outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Some good news in Italy - ventilators hacked together from scuba gear, following on from a project to repair broken ventilators.

https://dgiluz.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/its-working/

And here’s the whole toolkit on how to do it

https://www.isinnova.it/easy-covid19-eng/

social distancing is currently *not* happening in my clinic (where we're doing telehealth) and it's realllly starting to bug me out

is there an armchair epidemiologist here who can attempt to explain infective probability relative to the number of transmitted virions?

i.e. if one were to inhale a thousand virions as opposed to a hundred (or in whatever volume they ordinarily transmit) is one then theoretically 10x more vulnerable?

the grim statistic i want to know is how many ppl have gotten it *despite* practicing social isolation (like, say, limited to going to the store or w/e)

xp or: is there a certain threshold of "trace" bacteria beneath which infection is unlikely?

I honestly think most people probably have it at this point. I brought up the loss of taste/smell thing and apparently one of my co-workers hasn’t been able to smell or taste anything for three weeks but has no other symptoms. Now let’s just pretend she def has it - that would be three weeks of commuting, working, etc. how many people could you already have transmitted it to??

it's definitely not "most people"

Ok maybe not most but I think whole lot more than people realize. I think they will find that there’s a high percentage of carriers who are symptomatic or have symptoms that they don’t realizes are COVID related. This now makes three people I know who have completely lost their ability to smell and taste over the past month.

the grim statistic i want to know is how many ppl have gotten it *despite* practicing social isolation

When you find out let us know, too, will ya?

counterpoint: we should be fine by easter, a perfect day

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, March 25, 2020 5:18 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

counterpoint: no we are the best

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, March 25, 2020 5:18 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

def going to be interesting to see how don spins things if this is the trajectory, because he's always "all about the numbers"

probably going to say that the reduced price of oil is all his doing

xp I was going to say "let us know too, will ya, but if it's a scary big number then write it in code somewhere where I don't have to scare myself"

but I guess if it's that high a number at least we can all just go to the damn shop and stop taking circuitous routes all over the place looking nervously round every corner

best wishes to your family sleeve

Brilliant ENBB!

oh, yes, sorry - good luck to your family, sleeve

and stay safe, ENBB

thx all and no worries if you missed it b4 posting, thread moves fast. I have never met the niece but the family is wonderful and they are very concerned. another stark reminder that youth does not confer immunity.

yes, and that not everything merely short of dying is a picnic for anyone contracting it

that's what plays on my mind as a historical pneumoniac

update!

Apparently her test came back negative for Covid-19 🙏 However she is exhibiting all of the symptoms and the tests are supposedly not 100% accurate. Either way, she is not out of the woods yet. She is on a ventilator and the doctors are hoping she will begin to make progress with that and other treatments. She’s fighting. Thank you all for your love and positive energy

wishing all good things

best wishes to her and her family whatever it turns out to be

Not for the first time The Australian border force is trying to get people killed

These are concerning reports and images. The Government - specifically @PeterDutton_MP - needs to explain what is going on here, what protocols are in place at airports, and what directions are being given to @AusBorderForce #COVID19Aus https://t.co/XtDClMzker

— Kristina Keneally (@KKeneally) March 25, 2020

Seoul is 60% denser than New York and it has 334 cases. NYC alone has more cases than all of S Korea. https://t.co/LE3l52bxhM

— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) March 24, 2020

Of course you lie all the time but this one of the most violent and destructive lies you’ve ever told. https://t.co/tWNcAOfpIT

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) March 25, 2020

scare quotes around testing seem significant

have to wonder (but probably shouldn't) if there are 8 or 10 senators ruing their impeachment votes rn

probably not!

8 or 10 senators ruing their impeachment votes rn

that is not how their minds work. they are ready to hop on the trump train or off it, depending on how their own state is trending, plus how soon they are up for re-election. they do not currently think they will die of this or anyone close to them. only when it hits close to home will they know the score, and by then it will be too late to flip the script.

probably not!

This now makes three people I know who have completely lost their ability to smell and taste over the past month.

