[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

[hitbyambulance]

Moot. Russia is 92% success. Is better waccine drug.

i was so hoping that was a link to RT

[Dave Allen]

[Paingod]

Might as well just get the top half of a hazmat suit for $250.

I'm curious to see how the TSA reacts to those.

And how you take a sip of water.

[Isgrimnur]

Bloomberg

Measles cases reached the highest level in 23 years in 2019 and health authorities warned that many countries aren’t vaccinating enough people amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The global total for confirmed measles infections rose to 869,770 last year, the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control said in a report released Thursday. The number of deaths soared by 50% compared with a low reached in 2016.

The percentage of people who have received a first measles shot has stagnated in recent years and the coronavirus pandemic is now lowering vaccination rates by halting immunization campaigns, putting 94 million people at risk, according to the WHO.

[Kraken]

My sister made this facebook post about my niece:

Friends: my daughter Rose is a front liner at the local hospital here in Muskegon, working COVID intensive care on long shifts caring for patients who are deathly ill. I am asking for your prayers today. Prayers for her safety, the safety of her hubby and baby daughter at home, the safety of dozens of her co- workers who are either working double shifts, sick or in isolation. Grace for the patients who are gravely sick and dying, and comfort for the families who have had to say goodbye to their loved ones. It is far worse for this overwhelmed health care facility than I will describe here. All of those affected by this horrible virus need all the prayers and positive energy that you can muster.

A little later:

Locals, a call has gone out for meals and/or snacks for the overwhelmed staff who are having a difficult time finding enough time to eat. Especially those on the second and third shifts. If you own a restaurant and can deliver some meals, send over some pizzas, or just want to bake up some treats then give Mercy hospital a call and know that ANYTHING you can do to help would be so greatly appreciated.

Need I mention that we're still scaling an ever-steeper cliff?

[dbt1949]

Just read a story about the hoarding coming back. Oh joy.
I bet it's Trump supporters.

[hitbyambulance]

at this rate the entire population of North Dakota will be infected and/or dead within a few months

[Paingod]

Just read a story about the hoarding coming back. Oh joy.

There's been a little speculation about winter shortages of durable goods as the virus spikes. I'm not a hoarding advocate, but if you can afford to get a few extra rolls of TP and some extra beans and rice, it's probably not a bad idea to have a reserve.

We certainly don't intend to go to the grocery store and wipe out the baked beans and toilet paper, but we do have enough food (dry rice/beans/baking materials) on hand to last a month or more if all else fails.

[Sudy]

Ontario has 1,500 cases a day now, breaking records set earlier in the year. With worst-case scenario 5% daily growth, we could apparently be looking at 6,500 cases by mid-December. The province introduced a new tiered closure system a couple weeks ago that's actually allowed some businesses to re-open during this time of escalation. I've honestly stopped trying to make sense of things. A Burger King opened up a few steps from our apartment... for the first couple of weeks all tables were blocked off while our municipality returned to restaurants being closed for dine-in. I went in the other day and they have tables open with social distancing. There was a group of several teens who seemed to be friends with one of the employees. I'm pretty sure they don't all share a residence.

Of course, I know this must seem like a happy memory to many of you in the U.S. For North Dakota to be in such a state is frightening, as our close family (Mrs. Nym's mom/brother/sister) in neighbouring SD all have serious health conditions.

[LordMortis]

We certainly don't intend to go to the grocery store and wipe out the baked beans and toilet paper, but we do have enough food (dry rice/beans/baking materials) on hand to last a month or more if all else fails.

Eggs hold for a couple of months in the fridge no matter what the expiry date says. And yeah, it's time to move back to pulling in months of dry goods supplies at a time (Rice and beans and large sacks of potatoes). I haven't done so yet. I just started buying fresh produce again maybe a month ago. I am definitely part of the virus isolation fatigued populace 9 months in to this, so I totally get why people who view themselves invulnerable keep on keeping on but as someone who respects the rules and common courtesy and modern medical science as well as not being invulnerable to such things, fatigue is not enough to act with abandon. So hoarding at a minor capacity, it will be. I'm desperately trying to stay out of the office as much as possible but despite my best effort, I'm in 3.5 days a week (away from everyone as I can be) at a minimum.

