Deadly Wuhan Coronavirus

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Chris Cuomo may be of the left

He's standing next to his brother Andrew - the governor of the state of New York. He's received a few perks from that. And I was just pointing out the inherent hypocrisy in the newsy entertainment colon, of which he's a notable polyp.
 
Last edited:

nivek

As Above So Below
Smart move...

...

Hondurans in migrant caravan bused back after entering Guatemala

Hundreds of Honduran migrants bound for the U.S. were bused back to their homeland by Saturday morning after illegally entering Guatemala.

The group of mostly young men and some small children were met by a large roadblock of Guatemalan authorities after the country’s President Alejandro Giammattei promised Thursday to detain and return anyone who entered illegally.

“We will not allow any foreigner who has used illegal means to enter the country, to think that they have the right to come and infect us [with coronavirus] and put us at serious risk,” Giammattei said in a broadcast address to the nation.

(More on the link)

.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
The green slime in the video represents the coronavirus...

...

 

nivek

As Above So Below
 

nivek

As Above So Below
It appears things are worse than they let on...

...

Trump's medical team briefing reveals things are worse than we knew

President Donald Trump’s doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center revealed Sunday that the president’s condition is more serious than the White House has so far acknowledged.

“I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction,” Sean Conley, the president’s physician, told reporters during a hospital briefing. “In doing so, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true.”

Conley and others on Trump’s medical team remained upbeat, but said that the president had trouble breathing Saturday morning and had started a drug used only for severe or critical cases of Covid-19.

Here’s what we learned from the latest briefing.

Trump given steroid, a worrying sign

As a determination of the team based predominantly on the timeline from the initial diagnosis that we initiate dexamethasone. – White House physician Dr. Sean Conley

Dexamethasone – a safe, inexpensive steroid that has been around for decades – is generally reserved for patients with severe or critical Covid-19 cases.

The National Institutes of Health and World Health Organization both recommend the drug for patients on supplemental oxygen or ventilators, based on a large clinical trial that found it reduced the risk of death. But both guidelines warn the drug could harm people who don’t require oxygen therapy or a ventilator, and should not be used for such patients. Trump's doctors said Sunday that he has received oxygen therapy twice for limited periods. They also said he’s run a fever.

The decision to give Trump dexamethasone shows that “he’s actually having effects on his lungs from the virus,” said Abraar Karan, an internal medicine doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Trump continues antiviral treatment that can shorten length of illness

The president yesterday evening completed his second dose of remdesivir. He's tolerated that infusion well. – Dr. Brian Garibaldi

Remdesivir is an antiviral drug made by Gilead Sciences originally developed to fight Ebola. Trump’s doctors said Friday that he had begun the standard-five day course of infusions of the drug.

Remdesivir has been shown to speed recovery, but it’s not clear if it actually reduces the risk of death. The Food and Drug Administration has authorized emergency use in hospitalized patients.

Trump's oxygen levels have dipped to concerning levels

Late Friday morning, when I returned to the bedside, the president had a high fever and his oxygen saturation was transiently dipping below 94 percent. Given these two developments, I was concerned for possible rapid progression of the illness. I recommended the president we try supplemental oxygen, see how he would respond. He was fairly adamant that he didn't need it. He was not short of breath. He was tired, had the fever and that was about it. And after about a minute, on only two liters, his saturation levels were back over 95 percent. He stayed on that for about an hour, maybe, and was off and gone. – Dr. Conley

Another oddity of Covid-19: some patients’ oxygen levels fall, but they don’t have trouble breathing. That’s why doctors watch blood oxygen levels.

The president’s physicians gave him oxygen after his level dropped below 94 percent — a key threshold for Covid-19 patients. Dipping below that level signals that a patient’s case is moderate or severe, with the exact diagnosis depending on other vital signs, according to the CDC.

“Once you drop below 94 percent, by definition you have severe Covid,” said Carlos del Rio, an infectious-disease expert at Emory University.

What do Trump's lung scans actually show?

