Health New Coronavirus in China

[Salento]

In China they arrest the doctors.
instead of making them a statue,

At USA they dismiss Admirals, when worry about sailors safety,
after all, when they do what have to do, since safety of the crew, is also at Admirals concern.

You’re comparing Apples and Oranges.

If it is true that a Navy Captain revealed the operational status of his Warship / Aircraft Carrier to a civilian entity bypassing the chain of command, the Captain broke the rules.

He broadcast his weakness to the World on board an armed vessel full of highly sensitive and sophisticated Defense Assets in the middle of the ocean.

It’s a no no thing to do.

If true!

 

[Angela]

"From the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine "...the results of available studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing"THIS is why universal masking can help. The full letter has more insights and references:"https://nap.edu/read/25769/chapter/1

So, there you have it.

Meanwhile, Trump says he won't wear one because it doesn't look good. (I can say it; he is my president, after all, even if I didn't vote for him.)

I mentioned before that Singapore, up to now one of the shining lights in terms of controlling this thing, was on lockdown.

Update:

Singapore, after keeping society relatively open & functioning this whole time, is going into lockdown for a month. There are just over 1K cases & 5 deaths. Work places and schools are ordered to close. Main reason: unexplained community transmission.

 

[Angela]

The perils of keeping infected people at home...

It's happening here too. In the midwest somewhere 3 members of the same family have died. What is happening is what happens with health care workers, which is repeated exposure to the virus. Given that the virus to some extent is aerosolized, it's in the very air of the home. Yes, not a lot of it is expelled that way, but some, and if you share the same air?

What the heck is the solution, however?

Even if there was the capacity to move all ill people into hospitals, not just those in respiratory distress, people shed the virus when asymptomatic.

Perhaps masks should be worn in the home as well? Is it really necessary?

In Wuhan there were examples of entire families dying as well as young doctors. As this NYT editorial argues, a contributory factor might have been high infection doses, which can easily happen within family setting. https://nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/coronavirus-viral-dose.html… 6/14

 

[Angela]

On aerosolization of the Coronavirus...we've always been talking semantics, of course. When does aerosol become droplet?

 

[Angela]

I would say the debate is over...common sense and just using your logic wins again...

Now, when is someone going to wake up to the fact that the poor people working in supermarkets should be masked and gloved, and I mean strong masks...they're not only being infected, they're infecting others.

Of course, they would have to be rigorously trained "NOT" to touch the mask, and if they inadvertently do, to change their gloves.

Stop using cash, too, people. Use your card, and disinfect it and then your hands after use.

 

[Angela]

Amazing how all the mommy "anti-vaxxers" are now silent about the dangers of vaccines.

Same for the "it's just a bad flu" and "masks don't work" crowd.

 

[Angela]

... is getting really bad

We're out of options in the Tri-state area.

We tried ..., I don't know if we made mistakes, but it doesn't matter anymore, it's too late now.

Let's ride the storm with confidence and dignity.

It's hard, though, Salento. I still have a low grade fever and some of the symptoms. Is my body just continuously trying to fight it, or is it a sinus infection, a persistent cold, what?

Then there's my poor son stuck in the basement apartment, whom I'm monitoring for every cough. Remember the video about the Italian mother and the coronavirus? That's me, except I don't care if he sleeps and lays around when he's home. So long as he's well. I'm just so thankful my daughter doesn't live in the tri-state area. I'm also so regretful we sold our Florida condo shortly before this hit. Hindsight is always 20/20 isn't it?

My ways of coping? Research like hell so I feel some delusory sense of control, I suppose, post it in the vague hope it may help someone else, cook up a storm, play my favorite music, watch scenes from funny sitcoms. I've given up reading most of my favorite poetry. Too sad.

If there are some things I'm missing, I'd love to hear about them.

 

[Angela]

For anyone in Florida or with family in Florida you can see the cases by zip code.

Well, Sarasota would have been safer, but it's there too, and they had a four year old come down with it. Good grief.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429

 

[Angela]

For some historical perspective: the Spanish Flu

[video=youtube;48Klc3DPdtk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=48Klc3DPdtk&feature=emb_lo go[/video]

 

[Angela]

The U.S. was infected by people from all over the globe, starting with the case in Washington State in the second week of January. It shows.

 

[Angela]

New York City has now fitted out 45 mobile morgues...

I just can't even...

“Local crematories are now allowed to work 24/7. At one Brooklyn hospital, the in-house morgue was filled on Tuesday. The next day, the staff ran out of body bags. The casualties in NY are starting to severely tax the city’s ability to accommodate its dead”

 

[Dagne]

This is how shop assistants in pharmacies and supermarkets should be protecting themselves in LT. There are not enough of masks for all people even though the recommendations is to wear them by everyone (everyone should treat themselves as virus spreaders now)

 

[Angela]

I just had a perhaps bizarre thought. Has the pneumonia vaccine been of any help?

