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

McHuj said:
Are there any sites that report the numbers tested? I'm really interested in the percentage of negative tests. That information seems really hard to come by (or at least it's not consolidated anywhere)
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It tends to be presented with stats, but I don't know anywhere that consolidates them. Percentage negative tests is very high. eg. Alphawolf above,

Canada:
Tested: 236,851
Confirmed: 7,695

UK:
Tested: 143,186
Confirmed: 25,150

Of course, who gets tested greatly affects +ve test ratio.

Kaotik said:
There were few tests that showed them getting infected again some time ago...
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They tested +ve after release. The tests changed from mouth swabs to rectal test. The virus was clear from the throat but still present in the faeces. It appears to be an artefact at this point. They aren't contagious or symptomatic.

Found this: https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/...tum-feces-after-conversion-pharyngeal-samples

McHuj said:
Even after the body stops producing neutralizing antibodies, a subset of immune memory cells can reactivate a response effectively, he noted.
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That's the basis for immunisation. You propagate the appropriate Memory-T cells IIRC from my Uni education. Response to the pathogen is then much faster. Think about how the South Americans were wiped out by the common illnesses of the Europeans, but once survived, it's just a common cold. Given the generally mild symptoms of Covid19, I think we're seeing a very normal reaction to a new virus. We just haven't seen that many new viruses in this detail before, with such tracking, and of course the spread is international due to modern human movements. Hundreds of years ago, South Americans would have had the same thing. One would have contracted deadly HKU1 and natives would be dropping like flies. Hospitalisation rates would be through the roof, as well as sacrifices. Daily reports of new cases and warnings to stay indoors... Covid19 isn't really anything new in human terms and isn't some ghastly killer apocalypse bug by any stretch.
 
100,000 - 200,000 deaths in US if we follow distancing guidelines!

Dr Deborah Birx, one of the experts on the US taskforce, says one prediction model shows that if everyone follows the distancing guidelines, it takes the US down to 100,000 or 200,000 deaths - "which is still way too much".

Dr Birx says seeing the case rates in Washington and California, which are far lower than New York, is promising - and is why the US must adhere to strict rules to combat the virus.

"I know it's a lot to ask," she says.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world...83bba5a8854e067111aa14&pinned_post_type=share
 
If it can be confirmed that immunity occurs for a number of years following recovery, it would be very useful. You could almost end up with a 'Covid passport' indicating you weren't a threat to either yourself or others during any future outbreaks. It would make the social distancing somewhat easier if you knew a friend or family member could visit with impunity for both of you and, of course, it would make selecting the medical staff facing the public at hospitals much easier.

I hope that people in government are thinking about this sort of a thing so that the next outbreak is shorter and less disruptive.

A long way to go before we need to worry about this, however.
 
There's also the issue of future (or perhaps even on-going) mutations of the virus. Presumably that could have an impact on the effectiveness of any immune response.
 
It's unlikely to mutate into something that can do to people in the future who have been exposed what it can do to them now without prior exposure. All viruses are mutating all the time; there are over a hundred variations of SARS-CoV-2 already. We should be no more as afraid of SARS-CoV-2 mutating into something troublesome for those who are resistant as we should about any cold virus mutating into something more serious. 'Spanish Flu' mutated into a deadlier form for its second wave, but those who had the first encounter were less affected, it seems. And the deadlier strain only spread ahead of the mild strain due to the weird circumstances of the war.

It's always worth being sensibly cautious, but we shouldn't be afraid of unrealistic outcomes. Everything humanity faces with Covid19, it's already faced with a hundred other illnesses that are now commonplace and which have had thousands of years to evolve into super-killer-bugs. There's no reason or evidence to think this disease will do anything different. Human beings are at their most vulnerable when its new, but everyone who lives through it will develop resistances. Future generations will be exposed through their life to SARS-CoV2 the same as they are 229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1 and mostly suffer mild symptoms, maybe even none. Some health-compromised people will succumb to SARS-CoV-2 just as they do now Influenza.

The greater threat is not a future mutation managing to bypass the immunities of those who have already had it, but a more dangerous strain appearing while people have no exposure. And that in itself is less likely than a milder strain evolving to spread more widely and lay down the foundations of herd immunity.
 
Saying thousands of years to develop into some super bug makes it sound like there is a reason that would drive being deadly. There is no selective pressure for that. Covid is already a super bug because so many are asymptomatic and it seems to survive a long time in air and on surfaces. The only thing that would make it more super is reinfection. Killing the host isn't useful.
 
