outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Seems we're about 2 weeks away from a major med journal publishing a large randomized trial on convalescent plasma. That could have saved tens of thousands worldwide, and I have confidence it will as SOP. Avoiding mechanical ventilation as long as possible with high flow nasal canulas and proning may have similar benefits.

If some pandemic lumbers towards becoming endemic, its better to be among the second and later waves.

It feels very strange to post this on the day of the USA's 4th highest death toll, but it appears that we are post-peak of the first wave here in the states.

So much for the Sunshine Law: #Florida medical examiners were releasing #coronavirus death data, which showed a higher number than the official state tally. The state made them stop. https://t.co/XsvyTM1xcO via @kmcgrory & @rwoolington

— Craig Pittman (@craigtimes) April 29, 2020

deaths per day def seem to be on the decline particularly in NY

ten times (or more) the reported cases

The new serological data, which is provisional, suggests that coronavirus infections greatly outnumber confirmed covid-19 cases, potentially by a factor of 10 or more. Many people experience mild symptoms or none at all, and never get the standard diagnostic test with a swab up the nose, so they’re missed in the official covid-19 case counts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/antibody-tests-support-whats-been-obvious-covid-19-is-much-more-lethal-than-flu/2020/04/28/2fc215d8-87f7-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html

The new serological data, which is provisional, suggests that coronavirus infections greatly outnumber confirmed covid-19 cases, potentially by a factor of 10 or more. Many people experience mild symptoms or none at all, and but even if they're ill for a month, they're told to stay home until they're at death's door so they never get the standard diagnostic test with a swab up the nose, so they’re missed in the official covid-19 case counts.

probably just a coincidence that the lab is in wuhan

https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741

btw i'm not sure if this has been discussed itt but it's a new article so there it is

newsweek has become a conspiracy website, and this is essentially a conspiracy story that has been pushed by the usual right-wing sewer afaict

^^^

yeah newsweek turned into some dumb shit at some point. I stopped paying attention to them years ago. when did this happen?

alright

so the whole thing is bullshit?

https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/what-went-wrong-at-newsweek-according-to-current-and-former-staffers.html

so the whole thing is bullshit?

― davey, Wednesday, April 29, 2020 9:45 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

a lot of it frankly reads like bullshit

I hope this is true:
https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200429007051320

SEOUL, April 29 (Yonhap) -- South Korean health experts said Wednesday that recovered coronavirus patients may have tested positive again due to traces of virus fragments that have been inactivated.

As of Tuesday, a total of 277 people who recovered from COVID-19 have retested positive here, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

The country's central clinical committee for emerging disease control said there was no live virus present in such cases, positively refuting theories like the virus being reactivated or reinfection.

They said that apparent reinfection cases came because fragments of the virus remained in their bodies and showed up in test kits.
The country currently uses a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for the COVID-19 virus that works by finding the virus's genetic information, or RNA, in a sample taken from a patient.

The experts said this PCR test is so sensitive that it can still pick up parts of the small amount of RNA from a cell even after the person has recovered from COVID-19.

"RNA fragments still can exist in a cell even if the virus is inactivated," they said in a press release. "It is more likely that those who tested positive again picked up virus RNA that has already been inactivated."

Oh Myoung-don, head of the committee, said the cases in which people retested positive were due to technical limits of the PCR tests.

The committee further said it is virtually impossible for the virus to be reactivated unless the COVID-19 virus causes chronic infections.

"The COVID-19 virus does not invade inside of the cell nucleus and combine with a patient's DNA," Oh said. "It means that the virus does not create chronic infections."

Oh further said the COVID-19 virus is different from diseases such as HIV and hepatitis B in which the virus stays dormant inside of a cell nucleus and later causes chronic infection.

Concerns have risen over chronic infections after several COVID-19 patients stayed in hospitals over two months before being cured.

The country reported nine more cases of the new coronavirus Wednesday, bringing the nation's total infections to 10,761, the KCDC said. It marked the 11th day in a row that the number of new infections stayed at 15 or below.

✧✧✧@y✧✧.c✧.k✧

i think it definitely does stay in the body for while though. a month at least for me.

Yeah it was the whole reinfection thing that was freaking me out. If you can't get reinfected, then maybe issuing immunity passports could work after all.

NY Times really jazzed about Cuomo saying it’s “disgusting” what’s going on, that homeless people are sleeping in subways. Are they insinuating that he is saying homeless people themselves are disgusting? It kind of seems like that, and it also seems clear that’s not what he meant.

