New Diseases - Coronavirus

[Foggy]

Yeah, on the bright side, nobody seems to be worried about overpopulation anymore.

When I was a boy, that was a thing.

[Volkonski]

America’s Patchwork Pandemic Is Fraying Even Further
The coronavirus is coursing through different parts of the U.S. in different ways, making the crisis harder to predict, control, or understand.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... es/611866/

There was supposed to be a peak. But the stark turning point, when the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. finally crested and began descending sharply, never happened. Instead, America spent much of April on a disquieting plateau, with every day bringing about 30,000 new cases and about 2,000 new deaths. The graphs were more mesa than Matterhorn—flat-topped, not sharp-peaked. Only this month has the slope started gently heading downward.

This pattern exists because different states have experienced the coronavirus pandemic in very different ways. In the most severely pummeled places, like New York and New Jersey, COVID-19 is waning. In Texas and North Carolina, it is still taking off. In Oregon and South Carolina, it is holding steady. These trends average into a national plateau, but each state’s pattern is distinct. Currently, Hawaii’s looks like a child’s drawing of a mountain. Minnesota’s looks like the tip of a hockey stick. Maine’s looks like a (two-humped) camel. The U.S. is dealing with a patchwork pandemic.

The patchwork is not static. Next month’s hot spots will not be the same as last month’s. The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is already moving from the big coastal cities where it first made its mark into rural heartland areas that had previously gone unscathed. People who only heard about the disease secondhand through the news will start hearing about it firsthand from their family. “Nothing makes me think the suburbs will be spared—it’ll just get there more slowly,” says Ashish Jha, a public-health expert at Harvard.

Meanwhile, most states have begun lifting the social-distancing restrictions that had temporarily slowed the pace of the pandemic, creating more opportunities for the virus to spread. Its potential hosts are still plentiful: Even in the biggest hot spots, most people were not infected and remain susceptible. Further outbreaks are likely, although they might not happen immediately. The virus isn’t lying in a bush, waiting to pounce on those who reemerge from their house. It is, instead, lying within people. Its ability to jump between hosts depends on proximity, density, and mobility, and on people once again meeting, gathering, and moving. And people are: In the first week of May, 25 million more Americans ventured out of their home on any given day than over the prior six weeks.

[Azastan]

I had to go to the local Tractor Supply store on Friday, for fencing supplies. My 'local' TSC is in the town of Enumclaw, which is one of the worst affected places in King County. It's rural.

I was appalled to discover that I was the only person in the store wearing a mask. TSC advertise that they have someone stationed at each of their stores to keep an eye on how many people are in the store, to remind people about social distancing, wiping down carts. Not this store!

I wrote to TSC and told them I wouldn't be patronizing that store any more.

[ZekeB]

Rural people don't care about other people as much as they'd like you to think, Azastan. I live in a small town in a rural area and I see the same here with masks. Somehow they think the masks are all about themselves.

[Dave at Sea]

Donnie will not be happy..

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-26/ ... s/12285652

WHO suspends hydroxychloroquine trial for coronavirus patients due to safety concerns

Key points:
A study in The Lancet warned that hydroxycholoroquine could cause heart problems
Donald Trump said he was taking the drug as a precaution against COVID-19
Other WHO trials will continue, including for the experimental drug remdesivir

[neonzx]

Screenshot_20200526-123713-197.jpg

[RTH10260]

The greatest numbers for impotus, one third of the global numbers for him.

#MAGA

[jmj]

Russia's death numbers are clearly a lie.

[jemcanada]

Russia's death numbers are clearly a lie.

Maybe they didn’t count the ones that fell out of windows.

[Bill_G]

Russia's death numbers are clearly a lie.

Maybe they didn’t count the ones that fell out of windows.

I was just going to say ...

[Sterngard Friegen]

Me three.

[Sunrise]

Me four.

[poplove]

Five

[Kendra]

Six.

[ArthurWankspittle]

I'm estimating Trumpboy will have exceeded the US fatalities for WW1* by August at this rate.

*50+k in action, 60+k Spanish flu across the US troops sent to Europe

[TexasFilly]

I'm estimating Trumpboy will have exceeded the US fatalities for WW1* by August at this rate.

*50+k in action, 60+k Spanish flu across the US troops sent to Europe

That sounds about right but with all of the disgusting photos and videos I saw over the weekend, it may be sooner.

[RTH10260]

Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine
Embracing that reality is crucial to the next phase of America’s pandemic response, experts say.

William Wan and Carolyn Y. Johnson
May 27, 2020 at 9:15 p.m. GMT+2

There’s a good chance the coronavirus will never go away.

Even after a vaccine is discovered and deployed, the coronavirus will likely remain for decades to come, circulating among the world’s population.

Experts call such diseases endemic — stubbornly resisting efforts to stamp them out. Think measles, HIV, chickenpox.