What did the X-rays and CT scans show? Are there signs of pneumonia? Are there signs of lung involvement? Or any damage to the lungs? – Reporter

We're tracking all of that. There's some expected findings but nothing of any major clinical concern. – Dr. Conley

Trump’s doctors repeatedly ignored questions about what CT scans or other advanced imaging he had, and what they showed about his lungs. His doctors said only they had seen “expected findings.”

Their admission that the president’s oxygen saturation had dropped below 94 percent at times, that he has twice required oxygen, and that he has started on dexamethasone point to at least a moderate case of Covid-19.

Many patients with moderate disease develop pneumonia signaled by “ground glass opacities,” lung damage that appears as hazy white patches on CT scans. These develop when the virus injures tiny air sacs, filling them with pus or other fluid and making it harder to breathe. Trump’s doctors have not revealed whether he has this type of damage; if he did, it would be a reason for heightened concern.

How long has the president been sick?

Yesterday you told us that the president was in great shape, had been in good shape and fever free for the previous 24 hours. Minutes after your press conference White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters that the president's vitals were very concerning over the past 24 hours. Simple question for the American people, whose statements about the president's health should be believed? – Reporter

White House officials and Trump’s medical team have issued seemingly contradictory assessments of the president’s condition and the timing of his diagnosis since Trump announced his diagnoses on Twitter early Friday. That has made it harder to know how sick Trump is or how far along he is in the course of the disease.

“What jumped out is the continued lack of information on several critical aspects,” said Leana Wen, a former health commissioner for Baltimore and ER physician. “What is the president’s respiratory status? There is no chance that the President wouldn't have had multiple chest imaging studies done at this point. It would be standard of care to do at least daily.”

When could Trump leave the hospital?

If he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is that we can plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow to the White House where he can continue his treatment course. – Dr. Garibaldi

The possible discharge from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center so soon raised eyebrows. Patients’ condition often worsens about seven to 10 days in.

“The beginning of that second week is a phase we pay particular attention to,” said Helen Boucher, chief of infectious disease at Tufts Medical Center.

Remdesivir must be administered in a hospital setting. Of course, the White House has far more medical capacity than your average home, and can airlift the president to a hospital by helicopter. But it’s still possible his medical team will reconsider and advise the president to remain at Walter Reed.

But several doctors not involved with his care said it may be fine to discharge Trump, given the White House’s medical resources. “Once they see him turning for the better, and he’s getting better, I think they're right to go back to the White House,’” said Emory’s del Rio.

.
 

Standingstones

Celestial
The idea that Trump will be released on Monday seems foolish at best. There are a couple of scenarios that might play out. Trump doesn’t want to seem weak from the virus so he tells the doctors he wants out of the hospital. This seems stupid on the face of things.

I can’t believe that Trump, an unhealthy individual normally, would recover so quickly. I won’t be shocked if Trump is right back in the hospital after a short stay at the White House.
 

AD1184

Celestial
“I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction,” Sean Conley, the president’s physician, told reporters during a hospital briefing.
What kind of a nonsense statement is this? How could what this man telsl the press have a causal relation to what happens to the illness of Trump?
“In doing so, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true.”
Right. So it's not necessarily untrue either. That's the most weaselly denial ever. Before he was a doctor, did this man have a career as a used car salesman?
 
Last edited:

nivek

As Above So Below
Dozens of mammals could be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2

Numerous animals may be vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a large study modelling how the virus might infect different animals' cells, led by UCL researchers.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, reports evidence that 26 animals regularly in contact with people may be susceptible to infection.

The researchers investigated how the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 could interact with the ACE2 protein it attaches to when it infects people.

The focus of the investigation was whether mutations in the ACE2 protein in 215 different animals, that make it different from the human version, would reduce the stability of the binding complex between the virus protein and host protein. Binding to the protein enables the virus to gain entry into host cells; while it is possible the virus might be able to infect animals via another pathway, it is unlikely based on current evidence that the virus could infect an animal if it cannot form a stable binding complex with ACE2.

