Covid-19 News

Quote from Shane D.

Your state has had 750 deaths, among 20, 000 confirmed cases, with a population of almost 10 million. If that caused the system to be overloaded, the state of Georgia has some problems that have nothing to do with COVID.

Yes, indeed it does have problems. Like the rest of the former Confederacy, Georgia ranks close to the bottom healthcare, longevity, education and other measures of well being. As people say here, thank goodness for Alabama and Mississippi or we would be dead last. The hospitals with the worst problems are in rural counties, but even Atlanta hospitals lack essential equipment and supplies. That's why my wife and I are sewing 100 new mask covers. That tells you where Georgia stands, and where the U.S. stands. In any reasonable industrial country clothes manufacturers would make these masks in a fraction of the time it is taking us.

News reports from Japan say the four largest sources of concentrated infections have been hospitals, nursing homes, live music bars, and gyms. So, the governor's decision to reopen the gyms is dangerous. I think it is also foolish to re-open movie theaters. No doubt many people will stay away from gyms and movie theaters, but all it takes is the governor and about a million other idiots to reignite the epidemic and start rapidly driving the numbers up again. Most experts say that re-opening now will make the economic damage worse.

Since we are #45 in testing, and no one has idea how many people are infected, or who is infected, re-opening now is certain to cause a rebound in cases. How big a rebound depends on how many idiots there are.

Quote from Shane D.

Well tell me, how many are going to die from keeping the economy shut down?

If you "open" the economy up by re-igniting the pandemic, and re-establishing the infection rate so that cases double every 3 days, then the economy will definitely crash down again, much worse than before. It will take months or years to recover. So what you advocate will not only kills thousands of people, it will make the economic catastrophe much worse. Worse, not better.

Trump's own policy is to open up after adequate testing is available, after enough field workers have been trained to follow up and trace cases, and after the number of cases is small enough to allow tracing. None of these conditions have been met. Neither Trump nor the governor of Georgia has even begun to do these things. Before any stay-at-home rule is removed, we must have adequate testing and monitoring, or we will may damage the economy as badly as the 1929 crash did.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I have been in touch with some health workers, in particular, ICU nurses who care for COVID-19 patients. They have posted on Facebook and elsewhere what it really means to care for very sick COVID-19 patients. The toll on their bodies and minds is immense. Many will decide to quit, particularly if they feel the government is ignorantly increasing their work load and risk levels. So Shane D.and like thinkers, if there is a lot of "opening" of states as the President says he wants, when you or your loved ones get sick with the virus, there may be nobody there to take care of you.

From some private cases: Recovery of corona patients takes in average twice as long as for an other similar strong viral infections. You must also be careful not to miss the secondary attack. Thus do not think it's over if you feel well again after 5 days.

The least you can do is to shield all vulnerable as long as not enough medication is available. Even then you play with some unpredictable long term risks, like sudden high blood pressure, cardiac weakness, partial loss of lung function. The least bad symptom is loss of smell/taste as it will come back again.

If you get it then heads up. Many people with tons of precondition did survive it. Key is to act as fast a possible and if needed to push your doctor to get at least some useful medication. Be aware that most doctors do not know more than you know in such a "new" case. He can only help you with secondary effects or doing analytics regarding your precondition(s).

A National Plan to Enable Comprehensive COVID-19 Case Finding and Contact Tracing in the US

Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health

https://www.centerforhealthsec…act-tracing-in-the-US.pdf

https://academic.oup.com/cid/a….1093/cid/ciaa394/5816960

From France:

Abstract

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) appears to be a promising treatment for COVID-19. However, all

ongoing clinical trials with HCQ use different dosing regimens, resulting on various

concentrations PK studies are therefore needed to define the optimal dosing regimen.

For the full, already peer reviewed paper, go to the above link and click on the PDF link within.

Quote from Alan Smith

Nature interview with the architect of Sweden's unusual Covid-19 policy- a 5 minute read.

Interesting article. The results will tell the wisdom in the approach. I have my doubts. Especially keeping schools open.

Article on Sweden and the C.V.

https://www.project-syndicate.…by-hans-bergstrom-2020-04

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Interesting article. The results will tell the wisdom in the approach. I have my doubts. Especially keeping schools open.

