Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

There's extremely high risk of it all crumbling down on this point. Based on everything we know so far, getting the virus and COVID-19 doesn't make you immune but you might develop antibodies that will protect you for a time, but no-one knows for how long or even if everyone develops that protection

I think it's time to watch how the number of infected grows in South Korea for next a few days to see if it's possible to contain the virus (personally I don't trust Chinese government's numbers). South Korea tested at lot of people and they have a large number of cases but they didn't close an entire city. The increase of cases has been slowed for quite a few days and if it keeps that way then maybe it's a winning strategy when severe community transmissions is already in place.
 
I am really curious where this came from. I dont buy it that it came from an eaten bat. In china they have been eating all kinds of uncommon animals for a very very long time. It should have been a birth place of a lot more viral diseases. Also there have actually been cases of doctors facing patients with these kinds of symptoms in January in other countries. So it is possible that it didn't originate from China.

It's probably not from eating bats, but it's very unlikely that it's not from China (unless you believe it's something artificial). If it originated from somewhere else, it'd be very unlikely that somewhere else did not have serious number of cases. All huge outbreaks in other countries are all many days after the initial outbreak in China. There is no reason that the virus is more infectious in China than in other places.
 
And with people who have no symptoms carrying the virus, how do you know who has come into people with people who have the virus?

We've already seen numerous cases where the virus pops up in locations where noone at the location or anyone that recently travelled to the location had contact with anyone showing symptoms or anyone that had gone to a region that was at risk. The first one that comes immediately to mind is the case in Northern California where medical officials have no idea how the virus got there.

It's thinking like this that lures people into a false sense of security. Testing only people that show symptoms and people that have been to regions that have been confirmed to have the virus does little to nothing to track infections or the progression of the virus.

They ask them. They track where people have travelled, who they have been in contact with that may have given them the virus. Where they have been that they may have contracted the virus.

[edit] that article linked by green.pixel is a great example of what I've been trying to get across. Testing does nothing to track or stop the spread of the disease. It's best use is to determine if someone showing symptoms has the virus so they can receive the appropriate care.

Regards,
SB

Bullshit. There is a point when you have a significant number of community contracted cases where it will become not useful, but as long as you are able to keep community contracted cases low you can test and follow cases where isolation will keep the spread in check.
 
It's probably not from eating bats, but it's very unlikely that it's not from China (unless you believe it's something artificial). If it originated from somewhere else, it'd be very unlikely that somewhere else did not have serious number of cases. All huge outbreaks in other countries are all many days after the initial outbreak in China. There is no reason that the virus is more infectious in China than in other places.
Yep. Someone was talking to me today about the recent common illnesses across the UK with people having significant unwellness, wondering if it had already passed this way. If it had, there'd have been a massive spike in hospital take-ins and fatalities.
 
Based on everything we know so far, getting the virus and COVID-19 doesn't make you immune...
Where's that coming from? A while back we had 15% of cases in China testing positive again after being dismissed, but that hasn't been followed up with any public acknowledgement that people can get reinfected, and testing positive doesn't necessarily mean being ill and contagious. Typical Coronavirus response in humans (and other animals) is immunity, and I'm not aware of anything suggesting Covid-19 acts differently, let alone proves it.
 
I am really curious where this came from. I dont buy it that it came from an eaten bat. In china they have been eating all kinds of uncommon animals for a very very long time. It should have been a birth place of a lot more viral diseases. Also there have actually been cases of doctors facing patients with these kinds of symptoms in January in other countries. So it is possible that it didn't originate from China.
It's not from eating a bat, but from the chinese markets where countless different animals (often hunted illegally) are stacked close together and no-one has ever heard words like "hygiene", doesn't care or cares but can't do anything about it.
They're the perfect breeding ground for viruses to mutate and then spread to new hosts, including humans, SARS-CoV-2 isn't the first and won't be the last.
 
