Covid-19 Pandemic

[DB]

The doses suggested are notably higher than for its use as an antimalarial, I believe.

 

In other news, there's been a very big splash here about a study from the University of Oxford which was run with headlines claiming that alf of the UK population may already have been exposed to the virus, with the conclusion that it was likely that "herd immunity" was just around the corner.

 

This did the rounds of all the newspapers yesterday, but there are a few problems with the study, it seems.

 

Of course, I'm not seeing anything in the search results for the rebuttal of the study in the traditional paper media, but wired has an article that identifies the main concerns.

 

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-infections-oxford-study-immunity

 

The stand-out objection for me isthat the assumption that 1 per 1000 showed sufficient symptoms to be recognised as COVID-19 is unsupported - for populations under scrutiny this is about 50:50. It's plausible that a fair number of those with milder symptoms would be dismissed as having a common cold or influenza if the virus wasn't under the spotlight, but the difference is too great to pass the sniff test, by my standards anyway.

 

Anyway, to address the lack of testing issue, the UK has ordered 3.5 million tests which should identify those with active antibodies and give us a better idea of the spread. I'll be interested to see how these home tests work, as it's a blood test. A lancet and some sort of blotter test card, I suppose.

[DB]

And here is the Guardian telling us more about the test kit.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/uk-coronavirus-mass-home-testing-to-be-made-available-within-days

[Burncycle360]

Politicians seem to think that this is chicken pox and you can't be reinfected.

[DKTanker]

Politicians seem to think that this is chicken pox and you can't be reinfected.

I believe it is the medical community that is saying it with the acknowledgement that there may exist false negatives which give the impression of reinfection.

[cjpaul]

It is not, as it mostly ineffective against malaria caused by P. falciparum. Both malaria prophylaxis and treatment have moved on.

Mefloquine - mensch, do I recall some vivid 'dreams' like Darth Vader meets the Exorcist.

[rmgill]

[Ssnake]

"They all have the same infection" -- except for multimorbid patients, which make up the majority of severe cases.

"It worked very well ... for several hours" -- except that the average patient stays hospitalized for 20 days; even if a ventilator is needed for only half of the time that's an order of magnitude longer than "done on humans".

 

Not saying that it's a terrible idea but she's not properly assessing the risks involved. It may still be the best of a number of terrible options at some stage.

 

 

Finally, you're putting a respirator under four times the design load which will probably have consequences later. While my wife was still a nurse she told me about controlled drips for her cancer patients constantly failing at an inexplicably high rate, giving headaches to the maintenance technicians. I suggested to her to show the technicians what was going on in the ward with its strict non-smoking policy. The patients would climb up a flight of stairs to smoke out of a window in the stairwell while the IV machine had to pump the chemotherapy up four meters rather than being at roughly the same level with a patient lying in a bed.

Next time the mechanics came, she said they left with a thousand mile stare.

 

Pumping air into four lungs is not the same as pumping air into one. Failure rates will go up.

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

If this is the drug that is based on the anti Malarial drug, in testing one died and it sent three to the emergency ward.

The one that died, are you referring to the dumbass that ingested a copious amount of chloroquine phospate, a fish tank cleaner? Something his wife found at the back of a shelf in their house.

 

No, this was the official test they did, not someone home medicating. Sky or BBC had a UK doctor commenting on the results and apparently 4 out of the 12 either showed adverse results or no results at all (Its not clear to me why the patient died, just that they did). Ill have to have a search of the Lancet and see if they have the results of it.

 

As Retac says, its just one test so we shouldnt really be getting carried away either way on it.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

There is another story here on the use of hydroxychloroquine in a trial in Shanghai, and its not particularly promsing. From the group they used, hydroxychloroquine showed inferior effects to the control study.

https://www.newsweek.com/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-conventional-care-study-1494176

 

But as said, its just one more study, and it doesnt prove anythign either way.