Actually, I think sweden where both parents work suffer much more from closing schools, than many other countries. A good fraction of the workforce will temporarely quit their essential jobs or even more risky, the youngsters is taking cared of by grandma and grandpa if closing down the schools. Anyway

there is not much evidences for COVID to be spread by kids. Also Authorities manage a close eye on this and if there will pop up evidences then of cause measures will be taken. It's not 1/0. They prepared the law system to quickly do this.

More on the COVID-19 test which provides for DIY sample collection:

Here is the web page for the Pixel/Labcorp COVID-19 test that provides for do it yourself sample collection.

https://www.pixel.labcorp.com/at-home-test-ki…/covid-19-test

"We'll send you an at-home kit to collect your nasal swab sample and ship it back to our lab. Our lab will test your sample for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease (also called COVID-19), a respiratory illness."

$119 is the cost.

IMPORTANT: this is a test for virus- not antibodies. I just watched an ER doc on Fox getting it all wrong. I wish everyone and especially Fox would vet their "experts" better. Dumb mistake to make. How do you test for antibodies in nasal swabs?

Quote from sam12

Article on Sweden and the C.V.

https://www.project-syndicate.…by-hans-bergstrom-2020-04

I do not agree with this fellow.

It is really early too compare different countries as of date. The fast spread in essentially in Stockholm area, the rest of sweden is

closer to Denmark/Norway atm. And one reason for the fast spread is that a week of hollidays, that varied in time from one part

of the country to the next one and as an unlucky coinsidence, skiiers braught corona in from Italy to Stockholm. As the article also says,

we have dense poor areas in Stockholm where most of the spread have taken part. The article however paints it like there is a lot of people

who do not follow orders. That's not true. Stockholm is essentially dead if you ask for example my exwife who work and live in

Stockholm. People are a bit worried however, especially since the other end of the plateu is not visible yet. The article is interesting however

to shed light on the fact that the research community is splitted. But it's not true how the author paints it as it is one man show here

that dictates the measures. It's so that critics does not just say. I think that A is wrong because of B. They say A is wrong because of B and also

mr X is a moron. If I see such arguments I usually pass it into the dustbin and this article is a bit of too much for me. Actually recently people on

this side is complaining that they are ridiculed after saying A is not true because of B and moreover mr X is incompetent. Then mr X answers B

is obviously false because of simple math error and then the press and public rolled their eyes. Yes this is why it is important to humble and

always keep concentrating on the facts.

I've heard all of this before, and the so called mild version of West Coast COVID-19 is probably due to a less virulent collection of coronaviruses. Maybe we could have the good Stanford professor's opinion after catching the lethal form (if he survives it!).

Quote from Toffoli

"A new serological study by Stanford University found antibodies in 50 to 85 times more people than previously thought in Santa Clara County, California, resulting in a Covid-19 lethality of 0.12% to 0.2% or even lower (i.e. in the range of severe influenza). Professor John Ioannidis explains the study in a new video."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/#latest

"Stanford professor of medicine John Ioannidis explains in a new one-hour interview the results of several new studies on Covid19. According to Professor Ioannidis, the lethality of Covid19 is „in the range of seasonal flu“. For people under 65 years of age, the mortality risk even in the global „hotspots“ is comparable to the daily car ride to work, while for healthy people under 65 years of age, the mortality risk is „completely negligible“. Only in New York City was the mortality risk for persons under 65 years of age comparable to a long-distance truck driver."

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This is in line with a study in Sweden as well, around 0.1% death rate. They found that 1% of the ones infected knows they are infected e.g. led to a statistic.

Quote from Toffoli

"A new serological study by Stanford University found antibodies in 50 to 85 times more people than previously thought in Santa Clara County, California, resulting in a Covid-19 lethality of 0.12% to 0.2% or even lower (i.e. in the range of severe influenza). Professor John Ioannidis explains the study in a new video."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/#latest

"Stanford professor of medicine John Ioannidis explains in a new one-hour interview the results of several new studies on Covid19. According to Professor Ioannidis, the lethality of Covid19 is „in the range of seasonal flu“. For people under 65 years of age, the mortality risk even in the global „hotspots“ is comparable to the daily car ride to work, while for healthy people under 65 years of age, the mortality risk is „completely negligible“. Only in New York City was the mortality risk for persons under 65 years of age comparable to a long-distance truck driver."

