COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[Heads22]

I feel like I have a cold; felt about the same for about six days. I think its probably a cold, but I needed to get tested due to my job. Was hoping for a little quicker turnaround.

[greg775]

Feels weird to have many stores opening up in Lawrence, Ks. We've only got 2 active cases now and only had 60 or so total at its worse. Should be interesting to see how it spikes after the protests. Also teams start arriving June 15.

[bmags]

10 hours ago, Heads22 said:

I feel like I have a cold; felt about the same for about six days. I think its probably a cold, but I needed to get tested due to my job. Was hoping for a little quicker turnaround.

my friend had similar turnaround. Was tested on a wednesday with his wife. His wife found out that friday, he didn't get his results until Monday. 

[Middle Buffalo]

10 hours ago, greg775 said:

Feels weird to have many stores opening up in Lawrence, Ks. We've only got 2 active cases now and only had 60 or so total at its worse. Should be interesting to see how it spikes after the protests. Also teams start arriving June 15.

I’m confused. Haven’t you been advocating for public places to be opened? Now you are worried about a potential spread (due to protests)?

[bmags]

strange stuff.

[southsider2k5]

1 hour ago, bmags said:

strange stuff.

So is that to due to social distancing of the people, or the virus not being as infectious as was previously thought?

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Middle Buffalo said:

I’m confused. Haven’t you been advocating for public places to be opened? Now you are worried about a potential spread (due to protests)?

The key might be to pose in front of a boarded up church with an upside-down borrowed Bible and then NOT offer a passage or even word of prayer.

That would definitely teach those weak, yet constantly meddling governors.

[caulfield12]

2 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

So is that to due to social distancing of the people, or the virus not being as infectious as was previously thought?

Or the sheer density of the city is making those super-spreader incidents really stand out...or the theoretical different strain of the virus?

[StrangeSox]

2 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

So is that to due to social distancing of the people, or the virus not being as infectious as was previously thought?

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

This was talked about in the TWiV podcast I linked a page or two ago.

 

Quote

Other infectious diseases also spread in clusters, and with close to 5 million reported COVID-19 cases worldwide, some big outbreaks were to be expected. But SARS-CoV-2, like two of its cousins, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), seems especially prone to attacking groups of tightly connected people while sparing others. It’s an encouraging finding, scientists say, because it suggests that restricting gatherings where superspreading is likely to occur will have a major impact on transmission, and that other restrictions—on outdoor activity, for example—might be eased.

“If you can predict what circumstances are giving rise to these events, the math shows you can really, very quickly curtail the ability of the disease to spread,” says Jamie Lloyd-Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied the spread of many pathogens. But superspreading events are ill-understood and difficult to study, and the findings can lead to heartbreak and fear of stigma in patients who touch them off.

Most of the discussion around the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has concentrated on the average number of new infections caused by each patient. Without social distancing, this reproduction number (R) is about three. But in real life, some people infect many others and others don’t spread the disease at all. In fact, the latter is the norm, Lloyd-Smith says: “The consistent pattern is that the most common number is zero. Most people do not transmit.”

That’s why in addition to R, scientists use a value called the dispersion factor (k), which describes how much a disease clusters. The lower k is, the more transmission comes from a small number of people. In a seminal 2005 Nature paper, Lloyd-Smith and co-authors estimated that SARS—in which superspreading played a major role—had a k of 0.16. The estimated k for MERS, which emerged in 2012, is about 0.25. In the flu pandemic of 1918, in contrast, the value was about one, indicating that clusters played less of a role.

Estimates of k for SARS-CoV-2 vary. In January, Julien Riou and Christian Althaus at the University of Bern simulated the epidemic in China for different combinations of R and k and compared the outcomes with what had actually taken place. They concluded that k for COVID-19 is somewhat higher than for SARS and MERS. That seems about right, says Gabriel Leung, a modeler at the University of Hong Kong. “I don’t think this is quite like SARS or MERS, where we observed very large superspreading clusters,” Leung says. “But we are certainly seeing a lot of concentrated clusters where a small proportion of people are responsible for a large proportion of infections.” But in a recent preprint, Adam Kucharski of LSHTM estimated that k for COVID-19 is as low as 0.1. “Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,” Kucharski says.

That could explain some puzzling aspects of this pandemic, including why the virus did not take off around the world sooner after it emerged in China, and why some very early cases elsewhere—such as one in France in late December 2019, reported on 3 May—apparently failed to ignite a wider outbreak. If k is really 0.1, then most chains of infection die out by themselves and SARS-CoV-2 needs to be introduced undetected into a new country at least four times to have an even chance of establishing itself, Kucharski says. If the Chinese epidemic was a big fire that sent sparks flying around the world, most of the sparks simply fizzled out.

