PlagueWatch 2020-23 - Coronavirus

[CameronBornAndBred]

Out of curiosity, what beach was this? We had a group from up there and a fellow was sharing shine and strawberries with us. Cherry Grove..


Also, most of my Dad's people are from that area, Maggie Valley down to East Flat Rock..

I moved to Atlantic Beach. But, I'm a total introvert and recluse..so nobody shared except like 2 or three very close friends. Not because of anything other than more than that many people around me sent me into a voluntary corner. (FYI, I am quite content during this outbreak.)

[left_hook_lacey]

Anyone aware of online betting options for various COVID-related events? Positive things only, like date bets on when stay-at-home orders are lifted and the such.

My wife and I really miss our one big gambling event of the year being cancelled (March Madness) and we're jones-ing for some action on something.

I haven't really looked into to it, but if you find anything, let me know. I'd be willing to get in on that.

With that being said, if I had already bet on these things earlier, I would've lost my hat.

[TruBlu]

many years ago when I was a student, some of us had a rented house in Creedmoor, and every month or so some guys would stop by and tell us to not worry if we saw some activity back in the woods, they were just cranking up the still.
We had our vices, they had theirs, sometimes we cross pollinated.

As a kid, born on a very remote desolate farm, my dad always made sure to tell us that if we saw smoke rising from an area in the woods, we were to avoid playing anywhere near that area. Good advice!

[devildeac]

So what does it mean if you stay up late and get up early?

My wife hates it that I can start a movie at 9, and finish it with ease sipping ymmmmm beers, meanwhile she's out after the opening credits.

Then, she gets mad at me that I'm up with the rooster and rallying the troops to get up and be productive.

The kids are not fans of my out of school quarantine schedule I have them on. They don't understand why they have to get up at the same time they normally would, and why they've done so many yard chores. 😂 There's a method to my madness.

Early bedtime for the young'ins?

[devildeac]

As a kid, born on a very remote desolate farm, my dad always made sure to tell us that if we saw smoke rising from an area in the woods, we were to avoid playing anywhere near that area. Good advice!

Did you grow up on Copperhead Road?

[bundabergdevil]

The governor of PA did shut down state liquor stores. It caused a problem and sent a "tsunami" of business over state liens. They opened them back online only and it promptly overwhelmed the site. I do think if they stayed shut down it would have been a problem for people in the middle of the state w/o easy access to a border!



Used to (Oz, not College Park, thank goodness. Blech.)

West Virginia has stopped selling booze to Pennsylvanians crossing the border. West Virginia.

That's not some shot at West Virginia, I have great respect for their drinking culture. I'm just utterly shocked that they would stop serving anyone ever.

[devildeac]

West Virginia has stopped selling booze to Pennsylvanians crossing the border. West Virginia.

That's not some shot at West Virginia, I have great respect for their drinking culture. I'm just utterly shocked that they would stop serving anyone ever.

Oooh, lemme know if you get flamed for this comment as I did once for daring to make a dental reference about "almost heaven."

[richardjackson199]

West Virginia has stopped selling booze to Pennsylvanians crossing the border. West Virginia.

That's not some shot at West Virginia, I have great respect for their drinking culture. I'm just utterly shocked that they would stop serving anyone ever.

Good for West Virginia. If Pennsylvania's rule (not being used by other states as far as I can tell) is just encouraging travel across state lines from a state with more cases to a state with less, that rule defeats the purpose of slowing the spread.

[bundabergdevil]

Good for West Virginia. If Pennsylvania's rule (not being used by other states as far as I can tell) is just encouraging travel across state lines from a state with more cases to a state with less, that rule defeats the purpose of slowing the spread.

Oh yeah, for sure. We've all retreated to our innermost governing unit like Russian nesting dolls. Closed off borders to other nations, at state borders, and we went county-by-county here in PA with the stay-at-home roll-out.

[bedeviled]

So does anyone here know if there is some central repository or “clearinghouse” somewhere that is collecting all this potentially valuable information to further enhance the dissemination

Howard Bauchner, Editor in Chief of JAMA, said that they're getting over 100 journal submissions per day. Submissions have predominantly come from China until about the past week when Italy, France, Iran, & Pakistan started getting their papers in. The info overload is only going to get worse...which, overall, is really a positive development.

Some resources I bumped into:
Public Health Ontario has a "Daily Scan of Selected Public Health Organizations" updates. It's useful if you have in mind a public health entity you want to follow. For instance, if you go to the CDC section, you can see that a new guidance on animals & COVID was issued 4/2/20.

