Coronavirus and Pandemics

Unfortunately, the crap she posts is what is being marketed and bought by a very large segment of the US population. The disconnect from reality and direct attack on CONTENT over SOURCE, EVIDENCE over TESTIMONY and REALITY over BELIEF is pervasive and ubiquitous.EvC served as a valued counterpoint, a place when the viscous, obscene and repulsive stuff she marketed never went unchallenged.Unfortunately, banning Faith only removed the challenge side of her spiel. The spiel will continue but on other venues where it goes not just unchallenged but applauded.

Yep. It transpires that Huxley underestimated the power of human stupidity - you don’t need soma to control the masses.

Covid-19’s death toll appears higher than official figures suggest | The EconomistSince I'm not sure if everyone will be able to access this I will summarize:There are graphs that show the daily death rate for a couple of places. These are basically slightly bumpy horizontal lines. For a town in Italy (Nembro) this overs around 1 death per day. For the region around Madrid this sits at 50 per day. For Jan and most (or all of) Feb these are flat and track the 2019 numbers.Then in late Feb or early March the death rate attributed to covid-19 is graphed on top. This pushes the Madrid region to over 100 per day and for Nembro it peaks at over 3 per day.Then added to the graph is the actual total deaths for those places. For the Madrid region this peaks at about 175 per day and for Nembro almost 10 per day.The timing and shape of the actual deaths per day peaks track over the attributed to covid deaths per day very exactly.This strongly suggests that the covid deaths are being under reported by 2 or 3 times.

Here's today's graph of infections in the US from ArcGIS Dashboards Classic as of 4/13. There's a slight sign of slowing at 580,200, a rise of only 25,000 over a single day, but tracing the data back reveals Mondays to be a typical down day, perhaps because it is the first day after a weekend when data gathering might not be at its most robust: Here's today's graph of deaths in the US from Cumulative Cases - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center as of 4/13. It shows signs of slowing at with an increase of 1500, down from a nearly 2000 increase the day before: Here's a map of infection cases across the US: --Percy

In this context "safe" means "has acceptable number and severity of side effects at the standard dose levels." We don't know if chloroquine is "safe" for Covid-19.

This is a response to Message 5781 in the The Right Side of the News thread to correct some misinformation. I only respond to information directly bearing on the pandemic. This was a little hard to follow, but the basic point seems to be that we should reopen the country while making the greatest effort to protect those most vulnerable. But while it is true that older people are more vulnerable than younger people, people in every age group are vulnerable: A significant factor in deadliness is suspected to be viral load, meaning that small initial doses cause minor symptoms while large initial doses cause serious illness and death.We do not yet know what, if any, the permanent effects might be, but there are anecdotal reports of marathon runners getting winded from crossing the room even after a few weeks out of the hospital. There is no possibility that California has herd immunity (nor any country in the world, for that matter). California has 24,732 cases out of a population 39.5 million for an infection rate of .06%. Herd immunity requires around 70%. Even if infections in California were undercounted by a factor of 10 it would still be a factor of 100 too small to provide herd immunity.Also, it has not been established that surviving coronavirus confers immunity, and if it does for how long. While it would be surprising and unexpected if it conferred little or no immunity, it is still important to recognize that these are things we can only assume at this time and that we cannot know with certainty. Widespread opinion is that surviving the coronavirus confers at least several months of immunity. This is true. We need hugely more numbers of coronavirus tests and coronavirus antibody tests than we have, enough to test significant proportions of the country every day. This is true, but a more precise way of saying this is that the risk of exposure increases with increasing social contact and with the rate of penetration in your locale. Walking unprotected around the streets of New York City is much more risky than of Casper, Wyoming. A new flu vaccine is developed every year for the latest strain of flu. Millions of people take the vaccine providing them a level of immunity and giving the population a degree of herd immunity.There is no coronavirus vaccine. When the vaccine becomes available in about 18 months then there will be no need to fear the coronavirus, but until then it remains both ferocious and dangerous. Carrying on life as normal would result in millions of deaths directly due to the coronavirus, and millions more due to the unavailability of medical resources sucked up by the coronavirus. There is no evidence of "dramatic results" from hydroychloroquine, and preliminary data indicates serous potential side effects. No one should be taking any prescription medications for any reason other than under the care of a responsible doctor. Neither chloroquine nor hydroxychloroquine has been shown safe and effective for the treatment of coronavirus.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typos.

