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.”
Originally Posted by :
The bottom line, experts say, is that masks might help keep people with COVID-19 from unknowingly passing along the virus. But the evidence for the efficacy of surgical or homemade masks is limited, and masks aren't the most important protection against the coronavirus.
Originally Posted by :
That leaves fabric masks, which currently are recommended for general use by the CDC. Fabric masks also allow air in around the sides, but lack non-woven, moisture-repelling layers. They impede only about 2% of airflow in, Chu said.
All of this leakage in surgical and fabric masks are why public health officials generally don't believe that wearing a mask prevents anyone from catching a virus that is already floating around in the environment. Airflow follows the path of least resistance, said Rachael Jones, an associate professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah who was not involved in the new research. If viral particles are nearby, they have an easy path around a surgical or fabric mask. And in the case of a fabric mask, wearers may well be wafting in particles small enough to flow right through the fabric.
But what about the other way around? When the wearer of a mask coughs or sneezes, the barrier might be enough to contain a lot of that initial jet of grossness — even if there are gaps in the fabric or around the sides. That's what the new mask studies aimed to address: Whether surgical or fabric masks did a good job of containing viruses.
Originally Posted by Monticore:
It is fault for assuming you had any understanding in the first place therefore didn’t think we needed to explain everything from day one in each one of our posts , you also force us to argue multiple things at once which is a very hard target to hit sometimes.
My stance on masks hasn’t changed from day 1.
Right...you just never said it because everyone just knows. Never mind it's damn near impossible to find any expert saying such but there are plenty stating it protects you from the wearer but not you from getting it if it is already in the air. [Reply]
Originally Posted by petegz28:
How about the precious CDC stating nothing about it preventing you from getting it? They do, however, state it is to protect others from you.
We can go round and round about this but as you can see the whole "it does both" argument just cropped up today as a matter of convenience.
It is basic physics Pete can you drink a beer easier through a mask or without and what would be the reason.
Substitute mask for a piece of paper, t shirt , hard plastic , whatever , anything you put in front of your mouth will impede things from entering or exiting at varying degrees [Reply]
Originally Posted by Monticore:
It is basic physics Pete can you drink a beer easier through a mask or without and what would be the reason.
It's almost like you don't read a ****ing thing they say and just pound at your newly changed narrative. Let me post this again...
That leaves fabric masks, which currently are recommended for general use by the CDC. Fabric masks also allow air in around the sides, but lack non-woven, moisture-repelling layers. They impede only about 2% of airflow in, Chu said. All of this leakage in surgical and fabric masks are why public health officials generally don't believe that wearing a mask prevents anyone from catching a virus that is already floating around in the environment. Airflow follows the path of least resistance, said Rachael Jones, an associate professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah who was not involved in the new research. If viral particles are nearby, they have an easy path around a surgical or fabric mask. And in the case of a fabric mask, wearers may well be wafting in particles small enough to flow right through the fabric. [Reply]
Originally Posted by :
We identified 700 scientific papers and letters and 47 full texts were studied in detail. Children accounted for a small fraction of COVID‐19 cases and mostly had social contacts with peers or parents, rather than older people at risk of severe disease. Data on viral loads were scarce, but indicated that children may have lower levels than adults, partly because they often have fewer symptoms, and this should decrease the transmission risk. Household transmission studies showed that children were rarely the index case and case studies suggested that children with COVID‐19 seldom caused outbreaks. However, it is highly likely that children can transmit the SARS‐COV‐2 virus, which causes COVID‐19, and even asymptomatic children can have viral loads.
Conclusion
Children are unlikely to be the main drivers of the pandemic. Opening up schools and kindergartens is unlikely to impact COVID‐19 mortality rates in older people.
Originally Posted by petegz28:
It's almost like you don't read a ****ing thing they say and just pound at your newly changed narrative. Let me post this again...
That leaves fabric masks, which currently are recommended for general use by the CDC. Fabric masks also allow air in around the sides, but lack non-woven, moisture-repelling layers. They impede only about 2% of airflow in, Chu said. All of this leakage in surgical and fabric masks are why public health officials generally don't believe that wearing a mask prevents anyone from catching a virus that is already floating around in the environment. Airflow follows the path of least resistance, said Rachael Jones, an associate professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah who was not involved in the new research. If viral particles are nearby, they have an easy path around a surgical or fabric mask. And in the case of a fabric mask, wearers may well be wafting in particles small enough to flow right through the fabric.
Covid is not considered airborne , it is considered droplet which is like drinking it in rather than Breathing it but still masks make breathing harder anyways. [Reply]
I've seen a few studies that have said similar. In fact a couple have said shutting down schools didn't do nearly what we thought but of course at the time, who knew? Now that we do know, all of this talk about not starting school needs to be curtailed. [Reply]
Originally Posted by petegz28:
I've seen a few studies that have said similar. In fact a couple have said shutting down schools didn't do nearly what we thought but of course at the time, who knew? Now that we do know, all of this talk about not starting school needs to be curtailed.
