Confirmed Coronavirus Patient at the University of Michigan Health System
Per Michigan Medicine: https://twitter.com/umichmedicine/status/1237759433020710920
https://www.uofmhealth.org/coronavirus-covid-19-update
UofM, what are you waiting for? Cancel in-person classes already.
March 11th, 2020 at 11:47 AM ^
Again, it's probably been in Michigan for weeks. It's just being tested for and found now.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:30 PM ^
Sadly this is almost certainly true. Testing in the US has been restricted to people in known contact with confirmed cases, but of course you can't have confirmed cases without testing.
Confirmed cases probably lag actual propagation of the desease by several weeks.
The last number we were told (I work for Michigan Medicine) was that there were approximately 60 people waiting on test results. This was BEFORE the confirmed cases last night.
March 11th, 2020 at 11:56 AM ^
I’m outraged.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:05 PM ^
You've tested positive for the Rage Virus. Your cure is to step away from the interwebs.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:00 PM ^
My wife is a physician at the hospital and they have many patients with WAY WAY more deadly and scary diseases than Covid-19.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:03 PM ^
Isn’t that the truth.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:04 PM ^
No doubt, there's lots of scary things lurking around. How infectious are they? The dangerous thing about coronavirus is its ability to overwhelm a local medical system with sheer numbers. If the beds are full with people having severe respiratory issues, people with other issues are also facing a problem getting medical attention.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:26 PM ^
Insanity rules. So how long will it take for the national case count to go from 1,000 to 10,000? A week, a month? If it goes up 10 fold within a week, you might be correct. What if it never gets to 10,000 cases?
How many cases of the flu this season? At least 10s of millions and it hit hard in many areas.
Get a grip!
March 11th, 2020 at 12:40 PM ^
How fast the case count goes up will depend entirely on how people react and what precautions are taken. Being dismissive of the risk is only going to make it spread faster. So far it has jumped nearly 10 fold (8x) in a week, and that's with extremely limited testing.
I don't know why people insist on saying this is no different from the flu. It is significantly more dangerous, extremely so for elderly.
Furthermore to what you said. Yes a lot of areas got his hard by the flu this year, that means more people with already weakened immune systems because their bodies may not be FULLY recovered.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:45 PM ^
Do not assume that the number of confirmed cases is all there is. Very, very few people have been tested. The true number is certainly higher, though to what extent we don't know.
It's estimated that without intervention, it takes the virus 5-8 days to double its infection count. It's also estimated that actual cases are probably 5-10x greater than those that have been confirmed by testing. The mortality rate is ~3.4%. So with these rough numbers:
1,000 confirmed cases in US = ~7,000 actual cases.
No intervention for a month = ~110,000 cases = ~4,000 deaths.
No intervention for 2 months = 1.8 million cases = ~60,000 deaths.
If infection rates reach the same rate as the seasonal flu (9 - 45 million cases per year, depending on the year), which no one freaks out about, that would leave between 300,000 and 1.5 million Americans dead. The flu kills 12,000 - 61,000 per year.
Those are your numbers. Now you can decide if we need to do something about it or not.
Your number for the mortality rate is way high according to the realistic estimates I've seen. If the actual number of infected people is 5-10 times higher, it lowers the expected death rate. Better recalculate.
to ex-dx-dy..... Your mortality rate is probably tremendously high, skewing your numbers.
Official US cases of coronavirus have doubled in last 48 hours. Will that rate continue? We'll see, but as another poster noted, there isn't a whole lot of testing going on. It's a lot easier to dismiss this when no one can provide an accurate picture of how far or fast it has spread here.
They've had the flu in China as well, but it never prompted the government to shut down its entire economy, lock people in their homes, build mass quarantine centers, and spray disinfectant everywhere. If they took it that seriously, it's something to consider.
The number of cases doubles every four days.
So if there are 1,000, there will be 2,000 on March 15.
4,000 on March 19
8,000 on March 23
16,000 on March 27
32,000 on March 31
64,000 on April 4
128,000 on April 8
256,000 on April 12
512,000 on April 16
So in about a month, unless things change, there will be half a million. If 2% of those people die, that's over 10,000 people. And that doesn't include all the people who survive but end up on ventilators.
The death estimates also don't include the 100s and 1000s of "collateral" deaths that will occur when our hospitals/ICUs are all filled to overflowing with virus patients and Drs are forced to triage what would be normally low mortality events.
Didn't the Swine Flu kill 10,000 in the US?
There, you’ve done the sanctimonious “The flu has WAY higher numbers” asshole bit. You can be at ease.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:05 PM ^
https://www.ft.com/content/34f25036-62f4-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68
“The war has exploded and the battles are uninterrupted day and night. The cases are multiplying, we have a rate of 15-20 admissions per day all for the same reason,” he wrote on Facebook last week. “There are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopaedists — we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.”
"Frankly, I don't know for how long the health system can cope, I don't even want to think about how it could end," Massimo Galli, head of the department for infectious diseases at the Sacco Hospital in Milan, Told the Financial Times. "We are holding up, but other hospitals are much worse off than us and it is a fact that we will come increasingly under pressure in the coming days."
Giorgio Gori, Bergamo Mayor, tweeted: "It seems that the increase [in the number of cases] is slowing down, but it's only because we have no longer beds in intensive care (few are added with great effort). Patients who cannot be treated are left to die."
March 11th, 2020 at 12:22 PM ^
Good post! Too much insanity and it's only getting worse.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:23 PM ^
And you're point is? Sure cancer is probably deadlier, but at least they know what they are dealing with, and you can't get cancer from someone sneezing on you, but what does your post have to do with this disease? Do you believe they are just trying to create mass hysteria?