Maybe not, though; I would think all the people in nursing homes in the U.S. are given it every year, no?

 

[Dagne]

I read somewhere that pneumonia vaccine is not helping.
In many cases, the reason is immune response, rather than COVID-19 itself - the immune system is overreacting (the same happened in case of Spanish flu), or the virus is multiplying too quickly for the immune system to deal with it.

Scientists don’t know what exactly happens in older age groups. But based on research on other respiratory viruses, experts theorize that whether a coronavirus infection takes a turn for the worse depends on a person’s immune response. “The virus matters, but the host response matters at least as much, and probably more,” says Stanley Perlman, a virologist and pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Iowa."

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, some people—especially the elderly and sick—may have dysfunctional immune systems that fail to keep the response to particular pathogens in check. This could cause an uncontrolled immune response, triggering an overproduction of immune cells and their signaling molecules and leading to a cytokine storm often associated with a flood of immune cells into the lung. “That’s when you end up with a lot of these really severe inflammatory disease conditions like pneumonia, shortness of breath, inflammation of the airway, and so forth,” says Rasmussen.
Local inflammation can turn into widespread inflammation of the lungs, which then has ripple effects across all organs of the body. This could also happen if the virus replicates faster than the immune system can respond, so that it then has to play catch-up to contain the pathogen—a situation that could also cause the immune defense to spiral out of control.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/why-some-covid-19-cases-are-worse-than-others-67160

 

[Dagne]

I think it would be very interesting to analyse immune system of those who had COVID-19.
There should be more facts surrounding the immune response, rather than age and underlying conditions. Why is it that some relatively young and healthy people have very difficult illness and some - very light symptoms?

I know rather a number of people around me who are having very light flu/cold symptoms that have been lasting for about a month now. I suspect this all could be mild unregistered cases of COVID-19, only it is difficult to tell now.

The other paper tells that new coronavirus has HIV-like mutation. (People who like conspiracy theories say that Wuhan laboratory manufactured SARS-2 by adding to SARS-1 HIV insertions)

Now, a recent research paper viewable on the Chinese research site Chinaxiv.org and previously reported on by the South China Morning Post notes that the new coronavirus has an "HIV-like mutation" that gives it novel properties.
"Because of this mutation, the packing mechanism of the 2019-nCoV may be changed to being more similar to those of MHV, HIV, Ebola virus (EBoV) and some avian influenza viruses," the English abstract of the paper states.

 

[Angela]

I read somewhere that it is not helping. I think the actual reason why people are dying should be (or perhaps are) analysed in more depth.
In many cases, the reason is immune response, rather than COVID-19 itself - the immune system is overreacting (the same happened in case of Spanish flu).

"Scientists don’t know what exactly happens in older age groups. But based on research on other respiratory viruses, experts theorize that whether a coronavirus infection takes a turn for the worse depends on a person’s immune response. “The virus matters, but the host response matters at least as much, and probably more,” says Stanley Perlman, a virologist and pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Iowa."

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, some people—especially the elderly and sick—may have dysfunctional immune systems that fail to keep the response to particular pathogens in check. This could cause an uncontrolled immune response, triggering an overproduction of immune cells and their signaling molecules and leading to a cytokine storm often associated with a flood of immune cells into the lung. “That’s when you end up with a lot of these really severe inflammatory disease conditions like pneumonia, shortness of breath, inflammation of the airway, and so forth,” says Rasmussen.
Local inflammation can turn into widespread inflammation of the lungs, which then has ripple effects across all organs of the body. This could also happen if the virus replicates faster than the immune system can respond, so that it then has to play catch-up to contain the pathogen—a situation that could also cause the immune defense to spiral out of control.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/why-some-covid-19-cases-are-worse-than-others-67160

Yes, I saw that too.

It fits with the fact that significant percentages of the younger people who fall seriously ill have comorbidities usually associated more with the elderly, like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure etc.

For the younger who don't have that medical history, perhaps it's some individual pattern of immune function, or the sheer volume of the virus to which they're exposed. Viral load matters, as we see with doctors and family members of the sick.

The problem, of course, is that very big percentages of the population would fall into those categories if you add them all up, without taking into consideration that if there are high rates of infection, no health system as currently constituted could handle it.

 

[Angela]

I think it would be very interesting to analyse immune system of those who had COVID-19.
There should be more facts surrounding the immune response, rather than age and underlying conditions. Why is it that some relatively young and healthy people have very difficult illness and some - very light symptoms?

