DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... World War Z: COVID-19

Glad to hear it!

Worth a warning though - this is also consistent with a mild/asymptomatic case - which can still mean people are contagious. I don't know what we can do with that information (which is the worst part of this virus) - but it's worth being cautious.

That's great news, but damn, that's scary!

Chancellor Merkel is well, awaiting coronavirus test result: Spokesman
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is awaiting the result of a test to establish whether she has coronavirus after visiting a doctor who has tested positive for the illness, her spokesman has said.

"The chancellor is well," Steffen Seibert said during a regular government news conference. He declined to say when the test results are expected. Merkel went into quarantine on Sunday.




Switzerland cases rise by 956 to 8,060: health agency
Swiss health authorities reported 956 more coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of people tested positive in Switzerland and Liechtenstein to 8,060.

The number of deaths rose by six from Sunday to 66, the Federal Office of Public Health said.

Sigh


Guys, let’s not forget tornado and hurricane season is on its way.

Good news!

So, we've got that going for us.

As of yesterday, New York State has almost as many cases as France.

By then end of today, they should surpass France.

Did you happen to see the Governor of New York's press conference yesterday?

I don't know if this has been posted but these resources have been pretty helpful for me. My favorite is the first link and the situational heatmap associated with the spread of COVID-19.

https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Other dashboard visualizations.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/maps-visuals

My own personal evaluation of what is going on tells me that countries like Italy and Iran should see the growth rate of the virus slow if patterns follow what happened in China.

This also means that the growth rate in the US should start to slow around April 15th. If that doesn't happen then.. well it's not good.

I read a report this morning from an epidemiologist that stated that they’ve tested monkeys to see if they can be reinfected. So far the tests have shown the monkeys have immunity after building antibodies post sickness. This is huge.

I wish there was a titer test available to all of us to determine if we’ve had it or not. Titer tests detect the antibodies our body created after fighting off a virus. Those of us that have cleared the disease can be released to work with a little less fear of being a carrier.
I know a lot of people, me included, that were really sick 3 to 6 weeks ago. If it was COVID that I had I can now be in and out of nursing facilities doing my job knowing I’m not a vector. (Outside of my hands, clothes, or nursing equipment bring contaminated.) Hospital staff could be cleared to work in the higher risk areas. Grocery store clerks could know they were ‘safe’. This would be a huge boost to the moral of those of us out there doing ‘essential’ jobs.

One of the researchers on NPR said that in a perfect world, this is what we should do-test all and see who has had it already and then cut them loose and let them go back to a normal life as they would have immunity built up.

But, in the real world we are currently in, there is such a lack of testing and we are so late to the table that this is not possible-not even close.

The numbers are really going to soar now...

That's the second time I've heard this in the past couple of days, but the problem is that we've already had recorded/documented cases of people getting re-infected. One was in San Antonio.
Also, I've seen it mentioned in writing that you can get re-infected; this was compared specifically to a norovirus in that regard.

The Johns Hopkins board has been my go-to since the beginning; I don't recall whom it was that shared it on here back in January, but I've watched it daily since.

Here is a site I just became aware of yesterday via a friend on Facespace: https://www.covidactnow.org/

It gives you the "Point of no Return" on a state-by-state basis, broken out by type of restrictions put into place.

Of note: "Wuhan-style lockdown" is its own level of restriction. What we are starting to see here in Ohio, and San Fran, and other states is NOT as stringent as what they went to... and even with as stringent as they got, it still took them 6+ weeks to get things under control to the degree they have. That should set expectations of what sorts of improvements we will not see here.

With re-infection, it is also likely that the virus mutates to become less deadly over time. Is it possible that corona virus eventually mutates to have a death rate similar to the flu? I wouldn't be so surprised.

I also think that we have had MANY more cases globally than we think. I think this virus was around as many as 2 to 3 months before we knew it. If that is the case it's a good thing because the ACTUAL death rate would be much lower than we are seeing.

My understanding is that the WUHAN style lockdown isn't necessarily what allowed them to get a handle of the virus (assuming you trust their data). The tracing and quarantining of KNOWN cases is what eventually helped them control the situation.

Right now, New York seems like the US's WUHAN. Undoubedtly due to population density.

That's what I keep thinking/hoping/wondering about.

