***NON-POLITICAL COVID-19 Discussion Thread***

[JakeF]

A couple of reminders...

Originally Posted by Bwana

Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.

Originally Posted by Dartgod

People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.

We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.

Thanks!

Click here for the original OP:

Spoiler!

Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.

California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”

The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”

Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.

The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.

The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.

A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.

Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.

“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”

It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.

“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”

On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”

According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.

More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.

“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”

CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.

Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.

“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”

[Donger]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

It's being recommended by the mayor of SF, not the governor of CA.

Not the recommendation. BD's manly reaction to it.

[tk13]

Originally Posted by O.city

DJ ain't really wrong in this thread. Everyone is gonna get it, you just want everyone to get it not at the same time so shit isn't overwhelmed.

You can't shut everyone in and live in caves away from the virus.

That's exactly what they're trying to do though. How else do you stop it?

[O.city]

Originally Posted by tk13

That's exactly what they're trying to do though. How else do you stop it?

Stop it?

You don't. Slow it down? Sure. Stop it? Not until there's a vaccine.

[Iowanian]

Originally Posted by BWillie

Can you shoot the virus in the face to eradicate it?

I'm sorry if you're unable to accept or translate an Oregon Trail joke in midst of the mass hysteria.

Can I shoot a virus? No.
Does having the capacity to survive and eat well for an extended period of time without going to a town-city have an advantage? yes.
Does living ones life as an ant, always preparing and saving for winter have an advantage over the grasshopper playing in the field all summer have advantages when winter arrives?

I'm terribly sorry for those vegan tofu eaters who won't be able to locate their desired pallet at whole foods this month.

[tk13]

Originally Posted by O.city

Stop it?

You don't. Slow it down? Sure. Stop it? Not until there's a vaccine.

I meant keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed. There's no way to stop that unless you keep people apart. We have multiple countries with varying degrees of success as examples to look at.

[TLO]

Stopping it isn't possible - but slowing it down is so critical. We obviously have hot spot areas right now. We need to keep it so that there are minimal hot spots as opposed to the country becoming one giant hot spot.

[Fish]

Not exactly encouraging...

Surgeon general says U.S. cases are at the point where Italy was 2 weeks ago

Mar 16, 2020 10:55 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. surgeon general said Monday that the number of coronavirus cases in the United States has reached the level that Italy recorded two weeks ago, a sign that infections are expected to rise in America as the government steps up testing and financial markets continue to fall.

“We are at a critical inflection point in this country, people. We are where Italy was two weeks ago in terms of our numbers,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams told Fox News. “When you look at the projections, there’s every chance that we could be Italy.”

[...]

Adams said there will be 30 to 40 new testing sites running in 19 states that could each perform 2,000 to 4,000 tests a week. However, Brett Giroir, a senior health administration official, said community testing sites manned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and members of the U.S. public health service would be capable of testing 2,000 to 4,000 people each day, not every week. He said the federal government would begin deploying these sites on Monday.

[...]

Asked whether restaurants and bars around the nation should close for the time being, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said he wanted to wait for the guidance to come but allowed, “That could be.”

Fauci said he would like to see more aggressive measures, such as a 14-day national shutdown. Still, Fauci said travel restrictions within the United States, such as to and from hard-hit Washington state and California, probably would not be needed anytime soon.

“The worst is yet ahead for us,” Fauci said. “It is how we respond to that challenge that is going to determine what the ultimate endpoint is going to be.”

[LiveSteam]

Originally Posted by petegz28

San Francisco "orders" people to stay inside. Can they do that legally?

When a big chunk of their population is inside, when they are outside. Id say they can

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by O.city

Stop it?

You don't. Slow it down? Sure. Stop it? Not until there's a vaccine.

And man, the things you can do to slow it are so straightforward that merely not being a stupid jackass will help immensely, especially as we learn more.

The asymptomatic carrier thing is really important to think your way through. Yes, you are capable of shedding the virus still and technically still contagious. But man, it sure looks like you've gotta work hard to spread it at that point. I haven't seen anything credible to this point to indicate that this can be spread through anything other than 'lung fluid' (or whatever the hell the real term is). It's...I dunno...expectorate? Is that a fair way to use that term?

So if you're asymptomatic, theoretical transfer is absolutely possible. But actual real-world transfer? Man...you just have to be completely careless at that point. You have be licking your fingers or picking your noise and not washing your hands. You have to have seasonal allergies and be coughing/sneezing on hard surfaces/people.

It isn't that the symptoms make you more contagious - it's that they're force multipliers that make you more likely to spread it in the real world. They make you more likely to put expectorate (?) out in the world for people to contract the disease from.