Now I am imagining an end of the crisis in which restaurants can reopen, but no one has a sense of taste anymore.

all the better for some restaurants then

brb, gotta buy some soylent stock.

wow oxo really branched out huh

starting tomorrow night the most populated communes in santiago, chile are under full 7 day renewable quarantine , where you need a permit ( i think you can get online) to leave your house to go to the market/pharmacy/doctor.

and in other news Bolsonaro is very strong. he was an athlete.

Nice tune, lack of effective social distancing in the control booth.

https://youtu.be/PUHrck2g7Ic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

Great, really thorough, piece (focuses on the US but lots of interesting material on vaccine development)

when I took the garbage down last night, sense of smell still intact

xpost That was a really good piece, but unless I missed it (entirely possible!) it doesn't stress the importance of testing people to see if *they already had it.* If 80% of people have mild to no symptoms, then it stands to reason that some huge number of people are shut inside for no reason, which makes their hypothetical immunity moot. Once people can be assured not that they don't have it but that they *had* it and are now likely ok (assuming this is the case, and there's no reason to assume otherwise) they can get out and about, do the shopping, go back to work, help others and so on. And as people confirm they've had it, that number of back to normal folks will grow bigger and bigger. Not herd immunity, per se, but an increasingly large herd that is immune, not worried about themselves, not taxing medical services, and so on.

If 80% of people have mild to no symptoms, then it stands to reason that some huge number of people are shut inside for no reason

shut inside to avoid passing it on to those that haven't had it and may be vulnerable, right?

i think you're forgetting that the people who have had it and showed no symptoms can (and are) still passing it on to others

My understanding is that even if you've already had it and have had the antibody test to prove it, you might still be able to transmit the virus via contact with people who haven't, so there are dangers to it. Also if some people start treating it as a reason to break the lockdown then people who haven't had it will just start going out again.

(xpost)

That is partly how recovery from ancient and medieval plagues worked - eventually they burned out because they killed the people they were going to kill, and the people left were the people who were immune to begin with or who had gotten it and recovered.

obv we're not there yet on testing or understanding, and most of us are not comfortable with a pure Darwinian shakeout

i'd like to think that we can pull off a pandemic response in the U.S. that is superior to those of the middle ages, but..."we'll see what happens"

Where have any of you read that even if you've already had it and have had the antibody test to prove it, you are still able to transmit? I assumed, as with any other illness, once you had it and have recovered, you're not contagious. I mean, this isn't something you carry around with you forever, is it? You'd confirm you had it, wait a week or so, then yeah, there'd have to be a follow-up test to see if it's still in your system. But if you know you had it, whether or not it's out of your system, that's a big step forward for control, imo. Because you can start the virtual countdown to safety. As opposed to just waiting around to see if you *might* get sick, whether or not you actually are and don't know it or never get sick at all, which is how we're all treating it (appropriately) right now.

(Any other comparable illness, that is. Not, like, herpes or something.)

From the piece:

Much about the coming years, including the frequency, duration, and timing of social upheavals, depends on two properties of the virus, both of which are currently unknown. First: seasonality. Coronaviruses tend to be winter infections that wane or disappear in the summer. That may also be true for SARS-CoV-2, but seasonal variations might not sufficiently slow the virus when it has so many immunologically naive hosts to infect. “Much of the world is waiting anxiously to see what—if anything—the summer does to transmission in the Northern Hemisphere,” says Maia Majumder of Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.

Second: duration of immunity. When people are infected by the milder human coronaviruses that cause cold-like symptoms, they remain immune for less than a year. By contrast, the few who were infected by the original SARS virus, which was far more severe, stayed immune for much longer. Assuming that SARS-CoV-2 lies somewhere in the middle, people who recover from their encounters might be protected for a couple of years. To confirm that, scientists will need to develop accurate serological tests, which look for the antibodies that confer immunity. They’ll also need to confirm that such antibodies actually stop people from catching or spreading the virus. If so, immune citizens can return to work, care for the vulnerable, and anchor the economy during bouts of social distancing.

Not sure anyone knows for sure yet but I've seen a few leading epidemiologists say that they assume it will be like other coronaviruses and you won't be able to transmit once you've had it and fully recovered

From that we will need to develop testing for immunity, and a long-term capacity to administer these for people.

alright team, sounds like we have a plan. now let's get out there and Execute!

(^things people in the federal government should never say, because it freaks out conservatives)