Coronavirus and Pandemics

Im no doctor but i doubt it, it might have a slight beneficial impact as your antibody count would be higher when you got the corona virus. If you got it in roughly 14 days after getting the shot.As fare as i understand is that the problem with corona is your own body overreacting. When you get a virus like the flue the body essentially carpet bombs everything around an infected cell, its why you get a sore throat. With corona it basically damages your lung capacity too much and you die. But the body does not do this with white blood cells, but proteins like CRP. Again not a doctor. So take this with a spoon of salt.

Interesting collection of data by Josh Marshall More on Excess Mortality and COVID19's Hidden Toll

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I’m returning to this topic of calculating the full death toll of the COVID19 Crisis. As I noted yesterday, samplings of data from New York, Spain and Italy suggest a pattern in which the true scale of mortality tied to the COVID19 Crisis is roughly twice that recorded in the COVID19 death tolls we see each day, and sometimes much higher. Here are a few more data points which add weight to this emerging pattern.

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More detail at the link, short and well worth a read.

Blogger analysis with a link to the study: PulmCrit - Hydroxychloroquine fails first meaningful RCT Hydroxychloroquine didn't affect the virus or the pulmonary issues.

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This is now the third anti-viral therapy to disappoint us within a few weeks (preliminary data on lopinavir/ritonavir and remdesivir were both unimpressive). This raises a question of whether any anti-viral therapies will be beneficial. Especially among the critically ill, patients often present relatively late (at a time-point when viral load is already falling anyway). Much of the pathogenesis of critical illness seems to result from dysregulated inflammation, rather than direct viral cytopathic effect. This raises a question of whether any antiviral treatment will be beneficial for late-presenting patients with severe illness.

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Of course, it is possible that earlier use of hydroxychloroquine could be beneficial (e.g., perhaps at the first signs of illness on an out-patient basis). This is under investigation and additional data is likely to be forthcoming soon. Even if this does work in the outpatient clinic, it would probably have little impact on the management of these patients within the intensive care unit.

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Edited by JonF, : Read url and get title failed

Jesus f***ing Christ on a Pogo stick! This moron is still in charge? Trump Set To Outline Plans For Reopening The Economy

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Trump says we are beginning a science-based reopening, and that it’s important to be extra vigilant in blocking the form of entry of the virus from abroad.

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He thinks cross-border transmission is our number one problem?

In tonight's Trump for President rally Donnie said that the US needs testing and bragged that the US has tested 3.5 million Americans. Well that is about 1% of the population.

