Coronavirus thread

[prémont]

It's not just a quick, superficial comparison, but seems rather comprehensively done.

I only read it on Danish TV2, so in Danish, but it's a rather thorough article for that source.
I didn't have the energy to look for English sources, but surely the story will become internationally published.

It was at Colmar, the Albert Schweitzer Hospital, so people can use that for googling. Colmar is a place of pilgrimage for Chinese tourists, due to television series locations.

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/udland/2020-05-08-laeger-finder-spor-af-covid-19-i-europa-fra-foer-sygdommen-blev-opdaget-i-kina

Thanks. Very interesting article. The decisive test for these patients must be an antibody-test.

[arpeggio]

I found this interesting link:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/what-are-we-doing-doctors-are-fed-conspiracies-ravaging-ers-n1201446?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[Herman]

Sad story. That doctor should indeed not waste his time on facebook arguing with crazies after a long day work in the ICU.

[Que]

I found this interesting link:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/what-are-we-doing-doctors-are-fed-conspiracies-ravaging-ers-n1201446?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Modern information technology has demonstrated that more information doesn't necessarily lead to more common sense. We moved from the age of mass (state) propaganda to the age of mass information.

I'm not sure if the result is any better....   

Q

[Herman]

Well, I seem to have missed the era of mass state propaganda, when was this?

[Que]

Well, I seem to have missed the era of mass state propaganda, when was this?

What about the larger part of the 20th century?

Q

[MusicTurner]

Possibly some major break-throughs on the vaccine: Chinese scientists from the Sinovac vaccine company say that a traditional flu vaccine, PiCoVacc, that seems to work against corona on apes, and they are going to test in on humans globally now. There were no side-effects on the apes.

".... the results showed that our vaccine candidate offered safe and complete protection in rhesus macaques against SARS- CoV-2 strains," commented Mr. Weidong Yin, Chairman, President, and CEO of Sinovac.
"... Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech Ltd. is in discussion with regulators in other countries, and the World Health Organization, to launch phase III clinical trials in regions where the novel coronavirus is still spreading rapidly, CEO Yin Weidong said in an interview Thursday. "To evaluate whether the vaccine can give protection, we need to study the relation between disease incidence and vaccination," Yin said. "You can't do that when there's no cases.""

EDIT: reactions from leading Danish scientists are very positive. The vaccine uses old principles and technology, which should also facilitate its testing and production. Overall, you use dead virus, insert something like it in the body, and the body starts working to destroy it. The Danish scientists say that a time-span on 1.5 years for general availability seems reasonable, unless severe side-effects are discovered.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200506005601/en/Sinovac-Announces-Animal-Study-Results-Vaccine-COVID-19

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-china-s-sinovac-biotech-in-talks-to-test-covid-19-vaccine-globally-11588937378011.html

(scientific: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/06/science.abc1932; Danish: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/2020-05-09-ny-coronavaccine-kaldes-oldnordisk-og-primitiv-men-den-virker-paa-aber)

[Herman]

What about the larger part of the 20th century?

Q

What I did, in my part of that Century is what I do now.

I read a couple of newspapers that are obviously not state-controlled, and I read books, some of which were written far before the 20th century.

I do recall quitting watching tv (Dutch tv) when I got the feeling it was not for me.

[Que]

What I did, in my part of that Century is what I do now.

I read a couple of newspapers that are obviously not state-controlled, and I read books, some of which were written far before the 20th century.

I do recall quitting watching tv (Dutch tv) when I got the feeling it was not for me.

There must be a misunderstanding. I (obviously) wasn't implying that all information was the product of state or ideological propaganda or manipulation, just like not all information available to us now is misinformation. But its occurence was before, during and after WWII definitely real.

The Cold War ended in 1991. When mass misinformation became a widespread phenomenon, I'm not sure. Must be a while ago?

Q

[71 dB]

According to Belgian and American researchers llamas can help treat coronavirus:

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-llamas-could-help-with-antibody-treatments-for-the-coronavirus-2020-5

[Mandryka]

https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

". . . my goal here is to try to guide you away from situations of high risk. . ."

[MusicTurner]

https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

". . . my goal here is to try to guide you away from situations of high risk. . ."

The link stops; one needs to do registering/subscription to read anything, not knowing anything about any of the content beforehand.

[Mandryka]

The link stops; one needs to do registering/subscription to read anything, not knowing anything about any of the content beforehand.

That's a shame, I thought it was potentially very useful. It's a journalistic article, written by a Biology professor at a university in Massachusetts, looking at the risks of become infected in various situations which we're likely to encounter more and more as lockdown is eased.

I can't copy the whole thing, here's a handful of paragraphs

Indoor spaces, with limited air exchange or recycled air and lots of people, are concerning from a transmission standpoint. We know that 60 people in a volleyball court-sized room (choir) results in massive infections. Same situation with the restaurant and the call center.  Social distancing guidelines don't hold in indoor spaces where you spend a lot of time, as people on the opposite side of the room were infected. 

