COVID-19

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7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID-19

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Unfortunately, it is my understanding that widespread use of any therapeutic drug may promote mutation towards more deadly strain.

BeyondtheWrap
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Re: COVID-19

Post by BeyondtheWrap »

Which kind of mutation affects the deadliness of a virus? The fast kind that Jacob mentioned or the slow kind that Ego mentioned?

Peanut
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Peanut »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:41 am
@jacob:

As you noted, people will either not get it or not like it if they do get it, so will either amount to near total opening or result in very high level of absenteeism and protest. Distance education or home schooling is legal almost everywhere in U.S., so many/most will continue this practice.

I think what will happen will likely be return of just one parent to workforce under greatly modified conditions. Of course, mileage will vary significantly along socioeconomic lines. Poor kids are sent to school sick all the time.
I disagree. I would bet most parents will send their kids back to school if the parents and kids do not have any underlying health issues and wealthy parents will be the first to send their kids back to perceived safer private schools. I know parents in non-hotspot areas who continue to let their kids see their classmates. And I think many parents in hotspot areas would do the same if there weren't a natural inclination to follow the rules/fear of looking bad if found out.

Study on school closures:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... X/fulltext

7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID-19

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Peanut:

You might be right. I am likely biased due to my strong disinclination to return to one of those germ pits for the duration.

jacob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jacob »

BeyondtheWrap wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 8:59 am
Which kind of mutation affects the deadliness of a virus? The fast kind that Jacob mentioned or the slow kind that Ego mentioned?
Somewhat apples and oranges. The antigenes determine what the immune system sees. Since antigenic drift is slow, the immune system sees more or less the same thing ("all mutants look alike") over time which is good => immunity for a while. I don't know if the immune system specifically sees and targets [mostly] the [corona] spikes, but those spikes are what determines which human cells the virus can get into, e.g. upper and/or respiratory tract, heart muscle, organs, ... A shift here to other more critical cell types could be deadlier.

Other genes in the virus RNA determine what the virus does once it gets into the human cell. A mutation here could make the replication faster and thus the virus more virulent which could be deadlier or not. It could change things in the cell that triggers a larger immune response the side-effects of which can be problematic in itself. The answer would depend on understanding exactly how the virus works its magic. IIRC, it has 35 genes which then encodes for 35 different cogs and wheels in the molecular machinery, so that's complicated.

Overall, this holds for all RNA viruses. The fact that antigenic drift is low is good news for humans, since it should make vaccines easier.

J_
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Re: COVID-19

Post by J_ »

The first scientific general random (1200 people) study by the government about the grade of infection of people (> 16 YO and not in hospital) held in Austria gave today their results: at about 6th of April there were between 0,12 till 0,76% of the total population of 8.8 M. The most probable percentage is 0,33% or 28.500 infected.
At that time the official number was 12.200.

At 16 of April there will be the next random study under 2800 persons. See https://www.tt.com/artikel/30727820/sti ... esterreich

This give me an approach how long the pandemie will last before say 70 percent will have been infected. So in about 2,5 month of the start of the infected here in Austria and with severe lockdown the last month, only .33% of the population was infected. That is .33/2,5 = .132 % per month. That is about 44 Years!
That is not likely true but gives it an indication about the very long time this virus can hovering over us?
Until an vaccine is invented and available on world scale.

Of course my approach is full of hiatus, please correct me.

BeyondtheWrap
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Re: COVID-19

Post by BeyondtheWrap »

Here’s another website for those of us into this sort of thing: https://app.hospiq.com/covid19

ToFI
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Re: COVID-19

Post by ToFI »

@J
The good news or bad news is that most government are under-reporting cases. It's due to economic. The governments tend to only test and report severe cases. The countries with highest death rate are likely most under-reported their case numbers. e.g. UK. Death to recovered ratio is 66 to 1! That means lot of mild cases are not reported. How dare them criticize china under reporting?

It doesn't need the whole population to be infected to get herd immunity. Around 30% will do. This is based on 1918 flu's 30% infection rate.

Here's a few examples of countries with virus peaked or approaching peaking:
China
South korea
Switzerland
Austria
Iran
Italy
Spain

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fiby41
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Re: COVID-19

Post by fiby41 »

ToFI wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 12:03 pm
Around 30% will do.
According to links in previous posts we never gained herd immunity for that flu hence the second wave. It simply mutated in to a weaker strain that was contagious but not as deadly which kept it in circulation while the deadly strain ran out of hosts as it killed before it itself could be spread. There's a previous post that requires 60% infected for herd immunity.

7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID-19

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@J:

The time to achieve first .33% penetration is not particularly relevant. What matters is the new rate of infection based on maintained change in behavior and the average time it takes for an infected person to pass it to a not yet infected person. For instance, if the rate of infection GIVEN moderate social distancing is 1, this means that the number of new cases should stay the same. Therefore, if only .33% of population is currently positive, and maybe only .67% has already recovered AND the average time it takes to pass the baton of infection to the next person is 5 days, it will take approximately 59*3*5=885 days to reach 60% herd immunity(not considering all the humans born in the interim.)

