COVID-19 Useful Information to help us all surive

[stroopwafel]

With every passing week they accumulate more data on the virus. So far it seems to be, with exceptions, almost exclusively deadly for old age with cardiovascular issues, people with severe lung diseases and fatties. For many, espescially those of old age, invasive procedures like intubation and ventilation might add a few more months to the lifespan under the most miserable conditions.

Without comorbidity the virus kills almost no one. To try and protect everyone is a noble pursuit(though many governments are a little too eager to revoke privacy rights and roll out the police state in my opinion) it stands to argue how much the forces of nature can really be controlled or contained.

The fittest survive and reproduce. That is how evolution works. Unfortunately we are not above nature as is shown time and again. If anything it's also a lesson in humility.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

With every passing week they accumulate more data on the virus. So far it seems to be, with exceptions, almost exclusively deadly for old age with cardiovascular issues, people with severe lung diseases and fatties. For many, espescially those of old age, invasive procedures like intubation and ventilation might add a few more months on the lifespan under the most miserable conditions.

Without comorbidity the virus kills almost no one. To try and protect everyone is a noble pursuit(though many governments are a little too eager to revoke privacy rights and roll out the police state in my opinion) it stands to argue how much the forces of nature can really be controlled or contained.

The fittest survive and reproduce. That is how evolution works. Unfortunately we are not above nature as is shown time and again. If anything it's also a lesson in humility.

MYTH 3: COVID-19 Is a Danger Only to People Who Are 60+ and/or Already Sick

The reality? COVID-19 can be dangerous to anyone, even if younger people who are otherwise healthy face much lower odds of serious illness or death if infected. Data from the initial outbreak in China reported mortality risk for people under age 60 was low?1.3%. That rate rose with each decade of life, peaking at 14.8% for people over 80.

However, while mortality rates predict the risk of death, they don?t necessarily reflect the number of people who require hospitalization?or a ventilator?in order to recover. On March 14, 2020, French health ministry official Jerome Salomon reported the surprising news that of the 300 to 400 COVID-19 patients being treated in intensive care units in Parisian hospitals, around half were under the age of 65.

Findings from a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that tracked 1,099 COVID-19 patients in China also challenge the notion that people under 60 will only have mild symptoms from a COVID-19 infection, reporting 47 as the median age of hospitalized patients. This suggests that even younger patients can develop the most serious complications of COVID-19, which include pneumonia, sepsis, and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

According to Dr. Winslow, ?The risk goes up with age and comorbidities, but that does not mean that younger people are spared. We?ve had patients here at Stanford who are significantly younger than 60 who have become extremely ill with COVID-19.?

MYTH 4: Infants and Children Can?t Get COVID-19
?Children are not immune?they can become infected with COVID-19,? says Caesar Djavaherian, M.D., an emergency medicine and urgent care physician, and cofounder and medical director of urgent care network CarbonHealth. ?What we are seeing, however, is that the disease burden is much less in kids, because they have a different immunological response. That puts them at a much lower risk of complications and mortality when compared to adults.?

However, a new Chinese study suggests babies and preschoolers my be at risk for experiencing serious complications from the virus, although research is limited on this. All children should be instructed to practice good hand hygiene and participate in social distancing to prevent transmission of COVID-19, says Dr. Djavaherian. ?Remember, children can be carriers and infect other people, including those who are at a high risk of complications.?

https://www.healthcentral.com/article/covid-19-myths-and-facts

Yes, we do have more information and sadly more myths. Of course with every illness those with higher risks will have less favorable outcomes, however, this does not somehow mean that others are not at risk. As I linked above, we have also found now that the amount of viral load that an individual is exposed to, healthy or otherwise, can also effect the severity of illness. We are currently researching numerous factors that can impact the severity of illness, this is not limited only to those with comorbidities.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Stating:

What does it really matter if you get it now due to seeing some friends once or twice a week with maybe like a 10% chance of getting it vs having a high % chance when the country opens back up? You're just changing WHEN you get it, not if you get it.

