Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

The problem with the flu is that it's a "gateway" illness. It weakens you and can make you very susceptible to catching secondary infections like pneumonia which will then get in your lungs and finish you off. However, Covid-19 is more efficient in that it doesn't require a secondary bacteria or infection to kill the host as it can cause the fatal lung and pulmonary damage needed to kill you itself.

The death rate from influenza is actually not that great. However the statistics for influenza combined with a secondary infection (like pneumonia) are higher.

David Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Health Services, said, "People don't necessarily die, per se, of the [flu] virus—the viraemia. What they die of is a secondary pneumonia. So many of these pneumonias are not viral pneumonias but secondary [pneumonias]."

For this reason, influenza deaths are not based on testing the victim but more fo a "statistical" estimate. So take any influenza death rate with a grain of salt. Pneumonia is dangerous in its own right and can kill a lot of people even without the patient having been weakened by influenza or another illness first.

 

The big scary 2 million fatalities number that spurred the shutdowns was the top range of an estimate. 1.1-2.2 million American fatalities if we didn't do anything to slow the spread. Using the New York antibody testing estimates of 0.5-0.8%, the range would be 1.1-1.7 million fatalities in the US. Which is pretty much in line with the first estimates.

The death rate isn't appearing to be much lower than originally thought. The original estimates, at least those used in the published predictions that started the move to quarantine, were 0.5-1.0%. The updated death rate is pretty much right there.

 

That article was from 2018, since then they revised it down to an estimated 61,000.

 

Stop even arguing about the flu people. It is not the flu!

 

How much of the increase in thrombus formation is due to being bedridden and end organ damage?
Do we know if there is some mechanism in the virus that affects clotting factors?

 

The CDC corrected the number.

 

They did. from 80,000 to 61,000. The Stat article you posted is from Sept 2018. I posted the current CDC site.

 

What "people".

We are drawing comparisons...but we are all noting caveats.

Have you looked at the CDCs revised 2017 numbers? Have you looked at the antibody numbers? These two things, while not the same, are not as far off (numbers wise) as we originally thought. I have supported the shutdown and taken the science seriously, but the data is changing and most are ignoring it.

 

Quite a few former crabs here

 

Definitely not due to being bedridden. As you can imagine, a lot of hospitalized patients are bedridden, and we routinely administer low-dose anticoagulation to prevent clots in them, so it's quite rare for patients to develop clots in the hospital. COVID patients again and again are developing clots despite the usually effective preventive measures, requiring double dosing or full dose anticoagulation just to prevent clots.

We don't understand the mechanism, but suspicion is that it's from extreme levels of inflammation. By definition this is an end organ damage, we just don't know why.

 

why would that be? They're exposed to heat, humidity, UV rays...all things that trump said would kill the virus

 

Well if there was no covid, then impeachedpotus would not have mentioned injecting disinfectant so perhaps it would indeed be virus related.

 

I don't know if you can take anything form that, tons of people want to get tested so most testing sites are very busy, it doesn't mean they are all sick with anything....

 

Every time we compare this novel virus to the flu we push the narrative that we can treat it the same. We also don’t social distance with the flu and it kills in a year barely more than coronavirus has killed in two months.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure we'd have reached the 1 million. Just because the majority of people aren't stupid, and will adjust accordingly even as individuals. The top 2.2 million estimate I believe just assumes everyone is a moron and the infection runs rampant. That was assuming full basketball arenas, full movie theaters, restaurants, etc. Just doing the simple math on their estimated R0 times the death rate and population. That's just to show how deadly this thing is in terms of math. Without adjusting for behavior.

However, this virus is going to blow right through 50,000 dead in barely over a month since we locked down. Just a fraction of a full season and we are already at 50,000. That is WITH some pretty extreme measures put in place officially to limit the exponential growth curve. It's mind boggling to see anyone still arguing this wasn't as bad or comparable to the flu. This past month can only show the 1 million deaths was an actual possible outcome. Though it probably would have been less because of shifting behavior (which was already going to destroy the economy), without some additional mandates from govt I think we would have seen at least double the deaths.

But as far as the impact on business, the virus and those changes in behavior killed like 80% of leisure activity. We already were choosing to change behavior and hurt the leisure economy in order to save lives. So even without govt orders, we probably would have done much better than a 1 million fatality count based on those changes. The various state and local govts just took care of another chunk of morons that would have ignored the warnings, but are at least law abiding. Let's say another 15% of the economy. That probably keeps us under 100,000 deaths. Of course there will always be those that think they are "special" or not law abiding. If there weren't any morons, if there were 100% stay at home compliance we could have been virus free within 30 days. But of course this is impossible, because there are always going to morons, but also because you do have to leave grocery stores and food processing plants and the like open - which are also places to spread the virus.

 

The 1.1 and 2.2 million estimates both assume no distancing. One uses a fatality rate of 0.5%, the other uses a fatality rate of 1%. All the other assumptions are the same.

 

Although he backed off a day later, Rush Limbaugh threatened to move to Costa Rica if the ACA was enacted. Too bad he changed his mind.
Edit: Probably is off-topic but no more so than a laundry list of liberal celebrities who threatened to leave the country if Trump won.

 

This is a special kind of stupid.
Trump suggests disinfectant as treatment for coronavirus ‘by injection inside or almost a cleaning.’ Doctors call the idea 'dangerous’

The statement of exposing lungs to UVC light is IDIOTIC. How does UVC (short wave ultraviolet) light destroy bad organisms? By destroying the cells/DNA. What happens to your healthy lung cells if exposed to UVC light. Hmmmm.... destroyed or mutated. Might kill the virus but will destroy your lungs!

Hopefully no people will be dumb enough to try this. But, the scary part is that this is where our President's head is. Not in any real world but probably derived from some TV host's musings on "treatments". It is bad enough when he derives policy on education, the environment and the economy based on half-baked concepts, it is utterly irresponsible when he does it on life/death issues. "Monkey f$%%(ng a football" comes to mind.

 

So you are asking him to prove people that were classified as covid deaths didn't have COVID when the NY Times ran a story reporting as much.

I guess he must travel to NY to exhume the bodies and perform tissue PCR testing to "prove it"

 

When this settles down perhaps we need a GC sandcrab meeting.... favorite local eatery?