COVID-19

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1taskaday
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Re: COVID-19

Post by 1taskaday »

www.newscientist.com/article/2238477-ho ... 5182514361

The following is relevant information on the antibody test taken from newscientist link above:

What about antibody tests?

The downside of antibody tests is that they cannot detect infections in the first two weeks or so, when people are most contagious. However, our bodies keep making antibodies even after we have recovered from an infection, so testing people’s blood for antibodies against the coronavirus will reveal how many of us have been infected so far. This will help us calculate the infection fatality rate.

Can antibody tests distinguish between people who have recovered and those who are still infected?

Sometimes. People start producing so-called IgM antibodies against the coronavirus around 10 days after showing symptoms (perhaps 15 days after infection). After another two days, their bodies start making IgG antibodies, and gradually stop making IgM. Most people will recover fully as soon as IgG levels ramp up. Many rapid tests can detect both types of antibodies. If IgM antibodies are present in someone’s blood, they are likely to be still infected. If only IgG is present, they are recovering or fully recovered.

How accurate are these rapid tests?

We don’t know. Numerous companies are producing different tests that haven’t been independently checked yet. In general, testing for antigens or antibodies is less accurate than genetic testing, but the tests are easier and cheaper to manufacture. Rapid tests could play a valuable role, especially in poorer countries with little testing capacity. If they can reliably tell us when people have already been infected, it would allow key workers – especially in healthcare – to continue working without worrying about becoming infected or infecting their families.

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Sclass
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Location: Orange County, CA

Re: COVID-19

Post by Sclass »

Hey thanks that clears it up.

CS
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Re: COVID-19

Post by CS »

Another ventilator hack with an ambubag and a motor. Same concept as above.

Sure people here could make one in an afternoon.

https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/03/ ... entilator/

George the original one
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Re: COVID-19

Post by George the original one »

George the original one wrote:
Tue Mar 24, 2020 8:23 pm
State of Washington published count as of 3:00p Tue, 24 Mar
- 2469 Positives
- 31712 Negatives
- 123 deaths

Cases by County (County seats)
- 1 Adams (Ritzville)
- 12 Benton (Prosser)
- 6 Chelan (Wenatchee)
- 4 Clallam (Port Angeles)
- 16 Clark (Vancouver)
- 1 Columbia (Dayton)
- 3 Cowlitz (Kelso)
- 2 Douglas (Waterville)
- 7 Franklin (Pasco)
- 27 Grant (Ephrata)
- 1 Grays Harbor (Montesano)
- 29 Island (Coupeville)
- 8 Jefferson (Port Townsend)
- 1277 King (Seattle)
- 20 Kitsap (Port Orchard)
- 18 Kittitas (Ellensburg)
- 6 Klickatat (Goldendale)
- 2 Lewis (Chehalis)
- 1 Lincoln (Davenport)
- 2 Mason (Shelton)
- 138 Pierce (Tacoma)
- 1 San Juan (Friday Harbor)
- 48 Skagit (Mount Vernon)
- 614 Snohomish (Everett)
- 33 Spokane (Spokane)
- 1 Stevens (Colville)
- 14 Thurston (Olympia)
- 2 Walla Walla (Walla Walla)
- 64 Whatcom (Bellingham)
- 2 Whitman (Colfax)
- 44 Yakima (Yakima)
- 65 Unassigned (labs are having trouble keeping up and Dept of Health is working to determine the proper county)

Cases by Age
- 2% 0-19
- 9% 20-29
- 14% 30-39
- 13% 40-49
- 17% 50-59
- 16% 60-69
- 15% 70-79
- 14% 80+

Cases by Sex at Birth
- 51% Female
- 46% Male
- 4% Unknown
"The state's notifiable conditions database is currently experiencing a slowdown because of a 10-fold increase in the number of lab reports received. Our IT team is working to correct the issue."

111 new cases today. Added Ferry and Okanogan counties. Spokane area is accelerating now, likely due to the don't-tell-me-what-I-can-do attitude prevalent there.

