Coronavirus (way, way, off topic)
-
Here in DK, we started with closing down all public schools, and educational institutions 2 weeks ago. For my part, I have been working at my home office for the last 2½ weeks.
The government is taking a more and more strict approach to the current situation, limiting the freedom of movement, the latest is that (unless you'r a family living together) you are only allowed to be 2 persons in the same area (taking a walk etc.). And the schools etc. are closed at least until 14th of april (after the Easter holidays in denmark)
Luckily I live in the countryside, so we have lot's of space around us, with forrests etc. So we can get out in the fresh spring air, almost without meeting other people, or if we do meet other people, we can keep a safety distance of 2m. This also means that our local grocery store is not overly crowded with people, when we do shopping, as opposed to the shops in bigger cities.
As a kind of bonus, I get the opportunity to order some gadgets for my home office, now that I work full time here. "But honey, this thing will unclutter my desktop / make it easier for me to switch between work and hobby".." :smirk:
-
If you have a weak temperament or are easily upset, you may want to stop reading now.....
OK, then, for those who are still reading... I think we all have a shared interest in vetting out what is real vs propaganda. Therefore, how is it that as of this morning the news media is projecting "only" 20,000 dead in the UK and maybe "only" 200,000 dead in the US? Those sound like linear extrapolations to me, not exponential ones. If instead covid-19 really is doubling every 3.5 days, as I've heard from MD's, then in 5 weeks time it's going to be 2^10, i.e. 1000x, worse. Right? So, by that rekoning, in the UK it's going to be a million dead or dying and in the US about 2.5 million. In just 5 weeks from now. Even if social distancing has slowed the rate, the media numbers for the total cost (not just 5 weeks from now) sound way, way off. Or am I missing something? Even if we manage to "flatten the curve," then short of a miracle, that only means it will take longer for the 1000x damage to occur, not that it's going to be avoided. Right? Meanwhile, due to shortages that haven't yet occurred and so aren't yet reflected in the early numbers, I'd wager the outcomes will be even worse than 1000x worse. Does anyone here have a different viewpoint? It seems to me that the official projections are incredibly low-balled, and so they are actually contributing to the problem! The best way to flatten the curve would be for people to have accurate projections, because then they'd be shocked out of their complacency and not be taking unwise risks.
If you can possibly stay at home and not go out at all for anything for the next two months, I think you'd be wise to do that. Why? Because within that timeframe the actual trendlines should become a lot more apparent to everyone, and so by then people will have dialed in more closely to whatever the actual risks are and adjusted their behavior accordingly. To draw an anology, right now it's like Chernobyl just happened, and yet people are still attending parades outdoors the following day (which is what actually happened) because they were not made aware of the true risks.
-
Here the federal government has revised upwards its projections regarding # of infections, # of deaths, and the date of the "peak". They didn't have much choice, given that their prior projections would have soon been invalidated after-the-fact. Their new projections, especially regarding the "peak" date still seems far too conservative. I can only assume they are simply trying to avoid mass panic. Locally the governor has ordered that everyone not involved in giving or receiving essential services stay at home. Finally!
At least so far no one has talked about whether the food delivery infrastructure will be critically damaged. Because it is a high priority, though, I presume that to one degree or another it will continue to function. Some food items are being rationed, and a few categories, like dried beans, have been wiped out, but overall getting enough food to survive doesn't appear to be a problem if you have the money to pay for it. However, with large segments of the economy effectively "turned off," it seems likely that large numbers of people will be running out of money soon, and with the government here being slow to react...
Anyone have an updates for their country? I'm interested to hear more about Viet Nam, since it sounded as though it was doing well and there's so little coverage in the press here about it. Unfortunately, the case of China, there's a lot of suspicion that China under-reported how badly they were affected, which would surely have contributed to the under-reaction in the West. The data from Italy seems solid though. It it weren't for the Italians generously sharing their experience, I'm sure things would be even worse throughout the world.