Seems like a "Well, duh" piece of research as the whole point of the lockdown is to reduce r to less than 1, but this is mildly encouraging for the UK if accurate:

https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/...umber-covid-19-could-be-below-one-uk-lockdown

My guess is that, for the majority, this will be correct but there will still be a significant chunk of the population who won't take it seriously enough until the number of deaths ratchet up. A big leap in the UK yesterday, so this will probably be relatively soon.
 
Sxotty said:
Saying thousands of years to develop into some super bug makes it sound like there is a reason that would drive being deadly. There is no selective pressure for that.
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Exactly. Fear of catastrophic mutations is fairly irrational.

Covid is already a super bug...
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:???: I said 'super killer bug'. That's the concern. A virus that has great reproduceability and longevity without causing any disease is no concern whatsoever. If that's what SARS-CoV-2 is going to evolve to, good luck to it!
 
Interesting read if you have time. They proprose an App could potentially track, notify and isolate individuals infected with covid-19. Believe both China and Korea have been using something similar.
Article also contains new info (at least to me) on regional infection specifics.

Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 transmission suggests epidemic control with digital contact tracing
April 1, 2020
The newly emergent human virus SARS-CoV-2 is resulting in high fatality rates and incapacitated health systems. Preventing further transmission is a priority. We analyzed key parameters of epidemic spread to estimate the contribution of different transmission routes and determine requirements for case isolation and contact-tracing needed to stop the epidemic.

We conclude that viral spread is too fast to be contained by manual contact tracing, but could be controlled if this process was faster, more efficient and happened at scale. A contact-tracing App which builds a memory of proximity contacts and immediately notifies contacts of positive cases can achieve epidemic control if used by enough people
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https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/30/science.abb6936
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
Sooo Abe-chan's solution to Corona in Japan is to give every family two masks :')

Just in case some of you where thinking your country wasn't doing enough ;)
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progressive changes every 24 hours ;)

I think we went from, go have a vacation for March break, to all Canadians come home we are locking it down soon. Took less than 4 days.
 
Ohio's numbers today, confirmed: 2547 (up from 2199), Hospitalized: 679 (up from 585), and 65 Deaths (up from 55).
Confirmed Cuyahoga County: 589 (Up from 527).

There was a "coronavirus cluster" identified at an area nursing home, that has 108 patients across multiple buildings at this location in North Royalton-- despite the name being "ManorCare in Parma" -- https://www.cleveland.com/metro/202...9-cases-identified-at-manorcare-in-parma.html

They had an identified case earlier in PA -- https://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc...0200324-egrbc3f53jgdvorlovjhni5r3a-story.html
 
Portugal (population ~10 million):

54 500 tests
8 251 confirmed infected
187 deaths
230 in intensive care unit

We've been in isolation for ~2.5 weeks and during the beginning of this week we've started to see the curve flattening. Within the last 7 days we went from a ~25% day-to-day growth to 11%.
We might actually get it pretty easy, compared to most European countries.
I guess being in the tail end of Europe with land borders towards only one country (Spain) made us get our first cases pretty late in the game, so in relative terms we started our social isolation policies pretty early.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Though it's labelled directions are "one per week". And it's very much outside the norm of supplements. And it's not available either; click the drop-down "see more" under dosage...

New regulations mean that SunVit-D3 40,000IU supplements can no longer be sold directly to the public online as this strength exceeds recommended weekly supplementation regimens and there is the potential for people to confuse this strength with a daily supplement.​
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You are proving my point here. Many people will just use the maximum available dose and disregard any safety information because... Vitamins! Some people apparently think it's not toxic, regardless what toxicologists think. Because, hell, what do they know. Right?!​
WhiningKhan said:
I am not aware of any known cases where single mega-dose of D3 proved fatal or even caused serious harm.
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Here is a case from india where people developed "gastrointestinal symptoms (constipation and vomiting), polyuria/polydipsia, altered sensorium, pancreatitis, acute kidney injury, and nephrocalcinosis" from as little as 1.800.000 IU and up to 30.000.000 IU (median 4.200.000 IU), given as daily injections of 600.000 IU.

Back to the finer things in life. Here is a very interesting editorial from the New England Journal of Medicine on Corvid-19 from March, 26:
This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2
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N00b said:
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Back to the finer things in life. Here is a very interesting editorial from the New England Journal of Medicine on Corvid-19 from March, 26:
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If true that means it is worse though since we are shutting down everything. If it still kills that many when they are desperate to avoid it then ... Yes I know it is a rate but the point is that this disease should be skewing who gets it toward those who don't fear aka the young that don't die whereas those other examples were likely more evenly spread across demographics
 
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