State of Washington published count as of 6:20p Wed, 25 Mar
- 2580 Positives
- 31712 Negatives (not updated for 2 days now)
- 123 deaths

Cases by County (County seats)
- 1 Adams (Ritzville)
- 10 Benton (Prosser)
- 6 Chelan (Wenatchee)
- 4 Clallam (Port Angeles)
- 16 Clark (Vancouver)
- 1 Columbia (Dayton)
- 3 Cowlitz (Kelso)
- 2 Douglas (Waterville)
- 1 Ferry (Republic)
- 7 Franklin (Pasco)
- 27 Grant (Ephrata)
- 1 Grays Harbor (Montesano)
- 38 Island (Coupeville)
- 10 Jefferson (Port Townsend)
- 1359 King (Seattle)
- 27 Kitsap (Port Orchard)
- 6 Kittitas (Ellensburg)
- 6 Klickatat (Goldendale)
- 2 Lewis (Chehalis)
- 1 Lincoln (Davenport)
- 2 Mason (Shelton)
- 1 Okanogan (Okanogan)
- 155 Pierce (Tacoma)
- 2 San Juan (Friday Harbor)
- 63 Skagit (Mount Vernon)
- 634 Snohomish (Everett)
- 54 Spokane (Spokane)
- 2 Stevens (Colville)
- 14 Thurston (Olympia)
- 2 Walla Walla (Walla Walla)
- 66 Whatcom (Bellingham)
- 2 Whitman (Colfax)
- 51 Yakima (Yakima)
- 77 Unassigned (labs are having trouble keeping up and Dept of Health is working to determine the proper county)

Cases by Age
- 2% 0-19
- 9% 20-29
- 14% 30-39
- 13% 40-49
- 17% 50-59
- 16% 60-69
- 15% 70-79
- 14% 80+

Cases by Sex at Birth
- 51% Female
- 46% Male
- 4% Unknown

George the original one
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Re: COVID-19

Post by George the original one »

So far I've heard NYC, LA, Detroit, Chicago, and Atlanta ICUs are at capacity or will reach capacity in the next couple days.

CajunQueen
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Re: COVID-19

Post by CajunQueen »

Add NOLA to that list
https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/a ... 33111.html

"Because the city's hospitals are projected to run out of capacity by April 7, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center has been tapped as a place where 3,000 patients can be housed when they no longer need intensive care"

Colibri
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Colibri »

jacob wrote:
Wed Mar 25, 2020 8:16 am
+1

COVID19 is a threat multiplier. It increases mortality-rates for everything. It even makes non-lethal problems worse. Now is not a good time to get a tooth ache, for example. What we're trying to avoid is going back to having a 1860s-style health care system for a while. One of the reasons is that we don't have a population with a constitution/overall health to deal with that.
This is happening in my city. Local hospital (56 beds, nothing else in a 1000km radius) just shot the door to any non-emergency type of care. No more blood work, ultra-sound, specialist visits, etc. The only service provided right now is emergency care. We only have 3 cases, all travel related. No community transmission yet and the top doctor think we can avoid it if we respect the confinement.

You can't go the clinic either. All telehealth or phone call.

How many people will see their health declined because they can't have something as simple as blood work done to monitor a chronic condition ?
So important to stay healthy... when SHTF this is what you have to deal with.

BWND
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Re: COVID-19

Post by BWND »

I just wanted to add something to the UK Guardian story about 3.5million home tests shared a few posts up.

The UK PM and Chief Medical Advisor to the government did caveat that somewhat the afternoon after the story broke. They have ordered the tests but need to verify if it works or not. In their words, "an inaccurate test is worse than no test". That process is expected to take at least a week. The article suggested this was going to be available for online order but the PM press conference yesterday suggested access to the test would be much more controlled and targeted.

Finally, they stressed that other tests are much more important at this stage. Specifically, tests to see if someone currently has an infection are crucial now. Antibody tests are only appropriate a week or so (I think he said) after the infection. They will play an important role when it comes to a phased lifting of the lockdown.