In spite of all the isolation and masking up, I'm still coming down with a cold (hopefully minor). No coughing, no fever, etc... No idea where I got it from but it really hits how vulnerable I am simply from gassing the car every few weeks, grocery shopping once a week, and going to a huge office occupied by 6 to 10 people daily right now. (I suspect my cold comes from one of the younger more lax interpreters of company policies)

[Blackhawk]

I laid in a supply in March/April. It was all long-term food, but I've been thinking that it is time to go through it all and check expiration dates. I laid it all in thinking it would be there for a few months.

[Lorini]

Don't forget that the TP shortages were real. TP makers had to switch making commercial TP for commercial delivery to making way more home TP for home use. They shouldn't have nearly the issues they had at the start. I'm not planning to hoard TP at least.

[Daehawk]

And they still haven't kept up . At least around here. Bare shelves with only cheaper crappier brands. Sanitizer you can find here but Lysol and TP no not much at all.

[Daehawk]

Traffic was backed up down the road at the local health office Thursday. Im guessing it was testing.

[Isgrimnur]

Chapere

Researchers have discovered that a deadly virus found in Bolivia can spread from person to person in healthcare settings, raising potential concerns of additional outbreaks in the future, according to new findings presented today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH). The research also provides preliminary evidence regarding the species of rodent that carries the virus and may spread it to people or to other animals that can infect humans.

Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) laid out new clues to the many mysteries surrounding the Chapare virus, which caused at least five infections near Bolivia’s capital city, La Paz, in 2019–three of them fatal. Prior to that, the only record of the disease was a small cluster and a single confirmed case in 2004 in Bolivia’s Chapare Province, about 370 miles east of La Paz. The recent outbreak surprised health authorities, since initially all they knew was that it was a hemorrhagic fever that produced symptoms similar to diseases such as Ebola. It sparked a rapid mobilization of infectious disease experts from Bolivia’s Ministry of Health, the CDC and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) to explore the origins of the disease, including securing samples from patients and developing a new diagnostic test.

“Our work confirmed that a young medical resident, an ambulance medic and a gastroenterologist all contracted the virus after encounters with infected patients–and two of these healthcare workers later died,” said Caitlin Cossaboom, DVM, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist with the CDC’s Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology. “We now believe many bodily fluids can potentially carry the virus.”

[dbt1949]

My wife's nurse was do to come today. She felt bad all day and when she got here she vomited between her car and the house. She came in and washed my wife's hair before leaving early.
Looks like we are going to die now.

[AWS260]

My wife's nurse was do to come today. She felt bad all day and when she got here she vomited between her car and the house. She came in and washed my wife's hair before leaving early.
Looks like we are going to die now.

That's horrible. Fingers crossed that she just had a bad hangover.

[Z-Corn]

My wife's nurse was do to come today. She felt bad all day and when she got here she vomited between her car and the house. She came in and washed my wife's hair before leaving early.
Looks like we are going to die now.

That's horrible. Fingers crossed that she just had a bad hangover.

Or opioid withdrawal.

[Smoove_B]

If it was norovirus y'all will know tomorrow.

Also, I hope it wasn't norovirus.

[Moat_Man]

My wife's nurse was do to come today. She felt bad all day and when she got here she vomited between her car and the house. She came in and washed my wife's hair before leaving early.
Looks like we are going to die now.

What an incredibly irresponsible thing to do. Plus she's a nurse and should know better. It's possibly criminal behaviour if you get sick. Didn't she get the memo? When you are sick you stay HOME!

