Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Don't know if you have noticed, maybe you haven't, but humanity has continued on through all you mentioned. The winner in all those events. Mankind.

During the time of the Spanish Flu I think it would be acceptable to say that we didn't have quite the medical facilities or medicines that we have today, the measles required a vaccine and so will this virus. Dengue kills adults/children and life still goes on. You will not see people wearing rubber suits and building safe houses to avoid the killer mosquito (by the way I have had dengue fever twice and it is a nightmare) and the cure is...hydration. There is no vaccine or medicine to counter the effects just lots of water.
I haven't chosen to ignore or disbelieve "the science" and in fact think that throwing all your trust into that without using common sense is a fools game. Statistics and evidence are controllable and also distortable and has been adjusted forever to benefit those who can benefit.

 

Masks are to stop you from spreading your germs to others if you are infected but asymptomatic. Not intended to stop you from getting infected but likely helps.

 

I will give you that COVID is more communicable right now but the verdict is yet TBD whether it is more deadly than the flu. COVID does have the potential lingering risks of permanent lung and heart issues that the flu doesn't. As far as number of infected is concerned do not be surprised when the "experts" finally start revealing their projected guesstimates. On page 452 of this thread, on the Dr David Katz and Bill Maher interview Dr Katz said that 98 to 99% of those with COVID-19 are asymptomatic to mild cases. Not only that he spoke of an ER 12 hour shift he worked where 20 people were admitted that he knew without a doubt had COVID but 19 of them tested negative (huge false negative with testing). Iceland studies show that 50% of their population was asymptomatic. If 1 million have tested positive in the U.S. and, lets assume that is mostly made up of the 1-2% that were sick enough to get tested. Then factor in those who were sick but tested negative. It probably would not be too much of a stretch for some to say you could multiply the number of positive cases by a factor of at least 50 to get the actual number infected which would be in the neighborhood of 50 million plus.( I lean more towards 80 million)* I said 2 weeks ago that there were some in the COVID team at Johns Hopkins who were saying that the actual number infected was 50 to 100 times that of the positive case number.

*duchen please do not disappoint and not give me your optimistic rating . I'm still not sure why some still hold to the belief that the actual number of infected is still really low. The "experts" say that over 50% plus of the cases are asymptomatic and 98% of cases are no worse than mild thus it is very likely the majority of those people have never been tested. For the most part if you were asymptomatic you could not even get tested except in certain cases of travel etc. Do you believe there are more false positives than false negatives which i doubt since only 10-15% of those tested actually tested positive. That in itself such raise an eyebrow. People are showing symptoms of COVID and they test negative for the flu so they are tested for COVID and at least 85% of those people test negative for COVID. Something is wrong with that picture.

 

Congress sounds alarm over inaccurate antibody tests

 

That is quite a take - "team be afraid" and you want to "hide". How would you feel if you were referred to as "team murder" or you are just "irresponsible." Most people have good intent (and I include you in that) - instead of attacking people by calling into question their motives (which you do not know), deal with facts and results.

Facts - social distancing works to slow spread of the virus and flatten the curve. What the 1918 flu pandemic tells us about whether social distancing works | Nancy K Bristow. Saying "you have zero proof" social distancing works is idiotic in the face of evidence and the facts of how this disease travels.

Funny you say folks "only believe" social distancing works because they are told it does, but you seem to believe it doesn't work with NO evidence or basis! Recently, two Bakersfield local doctors said we should all go back to work. They have no training beyond medical school and were quickly corrected by experts. Two Bakersfield doctors go viral with dubious COVID test conclusions. You can disagree with every major medical organization in the world by citing some single doctor but remember that single doctors were still (being paid) saying smoking is good for you into the 1980s. The vast weight of evidence stands against you, and you have proffered no major studies by respected entities/professionals to counter.

So what of it? Maybe the single doctors are right and all the experts are wrong. Analyze the cost/benefit of each path. If the single doctors are right, we all go back to work more quickly AND there is no second wave. Great, the economy recovers more quickly. If we do not follow the single doctors and they are right we open more slowly than we could of. Financial pain is greater than it had to be but deaths are the same.

Second path is single doctors are wrong and we follow them. Well, we loosen social restrictions and have a second wave that shuts the economy down again AND many more die. Asymmetrical risk here as both goals (lives/economy) are severely damaged. Clearly the goal must be minimizing the loss of life WHILE not putting us in a position to have to reclose the economy (worst possible scenario).

There are no easy answers and characterizing this as a choice to "hide" or "let people die" is just dumb. We first should all take personal responsibility not to spread this virus. As an aside, if you walk around without a mask and become a super spreader AND know you may be sick, I would support manslaughter charges - it meets the criteria. The reality is each of us needs to act responsibly as a member of society, and our federal government needs to get its shit together on testing/tracking/coordination across states so we can open as quickly and safely as possible.

 

"But in most parts of the U.S., the percentage of all people who have contracted the coronavirus is assumed to remain in the single digits. That means that if a test is producing false positives for 10 percent of people who take it, the test is actually producing more false positives than true positives"
Assumed? Since they conveniently ignored the other side of the tests which is "false negatives" I guess it will give us many more opportunities to pontificate on COVID.

