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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
adiggs
Well-Known Member
It's this dynamic - that so many potential / likely exposures continue to go untested that leaves me mentally comparing the US response to the Iran response. I have the US coming out a little bit ahead, but not nearly as much as I'd like.
what are you talking about? All the candidates still running are 75+. Will the election in Nov be cancelled?
what are you talking about? All the candidates still running are 75+. Will the election in Nov be cancelled?
Over 75 and male are both vulnerable differentially to this type of virus. For reasons that remain to be clarified women defend from these kind of pulmonary infections somewhat better than men. Elderly men the worst and elderly men with COPD or emphysema even more poorly. I suspect for an 80 year old male with COPD covid 19 is a death sentence.
So how does weather affect the transmissability of influenza in general? I have read that warm and humid is bad because the virus clings to water in the air causing it to fall to the ground more quickly than in dry conditions.
I know it must have some affect because there is less influenza in the summer time here.
I know it must have some affect because there is less influenza in the summer time here.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Now, 70 cases in WA. Yesterday it was 39.
Positive (confirmed) * † 70
Deaths 10
* Positive
ps : Note that the residents and staff of the nursing home at the center of all this have not been tested. Family members of staff are not quarantined.
Positive (confirmed) * † 70
Deaths 10
* Positive
- Snohomish County - 18, including 1 death
- King County - 51, including 9 deaths
- Grant County - 1 case
ps : Note that the residents and staff of the nursing home at the center of all this have not been tested. Family members of staff are not quarantined.
Doggydogworld
Active Member
They were only going to close the food court for cleaning at first. IMHO the drop in customer traffic convinced them to clean the whole thing, so it was more of a marketing decision than a medical one. Testing the clerks would be a good idea, if only we had test kits. Maybe some day....
This kind of overreaction will die out pretty quickly once widespread testing reveals the virus has been in our communities for a while without causing the zombie apocalypse. Testing will also allow targeted quarantines which will be both more effective and less intrusive than the crazy/random ones we have today. As soon as we get test kits....
Government bungling is nothing new, but this test kit SNAFU really takes the cake. The threat was so severe they imposed travel restrictions back in January, but still can't test six weeks later? Morons.
/rant off
There is no medical test that is 100% accurate. That's why we talk about sensitivity and specificity when it comes to tests.
Medicine isn't clear cut as black and white or 1's and 0's.
For what it's worth, I am at least seeing some behavioral changes in my area. Widespread awareness, proliferation of public hand sanitizing stations, and changes in cultural norms (abstention from shaking hands) in an industry normally very much engaged in such behaviors.
I share your frustration with the governmental response, and think that for now at least we are on our own or reliant on state / county health officials to step in and fill the gap. The thought that this could have been a more virulent contagion than it seems to be is chilling; as bad as it may get, it could have been much worse.
To be fair, it is a much easier ask in the tech industry than the manufacturing industry to work from home. You can't remote into an assembly line. Tesla may want to consider asking non-essential personnel to work from home sooner than later. While still small in my opinion, I consider the risk to Fremont plant production to grow greater by the day for now.
Is the gender gap attributable to lifestyle choices in men (smoking, job type), or have those variables been controlled for in the relevant studies?
This situation is worse for me than the 9/11 time.
I was actually ON a plane flying from Asia to US when the 9/11 plane hijackings crashed. That didn't stop me from taking an airplane from Vancouver to home about a week later when air travel resumed, instead of driving across the border.
Now, unless, there is an emergency need to fly, I'm sticking to just staying local and traveling by car when needed. I would rather not be stuck in a container with poor air filtration.
But, also, maybe my situation is somewhat unique because now I have kids and my parents are older. Back then, I was single and had nothing to worry about.
Poor filtration? I'm going to need some citations for that claim. I have read multiple news sources pointing to very good HEPA filtration, in conjunction with compartmentalized circulation, in modern commercial airliners.
