82% if R0 is 5.7 (as more are thinking now).
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/22...immunity-in-weeks.html?recirc=taboolainternal
However, they're saying Stockholm has 11% with antibodies, although Stockholm is far more densely populated than the rest of the country, as the country, overall has 64 people per sq mi, (near last in Europe) vs. Stockholm's 13,000 per sq mi (200X more densely populated) - so maybe it's possible for both to be true, ie.., 11% antibodies in Stockholm (which has 22% of Sweden's population) and 1.8% of Sweden with antibodies, overall (11/1.8 = 6 and 100/22 = 4.5).
So, if Sweden, right now is only at 1.8% of the population infected with antibodies, they have a very long way to go to reach herd immunity, which looks to be 20-30X their current infection%, meaning that's theoretically 20-30X more hospitalized/dead than they have now, assuming no interventions or great treatments/cures before then. That's a worst case, as infections would slow down as an area nears herd immunity, plus very low density locations might simply not sustain infections through the population - which could also be true for swaths of middle America, although those hotspots in meatpacking plants and small town flare-ups should be scaring the crap out of Middle America, but they don't seem to be.
Same is possible in the US if we're not smart about how we reopen and are not ready to stamp out flareups as they occur (with aggressive testing/tracing/isolating). We might be at ~3% of the US that have been infected, I'd guess, just roughly based on comparison to NY's data, where 15% have antibodies and 1.5% have tested positive for the virus (10X ratio), so that the US with 0.3% tested positive for the virus (1MM of 330MM) would then be 3.0% with antibodies (10X).
So, if the US, right now is only at 3% of the population infected with antibodies, we also have a very long way to go to reach herd immunity, which looks to be 15-25X their current infection%, meaning that's theoretically 15-25X more hospitalized/dead than we have now, assuming no interventions or great treatments/cures before then. Infections should slow down quite a bit once above 30-40% infected (less targets and less infected), so I doubt we're talking truly 15-25X more hospitalized dead, but I think 10-15X more is definitely a risk. That's 10-15X the 60K deaths we've seen - over whatever time it would take to reach herd immunity if we're not practicing any interventions (probably 6+ months).
We better hope we get a spring/summer lull, like we do with the flu to give us more time to develop treatments/cures/vaccines by fall and to improve our infrastructure for massive testing/tracing and isolating, just in case the next wave is strong. If there's no seasonal lull, we're likely in for a very bad time in this country if we reopen too aggressively and without a good testing/tracing infrastructure in place. Our other hope is that maybe, somehow, our antibody tests are off and many more have been infected than we know (or are somehow immune) - but hope isn't a strategy.
It's certainly not "over" yet, but they're doing far worse than their similarly situated, similarly low population density Nordic neighbors, Norway and Finland, especially in deaths, which is what really matters; these neighbors are also doing much more testing per capita (and tracing) and practicing much more aggressive social distancing. Cases per 1MM are less different, likely because of far less testing. I threw Denmark, Iceland and Germany in, too, even though their densities are a bit different. And Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which are just a bit above Sweden in density are also doing much better than Sweden, with all of them below 40 deaths/1MM.
Sure Sweden is doing better than some of the much more densely populated countries, but on a density basis they're pretty much a very bad outlier. Ireland, though has about 3X the density as Sweden and has similar deaths/1MM and Spain at 4-5X the density of Sweden has 2X the death rate per 1MM as Sweden. Germany is an outlier in the other direction with 10X the density of Sweden (and is more dense than all the major EU countries other than the UK), but has a death rate of only 79/1MM - they've been the model country with regard to early/aggressive testing, tracing/isolating and social distancing (along with Denmark).
Country......Cases/1MM.......Deaths/1MM........Tests/1MM.....Density (per sq mi)
Sweden..........2088......................256.....................11K.....................56
Finland.............902.......................38.......................17K....................43
Norway............1427......................39.......................31K....................41
Iceland............5266......................29......................141K.....................8
Denmark.........1580......................78.......................33K...................345
Germany.........1945......................79.......................30K...................576
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
...and What It Might Mean for Sweden and the US (and more)
Some from Sweden also recently said they thought they'd be at "herd immunity" in several weeks. My guess is that's a pipe dream. Sweden has 1800 positive viral cases per 1MM, which is 0.18%, while NY has 15K cases per 1MM, which is 1.5% viral cases and NY's antibody sampling shows 15% actually with antibodies right now (were infected) or about 10X the level of cases. If Sweden had a similar ratio, they'd have 1.8% of their population with antibodies (10X 0.18%), which is almost nothing compared to herd immunity estimates of 54% if the transmission rate, R0, is 2.2 (as thought awhile back) or 82% if R0 is 5.7 (as more are thinking now).