[Sidetrack to make this post at least a little interesting to the general crowd. Those who clicked on the link, wondering if your beloved companion animal will become a coronavirus villain, like Mrs. O'Leary's cow, you may also find this further info interesting. According to this report of a Chinese study (pre-print), cats were able to catch SARS-CoV-2 when given high virus doses (not realistic exposure), but were asymptomatic and there's no data from the pandemic that indicates cats have been a source of transmission to humans (although a cat in Belgium & two dogs in Hong Kong were virus positive). Interestingly, in the reported study, infected cats did pass on the infection to a non-infected cat. When they tested some dogs, no infective virus particles were found. Ferrets may be similar to cats. Finally, it presently looks like you can continue to snuggle your chickens, ducks, & pigs.]

Now, back to the stuff the general public isn't interested in. Public Health Ontario also has a COVID-19 Synopsis of Key Articles page in which they provide summaries of recent journal articles. It's not expansive, but it could save you some time.

There are a few DBR members preparing to enter the frontline in COVID care. And, Mayor de Blasio is ??calling for a clinician draft??:

We don’t have the same kind of draft we used to have, but we’re going to have to create something new right now at this moment in history to enlist all available medical personnel around the country, and I mean civilians

With that in mind, here are some bootcamp resources I found to refresh clinician's critical care knowledge:

• Society of Critical Care Medicine (through which one can volunteer) has an online course called Critical Care for the Non-ICU Clinician
• Univ of Toronto put together a resource entitled Quick ICU Training for COVID-19
• Simulation Canada has a webpage dedicated to COVID-19 case simulations
• EMCrit Project has a practical Internet Book of Critical Care for COVID-19. In addition, I saw a bunch of places linked to a How to ventilate in COVID-19 video made by EMCrit for the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine

[fisheyes]

Howard Bauchner, Editor in Chief of JAMA, said that they're getting over 100 journal submissions per day. Submissions have predominantly come from China until about the past week when Italy, France, Iran, & Pakistan started getting their papers in. The info overload is only going to get worse...which, overall, is really a positive development.

Some resources I bumped into:
Public Health Ontario has a "Daily Scan of Selected Public Health Organizations" updates. It's useful if you have in mind a public health entity you want to follow. For instance, if you go to the CDC section, you can see that a new guidance on animals & COVID was issued 4/2/20.

[Sidetrack to make this post at least a little interesting to the general crowd. Those who clicked on the link, wondering if your beloved companion animal will become a coronavirus villain, like Mrs. O'Leary's cow, you may also find this further info interesting. According to this report of a Chinese study (pre-print), cats were able to catch SARS-CoV-2 when given high virus doses (not realistic exposure), but were asymptomatic and there's no data from the pandemic that indicates cats have been a source of transmission to humans (although a cat in Belgium & two dogs in Hong Kong were virus positive). Interestingly, in the reported study, infected cats did pass on the infection to a non-infected cat. When they tested some dogs, no infective virus particles were found. Ferrets may be similar to cats. Finally, it presently looks like you can continue to snuggle your chickens, ducks, & pigs.]

Now, back to the stuff the general public isn't interested in. Public Health Ontario also has a COVID-19 Synopsis of Key Articles page in which they provide summaries of recent journal articles. It's not expansive, but it could save you some time.

There are a few DBR members preparing to enter the frontline in COVID care. And, Mayor de Blasio is ??calling for a clinician draft??:
With that in mind, here are some bootcamp resources I found to refresh clinician's critical care knowledge:

• Society of Critical Care Medicine (through which one can volunteer) has an online course called Critical Care for the Non-ICU Clinician
• Univ of Toronto put together a resource entitled Quick ICU Training for COVID-19
• Simulation Canada has a webpage dedicated to COVID-19 case simulations
• EMCrit Project has a practical Internet Book of Critical Care for COVID-19. In addition, I saw a bunch of places linked to a How to ventilate in COVID-19 video made by EMCrit for the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine

Thank you once again for a great post.
In particular, the links on ICU care updates are fantastic.
Once again, I am sharing this post with my partners. They are all very appreciative!
Way to go DBR!

[Dr. Rosenrosen]

Small randomized trial of hydroxchloroquine shows potential. Published to non-peer reviewed site. Hopefully we get additional corroboration or confirmation via additional controlled trials that are underway and referenced in this piece.

https://www.contagionlive.com/news/r...ne-for-covid19

[MChambers]

Small randomized trial of hydroxchloroquine shows potential. Published to non-peer reviewed site. Hopefully we get additional corroboration or confirmation via additional controlled trials that are underway and referenced in this piece.

https://www.contagionlive.com/news/r...ne-for-covid19

I saw that, but I also saw this, finding no benefit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...99077X20300858

[sagegrouse]

The NY Times published an opinion piece yesterday by an MD in NoVa who also is on medical faculty at Georgetown:

"What You Should Know Before You Need a Ventilator -- It breaks my heart that patients who will get sick enough to need them won’t know what desperate situations they face."

Scary stuff.

