Coronavirus/COVID in the U. S. & Elsewhere

[Greg.D.]

I think the Wuhan coronavirus has a firm toehold in the U. S. now and will spread and be managed in a North American way (a Chinese viral epidemic with American characteristics). For better or worse.

I expect a surge in cases soon. But that will just be testing catching up with infections. That will be a good thing. Other than that, it’s sit and wait for me (now that we’ve stocked up on hand sanitizer).

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/3m-ramps-up-n95-respirator-production-amid-global-coronavirus-outbreak.html

”3M ramps up N95 respirator production as demand surges from global coronavirus outbreak”

“To fill the surge in demand for the devices, particularly the N95 respirator, 3M is ramping up production

In Aberdeen, South Dakota, more than 650 employees at one of 3M’s largest manufacturing facilities are working overtime to increase face mask production.”

Good pic’s at this link:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/total-fing-anarchy-costco-shoppers-share-funnyscary-tales-of-preppers-getting-ready-for-a-coronavirus-outbreak-2020-03-02

‘Total f***ing anarchy!’ Costco shoppers share funny/scary tales of preppers getting ready for a coronavirus outbreak

The comments sections gave some color from the front lines:

“Signs were up that they were out of toilet paper, paper towels and bottles of water. Even with that, inside people were stocking up on food, drinks... darn near everything it seems. Going up and down the aisles, seeing pallets empty and people loading up their carts... it was just surreal all the panic buying that is going on.”

“It was total f**king anarchy.”

“We sold out of toilet paper yesterday, which hasn’t happened at our Costco in 30 years. It was a horrible day to work and I am dreading work today.”

 

An ongoing topic - click here for Most Recent Post

Edited July 1, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Greg.D.]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/cdc-says-us-coronavirus-cases-climb-to-at-least-108-with-six-deaths.html

 

It's just their job, apparently optional if they feel like it:

 

 

Separately, the CDC said it’s stopped reporting “persons under investigation” or PUIs. It’s also not going to report case counts over the weekends. “Now that states are testing and reporting their own results, CDC’s numbers are not representative all of testing being done nationwide,” the CDC said.

 

 

 

The U.S. also has just 10% of the required respirator masks that would be needed for medical professionals if the COVID-19 outbreak erupts into a “full-blown” pandemic in America, Health and Human Services official Dr. Robert Kadlec said at the hearing.

medical professionals

[Greg.D.]

FDA cuts through the tape (their tape) to open up state and hospital labs to create and use their own tests.

 

 

In bid to rapidly expand coronavirus testing, U.S. agency abruptly changes rules

What went wrong:

 

 

The United States badly bungled coronavirus testing—but things may soon improveThe key problem with the kits is what’s known as a negative control, says Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious diseases at the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). CDC’s test uses the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay to find tiny amounts of the SARS-CoV-2 genome in, say, a nose swab. To make sure a test is working properly, kits also include DNA unrelated to SARS-CoV-2. The assay should not react to this negative control, but the CDC reagents did at many, but not all, state labs. The labs where the negative control failed were not allowed to use the test; they have to continue to send their samples to Atlanta.

[Greg.D.]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/03/how-many-americans-really-have-coronavirus/607348/

 

Interesting point at the end is that the fatality rate is probably much lower than 3 or 2%, because China probably has far more cases than the 100,000 they'll end up claiming - but they were not all sick enough to test and never were confirmed.

 

This could end end up being flu-like, only there is no vaccine to protect health care workers or older people, who have a higher fatality rate.

 

 

The Official Coronavirus Numbers Are Wrong, and Everyone Knows It

 

Because the U.S. data on coronavirus infections are so deeply flawed, the quantification of the outbreak obscures more than it illuminates.

We know, irrefutably, one thing about the coronavirus in the United States: The number of cases reported in every chart and table is far too low.

 

The data are untrustworthy because the processes we used to get them were flawed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s testing procedures missed the bulk of the cases. They focused exclusively on travelers, rather than testing more broadly, because that seemed like the best way to catch cases entering the country.

Just days ago, it was not clear that the virus had spread solely from domestic contact at all. But then cases began popping up with no known international connection. What public-health experts call “community spread” had arrived in the United States. The virus would not be stopped by tight borders, because it was already propagating domestically. Trevor Bedford’s lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which studies viral evolution, concluded there is “firm evidence” that, at least in Washington State, the coronavirus had been spreading undetected for weeks. Now different projections estimate that 20 to 1,500 people have already been infected in the greater Seattle area. In California, too, the disease appears to be spreading, although the limited testing means that no one is quite sure how far.