Russia has imposed extremely severe restrictions, especially in Moscow where one of the worst outbreaks is. You need to apply for a permit to go further than walking distance from your front door.

We're still in the middle of the pandemic, there is little time now for detailed analysis as we deal with the daily crisis, but initial indications as recounted in Coronavirus destroys lungs. But doctors are finding its damage in kidneys, hearts and elsewhere are that the Coronavirus attacks far more than just the lungs. Here's a list:

• Pneumonia
• Heart inflammation
• Acute kidney disease including complete renal failure
• Neurological malfunction
• Blood clots potentially causing organ and brain damage
• Intestinal damage
• Liver damage

How much of this damage is permanent? The article doesn't say, but let's hypothetically consider that at least in some cases it is permanent. Coronavirus could, in some instances, place a previously healthy person on dialysis for life and in need of a kidney transplant, or a liver transplant, or could cause blood clots that cause death or permanent brain damage, or permanently weaken the heart.In the US over a hundred thousand people have experienced severe enough symptoms to become hospitalized. There have been over 26,000 deaths so far.I hope I am preaching to the choir about the terrible dangers of coronavirus and why it must be taken very seriously.--Percy

How much social distancing is enough? The rule of thumb is six feet, but as I have long argued, it is not as simple as that. Human exhalation mechanisms are not some precise process producing only large droplets that fall immediately to the floor within six feet. Human exhalations consist of breath, coughs, and sneezes, and they all produce a wide variety of droplet sizes, from large droplets that fall immediately to the floor to individual molecules that float on vortices of air whither and yon.As Stay 6 Feet Apart, We’re Told. But How Far Can Air Carry Coronavirus? - The New York Times accurately states, three feet is not as good as six feet is not as good as nine feet and so forth. The article gets into a lot of back and forth which seems to be an attempt at all-sides-ism, but it does have a bottom line: Do everything you can do to minimize exposure to air that other people have been breathing into, because some of what people exhale can remain suspended in the air for long periods and travel long distances. For some strange reason the article doesn't mention masks, but if you're out and about among people you should be wearing a mask.I was at the grocery store this past Saturday, and while maybe 50% of customers were wearing some sort of facial covering, none of the employees were wearing any. It's safe to predict that within a month at least one employee of this 80-store grocery chain will die. I wish I could have grabbed a handful of my wife's masks and given one to everyone without one, but we don't have the manpower nor the financial means to produce masks at this volume. Most of our masks are going to the local hospital. Friends and neighbors get the rest.So take this message: Six feet is not enough. And wear a mask.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Punctuation.

Like heart attack.French Hospital Stops Hydroxychloroquine Treatment for COVID-19 Patient Over Major Cardiac Risk

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hospital in France has had to stop an experimental treatment using hydroxychloroquine on at least one coronavirus patient after it became a "major risk" to their cardiac health.

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The University Hospital Center of Nice (CHU de Nice) is one of many hospitals trialing hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients. It announced it had been selected for the trial on March 22. A statement from the hospital said it was testing four experimental treatments, one of which included hydroxychloroquine. It hoped to establish its effectiveness and side effects of this and the other treatments being tested.

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In an interview with the French daily newspaper Nice-Matin, Professor mile Ferrari, the head of the cardiology department at the Pasteur hospital in Nice, said the side effects had already been identified, with some patients having to stop treatment because of the risk posed.

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He said electrocardiogram recordings of patients involved with the trial were being constantly monitored. An ECG measures electrical activity in the heart, and represents this on a graph as a QT interval. Ferrari said these recordings are interpreted and, if anomalies are reported, treatment is stopped.
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Asked if this had happened yet, he said: "Yes, from the start of the trial. Thanks to this ECG follow-up, we highlighted the major risks of a very serious accident in a patient, and the treatment was immediately stopped."

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The potential cardiac side effects of hydroxychloroquine were highlighted by the Mayo Clinic at the end of March. An article on its website said the drug has the potential to lead to sudden cardiac death in some patients. In a small number of patients it has the potential to lead to a prolonged QTc , which can result in an abnormal heart rhythm.

