Covid-19 discussion and humor thread [Was: CDC says don't touch your face to avoid Covid19...Vets to the rescue!

[Hapless Bills Fan]

53 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

44yr old former federal prosecutor and founder of Above the Law legal blog.

 

From 2 days ago:

https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/03/19/david-lat-speaks-from-the-hospital-about-fears-hopes-and-what-people-should-know/?slreturn=20200221231157

 

 

Here’s the twitter thread he was using to document his story, for those interested: (click on tweet to see whole thread. Too long to post)

 

 

Thank you for sharing this, @BillsFan4

 

I've come to believe data on the case fatality rate by age group is blinding us to the real impact of this illness.  It makes the disease look like an Old Person's Problem. 

 

But the fact that 40% of the hospitalizations, including critical care, are age 20-54 shows a different light.    If it's true as in the data from China 20% of the overall cases are serious, then I think the way to look at it is if one gets sick with covid-19, there is a 1 in 5 chance it will make you life-alteringly sick.  I pray for him that he survives.

 

Survival will mean month or months of recovery to get back to where he was before illness.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 hour ago, BillsFan4 said:

44yr old former federal prosecutor and founder of Above the Law legal blog.

 

From 2 days ago:

https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/03/19/david-lat-speaks-from-the-hospital-about-fears-hopes-and-what-people-should-know/?slreturn=20200221231157

 

 

Here’s the twitter thread he was using to document his story, for those interested: (click on tweet to see whole thread. Too long to post)

 

 

Here's a compilation of the thread by "threader"

 

 

 

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

43 minutes ago, Augie said:

 

Save me the click, let me guess......they didn’t test anyone? No tests means it doesn’t exist! 

 

Just a wild guess. 

 

Oh, it's way worse than that.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 hour ago, JR in Pittsburgh said:

haha— yes. This lady tried to get a test, and had to go to the governor and senator, and it was mass chaos.  Only in West Virginia! 

 

They lost her husband's sample and claimed he'd never been tested, then that it was no longer viable and he needed to be retested (they're testing for viral RNA, viral viability may not matter - though I lack info on that point for coronavirus.  @Wacka?  @BillsFanNC?).

 

After 5 days had passed, she had called the Governor's office, and her Senator's office:

"As she struggled to understand what was taking so long, she turned on the TV, and there was President Donald Trump holding a briefing and talking about her state leader, Gov. Jim Justice. "I'm in the middle of all this and President Trump was giving a press conference complimenting 'big Jim' on how well he's managing the health care in West Virginia and managing the Covid process. And I was like, you have got to be kidding me," Carolyn explains. "It was just all starting to feel surreal," she adds."

 

During that time, of course, she developed symptoms.  Then they found her husband's sample and tested it: Positive.

[Sundancer]

Still hearing nothing from the admistration about the need to track and isolate cases coming out of this. 
 

“As the number of global coronavirus cases surpassed 300,000 and the death toll rose to more than 13,000, the World Health Organization’s top emergency expert said on Sunday that countries could not simply lock down their societies to defeat coronavirus without public health measures to avoid a resurgence of the virus down the road.

“What we really need to focus on is finding those who are sick, those who have the virus, and isolate them, find their contacts and isolate them,” the expert, Mike Ryan, said in an interview on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.”

“If we don’t put in place the strong public health measures now,” he said, “when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted, the danger is the disease will jump back up.””

[Sundancer]

2 hours ago, Sundancer said:

Still hearing nothing from the admistration about the need to track and isolate cases coming out of this. 
 

“

As the number of global coronavirus cases surpassed 300,000 and the death toll rose to more than 13,000, the World Health Organization’s top emergency expert said on Sunday that countries could not simply lock down their societies to defeat coronavirus without public health measures to avoid a resurgence of the virus down the road.

“What we really need to focus on is finding those who are sick, those who have the virus, and isolate them, find their contacts and isolate them,” the expert, Mike Ryan, said in an interview on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.”

“If we don’t put in place the strong public health measures now,” he said, “when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted, the danger is the disease will jump back up.””

The fact that New York has given up on widespread testing is an absolute worst case. People focusing on the death rates are often ignoring the hospitalization rates. Cuomo gets it. 
 

Social distancing now only works in conjunction with massive testing and tracking organized centrally but...
 

Boston is Still open. 

[K-9]

30 minutes ago, Sundancer said:

The fact that New York has given up on widespread testing is an absolute worst case. People focusing on the death rates are often ignoring the hospitalization rates. Cuomo gets it. 
 

Social distancing now only works in conjunction with massive testing and tracking organized centrally but...
 

Boston is Still open. 

It’s the reason that NY has gone away from widespread testing that has me even more concerned: the mass shortage of protective gear needed by hospitals and other care givers. 

[Sundancer]

7 minutes ago, K-9 said:

It’s the reason that NY has gone away from widespread testing that has me even more concerned: the mass shortage of protective gear needed by hospitals and other care givers. 

That stuff is coming. But it re-emphasizes the need for quarantine everywhere at some degree. If you’re in a healthy area stay that way, please. Other areas need the resources you don’t. 
 

Must be centrally organized. Another day passes without that and Boston is still open. 

Edited March 22, 2020 by Sundancer

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 hour ago, K-9 said:

It’s the reason that NY has gone away from widespread testing that has me even more concerned: the mass shortage of protective gear needed by hospitals and other care givers. 

 

There was something that didn't make sense to me there. 

It *should* be possible to test someone without risking exposure and without completely changing protective equipment for every person tested.