[Sudy]

Oh man, norovirus. While we didn't get an official diagnosis, I'm pretty sure that's what we came down with when we visited the in-laws several years ago. About twelve hours of losing it from both ends, often simultaneously in my case. This was with five of us sharing one bathroom... I have no idea how we made it. And then there was the week of weakness and exhaustion that followed.

Hey, which OOer told the story of getting sick like that in a server room, and having to substitute a box of old keyboards for a bathroom? Am I remembering that right?

[LawBeefaroni]

Oh man, norovirus. While we didn't get an official diagnosis, I'm pretty sure that's what we came down with when we visited the in-laws several years ago. About twelve hours of losing it from both ends, often simultaneously in my case. This was with five of us sharing one bathroom... I have no idea how we made it. And then there was the week of weakness and exhaustion that followed.

Hey, which OOer told the story of getting sick like that in a server room, and having to substitute a box of old keyboards for a bathroom? Am I remembering that right?

Yes.

Brian, AKA Metalhed.

[Kraken]

I don't see much news about the flu. Are we going to avoid the twindemic? It stands to reason that the measures we're taking against covid will thwart the flu virus, too, and the southern hemisphere had a mild flu season. Maybe we're catching a break here, or is it too early to say that?

[Daehawk]

I got my shot at the normal'ish time.

[dbt1949]

Ended up my wife's nurse sickness was food poisoning. How in the hell do you that?

[hitbyambulance]

Ended up my wife's nurse sickness was food poisoning. How in the hell do you that?

i remember in my early 20s working at the county government center in IT. regularly got colds, influenza, Norovirus and yes, even food poisoning (i frequented a lot of dodgy eateries back then) - especially in the winter, in Minnesota. seemed so normal to be regularly afflicted with disease at the time.... now i can't even really remember the last time i had an upper respiratory infection. it was in the past few years, but i've been sickness-free for a year and a half at least, which is a record.

[Kraken]

Last winter the flu kept me in bed for a day, and I felt pretty marginal for a few days on either side of that. I was like "eh, I'll probably live." I'd be less sanguine if I got the same symptoms today...so I'm glad there's apparently not a lot of flu going around.

[Formix]

Only one data point, but at my yearly physical this week, my doctor said he has seen zero flu patients where he normally would have had several by this time last year.

[Paingod]

I'm considering wearing a mask as a routine thing going forward in order to keep the practice normalized like it is in other countries. No one should ever feel self-conscious about being safe.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

It's not surprising that flu cases are way down this year; the same trends were seen in Australia and NZ, among other places, this summer (their winter). So many people wearing a mask when in public stops the transmission of more than just Covid.

[Paingod]

As a side note, our oldest kid's school was closed due to an outbreak in the "High School" side of the building. He's in the "Middle School" side and wasn't anywhere near the affected areas and people, but it's still a thing and he's still home for the next couple weeks at least. I believe the students share a common lunch area (used at different times to keep them separate), which is the reason for concern.

[Daehawk]

Unless the AC circulates from both areas of the school maybe.

[Isgrimnur]

[Anonymous Bosch]

This comes as something of a relief, given that I had the BCG vaccine myself as a younger lad in the UK, where it used to be mandatory up until 2005…

Cedars-Sinai studies century-old vaccine that may prevent coronavirus

LOS ANGELES — A widely used tuberculosis vaccine is associated with a reduced likelihood of contracting COVID-19, according to a new study by Cedars-Sinai.

The findings raise the possibility that a vaccine already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may help prevent coronavirus infections or reduce the severity of the disease, Cedars-Sinai said in a statement.

The vaccine, known as Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or BCG, was developed between 1908 and 1921 and is administered to more than 100 million children around the world every year. In the U.S., it is FDA-approved as a drug to treat bladder cancer and as a vaccine for people at high risk of contracting TB. The BCG vaccine is currently being tested in multiple clinical trials worldwide for effectiveness against COVID-19.

