[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

We should never meet; You would not make your SAN check.

US is now up to 13 cases. Still not time to panic.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Tuesday that a patient who had been evacuated from China tested positive for the illness. The CDC said in a press release that the patient was in California.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Jeff V »

Smoove_B wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 10:17 pm US is now up to 13 cases. Still not time to panic.
I'm sure you'll inform us when that time comes. :coffee:
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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We have an understanding. When I know, you all know - I promise.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Victoria Raverna »

Isgrimnur wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 3:41 pm From now on, I want you all to call me Loretta COVID-19
It stands for the coronavirus disease that was discovered in 2019.

The World Health Organization announced the name Tuesday, saying it was careful to find a name without stigma.

“We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, or an individual or group of people,” WHO's director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a call with reporters.
WHO discriminated against Middle East region or people? :)

MERS-CoV -> Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

Coronavirus: outspoken academic blames Xi Jinping for 'catastrophe' sweeping China:
The Guardian wrote:A prominent Chinese intellectual has become the first high-profile public figure to lay the blame for the coronavirus crisis at the feet of the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, saying the spread of the deadly virus has “revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance”.

As the crisis expands across the country, Xu Zhangrun, a law professor from one of the country’s top universities, lambasted the government under Xi in an essay titled: Viral Alarm, When Fury Overcomes Fear. In it, Xu blamed the current national crisis on a culture of suppression and “systemic impotence” that Xi has created. The virus has now killed more than 1,000 people inside China.

“The cause of all of this lies with The Axelrod and the cabal that surrounds him,” Xu writes, referring to Xi, according to a translation of the article by historian Geremie Barmé published on Monday by the website ChinaFile.

“It is a system that turns every natural disaster into an even greater man-made catastrophe. The coronavirus epidemic has revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance; the fragile and vacuous heart of the jittering edifice of state has thereby shown up as never before.”

Xu describes the outbreak as a “national calamity” that involves politics, the economy and “nation’s ethical fabric” making it “more perilous than total war itself”.
While it is verbose, it's worth reading the essay in its entirety. What the author describes is eerily reminiscent of the HBO Chernobyl miniseries.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by gameoverman »

Have you ever watched traffic cam footage from China? How about video on the quality of construction going on over there? China is playing fast and loose with safety and has been for a long time. It reminds me of US history, when the US first started industrializing. It almost always takes massive catastrophes before those in charge realize "Uh, maybe we should regulate this". It takes even more to get authorities to admit or acknowledge their farkups. That's partly why I'm still not convinced this virus is that big a deal, not even in China. There's over a billion people there, millions in that one city alone. Considering how they run things, even if the truth was 100,000 dead, it's not even a drop in the bucket of how bad it should be if the virus was a killer. I'm more inclined to believe the ones who've died there mostly died due to incompetence of one sort or another, not from the virus itself.

I may be wrong of course, time will tell.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Jeff V »

I assume China is a lot like the Philippines, where there mere availability of any type of healthcare depends on your upfront ability to pay for it. Lots of kids die there every year from dengue fever -- not because it's untreatable, caught early the cure is nearly 100% effective. But it's more expensive to treat than, say, treating someone for the flu. So they continue to bark up the wrong tree, treating for something less likely and by the time they concede it's dengue, the patient is in critical condition. And it's not like the dengue treatment is spectacularly expensive, last time I ran the numbers it was like $35. But for the poor there, that is about 1 month's salary.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Daehawk »

Xu vs Xi is a good title. :)

Modern medicine in China usually involves going to a walk in clinic , sitting in a chair, and having a IV of fluids administered. They really dont trust western medicine to work.

Chinese intellectual is usually not a good thing to be called and will end up getting you arrested.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by raydude »

gameoverman wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 5:54 pm Have you ever watched traffic cam footage from China? How about video on the quality of construction going on over there? China is playing fast and loose with safety and has been for a long time. It reminds me of US history, when the US first started industrializing. It almost always takes massive catastrophes before those in charge realize "Uh, maybe we should regulate this". It takes even more to get authorities to admit or acknowledge their farkups. That's partly why I'm still not convinced this virus is that big a deal, not even in China. There's over a billion people there, millions in that one city alone. Considering how they run things, even if the truth was 100,000 dead, it's not even a drop in the bucket of how bad it should be if the virus was a killer. I'm more inclined to believe the ones who've died there mostly died due to incompetence of one sort or another, not from the virus itself.