My understanding, and I'm not a physician so if this is not correct please jump in, is that virus have a very limited range of temperatures where they can live. Just a couple of degrees C higher and they die. That's why you get fevers, the body is trying to kill the virus through heat. Note that the additional UV rays from the sun during summer don't do the virus any good either.
X Fan
Active Member
FYI re: virus.
My son is an MD at UNC Hospitals and they received a briefing this morning re: disease profile. His note below:
“They originally thought that people without symptoms could spread the disease. When experts in infectious disease went in the field and investigated it further, they found that a lot of the people who said they never had symptoms were actually like "oh yeah I had chills and cough for like a day and then it went away" and thought that meant they didn't have to mark yes to being symptomatic. So this means A. Likely less able to spread than previously thought and more importantly B. Lots of mild cases that are being underreported.
My son is an MD at UNC Hospitals and they received a briefing this morning re: disease profile. His note below:
“They originally thought that people without symptoms could spread the disease. When experts in infectious disease went in the field and investigated it further, they found that a lot of the people who said they never had symptoms were actually like "oh yeah I had chills and cough for like a day and then it went away" and thought that meant they didn't have to mark yes to being symptomatic. So this means A. Likely less able to spread than previously thought and more importantly B. Lots of mild cases that are being underreported.
I wish this was the case all over. Today, I was standing in line to return something at Home Depot and a contractor guy in front of me was coughing with mouth wide open. He just couldn't help himself to cover because he was holding onto a few times with one hand and his cell phone in the other. I normally wouldn't say anything but with the situation on hand, I asked him politely if he'd mind covering but got irritated at what I suggested.
Hopefully, they have a plan in place. Santa Clara County, where the HQ is, has over a dozen cases to date now, and Alameda County, where the factory is now have new cases (although about 25 minutes away from possible exposure areas).
San Francisco just reported 2 unknown community acquired cases. That place will become a hotbed quickly with the population density there is. IMO, just a matter of days before more Bay Area businesses tell employees to work from home.
Good question. I'm not an expert in this but I do know that there is a basic phenotypic shift in immunity across the genders. First of all many immune and inflammatory related genes are on the X chromosome so women have twice the endowment in a sense of those genes which means they're more likely to be expressed. Perhaps as a correlate of this, women are more successful at fighting infections but also more prone to autoimmune issues. I'm sure there's quite a bit about this that remains to be mapped out in terms of how cytokines work differentially for the two genders, perhaps in terms of impact of classic sex steroids on their function, and how the inflammasome functions and what receptors contribute to what types of immune activation.
What is clear is the almost two-to-one vulnerability in many of the data sets for both covid 19 and the earlier version of SARS. Men are twice as likely to die and probably twice as likely to get seriously ill at least again in some of these data sets
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Personally, I'm not too worried about the symptoms if I, myself, were to possibly become infected.
I'm much more worried that I would get infected and accidentally pass it on to my little ones or their grandparents.
As with anything in life, humans tend to become more wary of things when they have more to lose.
I'm much more worried that I would get infected and accidentally pass it on to my little ones or their grandparents.
As with anything in life, humans tend to become more wary of things when they have more to lose.
X Fan
Active Member
Also:
“They also looked at the mortality rate which right now they have at ~3% but they are only really testing people that go to the hospital.
For comparison, the mortality rate of the flu is 0.6%, but they do surveillance for the flu. Which means they test entire populations of people, when people that never seek medical care and regardless of symptoms and severity. This seems to be worse than the flu but the actually dangerousness of it is likely closer to the flu than the numbers now are quoting. With that said, we have about 1 month of knowledge on the virus as opposed to like 70 years on the flu.
Still all preliminary.”
“They also looked at the mortality rate which right now they have at ~3% but they are only really testing people that go to the hospital.
For comparison, the mortality rate of the flu is 0.6%, but they do surveillance for the flu. Which means they test entire populations of people, when people that never seek medical care and regardless of symptoms and severity. This seems to be worse than the flu but the actually dangerousness of it is likely closer to the flu than the numbers now are quoting. With that said, we have about 1 month of knowledge on the virus as opposed to like 70 years on the flu.
Still all preliminary.”
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