I'm not sure how much the hospitals can actually do that makes a difference. I had previously read a WHO article that had said that oxygen, which is the first line treatment, didn't actually appear to change the outcomes, though it can keep you alive a bit longer than without it. I'm hearing that 70-80% of those who do advance to ventilation and intubation end up dying even with the added support. I mean, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do all that we can, just that even our best efforts may only occasionally help--which is suprising. I had thought modern medicine, when properly administered, would make more of a difference.
:sneezing_face:
-
I don't know if any of you have seen this before:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
@tbowmo said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
I don't know if any of you have seen this before:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Yes it's famous, I used to watch it daily when there was mainly a big red dot over China, and a few tiny dots elsewhere. Now they had to reduce the size of dots, and it's red everywhere :(
I find the table here https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ easier to see the trends, as the main info to know the progress of the epidemic in a place is the number of new cases / total cases and you can see it right away without clicking on each country. -
Here the federal government has revised upwards its projections regarding # of infections, # of deaths, and the date of the "peak". They didn't have much choice, given that their prior projections would have soon been invalidated after-the-fact. Their new projections, especially regarding the "peak" date still seems far too conservative. I can only assume they are simply trying to avoid mass panic. Locally the governor has ordered that everyone not involved in giving or receiving essential services stay at home. Finally!
At least so far no one has talked about whether the food delivery infrastructure will be critically damaged. Because it is a high priority, though, I presume that to one degree or another it will continue to function. Some food items are being rationed, and a few categories, like dried beans, have been wiped out, but overall getting enough food to survive doesn't appear to be a problem if you have the money to pay for it. However, with large segments of the economy effectively "turned off," it seems likely that large numbers of people will be running out of money soon, and with the government here being slow to react...
Anyone have an updates for their country? I'm interested to hear more about Viet Nam, since it sounded as though it was doing well and there's so little coverage in the press here about it. Unfortunately, the case of China, there's a lot of suspicion that China under-reported how badly they were affected, which would surely have contributed to the under-reaction in the West. The data from Italy seems solid though. It it weren't for the Italians generously sharing their experience, I'm sure things would be even worse throughout the world.
I'm not sure how much the hospitals can actually do that makes a difference. I had previously read a WHO article that had said that oxygen, which is the first line treatment, didn't actually appear to change the outcomes, though it can keep you alive a bit longer than without it. I'm hearing that 70-80% of those who do advance to ventilation and intubation end up dying even with the added support. I mean, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do all that we can, just that even our best efforts may only occasionally help--which is suprising. I had thought modern medicine, when properly administered, would make more of a difference.
:sneezing_face:
@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
I'm not sure how much the hospitals can actually do that makes a difference.
Specialist ICUs can save some of those who are develop viral pneumonia, the reality is that some will die but there is no telling which is which until they succumb. The dilemma is that once ICUs are overloaded the fatality rate climbs due to prioritisation, so the trick is to avoid overwhelming the facilities or accept a higher death rate than may otherwise be the case.
The easiest way to look at this much is as a flu outbreak, but with the added feature of 10 times the infectivity. For flu there are shots which can provide greater but not complete protection for the more prone, an annual mutation which the manufacturers refine on each cycle.
In the COVID case there is as yet no vaccine nor natural immunity, but crucially it is infectivity which is the danger as it presents a deluge of critical cases rather than spread over say many months.
Social distancing and isolation measures can slow the rapid spread, testing vigorously and isolating as in the Singapore and Korean etc models is another successful technique.The rest is a political decision...
This post I thought entirely apt...
-
A quick update regarding how long the virus can live on surfaces. Now it's up to 5 days.
Here’s how long the virus typically lasts on common surfaces:
Glass – 5 days.
Wood – 4 days.
Plastic & stainless-steel – 3 days.
Cardboard – 24 hours.
Copper surfaces – 4 hours.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-long-will-coronavirus-survive-on-surfaces/I'm a bit annoyed by the use of the word "typically." I mean, to be useful, we need to know the high end of the range, not the median.
If anyone else here has found any other useful tidbits, please post an update.
-
A quick update regarding how long the virus can live on surfaces. Now it's up to 5 days.
Here’s how long the virus typically lasts on common surfaces:
Glass – 5 days.
Wood – 4 days.
Plastic & stainless-steel – 3 days.
Cardboard – 24 hours.