Trump has completely abandoned his Monday claim that as president he has total power. He now says that he is authorizing the governors, under federal supervision, to decide the manner and pace of reopening. In other news Trump has authorized the sun to rise in the east each morning.I think the governors would be more than willing to grant the federal government a significant amount of control and coordination in reopening the country if they believed that someone sane and competent were in charge.Trump is chomping on the bit to reopen the country, but we are not ready, not even close. Here's a bar chart of the daily number of new coronavirus cases as of April 16 (yesterday). It indicates that we may have plateaued, with the emphasis on "may". Over the last eight days the number dropped four consecutive days, then rose four consecutive days: This means that mitigation efforts are having a positive impact but that there is no trend up or down.But that interpretation ignores our inability to conduct widespread testing. This very likely played a significant role in causing the plateau, meaning that the plateau represents saturation of our ability to test, not a plateauing in the rate of spread. There are still huge parts of the country to which the virus has yet to make any significant inroads. News reports indicate that significant portions of rural America are not closing businesses, practicing social distancing, or wearing facial coverings or gloves.The number of infections in rural America will of course never reach the levels of the country's population centers, but unless rural America gets very serious very quickly about protecting themselves they will have the same level of infections per hundred thousand as more urban areas of America.There is a way to make coronavirus disappear from our shores in just two or three weeks, but we lack the means to carry it out. If today we tested and obtained the results for everyone in America then we could quarantine those who test positive. Doing this is, of course, impossible. There aren't enough test kits, there aren't enough trained professionals to conduct them (The cotton swab you've heard so much about? It is carefully extended inches deep into winding nasal passages - the person doing this has to know what they're doing. My retired doctor friend who volunteered just tested a bunch of kids who are under state care a couple days ago.), and there aren't enough labs or lab personnel to analyze them.The federal government should make it a top national priority to dramatically increase our ability to conduct widespread testing. By regularly testing broad random samples of the population we can quickly identify new hotspots and conduct investigative tracing and intensive testing there. This would be very, very effective at ending the pandemic in this country. If we maintained this intensive level of testing then the country could return to normal.But under Trump it is unlikely the national resources to conduct this intensive level of testing will be mobilized soon, so the other necessary component for reopening the country is for everyone to wear facial coverings whenever out among other people.Again, the six-foot safe distance is nonsense. It's impossible to maintain in many places such as grocery stores and pharmacies, and breezes and drafts and tiny droplets and molecules and people walking around into each other's exhalations render it meaningless. The wearing of facial coverings is essential for ending the pandemic.How long will the testing and facial coverings be necessary? For as long as it takes to develop a vaccine. How long will that take? The earliest a vaccine can be available is the summer of 2021. You'll hear lots of promising news stories about earlier availability, but ignore them. Developing a new vaccine that is safe and effective is a major effort. It's going to take a while.By necessity there will have to be far more testing because Trump will eventually and after costly (in terms of lives) delays be dragged kicking and screaming into a national effort to make widespread testing possible. When it's in place then in order for it to work there will have to be edicts that people accede to randomized testing when asked or be quarantined for two weeks.And wear a facial covering whenever you go out.This will have to go on for at least another year minimum, because every time the unfortunately inevitable efforts at premature loosening occur the infection rate will rise again.Here's a final piece of data for people who for whatever inexplicable reason think we're getting closer to reopening the country. This is the number of deaths plotted over time. The rate of dying is rising: --Percy

With Trump touting chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine there's been a lot of baseless nonsense about possible drug solutions that have no science behind them. Here's a promising report about a scientific remdesivir study. Keep in mind that it is not peer-reviewed nor statistically significant, just promising. Other similar studies are ongoing: Gilead data suggests coronavirus patients are responding to treatment--Percy

I just returned from doing this week's grocery shopping. I'd say the number of customers wearing masks was about the same as last week, around 40%. Of the grocery store employees I saw, only one wore a mask. Perhaps they have not seen these articles: Or perhaps they've been listening to Trump describing how soon the country will reopen?Or maybe they saw the anti-mitigation demonstrations in the midwest.We know what will happen. With no vaccine and with no widespread testing, decreased mitigation efforts will mean increased infections.--Percy

Interestingly in Canada we have had about 1300 deaths from Covid 19 vs about 33,000 in the US. Over half the deaths in Canada have been in Quebec. Our population is about 10% of that of the US so the relationship percentage wise is about 33 to 13.At least from watching the news Quebec had a more cavalier attitude to social distancing than the rest of the country and I think that the US had a more cavalier attitude than Canada apart from Quebec.It does appear to me that social distancing does appear to be saving lives.

I was talking to a nurse at my cardiologist whose 73-year-old brother bags at a local supermarket. She complained to the Board of Health because the supermarket wouldn't issue masks and gloves.Around here masks are pretty universal and gloves are common. Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

?--Percy

When I was stationed in North Dakota I would sometimes listen in the car to a radio station in "The Peg". I heard them refer to Canada as "Big Lonely".

25 miles west of Boston.

Apparently there are people that live in the "Peg" (Winnipeg) on purpose but I don't understand it. I was based there for 2 months when I was in the air force and I found that to be sufficient.

Years ago I lived in Maynard in Rosie's Apartments on Railroad Street across the street from DEC where I worked. Route 27 was just down Main Street a bit.Up here in NH only about half the people seem to be modifying their behavior.--Percy