..........

In total, fewer than 500 people have been tested across the country (although the CDC has stopped reporting that number in its summary of the outbreak). As a result, the current “official” case count inside the United States stood at 43 as of this morning (excluding cruise-ship cases). This number is wrong, yet it’s still constantly printed and quoted. In other contexts, we’d call this what it is: a subtle form of misinformation.

This artificially low number means that for the past few weeks, we’ve seen massive state action abroad and only simmering unease domestically. While Chinese officials were enacting a world-historic containment effort—putting more than 700 million people under some kind of movement restriction, quarantining tens of millions of people, and placing others under new kinds of surveillance—and American public-health officials were staring at the writing on the wall that the disease was extremely likely to spread in the U.S., the public-health response was stuck in neutral. The case count in the U.S. was not increasing at all. Preparing for a sizable outbreak seemed absurd when there were fewer than 20 cases on American soil. Now we know that the disease was already spreading and that it was the U.S. response that was stalled.

Meanwhile, South Korean officials have been testing more than 10,000 people a day, driving up the country’s reported-case count. Same goes for Italy: high test rate, high number of cases. (Now some Italian politicians want to restrict testing.) In China, the official data say the country has more than 80,000 cases, but the real number might be far, far higher because of all the people who had mild(er) cases and were turned away from medical care, or never sought it in the first place. That may be cause for reassurance (though not everyone agrees), because the total number of cases is the denominator in the simple equation that yields a fatality rate: deaths divided by cases. More cases with the same number of deaths means that the disease is likely less deadly than the data show.

[Greg.D.]

Not sure why this is so hard for us. You can't know how you can do better if you don't know how you are doing. Weird that the CDC couldn't make a functional test in great enough numbers but that can happen ... but don't know why it is not fixed by now. Then, why has the CDC, the venerable producer of the The Morbidity and Mortality Report, decided to quit being the source of epidemiological data? We'll find out someday, I guess.

 

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-many-americans-have-been-tested-coronavirus/607597/[/size]

Exclusive: The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing

“I don’t know what went wrong,” a former CDC chief told The Atlantic.

"The CDC got this right with H1N1 and Zika, and produced huge quantities of test kits that went around the country,” Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC from 2009 to 2017, told us. “I don’t know what went wrong this time.”

Through interviews with dozens of public-health officials and a survey of local data from across the country, The Atlantic could only verify that 1,895 people have been tested for the coronavirus in the United States, about 10 percent of whom have tested positive. And while the American capacity to test for the coronavirus has ramped up significantly over the past few days, local officials can still test only several thousand people a day, not the tens or hundreds of thousands indicated by the White House’s promises.

 

.............

 

To arrive at our estimate, we contacted the public-health departments of all 50 states and ....

_____________________

 

The figures we gathered suggest that the American response to the coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, has been shockingly sluggish, especially compared with that of other developed countries. The CDC confirmed eight days ago that the virus was in community transmission in the United States—that it was infecting Americans who had neither traveled abroad nor were in contact with others who had. In South Korea, more than 66,650 people were tested within a week of its first case of community transmission, and it quickly became able to test 10,000 people a day. The United Kingdom, which has only 115 positive cases, has so far tested 18,083 people for the virus.

 

Normally, the job of gathering these types of data in the U.S. would be left to epidemiologists at the CDC. The agency regularly collects and publishes positive and negative test results for several pathogens, including multiple types of the seasonal flu. But earlier this week, the agency announced that it would stop publishing negative results for the coronavirus, an extraordinary step that essentially keeps Americans from knowing how many people have been tested overall.

...............

The federal tally of positive cases is now also badly out of date: While the CDC is reporting 99 positive cases of the coronavirus in the United States, our data, and separate data from Johns Hopkins University, show that the true number is well above 200, including those on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

...............

Oregon, situated between the California and Washington hot spots, can test only about 40 people a day. Texas has 16 positive cases, according to media reports, but the health department’s website still lists only three cases. TheTexas Tribune has reported that the state can test approximately 30 people a day.

Other states can test even fewer. Hawaii can test fewer than 20 people a day, though it could double that number in an emergency, an official told us. Iowa has supplies to test about 500 patients a day. Arkansas, though not near a current known outbreak, is able to test only four or five patients a day.

On the East Coast, testing capacity varies significantly. New York State has 22 positive cases, including several cases of community transmission in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It can test 100 to 200 people a day. Neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut have not shared any information about how many tests they have run, or about their daily testing capacity.