Getting it now vs getting it later means getting it when we do not have treatment options available to increase favorable patient outcomes to waiting until we do have treatment options available to increase favorable patient outcomes. We are not just trying to keep our healthcare systems from being overcapacity, we are trying to buy time to find better ways to treat it so we can increase the survival rate. Intentionally ignoring the warning and doing things that have been determined to increase the spread, like getting together with friends, is intentionally exposing oneself and others and taking unnecessary risks. The idea here is not just to "control the flow", we currently do not have adequate treatments available even when you do come into the hospital. It isn't just about being overcrowded here, even if you were the ONLY patient in the entire hospital right now, if you become severe, we do not have " tried and true" methods to increase your survivability yet. Currently we are "just trying things and seeing if they work" and that is not a good place to be if you become severe right now. The longer we can postpone people contracting it, the more time we have to come up with better treatments. The current survival rate of COVID-19 patients on ventilators is not good.

Most of the people who come down with severe illness from COVID-19 did not think it would happen to them either. Many people do not even know if they have underlying conditions. We have had people of all ages, genders, ethnicities come down with severe illness and even die from COVID-19, some who were considered healthy without any known preexisting conditions even with ample medical care. We still do not even know if there is any long term protective immunity from contracting it, so that certainly is not something that should be used to determine policy.

No, trying to build up " herd immunity" when we do not even know if that is possible, nor how long any protective immunity lasts from contracting the virus is not in any way the "best solution". That is a myth that has been long busted here:

https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/busting-myths-about-covid-19-herd-immunity-children-and-lives-vs-jobs

https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic

What we ARE trying to do here is reduce the number of people contracting COVID-19 until we can find a way to increase favorable patient outcomes. We need time here more than anything else. Instead of people accepting that they are going to get it at some point and letting their guard down, they need to be doing everything in their power to prevent it's spread. We have healthy first responders on the front lines here that we believe are coming down with severe illness due to the size of the viral load they are being exposed to.

I never implied to ever INTENTIONALLY get the virus. I said reducing you're chances from probably well over 80% (if everything was open and people are just going on like normal) to a theoretical say 10% or less from just essential shopping and seeing like a small handful of friends/family will greatly flatten the curve. You don't have to go from full-scale human interactions (work, bars/clubs/church, mass gatherings - concerts/cons/sports, friends/family) to basically 0. There's a "happy" medium that will work just fine (which is also different depending on population density of your area), which is greatly toward that 0 end of the spectrum. What most countries are trying to do isn't buy time for a treatment, it's just to not overwhelm health care.

The 1st article is using data from China and the WHO, which is just plain bad data. The measures China went through is not what the US is doing (hint: the US isn't really leading the world in deaths). The reason Taiwan is doing so good is because they didn't trust China or the WHO, sent their own doctors, the doctors saw what was really happening, and they put together a plan to stop the virus from barely even spreading; the US is well past being able to do that. Treatment options aren't just going to come around in a month or 2, it seems like remdesivir is the best hope but there's only enough of it for 140,000 people. We may not need to lockdown for 6-12 months but it's going to have to be at least 3+ months and that's not going to happen. Look how long it took NYC's hospitalization rate to go down (that was 2-3 weeks after the lockdown), a month isn't enough. With the current situation the US is in, the only somewhat decent option we have (unless we get testing up to par) is build up herb immunity slow and steady to at least a decent degree until a vaccine is available, which doesn't bank on long-term immunity (a year immunity isn't long-term). As your article says testing is basically the best "treatment" we have and from what I've seen, the US testing is still woefully short of what is needed. So when the US does open back up again, most likely without adequate testing, the only real option is herd immunity (because neither a treatment or vaccine will be available). Applying social distancing and just decent testing in most areas will probably work out decent enough. However, in metropolitan areas where people are body-to-body on a train twice/day, the infection numbers are going to soar again in those areas. Getting testing and tracing up to snuff is the best option for the US with herb immunity being 2nd; just knowing who already had the virus with anti-body tests will be extremely useful to be able to slow the virus. That would allow family members who had it to do the shopping or workers that had it to interact with the public while keeping others from as many human interactions as possible lowering their % chance of getting it as much as possible.