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This side effect is well known.Enjoy

It is silly to ridicule something as 'nonsense' simply because it does not completely eliminate all possibility of transmission. Completely eliminating all possibility of transmission is impossible, so if that is the only acceptable outcome there is no point trying anything.You yourself go on to say that 6ft is better than 3ft, so it's not nonsense, is it? It helps to reduce the risk of transmission, which is the point.You could pick a higher arbitrary number if you like, but that serve no purpose, since as we've all discovered it's hard enough to follow existing guidelines.Thankfully, we're on the metric system, so the wonders of rounding to the nearest metre give us an extra 6" distance in official recommendations.

The message remains the same. If you're not wearing a mask, six feet is not enough. And wear a mask.Here's social distancing as implemented in the Trump briefing room where he tells us every day about the wonderful job he's doing: The distancing is less than six feet, but even if it were six feet or ten feet or twenty feet, it is not enough. It is a bunch of people in a room, and there should never be a bunch of people in a room who are not wearing masks.Coronavirus is highly contagious, and its ravages can cause permanent damage and even death. Our current numbers (see COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)) tell us that 4.8% of those who contract coronavirus in the US die. Fortunately it can't actually be as bad as 4.8%. Our lack of testing capabilities means that many more are infected than we know. The mortality rate when adequate healthcare is available is probably below 2%.By the way, in case it isn't obvious, the "maintain a safe distance" rule only applies when you're out and about without a mask or with people you don't live with. DO NOT INVITE NON-CORESIDENTS INTO YOUR HOME OR APARTMENT IF THEY'RE NOT WEARING A MASK, AND DON'T DO IT ANYWAY. Treat your domicile as a coronavirus-free temple by maintaining safe practices that guarantee as much as is possible that no virus ever enters.--Percy

Well it seems we have tested almost one percent of the US population so Trump has the facts and more testing isn't needed so just open 'er back up.AbE: And remember, if we could test a million people a day it will still take a year to get everyone tested.Edited by jar, : see abe

Al Jazeera reports on how coronavirus can cause permanent damage. Some excerpts:

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Lungs

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...some scientists believe evidence is mounting to show that those on the moderate to severe end of the spectrum (who experience breathing difficulties and pneumonia) may be left with permanent lung damage.
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It is this process of excess inflammation brought on by an overreacting immune system that is the biggest danger to the lungs. It can cause irreversible damage to the air sacs on the periphery of the lungs known as alveoli.
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The inflammation caused by the body's immune response to the virus can cause the alveoli to pop, giving the lungs a honeycomb-type appearance, or to harden so they are no longer able to do their job. When this happens, a condition similar to fibrosis or hardening of the lungs occurs.

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According to WHO, SARS, a type of coronavirus that behaves similarly to COVID-19, did the same thing to the lungs of those affected by it and led to permanent damage to these people's ability to breathe normally.

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All this would suggest that for a small number of people who are severely affected by the disease, breathing normally may never be the same again and getting short of breath on minimal exertion or requiring medication to help you breathe may become the norm.

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Kidneys

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When sepsis takes hold, there is a danger that blood vessels throughout the body will dilate (get wider) in response to the infection and pressure within them will fall.

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This sudden drop in pressure stops the kidneys from receiving the flow of blood at the right pressure they need to do their complex set of jobs. Their sensitive cells can die off very quickly, leading to permanent kidney damage.

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This is from https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articleke...:

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Liver impairment is another emerging concern with COVID-19, as it was with the similar novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). According to a 2004 report, up to 60% of patients with SARS had liver impairment, with liver biopsy specimens demonstrating viral nucleic acids and injury. These authors noted that this may have been the result of drug-induced liver injury, given that most of these patients were treated with high doses of potentially hepatotoxic antivirals, antibiotics, and steroids.

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More simply, we do not yet know if coronavirus can directly cause liver damage, but the drugs used to treat a coronavirus infection can definitely cause liver damage.--Percy

I realize that the flu shot does not in any way protect you from covid19. I am curious though, if there have been any studies whether it is possible because of the effect of the flu shot on our own natural anti-bodies, that if and when you get the virus it would have a more severe impact.