COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...

[RU-05]

Going by the 3 week lag rule we see that, with current treatments and with younger % of the population being more commonly infected, for every 60 people who test positive, about 1.1 people die. Which is 1.8%.

Then you could try to figure how many people have the virus who are not testing positive, whether they are asymptomatic or just not getting tested for whatever reason.

 

[RocktheRac]

https://news.yahoo.com/more-schools-stay-online-one-140501853.html

School opened in Indiana and the first coronavirus case on the first day

Love it. Everyone will get it sooner or later. The sooner the better.

 

[Kbee3]

deaths are the highest they have been in over 2 months. It's not less severe

Don't confuse him.

 

[TroothSkr]

This may have discussed been talk about on this third before but I'm not checking it everyday. There seems to be a big drop in heart attacks and strokes during the pandemic. Is this an indication that that classifications of both were inaccurate before or are deaths of these two causes being lumped in Covid #s

@WhiteBus: Your claim – Big drop in deaths due to heart attacks and strokes. (I’ll call this Statement A).

First of all, I’d like to see the data that purports to show this. One needs to be sure to obtain, fact check, and analyze the data to validate your statement, before chasing down reasons why. But for kicks sake, let me make the assumption that the data exists and that your claim is true and see where that leads us. (I’m on the board of an orthopedic medical device company and I’ve seen the data that elective surgeries were way down, though they are creeping back up).

Here is how the scientific method works next. We need to determine ALL the reasons that could have happened.

You postulated two reasons that you thought were “either”-“or” (meaning they were the only explanations that could exist to support your statement and explain what happened). That’s actually not true, meaning your twin explanations, while mutually exclusive aren't collectively exhaustive, but I’m going to ignore that to try and showcase a different point.

Your explanation #1 is that all of the data on deaths due to heart attacks and strokes prior to COVID was wrong. That it is magically (?) correct now, so the decades of data on deaths from heart attacks and strokes were always lower than what people thought. It begs the question, since the deaths did actually happen in the past, what did people actually die of?

Explanation #1 is starting to sound increasingly nonsensical and I’m assuming that you only put that explanation in to showcase how silly it is and to throw your support behind explanation #2.

Your explanation #2 is that the data prior to COVID wasn’t wrong but that those same or similar number of deaths are happening today and are simply being lumped into COVID deaths.

Note however that BOTH of the reasons you postulated indicate that the original statement you made is WRONG!! And that deaths from heart attacks and strokes ARE NOT actually lower than they were before! In your explanation #1 it is because the pre COVID data was wrong, and in your explanation number 2 it is because the post COVID data classification is wrong.

But there have been real changes in people’s lives the world over which may have caused changes in the underlying causes of mortality. So, for example, what if your statement A is actually correct and heart attack and stroke deaths are in fact lower due to some as yet unexplored reason. A true scientist/epidemiologist/data scientist/researcher will necessarily need to explore that as well.

You see, this is how science works. ALL explanations must be explored before proving/disproving a hypothesis. It is not enough to simply throw a “random" hypothesis into the mix and ask for explanations that end up proving or disproving it. This thread is chock- full of such questions, partial hypotheses, semi-literate “explanations”, and simply bomb-throwing. I am NOT saying you are one of the bomb throwers – I actually don’t think you are. But know that good meaningful questions are difficult to frame, and often bullet proof explanations even harder to come by.

If this is truly an important question to seek to answer, then perhaps you can begin with stating why, and then linking to the data supporting changes in deaths due to heart attacks and strokes? And then maybe others who also see it as important can try and see how or why that might be true/not true.

 

[ArminRU]

Love it. Everyone will get it sooner or later. The sooner the better.

So much wrong with this post. First of all, there is nothing to “Love” about people getting this virus. Secondly, if everyone gets it, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands more deaths. The smarter choice would be to continue to delay while treatments and vaccines come available in the next 6 months.

 

[hoochie302]

If you got it once and never again, I understand your post. Simce you can get it more than once, you be a fool.

Love it. Everyone will get it sooner or later. The sooner the better.

 

[rutgersdave]

Love it. Everyone will get it sooner or later. The sooner the better.

The parent might have a different view.

 

[Greg2020]

Love it. Everyone will get it sooner or later. The sooner the better.

5g has melted your brain.

