COVID-19

Health, Fitness, Food, Insurance, Longevity, Diets,...
CS
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Re: COVID-19

Post by CS »

Hristo Botev wrote:
Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:46 am
I definitely DID have to get a physical/blood work to find out what my monthly payment would be for my term life insurance policy--and the higher your BMI, etc., the higher your payment is.
Our tester had a "calibrated" scale that was 10 lbs off, i.e. showed a weight lighter than it really was - which benefited most people. As someone with a real BMI of 18.5-19, it put me in the anorexic category, which I certainly am not! (Not all of my physicians scales could have been that far off.) The insurance was so expensive that we skipped it. Luckily that turned out to be a good decision in the long run.

Hristo Botev
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Hristo Botev »

CS wrote:
Wed Jul 29, 2020 1:54 pm
Our tester had a "calibrated" scale that was 10 lbs off, i.e. showed a weight lighter than it really was.
I need to get one of those scales for personal use.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: COVID-19

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

One of my employers once did a health screening. If you passed, you got $300. They tested BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure, and presence of nicotine. My guess is the insurance company offered the company a discount if they did this since policies are negotiated on a per-company basis.

I had many coworkers in their late 20s/early 30s fail the test, largely due to high blood pressure and nicotine.

Hristo Botev
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Hristo Botev »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Wed Jul 29, 2020 6:09 pm
One of my employers once did a health screening. If you passed, you got $300. They tested BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure, and presence of nicotine. My guess is the insurance company offered the company a discount if they did this since policies are negotiated on a per-company basis.

I had many coworkers in their late 20s/early 30s fail the test, largely due to high blood pressure and nicotine.
My old firm was self-insured and so always did health/wellness incentive programs; DW's employer does that as well. I think that's great. But do/can we charge higher premiums on an individual basis for folks who are in higher risk pools? Is there some sort federal law that prohibits that kind of thing?

jacob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jacob »

Meta-study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... 9/fulltext

Eye protection reduces the infection rate by a factor ~3 (from 16% to 5%).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AEXKR4C/ works well with cloth masks but even after removing the foam, the nose bridge interferes with my respirator. I'm thus stuck with leaving a gap or using my shooting glasses where the nose bridge can be removed for better coverage. Not sure what the ideal solution here is ... maybe more DIY finagling is in order.

Note that the 3M is sold with various lenses like clear (linked), smoke, mirror, ...

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jennypenny
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jennypenny »

We are flying back from SD on a smaller jet, and we were informed that masks with valves/vents or basically anything that looked like a respirator or construction mask was prohibited on board. We were told similar rules with an upcoming hospital visit for my son.

Just FYI in case this is a new trend. People might need to keep a standard-issue face mask with them in case they run into this.

jacob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jacob »

Sclass mentioned similar enforcement restrictions in the DIY mask thread. I already carry both because I have no interest in getting into a longer argument/explanation about my add-on exhalation filter vs a cloth mask.

Given the different situations one encounters. I'd presume that in a controlled environment, everybody would wear masks anyway, so I'm okay with switching to cloth. Whereas in a sloppy environment with a mix of maskless and masked humans, I'd get to keep my P100. In either case the protection for me is high.

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Viktor K
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Viktor K »

Our solution to this has been keeping our N99, vented vog masks on, with a surgical mask to double up with somewhere in pack.

I get that the valve means exposing others, but I prefer the n99 protection.

Also on mine, the exhaust valve doesn’t pop open without good effort / I am exercising or exerting myself. So for normal use, I assume still protects others as well as if not better than cloth/surgical.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: COVID-19

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@Hristo Botev - I'm a bit hazy on the details, so take this with a grain of salt, but iirc, one of the main things about the affordable care act was prohibiting insurance companies from charging you higher premiums based on preexisting conditions. Being obese, having high blood pressure, etc all counts as a preexisting condition, and so they can't charge higher premiums for that. Heck, in some states, they can't even charge you higher premiums based on your age.

jacob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jacob »

https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/cov ... rt-damage/

Open link to actual paper in the statnews link.
statnews wrote: One study examined the cardiac MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from Covid-19 and compared them to heart images from 100 people who were similar but not infected with the virus. Their average age was 49 and two-thirds of the patients had recovered at home. More than two months later, infected patients were more likely to have troubling cardiac signs than people in the control group: 78 patients showed structural changes to their hearts, 76 had evidence of a biomarker signaling cardiac injury typically found after a heart attack, and 60 had signs of inflammation.
The CV19 group was identified by testing positive on a standard swab test. People who were already identified as cardiac patients were excluded. The groups was thus comprised of people who tested positive with no known prior heart conditions.

That's worse cardiac signs than people in the control group after it was adjusted for pre-existing risk-factors like hypertension, diabetes, smoking, asthma, etc. So unless, there's some unknown-unknown risk factor that the statistical elimination failed to capture ...
paper wrote: Unlike these previous studies, our findings reveal that significant cardiac involvement occurs independently of the severity of original presentation and persists beyond the period of acute presentation, with no significant trend toward reduction of imaging or serological findings during the recovery period. Our findings may provide an indication of potentially considerable burden of inflammatory disease in large and growing parts of the population and urgently require confirmation in a larger cohort.
... meaning effects linger unchanged for at least 2 months. Given how heart damage appears common, the following the precautionary principle seems to be in order.