IOW, IMO we are waiting for a vaccine.

thrifty++
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Re: COVID-19

Post by thrifty++ »

Some positive news for a change:

"A study by the University of Bonn has tested a randomized sample of 1,000 residents of the town of Gangelt (an epicenter of the outbreak in Germany) and found that 2% of the population was currently infected and 14% were carrying antibodies suggesting that they had already been infected — whether or not they experienced any symptoms. Eliminating an overlap between the two groups, the team concluded that 15% of the town have been infected with the virus.

If these findings are correct, Germany’s actual death rate could be as low as 0.22% (2,607 deaths / (2,607 cases that have resulted in death + 1,172,000 cases that have resulted in recovery)). Assuming 14% of the German population of 83,700,000 (1,172,000 people) have been infected and have recovered."

https://interaktiv.tagesspiegel.de/lab/ ... andkreise/

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Ego
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Ego »

Regarding mutation:

A 382 nucleotide deletion in the genome of SARS-CoV-2
https://www.virology.ws/2020/04/10/a-38 ... ars-cov-2/

Toward the end of the original SARS outbreak a mutation occurred that made the virus less virulent.
The deletion in the SARS-CoV genome occurred in a region encoding a protein called Orf8. It was initially suggested that the 29 nucleotide deletion was somehow involved in adaptation of SARS-CoV to humans. This hypothesis was disproven in subsequent experiments which demonstrated that the 29 nucleotide deletion decreases viral replication in a number of different cell types. In other words, this virus has reduced fitness compared with a virus containing a full Orf8
The same deletion has occurred in SARS-CoV-2
SARS-CoV-2 viruses with a 382 nucleotide deletion, which encompasses almost the entire open reading frame of Orf8, have now been isolated from eight hospitalized patients in Singapore. These viruses appear to have been circulating in Singapore for at least four weeks.
It has not yet been found outside of Singapore but it seems to be one of the ways these coronas mutate once inside humans. If so, it could be good news.

George the original one
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Re: COVID-19

Post by George the original one »

thrifty++ wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:26 pm
If these findings are correct, Germany’s actual death rate could be as low as 0.22% (2,607 deaths / (2,607 cases that have resulted in death + 1,172,000 cases that have resulted in recovery)). Assuming 14% of the German population of 83,700,000 (1,172,000 people) have been infected and have recovered."
C'mon, you can't stretch the findings of an epicenter to the whole country to come up with a low death rate. That's just wishful thinking.

Edit: even the researchers say not to do that. Their conclusion was that one town had a 0.37% death rate. Rounding up to 0.4% and multiplying today's 18,000 USA deaths by 250 yields only 4.5 million people infected here in the states, still a very small fraction of the 330 million population.
Last edited by George the original one on Fri Apr 10, 2020 2:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.

slowtraveler
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Re: COVID-19

Post by slowtraveler »

The propoganda around this situation has been fascinating to watch. For example, China is selling faulty medical equipment to Europe at a premium price* and some news outlets or people call it aid. Before this really became public, they'd bought all the supplies they could from every country and hoarded it as they banned all export of goods. Companies like MMM have huge factories in China so banning export meant even multinational companies couldn't supply as much for the rest of the world.

Controlling information so they have time to raid the world supplies, controlling production, and then selling faulty goods at extortionate prices while tricking the world into thinking you're helping when you're the sole cause is the worst teammate one could ask for.

I really hope the people here posting about how China helps can see through the propaganda.

If the same thing happens in America, such as, during a hurricane, people call it extortion and protest or sue the business.

*Multiple sources supporting same point below so whichever side you lean, there's something for you.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ijing.html

https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/202 ... -safe.html

https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-mon ... y-supplies

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/busi ... tests.html

chenda
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Re: COVID-19

Post by chenda »

@slowtraveller - The stories you link to suggest it's primarily a problem with enforcement of regulatory standards in China and global dependency on Chinese based factories rather, than any sinister conspiracy.

slowtraveler
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Re: COVID-19

Post by slowtraveler »

@Chenda
In what way is selling Italy masks that they donated a week earlier and calling it aid affected by regulatory processes ?

chenda
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Re: COVID-19

Post by chenda »

@slowtraveller - I didn't see a specific reference to that in the NYT or Jakata Post articles (I don't consider the other 2 sources reputable enough to be worth reading) but from what I deduce China has donated some masks (Huewai has donated to New York State and got a personal thanks from the governor) and is selling lots more.

I don't doubt that Chinese media may hyping up and exaggerating its generosity in helping the west.

thrifty++
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Re: COVID-19

Post by thrifty++ »

Whatever happens it seems clear that once all of this is over some significant measures need to be taken to ensure that this does not come from China again, as it has done, and has happened before. I think that there needs to be a significant global presence located in China, constantly investigating, reporting on and regulating disease control, markets and food hygiene, like the WHO and/or the UN.

slowtraveler
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Re: COVID-19

Post by slowtraveler »

WHO insisted it wasn't transmissible from human to human and refused to allow Taiwan to help for a good while. WHO also condemned USA for closing its border to Chinese travelers.

A system of global communication about diseases allowing all the humans to share what's happening could've stopped this early. Until China stops surpressing its brave reporters and healthcare workers and then pressures WHO into supporting its false narrative, this is going to be a regular occurrence.

Meanwhile, in Taiwan-300 something cases.

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Bankai
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Bankai »

I read that they are removing dogs from the list of livestock. It's not an outright ban on eating dogs but these are likely to be imposed at the local level. At least that's the first step.

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