 

Again, .2 percent of the entire NYC population has died. And antibody tests say 25 percent are infected. That’s a death rate of .8 percent across their entire population. The flu in an average year kills 2k people in NYC. 16k are dead from this. Even if you take suspected cases out, it’s 12k. In a month essentially. And with a full lock down to avoid spread. It’s deadlier than the flu.
I am more than willing to accept the idea that far more people are infected than we realize, that different areas of the country might end up having different needs and different mortality rates, and your posts have been very respectful...but I can’t continue to discuss with folks who compare this to the flu. If that’s the starting point, apologies but it isn’t a legitimate discussion.

So good luck.

 

Gilead reports 'positive data' on remdesivir coronavirus drug trial

Very promising news.

 

Not really. Wish they were

 

Why is something wrong with that picture? Its symptoms are shared with hundreds of viruses, and many diseases that are not viral illnesses. At my hospital we test anyone who either has fever OR shortness of breath OR cough. Do you know how many diseases cause at least one of these 3 things?

I haven't found the actual study, but I can't tell from that article how that's positive news. All it shows according to that article is that 5 day treatment is comparable if not better than 10 day treatment. What we need it to show is that treatment is better than no treatment. I guess if it works then it's nice that you can get away with treating for 5 days as opposed to 10, but we need to confirm that it works first.

 

What are you talking about? IF this works, it takes away the death factor to countless people. Some people will still die because of underlying conditions anyway. This has the potential to take away the fear of a lot of people of dying. Try to have a little bit of optimism.

 

It is a drug that is used when someone is very ill from Covid 19. It has been very helpful in people who are gravely ill. Now we need a drug to take once the early symptoms start like a Tamiflu. And please no one bring up the China Study. No one should ever take anything coming from China as truthful. Period.

 

Where has it been shown that "it's very helpful in people who are gravely ill?" With all due respect, as a physician who actually orders these medications as well as read up on these studies, I'm most certainly going to pay attention to studies from China as well as studies from elsewhere in the world. Our job depends on us separating science from politics or emotions.

With that said, the study from China, which is the only study with published results, was not that damning for Remdesivir. It did show a trend toward improvement, but it was not powered enough to give a definitive answer. This is why multiple academic centers in the US are still conducting studies on this drug including the current institution my hospital is affiliated with as well as the previous institution I worked for. I'm hopeful that it'll help, but realistically it probably won't be a game changer. Then again, neither is Tamiflu, but anything is better than nothing.

 

Y

Gilead says shorter remdesivir regimen is effective and drug met main goal in government study

Not sure how this can not be perceived as good news. I am no doctor but the people who do know this kind of stuff think it's positive.

 

Haven't posted these numbers in awhile, mainly because they were holding at 21% for 2 weeks. but in the last 10 days or so it has dropped to 18%

CLOSED CASES
1,194,960

Cases which had an outcome:

975,673 (82%)
Recovered / Discharged

219,287 (18%)
Deaths

 

at least 50% of patients treated with a 5-day dosage of antiviral drug remdesivir improved and more than half were discharged from the hospital within two weeks.

is this really that different from the normal group admitted to the hospital that were not given this drug? From what I can tell, it is somewhat like Tamiflu that if not given early it does not do much and if given early it reduces the symptoms to a varying degree.

notice nowhere in their report did they reference how many patients improve without the drug and how many are discharged within two weeks without the drug being used. there ia s reason they did not baseline themselves against the average and it isn't because it would make them look too good.

 

The previous article you posted did not mention the NIAID trial, whose data may be released later today.

 

US now starting to report some cases Kawasaki syndrome in children as result of covid. First noted in Britain and now pediatricians are testing fo covid when patients present with Kawasaki syndrome

Rare inflammatory syndrome seen in US child with Covid-19

National Health Service England sent an alert to doctors and on Sunday the Paediatric Intensive Care Society tweeted it out to members. It warned about a small increase in cases of critically ill children with "common overlapping features of toxic shock syndrome and atypical Kawasaki disease with blood parameters" with some children testing positive for Covid-19.

There have also been some reports in Italy and Spain, doctors said.A team at Stanford Children's Hospital said they had also seen a case. They described the case of a 6-month-old girl admitted to the hospital with Kawasaki disease and later also diagnosed with coronavirus.

Kawasaki disease causes inflammation in the walls of the arteries and can limit blood flow to the heart. It is usually treatable and most children recover without serious problems, but it can be deadly. No one knows what causes Kawasaki disease, but some studies have pointed to a link between viruses or a bacterial infection.

The child in this case was initially diagnosed with a viral infection at an urgent care, the Stanford team said. She was fussy, had a fever, and didn't eat. She didn't have a cough or congestion. A flu test was negative and doctors diagnosed her with a viral infection. She later tested positive for Covid-19. On the second day she had a fever and a blotchy rash. A chest x-ray showed a small white spot in her mid-lung so doctors sent her to the emergency room, the team reported in the journal in the journal Hospital Pediatrics.