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Toffoli,

(1) That Santa Clara study has been posted here several times. However it is fatally flawed. please read this excellent peer review:

Here is a really useful blog-style but competent peer review of the Santa Clara seroprevalence prepint.

From above link (conclusions after much detail):

To summarize, there are three broad reasons why I am skeptical of this study’s claims.

1. First, the false positive rate may be high enough to generate many of the reported 50 positives out of 3330 samples. Or put another way, we don’t have high confidence in a very low false positive rate, as the 95% confidence interval for the false positive rate is roughly [0%, >1.2%] and the reported positive rate is ~1.5%.
2. Second, the study may have enriched for COVID-19 cases by (a) serving as a test-of-last-resort for symptomatic or exposed people who couldn’t get tests elsewhere in the Bay Area and/or (b) allowing said people to recruit other COVID-19 cases to the study in private groups. These mechanisms could also account for a significant chunk of the 50 positives in 3330 samples.
3. Third, in order to produce the visible excess mortality numbers that COVID-19 is already piling up in Europe and NYC, the study would imply that COVID-19 is spreading significantly faster than past pandemics like H1N1, many of which had multiple waves and took more than a year to run their course.

(2) Your other links are highly speculative. We'd all like the IFR of COVID to be around 0.1% (even then actually much more lethal than severe flu, for which many have immunity). Andrea.s has pointed out, when I said I hoped 0.1% might be possible, that in countries and localities where infection rates were high the number of deaths alone is enough to show >> 0.1%. So this argument that it is like just Flu has no evidence and is highly unlikely to be true. It is possible that some of the many strains floating around are much less lethal - but again there is little evidence.

You will however get 0.1% or lower in certain young populations (like Zelenko's patients!). That is a different matter.

You need to look at the totality of evidence here, not just what points in the direction you like.

Or rather I could say try telling the relatives of the 57 recently deceased NHS staff just how innocuous this Corona virus is (more like getting run over by a double-decker bus on your way to work). Has this guy never heard of mutations? That the high rate of false positives could be due to the presence of both mild and lethal forms of the virus within the same infected population?

Quote from stefan

This is in line with a study in Sweden as well, around 0.1% death rate. They found that 1% of the ones infected knows they are infected e.g. led to a statistic.

Stefan, I'd be interested in this if real but I bet you it is not. I can't find any research that argues Sweden COVID IFR is 0.1%. Perhaps you could link it? What you quote (and I'd like the evidence and sample from which this was determined) does not prove that. You need to be sure that those who "don't know they are infected" stay asymptomatic after they are tested. Many of them will not.

PS - they have a policy of shielding older people. If they do this really well then IFR 7X lower than the current estimate 0.66% is very possible just based on the fact that only young and healthy people catch it. Risk double with every 7 years age increase.

Anyway I've found a pharmaceutical supply company willing to sell most of the necessary ingredients for our Anti Bat combo including Avigan. I might replace Sceletium with Black seed Nigella sativa oil as it contains thymoquinone.

Quote from Shane D.

Yes, overall, residents in the south are generally more unhealthy, hence have a lower life span, but that has to do with their lack of physical activity, coupled with eating too much. It has nothing to do with the health care system, which are first rate as it is in all of the US.

See this DHH analysis:

"Health Care Quality: How Does Your State Compare?"

"The quality of health care varies widely across the nation. State Snapshots, an interactive tool from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), uses more than 250 statistical measures to offer state-by-state summaries of health care quality. The tool, based on AHRQ's 2015 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, analyzes quality in three dimensions: type of care (such as preventive or chronic), setting of care (such as nursing homes or hospitals), and clinical areas (such as care for patients with cancer or diabetes)."

https://www.ahrq.gov/data/info…s/state-compare-text.html

The lack of physical activity and eating too much is a direct result of terrible public health and education in the South. It is caused by things like lack of playgrounds in schools, lack of parks, sidewalks, bad food in public schools, and no decent health education in public schools. See the book:

Prescription for a Healthy Nation

https://www.amazon.com/Prescri…oving-ebook/dp/B007Y30BSW

No U.S. healthcare is "first rate" compared to other industrialized nations. We are #27. Except for the cost. We pay 2 or 3 times more per capita than any other country. Our hospitals are filthy, causing hospital-acquired infections at a higher rate than other countries. See:

How American Health Care Killed My Father

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma…-killed-my-father/307617/