One thing that worries me, and which I didn't learn until this crisis started, is that flu immunity isn't lifelong. I had always thought once you get once strain of the flu you can never get it again. I believe there have been cases of the same person getting COVID-19 twice. It is also possible to have immunity against other infections for only a matter of months before that falls away and we just don't know what the picture is for COVID-19. The thought of second and third waves of this is very concerning. As are the increasing stories I'm seeing about young people really suffering/dying from this disease. (possibly natural as the death toll goes up, the incidences of that goes up).

[edit - 1 task a day shared something above which puts antibody production 10-15 days after infection, so revise my "Antibody tests are only appropriate a week or so..." to "10-15 days of so". It's over a week anyway.]

steveo73
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Re: COVID-19

Post by steveo73 »

Australia has 2,799 infections and 12 deaths. It's growing quickly but so far we don't have those massive death tolls that some countries are having. People still don't get the concept of social distancing.

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fiby41
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Re: COVID-19

Post by fiby41 »

Re: Trustworthiness of Russian numbers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDeYOzJJk_Y
2 Russian grandmas who are in our contact both were telling us the method by which they were making masks at home.

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C40
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Re: COVID-19

Post by C40 »

@fiby41

I tell you what, in a situation like this, having a single-party government can be an incredible advantage (at least, when that government is actually focused on protecting it's citizens)

No back-and-forth B.S... Very little mixed messages, misalignment, or confusion among different government arms.... the citizens believe and trust the government and generally follow requests..

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fiby41
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Re: COVID-19

Post by fiby41 »

₹1,700,000,000,000 to provide, among other things but mostly for, 5 kg rice or wheat per person per month and 1 kg pulses based on regional availability or choice per household per month to 800,000,000 citizens for 3 months in up to 2 installments each month; LPG cooking gas to 80,000,000 citizens for 3 months; ₹5,000,000 insurance cover to frontline medical personnel; and ₹500 per month direct benefit transfers for the next 3 months into 200,000,000 accounts.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Dream of Freedom »

Stahlmann wrote:
Wed Mar 25, 2020 2:59 pm
smart people plz share recpies for diy ventilators and reusable masks
Recipes sure :P Place used masks in oven and bake for 30 minutes at 70 degrees Celsius.
Researchers at Stanford University have found that N95 masks can be effectively sterilised for reuse without affecting their filtration ability through low temperature heating in conventional kitchen ovens.


The findings could help alleviate a global shortage of the masks that are a crucial component of medical workers’ full personal protective equipment (PPE) against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19)


According to the research paper written by Dr Amy Price and Dr Larry Chu on behalf of the Stanford AIM Lab and Learnly Covid-19 Evidence Service, the N95 masks can be decontaminated repeatedly with no harm to their effectiveness by heating them at 70C in a regular kitchen oven for 30 minutes.
https://www.malaymail.com/amp/news/mala ... ns/1849911
Last edited by Dream of Freedom on Thu Mar 26, 2020 1:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Tyler9000
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Tyler9000 »

Neil Ferguson, one of the authors of the original Imperial College study that predicted 500k deaths in the UK alone, has now revised his predictions and believes less than 20k people may die. And of those 20k, 2/3rds probably would have died by the end of the year anyway because they were old and sick.

The original paper predicted that a full quarantine was required for 18 months until a vaccine was required. But notably, "Ferguson said community testing and contact tracing wasn’t included as a possible strategy in the original modelling because not enough tests were available." Now the UK is on the verge (within days or weeks depending on who you ask) of having millions of take-home antibody tests, which basically blows up the original model.

Add to that the competing Oxford research that indicates the infection rate was also based on incomplete data and the disease may be way less deadly than they first thought, and things are looking up.

Lesson learned: science is great, but models are only as good as the inputs and assumptions.

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Ego
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Ego »

The Numbers Problem

Asymptomatic cases

Iceland: After doing extensive testing of the population they estimate 50% of the cases are asymptomatic
Japan: After testing every Japanese person repatriated from Wuhan they found 30.8% of the cases asymptomatic
Diamond Princess: The CDC reports that 46.5% of the passengers and crew from the ship were asymptomatic

Important note: These are positive tests. This does not include those who were previously infected and recovered, thereby testing negative but having antibodies.

This is important because up to now we've been using the case fatality rate provided to us from Wuhan. If these asymptomatic rates prove to be true, the true fatality rates will be much lower.