 

[RocktheRac]

So much wrong with this post. First of all, there is nothing to “Love” about people getting this virus. Secondly, if everyone gets it, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands more deaths. The smarter choice would be to continue to delay while treatments and vaccines come available in the next 6 months.

Its gonna happen. Don't resist. It's how you will fair. Good health you will have little to no symptoms.

 

[RU848789]

If you got it once and never again, I understand your post. Simce you can get it more than once, you be a fool.

There's not a single documeted case of anyone getting COVID twice and the recent data from Mt. Sinai and China indicate that recovered COVID patients appear to have at least 3-6 months of immunity (so far), based on antibody levels.

 

[RU848789]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/aug/01/carl-bergstrom-people-are-using-data-to-bullshit

Very good article. Thought this part was very relevant given the debate we've had on whether the federal response was adequate or not (not, of course, IMO).

Populist politicians have deliberately loosened some people’s faith in the need to invest in independent expertise at the heart of government. Do you think the pandemic could be a watershed moment in reversing that trend?

I was involved in pandemic planning for a long time. During the Bush administration we had some very heated debates about the role of government in that planning. But I don’t recall ever having a debate about the necessary role of government in pandemic response. That has been the shock. Instead of it being all hands on deck, half the ship is denying that the ship is going down at all. Many people are standing waist deep in water saying everything is fine. And the political landscape is so fractured that it becomes possible for the populist elements to turn around and blame the very people they disregarded.

 

[Greg2020]

There's not a single documeted case of anyone getting COVID twice and the recent data from Mt. Sinai and China indicate that recovered COVID patients appear to have at least 3-6 months of immunity (so far), based on antibody levels.

not sure I believe it but some high-up doctor at a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama was on cnn a few weeks ago and he claimed one of his patients contracted it two separate times(once in March in Europe, and in June) in Alabama and the second time they caught it they died. This doctor is also anti-lockdown. So not sure what his deal was.

 

[thegock]

Its gonna happen. Don't resist. It's how you will fair. .

Or fare.

 

[WhiteBus]

@WhiteBus: Your claim – Big drop in deaths due to heart attacks and strokes. (I’ll call this Statement A).

First of all, I’d like to see the data that purports to show this. One needs to be sure to obtain, fact check, and analyze the data to validate your statement, before chasing down reasons why. But for kicks sake, let me make the assumption that the data exists and that your claim is true and see where that leads us. (I’m on the board of an orthopedic medical device company and I’ve seen the data that elective surgeries were way down, though they are creeping back up).

Here is how the scientific method works next. We need to determine ALL the reasons that could have happened.

You postulated two reasons that you thought were “either”-“or” (meaning they were the only explanations that could exist to support your statement and explain what happened). That’s actually not true, meaning your twin explanations, while mutually exclusive aren't collectively exhaustive, but I’m going to ignore that to try and showcase a different point.

Your explanation #1 is that all of the data on deaths due to heart attacks and strokes prior to COVID was wrong. That it is magically (?) correct now, so the decades of data on deaths from heart attacks and strokes were always lower than what people thought. It begs the question, since the deaths did actually happen in the past, what did people actually die of?

Explanation #1 is starting to sound increasingly nonsensical and I’m assuming that you only put that explanation in to showcase how silly it is and to throw your support behind explanation #2.

Your explanation #2 is that the data prior to COVID wasn’t wrong but that those same or similar number of deaths are happening today and are simply being lumped into COVID deaths.

Note however that BOTH of the reasons you postulated indicate that the original statement you made is WRONG!! And that deaths from heart attacks and strokes ARE NOT actually lower than they were before! In your explanation #1 it is because the pre COVID data was wrong, and in your explanation number 2 it is because the post COVID data classification is wrong.

But there have been real changes in people’s lives the world over which may have caused changes in the underlying causes of mortality. So, for example, what if your statement A is actually correct and heart attack and stroke deaths are in fact lower due to some as yet unexplored reason. A true scientist/epidemiologist/data scientist/researcher will necessarily need to explore that as well.

You see, this is how science works. ALL explanations must be explored before proving/disproving a hypothesis. It is not enough to simply throw a “random" hypothesis into the mix and ask for explanations that end up proving or disproving it. This thread is chock- full of such questions, partial hypotheses, semi-literate “explanations”, and simply bomb-throwing. I am NOT saying you are one of the bomb throwers – I actually don’t think you are. But know that good meaningful questions are difficult to frame, and often bullet proof explanations even harder to come by.

