I read in The Hill today that the FDA is now asking for validation data, with specific performance threshold recommendations, from antibody test manufacturers, in an effort to get unreliable tests off the market.
I listened to TWIV podcast on my dog walk this morning. Episode 609 was difficult for me, a layperson, to follow. One bright spot was hearing how optimistic the guest, Susan Weiss (40 years of coronavirus research), was about the number of enzyme (?) targets (?) – apparently offering multiple options for therapeutics.
Washington DC subway system has 91 stations and has 182,000,000 riders annually and operates from early in the morning until around midnight. NYC subway system has 427 stations and over 1.7 billion riders annually and until this week it operated 24/7.
As for cleanliness, although it’s not a perfect analogy (everyone gets a seat on a plane and the time onboard is longer on a plane), I’d say subway cars are around as clean as planes. Lots of people walking through and sitting and standing and doing all kinds of stuff; wouldn’t want to eat off the floor or seats but no need to take a shower when you get home. Wash your hands? Sure!
Perhaps the frequently touched poles, door handles, and such in subways, buses, buildings, etc. could be replaced with copper or a high copper alloy?
Here is a 2015 study on how long human coronavirus 229E lasts on various surfaces: https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/6/e01697-15.abstract
They found that this virus can last for days on stainless steel and other surfaces, but only a few minutes on copper surfaces.
Here is something I am wondering about . This does seem to spread like wildfire in confined conditions. (see prisons, meat processing plants cruise ships). I recall seeing where they tested everyone in one of these and 20% had asymptomatic positives. So it makes me think again does the amount of virus you get play a role , aka you touched something with the virus and now have a lighter version of it, which may have happened on the earlier cruise ships with the delivery of the food versus being Aerosol-ed on. I recall reading that how severe you get this may be based on how much virus you came in contact with.
But continuing this line of thought, it seems in some of these places with the asymptomatic cases , how much with even those symptomatic is the hospital rate and death rate? Also in about a month, we should know what herd immunity does in these places.
I live in a county in my state that is considered rural. There are a few smaller cities (25,000 people or so) but it’s mostly comprised of towns with 10,000 or less residents…and a lot of trees.
But, in our small town, for example, the vast majority of people work in one of those cities, or in a larger city in one of our more urban counties.
It would be really impossible to contain counties here and have people return to their workplaces…there is so much crossing of county and even state lines to work here.
The only “advantage” might be that we have precious little public transportation in this state, and even less in the more rural areas. People drive their own cars usually.
As an example, my DH works an hour drive from where we live…crossing three counties on just his drive to work. And the folks he works with come from all over this tiny state.
Our governor knows this…and has said that really, lessening of restrictions will need to be statewide.
This is inevitable. In the long run, it’s completely unrealistic to expect young adults not to come within 6ft. of anyone they don’t live with. The single teens and twenty-somethings were never going to practice social distancing until a vaccine or cure comes along, possibly years in the future. Social distancing is destined to be a short term measure among the young and healthy. At best, we might hope for another month or two of compliance.
DS is 25, a young adult. He is a cyclist and will ride along one of the most popular walkway stretches at the beach. His observations is that people my age (60+) are the ones walking in clusters and not distancing. For the most part, I’ve found young people (under 30) to be rather conformist and compliant. DD and her hubby - solid SIP. My neighbors, from all appearances - SIP.
But H’s family - vector poo show. BIL is oncologist he and wife visit their DD whose husband works in county mental health, a face to face position. They need to see the grandkids. Sigh. They also visit their DS who is married to a working nurse. Yet they all consider this to be SIP safely. Another SIL - edging up to 70 - had neighbors over for a cocktail hour. But it’s okay, it was on her deck. Um, the deck is about 4X8 feet.
I just took a call from a hospice grief counselor. Wanted to know how I was doing since mom passed. I told him that I was fine, but for the rest of my life will carry with me the pain of not having been able to visit mom for 6 weeks prior to her death.
I told him that IMO what was being done to folks in CCRC et. al. would be punishable if it was done by a pet breeder. Keep them in a confined area. Throw in some food and clean the litter box. No interaction, no touch, no warmth (and this is NOT to diss the staff - they were amazing and are also suffering under these conditions). They are breathing, they are ‘safe’. But at what cost.
There was a moment of silence and then he stated - wow, never thought of it in terms of pets, you have a point.
And - I don’t have a solution. But my gut tells me that as far as the aged in land locked cruise ship conditions - what we are doing is not the best approach.
My closest friends are relaxing some of their own rules. They are getting together with their kids. Sometimes they do it in their yards, with masks and distanced. We’re more willing to shop every week rather than every two weeks. A bit more lax with the wiping down of grocery products. Some are bringing back housekeepers. There is a SIP weariness setting in.
At first I thought this was going to be obviously false, so I spent a long time investigating. We’re interested in true current cases (diagnosed or not), rather than diagnosed cases. I figured new hospitalizations would be a good proxy for true cases. So I went to the CDC’s pages on hospitalizations. They give cumulative hospitalizations, but with a little subtraction I can get new ones.
I looked at hospitalizations for people aged 50-64, figuring that these infections are a good indicator of all infections among people who are running around infecting other people (rather than, say, sitting in a nursing home not being a danger to you and me unless we work there).
In the entire month of February, the rate of new hospitalizations for 50-64 was basically zero. In mid-March it began ramping up sharply, reaching a peak for the week of April 4: that would be people infected in the last week of March. Now it has subsidied somewhat, We, alas, don’t have, yet, the rate for the last week in April, and we can’t know the rate for the first week in May because we’re still in it. We can guess the numbers went down. I certainly hope they did!
