The Next Pandemic: SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19

[FireChans]

31 minutes ago, shoshin said:

 

Uh the IgG antibodies don't go away within weeks. The IgA ones do. 

 

And If you have a vaccine that gives you Covid IgG antibodies for a few months, you could--if nearly everyone (the present 90% of PPP posters excluded, ahem) gets a few cycles of the vaccine--control the spread of the disease in pretty short order. 

 

We can see in that initial study that different types of cases (asymptomatic vs symptomatic) were significant contributors to the length of time that the IgG antibodies were detected (which is not necessarily an indicator of the end of immunity). So it possible (but who knows) that a vaccine might provide longer immunity. But none of us knows how long the vaccine would be effective for--I am sure the studies are watching this closely. 

I think the point you are missing is if infection does not permit immunity, it is no guarantee vaccine permits immunity, especially if the virus prone to mutation.

 

You only have to look at the difference between the flu vaccine's efficacy and the polio vaccine's efficacy.  I've known people who have gotten the flu multiple times in the same season.

[shoshin]

7 minutes ago, FireChans said:

I think the point you are missing is if infection does not permit immunity, it is no guarantee vaccine permits immunity, especially if the virus prone to mutation.

 

You only have to look at the difference between the flu vaccine's efficacy and the polio vaccine's efficacy.  I've known people who have gotten the flu multiple times in the same season.

 

You're mixing apples and porcupines bringing up the flu compared to Covid. The flu mutates very fast and there are always many strains in the wild. The vaccines are usually aimed at just the anticipated top flu strains, nothing more. 

 

SARS-Cov is not like that at all. Far less mutation. 

[FireChans]

2 minutes ago, shoshin said:

 

You're mixing apples and porcupines bringing up the flu compared to Covid. The flu mutates very fast and there are always many strains in the wild. The vaccines are usually aimed at just the anticipated top flu strains, nothing more. 

 

SARS-Cov is not like that at all. Far less mutation. 

I'm not sure that the jury isn't still out on that. American scientists have seen it for 3 months.  I'm not sure we know its full capabilities or lack thereof now.

[BillStime]

These graphs speak volumes to what an absolute disaster the federal government’s inconsistent approach has been to COVID.  It’s no surprise considering as cases skyrocket and hospitals are full in areas that did not enforce proper protocols. In addition having a leader who has said multiple times he wants to slow down testing and thinks the virus is going away is not doing anything to course correct.
#flushtherurdsonnovember3rd  #wearamaskinpublic

 

[3rdnlng]

1 hour ago, BillStime said:

These graphs speak volumes to what an absolute disaster the federal government’s inconsistent approach has been to COVID.  It’s no surprise considering as cases skyrocket and hospitals are full in areas that did not enforce proper protocols. In addition having a leader who has said multiple times he wants to slow down testing and thinks the virus is going away is not doing anything to course correct.
#flushtherurdsonnovember3rd  #wearamaskinpublic

 

You don't belong in any honest discussion.

[Magox]

Berenson does Yeoman’s work as he cuts through the crap as good as anyone.

 

 

[Magox]

To piggyback off of an earlier post about how the death rate continues to fall.

 

Its gonna bottom out pretty soon. The question is does it begin to rise and at what rate?

 

 

[Magox]

All that talk panic porn regarding the Houston hospitals being at critical capacity was a complete distortion and misinterpretation of what the hospitals were actually saying.   
 

 

 

—-Healthcare CEOs of the Texas Medical Center said Thursday that a letter that was sent out to the community Wednesday regarding the hospital system's "increasingly stretched" ICU capacity level was "misinterpreted" and stressed the pandemic is not eclipsing hospital capabilities to care for  COVID-19 positive patients as well as other patients.

Following reports that TMC had reached 97 percent capacity, Dr. Marc Boom, Houston Methodist president and CEO, said ICU capacity percentages in the 80s or 90s is "completely normal."——

 

“We have the ability to go far higher than that in terms of the ICU beds we can utilize for COVID-19 patients," Boom said during a press conference. "...We have PPE (personal protection equipment) we have the capability, (and) we have learned enormous amounts about caring for people with COVID-19."

“The reality is all of us have the ability to significantly expand capacity on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis," Lawson said.”

 

Boom said overall, hospitals are seeing younger COVID-19 patients, who stay for a shorter period of time, and fewer deaths. Thanks to active surveillance programs and quick turnaround testing times, Boom and Mark Wallace, Texas Children’s Hospital president and CEO, said a "relatively low number" of hospital employees have tested positive for the virus. Texas Children's started accepting adult COVID-19 positive patients this week and is currently operating at a 74 percent ICU occupancy, Wallace said.

 

———

 

The national media is a broken institution 

[Hedge]

 

 

Quote

“One of the reasons we are so involved in this is that you don’t want the first vaccines to go to the highest-bidding countries,” Melinda Gates explained. “There are 60 million healthcare workers [around the world]. They deserve to get the vaccine first, they’re the ones dealing with this on the front lines, trying to keep us all safe. And then you have to start to tier from there, based on the countries and the populations. Here in the United States, it’s going to be Black people who really should get it first and many indigenous people, as well as people with underlying symptoms, and then elderly people.”