So if you take those that are showing symptoms out of the equation and put them at home, you might just have the perfect 'sweet spot' in slow spread from those who are asymptomatic out in the world.

Am I making that as clear in type as it seems in my head? There's an analogy to put together here somehow but I don't know how to put it together. Maybe a garden hose vs. a sprinkler? Throw a garden hose on the ground and yeah, it's gonna be wet there and if you grab the hose and swing it around, you'll splash water on people. And there's a lot of water coming out (again, assuming viral loads are higher for the asymptomatic). That's the 'asymptomatic illness' people. The slow soak of water on the ground will get a few people wet, and probably the amount you kinda want to have to create that acquired immunity - but not an overwhelming amount. Meanwhile if you toss a sprinkler on the end of that hose, it'll shoot the same amount of water out, maybe even less, but it's gonna be spraying it everywhere and get more people wet and at that point far more, far faster, than you intended. So just take the sprinkler off by keeping sick people at home.

I think that analogy works as I'm typing it while parsing through it. It might be stupid if i read it later but it seems to work right now.

[Donger]

4,287 cases
74 deaths

[FAX]

Originally Posted by loochy

Could the re-infection be the other strain? It happens with Flu A and Flu B (it happened to me, my wife, and my son 2 Christmases ago).

I suppose so, Mr. loochy.

I read somewhere ... can't remember where (too much information in too small a brain in too short a time) ... that COVID-19 DNA constantly mutates. Apparently, this is perfectly normal if you're a virus.

According to the Chinese, the bat version has mutated approximately 260 times already. They organize these mutations in "clusters" and there are 5 main clusters (again ... according to them).

Dr. Trevor Bedford has done a lot of work on the movement, spread, and mutation of the virus. He sees mutation in humans as more random. You can see some of his work here:

https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/ce...r-bedford.html

FAX

[ShowtimeSBMVP]

Launched in record speed, #NIH started enrollment for a Phase 1 #clinicaltrial of an investigational vaccine for #COVID19 for healthy adults in the Seattle area. #coronavirus https://t.co/SzZPgkz485 pic.twitter.com/3PgCr9oQYB

— NIH (@NIH) March 16, 2020

[wazu]

Originally Posted by Fish

Not exactly encouraging...

Surgeon general says U.S. cases are at the point where Italy was 2 weeks ago

Mar 16, 2020 10:55 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. surgeon general said Monday that the number of coronavirus cases in the United States has reached the level that Italy recorded two weeks ago, a sign that infections are expected to rise in America as the government steps up testing and financial markets continue to fall.

“We are at a critical inflection point in this country, people. We are where Italy was two weeks ago in terms of our numbers,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams told Fox News. “When you look at the projections, there’s every chance that we could be Italy.”

[...]

Adams said there will be 30 to 40 new testing sites running in 19 states that could each perform 2,000 to 4,000 tests a week. However, Brett Giroir, a senior health administration official, said community testing sites manned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and members of the U.S. public health service would be capable of testing 2,000 to 4,000 people each day, not every week. He said the federal government would begin deploying these sites on Monday.

[...]

Asked whether restaurants and bars around the nation should close for the time being, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said he wanted to wait for the guidance to come but allowed, “That could be.”

Fauci said he would like to see more aggressive measures, such as a 14-day national shutdown. Still, Fauci said travel restrictions within the United States, such as to and from hard-hit Washington state and California, probably would not be needed anytime soon.

“The worst is yet ahead for us,” Fauci said. “It is how we respond to that challenge that is going to determine what the ultimate endpoint is going to be.”

I feel like 2 weeks ago the stories out of Italy were it was already hell on earth with the medical system completely overrun.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by TLO

Stopping it isn't possible - but slowing it down is so critical. We obviously have hot spot areas right now. We need to keep it so that there are minimal hot spots as opposed to the country becoming one giant hot spot.

And that's absolutely fair, reasonable and 100% accurate.

But also far different than encouraging a national shutdown.

One can be extremely aggressive in localized hotspots and that's almost certainly the correct decision. Because these healthcare implosions are almost never going to be 'national' implosions - our country is friggen massive. They'll be largely localized. An enormous outbreak in Columbia, MO won't do anything to impact hospital availability in Birmingham, AL. Just as NYC hasn't had an impact on STL.

So it's vital that there be community responses with state (and eventually federal) support held in reserve to attack weaknesses as they emerge. This response needs to be really really narrowly tailored. Surgery with a shotgun here will have the effect of burning through resources before they're needed.

And I worry national fatigue will make areas that aren't impacted yet less capable of coping or addressing an outbreak if/when it does arise.

[wazu]

Italy story from 2/28: https://edition.cnn.com/asia/live-ne...0572952e5590be