If this is truly an important question to seek to answer, then perhaps you can begin with stating why, and then linking to the data supporting changes in deaths due to heart attacks and strokes? And then maybe others who also see it as important can try and see how or why that might be true/not true.

First I was looking for answer not a lecture. 2nd I gave the first two thoughts that could explain it. Thanks for bringing nothing to the table to explain it. For the rest of you, my first thought is that heart attacks especially fatal heart attacks should be up for two reason. Stress is way high for everyone and people are putting off visits and are not taking care of themselves because no one wants to go to emergency room.

This is the last in a many series of articles I've read for over a month.

https://www.inquirer.com/health/cor...troke-heart-attack-delayed-care-20200723.html

 

[Zak57]

Very good article. Thought this part was very relevant given the debate we've had on whether the federal response was adequate or not (not, of course, IMO).

Populist politicians have deliberately loosened some people’s faith in the need to invest in independent expertise at the heart of government. Do you think the pandemic could be a watershed moment in reversing that trend?

I was involved in pandemic planning for a long time. During the Bush administration we had some very heated debates about the role of government in that planning. But I don’t recall ever having a debate about the necessary role of government in pandemic response. That has been the shock. Instead of it being all hands on deck, half the ship is denying that the ship is going down at all. Many people are standing waist deep in water saying everything is fine. And the political landscape is so fractured that it becomes possible for the populist elements to turn around and blame the very people they disregarded.

If you haven't already, read The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis.

 

[TroothSkr]

First I was looking for answer not a lecture. 2nd I gave the first two thoughts that could explain it. Thanks for bringing nothing to the table to explain it. For the rest of you, my first thought is that heart attacks especially fatal heart attacks should be up for two reason. Stress is way high for everyone and people are putting off visits and are not taking care of themselves because no one wants to go to emergency room.

This is the last in a many series of articles I've read for over a month.

https://www.inquirer.com/health/cor...troke-heart-attack-delayed-care-20200723.html

Sorry for lecturing. An occupational hazard at times.

But moving on, unfortunately no one can explain anything based on the article you linked. All your article says is that cardiac and stroke CASES in the Philly area hospitals are down and it gives anecdotal info about cases from one hospital. Doesn't really say anything about deaths, which is what you were asking about and trying to provide a couple of explanations for. And even if I tried to extrapolate it to deaths, the closest I get is that I could infer from the anecdote that people died because they came in later than they otherwise would have (and who presumably may have been saved if they came in earlier?) That extrapolation would seem to suggest that deaths are increasing, not decreasing! Need different links with real data.

 

[goru7]

For Let’s Go Ru91, Ru Cheese, and the other interested Doctors and scientists that are interested in learning about Leronlimab, I am posting an interview done of Dr. Bruce Patterson, a 30 year veteran pathologist , scientist and virologist , formerly head of Virology at Stanford University, who runs Incelldx, the diagnostic company that ran the assays for the blood work for the 60 EIND’s patients Leronlimab was used on before the trials, and talks about Ig6, Ig8, Ig4 and T cells and how CoVid is a Rantes disease and that is why Leronlimab has and will work. . Enjoy.

 

[ScarletNut]

Here’s a question for the scientist/virologist. As a doctor, I don’t know the answer. If multiple vaccines become available and they each attack the virus by different mechanisms and they each are say 60% effective, would it make sense to get vaccinated by all of them? Would the different mechanism of attack increase the effectiveness to closer to 100%?

 

[ArminRU]

Here’s a question for the scientist/virologist. As a doctor, I don’t know the answer. If multiple vaccines become available and they each attack the virus by different mechanisms and they each are say 60% effective, would it make sense to get vaccinated by all of them? Would the different mechanism of attack increase the effectiveness to closer to 100%?

I had the same exact conversation today, that’s funny. Would love to know the answer as well.

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

Very good article. Thought this part was very relevant given the debate we've had on whether the federal response was adequate or not (not, of course, IMO).

Populist politicians have deliberately loosened some people’s faith in the need to invest in independent expertise at the heart of government. Do you think the pandemic could be a watershed moment in reversing that trend?