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Sclass
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Sclass »

jacob wrote:
Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:39 am
Sclass mentioned similar enforcement restrictions in the DIY mask thread. I already carry both because I have no interest in getting into a longer argument/explanation about my add-on exhalation filter vs a cloth mask.
Good tip. I’m carrying some cloth masks (w/Filti liners) and some surgical masks in my car as spares now. I haven’t been hassled for the elastomer p100 respirator yet but the reasons against them is more commonly encountered online.

I get stopped by at least one person and asked about my 3M 6200 every time I go shopping. All compliments on the quality and often inquiries on where to get one.

At this point locally people are just happy to see a face covering. We still have people refusing to mask up. Especially outdoors. SoCal is very different than the Bay Area where they’ve spoken out against the valves.

So many people are wearing those neoprene masks from Amazon with the plastic exhaust valves on the front around my area. Nobody is stopping them. A friend recently stopped me to chat while wearing one of these. He went on and on about his C19 a symptomatic wife. :x
I can see the issue.

Image

Peanut
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Peanut »

jacob wrote:
Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:44 pm
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/cov ... rt-damage/

Open link to actual paper in the statnews link.


One study examined the cardiac MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from Covid-19 and compared them to heart images from 100 people who were similar but not infected with the virus. Their average age was 49 and two-thirds of the patients had recovered at home. More than two months later, infected patients were more likely to have troubling cardiac signs than people in the control group: 78 patients showed structural changes to their hearts, 76 had evidence of a biomarker signaling cardiac injury typically found after a heart attack, and 60 had signs of inflammation.
I skimmed the article last week but afterwards I wasn't clear on the basic question I had, which was were these values 0,0,0 for he control group or was that info not available/given?

--
7w5 asked a while ago if those of us skeptics would be willing to revise our initial assessments. The Georgia camp news last week was very startling to me. I had put a lot of stock in studies such as: https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/ ... 2020004879

So I am definitely adjusting my priors.

jacob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jacob »

They used two control groups. A healthy (non-hypertensive, non-medicated) group for which the values were 0,0,... and a risk-factor adjusted group taking various comorbidities into account. So basically three groups:
1) Random people who had tested positive for COVID.
2) Healthy non-random people who had tested negative.
3) Random people who had tested negative for COVID.
paper wrote: Taken together, we demonstrate cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60 patients (60%) with recent COVID-19 illness, independent of pre-existing conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and the time from the original diagnosis. These findings indicate the need for ongoing investigation of the long-termcardiovascular consequences of COVID-19.
My bold. Some statistics were involved in arriving at that figure since they did not infect a random group of healthy and/or comorbid people to see what would happen. Sample sizes were on the order of 50-100 ppl.

The actual paper gives more detail: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaca ... le/2768916 (table 1). (The pdf is more readable.)

Peanut
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Peanut »

Thanks for that. It's still difficult for me to assess the significance of the study. I mean, it sounds terrible. But what do these hearts look like six months from now? Do recovered pneumonia patients have similar markers?

jacob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jacob »

I guess we'll see in 6 months for a follow-up study now that people are paying attention.

7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID-19

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

One thing that I think is very important issue with school openings is the fact that the current number of school nurses is very low and this job has largely been taken on by school clerical staff with virtually no training. Even in a normal situation, in an elementary school with a few hundred students there will be a near constant stream of sick or “playing sick” kids into the office throughout the day. Who is going to take responsibility for determining whether third grader likely has Covid, strep throat, just allergies, or just wants to go home and play video games? I can’t imagine the situation as being anything but a logistical nightmare.

chenda
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Re: COVID-19

Post by chenda »

Has there been any moves by certain states to close off their borders with surrounding states, if that's even legal ? I'm thinking Europe had an advantage in been able to resurrect it's old borders to slow transmission.

Hawaii seems to have minimal cases, unsurprisingly. (I thought Rhode Island should then I realised most of it isn't actually an island)

jacob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jacob »

@chenda - New York enforces some level of self-quarantine for out of state visitors and returning New Yorkers.

See https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid ... l-advisory

Most states are on the list now. Basically any state that's orange or worse: https://covidactnow.org/?s=830154

Add: Looks like Chicago has one too https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/c ... order.html ... not sure exactly how this is enforced. Usually there will be a toll booth at each state border and they could be "taking names and numbers" there. It's obviously trivial for air travel. However, it's also possible to travel between states along other routes, so I don't know ...

chenda
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Re: COVID-19

Post by chenda »

@Jacob Interesting. I saw that patch of green and found Vermont seems to have done an uniquely excellent job in fighting the virus, and seems to have some kind of border monitoring stations:

https://vtdigger.org/2020/04/06/vermont ... -covid-19/

I found this opinion piece interesting as I had no idea just how autonomous American states are. That they even have their own armies really surprised me.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-co ... oronavirus

nomadscientist
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Re: COVID-19

Post by nomadscientist »

It would be more interesting to see the heart inflammation stats normalised to people who recently had flu.

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