Dang, I'm trying to find where I saw those reports and this is the best I can do right now. Hopefully the new study can get followed up with more and the results can be verified because that is WAY better than a critter like this being able to keep making the rounds over and over again.

Anyway, here is a Forbes article that recounts a few of the cases and one study that said up to 14% of cases can get re-infected: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/20...k/#7f8a2ba15c0f

The severe lengths they went to in order to strictly enforce isolation and social distancing is the only means with which they were able to put the brakes on things. Yes, contact tracing absolutely helps, and it has been a boon for South Korea and even allowed them to learn that almost all of their outbreaks were traceable back to a single person, but that alone isn't enough because by the time you get Patient A and know they are ill, you then start doing your contact tracing, but by that point, every contact has had contact with others for a couple of weeks... and so on. You're always playing catch-up.

That website looks like all they did was take the same map and model that was published in the New York Times and done by Columbia University and make their own separate website.

The interactive map on NYT even has it broken down by county.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsod...-of-coronavirus

THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Do You Get Immunity After Recovering From A Case Of Coronavirus?
March 20, 20203:39 PM ET
Nell Greenfieldboyce 2010
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE


A recovered coronavirus patient takes a selfie before being discharged from a hospital in Sri Lanka. Researchers are trying to determine whether having a case of COVID-19 will give you immunity.
Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images
It's unclear whether people who recover from COVID-19 will be immune to reinfection from the coronavirus and, if so, how long that immunity will last.

"We don't know very much," says Matt Frieman, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. "I think there's a very likely scenario where the virus comes through this year, and everyone gets some level of immunity to it, and if it comes back again, we will be protected from it — either completely or if you do get reinfected later, a year from now, then you have much less disease."

"That is the hope," he adds. "But there is no way to know that."

Researchers do know that reinfection is an issue with the four seasonal coronaviruses that cause about 10 to 30% of common colds. These coronaviruses seem to be able to sicken people again and again, even though people have been exposed to them since childhood.

"Almost everybody walking around, if you were to test their blood right now, they would have some levels of antibody to the four different coronaviruses that are known," says Ann Falsey of the University of Rochester Medical Center.

After infection with one of these viruses, she says, antibodies are produced but then the levels slowly decline and people become susceptible again.

"Most respiratory viruses only give you a period of relative protection. I'm talking about a year or two. That's what we know about the seasonal coronaviruses," says Falsey.

In studies, human volunteers who agreed to be experimentally inoculated with a seasonal coronavirus showed that even people with preexisting antibodies could still get infected and have symptoms.

That happens even though these viruses aren't as changeable as influenza, which mutates so quickly that a new vaccine has to be developed every year.

"We work with some common cold coronaviruses. We have samples from 30 years ago, strains that were saved from 30 years ago, and they're not appreciably different than the ones that are circulating now," says virologist Vineet Menachery of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

Still, seasonal coronaviruses probably do mutate a bit over time to evade the body's defenses, says Frieman. But there's little known about what those changes might look like, since researchers don't do annual surveillance of coronaviruses as they do for influenza.

It's also possible that, for some reason, the body's immune response to seasonal coronaviruses is just not that robust or that something about the infection itself may inhibit the body's ability to develop long-term immunity.

"Maybe the antibodies are not protective, and that is why, even though they are present, they don't work very well," says Frieman.

The other known human coronaviruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome, can cause more severe disease, and basically nothing is known about the possibility of reinfection with those viruses.

Some people sickened by SARS, the dangerous coronavirus that emerged in China in 2002, did develop a measurable immune response that lasted a long time.

"We've gone back and gotten samples from patients who had SARS in 2003 and 2004, and as of this year, we can detect antibodies," says Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa. "We think antibodies may be longer lasting than we first thought, but not in everybody."

Still, it's hard to predict how those survivors' bodies would react if they were exposed to the SARS virus again. "There were 8,000 cases, the epidemic was basically brought to an end within six months or eight months of the first case, so we don't have anyone who was reinfected that we know of," says Perlman.

The other severe coronavirus, MERS, emerged in the Middle East in 2012. "We have almost no information about reinfection because there has only been a total of 2,500 cases over eight years," says Perlman, who notes that the odds of anyone getting reinfected with that virus are not great, especially considering that 35 percent of people who had it died. Survivors of MERS did generate an immune response to the virus that can be detected up to two years later, he says. And the more ill the patient was, the more robust and long-lasting the immune response.