I may be wrong of course, time will tell.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Victoria Raverna »

Jeff V wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 8:29 pm I assume China is a lot like the Philippines, where there mere availability of any type of healthcare depends on your upfront ability to pay for it. Lots of kids die there every year from dengue fever -- not because it's untreatable, caught early the cure is nearly 100% effective. But it's more expensive to treat than, say, treating someone for the flu. So they continue to bark up the wrong tree, treating for something less likely and by the time they concede it's dengue, the patient is in critical condition. And it's not like the dengue treatment is spectacularly expensive, last time I ran the numbers it was like $35. But for the poor there, that is about 1 month's salary.
Philippines has basic public healthcare that cover near all of the people there? If not then China is not like that.

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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by UsulofDoom »

UsulofDoom wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2020 10:25 pm
stessier wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2020 3:07 pm
UsulofDoom wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2020 2:53 pm Here is a good link to the John Hopkins reporting. Shows locations on a map. My closes is one case in Boston 150 miles a way.

Coronaviris Stats and map
Total Confirmed 17,491
Total Deaths 362
Total Recovered 536
BAM!
Todays Stats.

Total Confirmed 28149
Total Deaths 565
Total Recovered 1146
Hope to see bigger recovery in the next week.

I was hoping the recovered would be much more.
Still 12 in US up one
Also none in South America or Africa.
Todays Stats.

Total Confirmed 60329 big increase in two days from 45000
Total Deaths 1369
Total Recovered 5995

I was hoping the recovered would be much more.
14 in US up two

One in Boston still not recovered.
Also none in South America ,central America or Africa.

I was planning on doing some metal grinding and painting this spring , so I picked up the below while available.

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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Your pics aren't showing up.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by UsulofDoom »

Daehawk wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 12:08 am Your pics aren't showing up.
They did on the preview
If I make a grammar or spelling mistake, PM me. I will correct it. It’s better than you being an asshole!

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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Blackhawk »

They showed up for me initially. Now they don't.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by em2nought »

"Something" is burning in Wuhan. :shock:

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Technically, he shouldn't be here.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by raydude »

em2nought wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 2:36 am "Something" is burning in Wuhan. :shock:

Enlarge Image
Of course I should have converted Celsius to Farenheit first. 89 degrees in winter?!
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Jeff V »

Victoria Raverna wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:26 pm Philippines has basic public healthcare that cover near all of the people there? If not then China is not like that.
You need to be able to qualify for a health card, and from what I'm told they are only accepted in the dingiest of pubic hospitals, where they will treat you for something that is not the problem just because it's cheaper than treating you for the actual problem. For hospitals less likely to kill you via nosocomial infection, you need to go to private hospitals where you need to show them the money. And even then, it's barbaric compared to, say even a crappy US hospital. When I had to go to one with a massive leg infection, I had drag my hobbled ass across the street to a pharmacy to purchase the tetanus serum, then return to the hospital so i could pay cash to a nurse to inject it for me. The hospital itself had no internal pharmacy. And this was a private hospital. On the plus side, x-rays (the old-style film plates, not modern PACS systems) and radiologist evaluation was only $2 US. While you have to not be flat ass broke to get treatment, it doesn't cost a lot.

There is approximately one western-style hospital in Manila (St. Lukes). It is the only hospital authorized for immigration physicals to the US. My wife's plot to whisk me away to the Philippines for my end of days includes distance to this hospital as one of the considerations.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by wonderpug »

For a source on news/updates, this BunkerJohn guy on imgur has been posting really great daily updates with pretty charts, maps, and a very helpful Bunker John's Uh-Oh Scale of how concerned he thinks we should be.

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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

UsulofDoom wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 12:00 am
Total Confirmed 60329 big increase in two days from 45000
Total Deaths 1369
Total Recovered 5995
Probably too boring for this thread, but part of outbreak investigation involves the creation of what's known as an official case definition. Here, the investigators are coming up with a way to identify possible, probable and confirmed individuals with the illness in question. As the investigation continues (particularly when you're dealing with an unknown agent or one that hasn't been fully studied) that case definition should change. Symptoms may be added or removed and categories or patient status tiers might change.

This last jump in number is exactly that:
The spike in numbers is partly due to a broader definition of what constitutes a confirmed case, to include people diagnosed on the basis of their symptoms rather than testing positive.
Listing someone as a confirmed case based on just symptoms and not a positive test result is potentially problematic as you're absolutely going to now have people that really aren't stick listed as such.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Big jump in new Coronavirus cases; deaths declared as diagnosis method adjusted

Another new 14,840 cases were reported in Hubei on Thursday, up from 2,015 new cases reported across mainland China a day earlier.
China's Hubei province, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, reported a stark rise in the number of new cases Thursday, dashing hopes that the epidemic may have been slowing down.