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/22...immunity-in-weeks.html?recirc=taboolainternal
However, they're saying Stockholm has 11% with antibodies, although Stockholm is far more densely populated than the rest of the country, as the country, overall has 64 people per sq mi, (near last in Europe) vs. Stockholm's 13,000 per sq mi (200X more densely populated) - so maybe it's possible for both to be true, ie.., 11% antibodies in Stockholm (which has 22% of Sweden's population) and 1.8% of Sweden with antibodies, overall (11/1.8 = 6 and 100/22 = 4.5).
So, if Sweden, right now is only at 1.8% of the population infected with antibodies, they have a very long way to go to reach herd immunity, which looks to be 20-30X their current infection%, meaning that's theoretically 20-30X more hospitalized/dead than they have now, assuming no interventions or great treatments/cures before then. That's a worst case, as infections would slow down as an area nears herd immunity, plus very low density locations might simply not sustain infections through the population - which could also be true for swaths of middle America, although those hotspots in meatpacking plants and small town flare-ups should be scaring the crap out of Middle America, but they don't seem to be.
Same is possible in the US if we're not smart about how we reopen and are not ready to stamp out flareups as they occur (with aggressive testing/tracing/isolating). We might be at ~3% of the US that have been infected, I'd guess, just roughly based on comparison to NY's data, where 15% have antibodies and 1.5% have tested positive for the virus (10X ratio), so that the US with 0.3% tested positive for the virus (1MM of 330MM) would then be 3.0% with antibodies (10X).
So, if the US, right now is only at 3% of the population infected with antibodies, we also have a very long way to go to reach herd immunity, which looks to be 15-25X their current infection%, meaning that's theoretically 15-25X more hospitalized/dead than we have now, assuming no interventions or great treatments/cures before then. Infections should slow down quite a bit once above 30-40% infected (less targets and less infected), so I doubt we're talking truly 15-25X more hospitalized dead, but I think 10-15X more is definitely a risk. That's 10-15X the 60K deaths we've seen - over whatever time it would take to reach herd immunity if we're not practicing any interventions (probably 6+ months).
We better hope we get a spring/summer lull, like we do with the flu to give us more time to develop treatments/cures/vaccines by fall and to improve our infrastructure for massive testing/tracing and isolating, just in case the next wave is strong. If there's no seasonal lull, we're likely in for a very bad time in this country if we reopen too aggressively and without a good testing/tracing infrastructure in place. Our other hope is that maybe, somehow, our antibody tests are off and many more have been infected than we know (or are somehow immune) - but hope isn't a strategy.
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It is interesting that the actual cases and deaths in NY/NJ ended up being far worse than anyone thought, as NY has over twice the death rate per 1MM as Italy and Spain, the two worst countries (and NJ is worse too), but the hospitals somehow were never completely overwhelmed, but it was damn close and there were short periods where they truly were overwhelmed and supplies/vents ran out. In hindsight, it looks like the hospitalizations as a fraction of cases were a lot lower than expected, which was good, but it looks like the deaths per hospitalizations and per cases were much greater than expected, which is bad. Again, locking down earlier would've made a huge difference.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/covid-social-distancing.html
I disagree..NYC/north Jersey hospitals were overwhelmed. It could have been much worse, for sure. But anyone with a foot in the door at many NNJ/NYC hospitals would have a great debate with you on the highlighted text above.
I should have been more specific - I didn't think they were overwhelmed to the extent that Italy and Spain were, where there were countless stories of docs not even being able to treat some patients in favor of others that could maybe still be saved. Correct me if I'm wrong on that and my apologies if I am. I thought it was more running out of PPE and space and occasionally ventilators, which maybe were split, all of which is still a horrible way to have to do medicine, especially while being scared of catching the virus for all those reasons on top of working in really bad conditions for very, very long hours and watching so many die.