Pennsylvania can test only about a dozen people a day, and Delaware can test about 50 people, our survey found. An official in Massachusetts, where two of 20 tests have come back positive, said that she did not know the Bay State’s daily capacity, but that its health department “currently [has] an adequate supply of test kits.”

[Martin B]

First case in our state cropped up today - someone who apparently caught it on a cruise.

 

As if I already didn't need more reasons to every get on one of those disgusting cesspools.

[Randy W]

Okay, well, not US, but Italy

https://www.facebook.com/7382473689/posts/10158615926953690/

Edited July 6, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Allon]

Well when you fire the people who are in charge of handling pandemic and world wide disease, I guess this what you get. And then cut the budget.

 

I understand from cable news, that the renowned Baylor School of Medicine was close to a vaccine years ago but the funding was dropped. Some of the 8 billion dollars allocated to the fight of the infection should be going there. Need about 3 million bucks.

 

https://abc13.com/5988295/

[Greg.D.]

I think there are a lot of "almost there" vaccine candidates stored away in freezers. I'll trust that the person interviewed knows how truly close this SARS1 vaccine was ... and has no financial interest.

 

But, short of a vaccine, we can make use of the recovered people - if their recovery conveys permanent resistance. We can call them "Wuhan Angels": people who go back out in the community and keep the grocery stores, hospitals and critical government and business functions limping along. The corona gig economy. You read it here first.

[Allon]

He is director of the lab at Baylor. He did mention of their coronaviruses they had been working on several that were close to the genome associated with COVID-19. One I think he said was 80%. The written article is here from NBC. I can't find the other interview. This guy runs the lab there that specializes in tropical and rare diseases that nobody else will work on.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/scientists-were-close-coronavirus-vaccine-years-ago-then-money-dried-n1150091

 

I do know there are other research sites (Kansa State) that are being funded by corporate money but their freezer does not have the vaccine Baylor was "excited about."

 

I just think somebody needs to get off their ass and get going, and allow the public to know what they are doing, and not in some internal restricted publications.

 

I think Gov. Cuomo (NY) had a good point yesterday when he said what we need is information and the more of it the better. People will panic more from having no information. At least we can argue about the conflicts.

[Greg.D.]

It helps greatly to have an animal model for the virus: something that can be infected by the virus and will respond to a test vaccine. Otherwise testing would have to be done in humans later. Has to be susceptible to the virus and we know bats aren't! I think it was mice, hamsters, and monkeys with the other SARS.

 

Scaling up production can only be done after definitive evidence of efficacy. You wouldn't ramp up a billion dollar enterprise with no evidence of its usefulness (WeWork excluded).

 

Going back to the freezer vaccine: it can inform the SARS2 vaccine development and/or it might even be cross-reactive (they each bind our ACE receptor). But, you need to show it works first. It worked in mice and the Baylor team has the sars2 virus to test the old vaccine against the new virus - again in mice. This freezer vaccine ne was never tested in humans.

 

U. S. has a low death rate when there are 500 confirmed case, what happens at 50,000?

 

I haven't heard anything about a coronavirus manhattan project yet; not even an order to make 10,000,000 masks. What's going on?

Edited March 10, 2020 by Greg.D. (see edit history)

[eseum]

I've been amazed that there hasn't been an explosion of virus cases here in Las Vegas. Hasn't kept my wife from worrying though. She's been going on about buying more food and other items, and complaining about stores being out of, you guessed it, toilet paper. We have no more room in our freezer, and we probably have at least a month of dried staples. I keep telling her that she only needs to start worrying if I tell her its time to do so. Hasn't helped. I, of course, found toilet paper and bought 24 double rolls. When I got it out of the car she asked why I didn't buy more. Made me pretty mad, so I told her if it looked like we might run out I would just go over to the local casino to take my sh....s. The extra toilet paper is now taking up room in a spare bedroom, because we still have a lot in the linen closet.

 

I read this morning where Italy has locked down the entire country. Hope they have enough toilet paper!

[Greg.D.]

First we knew the Covid-19 seemed to affect men more. The, we noticed unlike the flu, it spares young children. China has released some epidemiological data (through WHO) and maybe published some papers. It could be that the infection progresses farther and more virulently in people with high blood pressure.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/these-underlying-conditions-make-coronavirus-more-severe-and-theyre-surprisingly-common/ar-BB10ZdOC?li=BBnb7Kz

These underlying conditions make coronavirus more severe, and they're surprisingly common

 

 

Cardiovascular complications

The novel coronavirus tears apart the lungs, but the underlying condition most connected with COVID-19’s worst outcomes are afflictions of the heart.