Copper surfaces – 4 hours.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-long-will-coronavirus-survive-on-surfaces/I'm a bit annoyed by the use of the word "typically." I mean, to be useful, we need to know the high end of the range, not the median.
If anyone else here has found any other useful tidbits, please post an update.
-
@NeverDie 17 days is the longest I know of SARS-CoV2 surviving in the wild.
Here is the link to the source....
Thank @skywatch that's interesting, especially the nearly 18% of asymptomatic cases, it explains why the epidemic could progress silently in many places before beeing noticed.
For the "surviving" that's not what I understand, they say "traces of SARS-CoV-2 RNA" it means they can still see it was there on some surfaces, but the virus is probably "dead". Looks more like a trace of blood that you see after a murder.
-
Thank @skywatch that's interesting, especially the nearly 18% of asymptomatic cases, it explains why the epidemic could progress silently in many places before beeing noticed.
For the "surviving" that's not what I understand, they say "traces of SARS-CoV-2 RNA" it means they can still see it was there on some surfaces, but the virus is probably "dead". Looks more like a trace of blood that you see after a murder.
@Nca78 I understood it was viable (i.e. capable of infection) detection, maybe , maybe not. ;)
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
-
@Nca78 I understood it was viable (i.e. capable of infection) detection, maybe , maybe not. ;)
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
maybe , maybe not
Yup:
Does the cruise ship report imply that viruses survive up to 17 days on surfaces?
Dr Julia Marcus: A CDC investigation of the cruise ship found evidence of viral RNA in cabins that hadn’t yet been cleaned. But to be clear, that just means the virus was detectable – not that it was viable or that contact with those services would have been able to infect someone. (Editor’s note: RNA, or ribonucleic acid, carries the virus’s genetic information.)
Dr Akiko Iwasaki: It just means that there are parts of the virus that still remain. The virus needs many other components to be intact. If you have bits and pieces of RNA, that’s not going to make a virus, you need an entire intact genome. Just because you had a little piece of RNA doesn’t mean that there’s an infection.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/04/how-long-does-coronavirus-live-on-different-surfacesIt seems that they only tried to detect either it (possibly intact) or any trace bits of it (possibly not intact), and the way I read it, we don't know whether what they detected was purely unviable bits or whether something still viable was mixed in there as well. I guess if it had turned out that they couldn't even detect it, then that would have been useful information. It's too bad they didn't think ahead enough to test for viability if they did detect something.
I'm just amazed that by now such basic, practical questions like this, which it should be fairly easy for science to answer, haven't been pinned down with certainty. Or, maybe it has, and we just need to find it somewhere in the scientific literature, unfiltered and undistorted by mass media?
-
Thank @skywatch that's interesting, especially the nearly 18% of asymptomatic cases, it explains why the epidemic could progress silently in many places before beeing noticed.
For the "surviving" that's not what I understand, they say "traces of SARS-CoV-2 RNA" it means they can still see it was there on some surfaces, but the virus is probably "dead". Looks more like a trace of blood that you see after a murder.
Another interesting tidbit:
One other surprising finding from the study was that 70 percent of the patients sick enough to be admitted to the hospital did not have a fever. Fever is listed as the top symptom of covid-19 by the CDC, and for weeks, many testing centers for the virus turned away patients if they did not have one. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/22/coronavirus-ventilators-survival/
-
@Nca78 I understood it was viable (i.e. capable of infection) detection, maybe , maybe not. ;)
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source link? Does getting one offer any protection against the others, or will we have to endure 33+ separate assaults? I feel like I've already had it twice this year (all the symptoms except for fever), but I'm unsure as to whether it was just the flu or genuine coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Oxford University is already doing a double-blind study of an innoculation they've developed. They're testing it on human volunteers (and at least some of the ones receiving the placebo control will need to develop actual covid-19 before they can conclude efficacy). They expect they'll know within 6 months or less whether or not it works.
-
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source link? Does getting one offer any protection against the others, or will we have to endure 33+ separate assaults? I feel like I've already had it twice this year (all the symptoms except for fever), but I'm unsure as to whether it was just the flu or genuine coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Oxford University is already doing a double-blind study of an innoculation they've developed. They're testing it on human volunteers (and at least some of the ones receiving the placebo control will need to develop actual covid-19 before they can conclude efficacy). They expect they'll know within 6 months or less whether or not it works.
