Covid positivity thread
Not about someone else getting a positive test or the metric, test positivity, but rather an opportunity to share positive developments on the the road to returning to normalcy. In the last several days there have been positive announcements on multiple fronts:
1. Therapeutics-
“British pharmaceutical company Synairge claims its new respiratory coronavirus treatment has reduced the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients needing intensive care in a clinical trial.
The company said its nebulizer treatment produced a 79% lower risk of patients developing severe disease than those given a placebo in initial trials. It said patients who received the treatment “were more than twice as likely to recover (defined as ‘no limitation of activities’ or ‘no clinical or virological evidence of infection’) over the course of the treatment period compared to those receiving placebo.” While we will certainly want to hear what others have to say when they review the test results, my understanding is that this is a treatment that people had hope for based on other studies. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/20/synairgen-says-small-coronavirus-treatment-trial-could-signal-major-breakthrough.html
2. Testing - the FDA approved the first use of pooled testing for Quest. While not a panacea, it does have the ability to ramp up our testing capability which will be important as September approaches and students head for college, some schools start to open up and more return to work.
Are there other signs of potential breakthroughs in treatment, testing or vaccines? I didn’t include the Moderna results because I assumed that was a bit old news, but in general, vaccines seem to be moving along as quickly as we could realistically hope.
I'll feel more comfortable once our overall infection rates get down to the levels seen in other 1st world nations.
Also, my concern isn't just alive or dead, it's the long term health effects for people that get it and survive. Spending the next 40 years with half my current lung capacity does not appeal to me.
I was trying to find the Cheech and Chong bit - that since the person had one lung removed they had been able to cut their smoking in half
Damn, was enjoying the Covid positivity thread.
Now it is officially just "Covid thread" replete with the same goal post moving irrationality and doom and gloom speculation that permeates every Covid thread on here.
It was a nice break though, it did look like maybe we were on to something for a minute.
I have no idea what that number is, other than somewhere between 0.1 and 0.65, but I don't think that's nearly as important as its R-value, i.e. the fact that it can spread so freely and we don't have any way to mitigate it other than distancing and/or masks, which are kinda like poor man's distancing. To me, getting that under 1 (i.e. 1 person statistically infects <1 other person) is where the answer to your question lies.
That said, I have long suspected the true death rate is much lower than the current stats say - mostly because we have more silent carriers than we think. Also, the potential silver lining to last month's explosion in cases is that it was largely 20-55 people living their best life in bars and beaches and they'll probably have less aggravating co-morbidities.
Now, in the grand scheme of things, this is all STILL VERY BAD and we've likely baked in some sobering news for later down the road. But it's good that we avoided worst-case doomsday scenarios and I'll take any win I can get. I think it's critical that we a) realize that the spike in cases were tied to people relaxing their guards and should be an illustrative case for what not to do going forwards b) experts sounding the alarm bells on things that mostly didn't happen (i.e. running out of ICU beds) means they did their job. A really good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that IF we handle this right*, then afterwards it'll look like we made a big fuss over relatively nothing.
* to this point, I don't think we did but at a certain point what's done is done and recriminations have diminishing returns.
That's an interesting question. I think I've presented this argument before here, but here's how I perceive the "this is enough, screw it, let's move on with our lives" question:
(1) The average person lives to be 80 years old.
(2) We have been consumed with CV since March 11, 2020 (the day the shit really started to hit the fan). That's 132 days now.
(3) 132 days comprises 0.45% of the life of an 80 year old.
(4) Call the number above X.
Once X > IFR ......... I think it's time to say "this is enough, screw it, let's move on with our lives."
I don't know if we have reached the point where X > IFR. But I think we are, if nothing else, getting close to that point.
Perhaps that is a very cold-hearted calculating, and even ghoulish, way of thinking about this. Interested in others thoughts.