In the new study, published online Nov. 19 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, investigators tested the blood of more than 6,000 healthcare workers in the Cedars-Sinai Health System for evidence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and also asked them about their medical and vaccination histories.

They found that workers who had received BCG vaccinations in the past — nearly 30% of those studied — were significantly less likely to test positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood or to report having had infections with coronavirus or coronavirus-associated symptoms over the prior six months than those who had not received BCG. These effects were not related to whether workers had received meningococcal, pneumococcal or influenza vaccinations.

The reasons for the lower SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels in the BCG group were not clear, according to Dr. Moshe Arditi, director of the Pediatric and Infectious Diseases and Immunology Division at Cedars-Sinai and co-senior author of the study.

“It appears that BCG-vaccinated individuals either may have been less sick and therefore produced fewer anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, or they may have mounted a more efficient cellular immune response against the virus,” said Arditi, professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Sciences. “We were interested in studying the BCG vaccine because it has long been known to have a general protective effect against a range of bacterial and viral diseases other than TB, including neonatal sepsis and respiratory infections.”

In the new study, the lower antibody levels in the BCG group persisted despite the fact that these individuals had higher frequencies of hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and COPD, which are known risk factors for being more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and developing the more severe forms of COVID-19.

While noting that no one believes BCG will be more effective than a specific vaccine for COVID-19, Arditi said it could be more quickly approved and made available, given that it has a strong safety profile demonstrated by many years of use.

“It is a potentially important bridge that could offer some benefit until we have the most effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines made widely available,” he said.

Doctor Susan Cheng, associate professor of Cardiology and director of Public Health Research at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai and a senior study co-author, said that “given our findings, we believe that large, randomized clinical trials are urgently needed to confirm whether BCG vaccination can induce a protective effect against SARS-CoV2 infection.”

In fact, a number of randomized clinical trials have been launched to study the potential protective effects of BCG vaccination against COVID-19, according to the Cedars-Sinai statement. Along with Texas A&M University, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Cedars-Sinai is a site for the U.S. arm of this ongoing trial, which is recruiting hundreds of healthcare workers. Arditi serves as the principal investigator of this clinical trial at Cedars-Sinai.

“It would it be wonderful if one of the oldest vaccines that we have could help defeat the world’s newest pandemic,” Arditi said.

[dbt1949]

I had a tuberculosis vaccine when I was young. Whether it was this one or not I have no idea.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I had a tuberculosis vaccine when I was young. Whether it was this one or not I have no idea.

Wikipedia suggests the US has never used mass immunization of BCG due to the rarity of tuberculosis in the US. But given your military service and where you were deployed, I'd be shocked if you had not received it.

[dbt1949]

My next door neighbor had it when I was a kid. She survived it okay (I guess) but I always remember it.

[Smoove_B]

Wikipedia suggests the US has never used mass immunization of BCG due to the rarity of tuberculosis in the US.

It's true. But it's so potentially problematic we bend over backwards to ensure compliance when someone has it and they need to be treated. During my salad days of public health work, I actually had to drive people unable to otherwise secure transport to a hospital to receive treatment.

I was free Uber before Uber was cool.

[Jeff V]

Wow, potentially good news for my wife -- The Philippines vaccinates against TB, but then again, so many of her friends here have had it that anecdotal evidence might indicate it's not all that affective. Or else maybe The Philippines use a different vaccine.

When I worked for a hospital, we were required to be tested for TB once every other year or so. Filipinos always got a pass because the vaccine made the skin test false positive. When she immigrated here, she had to get chest x-rays.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Wow, potentially good news for my wife -- The Philippines vaccinates against TB, but then again, so many of her friends here have had it that anecdotal evidence might indicate it's not all that affective. Or else maybe The Philippines use a different vaccine.

It likely depends on her age. According to Wikipedia, BCG vaccination started in the Philippines in 1979 with the Expanded Program on Immunization.