It is a daunting proposition — a coronavirus-tinged world without a foreseeable end. But experts in epidemiology, disaster planning and vaccine development say embracing that reality is crucial to the next phase of America’s pandemic response. The long-term nature of covid-19, they say, should serve as a call to arms for the public, a road map for the trillions of dollars Congress is spending and a fixed navigational point for the nation’s current, chaotic state-by-state patchwork strategy.

With so much else uncertain, the persistence of the novel virus is one of the few things we can count on about the future. That doesn’t mean the situation will always be as dire. There are already four endemic coronaviruses that circulate continuously, causing the common cold. And many experts think this virus will become the fifth — its effects growing milder as immunity spreads and our bodies adapt to it over time.

For now, though, most people have not been infected and remain susceptible. And the highly transmissible disease has surged in recent weeks, even in countries that initially succeeded in suppressing it. Left alone, experts say, it will simply keep burning through the world’s population.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... s-endemic/

[Sterngard Friegen]

The Spanish Flu of 1918 has never gone away.

[RTH10260]

BUT... But.... but.... precedental magick and bunny-out-of-the-hat trick ...

[RTH10260]

Coronavirus Epidemics Began Later Than Believed, Study Concludes
In Washington State and Italy, the first confirmed cases were not linked to the outbreaks that followed, the analysis found. The epidemics were seeded later.

By Carl Zimmer
May 27, 2020

The first confirmed coronavirus infections in Europe and the United States, discovered in January, did not ignite the epidemics that followed, according to a close analysis of hundreds of viral genomes.

Instead, the outbreaks plaguing much of the West began weeks later, the study concluded. The revised timeline may clarify nagging ambiguities about the arrival of the pandemic.

For example, while President Trump has frequently claimed that a ban on travelers from China prevented the epidemic from becoming much worse, the new data suggest that the virus that started Washington State’s epidemic arrived roughly two weeks after the ban was imposed on Feb. 2.

And the authors argue that the relatively late emergence of the outbreak means that more lives could have been saved by early action, such as testing and contact tracing.

The new analysis is not the last word. Scientific understanding of the coronavirus is evolving almost daily, and this type of research yields a range of possible results, not complete certainty.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/heal ... tates.html

[RTH10260]

What it looks like to have Herd Immunity

The World Is Still Far From Herd Immunity for Coronavirus
By Nadja Popovich and Margot Sanger-KatzMay 28, 2020

The coronavirus still has a long way to go. That’s the message from a crop of new studies across the world that are trying to quantify how many people have been infected.

Official case counts often substantially underestimate the number of coronavirus infections. But in new studies that test the population more broadly, the percentage of people who have been infected so far is still in the single digits. The numbers are a fraction of the threshold known as herd immunity, at which the virus can no longer spread widely. The precise herd immunity threshold for the novel coronavirus is not yet clear; but several experts said they believed it would be higher than 60 percent.


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... unity.html

ETA herd immunity images screenclip from NYT for those with limited access

NYT_Herd_Immunity.jpg

[RTH10260]

CDC chief defends failure to spot early coronavirus spread in U.S.
Robert R. Redfield says diagnostic testing would have made little difference, describing it like ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’

Lena H. Sun and Joel Achenbach
May 30, 2020 at 1:11 a.m. GMT+2

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday defended the agency’s failure to find early spread of the coronavirus in the United States, noting that surveillance systems “kept eyes” on the disease.

“We were never really blind when it came to surveillance” for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, CDC chief Robert R. Redfield said. Even if widespread diagnostic testing had been in place, it would have been like “looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said.

Redfield was among three CDC officials who spoke with reporters Friday about a comprehensive analysis by the agency that found the coronavirus began spreading in the United States as early as the second half of January,eluding detection by public health surveillance systems that help monitor for early signs of novel contagions.

Reporters who received the report had requested to speak with experts. It was the first such CDC briefing in nearly three months.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... spread-us/

[RTH10260]

Please read article, no good way of quoting

From the Andes to Tibet, the coronavirus seems to be sparing populations at high altitudes

By Simeon Tegel
May 31, 2020 at 4:02 p.m. GMT+2


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/th ... story.html

[AndyinPA]

Please read article, no good way of quoting

From the Andes to Tibet, the coronavirus seems to be sparing populations at high altitudes

By Simeon Tegel
May 31, 2020 at 4:02 p.m. GMT+2


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/th ... story.html

I am not speaking at all from a qualified medical perspective, but I find that interesting as I'd read earlier that some doctors thought that the lung issues were frequently more like high-altitude sickness than pneumonia.

[pipistrelle]

Please read article, no good way of quoting

From the Andes to Tibet, the coronavirus seems to be sparing populations at high altitudes

By Simeon Tegel
May 31, 2020 at 4:02 p.m. GMT+2


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/th ... story.html

I am not speaking at all from a qualified medical perspective, but I find that interesting as I'd read earlier that some doctors thought that the lung issues were frequently more like high-altitude sickness than pneumonia.

So if your body has adapted to high altitudes, not as much an issue?