Fragments of inactivated RNA would explain the positive test results, but many recovering patients report periodic recurrence of mild symptoms, like low fever or pains, which are not explained by inactive RNA. There's still a lot to learn about this virus.

Could it be people who take longer to recover who just had one bad false negative test after presumed recovery?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/26/health/remdesivir-trial-results-coming-soon/index.html

Considering the rollout of what seemed like good news, only to be a flawed study with no control group, idk how excited i will get about the actual official trial results.

the NIAID study that fauci was referring to was a randomized, placebo-controlled trial with over 1000 patients that apparently showed an faster time to improvement and hospital discharge with remdesivir. we'll see what we can learn from the actual paper but this appears to be some good news

Pfizer now saying they might have a vaccine in the fall, which would be absolute record time for vaccine development

bollocks will they

who knows. they start testing this week? https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-fall-2020-4

The Oxford group have been claiming September

Thanks Kev, that's very helpful.

drug company executives love to cite positive preliminary indications in the rosiest possible terms. it probably annoys the scientists who are doing the work.

They've had a head-start with vaccine development for SARS and MERS, though? September still feels like a pipe-dream but the possibility of a breakthrough isn't as remote as if this were a type of infection they'd never seen before.

Also 'ready' does not necessarily mean 'manufactured in massive quantities for global distribution'.

The vital interests of the people in power, in both governments and corporations, are going to align almost unanimously in favor of doing everything necessary to move a proven vaccine or drug treatment into massive production and distribution ASAP. With the politics of it settled, it becomes purely a logistical problem. Trump's narcissism and incompetence could bog it down in the USA, but the whole world will be acting on this one.

surely you can't be suggesting that we trample on the patent rights of the vaccine developer

SARS (2002) & MERS (2012) vaccines: 0

I think a vaccine would be amazing and it's a bright hope in this era of bleakness, but I would not bet that we see an affordable solution go to market until well after the virus has run its course... again, I hope I'm wrong here.

well, this one isn't going to "run its course"

Patent rights can be transferred through purchase and property rights can be forced into transfer by eminent domain. Just give a one-time payment and license the rights for $1 to all takers.

I disagree. I think with the combination of contact tracing & social distancing, we have a much better chance at detecting & limiting exposure.

(disagreeing with silby there^)

it’s a nasty disease. it’s incredibly dangerous. i am seriously in a spin about this casual talk of heading back to “normal”. what has changed? we’ve made the number of deaths level off through an unprecedented effort of policy and will. it’s been shambolic but distancing has has an effect. but thousands of people are still dying of this every day! that’s.... not good!! and we’re ready to turn up the volume on that number?? i just have no words really

Get your White House gift shop Covid-19 commemorative coin. Regularly $125, but now at a low low price of $100.

Are they insinuating that he is saying homeless people themselves are disgusting? It kind of seems like that, and it also seems clear that’s not what he meant.

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, April 29, 2020 1:03 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

@Tracer yeah he means the people are disgusting. I wouldn't believe him to think otherwise.

keep in mind they were talking about snake trains w/o doors between cars for a while there before everyone pointed out that without doors the whole train becomes to poop car

snake train! open ended cars you mean? i kinda like em

yeah i mean it makes sense until you have the poop car

xps: The thing that worries me about coronavirus vaccines is the issues faced testing vaccine candidates for 2003 SARS and MERS. Vaccine efforts paused/halted because the vaccine candidates tried caused vaccine-associated hypersensitivity, and in animal models, lung pathology when challenged by live virus. In a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine context, vaccine-associated hypersensitivity could mean the majority of infections that otherwise were mild or asymptomatic have a higher likelyhood of outright acute respiratory syndromes.

I've read that some 90 vaccine candidates are currently in development. We may need that many to find one that confers immunity without hypersensitivity. All praise to those volunteering for early human trials, they're braver than me.

One of the nice things about the fact that pharmaceutical companies are largely all owned by the same three index funds is that it's not in the interests of the index funds for the pharmaceutical companies to makes swingeing profits if that would cripple every other company the index funds invest in (IE every other company) - there's already been a lot of co-operation between them and I'd be amazed if whichever of them comes up with the cure tries for Shrekli-size gouging.

xps:

The traditional method of disposing human waste from trains is to deposit the waste onto the tracks or, more often, onto nearby ground using what is known as a hopper toilet.

Trying to price gouge on a vaccine or drug treatment that could end or control this global pandemic would only be effective as a way of committing corporate suicide. The full weight of the world's governments and people would crush your corporation like a bug.

is shortage of ventilators still an issue in NY?

no, because the peak number of infections was far lower than expected (20k vs. 120k expected) thanks to social distancing... hopefully.