What you (and many other people) are missing here is the average life expectancy of an 80 year old. In the US, once someone makes it to that age, they have 7 - 9 years of life left. Are we willing as a society to sacrifice our parents and grandparents so we can go to the bar?
Sorry you lost a leg in Korea, or were shot down in Vietnam, but I really need a haircut.
This is seriously one of the most outrageously manipulative things I have ever read in my life.
Your response, to the rightful concern that it is cruel to suggest that someone, like in the case of a WWII vet, has lived long enough, is Ellen Jamesian. You’re trying appropriate the real outrage of the original statement into undeserved outrage for your counter argument.
You people are truly sick. Now I am starting to understand it. I thought for a long time it was just trolling but your political obsessions have taken away your ability to think or behave rationally.
Never mind on this thread. Thanks anyway blue in dc, it was worth a try.
1,000 upvotes if I could. Bravo!
Really! You are Incredulous. You respond to someone’s valid point of view and concern and you turn it into a negative and make it political. Then I call you out and you play victim. You are the first to point fingers at everyone else. And I looked at some of your other posts on here and whenever someone posts a point of view about issues that you don't agree with you respond with outrage and play the fake politics card.
Regarding separating fact from fiction:
I know the difference between issues and politics. You don’t have a clue.
I worked for a respected republican congressman over many years ago and had an inside view of the tactics right wing minority factions used to take over the party. I’m an independent.
I have a graduate degree in mathematics and both can and have done the research to be able separate fact from psychological marketing tactics.
And I know how to tell the difference between someone who has everyone’s interests at heart vs someone who is just a really shitty human being.
Not politics, math.
cdc.gov/covid if you can read.
Comments:
(1) Admittedly this is anecdotal, but what I've seen is that my older-age acquaintances are more sick of the lockdown than younger folk! And more willing to take risks.
And I can understand that - it IS PROBABLY A FUNCTION of the very math that I was talking about above! Every day in quarantine is a greater percentage of their still-life-to-live (vs. a 30 year old).
(2) The get a haircut argument is so tiring. Barbering is an honest profession, and I'd argue it's fairly essential. We don't all want to go around looking like Geico the Caveman! People being proud of their appearance IS correlated with mental health. It is fair to point that out.
Also, have there been any widespread breakouts attributed to barbers or hair salons? Just wear a damn mask, and you'll most likely be fine.
(3) What on Earth does Korea or Vietnam have to do with this? That completely lost me.
1. I agree. Some of the older people I know seem to want to get it. They think it's "just the flu". Or maybe they want to die?
2. My point was non-essential activities (a haircut was probably a bad example). Live or die stuff. The case explosions seem to be mostly connected to restaurants and to a much greater extent, bars. Any place that large numbers of people are congregating indoors, without masks, for long periods of time. Probably churches too.
3. The elderly are not disposable just because they're old. Tons of people (and I'm not even saying you) talk about them like they are. Oh, he was 80, probably would have died soon anyway.
As to point 1, they want their children and grandchildren to live and prosper and not have the country they have dedicated their entire lives to building burned down to the ground by other people in their name.
Thanks for the response - that helps my understanding, particularly on point #3.
Diving deeper on #3, I've used the term "incremental deaths" myself. So I've broached that subject. It's a touchy subject, but I think it's worthy of conversation.
Given that the average person who enters in a nursing home (1) exits through the back door and not the front door, and (2) is only there on average 9 months --- how do we exactly consider those deaths?
Is an 85-year-old nursing home patient CV death truly "equal" in terms of "incremental attributed to the disease" as the CV death of, say, a 40-year-old parent?
I'd argue that the answer ---- and again, maybe this is ghoulish, but it is my answer ---- is not "absolutely, 100% yes."
When things really got out of hand in Italy, doctors were having to choose who to save. The 40 year old with kids was 1st in line, ahead of the 40 year old without kids, and both of them were ahead of the 80 year old.
