Are there stats regarding the COVID-19 virus?
I was wondering if the powers-that-be have a handle on the stats to show who is more opt to get the virus?
Example, does anyone know if one has had the pneumonia shot plus booster, is that person more apt to do much better if they should get the virus?
Also, what about people who have been getting flu shots for decades? Yes, I know, this isn't the flu, but I was wondering about antibody build up?
China shows men were dying from the virus on a much higher scale then women. But one has to realize that in China more than half the males population smoke cigarettes.... and women in China rarely smoke. Thus, I am curious if that is also the case in Italy?
Did hear that if a teenager and young adults who vape, if they catch the virus, it will do major damage to their lungs because their lungs are already scarred from the vaping.
Just wondering what others have heard.
I have read that everyone will get this virus. No one has any immunity.
the difference is in how serious it will be. Little kids seem to have no symptoms (but, they do still get infected....so do not act like they are immune...they are not).
the big factor across all age groups is “underlying conditions”. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, hyper tension, etc.
then age. I think because as we age our organs stop performing a peak, so being really old is an underlying condition in many cases. Because of the lung damage and ace2 receptors in the lungs from smoking...that is also a risk factor. It could be that men are slightly more effected than woman might be because they are still the majority of the smokers....especially in Asia where that statistic was uncovered.
the single biggest risk factor is when the health care system is totally overwhelmed by patients. Like Italy....soon to be us. Choices between who will get care and who won’t. In Italy no one over the age of sixty will get ICU care...they have to do triage and give the limited beds and ventilators to those who have the best chance of surviving. Fatality rates begin to climb really high once the hospitals are past capacity.
The USA is only 10 days behind Italy in the number of cases. We are doubling the number of new cases every 4 days. We are at 19,000 this morning...by March 28 we will be over 40,000. By April 15 we will be over 100,000. The time to stop this was back in January...even intensive testing in February would have limited this....containment is no longer possible.
so..do everything to prevent getting this until mid to late summer when the number of cases has dropped to the point where the hospitals can take all patients.
^ This. It is not true that there are many people dying in Italy because there's many old people. The average age is slightly older than other countries, around 42 if I recall correctly. The real reason is that 9 patients out 10 don't have access to intubation and intensive care because there is simply no place anymore.
# are changing by the hour for EU, UK and US, so hard to get a fix on. Plus US does not have any semblance of national real time health care records database beyond kids required for school immunization stuff that states do. We are oh so beyond containment, (that could have started in Feb.) we’re at just hoping, hoping, to slow Covid down & flatten the spread over weeks & months rather than days.
for sane solid info, these are the sites I’ve found:
WHO’s. https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease/novel-Coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public
UKs NHS https://youtu.be/FJrpfmnOnpc
US CDC https://www.cdc.gov/CORONAVIRUS/
John Hopkins Center https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com.
John Hopkins site is a dashboard type of interactive & updated daily. It has links below map that leads to all sorts of rabbit holes. I’d bet there’s data some where down in these. I’ve been tracking some countries since 2/4 from this site. US case projections looking like what happened within Spain & Italy 2 weeks ago.
for writers, Helen Branswell. She is beyond awesome imo. Right now she’s with STAT. STAT does daily list serves which public can get. Her 1/5/20 article from Wuhan is a great place to start. Her articles are like reading “The Hot Zone” but in real time. Fascinating.
James Hamblin’s articles in The Atlantic are pretty great too imo. His 2/24/20 one is a good overview
on economics, WSJ & Economist doing relatively unbiased reporting;
for hard US unemployment #s, Jacob A Robbins blog has data. His March 18, blog posting for 21 states unemployment is stunning.
if you Reddit, there’s several threads going on Covid. I like reddit but you gotta be prepared to get doxxed or flamed if you post.
right now Sat 3/21 for Louisiana: 537 confirmed, 14 deaths
Only 1931 tested: 1084 state labs, 847 commercial labs. Almost half states parishes (counties) have cases. LA health system will be overwhelmed by next weekend if case trajectory stays on this track. Data source WWL / New Orleans.
E.g. (there never is just one virus, but for the sake of the illustration...)
White blood cell to brain: see this? What is it?
Brain: dunno. Kill it.
White blood cell: okay, done. Next?
Brain: looks nasty. If you see any more of them, kill them too. If they're already in cells, destroy the cell. Now go and make some antibodies.
or
White blood cell to brain: ohmygod there are hundreds of them! Where did they come from?! They're flooding in! What do we do???