 

[southsider2k5]

40 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

This was talked about in the TWiV podcast I linked a page or two ago.

 

 

So is the idea that some people are just more "infectious" than other people?  Or that we don't know why some events happen or not?

[StrangeSox]

17 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

So is the idea that some people are just more "infectious" than other people?  Or that we don't know why some events happen or not?

I can only go off of this article and the discussion I heard, but basically:

• Superspreading is still poorly understood overall
• Some people seem to shed a lot more viral load than others
• Conditions e.g. indoors matter
• Behavior e.g. not socially distancing, not frequently washing hands, participating in choral practice matters

[NWINFan]

My wife went through a Wendy's drive through. The guy in the window had a mask hanging over his neck but didn't have his face covered. When my wife complained to the manager, the manager got nasty.

The fitness center in my town opened up yesterday. I went today. The room wasn't crowded, but half didn't wear masks. When I left there were only four of us; I was the only one with a mask. I was glad I never got near anyone.

I don't understand people not wearing masks. It is not a politically correct thing, and it is not intrusive. This is insane.

[Iwritecode]

I can't imagine trying to do any kind of fitness or exercising while wearing a mask.

 

 

[bmags]

3 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

So is that to due to social distancing of the people, or the virus not being as infectious as was previously thought?

I wonder if these are people that by the way they talk naturally cough or ... articulate themselves too much

 

[greg775]

6 hours ago, Middle Buffalo said:

I’m confused. Haven’t you been advocating for public places to be opened? Now you are worried about a potential spread (due to protests)?

I'm not "worried" but wondering. We have two active cases for weeks now. Our hospital may have to close because it has had so little business amid waiting for COVID cases.

We had 2000 people all bunched close together with no masks Sunday night during the protest. Of course I'm wondering if we'll go from two cases to a lot more. I'm not discounting COVID exists. I disagree with almost everything the governor has done here but I wear my mask in situations where I'm showing respect. And I'm ordered to at church. Why wouldn't I be curious if a gathering of 2000 would spike our case total?

Edited June 2, 2020 by greg775

[NWINFan]

3 hours ago, Iwritecode said:

I can't imagine trying to do any kind of fitness or exercising while wearing a mask.

 

 

It really isn't all that hard. Wearing mask is not intrusive. Some people came to my house to do some repair work. They wore a mask. Not a big deal. And I would not have let them in without a mask. I can't control what goes on in public; I will control what goes on in my own home.

[tray]

IMO, church and religion has nothing to do with the Corona virus thread. It seems like it is a sneaky way of inserting something even more divisive than politics into this discussion.

[caulfield12]

29 minutes ago, tray said:

IMO, church and religion has nothing to do with the Corona virus thread. It seems like it is a sneaky way of inserting something even more divisive than politics into this discussion.

It was largely because liquor stores and abortion clinics were allowed to remain open...I mean, let’s be real, if you were paying attention yesterday, a certain someone was actually holding the (borrowed for the moment) book of Holy Scripture upside-down.  Then the Catholic Church was dragged into it, too, through an unwanted visit to the Pope John Paul II shrine today.  Simply because of slipping poll numbers across religious conservatives, which were caused by the Covid-19 reaction in the first place.

 

Fed's massive 'Main Street' business rescue in danger of fizzling

Lawmakers, business groups and analysts are warning that the lending program may fail to deliver the rescue to corporate America that it promised.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/02/fed-reserve-main-street-program-297149

Edited June 3, 2020 by caulfield12

[greg775]

Author of this piece has had it ... his mayor told people to go to this rally of thousands, covid be damned. Meanwhile, locked down the past three months. I'm sure people will just dismiss this as racist, and you won't see any famous media reporters writing this cause they'd probably be fired, but in the spirit of accepting other people's rights to feel the way they want to feel in America, it's worth a read. Same governors who locked it down encouraging thousands of people to attend rallies. Some might see it as a double standard.

https://regiehammblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/31/done/?fbclid=IwAR0nluJH0ZYQZ91ILysCOztrlW3mRkWhId4k0HKeRVy3afgBFPl-v5AS4ls

Edited June 3, 2020 by greg775

[Jerksticks]

On 6/1/2020 at 11:22 AM, Quin said:

Yeah, unfortunately the stay at home protests, early reopenings, and now the Floyd protests will all stack into another spike.