I've always been of the opinion that, given the choice, you save the young ones first. If there's only room in the lifeboat for 20 people, and 40 want to get in it, the youngest should get those spots.
But I'd rather have a lifeboat that fits everyone. Or a captain that turns the pumps on and tries to plug the holes instead of ignoring the ship taking on water entirely.
The wealthiest, most powerful, nation on earth should have a better handle on this thing. And we don't.
You do realize this spike started 10-14 days after the protests started right? The 18-34 yo's recirculated it, it wasn't just the bars and restaurants. All the numbers in florida had been going down till beginning of june. Average age of the protestors, yep you guessed it 18-34. Only open minded non-political driven people will acknowledge this.
Honestly, “just wear a damn mask” would solve an awful lot of problems. It would matter a great deal less if the IFR were 0.3,-.6 or 0.9 if the rt were under 1.
It would matter a great deal less if the IFR were 0.3,-.6 or 0.9 if the rt were under 1.
YES. So much this.
Best answer to the stupid debate about who should die. Get the damn R0 down and the first debate goes away.
Well know for sure November 4th.
Just read up on that nebulizer study. I'm glad it was double-blind, I am concerned that it was only 101 patients though. Hopefully the results can be duplicated in further trials.
Here are a couple other positive items on the antibody treatment front.
This is the one I have been following rather closely, mostly because I have felt like it was our best chance to really change the fight against covid in a major way. They are on phase 3 trials and testing in 3 different capacities - prevention, mild cases, and severe cases.
https://www.livescience.com/antibody-cocktail-for-covid19-trial.html
These, out of pure fascination and interest, I have been following. And it involves Llama's!
https://www.livescience.com/antibody-cocktail-for-covid19-trial.html
https://www.wired.com/story/llamas-yes-llamas-could-help-us-fight-covid-19/
I am hopeful that when a vaccine does come out, that whatever federal agency gets the microphone to discuss it is able to persuade everyone to get it as it comes available. I am afraid people will be reluctant to take it for safety concerns or because they have wild conspiracies about it or they are anti-vax prone anyway.
Agreed. There's no greater battleground for this whole issue than student registration in America's K-12 school system. Vaccination requirements differ by state.
California, for example, requires student immunization proof from parents, no waivers. But interestingly California has also had a return of measles (likely from fear of MMR vaccine) and also varicella (chicken pox).
These are interesting times.
The reason for this is that private schools aren't subject to those state requirements. So the anti-vaxxers here send their kids to private schools that don't require immunizations and it's in those schools and communities where the outbreaks have happened.
I have read that their are significant federal payments being made to hospitals for every patient diagnosed with COVID. Given their struggles from cancellation of elective procedures and a large incentive, are the people being hospitalized today as sick as they were 2-3 months ago. Apparently, the level of D-Dimer in the blood is a good indicator of the degree of sickness. It would be interesting to see such an analysis. Hospitals need to be 80-90% full to break even.
Sorry if this sparks controversy. I’m just asking a question.
For one, you didn't ask a question. Two, you're implying something that's not happening.
There are medicare payments made based on admittance of Covid patients (and then additional amounts based on whether they go on ventilator, etc). Just like there are payment schedules for treatment of any and every disease. If someone is sick enough to be treated for many days in an ICU, the payments are big, as they should be. They also get a lot of money to treat cancer patients but they don't just make that diagnosis up for the money.
Doctors are not doing anything nefarious that would put their patients health at risk, not to mention their own reputation and license (which could lead to malpractice, etc). Suggesting as much is complete nonsense. They're doing the best they possibly can for patients given the information they have.
I will say, they are/were treating anything that looks like covid as covid out of caution. There have been too many instances of false negatives (patient tests negative and then the next day tests positive) not to do this. This isn't a financial reason though, it's just prudent caution. They treat the patient according to the symptoms, just like any disease.
The Belgians also seem to be onto something pretty powerful here using existing Yellow Fever vaccine which has been used reliably for over 80 years.