I was involved in pandemic planning for a long time. During the Bush administration we had some very heated debates about the role of government in that planning. But I don’t recall ever having a debate about the necessary role of government in pandemic response. That has been the shock. Instead of it being all hands on deck, half the ship is denying that the ship is going down at all. Many people are standing waist deep in water saying everything is fine. And the political landscape is so fractured that it becomes possible for the populist elements to turn around and blame the very people they disregarded.

That was a loaded question. "independent expertise at the heart of government" is not the same thing as "independent expertise in pandemic planning". There are plenty of areas that only a governmental responsibility.

Trump INCREASED CDC funding.. he wanted to decrease it.. probably as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations.. but a GOP Congress and Senate wanted it increased and he signed it. The response tot eh question is a fabrication. That guy certainly has the expertise to write a tome on BS, I'll give him that.

 

[WhiteBus]

Sorry for lecturing. An occupational hazard at times.

But moving on, unfortunately no one can explain anything based on the article you linked. All your article says is that cardiac and stroke CASES in the Philly area hospitals are down and it gives anecdotal info about cases from one hospital. Doesn't really say anything about deaths, which is what you were asking about and trying to provide a couple of explanations for. And even if I tried to extrapolate it to deaths, the closest I get is that I could infer from the anecdote that people died because they came in later than they otherwise would have (and who presumably may have been saved if they came in earlier?) That extrapolation would seem to suggest that deaths are increasing, not decreasing! Need different links with real data.

Please. There are reports that suit your needs everywhere. Every time I link an article it gets shot down because it's on the wrong side of someone's agenda or a bias. That's why I stopped posting links Today a guy knocks a CBS report after trashing USA today. So just Google. Pick a sourse you like.
I agree that people died because they put off seeing their doctors or more dramacticly not going to the ER with chest pains.
This isn't a Philly thing. The first one I saw was a Yale Medicine back in early May. There are many.
Logic says that numbers should be up on at least heart attacks.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/stories/hospitals-covid-fears/

 

[RU848789]

Here’s a question for the scientist/virologist. As a doctor, I don’t know the answer. If multiple vaccines become available and they each attack the virus by different mechanisms and they each are say 60% effective, would it make sense to get vaccinated by all of them? Would the different mechanism of attack increase the effectiveness to closer to 100%?

Theoretically that could work, but it won't be done because there aren't any vaccine combination trials to measure success - and especially safety - of the combo and there's no doctor in the world who will (or should) combine vaccines on his/her own.

 

[Greg2020]

Theoretically that could work, but it won't be done because there aren't any vaccine combination trials to measure success - and especially safety - of the combo and there's no doctor in the world who will (or should) combine vaccines on his/her own.

Not even Stella?

 

[albanyknight]

If you haven't already, read The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis.

I have been pushing The Fifth Risk as the single best book for a lay person to get a basic understanding of the many things that the federal government does and the many important roles that it plays in every American life.

Having worked at two major agencies in Washington DC., both policy and culture come from the top. The White House sets the goals and agendas and each cabinet head brings it to their respective agencies and things then filter down through the Deputy and Assistant Secretary's for each department.

Trying to deflect blame on to Fauci, Birx, CDC is the same thing that is going on with the Ellen Show today as Ellen denies all culpability regarding a toxic work environment.

Things don't work that way both in the private and public sectors.

When you elect into office an administration that doesn't believe in government; that eschews regulations and despises the rule of law, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what is going to happen.

This is a fact. The Bush and Obama administrations with very different approaches to governance, both understood that it is impossible to deal with a pandemic without a federal response that unified all states to be on the same page. Trying to argue this would be the same as arguing that the Jets have won more Super Bowls than the Giants. It is insane.

 

[LC-88]

G

.... with a long article/interview about/with Shi Zhengli, the Chinese researcher known as the "batwoman" who many have pointed to as a possible culprit for any lab shenanigans. She said the following:

• They first received actual SARS-CoV-2 samples in late December from patients
• They've never worked with any viruses that are that close genetically to CV2 - even the RaTG13 bat coronavirus (the closest) only shares 96.2% of its genetic material witih CV2, which is actually pretty far off from a match (humans and chimps share 98%) - she and others have said that their differences suggest these two viruses diverged evolutionarily 20-70 years ago. They spent much of their time investigating variants of SARS, since that was what they were most worried about.
• She also explained the naming issue with RaTG13 and its original name, 4991 - they're identical with the former being a better identifier of sample collection time and location.
• She also doubts the Wuhan wet market is the origin of CV2, thinking that's just where many of the cases started, but that it likely started somewhere else and was brought to Wuhan.
• Her answers to Science were reviewed by Chinese authorities (as they likely would be in any other country's govt. lab), but the experts Science spoke with feel the answers were logical and helpful. Doesn't mean everyone will believe her though.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...st-center-covid-19-origin-theories-speaks-out

https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...entions-and-more.191275/page-112#post-4558420

https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...entions-and-more.191275/page-110#post-4556128

Please see my post of Nature.com article with link on previous page (94) of this thread. Bat woman was on the team that created the virus referenced in the article. Work completed in 2015. So she is full of it on point #2. Read the article. It describes what we are dealing with now.

 

[wisr01]

Persistent heterogeneity not short-term overdispersion determines herd immunity to COVID-19

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.26.20162420v1.full.pdf

Abstract:

It has become increasingly clear that the COVID-19 epidemic is characterized by overdispersion whereby the majority of the transmission is driven by a minority of infected individuals. Such a strong departure from the homogeneity assumptions of traditional well-mixed compartment model is usually hypothesized to be the result of shortterm super-spreader events, such as individual’s extreme rate of virus shedding at the peak of infectivity while attending a large gathering without appropriate mitigation. However, heterogeneity can also arise through long-term, or persistent variations in individual susceptibility or infectivity. Here, we show how to incorporate persistent heterogeneity into a wide class of epidemiological models, and derive a non-linear dependence of the effective reproduction number Re on the susceptible population fraction S. Persistent heterogeneity has three important consequences compared to the effects of overdispersion: (1) It results in a major modification of the early epidemic dynamics; (2) It significantly suppresses the herd immunity threshold; (3) It significantly reduces the final size of the epidemic. We estimate social and biological contributions to persistent heterogeneity using data on real-life face-to-face contact networks and age variation of the incidence rate during the COVID-19 epidemic, and show that empirical data from the COVID-19 epidemic in New York City (NYC) and Chicago and all 50 US states provide a consistent characterization of the level of persistent heterogeneity. Our estimates suggest that the hardest-hit areas, such as NYC, are close to the persistent heterogeneity herd immunity threshold following the first wave of the epidemic, thereby limiting the spread of infection to other regions during a potential second wave of the epidemic. Our work implies that general considerations of persistent heterogeneity in addition to overdispersion act to limit the scale of pandemics.

Sorry for the delay but I have been busy for a few days. Here is a brief summary of the link in my quoted post:

https://www.news-medical.net/news/2...ched-coronavirus-herd-immunity-threshold.aspx

 

[bac2therac]

false positives for Phillies now...oh boy

 

[RUBOB72]

Made an appointment to be tested Monday morning . I have no symptoms but a mild fever .But as we know it is a concern. I spoke to my primary ( partner) and she says she believes from what I told her I may be having a return of an infection in the prostate ( that bastard walnut) of the kidney / bladder ... I mentioned that the symptoms are the same as last year. Putting me on an antibiotic as a precautionary measure and told me get the Covid 19 test. So I’m feeling ok but who knows. Drinking plenty of fluids and taking Tylenol. l wear mask all the time, gloves in supermarket stores And wash hands all the time. It is what it is so yes realize even when you practice good hygiene and protocols ... it is easily passed around...

 

[tom1944]

Made an appointment to be tested Monday morning . I have no symptoms but a mild fever .But as we know it is a concern. I spoke to my primary ( partner) and she says she believes from what I told her I may be having a return of an infection in the prostate ( that bastard walnut) of the kidney / bladder ... I mentioned that the symptoms are the same as last year. Putting me on an antibiotic as a precautionary measure and told me get the Covid 19 test. So I’m feeling ok but who knows. Drinking plenty of fluids and taking Tylenol. l wear mask all the time, gloves in supermarket stores And wash hands all the time. It is what it is so yes realize even when you practice good hygiene and protocols ... it is easily passed around...

