Originally Posted by Bwana:
Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.
Originally Posted by Dartgod:
People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.
We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.
Thanks!
Click here for the original OP:
Spoiler!
Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.
California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.
“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”
The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.
The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”
Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.
The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.
The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.
A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.
Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.
“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”
It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.
“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”
On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.
“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”
According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.
More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.
But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.
“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”
CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.
Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.
“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”
NYU scientists: Largest U.S. study of COVID-19 finds obesity the single biggest factor in New York’s hospitalizations
Doctors at NYU Langone Health center conducted the largest study so far of U.S. hospital admissions for COVID-19, focused on New York City. They found obesity, along with age, was the biggest deciding factor in hospital admissions, which may suggest the role of hyper-inflammatory reactions that can happen in those with the disease.
By Tiernan Ray
For months, scientists have been poring over data about cases and deaths to understand why it is that COVID-19 manifests itself in different ways around the world, with certain factors such as the age of the population repeatedly popping up as among the most significant determinants.
Now, one of the largest studies conducted of COVID-19 infection in the United States has found that obesity of patients was the single biggest factor in whether those with COVID-19 had to be admitted to a hospital.
"The chronic condition with the strongest association with critical illness was obesity, with a substantially higher odds ratio than any cardiovascular or pulmonary disease," write lead author Christopher M. Petrilli of the NYU Grossman School and colleagues in a paper, "Factors associated with hospitalization and critical illness among 4,103 patients with Covid-19 disease in New York City," which was posted April 11th on the medRxiv pre-print server.
Spoiler!
The paper has not been peer-reviewed, which should be kept in mind in considering its conclusions.
Among other things, the presence of obesity in the study points to a potentially important role of heightened inflammation in patients, a phenomenon that has been a topic of much speculation in numerous studies of the disease.
Petrilli and colleagues at the Grossman School, and doctors at the NYU Langone Health center, studied the electronic patient records of 4,103 individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 in the New York City healthcare system between March 1st and April 2nd.
It is "the largest case series from the United States to date," write Petrilli and colleagues.
The motivation of the work, they write, was that "Understanding which patients are most at risk for hospitalization is crucial for many reasons," such as how to triage patients and how to anticipate medical needs.
Half of those patients were admitted to a hospital. What the researchers found is that "In the decision tree for admission, the most important features were age >65 and obesity."
Obesity, in this case, was measured as weight relative to a person's height. The authors use a metric scale, so a body mass index of 30 kilograms of weight and higher is considered obese.
The "decision tree" in this case refers to the statistical method they used to analyze the patient data. A decision tree is a way to group members of a sample based on their shared characteristics. "For a given population, the decision tree classification method splits the population into two groups using one feature at a time, starting with the feature that maximizes the split between groups relative to the outcome in question." They keep splitting groups into smaller and smaller groups until they arrive at groups that "[have] similar characteristics and outcomes."
Others have made reference to obesity in conjunction with COVID-19, to a greater or lesser extent, but without the data of the NYU group.
Writing in The Lancet on March 31st, RNA virus researcher Gregory Poland summed-up the conditions aggravating the COVID-19 situation globally: "We have an increasingly older age demographic across virtually all countries, as well as unprecedented rates of obesity, smoking, diabetes, and heart and lung disease, and an ever-growing population of people who are immunocompromised—all comorbidities that lead to significantly higher risks of severe disease and death from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)."
And Drs. David S. Ludwig and Richard Malley of Boston Children's Hospital wrote in The New York Times on March 30th that Americans' risk from the virus is compounded by the fact that they are generally "too diseased."
"The huge burden of obesity and other chronic conditions among Americans puts most of us at direct risk," they wrote. "In fact, with obesity rates in the United States much higher than affected countries like South Korea and China, our outcomes — economic- and health-wise — could be much worse."
But what does it mean for obesity to show up as the big deciding factor for hospitalization?
Obesity is generally known to be associated with inflammation. As the NYU authors observe, "Obesity is well-recognized to be a pro-inflammatory condition." They focus on the inflammation aspect because it has been cited in several studies as being a possible factor in COVID-19, in particular, inflammations that seem to be in a hyper-activated state. But it's not entirely clear what role it plays.
"Hyperinflammatory states are well described in severe sepsis," the authors note, "however, the degree to which Covid-19 related inflammation is similar to or different than that typically found in sepsis is unknown."
Without drawing conclusions, they note that previous studies have shown that patients with COVID-19 have displayed blood clotting, or "hypercoagulability," in the form of thrombosis and embolisms.