The principle is viral exposure over an extended period of time. In all these cases, people were exposed to the virus in the air for a prolonged period (hours). Even if they were 50 feet away (choir or call center), even a low dose of the virus in the air reaching them, over a sustained period, was enough to cause infection and in some cases, death.
 
Social distancing rules are really to protect you with brief exposures or outdoor exposures. In these situations there is not enough time to achieve the infectious viral load when you are standing 6 feet apart or where wind and the infinite outdoor space for viral dilution reduces viral load. The effects of sunlight, heat, and humidity on viral survival, all serve to minimize the risk to everyone when outside.

When assessing the risk of infection (via respiration) at the grocery store or mall, you need to consider the volume of the air space (very large), the number of people (restricted), how long people are spending in the store (workers - all day; customers - an hour). Taken together, for a person shopping: the low density, high air volume of the store, along with the restricted time you spend in the store, means that the opportunity to receive an infectious dose is low. But, for the store worker, the extended time they spend in the store provides a greater opportunity to receive the infectious dose and therefore the job becomes more risky.

[MusicTurner]

Thank you for the clarification, which us useful - and calming

[Que]

Interesting graph of the total of deaths per week (irrespective of cause of death) in the Netherlands:




The spike on the left is the flu epidemic of the winter of 2017, the spike on the right is the impact of the COVID pandemic.

Of course we don't know how this would have looked like without the special containment measures.

Q

[Karl Henning]

Why we're reading bucket list books in quarantine

[Mandryka]

Interesting graph of the total of deaths per week (irrespective of cause of death) in the Netherlands:




The spike on the left is the flu epidemic of the winter of 2017, the spike on the right is the impact of the COVID pandemic.

Of course we don't know how this would have looked like without the special containment measures.

Q

Is anyone estimating what proportion of the excess deaths are caused by COVID, rather than, for example, people just not getting hospital treatment for other conditions.

[JBS]

Thank you for the clarification, which us useful - and calming

I was just able to read the article in full. The link made no attempt to have me register or subscribe.

[Ratliff]

Possibly some major break-throughs on the vaccine: Chinese scientists from the Sinovac vaccine company say that a traditional flu vaccine, PiCoVacc, that seems to work against corona on apes, and they are going to test in on humans globally now. There were no side-effects on the apes.

".... the results showed that our vaccine candidate offered safe and complete protection in rhesus macaques against SARS- CoV-2 strains," commented Mr. Weidong Yin, Chairman, President, and CEO of Sinovac.
"... Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech Ltd. is in discussion with regulators in other countries, and the World Health Organization, to launch phase III clinical trials in regions where the novel coronavirus is still spreading rapidly, CEO Yin Weidong said in an interview Thursday. "To evaluate whether the vaccine can give protection, we need to study the relation between disease incidence and vaccination," Yin said. "You can't do that when there's no cases.""

EDIT: reactions from leading Danish scientists are very positive. The vaccine uses old principles and technology, which should also facilitate its testing and production. Overall, you use dead virus, insert something like it in the body, and the body starts working to destroy it. The Danish scientists say that a time-span on 1.5 years for general availability seems reasonable, unless severe side-effects are discovered.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200506005601/en/Sinovac-Announces-Animal-Study-Results-Vaccine-COVID-19

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-china-s-sinovac-biotech-in-talks-to-test-covid-19-vaccine-globally-11588937378011.html

(scientific: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/06/science.abc1932; Danish: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/2020-05-09-ny-coronavaccine-kaldes-oldnordisk-og-primitiv-men-den-virker-paa-aber)

What you have written at the top, about the flu vaccine conferring immunity to CoV, doesn't make sense and I don't see reference to it skimming the articles you cite. vaccines are very specific, polio vaccine does not protect against measles, etc, and flu vaccines themselves have to be reformulated every year because different strains of the flu propagate every year. What is the same is the basic premise, introducing a small amount of a weak strain of the virus, or of a fragment of the virus, that can provoke an immune response without causing illness.

Public health officials and politicians can't entirely rely on optimistic assumptions that a vaccine will be available in a short time line due to miraculous advances in medical science. Just from having my kid vaccinated, I know there are vaccines for which you have to wait months for the person to develop an immune response, and others where immunity decays away unless a booster vaccine is given a set time afterwards. Even presented with a working vaccine, it can take years to determine that it is safe, that it works, and what the sufficient and safe dosage is.

And there could be no vaccine. Someone has to be thinking about how to resume our culture with Covid-19 as a seasonal disease, like flu.

[Karl Henning]

A new analysis: Coronavirus death rate surged in Massachusetts locations that already faced challenges
Harvard analysis finds mortality rate surged higher in communities with more poverty, people of color, and crowded housing.