Good luck

 

[RU848789]

Made an appointment to be tested Monday morning . I have no symptoms but a mild fever .But as we know it is a concern. I spoke to my primary ( partner) and she says she believes from what I told her I may be having a return of an infection in the prostate ( that bastard walnut) of the kidney / bladder ... I mentioned that the symptoms are the same as last year. Putting me on an antibiotic as a precautionary measure and told me get the Covid 19 test. So I’m feeling ok but who knows. Drinking plenty of fluids and taking Tylenol. l wear mask all the time, gloves in supermarket stores And wash hands all the time. It is what it is so yes realize even when you practice good hygiene and protocols ... it is easily passed around...

Good luck. I hope it's just the minor infection and not COVID, obviously. One thought for you (ask your doctor of course, before making any decisions): if you only have a mild fever, it's quite possible you don't have COVID (if no other symptoms) or that even if you do, your viral levels are low and you might still get a "false negative" test (which would give you a false sense of security), so it might not be worth getting the COVID test at this point with just a mild fever. Certainly if the fever worsens and/or some other symptoms develop, getting the test becomes more important (and more likely to be accurate).

One other thing that can be helpful for people is getting a pulse oximeter to measure oxygenation levels in the blood, since there are sometimes people with minimal symptoms who become anoxic and that can be seen by this device - and anyone with low O2 blood levels should be getting to a doctor or hospital ASAP.

 

[RU848789]

G
Please see my post of Nature.com article with link on previous page (94) of this thread. Bat woman was on the team that created the virus referenced in the article. Work completed in 2015. So she is full of it on point #2. Read the article. It describes what we are dealing with now.

I've read the article and responded to it before - see the 2nd link in my post to a previous post of mine with links to discussions on that from top virologists. The bottom line is that the idea that someone was able to "create" SARS-CoV-2 back in 2015 without any knowledge of CV2 is preposterous. Sure, if they were given the blueprints to CV2, someone could make it, like we're doing now with putting the viral proteins/RNA into vaccines, but how would anyone know to make something so different from anything we'd ever seen before out of trillions of structural possibilities? It fails the Occam's Razor test completely.

 

[RU848789]

Below is the Worldometers detailed graphic of US deaths and the COVID Tracking charts of US tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, all on 7-day moving averages. Another bad day, as Worldometers reported that we almost tied yesterday's record high in deaths for wave 2 (1465), with 1462 deaths, although COVID Tracking only reported 1308 today. Regardless, the 7-day moving average continues its steady climb and is now around 1100 per day in both sources.

Cases were up again today to over 71K, despite drops in FL/TX/CA, which had been driving the increases, meaning other states are starting to accelerate more. The 7-day MA is still in a peak plateau and hospitalizations appear to be at their peak, also.

With regard to highlights from states, California set another new high 191 deaths, today, as did Florida, with 256 deaths, while Texas was just below their WM high. In addition, Mississippi, Nevada, Idaho, and Montana all set new records for deaths.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us
https://covidtracking.com/data#chart-annotations

Below is the Worldometers detailed graphic of US deaths and the COVID Tracking charts of US tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, all on 7-day moving averages. Like clockwork, we see a Saturday decline from the preceding several days, as deaths on WM dropped from 1462 to 1142, although last Saturday the drop was to 926 deaths and it was to 823 2 weeks ago. If the pattern repeats, we'll see drops to the 600-800 range the next two days. Regardless, the 7-day moving average continues its steady climb and is now around 1100 per day in both sources. Cases also did their usual decline going from 71K yesterday to about 58K today and nothing of major note from the states today.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us
https://covidtracking.com/data#chart-annotations

 

[Proud NJ Sports Fan]

not sure I believe it but some high-up doctor at a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama was on cnn a few weeks ago and he claimed one of his patients contracted it two separate times(once in March in Europe, and in June) in Alabama and the second time they caught it they died. This doctor is also anti-lockdown. So not sure what his deal was.

Fake news

 

[Proud NJ Sports Fan]

Very good article. Thought this part was very relevant given the debate we've had on whether the federal response was adequate or not (not, of course, IMO).

Populist politicians have deliberately loosened some people’s faith in the need to invest in independent expertise at the heart of government. Do you think the pandemic could be a watershed moment in reversing that trend?

I was involved in pandemic planning for a long time. During the Bush administration we had some very heated debates about the role of government in that planning. But I don’t recall ever having a debate about the necessary role of government in pandemic response. That has been the shock. Instead of it being all hands on deck, half the ship is denying that the ship is going down at all. Many people are standing waist deep in water saying everything is fine. And the political landscape is so fractured that it becomes possible for the populist elements to turn around and blame the very people they disregarded.

