Is there any data on the rate of longer term damage (e.g. reduced lung capacity) after recovery from COVID-19?
Depends on what you mean by longer term…because this virus has only been around for 6-8 months or so, we don’t really know the extent of long term consequences, but will be studying this for years to come.
I agree with all of this.
What many people fear most though is risk of death, and some struggle to put that in context…hopefully these estimates will help with that.
The opinion piece was very insightful. The media just love to push tragedy. They pushed stories of young people with COVID 19 even though young people were not representative of those most affected, that is, the super elderly and frail. But young people are ‘prettier’ and them getting sick is scarier, so that narrative was pushed. It kept eyeballs on the TV.
We locked down young and healthy people but many governors allowed, even mandated, that COVID positive people be admitted to nursing homes to infect the most vulnerable. It’s criminal indifference to those elderly people.
see: asymptomatic spread (40%) and exponential math. Young health people spreading it to vulnerable - without knowing it.
Nursing home spread happened because asymptomatic healthy workers brought it into the nursing homes and spread it, unknowingly. The narrative of past covid positive patients being repatriated into nursing homes and causing the nursing home spread is FALSE. Please stop spreading that false narrative.
If we had TESTING and PPE, this could have been stopped in its tracks. But we didn’t. If we had honest information about masks in early March (do we have honest info about masks yet, even now?), spread could have been reduced. Our loved ones in nursing home died alone in April with no family members visiting any time in March. Again, asymptotic spread, no testing, lack of PPE, and “masks not needed” narratives from our federal government.
Yes yes yes! I think I will copy your response and post it everytime someone on Facebook repeats the nonsense. I was saying the same thing to my husband this morning about how that argument drives me bonkers.
This article https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6493/808 addresses the “clumpiness” of coronavirus. I found it really interesting. Trying to answer questions like why it seems to be able to circulate in the community in some places for quite a while before blowing up, and in other places it starts with an explosion. The “superspreader event” is how this virus likes to spread evidently.
Yesterday one of my closest friends was surprised to find out that her husband had this in March. He was pretty sick and at the time said that it was not like the flu, which he had also had. Never had respiratory issues, but had a bad headache and fever. He is the same age as my H, and no underlying conditions. He had taken the younger kids skiing about 2 weeks before he was sick, but also traveled for work afterwards. She went to get antibody tests for herself and 3 of the kids. Will be curious to see . In some ways this makes me feel better about things, in that this is finally someone I know that had this and recovered just fine. I know that its not always the case. So perspective is i guess key.
Florida, God’s waiting room, kept nursing home deaths low by prioritizing PPE for nursing homes, and by reaching out to them to start using (existing, then expanded) CDC protocols for infection control.
That was a very interesting read - thank you for posting it.
https://apnews.com/5ebc0ad45b73a899efa81f098330204c
Not a false narrative.
“The effect of the order was to contribute to 5,000 deaths” in New York nursing homes.
And if it was a false narrative, would the directive have been reversed.
Yes, some of the deaths may have been due to workers being positive. But knowingly introducing COVID positive people into a facility with frail elderly people was worse than stupid.
Its a false narrative, @TatinG. New York is not the only state in the union - I don’t know what happened there, but look at Connecticut, Massachusetts almost all other states and you will see that they did not have that policy and the vast majority of deaths are from nursing homes in April (they were forced to die alone, for their own protection!) that prohibited visitors starting in March. This is very close to me, so please, do your own research on this and think about it. I know you said you know lots of people in many states and don’t know anyone with Covid, so please try to understand that those of us who are living Covid in our area can see what is happening. We don’t have the microphone of opinion pieces that are spread everywhere as fact. Just look at the numbers.
Here’s some info to start from Connecticut:
"All told, 1,927 nursing home deaths have been linked to COVID-19 as of May 13, according to state data. The nursing home death toll represents 62% of coronavirus deaths recorded in Connecticut.
There have been 276 deaths so far in 75 assisted living facilities, and those deaths are counted separately from nursing homes."