I think that, if I'm a grandparent, and my grandkids are going to school every day, it's probably still prudent for them to still try and keep their distance if at all possible.
But, yeah, it seems unlikely that school kids are going to be "super spreaders" like adults can be. [Reply]
(CNN)Sweden has revealed that despite adopting more relaxed measures to control coronavirus, only 7.3% of people in Stockholm had developed the antibodies needed to fight the disease by late April.
The figure, which Sweden's Public Health Authority confirmed to CNN, is roughly similar to other countries that have data and well below the 70-90% needed to create "herd immunity" in a population.
It comes after the country adopted a very different strategy to stop the spread of coronavirus to other countries by only imposing very light restrictions on daily life.
Sweden's chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said the number was a "little lower" than expected "but not remarkably lower, maybe one or a couple of percent."
"It squares pretty well with the models we have," he added, while speaking at a news conference in Stockholm.
The study carried out by Sweden's Public Health Agency aims to determine the potential herd immunity in the population, based on 1,118 tests carried out in one week. It aims to carry out the same number of tests every seven days over an eight-week period. Results from other regions would be released later, a Public Health Authority spokesperson said.
Sweden has adopted a different strategy to other Nordic nations during the pandemic, choosing to avoid a lockdown and keep most schools, restaurants, salons and bars open. It did, however, ask people to refrain from making long journeys, placing an emphasis on personal responsibility.
The strategy was criticized by Swedish researchers early on, who said that attempting to create herd immunity had low support. But the authorities denied that achieving herd immunity was their goal.
Herd immunity is reached when the majority of a given population -- 70 to 90% -- becomes immune to an infectious disease, either because they have become infected and recovered, or through vaccination. When that happens, the disease is less likely to spread to people who aren't immune, because there just aren't enough infectious carriers to reach them.
No community has yet achieved this and a vaccine "will get us to herd immunity quicker" than infection, Michael Mina, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a recent interview with Public Radio International's The World.
Sweden's percentage of people with antibodies is not far off that of other countries that did enforce lockdowns. In Spain, 5% of people had developed coronavirus antibodies by May 14, according to preliminary results of an epidemiological study by the government.
According to Martin Kuba, an official Jihocesky region in the Czech Republic who spearheaded a randomly selected mass testing for coronavirus among the general public and frontline workers, the initial results showed that the proportion of people who have had the disease stood at "single digit percent" rather than "fraction of a percent".
Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, estimated earlier this month on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon that between 5% and 15% of people in the US have been infected.
He said the coronavirus was going to circulate and infect at least 60% to 70% of the population before it slows down, but warned that the country had "a long ways to go" to get to a level of herd immunity. A report he wrote along with other epidemiologists and a historian estimated this would likely take 18 to 24 months.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Program, said the concept of herd immunity was a "dangerous calculation."
When asked if he would be comfortable with immunity passports based on his company's tests, CEO of Swiss drugmaker Roche Severin Schwan told CNN's Julia Chatterley: "I do believe that we are in a world with a lot of ambiguity, and we also have to make decisions on incomplete information. So, I do think it is valuable information, but we should not fully rely on it."
On April 24, chief epidemiologist Tegnell told BBC radio that the authorities believed Stockholm had "an immunity level... somewhere between 15 and 20% of the population."
He said the strategy had "worked in some aspects ... because our health system has been able to cope. There has always been at least 20% of the intensive care beds empty and able to take care of Covid-19 patients."
Asked whether Sweden's approach will help it withstand a possible second wave, Tegnell said he believed it would.
"It will definitely affect the reproduction rate and slow down the spread," he said, but added that it wouldn't be enough to achieve "herd immunity."
But Sweden's foreign minister Ann Linde and Peter Lindgren, managing director at the Swedish Institute for Health Economics (IHE), said last month that it had failed to prevent a high number of deaths in care homes.
Sweden has now had 32,172 cases and 3,871 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaFace:
I think that, if I'm a grandparent, and my grandkids are going to school every day, it's probably still prudent for them to still try and keep their distance if at all possible.
But, yeah, it seems unlikely that school kids are going to be "super spreaders" like adults can be.
Let's face the facts, there is never going to be a 100% safe scenario. If we shut down everything because someone somewhere may have this and might spread it to someone who might be at high risk then we are shut down for good.
Everything is starting to trend downward. The places that are re-opening don't have their hospitals hemorrhaging dead people. And what I find a bit ironic is there were some people who swore the warm weather would do little to anything to this virus and now we are hearing it as an excuse as to why things are going down now but will come back in the fall. [Reply]
Originally Posted by petegz28:
Let's face the facts, there is never going to be a 100% safe scenario. If we shut down everything because someone somewhere may have this and might spread it to someone who might be at high risk then we are shut down for good.
Everything is starting to trend downward. The places that are re-opening don't have their hospitals hemorrhaging dead people. And what I find a bit ironic is there were some people who swore the warm weather would do little to anything to this virus and now we are hearing it as an excuse as to why things are going down now but will come back in the fall.
Warm weather with social distancing measures still in place. Brazil is warm but getting hit hard without much social distancing. [Reply]