 

[stroopwafel]

With the current situation the US is in, the only somewhat decent option we have (unless we get testing up to par) is build up herb immunity slow and steady to at least a decent degree until a vaccine is available, which doesn't bank on long-term immunity (a year immunity isn't long-term).

Herd immunity works with some viruses but not every. There are some indications that a mild coronavirus infection doesn't spare someone from a more severe infection later on(ie coronavirus related pneumonia).

If the objective is to prevent the spread of the virus as much as possible than the only option is to maintain the status quo until a vaccine is developed and distributed. Including the testing phase this will take atleast 2 years. Obviously this will come at tremendous costs both economically and psychologically for many people. Countries like Italy and Spain will never recover and become impoverished with their democracy in tatters and buried in debt. You also have to consider the implications of giving the government so much control over our lives. History learns that surrendering freedom for a little safety isn't easily reversed(ie people will have neither).

There is a point where the question if the cure isn't worse than the disease becomes legitimate. People at high risk(old age, obese, immunocompromised, lung disease etc.) should obviously continue to be isolated and so should large gatherings continue to not take place but I don't see how the current draconic measures in any way weigh up to people at very low risk for complications or death.

Ofourse there is always some risk. Just as there is some risk of walking under the bus, developing cancerous cell mutations, getting depressed and ending your own life, ending up in a lethal car accident or any of the other million ways in which one can die. I don't think there would be such an overraction to covid-19 if the mere thought of death wasn't so abolished in modern culture and if it wasn't treated like a medical problem. Death is part of life and we are going to die anyway. If anything it should be a reminder that life is short and we shouldn't waste it arguing over trivial shit that was so rampant in the last decade or so.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

You know what I'm curious about? Why does nobody talk about shoe hygiene? I know from farms you need to be very careful not to walk diseases in on your shoes. People sneeze and cough that saliva will usually end up on the ground right? You walk home after stepping on it do you then bring the virus into your home on the soles of your feet? Possibly the same floor your baby might crawl across?

In a farm they either make you change your shoes at the entrance or give you a washing station which is basically a tray full of detergant and water for you to step in.

Oh and what I said here about wearing a mask but still behaving as if you assume it doesn't work? Super reasonable but It got me downvoted majorly on reddit....

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

With the current situation the US is in, the only somewhat decent option we have (unless we get testing up to par) is build up herb immunity slow and steady to at least a decent degree until a vaccine is available, which doesn't bank on long-term immunity (a year immunity isn't long-term).

Herd immunity works with some viruses but not every. There are some indications that a mild coronavirus infection doesn't spare someone from a more severe infection later on(ie coronavirus related pneumonia).

If the objective is to prevent the spread of the virus as much as possible than the only option is to maintain the status quo until a vaccine is developed and distributed. Including the testing phase this will take atleast 2 years. Obviously this will come at tremendous costs both economically and psychologically for many people. Countries like Italy and Spain will never recover and become impoverished with their democracy in tatters and buried in debt. You also have to consider the implications of giving the government so much control over our lives. History learns that surrendering freedom for a little safety isn't easily reversed(ie people will have neither).

There is a point where the question if the cure isn't worse than the disease becomes legitimate. People at high risk(old age, obese, immunocompromised, lung disease etc.) should obviously continue to be isolated and so should large gatherings continue to not take place but I don't see how the current draconic measures in any way weigh up to people at very low risk for complications or death.

Ofourse there is always some risk. Just as there is some risk of walking under the bus, developing cancerous cell mutations, getting depressed and ending your own life, ending up in a lethal car accident or any of the other million ways in which one can die. I don't think there would be such an overraction to covid-19 if the mere thought of death wasn't so abolished in modern culture and if it wasn't treated like a medical problem. Death is part of life and we are going to die anyway. If anything it should be a reminder that life is short and we shouldn't waste it arguing over trivial shit that was so rampant in the last decade or so.