I'd like to understand the logistics there.

[Cripple Creek]

10 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

They lost her husband's sample and claimed he'd never been tested, then that it was no longer viable and he needed to be retested (they're testing for viral RNA, viral viability may not matter - though I lack info on that point for coronavirus.  @Wacka?  @BillsFanNC?).

 

After 5 days had passed, she had called the Governor's office, and her Senator's office:

"As she struggled to understand what was taking so long, she turned on the TV, and there was President Donald Trump holding a briefing and talking about her state leader, Gov. Jim Justice. "I'm in the middle of all this and President Trump was giving a press conference complimenting 'big Jim' on how well he's managing the health care in West Virginia and managing the Covid process. And I was like, you have got to be kidding me," Carolyn explains. "It was just all starting to feel surreal," she adds."

 

During that time, of course, she developed symptoms.  Then they found her husband's sample and tested it: Positive.

You missed the best part.  The state said his re-test was positive.  Wife says he was never re-tested. (unless I misread)  

[Hapless Bills Fan]

37 minutes ago, Cripple Creek said:

You missed the best part.  The state said his re-test was positive.  Wife says he was never re-tested. (unless I misread)  

 

You didn't misread, but I'm not sure that was the best part.  One of the parts that made me shudder, for sure.

On a different note, the Saints are ready to rescue you!

 

[BillsFan4]

3 hours ago, Sundancer said:

That stuff is coming. But it re-emphasizes the need for quarantine everywhere at some degree. If you’re in a healthy area stay that way, please. Other areas need the resources you don’t. 
 

Must be centrally organized. Another day passes without that and Boston is still open. 

I really hope it is coming. They’ve been saying it’s coming for over a week now, it’s shipped, you can get it. But everyone I know in healthcare is saying that is absolutely false. I pray it changes soon.

 

As of last night there was still no proof that the defense production act was even invoked (despite saying it was multiple times now)

Edited March 22, 2020 by BillsFan4

[Hapless Bills Fan]

16 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

I really hope it is coming. They’ve been saying it’s coming for over a week now, it’s shipped, you can get it. But everyone I know in healthcare is saying that is absolutely false. I pray it changes soon.

 

Yes.

 

What I don't understand is why we don't adopt a two-tiered testing system using one of the rapid tests that are known to have unacceptable false-negatives, as a screening tool.  I'm talking about the Biomedomics IgM-IgG test, for example, that works from a finger prick and can be developed in 15 minutes.  It sounds as though they're filing EUA but for a joint test system with PCR.  They claim to have sold 500,000 tests in China.

The test works off a fingerprick blood sample and develops in 15 minutes.  Per the company's accepted pre-print, it has an 88% success rate at detecting infections (failure to detect may be due to low antibody response in an individual, or testing prior to development of antibody response and may not be fixable) and a 90% false positive rate (the false positives may be fixable with a tweak to the reagants, but of course that could impact the false negative rate).

What this would seem to suggest as a strategy is:
1) Drive-through or walk-through mass screening with Biomedomics test.  Physically isolate test takers from patients and testing from results with a plexi barrier and a reach-through plastic window; test-takers need only change gloves between patients.

2) If Biomedomics positive -> give quarantine instructions and initiate contact tracing

3) If Biomedomics negative -> RT-PCR test

 

It could theoretically allow quicker, mass testing and spare the reagents and labor of the more sensitive, but more finicky test.

[K-9]

3 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

There was something that didn't make sense to me there. 

It *should* be possible to test someone without risking exposure and without completely changing protective equipment for every person tested.

I'd like to understand the logistics there.

The PPE required for testers needs to go to care givers instead due to the dire shortage. I agree that testers should re-use as much as possible, but the shortage is what it is, regardless.

Edited March 22, 2020 by K-9

[Hapless Bills Fan]

32 minutes ago, K-9 said:

The PPE required for testers needs to go to care givers instead due to the dire shortage.

 

Yes, I understand that, but if they're running short because the testers are completely changing PPE between people they test, that should be possible to work around safely using barriers.  We MUST test, and devising barrier systems to minimize PPE to 2 per shift with 10 techs testing 1000 patients (say) would use 10x less PPE than 2 techs testing 100 patients but changing each time.

However, while testing throat swabs, this is probably more of a challenge.  For a finger-prick test, easier.

 

[Edit: yes, if the national stockpiles were larger and manufacturing were ramped up, this would be less of a problem, but the same math holds]

[K-9]

6 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Yes, I understand that, but if they're running short because the testers are completely changing PPE between people they test, that should be possible to work around safely using barriers.  We MUST test.

I don’t think that’s why they’re running short, though, necessarily. It’s a question of manufacturing and stockpiles. Speaking of which, has the federal government begun delivering those millions face masks yet? Or are we still not a “delivery clerk?”

 

And yes, we MUST test. Unfortunately, we MUST also protect care givers on the front lines of the crisis. A dilemma healthcare workers and others began warning us about a while ago. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

From @Cripple Creek in the other thread: immediate action needed to ensure crops can get harvested

 

6 hours ago, Cripple Creek said:

Produce supply line affected by Consulate closures.  (Please move if deemed an unreliable source.)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/mexico-farms-h2a-visas-produce-coronavirus-us

[Sundancer]

Unreliable source but curious issue. I wonder if Americans who are out of work can be trained to do this. I bet not fast enough. 

[mead107]

Better plant a garden. 

Stock up on canning equipment.  

[T&C]

Rand Paul has tested positive for the Coronavirus...