[alarms go off, action stations, everyone rushes to the scene, terrible mess ensues.]
So how sick the person you meet is, at what stage of the disease, and how much (e.g.) water vapour from his breath reaches you - it's all going to matter. Standing in a poorly ventilated subway carriage with eighty other people? - very bad idea.
If your immune system is not in fine fettle, or perhaps if there is inflammation from other causes around in your major organs masking the presence of the virus, your body may be slower to respond to the alerts and then more stressed when it does.
Or something like that, I guess. Fortunately the world has many fine virologists to turn to who will soon find out, and their time has come.
The best thing to do is assume you will be infected at some point. They estimate 60% to 80% of all people in the world will become infected with this virus at some point.
80% of those people will recover at home. 20% of the infected people-(which is NOT the same as 20% of all people) will need to be hospitalized. Of that 20%, 5% will need ICU care. Something like 96% to 99% of infected people will recover.
That sounds like a small number(1%-4% death rate) but the problem is timing. Many of the deaths, in Italy especially, could have been prevented had the patient been able to receive treatment. There were just too many patients at once.
So the best thing to do is try as hard as you can (isolation, hand washing) to avoid becoming infected right now and avoid spreading it if you have gotten infected. But you probably will get infected at some point. You will most likely recover at home. And if you are unlucky enough to be part of the small percentage of people who become gravely ill, if you time things right, you have a really high chance of recovering with treatment.
Reduce your stress, maybe by stepping away from this topic for a while. Eat well. Do your best to sleep well. Connect with others on social media or on the phone. Do everything you would do to maintain good health. We will survive this.
Since it attacks the lungs, anyone with Asthma, ongoing Bronchitis, lung diseases, compromised immune systems etc will be effected. They put diabetes into that category too. I don't think they know why a 19 yr old died and an 80 yr old survives.
I just know that yesterday we had my 7yr old grandchild and we went nowhere. Monday we ate out to a place that is never crowded. The owner was wiping everything down with bleach water. Tuesday began the lockdown. I cooked at home till Thurs and got takeout. We have been out to pick up my Gson at work, food and prescriptions. We go nowhere else.
Does it really matter who may get it? What matters is to take precautions. Stay in your home. Wash hands. Take a walk when you get antsy. Stay away from crowds. It boggles my mind that Fla is not closing their beaches. Call in the National Guard to patrol them. We need to stop the spread for it to die off.
I am glad the U.S. Vice-President and his wife will be tested since a member of their Staff has the virus. But our President apparently isn't getting re-tested even though he's been around the Vice-President on a regular basis. Kinda like Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation concept. Wish he would rethink this.
T did get retested. Negative.
So answer is we don't know much. Vaping, we now know is VERY BAD for the young, so what it will do we may also find out.
This is a "dry pneumonia" which, on scan is very unique looking with it's cloudy patches adhereing to the edges of the lung. It doesn't start with sniffles but with dry cough and in some cases tightness, pain in chest, difficulty breathing, exhaustion. Spread by droplet, and we don't know if in feces, etc or not, don't know how long virus lives on surface, but so far seems present on some materials such as plastic for a long time, as long as three days; not known if infectious then though. Dry pneumonias often kill more easily with less suffering but can involve stealth and sneak up; you can go from air hunger to sleep to coma to death. It is, once you get on a vent, proving hard to get you off. Day 7 and 8 are said to be crucial. They believe you can shed virus and infect people before you have symptoms. People on vents are going down with total failure of kidneys and heart; unknown if because of age or not. If you are immune suppressed or elderly stay home. If you are able at all STAY HOME anyway. We currently do not have enough PPE/ personal protective equipment. Hopefully this will get better this week. I think our Govs and Mayors are our heroes now in my opinion. Doing the very best they can. Some states, mine, oregon, Washington, planning overflow beds, and have cots delivered already. Think pictures you are seeing in Italy. I think in the next two weeks we will know if we are going to remain lucky, or are going to see what Italy and Spain are seeing. Be careful of masks. They are hotbeds of viral growth. One time wear, and then wash if a bandana. Virus loves the moisture you breath out of your nose. Good luck everyone and stay out of ALF. It spreads like wildfire in such places.
I just wish my Governor [who is an MD] would have shut down the State last week, instead of today.... [sigh]. My boss and I decided back on March 16th to start working from home. Other businesses in our building were doing the same.