I know rather a number of people around me who are having very light flu/cold symptoms that have been lasting for about a month now. I suspect this all could be mild unregistered cases of COVID-19, only it is difficult to tell now.

We cross posted.

Yes, I think it's very possible.

Viral load matters as well. Young doctors and nurses are dying of it, and so are younger family members sheltering in place with the sick.

One thing that I didn't mention in the post is that the virus driving the immune system into hyper response may explain why a drug like Plaquenil helps, and the biologics for autoimmune disorders as well, although the researchers no longer mention them, because the costs are astronomical.

Genetics may play a role here too, not only individually, but "ethnically", which is something they're going to have to investigate eventually.

If someone is genetically prone to developing autoimmune disorders, a serious bacteriological infection, among other things like trauma or severe emotional stress, can trip them into one. The result is an immune system in hyperdrive, which then attacks the person's own body. The treatments all do the same thing, in one way or another, i.e. they dampen the immune response.

Now, one could say it therefore makes no sense to give something that suppresses the immune system to a sufferer from a virus. However, what they only started discovering relatively recently is that these drugs may perhaps not really dampen the overall immune response; instead, they may help the immune system to not "misfire", i.e. patients may find not only a lessening of the symptoms of the autoimmune disorder, but more resistance to actual infection.

I know from personal experience rather more about all this than I would wish, so, for what it's worth...

 

[Angela]

The virus was nearly stamped out in Tokyo. But then the cherry blossom festival came, and people filled the parks. From the photos I saw, people were taking their masks off to enjoy the fragrance..


#breaking Tokyo Governor says city is on the verge of a major outbreak & situation is worsening. Number of daily coronavirus cases has more than doubled in one week. Tokyo has 120 hospital beds left for coronavirus patients. An epidemiologist warns Tokyo could be 'the next NYC.'



I'm smelling my own blossoms in my yard and praying for next year...

 

[Yetos]

This is how shop assistants in pharmacies and supermarkets should be protecting themselves in LT. There are not enough of masks for all people even though the recommendations is to wear them by everyone (everyone should treat themselves as virus spreaders now)

If this pharmacy apotheke was in Greece, they would pay a fine, for overpopulation,
the difference is that personel should be behind a glass like in banks
the law here except such safety precautions also say about how many person enter, at pharmacys the law allow min 1 person per 15 m² ​ (including personel) of clear area, including personel. (clear area = true area minus storage and warehouses,)
Every where here is 15 m2, except Super markets were it is 10 m2 for now.

 

[Dagne]

This is an interesting article - why SARS-2 spreads so well compared to SARS-1 (though in many other aspects they are very similar)

The new coronavirus has an HIV-like mutation that means its ability to bind with human cells could be up to 1,000 times as strong as the Sars virus, according to new research by scientists in China and Europe.
Scientists showed that Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) entered the human body by binding with a receptor protein called ACE2 on a cell membrane. And some early studies suggested that the new coronavirus, which shares about 80 per cent of the genetic structure of Sars, might follow a similar path.

But the ACE2 protein does not exist in large quantities in healthy people, and this partly helped to limit the scale of the Sars outbreak of 2002-03, in which infected about 8,000 people around the world.

Other highly contagious viruses, including HIV and Ebola, target an enzyme called furin, which works as a protein activator in the human body. Many proteins are inactive or dormant when they are produced and have to be “cut” at specific points to activate their various functions.

When looking at the genome sequence of the new coronavirus, Professor Ruan Jishou and his team at Nankai University in Tianjin found a section of mutated genes that did not exist in Sars, but were similar to those found in HIV and Ebola.

​

“This finding suggests that 2019-nCoV [the new coronavirus] may be significantly different from the Sars coronavirus in the infection pathway,”
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...e-likely-sars-bond-human-cells-scientists-say

The reason why some people think SARS-2 was manufactured is because of its similarity to SARs 2003. It is like an updated SARS - 1 version, rather than a new product. Earlier, SARs, MERs, EBOLA, HIV, they all were "originals" - entirely new viruses.

So far, scientists do not know how to produce an entirely new virus. They take an existing one and alter it by deleting/inserting parts of different viruses, depending on qualities that they want to bring out in a new manufactured virus. In this respect SARS-CoV-2 looks like it was made on SARS 2003 platform plus some alterations regarding susceptibility.

On the other hand, SARS-CoV-2 might have developed by itself, only nobody can find an animal vector who had this virus naturally in nature. The whole story really makes one wonder. I suppose China tries to avoid any association with SARS-CoV-2 by any means, as it caused so much damage Worldwide.