How can there not be a COVID-19 thread?

SuperMatt

SuperMatt

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SuperMatt said:
WTF? I thought Twitter didn’t allow such accounts. Maybe I should start an account for Ronald Reagan.
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I shit you not, they've change the name of the account and taken it over... this post downplaying it is from today. Unbelievable.

EgwHM3YXgAAD7p7
 
SuperMatt said:
The latest Trump planner thinks that 200,000 deaths is too few. He’s going for 2 million!

boingboing.net

Trump's new pandemic boss Scott Atlas pushes ‘herd immunity’ plan, 2 million+ Americans would have to die

"With a population of 328 million in the United States, it may require 2.13 million deaths to reach a 65 percent threshold of herd immunity, assuming the virus has a 1 percent fatality rate,…
boingboing.net boingboing.net
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That theory of reaching herd immunity while protecting the more vulnerable from fatal infection might be worth something in the USA if it were more evident that slightly less than half the country doesn't feel it their duty to ignore masking and social distancing entirely on partisan grounds... i.e., that only Democrats believe it's necessary or even that only Democrats think covid-19 is not just a hoax and "lots of people get the flu even in summer".

In other words the trick here would be in getting a lot of around half the country to sign up for the idea that protecting the vulnerable is even an option, never mind patriotic.

Not sure how we got so lost but Trump has had a lot to do with it in my biased opinion.
 
I heard that was over.
 
According to worldmeters, total losses in the US have exceeded the urban population of the city @Alli lives in/near
 
D_T said:
@PearsonX

elemental.medium.com

A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged

A closer look at the Bradykinin hypothesis
elemental.medium.com elemental.medium.com
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Interesting... I need to read a little more about this. I think some of the things are overreported here, like I didn't even know that ACE-Inhibitors can cause loss of taste and smell. It's also listed as rare side-effect of lisinopril for example (the range I consider study noise as all these stuff had to be documented in a trial), so if it is true, it probable takes genetic susceptibility. The brain effect seems to be luckily overblown, as per my conversations with neurologists/neurointensivists who took care of COVID patients. Though a weird thing one of them mentioned is hyperexcitation and unusually high sedative dose requirements. I personally haven't picked up a high "brain signal" here, that could not be explained by a rough ICU admission. Another intensivist colleague told me that hypotension (low blood pressure) was weirdly unusual for crashing COVID patients. This also kinda opposes the ACE-inhibition hypothesis.
On the other hand, early on there was some panic about ACE-inhibitors increasing mortality/susceptibility with covid as they come with upregulation of ACE...but I checked a few weeks ago and that mortality signal doesn't exist either. BTW, hydroxychloroquine downregulates ACE (again stuff I learned thanks to COVID...), but if the virus can overcome this effect, that also explains why it is so ineffective later in the disease course (it is still evaluated as a postexposure prophylactic, but you need a huuuuuge sample size to confirm such effect...).
 
lizkat said:
That theory of reaching herd immunity while protecting the more vulnerable from fatal infection might be worth something in the USA if it were more evident that slightly less than half the country doesn't feel it their duty to ignore masking and social distancing entirely on partisan grounds... i.e., that only Democrats believe it's necessary or even that only Democrats think covid-19 is not just a hoax and "lots of people get the flu even in summer".

In other words the trick here would be in getting a lot of around half the country to sign up for the idea that protecting the vulnerable is even an option, never mind patriotic.

Not sure how we got so lost but Trump has had a lot to do with it in my biased opinion.
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Herd immunity is not happening. This is like a California wildfire, by the time one end finishes burning the other end gets ablaze again, and it will go around in circles of seasons.

This is why I'm so unimpressed by, but also grateful for the Swedish response. They'll serve as a control. You need 40-70% infection for herd immunity, that is 130M Americans at the very least. It you make the assumption that we have detected 10% of the actual cases, then we are less than halfway there in 6 months. The big issue is that antibodies are lost against coronaviridae over months, this applies to strains that just cause "cold", MERS, SARS-CoV-1 and as far as we can tell with about 9mo worth of data, with SARS-CoV-2 as well.

So for us to reach herd immunity we'd need immunity developing fast and lasting long enough to reach the magic number (which I think is closer to 70%), before people start losing their immunity.
 
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PearsonX said:
Herd immunity is not happening. This is like a California wildfire, by the time one end finishes burning the other end gets ablaze again, and it will go around in circles in seasons.

This is why I'm so unimpressed by, but also grateful for the Swedish response. They'll serve as a control. You need 40-70% infection for herd immunity, that is 130M Americans at the very least. It you make the assumption that we have detected 10% of the actual cases, then we are less than halfway there in 6 months. The big issue is that antibodies are lost against coronaviridae over months, this apples to strains that just cause "cold", MERS, SARS-CoV-1 and as far as we can tell with about 9mo worth of data, with SARS-CoV-2 as well.

