Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Not kidding. Yes it’s partly due to desperation. Trump is just that toxic. And people such as yourself seemingly can’t see it.

 

Anderson Cooper had an excellent episode on the President’s response and actions on the virus.

 

UK government says 12 new positive tests for coronavirus, total now 35

Coronavirus cases in Germany jump to 117

 

Just a question for those with a background in the medical fields. Does anyone know, with less than 8 weeks of "research" into the Covid-19 strain, how accurate are the tests being performed both in the US and abroad at discerning this coronavirus from all others?

I am not calling anyone or anything a hoax, that is not my motivation for asking, however , it does make me wonder whether or not the current testing methods used for confirming infected patients are universally accepted as 100% accurate. We did see that some of the original test kits provided by the CDC were defective. There has not been much time to validate many assumptions at all.

I am an engineer in the semiconductor industry who has spent 30+ years performing analysis and have always been amazed at how quickly our testing methods have had to change to keep pace with technology and how long it takes to validate new methods.

 

Yep, don't think for a second our govt wouldn't clamp down on our azzes if they deemed it 'an emergency'. Need not look any further than the recent CDC statement.

 

Good question. I pulled this off of the CDC site.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

It appears that the test kits are based off of the SARS testing kits with Covid-19 specific panels.

A large assumption by me, with both being in the same family of viruses the validity is based off of the SARS testing and then identifying the Covid-19 markers.

 

Florida can now test for coronavirus at state health labs, including Jacksonville

 

I’ve read several articles on this, and indeed testing is an issue. But these epidemiologists/virologists suggest “false positives” are not the issue, but rather that we actually aren’t testing people nearly enough (due to the fact testing kits are largely not obtainable for local hospitals). That is a scary thought.

They suggested the actual spread of the virus is much greater than assumed by the official counts - which is pretty rational even for a medical layperson like me to understand. For the “unexplained” people with no travel to hot zones, they obviously caught it from someone else in their community. Perhaps the good news is that “someone else” didn’t (yet) experience the most severe symptoms to show up on the radar yet. It’ll probably take a couple weeks to get a grasp on how bad it could get in the U.S., hopefully by then the testing issue is improved and there is a better sense of mortality rates vs. the flu.

 

I dig thru our patient charts at work, at least one local hospital has already been screening for coronavirus for a while, maybe DX dependent.

 

Coronavirus quarantine, travel ban could backfire, experts fear
ACLU and Dem Congressman call travel ban racist

 

I would wonder how though? Supposedly there is no testing kit available directly for hospitals, or at least there hasn't been (it seems to be something they are trying to get asap). I suppose the guy could take a sample and look under a microscope in a lab, but I’m not sure just any doctor would necessarily be qualified to determine “yep, that’s the COVID-19” just by looking at it. That’s why the protocol is to send to the CDC, or now in some cases to state labs.

 

Why do that? This is what the ACLU has to say in that story. Absolutely noting about racism.

Congresswoman Chu's comments aren't about racism either.
Question - Did you not understand the story or did your intentionally misrepresent what it said?

 

Coronavirus: Washington state investigates possible outbreak at nursing facility - CNN

 

Or, and this is what I am wondering, if the fact we are allegedly under testing,yet calculating mortality rates from a flawed test set, is this actually the plague of all time.....or the Flu??

We are making TONS of assumption s with so little understood data is my guess

 

While the quote attributed to the ACLU does not raise the issue of inequitable treatment based upon race, comments in the first 3 paragraphs of the article seem to raise the issue of racism:

"The Trump administration’s quarantine and travel ban in response to the Wuhan coronavirus could undercut international efforts to fight the outbreak by antagonizing Chinese leaders, as well as stigmatizing people of Asian descent, according to a growing chorus of public health experts and lawmakers.

The World Health Organization’s top official on Tuesday repeated concern that moves that interfere with transportation and trade could harm efforts to address the crisis, though he didn't directly name the United States. Meanwhile, unions representing flight attendants, nurses and teachers criticized the administration on Tuesday for not being forthcoming about what kind of screening and treatment individuals will undergo, and some members of Congress say they're concerned the efforts could stoke racial discrimination.

"This is a virus that happened to pop up in China. But the virus doesn’t discriminate between Asian versus non-Asian,” said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), a former emergency room physician who will preside over Congress' first hearing on the outbreak on Wednesday. “In our response we can’t create prejudices and harbor anxieties toward one population.""

Perhaps the issue is with the writer?

 

I’ll wager my bottom dollar that he got the article and the commentary he included from some conservative hack website or facebook.

I’ll also wager my bottom dollar he doesn’t respond to your post.

 

I think the early indications are it's worse than the flu by a factor of like 10+, but obviously that is based on mostly Chinese data. There's a study here that claims 2.3% which would be more than 20x the flu. But obviously the science/medicine is going to evolve.

Study of 72,000 COVID-19 patients finds 2.3% death rate

All those SARS and MERS were even more deadly in terms of mortality rates, but they fizzled out because they didn't transmit as easily. This one seems to spread more like the common cold, and if so we need to take it seriously.

 

Politico?

 

Definitely worth watching over the next 2 weeks.

If it spreads to the more rural areas of Nigeria things could get ugly there.


Nigeria identifies 100 who may have been exposed to coronavirus patient

 

I have read one theory that the extreme communicability of the virus may be a function of the fact that so many with the virus fail to manifest symptoms, unlike with other flus (it also happens with the flu, albeit to a far lesser percentage), so they don’t socially distance.