The new coronavirus is definitely spreading in the US, as expected, given new cases now in LA and NYC and many other states, as well as the significant outbreak in Washington, where there have now been 10 deaths, meaning things are certainly poised to get much worse in the US in the short term. However, there was some good news, today and recently, worth sharing (yeah in a new thread, IMO), which should help keep this from becoming as bad as many doomsday scenarios are painting, as per below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/...show®ion=TOP_BANNER&context=storyline_menu
Today, agreement was reached, in principle by the House and Senate on a bipartisan $8.3 billion law providing emergency coronavirus funding for testing, treatments, supplies, quarantining facilities, tele-diagnosis technology, etc. and the CDC has lifted restrictions on who can be tested for the coronavirus (all that is needed is a doctor's approval), as test kits are becoming available in large numbers everywhere in the US, which means we should quickly get a far better handle on total infection rates and hospitalization/mortality rates in this country (and it will provide peace of mind to those worried that their flu or cold could be the coronavirus - or it will confirm their fears, but at least then allow treatment and self-quarantining). Good to see bipartisan support on this.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday broadened the guidelines for coronavirus testing, allowing anyone who has symptoms like a fever, cough or difficulty breathing to receive a test if a doctor agrees.
Doctors were encouraged to first rule out other causes of respiratory illness, like influenza, and to take into consideration whether there are other local coronavirus cases, officials said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/us/politics/coronavirus-emergency-aid-congress.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/health/coronavirus-test-demand.html
In addition, a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine (by leading MDs in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the CDC) suggests that the mortality rate of the coronavirus, once milder cases are factored in, could be <1%, more akin to a severe flu season ("normal" flu seasons have mortality rates around 0.1-0.2%).
This would still be a very serious threat, potentially killing maybe 5-10X more people than than the flu (which kills 15-60K per year in the US), if no precautions/interventions are taken, given the greater mortality rate and greater transmission rate than influenza. But aggressive interventions (frequent hand-washing, avoiding crowds, aggressive testing, self-quarantining, closure of schools, telecommuting, etc.) are capable of significantly lowering the actual transmission rate (and, obviously the actual number of deaths). Here's an excerpt from the Times article about this and a link to that (and below that is an excerpt from the actual journal article).
Early estimates of the coronavirus death rate from China, the epicenter of the outbreak, have been around 2 percent. But a new report on 1,099 cases from many parts of China, published on Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine, finds a lower rate: 1.4 percent.
The coronavirus death rate may be even lower, if — as most experts suspect — there are many mild or symptom-free cases that have not been detected.
The true death rate could turn out to be similar to that of a severe seasonal flu, below 1 percent, according to an editorial published in the journal by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-flu.html?
action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
And below is an excerpt from the actual Journal article. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that with influenza the ratio of deaths to confirmed cases (by testing) to total infected people is well known after decades of study (and it's re-evaluated for each year), while, currently, all that is "known" now (and not known well yet) is the ratio of deaths to confirmed (by testing) cases (the ~2% number most of us have heard, where most confirmed cases by testing are serious cases, like pneumonia, while the number of infected people is simply unknown and that number is needed to get a true mortality rate (and is why many experts believe the ultimate mortality rate will be <1%).
On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/...show®ion=TOP_BANNER&context=storyline_menu
Today, agreement was reached, in principle by the House and Senate on a bipartisan $8.3 billion law providing emergency coronavirus funding for testing, treatments, supplies, quarantining facilities, tele-diagnosis technology, etc. and the CDC has lifted restrictions on who can be tested for the coronavirus (all that is needed is a doctor's approval), as test kits are becoming available in large numbers everywhere in the US, which means we should quickly get a far better handle on total infection rates and hospitalization/mortality rates in this country (and it will provide peace of mind to those worried that their flu or cold could be the coronavirus - or it will confirm their fears, but at least then allow treatment and self-quarantining). Good to see bipartisan support on this.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday broadened the guidelines for coronavirus testing, allowing anyone who has symptoms like a fever, cough or difficulty breathing to receive a test if a doctor agrees.
Doctors were encouraged to first rule out other causes of respiratory illness, like influenza, and to take into consideration whether there are other local coronavirus cases, officials said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/us/politics/coronavirus-emergency-aid-congress.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/health/coronavirus-test-demand.html
In addition, a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine (by leading MDs in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the CDC) suggests that the mortality rate of the coronavirus, once milder cases are factored in, could be <1%, more akin to a severe flu season ("normal" flu seasons have mortality rates around 0.1-0.2%).
This would still be a very serious threat, potentially killing maybe 5-10X more people than than the flu (which kills 15-60K per year in the US), if no precautions/interventions are taken, given the greater mortality rate and greater transmission rate than influenza. But aggressive interventions (frequent hand-washing, avoiding crowds, aggressive testing, self-quarantining, closure of schools, telecommuting, etc.) are capable of significantly lowering the actual transmission rate (and, obviously the actual number of deaths). Here's an excerpt from the Times article about this and a link to that (and below that is an excerpt from the actual journal article).
Early estimates of the coronavirus death rate from China, the epicenter of the outbreak, have been around 2 percent. But a new report on 1,099 cases from many parts of China, published on Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine, finds a lower rate: 1.4 percent.
The coronavirus death rate may be even lower, if — as most experts suspect — there are many mild or symptom-free cases that have not been detected.
The true death rate could turn out to be similar to that of a severe seasonal flu, below 1 percent, according to an editorial published in the journal by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-flu.html?
action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
And below is an excerpt from the actual Journal article. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that with influenza the ratio of deaths to confirmed cases (by testing) to total infected people is well known after decades of study (and it's re-evaluated for each year), while, currently, all that is "known" now (and not known well yet) is the ratio of deaths to confirmed (by testing) cases (the ~2% number most of us have heard, where most confirmed cases by testing are serious cases, like pneumonia, while the number of infected people is simply unknown and that number is needed to get a true mortality rate (and is why many experts believe the ultimate mortality rate will be <1%).
On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