Did we decide to shut down the economy based on faulty data?

George the original one
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Re: COVID-19

Post by George the original one »

Ego wrote:
Thu Mar 26, 2020 1:04 pm
Did we decide to shut down the economy based on faulty data?
No, because we're already seeing that the disease, faulty data or not, is shutting down ICUs.

jacob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jacob »

Ego wrote:
Thu Mar 26, 2020 1:04 pm
This is important because up to now we've been using the case fatality rate provided to us from Wuhan. If these asymptomatic rates prove to be true, the true fatality rates will be much lower.
I don't know who "we" are, but the US experts (CDC et al) have been using a death rate of 1% from the get go. Same assumption from Denmark. If South Korea did all their contact tracing and testing correctly, then their numbers suggest 1.4%. The Italian city of Vo (pop 3000) which was fully isolated and fully tested had a death rate slightly over 1%. And finally the Diamond Princess also had a death rate slightly over 1% if we assume that everybody there eventually got it. Taiwan is also on the ball and has a death rate of 0.8%.

These are not difficult numbers to find and I'd expect modellers would understand the issues with using the wrong denominator even if the public doesn't. It's all the journalists/laymen that presume that reported CFR is the real CFR w/o wondering why Italy > 10% and China ~ 3.8% or SK ~ 1%, not checking to see how widespread testing was in any given country. I see this mistake over and over everywhere. It's probably the biggest misunderstanding of the math. (#2 being the exponential growth delay. #3 being the threat multiplier effect.)

The more pertinent point, I think, is that whatever social measures taken are actually making a difference (as they would be expected to after about 10 days---median incubation + median time to hospitalization). An epidemic is an adaptive system composed of the virus and its targets. As people change their behavior, the numbers change. For example, the greater the social distancing, the longer the doubling rate. In particular, just because the mayor, governor, or president is acting like an idiot doesn't mean that 100% of the population is copying it. Conversely, even if leaders are making the right choices, it doesn't mean that everybody follows them. Some will go farther and some will not go far enough, but regardless, the numbers change.

The difference between do-nothing and simple social distancing can push the overload date forward by weeks and/or create a difference in the final death toll by a factor 10.

I will also say/predict that as these measures begin to work and prevent the worst, there will be a lot of people who won't understand "why we had to go to such lengths to prevent something that turned out not to be a big deal." That kind of blindness is a political death trap that's sure to be exploited.

Add: Should also note that some places COVID deaths are not being counted or counted as something else. Russia has a strangely high number of pneumonia deaths this year even if the test numbers are low. There are reports out of WA that not everyone is being tallied because it was too late for a test.

theanimal
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Re: COVID-19

Post by theanimal »

New paper showing heart damage from infection.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161 ... 120.046941

Abstract:
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic impacting nearly 170 countries/regions and more than 285,000 patients worldwide. COVID-19 is caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), which invades cells through the Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor. Among those with COVID-19, there is a higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease and more than 7% of patients suffer myocardial injury from the infection (22% of the critically ill). Despite ACE2 serving as the portal for infection, the role of ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers requires further investigation. COVID-19 poses a challenge for heart transplantation, impacting donor selection, immunosuppression, and post-transplant management. Thankfully there are a number of promising therapies under active investigation to both treat and prevent COVID-19.

thrifty++
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Re: COVID-19

Post by thrifty++ »

Re numbers, an NZ based university study predicted that if we did nothing, here, it would kill about 1.67% of the population. This is about 80,000 people. https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.au ... PM-006.pdf

I guess the problem is that no one really knows for sure. Its all so uncertain. I guess government responses will adjust proportionately as new information is unveiled.

steveo73
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Re: COVID-19

Post by steveo73 »

Tyler9000 wrote:
Thu Mar 26, 2020 1:01 pm
Lesson learned: science is great, but models are only as good as the inputs and assumptions.
People need to understand science isn't something that is set in stone in lots of cases. If you believe models are reliable predictive tools you do not understand science today.

Good data and a well defined process may lead to accurate models but once something is complex all bets are off.

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