Until the recent emergence of SARS-Cov2, the official name of the current coronavirus, and this pandemic, scientists say, there just hasn't been much of a research push to fully understand how and why reinfection with coronaviruses can occur.

"You get colds over and over again, and I don't think we think that we're really so well protected against any of them, second time around," says Perlman. "You don't care, either, because it's just a cold virus. I mean, you'd like to not get a cold again, but it's not really a big deal."

This pandemic, he notes, "is a big deal."

He would bet that the virus that causes COVID-19 won't reinfect people. But he wouldn't guess how long their immunity might last.

What's more, some people might have stronger protection from reinfection than others.

"Based on other infections where you get a deep lung infection, you are usually protected against the second infection. If you just have a mild COVID-19 infection that involves your upper airway, maybe it will behave like a common cold coronavirus and maybe you can be reinfected again," says Perlman. "We just really don't know. It's even hard to speculate."

Understanding the natural immune response to this virus is important for vaccine development, he notes.

"If the natural infection doesn't do very well in giving you immunity, what is going to happen with the vaccine?" says Perlman. "How are we going to make sure that that vaccine not only induces a response that works for the next six months, but two to three years?"

Good for the Haslams!...

Well done Haslams

USA TODAY
@USATODAY
Exclusive: 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be postponed, likely to 2021, veteran IOC member Dick Pound says

https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/1242140452578406400

This makes sense. I also think A LOT of these models are just flat wrong. They are extrapolating a exponential curve in a linear fashion to project cases / deaths. The governor of California said 50 million people could die. COVID-19 is serious and a problem but isn't 1918 all over again.

Here's another good viewpoint on the data issue.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fi...osYlbOj5BJTN8eM

That’s the right call

Interesting interactive map on how the virus got out. Pretty incredible work putting this together...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html

So tired of all of these newspapers thinking I'm going to subscribe or pay to read their stupid stories. Every time I run across one, I just block them from my browser.

The New York Times is actually providing free access to their coronavirus news and stories. Here's the link to sign up for free.

https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/coronavirus

j/c

US Surgeon General: "This week, it's going to get bad"

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coro...8ed835c7a36eef7

Some potentially good news... while they still had over 600 deaths in the last day, putting them over 6,000 total, the daily total has dropped for the second day in a row.

I hope Italy has turned the corner. I still believe some other nations in Europe will be hit hard. Last I saw, Spain was still on the rise.

Well, in theory, it will follow that linear exponential progression forever provided it has people to spread to.

Herd immunity thresholds, social distancing, etc all speed up the point where that progression gets halted.


I think that statnews article is a mess. The author completely focuses on efforts to try to downplay death rates while nearly completely ignoring the part where that isn't what makes this virus so serious. Yes, we need more data. We need a LOT more data... that part is inarguable, but the rest of it he just seems to do nothing but try to downplay things while ignoring the load this is going to put on the heathcare system if these measures are not in place. He argues the policy from the standpoint of the mortality rate while virtually ignoring the actual issue.

Both Spain and Switzerland are not looking too good, at all. I think Switzerland is about five or six days from being out of ICU beds at this point. Germany is accelerating, too.

France has slowed dramatically. The question is if it is real or not.
Ditto for Iran - whom everyone was so worried about and thought they were overrun; suddenly, they aren't nearly as bad off as we may have thought.... or, their numbers are lying.

US military to send field hospitals to New York, Seattle
The US military is preparing to deploy field hospitals to New York and Seattle, Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said, as he acknowledged for the first time that the global coronavirus pandemic could impact military readiness.

"Right now I anticipate sending a (field) hospital to Seattle and a hospital to New York City," Esper told a news conference, adding he had put five expeditionary units on prepare to deploy orders.

"Once that's confirmed, we will look to sending to other places,” he said.

j/c

This cite has updated numbers - and they update fairly often. For the u.s., the world, countries.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronaviru...QwDWrGiA8f_swXc

There are currently thousands of Americans trapped around the world with border closings and airlines shutting down.

What was it GM was saying about staying home and not traveling?

PA just upped their school closings another week