March 11th, 2020 at 12:27 PM ^
I bet none of them are transmitted as easily.
People shouldn't freak out, but being dismissive of how serious COVID19 is, especially for certain population groups, is also stupid and irresponsible.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:44 PM ^
Article at the NYT this morning that is easy to read and has pictures:
"How Coronavirus Hijacks Your Cells"
No link because you have to suscribe, but soon it will be released.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:39 PM ^
Amen.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:39 PM ^
No doubt...and hopefully all of those immunocompromised individuals don't get Covid-19.
Not really sure what this means but not in terms of risk to a large number of people. Cancer is way worse than Covid but you can't give it to someone else
But I was told by the handwringers here that that is impossible. Nothing could be worse than this.
I have literally not seen one comment on here, Twitter, or Facebook saying anything close to this.
The comment ranges have essentially been:
I'm just going to keep living my life like normal.
v
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Our government needs to take this thing seriously, or a lot of people are going to die unnecessarily.
Let me know how contagious cancer is. TIA.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:02 PM ^
To everyone who keeps calling this an overreaction, every public health expert that I've heard interviewed has said that the steps being taken nationwide to reduce public gatherings are proportional and justified.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:08 PM ^
And everyone I have heard interviewed has said the opposite. So who is right? Every Doctor / NP I know is not alarmed. So who is right?
Do I cancel spring break the week of 3/23???? Don't know what to do .
March 11th, 2020 at 12:15 PM ^
Just curious, can you point me to some interviews from doctors who don't think this is a big deal? I'm following the news fairly closely and generally the only people who seem to be downplaying it are politicians, not medical professionals.
FWIW, Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr. Robert Redfield are high up at the NIAID and CDC, and they are testifying before congress today. Fauci testified, “It is critical because we must be much more serious as a county about what we might expect. ... A couple of cases today are going to be many, many cases tomorrow."
Redfield testified, "This is a time for everyone to get engaged. This is not just a response for the government and public health system. It's a response for all of America.”
Those are two of the most plugged in doctors in terms of our public health capacity and our potential abilities to respond to this epidemic, and they seem fairly alarmed.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:27 PM ^
I have afew Doctors / NP's that I know personally, obviously not with the Cred of the ones you have listed. I was on Yahoo, now I know this is not a news source, but yesterday had article about doom and gloom from Patients, today there were a few who had it and it was no big deal. My point was more of there is just so much out there not sure what to do or who to listen to.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:53 PM ^
Look at what is happening in Italy. This is the scenario that people are trying to avoid. It is not a worry that many people will get a very manageable case of the flu, it is that it doesn’t take many severe cases to overwhelm the health system.
The "no big deal" is part of the problem.
If this were crippling to everybody, it wouldn't spread fast. You'd get it, you'd be bedridden, you'd be in ICU. Isolation, masks, everyone knows you've got something. SARS was significantly deadlier, but it was so bad that people KNEW they had it and it didn't spread fast.
Coronavirus is, potentially, a problem because it's not always serious. Many people have it and it feels like a bad cold. Most of us go to work with colds. We need to earn money! We can function!
The problem is that it kills a small but significant number of the people who get it. 1%. Sound small? You know more than 100 people; probably a lot more. Imagine, in your social circle 300 people all getting coronavirus. They all get it because it's not bad for most of them, so they go to work and catch it and spread it. Most just deal with it for a few days and get over it. No big deal.
But 3 people you care about die. You go to their funeral. It's awful.
That's the problem.
Death rate from SARS worldwide was 9.6%, 8098 cases with 774 deaths. Only 27 cases in US and no deaths.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:28 PM ^
Dr Drew. I agree, this shit is bad. The thing about it compared to other diseases is they don't really have a treatment plan. It's like the flu, where it just has to run it's course.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:56 PM ^
I think it comes down to objectives. For Dr.s at the CDC of course their sole objective is to slow the spread and decrease infection severity. This could be done by enacting complete travel bans, curfew enforced by military occupation, controlled rationing to avoid grocery contact, etc. I’m being extreme on purpose, I don’t think anyone thinks that’s the right course of action. My point is the correct balance in dealing with a virus outbreak is the give and take of multiple forces, not just what the medical objective is.
This is why you hear disagreements on whether the current course of action is overblown. Don’t forget, economic downturn has shown to increase mortality rate as well...
I’ll do you one better in that there seem to be a few politicians, who are affiliated with one big politician in particular, who are doing the “Oh, it’s not that bad” routine.
Of course, in today’s world, the word of Mr. stable genius outweighs that of countless medical professionals in the minds of tens of millions.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:28 PM ^
Well there's your problem. Stop listening to Dr Drew.
Was one of those people you interviewed Lou Dobbs?
March 11th, 2020 at 12:03 PM ^
The fact that we don't offer online classes is going to unfortunately make this transition more difficult than for many other schools. We don't have the infrastructure necessary to run everything efficiently from a web platform.
Since we're The University Of Michigan, The Leaders And Best, The Best University In The World, etc etc. I'm sure we'll figure it out, but it's going to take a little longer without the existing online class functionality to build off.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:13 PM ^
Michigan does offer online classes.
I don't understand the misinformation on this...
...and people in general who also tout some kind of faux academic (re: online state university) superiority because Michigan supposedly doesn't have online courses -- which they do.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:21 PM ^
They have almost no online classes when I tried to register a couple months ago.
March 11th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
Michigan doesn't offer many online *only* classes. The infrastructure to attend lectures online in parallel with in person students exists and has existed for years .
March 11th, 2020 at 12:45 PM ^
Record lecture, post along with slide deck to *Canvas. Fin.
*RIP CTools