Vaccine is called RegaVax from Rega Institute at KU Leuven.
Only tested on hamsters thus far. Appears to have "one and done" power, no additional boosters needed. Made hamsters in the study immune to COVID-19.
Article is in Dutch, but upper right in Google Chrome you can translate it to English:
I think the optimism among the researchers is noteworthy.
"So far everything has gone smoothly, but you are never sure how it will continue. About ten percent of all vaccines make it to the finish. So of the 120 vaccines currently under development, only ten will ever be used. We are hopeful that our vaccine will be one of those vaccines. "
Anyway, patience.
I'm just excited for press briefing sweeps week!
Ty Blue in DC great Idea,best topic of 2020. All the negativity has gotten tge best of me @ times.
Haven't checked today but fatalities have been trending down 14 weeks now I think? OP hit the nail on the head about treating the symptoms better now than in the beginning of the outbreak. Less severe symptoms is much easier on the body. Another treatment showing positive results is Remdesivir a anti-viral used for SARS.
Very encouraging to hear that Jack Nicklaus fared very well for a 80 year old man with covid only reporting a sore throat. His wife is asymptomatic and never knew she had it. Is it possible that catching it from a asymptomatic carrier vs someone with symptoms is a less severe infection? Have no idea just a thought.
In florida sounds like they are testing 100k a day? Is that possible?
Overall very encouraging that they are making progress on cutting down the severity of infections for some that may have died in march.
I would be very interested in seeing that weekly data. Everything I’ve looked at suggested a downward trend til early July but then an uptick.
Exact numbers depend on what you look at. Here's what I have, starting the last week of March:
1741; 6320; 12084; 13735; 13738; 12683; 12351; 9704; 8167; 6533; 5607; 4950; 4136; 3778; 3425; 4610; 5163
The bottom point, 3425, is the first week of July. The median time between diagnosis and death has been 18 days, and death trends have consistently lagged new case trends by three weeks this whole time. The upturn in deaths starts three weeks after the upturn in cases.
So deaths are going back up and will keep doing so. But just for perspective, the 5163 comes three weeks after cases were up to 253K weekly. The previous case peak before the current upturn was 218K, resulting in 12683 deaths three weeks later. So a new case in July is not the same as a new case in April. We had 458K cases last week; it will take even more than that before we get to a point where we spend five weeks with >12000 people dying each week. And testing keeps going up, up, up; and new testing is basically guaranteed to find nondeadly cases that would've been missed before, rather than deadly ones.
That's interesting to see the numbers. I think a combo of better treatment and more testing has decreased our case fatality rate.
I think the worry is even with more testing, some locations are reporting stupid high positivity rates. Whcih means not only is our testing capacity being...tested...but that the virus is still spreading and not showing signs of slowing down. We are not as bad as we were back in April/May yet...but we're also not that far off.
A good way to make sure we get there is to open up schools while we climb this second wave.
Thank you to COVID! I just went on a trip to the Grand Canyon with my wife and 16 year old son.
- The flights were on time and the airports were at about half capacity. Best flights I have ever experienced.
- Stayed in Las Vegas, hotel was great. Eating, walking and shopping in Vegas was not crowded at all.
- Rented a Mustang Convertible and drove Route 66 with almost no one else on it.
- The South Rim of the Grand Canyon was incredible because of much smaller crowds.
My son wanted to go to the Grand Canyon for his 16th birthday and COVID made it the best trip ever!
Sharky how was the weed in nevada,lol?
The fatality rate is way under 1% when you figure all the people that never got tested & had it.
Masks are about worthless if they're not N95. Watch the youtube vid of the girl vaping right thru hers.
High risk people need to protect themselves - get on with life for the rest. That includes Michigan football this fall & the big house full.
The transmission rates seemingly trending in the right direction... I’m so hopeful!
Edited to add: I am in Texas and after a rough few weeks our transmission rate is hovering around 1.