The article you linked to also says this-
Louisiana barred hospitals for 30 days from sending coronavirus patients to nursing homes with some exceptions. And while Louisiana reported about 1,000 coronavirus-related nursing home deaths, far fewer than New York, ** that was 40% of Louisiana’s statewide death toll, a higher proportion than in New York.**
It’s hard to keep up with all the data and revised estimates that are continually coming out from top organizations and people.
From Freopp, two things:
1.Estimates of death rate by age, comparing covid-19 vs. influenza.
2.Nursing home data in total and by state. 40% of all covid-19 fatalities in nursing homes. 1.6% of US population is in nursing homes. Incredibly tragic.
https://freopp.org/the-covid-19-nursing-home-crisis-by-the-numbers-3a47433c3f70
Re nursing homes, I suspect the standard of care is awful as well in many cases and that has contributed to the poor outcomes. My 92 year old FIL had to spend some time last year in a nursing home/LTCF - just under six weeks - and there is no way he is going back. He - and we - would rather have him die falling off the bed at home than being trapped in one of those places again.
BTW, all my 80+ year old relatives living at home have sailed through this crisis without issue, observing only common sense precautions to prevent acquiring COVID (certainly not isolating completely, wiping down groceries, etc.). Both in Florida and metro NYC.
Both can be true. LA County, for a time, made the same mistake New York did, BTW. But just because some outbreaks may be due to the workers, other cases and outbreaks may be due to returning infected patients to nursing homes. Until some specific study is done, we may never know. And just because some outbreaks may be due to workers coming in to work positive, doesn’t make the policy of returning infected patients to nursing homes a good policy.
Not all (or maybe even most) deaths in nursing homes were from transferring patients from hospitals. But all or most were from nursing homes not taking effective steps in infection control, even though the earliest reported outbreak was in a nursing home.
Testing capability in the US was slow, and that hurt our response. The CDC was acting in good faith and got bad results, it happens. We’ve gotten better, but it is not and was not all about testing.
CDC guidelines for infection control existed, state regulations for nursing homes existed, and states all had PPE stockpiles, although none were adequate for the threat. States that prioritized PPE, inspections, and enforcement at nursing homes had fewer deaths.
We can all see that now in hindsight. I don’t believe governors or public health directors wanted to kill old people or were indifferent. But they made poor decisions, and need to start doing better for the long run.
And sending infected patients back to nursing homes was an appallingly bad decision at any point in this outbreak, even if it wasn’t the primary cause of deaths in each state.
I agree with you that it was a bad decision, where it was done, but it was not done in most states. The false narrative is attributing this policy to the majority of nursing home deaths across the country. Its FALSE. The cause of the nursing home spread was lack of testing of workers, lack of PPE, and lack of knowledge of the fact that the virus is mostly airborne spread and how to mitigate that spread. People who want to politicize this will go their own stories and beliefs, but the high death rate in the US (because of nursing homes) is predominately a failure of testing and PPE. See Germany - high infection, low deaths. High testing, lots of PPE.
you know, its interesting that you give the CDC the benefit of the doubt ‘good faith and bad results’ but not to the states that came up with the repatriation policy. I think the testing fiasco was rote mismanagement on the part of the CDC.
It really is (and was) all about testing until there is a vaccine. Unless you test, you don’t know to isolate the sick. Pretty simple actually. See how well it worked for the white house? They had 2 asymptomatic positives that they tested frequently. Looks like because they were positive and were TESTED, they didn’t spread it to others there. So how well that worked?
That contains the following:
The problem is that people older than 50 with those kinds of risk factors make up a large percentage of people older than 50 in the US. Since this age group generally has higher income and wealth than other age groups, if many of them limit their activity out of fear of COVID-19, their economic impact will keep the economy down, even if all additional government restrictions were lifted.
I never said or meant to imply that the majority of nursing home deaths were due to returning COVID positive patients to nursing homes. And I never said that the reason for the high percentage of deaths being in nursing homes across the entire country was due to this policy. But many did, as many as 5,000 in New York according to some opinions, and we have no way of knowing how many, does not make it a false story. Unless you think the AP is an unreliable source.
If only other states, like my own Maryland, would have followed this course. Such a sad situation and totally avoidable. States had a big heads up that nursing homes would be a big issue after the initial outbreak in Washington state nursing homes.