Nearly half the adults living in the United States have high blood pressure. Likewise, diabetes is a household name, with one of every 10 Americans—34.2 million across all ages—dealing with the metabolic disorder. Both can factor into cardiovascular disease, a wide spectrum of disorders that kill one person roughly every 37 seconds in the United States.

Though the specific influence of COVID-19 on the cardiovascular system remains unclear, the American College of Cardiology states, “there have been reports of acute cardiac injury, arrhythmias, hypotension, tachycardia, and a high proportion of concomitant cardiovascular disease in infected individuals, particularly those who require more intensive care.” One study of 150 patients from Wuhan, China—the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak—found that patients with cardiovascular diseases had a significantly increased risk of death when they are infected.

That’s because the heart and lungs are incredibly interconnected. Breathe in and out rapidly, and your pulse automatically increases its pace. But if your heart is already weak or you have blocked arteries, then you are working harder than a normal person to circulate blood and oxygen throughout your body.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/10/coronavirus-is-mysteriously-sparing-kids-killing-elderly-understanding-why-may-help-defeat-virus/?

Coronavirus is mysteriously sparing kids and killing the elderly. Understanding why may help defeat the virus

One of the few mercies of the spreading coronavirus is that it leaves young children virtually untouched — a mystery virologists say may hold vital clues as to how the virus works.

 

In China, only 2.4 percent of reported cases were children and only 0.2 percent of reported cases were children who got critically ill, according to the World Health Organization. China has reported no case of a young child dying of the disease covid-19.

.........

Previous coronavirus outbreaks have also mysteriously spared the young. No children died during the SARS outbreak in 2002, which killed 774 people. And few children developed symptoms from the deadly MERS coronavirus, which has killed 858 since 2012.

To find out why, Menachery has been giving mice at his Texas lab SARS — which is a very close cousin to the new coronavirus. Baby mice at his lab have shaken off the infection, while the older mice have had their lungs and bodies ravaged by the disease.

.....

Menachery found the older mice’s fatalities were strongly related to not just weakness in their immune systems but also a “disregulation” that caused their immune systems to overreact to the SARS coronavirus. That’s similar to how humans die of infections from the new coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2.

 

“It’s the aggressive response from their immune system that is damaging them, even more than the infection itself,” Menachery said. “It’s like police responding to a misdemeanor with a SWAT team crashing through the door.”

[Allon]

I wonder to what extent BP medications such as ACE inhibitors like Lisinopril (Zestoretic) might have on the virus. I knew it has a diuretic mix and is the first line of defense on hypertension. Might it help or inhibit the virus? What other hypertension drugs out there that could affect the virus positively or negatively.

[Martin B]

I've been amazed that there hasn't been an explosion of virus cases here in Las Vegas. Hasn't kept my wife from worrying though. She's been going on about buying more food and other items, and complaining about stores being out of, you guessed it, toilet paper. We have no more room in our freezer, and we probably have at least a month of dried staples. I keep telling her that she only needs to start worrying if I tell her its time to do so. Hasn't helped. I, of course, found toilet paper and bought 24 double rolls. When I got it out of the car she asked why I didn't buy more. Made me pretty mad, so I told her if it looked like we might run out I would just go over to the local casino to take my sh....s. The extra toilet paper is now taking up room in a spare bedroom, because we still have a lot in the linen closet.

 

I read this morning where Italy has locked down the entire country. Hope they have enough toilet paper!

 

We've got about 12 months of "staples" stocked up - things like toilet paper, soap, shampoo etc. We're going to go through it anyways so it doesn't really hurt to keep some extra. It would suck to have to take a special trip just to buy something like tampons if this situation escalates. We also have 1-2 months of emergency food and water in our basement (nuts, pureed fruits, rice, beans, peanut butter, etc.)

 

And my wife insisted that we stock up on wine (for her) and beer (for me) in case we're holed up for weeks. Can't say I pushed back very hard on that one.

 

As of last night all my business travel until August - aside from a trip in March - got cancelled. This morning my wife told me "you are not traveling in March, end of story". I told her I could net $5,000 off of a 3 day trip within the US and would be extra cautious. She flat out said "F**k the money, you're staying here. You can always find a new job and tell your boss to go f**k himself". So I told my boss I wasn't going and that was that.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Barfus (see edit history)