 

But even if it does work, as the Lancet points out,

 

Effective vaccinesand antivirals that are being developed could counteract this global public health threat. The extent to which these strategies can detect cases earlier and isolate infectious individuals from the susceptible pool or protect against infection is less well-understood, hence necessitating further evaluation.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30073-6/fulltext

 

 

 

By which I believe they mean that even if you have a drug that works, you have to know who has Coronavirus to treat them. That is OK when they are in a hospital ward dying of it, but the aim surely should be so they dont get infected in the first place, meaning the lockdown presumably has to continue anyway. And you need far better tests than we do. So what you really want is not a treatment at all, its a vaccine, and that seems to be as far away as ever.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

Its things like this which make me freak out a little.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/brit-chloe-middleton-21-no-17977944

 

A British woman aged just 21 has died from coronavirus, her heartbroken family say.

The 21-year-old female, from the UK, is believed to be one of the youngest in the world to die from Covid-19 having displayed no pre-existing health condition.

Chloe Middleton, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, tragically died on 21 March.

Her grieving mum Diane Middleton took to social media to pay tribute.

On Facebook, she wrote: "To all the people out there that thinks it's just a virus please think again.

 

But Britain as always takes it stoically.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/massive-queues-outside-fish-chip-17982766

[Stuart Galbraith]

And this may be kind of inappropriate, but its something of a sign of the times...

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52032461

Fans of The Walking Dead must wait for the finale of the current series after producers revealed they had not been able to finish it because of Covid-19.

[RETAC21]

Its things like this which make me freak out a little.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/brit-chloe-middleton-21-no-17977944

 

A British woman aged just 21 has died from coronavirus, her heartbroken family say.

The 21-year-old female, from the UK, is believed to be one of the youngest in the world to die from Covid-19 having displayed no pre-existing health condition.

Chloe Middleton, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, tragically died on 21 March.

Her grieving mum Diane Middleton took to social media to pay tribute.

On Facebook, she wrote: "To all the people out there that thinks it's just a virus please think again.

 

But Britain as always takes it stoically.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/massive-queues-outside-fish-chip-17982766

 

Well, statistics are made of people, it could be that she had an undiagnosed condition or that the virus went to unexpected places. Friend of mine nearly bought the farm when a common cold virus infected the brain and provoked inflamation there.

[DB]

A friend relates that a viral infection killed his father (eventually) because a consequence was heart valve damage. Not the main issue whilst he was suffering from the "normal" effects of the virus, but it killed him in the end.

Edited March 26, 2020 by DB

[Stuart Galbraith]

Its like my father, yes, the Cancer was responsible for his death, but in a round about way. The wounds he had in a car accident opened up on and he bled out internally, I think possibly as part of the chemo or the general weakening of his condition. So you could argue it was partly the car accident that got him 40 years on. That was before they learned to make decent steering wheels.

 

On CNN, the latest jobless figures in the US are 3.2 million. They are also parking up freezer trucks outside hospitals in New York as overflow Morgues.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Stuart Galbraith

[Harold Jones]

Colorado has moved on from maintain social distancing and is now officially on lock down/shelter in place. People are still allowed to exercise and walk their dogs, but must stay at least 6' away from other people out doing the same. Grocery stores, pharmacies, pot shops, liquor stores, hardware stores, and gun shops have been decreed to be essential and will remain open.

[Ssnake]

Pot, liquor, guns: Essential ingedients to the American Way of Life.

 

 

Muscle cars are missing from this, though.

[Harold Jones]

I just hit the highlights, but auto parts stores are in the essential category. Apparently speeding has become an issue because traffic is so light. They interviewed a cop on the news last night, he says people are telling him that they don't really notice that they are speeding. He said "Yeah right, you didn't notice you were going 102 down a surface street."

[BansheeOne]

Immigrants in general! Of course there are differences between this and that group but as a whole immigration is losing us money. We do it wrong.

 

PS: Immigration includes the whole de facto asylum immigration. If it were only the non asylum immigrants we'd probably in the plus.

I don't disagree we're doing immigration wrong, but there are not quite 1.8 million or 2.2 percent refugees/asylum seekers in Germany for which "never paid a dime for healthcare" is probably generally true - a far cry from 10-20. I'm also sure immigrants, including many EU citizens, contribute below-average; mostly because of their socio-economic backgrounds and them doing low-paying, though not necessarily easy jobs. Which BTW we may soon become acutely aware of in the current crisis - people are already fretting that closed borders will keep out not just seasonal East European farmworkers, but also cross-border commuters from Poland working in East German hospitals.