Martenson presents a mixture of useful info and biased info. His pro HCQ bias is almost off the charts. He almost never discusses any of the inconclusive or bad clinical trials (and there are more of them than the couple of potentially positive ones). And his slides on Lupus from that Italian site are just bad science, since he uses a completely unsubstantiated comment as if it's accepted/reviewed data and ignores the wealth of info showing that lupus patients on HCQ are not being protected against getting COVID (see my post linked below), which is why the Lupus Foundation of America said, "There is no evidence that taking hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) is effective in preventing a person from contracting the coronavirus."
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...social-distancing.191275/page-89#post-4531982
Furthermore, most medical experts and clinicians I've seen weighing in on HCQ have been at best neutral on it and at worst think it's ineffective and possibly unsafe to boot. Perhaps the latest medical literature review and analysis on this published today, excerpted below, will convince doctors that this drug should really not be used until we see the results from ongoing controlled clinical trials. We'll see.
https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1096/fj.202000919
As hospitals around the globe have filled with patients with COVID‐19, front line providers remain without effective therapeutic tools to directly combat the disease. The initial anecdotal reports out of China led to the initial wide uptake of HCQ and to a lesser extent CQ for many hospitalized patients with COVID‐19 around the globe. As more data have become available, enthusiasm for these medications has been tempered. Well designed, large randomized controlled trials are needed to help determine what role, if any, these medications should have in treating COVID‐19 moving forwards.
While HCQ has in vitro activity against a number of viruses, it does not act like more typical nucleoside/tide antiviral drugs. For instance, HCQ is not thought to act on the critical viral enzymes including the RNA‐dependent RNA polymerase, helicase, or proteases. Despite in vitro activity against influenza, in a large high quality randomized controlled trial, it showed no clinical benefit, suggesting that similar discordance between in vitro and in vivo observations is possible for SARS‐CoV and SARS‐CoV‐273 (Table 3).
Additionally, HCQ and especially CQ have cardiovascular and other risks, particularly when these agents are used at high doses or combined with certain other agents. While large scale studies have demonstrated that long‐term treatment with CQ or HCQ does not increase the incidence of infection, caution should be exercised in extrapolating safety from the studies of chronic administration to largely healthy individuals to estimate the risk associated with short‐course treatment in acutely and severely ill patients. Furthermore, the immunologic actions that make HCQ an important drug for the treatment of auto‐immune diseases might have unintended consequences when it is used for patients with COVID‐19. The effects of this immune modulation on patients with COVID‐19 are unknown at this time, including a potential negative impact on antiviral innate and adaptive immune responses which need to be considered and studied.
For all these reasons, and in the context of accumulating preclinical and clinical data, we recommend that HCQ only be used for COVID‐19 in the context of a carefully constructed randomized clinical trial. If this agent is used outside of a clinical trial, the risks and benefits should be rigorously weighed on a case‐by‐case basis and reviewed in light of both the immune dysfunction induced by the virus and known antiviral and immune modulatory actions of HCQ.
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Derek Lowe (In the Pipeline, best Pharma blog out there, IMO) is not quite as sanguine as Fauci was and maybe that's because he, like many of us, are really hoping for something that is a "cure" or close to it and remdesivir certainly does not look like that. It was certainly moderately positive data, but not a cure or a gamechanger for most. He thinks (as I do fwiw) that in the short term (i.e., through summer), the only likely gamechanger for potentially large numbers of people is an engineered monoclonal antibody (some should be ready by the end of summer), although he also thinks convalescent plasma could be effective in small populations before then, as per a separate blog post. He also said it would be nice to be proven wrong by some new treatment or repurposed existing drug, but he's not counting on it.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/30/about-remdesivir-and-about-game-changers
Now we have bits of data from an NIAID/NIH trial of the drug that began enrolling in Nebraska in late February (the first patient was one of the Diamond Princess cruise ship passengers, which seems long enough ago by now that it might as well be the Titanic). This one was double-blinded and placebo-controlled: patients in the treatment group received 200mg of the drug the first day and 100mg each day thereafter, for up to ten days. Participants needed to test positive for the virus and have evidence of lung involvement in the disease. The primary endpoint was improved time to recovery (discharge from the hospital or ability to return to normal activity), and it appears that remdesivir was statistically better than placebo: 11 days versus 15 days. The team also monitored overall survival in the >1000 patients, and there was a possible trend towards the drug, but it did not reach statistical significance (8% mortality in the treatment group, 11.6% in the placebo group).