"Corona virus feeling confused as to why coronavius is a bigger deal than seasonal flu? It has to do with RNA sequencing: ie genetics. Seasonal flu is an "all human virus"The DNA/RNA chains that make up the virus are recognized by the human immune system.this means that your body has some immunity to it before ti comes around each year... you get immunity tow ways... through exposure to a virus, or by getting a flu shot.
Novel viruses, come from animals.. the WHO tracks novel viruses in animals, sometime for years watching for mutations.. Usually these viruses only transfer from animal to animal (pics in the case of HiN1) (birds in the case of the spanish flu)> But once, one of these animal viruses mutates, and starts to transfer from animals to humans, thenit a problem.Why, because we have no natural or acquired immunity.. theRNA sequencing of the genes inside the virus is not human, and the human immune system doesn't recognize it so, we cannot fight it off.
Now,, someitmes, the mutatuion only allows transer from animal to human, ,for yearsit's only transmiision is from an infected animal to a human before it finally mutates so that it can now transer homan to human..once that happens, we havea new contagion pahse. And depending on the fashiion of the mutation, that's what decides how contagious, or deadly it's going to be.
H1N1 was deadly, but it did not mutate ina way that was as deadly as the spanish flu. It's RNA was slower to mutate and it attached its hose differently. too. Fast forward: Here comes th coronavirus, it eistedin animals only, for nobody knows how long, but one day, at an animal market, in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, it mutated and made th jump fromanimal to epoeple. At first, only animals could give it to a person, but here is the scary part, in just TWO WEEKS it mutated again, and gained the ability to jump from human to human. Scientist call this quick ability, "slippery". This corona virus not being in any form a "human" virus, whereas, we would all have some natural or acquired immunity. Took off like a rocket. and this was because, humans have no known immunity. Doctors have no known medicines for it. This particular mutated animal virus, changed itself in such a way the way that it causes great damage to human lungs. This virus is is different from seasonal flu, or H1N1 or any other type of influenza.. this one is slippery AF, and it's a lung eater, and it already mutatedAGAIN, SO that we now have 2 strains to deal with: Strain S, and Strain L, which makes it twice as hard to develop a vaccine.
This article goes on, about history Baltimore, 1918 , not closing events fast enough during the Spanish flu. Henry VIII stayed in his room till the black plague passed. Social isolation is the key since we are still working on the tools to fight this.
Right now it's hitting older folks harder, but the genome is so slippery if it mutates again, who is to say what it will do next.
This was sent to me from a relative, not sure where this article originated from.
Lungs may be scarred forever if one catches it (maybe like pneumonia scars lungs) whether or not smoking or vaping.. perhaps impacting the rest of one's life. Maybe the treatments for symptoms harm the body long term, too; shorten lives.
They either don't have many answers or aren't saying. Seems odd that elderly, sick are in the targeted groups, but everyone's immunity lowers as we age whether there's an underlying medical condition or not. Why did no one like Xi Jinping in his 60s and other older officials in China not catch it.
Men dying at a higher rate: I don't know, but suspect it may have something to do with males having XY chromosomes, not XX like women's .. extra estrogen. I've read that baby boys are also more at risk of anything due to this fact.
Italy: People were encouraged to hug Chinese people in Italy to show their support, and did. Did they get infected this way, too? We may never know.
🤮🥵️
My son is one of those most likely infected but not tested? Why not tested? Canada does not have enough tests kits and the reagents needed to process the test. So tests are being limited to those in nursing homes, health care workers etc.
My son became a 'stats-man' to stay informed & it was helping keep the worry down. We've always told him to check the source though.
We seem to have moved into a new phase today & he is no longer looking. At saturation point I think. Now it's important to get knowledge but protect mental health too.
As a family we are narrowing our sources down to the trusted few: our trusted ABC news source, our Gov Health Dept & State premiers website (& disregarding the rest).
The priorities of food, health, & family are front & centre now.
Whether you are tested or not, follow the CDC recommendations.
I am not a fan of testing everyone and support the government in efforts to determine where testing needs to be done- and now it’s NYC & the state. I would waive mine as I am asymptomatic.
I also fear false positive or negative tests. A person can be negative for Covid today & positive tomorrow. It can give a false sense of security.
Stay Safe everyone!
1500 people have died in Iran.
More males are getting ill over females in Italy.
NY epicenter of the virus in the US
California & Washington state as well.
I have been keeping an eye on the BBC's "how many cases in your area" page.
In ten days (I think it's ten days or so) in my county it's gone 1... 3... 7...
Oh blimey, here we go.
Close to you.
No idea here as no mapping app (what a great tool - get on that tech-nerd Son).