Where's that coming from? A while back we had 15% of cases in China testing positive again after being dismissed, but that hasn't been followed up with any public acknowledgement that people can get reinfected, and testing positive doesn't necessarily mean being ill and contagious. Typical Coronavirus response in humans (and other animals) is immunity, and I'm not aware of anything suggesting Covid-19 acts differently, let alone proves it.
Partly from talking with doctors at our hospitals infection ward, partly from various sources. This piece has several quotes in one article for example
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...id-19-twice-sick-spread-relapse-a9400691.html

(also, yay for having asthma and being a nurse, lucky for me I work at one of the psychiatric wards (aside from io-tech) and we rarely need to be involved with somatic stuff. Today was exception for me because they had psychotic patient in for somatic stuff that needed rooming-in (is this the right word? we call it that ("vierihoito") no matter what it's about but seems rooming-in is usually in context of mothers and babies, but then we have no clue if new patients coming in might carry it or not so yay again)
 
They ask them. They track where people have travelled, who they have been in contact with that may have given them the virus. Where they have been that they may have contracted the virus.



Bullshit. There is a point when you have a significant number of community contracted cases where it will become not useful, but as long as you are able to keep community contracted cases low you can test and follow cases where isolation will keep the spread in check.

Let me try this again, except with a real world case study which is still on-going. Taiwan.

They've been successful at limiting the impact it has had in the country thus far due to 2 major reasons that are interlinked and pretty much worthless if one of those isn't enforced.
  • First they locked down and limited travel into the country.
  • Secondly, they tested everyone that was allowed into the country.
In this case testing works because you've limited the scope of the number of people requiring testing. And it doesn't matter whether the person shows symptoms or where the person has been.

IE...
  • Did the person come from China? Tested.
  • Did the person come from France which at the time was a "safe" country? Tested.
That ability to universally test people allowed into the country makes testing useful.

That said, we'll see what happens there going forward as some people with the virus still got into the country prior to them locking down travel. Will they be successful at containing the virus?

However, they've been very aggressive at utilizing their manufacturing sector to rapidly churn out things that are needed to combat or limit the impact of the virus. Again something most other countries aren't able to do due to outsourcing of manufacturing.

Compare that to other countries regardless of whether they were great at testing or not so great at testing at the start of the pandemic. Unless those countries locked down their borders (almost impossible to do for countries that aren't an island nation) testing becomes useless as a way to track the spread of the virus.

The end result in those countries are going to be roughly the same regardless of how well they tested at the start of the pandemic because testing alone won't allow you to track the virus.

BTW - that case in Northern California? Of coursed they tracked the person's previous travel and everyone they had contact with. No connection to Covid-19 was unearthed during the investigation. Hence why it was an important medical discovery.

They basically got it from a carrier who didn't show symptoms and who hadn't been to an at risk country (like China) or any known infection sites. And it's entirely possible that person may have also gotten it from a carrier who didn't show symptoms.

Regards,
SB
 
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Partly from talking with doctors at our hospitals infection ward, partly from various sources. This piece has several quotes in one article for example
None of those quotes make it likely there's no ongoing immunity. Opinions range from time-limited antibodies to mutating, re-emerging forms, to standard disease immunity.
 
Unless those countries locked down their borders (almost impossible to do for countries that aren't an island nation)
Virtually impossible with international business and tourism.

The end result in those countries are going to be roughly the same regardless of how well they tested at the start of the pandemic because testing alone won't allow you to track the virus.
Not quite true. Testing helps limit, not stop, the spread by at least preventing disease spreading from the detected carriers. This doesn't eliminate the disease, but it slows its progress. If there's as many silent carriers as symptomatic, isolating the symptomatic reduces sources of infection by half, which is some days' delayed disease peak.

BTW - that case in Northern California? Of coursed they tracked the person's previous travel and everyone they had contact with. No connection to Covid-19 was unearthed during the investigation. Hence why it was an important medical discovery.

They basically got it from a carrier who didn't show symptoms and who hadn't been to an at risk country (like China) or any known infection sites. And it's entirely possible that person may have also gotten it from a carrier who didn't show symptoms.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/09...-likely-not-infectious-after-recovery-begins/

People who contract the novel coronavirus emit high amounts of virus very early on in their infection, according to a new study from Germany that helps to explain the rapid and efficient way in which the virus has spread around the world.

It was published Monday on a preprint server, meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it could still provide key information that the public health response has been lacking.

The researchers monitored the viral shedding of nine people infected with the virus.

The researchers found very high levels of virus emitted from the throat of patients from the earliest point in their illness —when people are generally still going about their daily routines.