That’s it. Those are the numbers we have. The rest will be in a “forthcoming report”, and we’re going to have to wait until it comes forth. This release was after an April 27 meeting of the data and safety monitoring board, and it’s worth noting that had there been “clear and substantial evidence of a treatment difference” during the trial that the DSMB was to have halted the study at that point. We can infer that nothing rose to that level, then: we have a difference, but not substantial enough to have ended the trial prematurely. And I have to note another issue: if you look at the Clinicaltrials.gov record for the trial, it appears that the outcomes measures for the trial were changed (as noted by Walid Gellad on Twitter). That primary endpoint of the trial mentioned above, time to recovery? It was originally an 8-point severity scale (death, on ventilator, hospitalized with oxygen, all the way down to discharged with no limits on activity). A similar ordinal scale measure is still in the secondary endpoints, as it was before, but we have no numbers for that yet, of course. But it’s clear that the primary endpoint was changed at some point in April...
...Until we have such a monoclonal antibody, and until the advent of a vaccine later on, I do not see any game-changers on the horizon. I will look forward to being wrong about how quickly these things will appear – that would be great – but I don’t think I’m wrong about those being the main things that will knock down the virus.
a bunch in nj have died in their 30's, 29, have died in their 20's. Ny state 66 in their 20's.
many people were refused admittance who ended up dying. I have read about a number of people who that happened to, and happened to a friend of a friends mom.
I dont know if this connection was made here yet but, I just watched the video above where he discussed Covid as a clotting disease. Also at some point it was recorded that people with certain blood type A were over represented in Covid patients and O under represented. It seems that A and B Blood types have higher clotting risk.
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2020/01/23/whats-blood-type-got-to-do-with-clot-risk
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/...ype-a-associated-with-higher-risk-of-covid-19
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2020/01/23/whats-blood-type-got-to-do-with-clot-risk
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/...ype-a-associated-with-higher-risk-of-covid-19
Report by a team of long-standing pandemic experts saying the pandemic will continue for about 18mos to 2 years until 60-70 percent of the population has been infected. They come up with a few scenarios of how it could play out and that a vaccine could alter the timeline but vaccine development isn’t always straightforward and simple either. I’ve mentioned before that those large percentage figures never seemed wild to me and that it was usually something that was estimated over a 2-3 year timeframe not all at once.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/health/report-covid-two-more-years/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/health/report-covid-two-more-years/index.html
You have to figure that based on currently understood infection rates, if 60-70 percent of the population eventually becomes infected then the ultimate death toll would be over 300,000.
I'm not so confident, as some other posters are, that in 20 years we will have forgotten about all this.
Good page with some state by state stats and averages.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-us-maps-and-cases/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-us-maps-and-cases/index.html
Was just about to post this, thanks. I agree with everything it says, with one exception. While I'm a skeptic about many things, I'm more optimistic than these guys are about i) convalescent plasma and/or engineered antibodies being effective in treating/preventing many of the worst cases by the end of summer (earlier, hopefully for CP) and ii) having a commercially available vaccine by the end of this year (for millions, but not for anywhere near everyone, i.e., billions), assuming we adopt the "human challenge" approach of testing the vaccine in healthy young people willing to be exposed to the virus on purpose. This could shave several months off vaccine development timelines, although this might be hard to justify ethically if there are no promising treatments available should some volunteers become ill with the virus.
People who think a virus new to the planet will just go away this summer are certifiably nuts, though, and I still can't believe we're opening up numerous states with fairly active ongoing outbreaks. This just seems like a recipe for disaster, as per the excerpted section below.
Lipsitch and Osterholm both said they are surprised by the decisions many states are making to lift restrictions aimed at controlling the spread of the virus.
"I think it's an experiment. It's an experiment that likely will cost lives, especially in places that do it without careful controls to try to figure out when to try to slow things down again," Lipsitch said.
Plus, he said, some states are choosing to lift restrictions when they have more new infections than they had when they decided to impose the restrictions. "It is hard to even understand the rationale," Lipsitch said.
LMAO
You and Proud are Imbeciles.
Any American with an ounce of common sense knows the mass fatalities in the United States are a direct result of Trump doing nothing in January while ignoring all US Department of Intelligence reports of the upcoming Pandemic crisis.
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