@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source link?
Of course! ;)
And now we have this...."The coronavirus changes at an average speed of about one mutation per month. By Monday, more than 10,000 strains had been sequenced by scientists around the globe, containing more than 4,300 mutations, according to the China National Centre for Bioinformation."
See the full article here.....
-
@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source link?
Of course! ;)
And now we have this...."The coronavirus changes at an average speed of about one mutation per month. By Monday, more than 10,000 strains had been sequenced by scientists around the globe, containing more than 4,300 mutations, according to the China National Centre for Bioinformation."
See the full article here.....
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
See the full article here.....
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3080771/coronavirus-mutations-affect-deadliness-strains-chinese-studyI would take this with a grain of salt, because of this: "The authors say their findings - based on just 11 patients - are the first to show the mutation could affect the severity of illness."
You can't pretend to trace mutation and link them to different regions of the world with only 11 patients...
They claim the strain in Europe is more deadly, but it's the one that arrived in Vietnam (vast majority of the 270 cases recorded here are linked to people arriving from Europe in March) and it doesn't seem to be that deadly: most people are now cured and no none died.
-
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
maybe , maybe not
Yup:
Does the cruise ship report imply that viruses survive up to 17 days on surfaces?
Dr Julia Marcus: A CDC investigation of the cruise ship found evidence of viral RNA in cabins that hadn’t yet been cleaned. But to be clear, that just means the virus was detectable – not that it was viable or that contact with those services would have been able to infect someone. (Editor’s note: RNA, or ribonucleic acid, carries the virus’s genetic information.)
Dr Akiko Iwasaki: It just means that there are parts of the virus that still remain. The virus needs many other components to be intact. If you have bits and pieces of RNA, that’s not going to make a virus, you need an entire intact genome. Just because you had a little piece of RNA doesn’t mean that there’s an infection.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/04/how-long-does-coronavirus-live-on-different-surfacesIt seems that they only tried to detect either it (possibly intact) or any trace bits of it (possibly not intact), and the way I read it, we don't know whether what they detected was purely unviable bits or whether something still viable was mixed in there as well. I guess if it had turned out that they couldn't even detect it, then that would have been useful information. It's too bad they didn't think ahead enough to test for viability if they did detect something.
I'm just amazed that by now such basic, practical questions like this, which it should be fairly easy for science to answer, haven't been pinned down with certainty. Or, maybe it has, and we just need to find it somewhere in the scientific literature, unfiltered and undistorted by mass media?
@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
I'm just amazed that by now such basic, practical questions like this, which it should be fairly easy for science to answer, haven't been pinned down with certainty. Or, maybe it has, and we just need to find it somewhere in the scientific literature, unfiltered and undistorted by mass media?
The only things they can detect are some specific DNA sequences that are specific to the virus. So the tests can either find those DNA sequences, or not. There are probably ways to check if there are indeed viable viruses in the samples taken, but it must be a very hard task and not worth the energy.
For survival time of the virus I guess the most practical approach is to put live virus on different surfaces and check after x hours/days if the viruses are still "alive" and able to contaminate people, like the studies you quote earlier. Based on these studies, it doesn't seem credible that the traces found are still dangerous after 17 days. -
Here is some more breaking news to cheer you up!
@skywatch Yipes! Thanks for the heads up.
The article you linked makes it sound as though it is better at hooking onto and penetrating human cells, but I wonder if anything else of importance may have changed too. For instance, I wonder whether it lives the same length of time on surfaces as the original virus, or whether that information is obsolete wrt the new mutation. That might be an alternate explanation for the higher infection rate.
-
@skywatch Yipes! Thanks for the heads up.
The article you linked makes it sound as though it is better at hooking onto and penetrating human cells, but I wonder if anything else of importance may have changed too. For instance, I wonder whether it lives the same length of time on surfaces as the original virus, or whether that information is obsolete wrt the new mutation. That might be an alternate explanation for the higher infection rate.