Health officials in Hubei reported 14,840 new cases, most of them in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province where the virus is believed to have originated.
The province also said another 242 people had died from the coronavirus Wednesday, bringing the total there to 1,310. Tuesday's death toll in the province was 1068.
Across mainland China, there were 15,152 new confirmed infections on Wednesday, bringing the total number of cases to 59,805, a significant jump that's sure to raise concerns about the true scale of the epidemic in China.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by morlac »

raydude wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 6:33 am
em2nought wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 2:36 am "Something" is burning in Wuhan. :shock:

Enlarge Image
Of course I should have converted Celsius to Farenheit first. 89 degrees in winter?!
That's not showing heat but Sulfur Dioxide concentrations.

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3874013

Interesting read, Speculation is they are burning bodies or medical waste. From the linked:

"A staffer from a funeral home in Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, claims that the number of bodies she and her co-workers have had to transport and cremate each day is four to five times higher than the usual amount. Based on the account of the Wuhan funeral home staffer, the daily average number of bodies suspected of being coronavirus victims is estimated at 225, or 4,725 bodies, at a single Wuhan funeral home since Jan. 22.

There currently are eight registered funeral homes in Wuhan. If the account of the funeral home staffer is true, this would mean there are 1,628 deaths per day in the city and 34,200 over the past 21 days."


spilly speculation but...

No link's the these claims but I would not be surprised if those numbers are more accurate. Not sold on mass burning of bodies either but again I wouldn't be shocked.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Dogstar »

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 11:10 am
UsulofDoom wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 12:00 am
Total Confirmed 60329 big increase in two days from 45000
Total Deaths 1369
Total Recovered 5995
Probably too boring for this thread, but part of outbreak investigation involves the creation of what's known as an official case definition. Here, the investigators are coming up with a way to identify possible, probable and confirmed individuals with the illness in question. As the investigation continues (particularly when you're dealing with an unknown agent or one that hasn't been fully studied) that case definition should change. Symptoms may be added or removed and categories or patient status tiers might change.

This last jump in number is exactly that:
The spike in numbers is partly due to a broader definition of what constitutes a confirmed case, to include people diagnosed on the basis of their symptoms rather than testing positive.
Listing someone as a confirmed case based on just symptoms and not a positive test result is potentially problematic as you're absolutely going to now have people that really aren't stick listed as such.
It's problematic, but at this point, I'm not sure what China is supposed to do. It's been widely theorized that they're under-reporting cases to begin with (especially as there isn't an accurate count of people in villages or trapped in their apartment buildings), that they're running out of test kits to test potentials, and that the test kits themselves may not be completely accurate. We screwed up testing here and we have a tiny percentage of potentials compared to China. As a health care professional, what do you think they should do?
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Dogstar wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 11:38 am It's problematic, but at this point, I'm not sure what China is supposed to do. It's been widely theorized that they're under-reporting cases to begin with (especially as there isn't an accurate count of people in villages or trapped in their apartment buildings), that they're running out of test kits to test potentials, and that the test kits themselves may not be completely accurate. We screwed up testing here and we have a tiny percentage of potentials compared to China. As a health care professional, what do you think they should do?
Just to clarify, I'm not a health care professional but I have conducted outbreak investigations. In fairness, they were orders of magnitude smaller and didn't involve emerging infections. :D

So with that, I'm not sure what the official protocol is, particularly knowing that the test is allegedly problematic. My gut inclination would be to list them as probable, not confirmed just based on my smaller scale protocols. That being said, when you list someone as probable, the idea then is to follow up and confirm, assuming they're available for additional testing. The scope and magnitude of this outbreak however, seems like adding people into that probable category means very few will actually get follow up as you're now focused on the confirmed cases. Assuming we all get through this (we will), I'm guessing all kinds or protocols and response manuals are going to be re-examined. Truly, this is beyond anything we've ever seen in the modern age.

If you want excellent info, the WHO is providing updates and this is their latest (2/12/20). They're also clear that they're using the WHO case definition so their numbers aren't going to match China.

Either way, I'm still confident (as I said when this started) that China is misrepresenting the size and scope of the outbreak. If this is a way for them to "sneak" numbers into the totals, then that's not good either. Some have suggested the numbers are going to go even higher over the next few days as China "adjusts the case definitions".

What I'm finding really interesting is what's happening on the major cruise ships that have been quarantined. Something on them is different as the number of cases and how quickly it's spreading to passengers and crew is rather alarming. Why does it appear to be more severe on a boat? Is there something about these ships we're not accounting for? During the SARS outbreak there was spread by the toilets between apartments in a giant complex. Somehow the wastewater was circulating in such a way that it was releasing clouds of viral particles into apartments where people had self-quarantined for protection.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Doing some shopping last night and noticed the tabloid headlines: "65 MILLION COULD DIE FROM CORONAVIRUS ACCORDING TO SCIENTISTS!"