This pattern of virus shedding is a marked departure from what was seen with the SARS coronavirus, which ignited an outbreak in 2002-2003. With that disease, peak shedding of virus occurred later, when the virus had moved into the deep lungs.

Shedding from the upper airways early in infection makes for a virus that is much harder to contain. The scientists said at peak shedding, people with Covid-19 are emitting more than 1,000 times more virus than was emitted during peak shedding of SARS infection, a fact that likely explains the rapid spread of the virus.

SARS-CoV-2 appears to be prolific at early reproduction. The only really usable test for the masses would be something you could use at home - take a swap, wave it under a doodad, and see if you have the virus or not. Unless you can test everyone on one day, where you could lock everyone up, perform the test, and then for everyone who's positive, keep them and everyone they are in contact with locked up while everyone else carries on, testing can't be used to follow the infected.

I guess alternatively, you could break down small communities. Wouldn't work for cities, but small towns/villages could have everyone tested and, if there are no infections, allow people to go about their interior lives while quarantining them off from outside infection.
 
It's not from eating a bat, but from the chinese markets where countless different animals (often hunted illegally) are stacked close together and no-one has ever heard words like "hygiene", doesn't care or cares but can't do anything about it.
They're the perfect breeding ground for viruses to mutate and then spread to new hosts, including humans, SARS-CoV-2 isn't the first and won't be the last.
That still doesnt sound like a good explanation. This has been the case for many many years and not just in China but pandemics and new types of serious viruses should have been occurring yearly
 
That still doesnt sound like a good explanation. This has been the case for many many years and not just in China but pandemics and new types of serious viruses should have been occurring yearly

Mutations in viruses happens all the time. A deadly strain is going to be just a fraction of those. If those are occurring in say, animals, a mutation that is able to take hold and affect another species is a much smaller fraction of that.

In other words, it doesn't happen all time because the chances for a virus to mutate into something that is both prolific and deadly AND able to be transmitted to another species is slim.

Regards,
SB
 
Let me try this again, except with a real world case study which is still on-going. Taiwan.

They've been successful at limiting the impact it has had in the country thus far due to 2 major reasons that are interlinked and pretty much worthless if one of those isn't enforced.
  • First they locked down and limited travel into the country.
  • Secondly, they tested everyone that was allowed into the country.
In this case testing works because you've limited the scope of the number of people requiring testing. And it doesn't matter whether the person shows symptoms or where the person has been.

IE...
  • Did the person come from China? Tested.
  • Did the person come from France which at the time was a "safe" country? Tested.
That ability to universally test people allowed into the country makes testing useful.

That said, we'll see what happens there going forward as some people with the virus still got into the country prior to them locking down travel. Will they be successful at containing the virus?

However, they've been very aggressive at utilizing their manufacturing sector to rapidly churn out things that are needed to combat or limit the impact of the virus. Again something most other countries aren't able to do due to outsourcing of manufacturing.

Compare that to other countries regardless of whether they were great at testing or not so great at testing at the start of the pandemic. Unless those countries locked down their borders (almost impossible to do for countries that aren't an island nation) testing becomes useless as a way to track the spread of the virus.

The end result in those countries are going to be roughly the same regardless of how well they tested at the start of the pandemic because testing alone won't allow you to track the virus.

BTW - that case in Northern California? Of coursed they tracked the person's previous travel and everyone they had contact with. No connection to Covid-19 was unearthed during the investigation. Hence why it was an important medical discovery.

They basically got it from a carrier who didn't show symptoms and who hadn't been to an at risk country (like China) or any known infection sites. And it's entirely possible that person may have also gotten it from a carrier who didn't show symptoms.

Regards,
SB
No one was ever suggesting 'testing alone'. It is one tool to slow the spread to not overwhelm the health systems and to eventually beat it with a vaccine.

The notion that a case might get through or has gotten through doesn't invalidate the model. Again there's a point when you are getting too much community spread which will make testing for control a waste, maybe the US is there, I don't know.
 
Virtually impossible with international business and tourism.