 

[shoshin]

1 hour ago, Magox said:

All that talk panic porn regarding the Houston hospitals being at critical capacity was a complete distortion and misinterpretation of what the hospitals were actually saying.   
 

 

 

—-Healthcare CEOs of the Texas Medical Center said Thursday that a letter that was sent out to the community Wednesday regarding the hospital system's "increasingly stretched" ICU capacity level was "misinterpreted" and stressed the pandemic is not eclipsing hospital capabilities to care for  COVID-19 positive patients as well as other patients.

Following reports that TMC had reached 97 percent capacity, Dr. Marc Boom, Houston Methodist president and CEO, said ICU capacity percentages in the 80s or 90s is "completely normal."——

 

“We have the ability to go far higher than that in terms of the ICU beds we can utilize for COVID-19 patients," Boom said during a press conference. "...We have PPE (personal protection equipment) we have the capability, (and) we have learned enormous amounts about caring for people with COVID-19."

“The reality is all of us have the ability to significantly expand capacity on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis," Lawson said.”

 

Boom said overall, hospitals are seeing younger COVID-19 patients, who stay for a shorter period of time, and fewer deaths. Thanks to active surveillance programs and quick turnaround testing times, Boom and Mark Wallace, Texas Children’s Hospital president and CEO, said a "relatively low number" of hospital employees have tested positive for the virus. Texas Children's started accepting adult COVID-19 positive patients this week and is currently operating at a 74 percent ICU occupancy, Wallace said.

 

———

 

The national media is a broken institution 

An interesting commentary that could have a profit motive but Gov Abbott is pausing reopening and elective surgeries because...? 
 

And I agree that most hospitals operate with 85% bed capacity. That’s good business. When you get a surge of new cases, that 85 doesn’t stay level without disruption to the system in other ways. 

[Doc Brown]

4 hours ago, BillStime said:

These graphs speak volumes to what an absolute disaster the federal government’s inconsistent approach has been to COVID.  It’s no surprise considering as cases skyrocket and hospitals are full in areas that did not enforce proper protocols. In addition having a leader who has said multiple times he wants to slow down testing and thinks the virus is going away is not doing anything to course correct.
#flushtherurdsonnovember3rd  #wearamaskinpublic

 

In simple terms, if you compare the Northeastern states to most European countries you'll see a similar graph.  The spikes in Latin America are similar to the spikes you're seeing now in FL, CA, TX, etc...  The graph of the US is pointless unless you divide the states into geographical regions.

[Taraka]

Waiting on a vaccine and it arriving quickly is the only hope we have of stopping this virus. Until then we're *****

[shoshin]

5 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

In simple terms, if you compare the Northeastern states to most European countries you'll see a similar graph.  The spikes in Latin America are similar to the spikes you're seeing now in FL, CA, TX, etc...  The graph of the US is pointless unless you divide the states into geographical regions.

We will see how the states do with this spike and further whether they will be pee in the pool especially come the fall. 
 

The next few weeks of deaths data in those  will tell an unmistakeable tale. Mid July we can quantify the effect of this case spike as  like NYC (bad), a new thing where deaths don’t follow cases (amazing), or something in between. 
 

2 minutes ago, ~Kostabi~ said:

Waiting on a vaccine and it arriving quickly is the only hope we have of stopping this virus. Until then we're *****

Now that’s how you do panic folks!

Edited June 26, 2020 by shoshin

[TPS]

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/covid-lockdown-versus-economy-was-always-false-trade-off?sref=U5wmynFo

 

Quote

After at least three months of furious debate over the rival merits of fighting the pandemic and keeping the economy alive, it looks ever more as though this was a false dichotomy. The disease needs to be beaten. Even if it is not as terrifying as some made it seem a few months ago, the economy cannot function on full throttle until the virus has been bottled up and defeated.

 

[Beast]

8 minutes ago, TPS said:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/covid-lockdown-versus-economy-was-always-false-trade-off?sref=U5wmynFo

 

 

Didn’t open the link and just read the quote.

 

Good luck with that. What are the plans? How do you shut an economy down for months upon months and expect to return to a functioning economy? Who is going to pay the bills for those business owners and employees that have no revenue coming in?

 

Does the government need to plant a few more of those money trees?

[123719bwiqrb]

10 minutes ago, Beast said:

 

Does the government need to plant a few more of those money trees?

 

<insert money printer go brrrrrr.jpg here>

[Warren Zevon]

34 minutes ago, Beast said:

Does the government need to plant a few more of those money trees?

 

Definitely going to need at least a second stimulus bill. 

[Magox]

4 hours ago, shoshin said:

An interesting commentary that could have a profit motive but Gov Abbott is pausing reopening and elective surgeries because...? 
 

And I agree that most hospitals operate with 85% bed capacity. That’s good business. When you get a surge of new cases, that 85 doesn’t stay level without disruption to the system in other ways. 

