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 DaFace:
Here's a good article that seedy posted in late March that lays out the process we're going through.
From the article.
Ummmmmm........
Originally Posted by :
Summary of the article: Strong coronavirus measures today should only last a few weeks, there shouldn’t be a big peak of infections afterwards, and it can all be done for a reasonable cost to society, saving millions of lives along the way. If we don’t take these measures, tens of millions will be infected, many will die, along with anybody else that requires intensive care, because the healthcare system will have collapsed.
Originally Posted by :
While Elizabeth Aguirre was being treated for coronavirus at Christ Hospital, she kept thinking of the people that depended on her. She had a 4-year-old son at home, and her parents, who lived in Ecuador, relied on the money she sent them.
She was also 20 weeks pregnant with a daughter.
As Aguirre, 40, deteriorated in the hospital, doctors tried many strategies to save her and her unborn daughter: intubation, courses of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, and, for the first time at Christ Hospital, the anti-Ebola medicine remdesivir. On Tuesday, after 24 days in the hospital, she returned home to her family.
All I could do was ask God to give me the opportunity to live through this to take care of my children,” she said through an interpreter.
On March 23, Aguirre, a Union City customer service agent, first noticed her symptoms: fever, chills, headaches, shortness of breath. She was admitted to the Jersey City hospital on March 30.
Aguirre was entering a war zone. Hudson County’s outbreak was still accelerating, and Christ Hospital was dealing with a “tidal wave” of patients, the hospital’s chief medical officer, Dr. Tucker Woods, said in March. The hospital was running critically low on ventilators and protective gear, and patients were being housed in previously unused rooms.
Normally staff saw roughly five or six intubations a day. During the outbreak, more than 20 patients were on ventilators every day.
“I was thinking about all of the things that I saw in the news media, about how many people were dying at that moment,” Aguirre said. “I was very scared.”
Aguirre was assigned to the care of Dr. Shil Patel. A gastroenterology fellow, Patel was not supposed to be taking charge of patients who were critically ill with respiratory diseases. But after the massive influx of coronavirus patients, Patel agreed to brush up on his general medicine and step in.
“There was a period of time where I (was) just reading like a madman, trying to catch up on if there’s anything new that I’ve been missing,” Patel said.
Taking care of Aguirre was “a little nerve-wracking,” he said, “in her case particularly because she’s pregnant.”
“I’d already seen quite a (number) of patients not doing so well, and unfortunately not even making it,” he said. “I didn’t want her, obviously, to be another one of those patients."
Aguirre was isolated and put on high-flow oxygen. Because her pregnancy was still early, Patel said the doctors’ attention was focused on saving her life. If her condition took a turn for the worse, it would be extremely difficult to save the baby. She remembers being told that her chances of recovery were low.
Patel hoped that Aguirre would follow a path that they’d seen in some other patients: “We would essentially support her, take care of her until her symptoms (peaked)," he said. "And she would ease her way into again normalizing.”
Instead, Aguirre’s condition deteriorated. Doctors tried the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, with little effect. On April 2, she was put on a ventilator. Doctors say they’ve learned that once patients are intubated with a ventilator, it’s extremely difficult to get them off again. Many die on the machines.
Aguirre’s doctors had already decided to explore other avenues. They’d heard that California-based pharmaceutical company Gilead was offering the drug remdesivir, which was initially developed to treat Ebola, for compassionate use, meaning that the drug could be used to treat severely ill patients as a last resort.
At that point, using remdesivir was granted on a case-by-case basis, and was allowed for only two categories of patient: children and pregnant women.
But figuring out how to secure the drug was another challenge.
“I was like, all right, how the hell do I do this?” Patel said. “Our hospital is not one of those big hospitals. We don’t even have departments that (are) familiar with this.”
Patel contacted Gilead, which sent instructions: Aguirre would need to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and that approval would then need to be sent to Gilead, which would then send a course of the medicine. Some 36 hours and one sleepless night later, Patel succeeded in acquiring the drug.
The remdesivir arrived in time to start treating Aguirre just a day or two after she was intubated.
After the drug was administered, Aguirre improved. Her breathing got stronger, and she stopped depending on the ventilator. She was extubated after just three days on the machine.
“I just remember that I just continuously kept breathing to help my lungs get better,” Aguirre said. “I was just thinking to breathe.”
She spent the next 18 days in the hospital in what Patel calls a “recovery phase.” On April 23, she was discharged. For fear of spreading the disease, Aguirre instead went to stay at her mother-in-law’s home. She still needs oxygen for most of the day, but her breathing is improving, and her gynecologist told her that the baby’s heart is healthy.
Patel is wary of attributing her recovery to remdesivir, though the hospital has expanded its use of the drug.
“It’s hard to tell if it was just the course of the disease, because she was still a relatively young patient, or if it was the drug itself,” he said.
On Tuesday, Aguirre received the results of her last coronavirus test: negative. For the first time in a month, she was able to come home and see her husband and son.
“I was crying. He was crying,” she said. “I’m very happy that I’m cured.”
Pretty scary stuff , the fact a gastroenterologist had to care for her is scary, she was young, not sure if she had other pre existing conditions other than pregnancy, in the end two lives saved [Reply]
“At that point, using remdesivir was granted on a case-by-case basis, and was allowed for only two categories of patient: children and pregnant women.“
Originally Posted by Chiefnj2:
“At that point, using remdesivir was granted on a case-by-case basis, and was allowed for only two categories of patient: children and pregnant women.“
This is troubling.
That was pretty early on before some of their trials it has been granted use in more cases I think. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Monticore:
That was pretty early on before some of their trials it has been granted use in more cases I think.
I’m still troubled by the fact that in a life and death situation a competent adult can’t consent to using an experimental treatment, and that the treatment was available only for a certain class of people. If the husband was also sick, he likely wouldn’t have gotten it and thus had a greater chance of dying. [Reply]
It’s crazy how sick people get from this even when they survive. 18 days in the hospital plus still recovering. It's mind boggling compared to normal cold/flu season sickness.
I've only had 1 time I missed more than 1 day of work due to being ill. It's hard to imagine telling your boss, sorry I missed the last month of work, I got sick. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ChiliConCarnage:
It’s crazy how sick people get from this even when they survive. 18 days in the hospital plus still recovering. It's mind boggling compared to normal cold/flu season sickness.
I've only had 1 time I missed more than 1 day of work due to being ill. It's hard to imagine telling your boss, sorry I missed the last month of work, I got sick.
A very very very very small portion of people get that sick. [Reply]