Nevertheless, I’m going to have to rate the claim FALSE. That’s because for most of the relevant time period of February and March, to a first approximation there were no cases. There almost certainly are fewer true new cases now than there were in the last two weeks of March, but now there are also people that were infected weeks ago, whereas in the last two weeks ago, there were virtually none. Moreover, the claim was for the entirety of February and March, and for most of that period there were hardly any cases.
Our state is having a news conference at 10am HI std time where the legislative committee will provide guidance on how state will continue the process of reopening carefully.
There are differing issues and resources in the different islands, and I believe those will be taken into account. I believe contact tracing is a huge weakness pretty much nationwide, according to articles I’ve read. This is a huge barrier to safe reopening.
I agree with @TatinG and @dietz99 that the treatment of people in nursing homes is cruel. But I don’t know what a better solution would be. Maybe using caretakers who are known to have antibodies, hoping that this protects the caretakers from contracting and spreading the virus, even though we don’t know it does.
We need to protect elders who are not currently infected. Or, maybe, we want to adopt the theory that people in nursing homes have such a bad quality of life that wiping a quarter or a half of them out is worth it. But if you allow them all to be infected, that puts a huge burden on health care providers, unless they or their health care powers of attorney agree to palliative care only for those who get sick, which I don’t think would happen.
And then you still wouldn’t be able to allow family to visit, because you wouldn’t want to infect the children of nursing home residents. Those children are mostly in a vulnerable age group themselves.
If my mother were still alive and were in the state of health she was in the last year of her life, my siblings and I would absolutely say palliative care only for covid, but I think we’re in the minority.
One more time about reports of “re-infection” – let’s fight the mis-information!
From today’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security e-newsletter:
FALSE POSITIVE “RE-INFECTION” TEST RESULTS In an interview on BBC News, the WHO Technical Lead for the COVID-19 response, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, discussed the potential for re-infection with SARS-CoV-2, in light of recent data regarding false positive diagnostic tests. She noted that the positive diagnostic tests in recently recovered COVID-19 patients are actually false positives rather than evidence of re-infection, supporting statements made by experts last week. Viral RNA fragments in dead lung cells are responsible for the positive PCR test results, and the virus detected by these tests is not viable (ie, cannot infect someone). She emphasized that clearing these dead cells and RNA fragments is a natural part of the body’s healing process and not a sign of re-infection or reactivation of a prior infection. She also commented on the WHO’s current understanding of human’s ability to be re-infected with SARS-CoV-2. At this time, studies are ongoing to determine whether the antibodies produced in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection confer immunity to those individuals and, if so, how long that immunity could persist. There is not currently sufficient evidence to determine whether individuals will maintain any lasting immunity against the virus.
“On Wednesday, the US death count passed the 60,000 mark that the IHME model had said was the likely total cumulative death toll. The IHME on April 29 released a new update raising its estimates for total deaths to 72,433, but that, too, looks likely to be proved an underestimate as soon as next week. Even its upper bound on deaths — now listed as 114,228 by August — is questionable, as some other models expect the US will hit that milestone by the end of May, and most project it will in June.
One analysis of the IHME model found that its next-day death predictions for each state were outside its 95 percent confidence interval 70 percent of the time — meaning the actual death numbers fell outside the range it projected 70 percent of the time. That’s not great! (A recent revision by IHME fixed that issue; more on this below.)
This track record has led some experts to criticize the model. “It’s not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited” to making projections about Covid-19, Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told reporters.”
Again, diagnosed cases. The only thing we know about late February is that Covid was spreading rampantly in the City of New York and surrounding area which we can see now from the huge increase increase in cases (and high death rates - which means lack of testing among exponential spread) once testing started coming online in March.
“There almost certainly are fewer true new cases now than there were in the last two weeks of March” - Agree
My thought is that this was spreading silently in February and early March and a lot of people had it that were NEVER captured in the numbers. I know people that this happened to. Now, testing is much easier to get. Not automatic, but people who call their doctor (at least in the Northeast) can get a test if they want one. It was pretty much impossible during March. Even with that increased testing, the number of new cases now (in NY) is around 3K new a day, which is about the same as mid-March. And again, mid-March was grossly under tested as opposed to now.
I don’t know why anyone would bank on immunity to CV-19 lasting very long.
Immunity to the flu viruses don’t - that’s why we need to get vaccinated every year - so we can protect ourselves (and through herd immunity) those who, for medical reasons, can’t get the vaccine.
To be less sarcastic, the states and counties that are loosening restrictions are well aware of local travel and tourism data, regardless of whether those in far flung locales know that data. Best to leave a lot of this to local control, informed by state and federal information and resources. Iowa, for instance, knows that the hordes of candidates and political operatives that swarmed their state through early February are gone and won’t soon return.
My sister got to wave at my mother Friday. Which is nice. But my mother still wants to know when she can see us, and we just don’t know. She is well aware of the pandemic and risks, and does not want to risk the health of her neighbors at the CCRC, but the situation gets more toxic by the day.
My neighbor is one of 3 siblings who live within a mile of each other. They had a gathering on their patio this weekend - siblings and spouses, kids and grandkids. I didn’t count and don’t care how many of them there were.
There are millions of cases of this disease nationally, it has spread too far to stamp out. We need to focus on protecting those most at risk, communicating treatment protocols, and getting accurate tests over getting quantities of tests.
My good friend’s older brother has COVID-19. He was in the hospital last week and released. He started struggling this week and was readmitted a couple of days ago. They transferred him to the ICU a few hours ago and have now put him on a ventilator. He is disabled and lives in a nursing facility that had an outbreak. He does have underlying conditions. But if it weren’t for the virus, he would be OK. That’s why I hate the “Well, gee, it’s just dangerous for people with underlying conditions” argument. If it’s your brother that’s a pretty poor argument.