Not quite true. Testing helps limit, not stop, the spread by at least preventing disease spreading from the detected carriers. This doesn't eliminate the disease, but it slows its progress. If there's as many silent carriers as symptomatic, isolating the symptomatic reduces sources of infection by half, which is some days' delayed disease peak.


https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/09...-likely-not-infectious-after-recovery-begins/

People who contract the novel coronavirus emit high amounts of virus very early on in their infection, according to a new study from Germany that helps to explain the rapid and efficient way in which the virus has spread around the world.

It was published Monday on a preprint server, meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it could still provide key information that the public health response has been lacking.

The researchers monitored the viral shedding of nine people infected with the virus.

The researchers found very high levels of virus emitted from the throat of patients from the earliest point in their illness —when people are generally still going about their daily routines.

This pattern of virus shedding is a marked departure from what was seen with the SARS coronavirus, which ignited an outbreak in 2002-2003. With that disease, peak shedding of virus occurred later, when the virus had moved into the deep lungs.

Shedding from the upper airways early in infection makes for a virus that is much harder to contain. The scientists said at peak shedding, people with Covid-19 are emitting more than 1,000 times more virus than was emitted during peak shedding of SARS infection, a fact that likely explains the rapid spread of the virus.

SARS-CoV-2 appears to be prolific at early reproduction. The only really usable test for the masses would be something you could use at home - take a swap, wave it under a doodad, and see if you have the virus or not. Unless you can test everyone on one day, where you could lock everyone up, perform the test, and then for everyone who's positive, keep them and everyone they are in contact with locked up while everyone else carries on, testing can't be used to follow the infected.

I guess alternatively, you could break down small communities. Wouldn't work for cities, but small towns/villages could have everyone tested and, if there are no infections, allow people to go about their interior lives while quarantining them off from outside infection.

At home test will probably never happen. The current gold standard test requires amplifying the genetic material of the virus, which takes at least a few hours and an expensive instrument.

It’s a rna based virus so you need to transcribe it into dna and then amplify the dna. From the amplified dna, probes are used to detect the presence of the virus.

There are rapid tests for viruses like the flu that can take an half hour and are cheap. Problem is they are notoriously inaccurate. Delivering false negatives at a 50% clip.
 
What we need is for everybody to calm the fuck down. Nothing being done has stop the virus from spreading globally in only a few months. The virus is going to spread through almost every community on the globe. Unfortunately people will get sick and some will die.

The economic devastation will be far worst than the disease. The media is driving a ton of unnecessary fear and hysteria all for the sake of “keeping us inform”.

Put it this way, in the time Covid-19 has caused 150K known cases and 6k deaths. Pathogens other than Covid-19 have caused about 100 million cases of pneumonia and over 1 million deaths.

The Information Age is driving a level of hypersensitivity in a way that can become extremely dangerous. If this happened 30 years, it would probably been over before most of us would of been aware of some new strain of Coronavirus. Now we are a couple steps away from a breakdown of society. 24 hour news cycles and the internet is turning us into lunatics.

The initial fear was warranted but we have a ton of data and nothing points to a virus with a high fatality rate like SARS or MERS. Be smart, wash your hands, keep your hands out you mouth, nose and eyes, and keep away from sick people. Shit you should be doing anyway.
 
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The initial fear was warranted but we have a ton of data and nothing points to a virus with a high fatality rate like SARS or MERS. Be smart, wash your hands, keep your hands out you mouth, nose and eyes, and keep away from sick people. Shit you should be doing anyway.

SARS had a much lower infection rate, it barely touched the world. While COVID-19 is much more survivable, that may only be true while health care systems hold up.
 
The economic devastation will be far worst than the disease.
Oh?
I’ve seen some rather large economic upheavals, and the elasticity of the economy is remarkable. Outside of stock market butterfly effects, base economy is pretty damn stable, unless you look at very short time spans. The interconnectedness that on one hand make effects propagate through the system, also helps maintain equilibrium overall. You sometimes just have to give it a bit of time to adjust.

Whereas people who die are dead. As long as it is noone you care about more than the immediate value of your stock portfolio, of course the economic effects will be worse than the disease. And a fair fraction of the population just don’t give a damn about the people dying in hospital corridors, as long as it is somebody elses mom, and have a hard time understanding that their priorities may nor be shared by others.

No, I don’t think the economic effects will be worse than the disease. But then, my yardsticks for measuring such things are clearly not universal.
 
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