Are you ok for others to inject their political opinions into this thread going forward?

 

[RUBOB72]

Good luck. I hope it's just the minor infection and not COVID, obviously. One thought for you (ask your doctor of course, before making any decisions): if you only have a mild fever, it's quite possible you don't have COVID (if no other symptoms) or that even if you do, your viral levels are low and you might still get a "false negative" test (which would give you a false sense of security), so it might not be worth getting the COVID test at this point with just a mild fever. Certainly if the fever worsens and/or some other symptoms develop, getting the test becomes more important (and more likely to be accurate).

One other thing that can be helpful for people is getting a pulse oximeter to measure oxygenation levels in the blood, since there are sometimes people with minimal symptoms who become anoxic and that can be seen by this device - and anyone with low O2 blood levels should be getting to a doctor or hospital ASAP.

I sincerely appreciate your response and thoughtfulness numbers. This morning I still feel pretty good and antibiotics started. It is a scary thing and not so much for me.You worry about those who you may have had contact with. With me it has only been my wife and 7 days ago with my son, his wife and my 4 year old granddaughter. But we social distanced from each other but who knows. Did go to two supermarkets. Anyway going tomorrow morning have the appointment. I did have a bacterial infection last spring caused by gravel still passing from a lithotripsy procedure on an 8mm kidney stone. That is always a possibility with stones in the kidney’s, bladder or urethra. Once again thanks.

 

[RobertG]

Here is a science article from the NY Times (presents both sides and devoid of politics) about studying how the virus spread on the Diamond Princess and how aerosols may have played a bigger role.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/...html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

 

[bac2therac]

Australia spiking big time...why?

and wasnt I laughed at when I brought this up a couple weeks ago

 

[bac2therac]

I sincerely appreciate your response and thoughtfulness numbers. This morning I still feel pretty good and antibiotics started. It is a scary thing and not so much for me.You worry about those who you may have had contact with. With me it has only been my wife and 7 days ago with my son, his wife and my 4 year old granddaughter. But we social distanced from each other but who knows. Did go to two supermarkets. Anyway going tomorrow morning have the appointment. I did have a bacterial infection last spring caused by gravel still passing from a lithotripsy procedure on an 8mm kidney stone. That is always a possibility with stones in the kidney’s, bladder or urethra. Once again thanks.

Hope everything goes fine Bob.

 

[RU#1fan]

Theoretically that could work, but it won't be done because there aren't any vaccine combination trials to measure success - and especially safety - of the combo and there's no doctor in the world who will (or should) combine vaccines on his/her own.

Stella would support it.

 

[wisr01]

Interesting research that might explain conflicting results on HCQ and also lend credence to the recent Bromhexine study as it is a TMPRSS2 inhibitor.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216150v1.full.pdf

"First we show that SARS-CoV-2 is more dependent on TMPRSS2 than is SARS-CoV-1, and that this difference can largely be explained by the presence of a furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 S protein. Second, we show that TMPRSS2 expression overcomes the antiviral effect of hydroxychloroquine, thus providing a mechanistic explanation for its poor therapeutic efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 despite encouraging cell-culture results."

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-020-01673-z

"The inhibitors of endosomal acidification such as CatB/L inhibitor E-64D and hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine may only work for TMPRSS2-absence patients who are infected by SARS-CoV-2, and may have less effect or no effect for the patients with wild-type of TMPRSS2 [5, 24]. Therefore, the EUR and AFR populations might be more sensitive to hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine by carrying missense variants and stop-gained variants on TMPRSS2 (Figs. 1c and 2c). Yet, for patients who have wild-type of ACE2 and TMPRSS2, a combination of camostat with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine may have better clinical benefit. However, all discussed treatment strategies must be validated by randomized controlled trials before clinical use. The second mechanism is cleavage of ACE2 by TMPRSS2 at Arginine 697 to 716 [12], which enhances viral uptake. Thus, the EUR population with p.Arg708Trp, p.Arg710Cys, p.Arg710His, and p.Arg716Cys variants in ACE2 may have mild symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 infection as ACE2 loses the cleavage site by TMPRSS2 and changes the ACE2 dimer formation [26]