Seriously, screw those publishers. Bat boy and bigfoot are one thing, but this kind of thing does serious harm.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Smoove_B wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 12:19 pm What I'm finding really interesting is what's happening on the major cruise ships that have been quarantined. Something on them is different as the number of cases and how quickly it's spreading to passengers and crew is rather alarming. Why does it appear to be more severe on a boat? Is there something about these ships we're not accounting for? During the SARS outbreak there was spread by the toilets between apartments in a giant complex. Somehow the wastewater was circulating in such a way that it was releasing clouds of viral particles into apartments where people had self-quarantined for protection.
There are a couple of factors in play on cruise ships. The first one is obvious - several thousand people in close quarters. The crew still has to bring them food 2-3 times per day and clean the rooms. Even if you keep everyone in their rooms (which the ships have eased up on), the crew is literally spreading the virus on their clothes and equipment.

The other factor is the average age of most cruise ship passengers - well above retirement (since we are not talking Caribbean or Disney cruises here). So you have a more susceptible population congregated in one place.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Right, highly concentrated people is likely a factor, but my general impression is that this same level of human concentration isn't resulting in the same level of spread in the major metropolitan areas of China - at least, as they've represented to us. Is it much more communicable than we realize? Is there another high-risk transmission route we're not considering? Are the ship's crew not following infection control protocols? Is passenger age an issue? There's so many outbreak variables, but my gut is telling me there's more to the story.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Daehawk »

Im sure heating and air circulation is also to blame. Those filters aren't made small enough for disease prevention.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by gilraen »

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 1:08 pm Right, highly concentrated people is likely a factor, but my general impression is that this same level of human concentration isn't resulting in the same level of spread in the major metropolitan areas of China - at least, as they've represented to us.
Most rooms on standard older cruise ships (like the Diamond Princess) are on the inside of the ship and do not have windows. You have no way of airing out the room, so whatever crap gets blown in through the HVAC system is there to stay. That's not usually the case on land.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

All great theories - but I wanna know. :wink:

Really, it's a risk issue. If it's truly the case that it can spread through HVAC systems, that's something we should know about so we can develop adequate response / preparation tactics. If the ship crew isn't doing an adequate job of sanitizing (food service, door handles, etc...) then that's another issue. The biggest outbreak I worked on was in a county jail and after a second outbreak occurred in a different area of the jail, that was the cause - the maintenance staff were using spray bottles filled with water to wipe down door handles. The jail had been "cost cutting" and not giving them adequate cleaning supplies and sure enough wiping down handles with water doesn't work to prevent disease spread.

Is there a pattern for illness on the boat that follows interior vs exterior rooms? Does having a window mitigate risk? Does having a patio mitigate risk? What is the relative risk for those inside the bowels of the ship vs those in a balcony suite? This is the stuff that I enjoy (as wrong as that sounds) the most - unraveling the mystery.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

Dunno if this could be a factor, but there are concerns coronavirus could spread through pipes:
The Hill wrote:Health officials in Hong Kong are investigating whether the coronavirus may have been transmitted between residents of a high-rise apartment building through bathroom pipes.

CNN reported Wednesday that residents in Hong Kong’s Tsing Yi area were partially evacuated after a 75-year-old man and 62-year-old woman living in the same building became infected with the coronavirus.

Health officials said the two patients live 10 floors apart, raising the possibility that the virus had spread through the building. Officials decided to quarantine dozens of residents living in the building after an unsealed pipe was found in the woman’s apartment.

...

Researchers are still working to determine exactly how the virus spreads, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says person-to-person spreading is thought to occur mainly through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similar to the flu. It’s not clear if the virus can be spread through fecal matter.

But because the two Hong Kong patients lived near one another in the same building and one apartment was found to have an exposed pipe, authorities are trying to determine whether the coronavirus could have spread through the sewage system.

During the SARS outbreak in 2003, pipes became a source of transmission and it spread through fecal matter. Hundreds of people in Hong Kong died during the SARS outbreak.

Microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung said Tuesday that an improperly sealed pipe could result in virus transmission by carrying infected feces into the building’s ventilation system, according to CNN.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Yeah, I mentioned that above for the ships. The 2003/4 SARS outbreak having this was a big surprise, but I hadn't actually seen it being theorized again for this new outbreak with actual evidence of it happening in a very similar way (cases in an apartment building where patients had zero contact). Thanks.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by LordMortis »

Why do I get the feeling if this news/speculation spreads we are going to ironically hit epidemic proportions of people using public restrooms and not flushing because "don't want get corona virus".
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Daehawk »

Coronavirus kills an entire trade show

Fear Kills A Great Trade Show: The Death of MWC 2020
Fear is viral. While there have been only two cases of coronavirus in Spain—as opposed to 22 million flu illnesses leading to 12,000 deaths this season in the US alone, according to the CDC—snowballing hysteria over the possibility that a few people may get a flu-like illness, but not the flu, led to the cancellation of the biggest trade show in the mobile device world.
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gameoverman
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by gameoverman »

raydude wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:49 pmKnow what the problem with exponential growth is? At first it seems too small to matter, until it runs away from you.
I'm aware of that being a possibility. What I'm saying is there is no evidence, so far as I've read, that suggests exponential growth is happening. We are in the middle of February now, where's the growth? All I see are small and contained detections, such as the one in France. Here in California there have been infected people identified but where are all the ones they infected? California has a lot of people in it, any kind of growth would be obvious.

This corona virus panic reminds me of the WWIII panic we recently had after that Iranian guy was killed. I think people like the excitement of thinking a calamity is about to happen and so any chance they get they cry "apocalyptic event!". Corona virus is just the latest reason to indulge in that. That's how I see it.
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raydude
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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gameoverman wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 4:29 pm
raydude wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:49 pmKnow what the problem with exponential growth is? At first it seems too small to matter, until it runs away from you.
I'm aware of that being a possibility. What I'm saying is there is no evidence, so far as I've read, that suggests exponential growth is happening. We are in the middle of February now, where's the growth? All I see are small and contained detections, such as the one in France. Here in California there have been infected people identified but where are all the ones they infected? California has a lot of people in it, any kind of growth would be obvious.

This corona virus panic reminds me of the WWIII panic we recently had after that Iranian guy was killed. I think people like the excitement of thinking a calamity is about to happen and so any chance they get they cry "apocalyptic event!". Corona virus is just the latest reason to indulge in that. That's how I see it.
I agree with you there. The worst thing is that the same news that my Trump loving relatives follow is touting massive coronavirus scares. Fear sells, so let's hawk it! Then when the real news reports that cases keep climbing, even though it's slower than the fake news, it just reinforces my Trump loving relatives belief in their news sources.
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Daehawk
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Daehawk »

Just look at cruise ships if you want to see a spread. First 2 then 12 then 33 then 64 people.
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gilraen
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by gilraen »

I work in employee health software. We have a certified epidemiologist/industrial hygienist/nurse (she has lots of letters after her name...) on staff for medical content review. So we had quite a few discussions about this in the past couple of weeks, and it actually comes down to the fact that not everyone who gets infected becomes super-sick. Hell, some people are entirely asymptomatic.

We are in the middle of a cold & flu season - so there's a very distinct possibility that some people who got infected actually don't know it. They will recover just fine and think that they had a case of flu or maybe bronchitis (since cough and shortness of breath are some of the symptoms). But in the meantime, they have just spread the virus to everyone around them, who might also think that they got the flu...until the virus finds a particularly susceptible host (e.g. someone immunocompromised) That person will become very sick and make the news, but no one will know about the other hundred people who all caught it but didn't have symptoms severe enough to warrant going to the doctor.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

gilraen wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 5:10 pm I work in employee health software. We have a certified epidemiologist/industrial hygienist/nurse (she has lots of letters after her name...) on staff for medical content review. So we had quite a few discussions about this in the past couple of weeks, and it actually comes down to the fact that not everyone who gets infected becomes super-sick. Hell, some people are entirely asymptomatic.
This truly is the core issue. We don't know and we don't know what we don't know. The little information we have (that it's a coronavirus) tells us enough to get us started, but those slight modifications and variations to its genetic coding could result in much larger disease manifestation impacts. I was reading something earlier this week about how someone figured out this new variant has a slight bend in one of the glycoprotein "spikes" that is atypical. That slight bend might somehow change how the virus presents itself to the immune system. It might change how it can attach to a cell and how quickly it can get inside.

It's highly likely there's variation in illness and that there are carriers and super-spreaders. It's also highly likely that there are risk factors influencing them - age or chronic illness. We really have no idea so the best we can do is dispatch the best scientists to figure it all out.
Maybe next year, maybe no go
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Daehawk
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Daehawk »

Japan just had their first death from coronavirus. It was an 80 year old woman. As far as they can tell she has not traveled anywhere and had not come into contact with any Chinese tourists.
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
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