 

Meanwhile shelves are slowly filling back up here. Pasta, rice and canned food still look kinda desolate, and apparently the people who actually ran out of their normal toilet paper stocks when none was to be had are now having their go; there were recent reports about problems for the canalization and water treatment plants because of increased use of alternatives not so well suited for the infrastructure - tissues, paper towels, etc. However, the bread and produce sections are basically back to normal. Part of that may be that supermarkets have limited access and adopted "one out, one in" policies. When I went after work yesterday, people waiting outside where holding so much distance I had to be advised twice that this was not yet the end of the line.

 

Less positive, and apropos of state welfare, we're on short time at work from today, meaning reduced hours and pay, boosted by payments from the national employment agency, a measure to avoid layoffs in companies experiencing (hopefully) temporary orders shortages. We usually need about 35,000 Euro of revenue per week to survive, though a couple weeks of 20,000 won't kill us. However, we made just 13,000 last week, and a grand total of 1,000 so far this one. I'm lucky that as part of the current in-office staff I'm on half-time at about 80 percent basic pay; most sales staff goes on five hours per week at 60 percent. The company has filed with the agency for this to last until the end of May, at which point we hope things will pick up again.

Edited March 26, 2020 by BansheeOne

[Jeff]

I'm curious what kind of lasting actions this pandemic will give us. We still shake hands to prove we don't have any weapons. What will we be doing in 20 years because of today that we won't remember why? Some kid will ask, "Grandpa, why do we do X" and grandpa will tell the story about the Great Pandemic of 2020.

[Soren Ras]

I can easily imagine the handshake going the way of the dinosaurs, and a more Asian greeting with no touching involved will find favor.

 

Also, now that we have established that the government can shut down the economy in a country very quickly, it will be interesting to see at some point whether it can also restart it again.

 

Final thought: The Euro is doomed. And it always was in the long run, which is turning out to be shorter than imagined. I've been wrong before and will be again, but I cannot for the life of me see how the Southern European economies (all of them at once) are going to get the loans they will need to reboot their economies under the current currency structure.

 

--

Soren

[Skywalkre]

I'm curious what kind of lasting actions this pandemic will give us. We still shake hands to prove we don't have any weapons. What will we be doing in 20 years because of today that we won't remember why? Some kid will ask, "Grandpa, why do we do X" and grandpa will tell the story about the Great Pandemic of 2020.

I'm afraid it may lead some to be even more zealous about living in a more sterile environment. Some of the docs and experts I've been reading over the years have pushed a theory that one reason we may be seeing a rise in autoimmune diseases is because folks are living in too 'clean' of environments.

[Skywalkre]

Read and watched several accounts that data from countries already hit indicate upwards of half of those infected have either no symptoms or symptoms so mild there's no reason to take notice.

 

The lack of tests here and the delay in getting them out is bloody infuriating at this point. This article makes it sound like it'll still be two months at best til we get an antibody test (and who knows how long after that it'll take to actually reach people).

[Tim the Tank Nut]

the Autoimmune failure due to an overly clean environment is a real thing. Growing up with farming and farm animals make one more resilient.

Our overuse of sanitizers long term is a serious issue

[Brian Kennedy]

I'm curious what kind of lasting actions this pandemic will give us. We still shake hands to prove we don't have any weapons. What will we be doing in 20 years because of today that we won't remember why? Some kid will ask, "Grandpa, why do we do X" and grandpa will tell the story about the Great Pandemic of 2020.

 

One of the most depressing things is that it's going to reinforce a whole slew of existing negative trends.

 

-- Growing wealth disparity (tech bros who can work remotely vs service industry workers who get fired)

 

-- Lack of exercise (sitting in front of your computer vs going outside)

 

-- Lack of social interaction (adults having fewer and fewer friends nowadays, having less sex, etc.).

[DB]

A correction - the news reports that the UK has 8000 ventilators, not the 4000 Banshee believed he had seen claimed. They're expecting to more than double these, but they will need to be design approved. I imagine that will be very expedited.

 

In the meantime, a company near me that makes them is farming out production as best it can.

 

https://www.lutontoday.co.uk/business/luton-companys-ventilator-be-produced-en-masse-after-uk-government-orders-30000-models-coronavirus-battle-2518442