Now in *shut-down* mode but schools still open tomorrow & most jobs - I have a day off so I can do online yoga in peace & don't have to spend the WHOLE day with my family - gotta look for the positives 😉
If I was out in the workforce than I would be tested. They just closed down my daughters workplace because of one person that was positive at one site and someone exposed at hers. She was here yesterday, and kept 6 ft away from us while she washed her clothes and stayed downstairs where the laundry is. She is in an office of only two people. So no close contact to the other person.
I have been self quarantining . This is my 3rd day of not going anywhere. Testing hasn't come to my little town. I think we may have one case so far. The large Hospital in Del has set up something but its limited. Actually, do I really want to stand in line with potential carriers? My daughter works at a local hospital. Hopefully, if the start testing people other than staff, that my daughter can bring the test to us.
If you are rich and powerful in the US though, you can get tested whenever you feel like it. That's the American way.
2 weeks in isolation for us. I find it had to remember what day of the week it is.
in my county, people aren’t taking it seriously. I mean a lot are but a lot aren’t and a lot seem to think that there’s nothing to worry about it since it’s not in their city. Only.....we don’t know it’s not in their city. We should be acting like we and everyone else have it, that’s it’s everywhere, but we aren’t. In my county there are 14 cities and 4 hospitals. 2 hospitals are in my city, which is the biggest city in the county, 1 hospital is a small hospital at the south end of the county and the other is a small hospital on the peninsula. The health department is only releasing the number of cases, they are not telling us the ages of the patients or where they live. So when we are told that a particular hospital has positive cases, for some bloody reason the geniuses in this area think the person must live in the city that hospital is in, therefore the virus is only in that city. The hospital around the block from me has had multiple cases and the lone fatality. It’s where most of the testing is being done. So there are A LOT OF BLOODY IDIOTS who think my city is the only affected city and therefore they are not practicing social distancing!
since Tuesday we have gone from 2 confirmed cases to 14 confirmed cases. 4 confirmed person to person cases (transmitted from contact with an infected person in a health facility or place of employment) and 4 or 5 who picked it up in the community and had NO contact with another infected person. And again I am telling you, since the cases are coming out of the hospital in my city which serves everyone not just residents of this city, people think the virus is confined to this city! This is why there were large parties last night. Why parks are full of kids, why basketball courts are full of people. people are not staying home.
My understanding about the higher rate of male deaths in China is that it may be linked to more males being smokers than females.
In Italy according to the abc news death rates are twice as high for males as females https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-mortality-high-men-italy-women/story?id=69717021
There is a lot of good info on that website about where the virus “began” - with bats, of all animals, that spread via the wet market in Wuhan, what kind of virus it is, etc.
Last I heard today 3/23 Louisiana is now “the” hotspot state developing more cases.
I am worried about California and the homeless people there. How will the government deal with that? I read California is buying leases at hotels and RV’s for those folks but they apparently aren’t learning about precautions or not heeding precautions. I read there are 150000 homeless people in LA & San Francisco alone. That is a public health nightmare.
5,948 tests done, 1,172 active cases, 34 deaths (source WWL)
it has been just 15 days since first confirmed case in the state.
Gov has asked feds for “major disaster declaration” to be granted. This will allow state to set in place & use existing Hurricane plan to have the already designated parish (county) emergency managers start doing stuff but tailor it for Covid-19 needs, like barricades, Natl Guard positioning, feeding programs, triage centers, FEMA requests, ratting in FQ & wharves, homeless. One bright spot in this us that LA has contingency plans at the ready cause of annual hurricane worries. Btw 480 person NOLA fire dept has 54 firefighters who have had contact with Covid-19 positive person. They are all going to need to go into quarantine.
its eeerie in NOLA right now. Yesterday Mayor called all “non essential” biz to close EOD, if you don’t Safety & Permits can take your occupational license. It’s empty streets like after H. Katrina but without flooding & power outage AND with those who can leave the city have, probably like it was for NOLA during the yellow fever outbreaks in the 1800’s.
If it means asking your Doc to have a 30 day switched to a 90 day do it; or if your drug/RX insurer is a real stickler on allowing 90 day filled ask your doc to perhaps do a fresh RX for a slightly different med so that you can get that new one filled.
Why? Cause the vast majority of primary ingredients for drugs come out of China or India. China will likely back into production soon but that will take time to gear up BUT ALSO India (1.2B) is on total country lockdown as of today. Some Medications are gonna run out late spring & into summer.