For sure.  It’s weird on here right now.  2 weeks ago people on here were screaming about the lake of the ozarks kids not social distancing.  Going out for any reason but to get groceries was murder.  Opening states slowly was murder.  Trump murdered 100,000.  We botched the whole virus thing, but the social distancing and curve-flattening hopefully bought us time and opportunity to set up trace and contain.  
 

But now you watch videos and see pics of literally tens of thousands of people crawling all over each other...so if any of the science that was being screamed at people on here for the last few months is true....then the only possible outcome of these riots is exponential death.  It’s the only possible outcome.  
 

How do we set up trace and contain now?

[southsider2k5]

51 minutes ago, greg775 said:

Author of this piece has had it ... his mayor told people to go to this rally of thousands, covid be damned. Meanwhile, locked down the past three months. I'm sure people will just dismiss this as racist, and you won't see any famous media reporters writing this cause they'd probably be fired, but in the spirit of accepting other people's rights to feel the way they want to feel in America, it's worth a read. Same governors who locked it down encouraging thousands of people to attend rallies. Some might see it as a double standard.

https://regiehammblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/31/done/?fbclid=IwAR0nluJH0ZYQZ91ILysCOztrlW3mRkWhId4k0HKeRVy3afgBFPl-v5AS4ls

If only we knew a famous media reporter.

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, greg775 said:

Author of this piece has had it ... his mayor told people to go to this rally of thousands, covid be damned. Meanwhile, locked down the past three months. I'm sure people will just dismiss this as racist, and you won't see any famous media reporters writing this cause they'd probably be fired, but in the spirit of accepting other people's rights to feel the way they want to feel in America, it's worth a read. Same governors who locked it down encouraging thousands of people to attend rallies. Some might see it as a double standard.

https://regiehammblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/31/done/?fbclid=IwAR0nluJH0ZYQZ91ILysCOztrlW3mRkWhId4k0HKeRVy3afgBFPl-v5AS4ls

Apparently you’ve never been to Breitbart, Alex Jones, InfoWars or Q-Anon...at best, they would have a tweet red-flagged.

[StrangeSox]

6 hours ago, Jerksticks said:

For sure.  It’s weird on here right now.  2 weeks ago people on here were screaming about the lake of the ozarks kids not social distancing.  Going out for any reason but to get groceries was murder.  Opening states slowly was murder.  Trump murdered 100,000.  We botched the whole virus thing, but the social distancing and curve-flattening hopefully bought us time and opportunity to set up trace and contain.  
 

But now you watch videos and see pics of literally tens of thousands of people crawling all over each other...so if any of the science that was being screamed at people on here for the last few months is true....then the only possible outcome of these riots is exponential death.  It’s the only possible outcome.  
 

How do we set up trace and contain now?

There's perhaps something more morally righteous about these protests and their cause than getting drunk at a pool party.

 

But there will definitely be outbreaks because of this. Unfortunate that the murder of yet another one of our fellow citizens sparked this off.

[Quin]

8 hours ago, Jerksticks said:

For sure.  It’s weird on here right now.  2 weeks ago people on here were screaming about the lake of the ozarks kids not social distancing.  Going out for any reason but to get groceries was murder.  Opening states slowly was murder.  Trump murdered 100,000.  We botched the whole virus thing, but the social distancing and curve-flattening hopefully bought us time and opportunity to set up trace and contain.  
 

But now you watch videos and see pics of literally tens of thousands of people crawling all over each other...so if any of the science that was being screamed at people on here for the last few months is true....then the only possible outcome of these riots is exponential death.  It’s the only possible outcome.  
 

How do we set up trace and contain now?

These protests will result in second spikes. You see a large amount of protestors wearing masks, but not all. This is the ultimate stress test of reopening.

The US didn't reopen slowly, it reopened fast. Only Illinois, Connecticut, and New York met CDC requirements to reopen. 

Hopefully those areas were able to suppress the virus fast enough that they aren't hit as hard.

[StrangeSox]

1 hour ago, Quin said:

These protests will result in second spikes. You see a large amount of protestors wearing masks, but not all. This is the ultimate stress test of reopening.

The US didn't reopen slowly, it reopened fast. Only Illinois, Connecticut, and New York met CDC requirements to reopen. 

Hopefully those areas were able to suppress the virus fast enough that they aren't hit as hard.

Things are already looking bad in a lot of states. They'll look much worse in a few weeks.

Thread showing 7-day average of positive tests rising in multiple states across the country. Overall, outside of NY, NJ, and CT, the national positive rate is flat and now ticking back up a little.