 

I'm not going to get into the motives of what these hospital officials are saying.  I assume their facts are correct.

 

Why is Gov Abbott pausing the reopening and elective surgeries?  Simple, there are lots of infections and new hospitalizations so he wants to try to get that under control and he wants to make sure that he doesn't have a PR crisis of not having hospitalization capacity to treat all patients.

 

If you see even the hospitals are saying that the people who are being hospitalized are younger, healthier and staying in for shorter time periods.   This all seems to align with what we have been hearing from the governors as well.

 

 

My view on this has been clear all along, protect the most vulnerable and lets get the economy and peoples lives going again, with the understanding that the infections were going to rise.   Of course my view is not how Governors are communicating this with their constituents because they don't want to fully level with them.   I would, even though on the surface it's not politically palatable. 

 

The hopes was that the virus would have a seasonal component to it, it doesn't appear that is the case.   Which is unfortunate, no respite.

 

With that said, under the scenario that I was advocating for and that the reality is that this does not appear to have a seasonal component to it, things are going about as well as I would have thought.

 

That the seniors appear to be the ones who are being most protected and that is reflected in the census of demographic data and fatality counts we have been getting.  Hospitals are in great position to withstand these surges.  Medical professionals are better equipped with more experience and better proven methods to treat their patients.  Testing is increasing dramatically.  Surveillance testing is being conducted to target specific areas.   I just wish there was more granular data on who exactly is testing positive.  How many are coming from people requesting tests (which would indicate more community spread), or through contact tracing or through targeted surveillance testing.  Right now, it's all anecdotes.  

 

Pretty much everything that I was thinking would happen has been happening aside from the Hopes that it would be seasonal.  But even then, I predicted that the contact tracing wouldn't be effective because the true baseline of the infected count was way too high for that to be effective.  That turned out to be true.   I predicted that the death count would go down and bottom out to around 500, it's down to 609 (7 day moving average) and still trending lower.  It may get down there or not, but it's close.   In other words, I didn't expect to see us have some very low number knowing that the US's strategy to reopen was more aggressive than other countries and that we have more autonomous geographical zones than other countries which makes it more of a challenge in that regards.   I said that I expected that the hospitals would be well positioned to handle any surges, so far that seems to be the case aside from some dishonest reporting from the media.   I predicted months ago that the true IFR rate would be somewhere between .25%-.5%, and with all the studies that appears to be well within that range, even the CDC yesterday came out with something yesterday that indicated that to be the case with the asymptomatic people.   I had strong assumptions based off early studies that children were low emitters of the virus and there have been countless studies and governmental bodies that are confirming this with their statements.

 

I just wish that we had political leaders that would completely level with us.  By basically saying -

 

It sucks that this virus came to us from China, but it is what it is.  There will be people who will die from the virus but that the risks of staying shut down or severely restricted poses larger risks both on a public health and economic standpoint than the virus itself.  That we know who this virus affects most and that we will do everything we possibly can to protect the most vulnerable and those who are working on the front lines.  The people who are most affected are people over 70 with multiple comorbidities.  If you aren't in this category the risk of you dying is very low.     As we open up the economy, we will see an increase of infections and there will be more hospitalizations but we fully expect that the vast majority of those who are hospitalized will survive.

 

But whatever, politicians will do what they do.  

 

 

[SoCal Deek]

Yesterday. Thursday, saw yet another first since I’ve been reporting. No states were in triple digit Covid deaths and only ONE state, California, reported over 50 deaths. Over thirty states were in single digits with around a dozen reporting ZERO, again. Is there a point when this stops being considered a ‘deadly’ virus and is instead something that just causes people to get sick? Has the virus changed? Have we improved our response and treatment? With the loosening of restrictions some weeks ago now one would not have anticipated these results. Let’s face it, people aren’t THAT good at masking and distancing...they’re just not.

[123719bwiqrb]

6 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

Yesterday. Thursday, saw yet another first since I’ve been reporting. No states were in triple digit Covid deaths and only ONE state, California, reported over 50 deaths. Over thirty states were in single digits with around a dozen reporting ZERO, again. Is there a point when this stops being considered a ‘deadly’ virus and is instead something that just causes people to get sick? Has the virus changed? Have we improved our response and treatment? With the loosening of restrictions some weeks ago now one would not have anticipated these results. Let’s face it, people aren’t THAT good at masking and distancing...they’re just not.

I think it is a few small factors.  Would be nice if the media would fill us in.

 

1) We have a good consensus on treatment plans.

 

C) Better/faster testing gets people & docs ahead of the game. They aren’t waiting at home until they turn blue.

 

Z) The virus seems to be “weaker” wrt deaths.  Maybe vitamin D levels are naturally higher this time of year, so that is helping?

 

7) Older at risk people are now finally taking the proper precautions?  Maybe most are not wearing a mask properly, but the elderly got the message loud & clear?

 

(The numbering is above is a joke, thanks to Buzz from Home Alone).