I'm not saying "natural" herd immunity is the end-game, only a stop-gap until there is an end-game (vaccine or at least a treatment). The more people that have had it, the less it will spread. Even having a say third of the population already being infected will slow the spread even though it's not enough to actually to achieve herd immunity. Anything slowing the spread will help whether it's people being previously infected, social distancing, testing, masks, etc. I don't think there's anything solid saying immunity is actually in question. Most of the immunity may not work articles mainly sight that people test positive weeks after recovery and that really doesn't mean anything and that's been known for over a month now. From what I've seen, anyone getting reinfected seems to be an anomaly more than anything (plus people with immune system issues getting it again isn't surprising) and I think if it was happening on even a scale of like 10% or higher, I feel like it would be known by now.

I haven't seen that the vaccine will take 2+ years, I've seen that it will take about a year. I guess that's assuming the current vaccine that's being tested will go smooth without any hiccups. Also, the virus can burn itself out if it doesn't mutate enough to be able to reinfect along with the fact that it seems like heat won't have much of an affect on the virus meaning it won't go away in the northern hemisphere during summer while sticking around in the southern hemisphere and then making its way back north as the seasons change again. That also gives it less time to mutate as well. So by the time a vaccine is ready, we may not even need it and possibly only give it to at-risk people at that point. People are saying it could be like the flu, but the flu is like the flu because it's unique in how it can't not mutate basically. There's a reason why most viruses don't end up being like the flu.

Asking if the cure is worse than the disease is very valid because it's actually not about money vs lives, it is a question of lives vs lives. There is a lives cost due to a bad economy. The fact that in the US health insurance is tied to employment and the fact that millions got laid off/furloughed during a PANDEMIC losing health insurance. There's a bunch of medical services that are down now like preventative screenings where catching things too late can be the difference between life and death. I'm sure there's a whole rabbit hole to go down where you'll find 1,000s of deaths that will be caused by Covid that didn't involve contracting it at all.

I do definitely feel we had to shutdown at least metropolitan areas to stop health care from getting completely overloaded because there was almost no preventative measures being taken. In February, we could've stopped mass gatherings even closing bars/clubs, enacted social distancing measures, and of course, initiated TESTING. However, I think closing entire states was going too far as communities outside of metropolitan areas have much small population densities and the spread will be much slower there with just doing basic social distancing and using common sense.

You know what I'm curious about? Why does nobody talk about shoe hygiene? I know from farms you need to be very careful not to walk diseases in on your shoes. People sneeze and cough that saliva will usually end up on the ground right? You walk home after stepping on it do you then bring the virus into your home on the soles of your feet? Possibly the same floor your baby might crawl across?

In a farm they either make you change your shoes at the entrance or give you a washing station which is basically a tray full of detergant and water for you to step in.

Oh and what I said here about wearing a mask but still behaving as if you assume it doesn't work? Super reasonable but It got me downvoted majorly on reddit....

I guess because most people take off their shoes at the door and don't walk around the house in them. Plus, I'd assume the virus would wash off the bottom of the shoes via rain water and whatnot and people rarely actually touch the bottom of their shoes I would think (I know I hardly ever do).

A lot of the mask studies are flawed in the fact that the studies test masks under different conditions than what wearing them in public is attempting to accomplish. Most, if not all, mask studies were done in households. If you live with someone that's sick, a mask ain't going to help much, if at all. However, if you wear it in public to stop getting infected by walking past a random person, talking to someone for a minute or two, or you went to get a case of Pepsi right after someone put some droplets into the air, it could work much better in that environment. There was a graph I saw of South Korea's infected rate prior to and after everyone started wearing masks and there was quite a difference. Also, the fact that this virus is probably most contagious when you're not sick yet should make wearing masks more effective than with other viruses as well.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Whether or not most people take their shoes off indoors is very much a cultural thing. Most people I know don't do that.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Just released SciShow episode on masks and Covid-19