So for us to reach herd immunity we'd need immunity developing fast and lasting long enough to reach the magic number (which I think is closer to 70%), before people start losing their immunity.
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D_T said:
That's definitely why @'ed you to bring it your attention, I figured you could run it through your SME parser :D
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Interesting read with numbers that are easy to understand, I enjoy these posts. Gavin Newsom is the same way, doesn't seem to be playing politics with it when he has his conferences, he really knows the numbers inside and out and cites them exactly. I'll always pay closer attention to that than some anecdotal or arbitrary talking point just to espouse a political view. Let the facts speak for themselves.
 
ericgtr12 said:
Interesting read with numbers that are easy to understand, I enjoy these posts. Gavin Newsom is the same way, doesn't seem to be playing politics with it when he has his conferences, he really knows the numbers inside and out and cites them exactly. I'll always pay closer attention to that than some anecdotal or arbitrary talking point just to espouse a political view. Let the facts speak for themselves.
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i was impressed with how Newsome handled the virus early on. But he caved under pressure when trump pushed for society to open up.
 
ericgtr12 said:
Interesting read with numbers that are easy to understand, I enjoy these posts. Gavin Newsom is the same way, doesn't seem to be playing politics with it when he has his conferences, he really knows the numbers inside and out and cites them exactly. I'll always pay closer attention to that than some anecdotal or arbitrary talking point just to espouse a political view. Let the facts speak for themselves.
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Player7592 said:
i was impressed with how Newsome handled the virus early on. But he caved under pressure when trump pushed for society to open up.
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I generally liked Newsome's approach. They were also the first state I was aware of that had concrete criteria as to when and how a reopening can be considered. I honestly don't understand what transpired in California in the summer. Hence, I avoid the topic until I have an explanation. (It's really hard to keep up with the timing of interventions...and that reflects on the performance of the federal government and the president who hindered it).

BTW, one interesting aspect of COVID and this is why I don't think there is winning until a vaccine emerges is:
1. It spreads through asymptomatic people...i.e. the only way to monitor the spread is testing and tracing
2. Asymptomatic people develop weaker immunity to the virus
3. Those with weaker immunity lose their antibodies and go undetected in a matter of weeks (~2mo?) by the antibody testing
4. Preliminary data indicates that masks reduce disease severity, I.e. increase the proportion of asymptomatic infections
5. The circle restarts: if you had no symptoms, you might as well be considered never having had the disease from the immunity stand point.

So I think from a herd immunity stand point it's those with symptoms that count to the tally, and those numbers would take 2-3 years for us to get the desired numbers of herd immunity. Add the heart involvement that is detected regardless of severity, and it tells you how messed up the situation is.
Also, now that schools reopened, healthy kids had a 15% ICU admission rate with the infection. That's very scary even if the peds side (in my limited experience) tends to have a lower threshold for ICU than the adult.
 
PearsonX said:
I generally liked Newsome's approach. They were also the first state I was aware of that had concrete criteria as to when and how a reopening can be considered. I honestly don't understand what transpired in California in the summer. Hence, I avoid the topic until I have an explanation. (It's really hard to keep up with the timing of interventions...and that reflects on the performance of the federal government and the president who hindered it).

BTW, one interesting aspect of COVID and this is why I don't think there is winning until a vaccine emerges is:
1. It spreads through asymptomatic people...i.e. the only way to monitor the spread is testing and tracing
2. Asymptomatic people develop weaker immunity to the virus
3. Those with weaker immunity lose their antibodies and go undetected in a matter of weeks (~2mo?) by the antibody testing
4. Preliminary data indicates that masks reduce disease severity, I.e. increase the proportion of asymptomatic infections
5. The circle restarts: if you had no symptoms, you might as well be considered never having had the disease from the immunity stand point.

So I think from a herd immunity stand point it's those with symptoms that count to the tally, and those numbers would take 2-3 years for us to get the desired numbers of herd immunity. Add the heart involvement that is detected regardless of severity, and it tells you how messed up the situation is.
Also, now that schools reopened, healthy kids had a 15% ICU admission rate with the infection. That's very scary even if the peds side (in my limited experience) tends to have a lower threshold for ICU than the adult.
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And that takes me to how pissed I was at Bill Maher when he interviewed some sports anchor about "why it's stupid to pause pro sports seasons" and the guys was talking about improved therapeutics (was totally clueless), and totally forgot about the heart stuff which can easily kill someone who's expected to perform on the level of a pro athlete.
 
When you aren't playing around with this shit anymore.
gizmodo.com

Woman Arrested For Facebook Post Promoting Anti-Lockdown Protest in Australia

Police in Australia arrested a 28-year-old woman on Wednesday for publishing a Facebook post that promotes an anti-lockdown protest in the country’s state of Victoria. Footage of the arrest was captured by her partner and shows police officers handcuffing the woman and saying that she’s being...
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com
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Police in Australia arrested a 28-year-old woman on Wednesday for publishing a Facebook post that promotes an anti-lockdown protest in the country’s state of Victoria. Footage of the arrest was captured by her partner and shows police officers handcuffing the woman and saying that she’s being charged with “incitement.” The woman’s phone and computers were also seized.

The video, which was livestreamed on Facebook, has gone viral and shows the police eventually taking possession of the phone that was broadcasting the encounter. Over two million people have watched the video so far.

“It’s in relation to a Facebook post, in relation to a lockdown protest you put on just that day,” detective Adrian Smith with the Victorian Police told the woman as she was handcuffed in her home.

“I wasn’t breaking any laws by doing that,” the woman said, explaining that she had an ultrasound scheduled in an hour because she’s pregnant.

“You are actually. You are breaking the law,” Smith responded. “That’s why I’m arresting you.”
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Australia remains the only wealthy democracy in the world that doesn’t have anything equivalent to America’s First Amendment protections for free speech. And even though it’s clear lockdowns are sometimes necessary to defeat this global pandemic, it’s hard to justify arresting someone and seizing all of their electronics simply for posting about a protest on Facebook. This will likely only inspire covid-deniers to become more ridiculous and radicalized than they already are.
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