The authors suggest that inflammation could be explored further in another study. "We did not have inflammatory markers available for non-hospitalized patients; it is possible that these would have been strong predictors for hospitalization risk as well if available."
All of this is from just one geography, and so its utility may be limited, the authors acknowledge, stating, "factors associated with poor outcomes may differ elsewhere."
Given the scale of the outbreak in New York — the city has had 98,715 confirmed cases as of April 12th, and 6,367 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins — New York is becoming its own field of study.
For example, the same day as the NYU group, scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reported the results of an extensive study of the genome of the virus among New York cases. What they found was both a melting pot, as it were, of strains of the virus, and peculiar local differences.
"We find that New York City, as an international hub, provides not only a snapshot of the diversity of disease-causing SARS-CoV-2 at the global level but also informs on the dynamics of the pandemic at the local level," write the authors.
That suggests the kinds of clinical data found by the NYU researchers may at some point be combined with the genetic data and other factors as scientists gather more data and dig deeper.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said "the worst is over" and the state is controlling the spread.
“If you isolate, if you take the precautions, your family won’t get infected. We can control the spread. Feel good about that,” he said at a coronavirus briefing today.
However, Cuomo warned New Yorkers need to "continued to be smart."
“The worst is over. Yeah, if we continue to be smart going forward. Because remember we have the hand on that valve. You turn that valve too fast, you will see that number jump right back," he added. [Reply]
It’s pretty pointless to me to try greatly increasing testing unless it’s testing for antibodies. Between false positives, false negatives, and the fact you can get the virus five minutes after the test, there just isn’t much benefit in testing hundreds of thousands per day. However testing for antibodies at that rate would give us a tremendous amount of knowledge that is not nearly as fluid and changing as testing for the virus is. By all means keep testing those who need it, but any efforts for huge rollouts for the general public should focus on antibody testing.
I haven’t seen too much more about the plasma transfusions increasing but given the early success of that working then more information about who has the antibodies would help in opening up that line of treatment on a larger scale as well. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Donger:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said "the worst is over" and the state is controlling the spread.
“If you isolate, if you take the precautions, your family won’t get infected. We can control the spread. Feel good about that,” he said at a coronavirus briefing today.
However, Cuomo warned New Yorkers need to "continued to be smart."
“The worst is over. Yeah, if we continue to be smart going forward. Because remember we have the hand on that valve. You turn that valve too fast, you will see that number jump right back," he added.
So were probably what? 3 weeks away from opening studd? [Reply]
Originally Posted by Donger:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said "the worst is over" and the state is controlling the spread.
“If you isolate, if you take the precautions, your family won’t get infected. We can control the spread. Feel good about that,” he said at a coronavirus briefing today.
However, Cuomo warned New Yorkers need to "continued to be smart."
“The worst is over. Yeah, if we continue to be smart going forward. Because remember we have the hand on that valve. You turn that valve too fast, you will see that number jump right back," he added.
Did anyone bother to tell him yesterday was Sunday? [Reply]
Originally Posted by Donger:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said "the worst is over" and the state is controlling the spread.
“If you isolate, if you take the precautions, your family won’t get infected. We can control the spread. Feel good about that,” he said at a coronavirus briefing today.
However, Cuomo warned New Yorkers need to "continued to be smart."
“The worst is over. Yeah, if we continue to be smart going forward. Because remember we have the hand on that valve. You turn that valve too fast, you will see that number jump right back," he added.
Who the fuck cares, the guy underestimated it. He is clearly shit at his job no matter which way you look at it.
And my opinion isn't shapped by the DC. So stop bringing it up like a jilted lover. [Reply]
Originally Posted by mr. tegu:
It’s pretty pointless to me to try greatly increasing testing unless it’s testing for antibodies. Between false positives, false negatives, and the fact you can get the virus five minutes after the test, there just isn’t much benefit in testing hundreds of thousands per day. However testing for antibodies at that rate would give us a tremendous amount of knowledge that is not nearly as fluid and changing as testing for the virus is. By all means keep testing those who need it, but any efforts for huge rollouts for the general public should focus on antibody testing.
I haven’t seen too much more about the plasma transfusions increasing but given the early success of that working then more information about who has the antibodies would help in opening up that line of treatment on a larger scale as well.
If we are going to open up our country anytime soon we have to have rapid testing so we can isolate\quarantine people away from everyone. We are a very long ways from being able to do that unfortunately. [Reply]
Originally Posted by O.city:
I’m all about antibody testing but it’s gotta be specific and accurate. You **** up and give people false positives and that’s not ideal
Wonder how many people have really already had it. [Reply]