I should add that it resonates with an earlier post by Bedeviled (#3057) that indicates that ventilators may not be needed in an increasing number of COVID-19 cases. I hope that's true.

[MChambers]

Here's a good article from my local paper on the difficulties in knowing how many have died of COVID-19 and why the count is almost certainly too low. https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...a6d_story.html

[Bob Green]

Captain Crozier tests positive for COVID-19:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/05/polit...avy/index.html

There is no telling how many CVN 71 Sailors are infected.

[throatybeard]

The NY Times published an opinion piece yesterday by an MD in NoVa who also is on medical faculty at Georgetown:

"What You Should Know Before You Need a Ventilator -- It breaks my heart that patients who will get sick enough to need them won’t know what desperate situations they face."

Scary stuff.

I should add that it resonates with an earlier post by Bedeviled (#3057) that indicates that ventilators may not be needed in an increasing number of COVID-19 cases. I hope that's true.

Thanks for the link. The [appropriately] graphic analogies are helpful.

It amazes me that people are still attempting to minimize/pooh-pooh/deny/spin COVID-19 away. I can scarcely think of anything more wicked, shy of genocide, which COVID denialism is uncomfortably close to.

[swood1000]

Small randomized trial of hydroxchloroquine shows potential. Published to non-peer reviewed site. Hopefully we get additional corroboration or confirmation via additional controlled trials that are underway and referenced in this piece.

https://www.contagionlive.com/news/r...ne-for-covid19

I saw that, but I also saw this, finding no benefit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...99077X20300858

The difference might be that the first study was conducted on patients "hospitalized with mild illness" and found that they recovered more quickly, suggesting “that hydroxychloroquine might convey some protection against the illness worsening.” The second study was conducted on patients with “severe Covid-19 infection.” Furthermore, of the 11 subjects in the second study, “8 had significant comorbidities associated with poor outcomes (obesity: 2; solid cancer: 3; hematological cancer: 2; HIV-infection: 1).” So it’s possible that hydroxychloroquine can inhibit the virus from gaining a foothold but is ineffective against a raging infection and/or in those with significant comorbidities.

This brings to mind that the initial indication that hydroxychloroquine (HC) might have some effect against Covid-19 came from the observation in a hospital that none of the lupus patients became infected:

During the initial Chinese outbreak, Wuhan doctors observed that patients with lupus—a disease for which HC is a common treatment—did not seem to develop Covid-19. Of 178 hospital patients who tested positive, none had lupus and none were on HC. None of this Wuhan hospital’s dermatology department’s 80 lupus patients were infected with the novel coronavirus. The Wuhan doctors hypothesized that this may be due to long-term use of HC. They treated 20 Covid-19 patients with HC. Their result: “Clinical symptoms improve significantly in 1 to 2 days. After five days of chest CT examination, 19 cases showed significant absorption improvement.”

Perhaps HC is effective primarily if taken before or in the very first stages of infection, as with these lupus patients. Apparently, there is a study being conducted in which they are giving HC prophylactically to volunteer health care workers and first responders. The results should be interesting.

[CDu]

Thanks for the link. The [appropriately] graphic analogies are helpful.

It amazes me that people are still attempting to minimize/pooh-pooh/deny/spin COVID-19 away. I can scarcely think of anything more wicked, shy of genocide, which COVID denialism is uncomfortably close to.

From what I have seen, the general argument from a not-insubstantial segment of the population has shifted to “people are way underestimating the case counts of the asymptomatic folks,” and “I bet there were tons of people in the US who had it back in December and got better.” This despite no actual evidence to support it (and pretty much all the evidence suggesting the opposite) mind you. Everything I have seen estimates the asymptomatic folks representing 40-85% of cases - meaning one could assume the true case counts are anywhere from 2-7 times the confirmed cases - neither of which is nearly enough to suggest the death rate is anywhere nearly as low as that of the flu.

Meanwhile, we are potentially going to top 10,000 total US deaths today, with over 7,000 deaths in the past week alone.

[swood1000]

Here's a good article from my local paper on the difficulties in knowing how many have died of COVID-19 and why the count is almost certainly too low.https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...a6d_story.html

As I understand it, the way they determine the effect on society in a particular year of a disease such as the flu is by comparing the expected number of deaths without the disease with the number that actually died. This is all done by statisticians, and has the effect of excluding the people who would have died anyway that year but who also just happened to have the flu (along with all their other infirmities). So we won’t know the official effect of Covid-19 until after it’s over and they do this calculation. On the one hand the current count is too low because some were left out, as the story says, but on the other hand it’s inflated because some of those people would have died this year anyway of other causes.

Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London scientist whose research about the enormous number of deaths there might be in Britain, told Parliament that the deaths of those who would have died anyway before the end of the year “might be as much as half or two thirds of the deaths we see, because these are people at the end of their lives or who have underlying conditions.”