The researchers found that for some animals, such as sheep and great apes (chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and bonobo, many of which are endangered in the wild), the proteins would be able to bind together just as strongly as they do when the virus infects people. Some of the animals, such as sheep, have not yet been studied with infection tests, so this does not confirm that the animal can indeed be infected.

Lead author Professor Christine Orengo (UCL Structural & Molecular Biology) said: "We wanted to look beyond just the animals that had been studied experimentally, to see which animals might be at risk of infection, and would warrant further investigation and possible monitoring.

"The animals we identified may be at risk of outbreaks that could threaten endangered species or harm the livelihoods of farmers. The animals might also act as reservoirs of the virus, with the potential to re-infect humans later on, as has been documented on mink farms."

The research team also performed more detailed structural analyses for certain animals, to gain a better understanding of how infection risks may differ across animal species. By comparing their findings to other experimental data, they set thresholds to predict which animals are at risk of infection, and which ones most likely cannot be infected.

They found that most birds, fish, and reptiles do not appear to be at risk of infection, but the majority of the mammals they reviewed could potentially be infected.

Professor Orengo added: "The details of host infection and severity of response are more complex than just the interactions of the spike protein with ACE2, so our research is continuing to explore interactions involving other host virus proteins."

The team's findings mostly agree with experiments conducted in living animals and with reported cases of infections. They predict possible infection in domestic cats, dogs, mink, lions, and tigers, all of which have had reported cases, as well as ferrets and macaques, which have been infected in laboratory studies.

First author, Su Datt Lam (UCL Structural & Molecular Biology and the National University of Malaysia) said: "Unlike laboratory-based experiments, the computational analyses we devised can be run automatically and rapidly. Therefore, these methods could be applied easily to future virus outbreaks that, unfortunately, are becoming more common due to human encroachment into natural habitats."

Co-author Professor Joanne Santini (UCL Structural & Molecular Biology) said: "To protect animals, as well as to protect ourselves from the risk of one day catching COVID-19 from an infected animal, we need large-scale surveillance of animals, particularly pets and farm animals, to catch cases or clusters early on while they're still manageable.

"It may also be important to employ hygiene measures when dealing with animals, similar to the behaviours we've all been learning this year to reduce transmission, and for infected people to isolate from animals as well as from other people."

More information: Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-71936-5

Journal information: Scientific Reports


.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
It appears Europe and the UK are having a second wave of covid infections...The UK at over 12,000 new cases and western European countries each with thousands of new cases daily as well...

...
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
In Brooklyn and Queens they were going to reopen the schools and the big spikes soured all that. I listened to the most cringeworthy press conference yesterday imaginable from the governor and between him and the NYC mayor it sounds like a total clusterfuck. Zero testing or cleaning or anything? We either will or won't do something, either right now or later or tomorrow or not at all.

Oh. I see.

Utter incompetence knows no political affiliation. You would think that having many months to consider this that somebody, somewhere could pull their head out of their asses.

Maybe Billy Joel could give us Miami 2021
 

nivek

As Above So Below
the big spikes

Wisconsin, Tennessee, North Carolina, Illinois and a host of other states including New York are experiencing big spikes, Wisconsin is over 2000 today, first time I've seen that high number over there...

...
 

Standingstones

Celestial
The utterly weird, sad part is that government officials have had over a half of a year to formulate some sort of a Covid plan. Instead, all the public gets is stonewalling and lies. Is it any wonder the populace doesn’t trust anything the government tells us?
 
The utterly weird, sad part is that government officials have had over a half of a year to formulate some sort of a Covid plan. Instead, all the public gets is stonewalling and lies. Is it any wonder the populace doesn’t trust anything the government tells us?
The loss of trust is a given - since at least the bogus "WMDs in Iraq" narrative was exposed, the proof that our officials and their lackeys in the media are all liars has been a matter of public record.

What remains to be seen is if the mounting evidence that our government is not simply inept - but rather has undergone a silent coup that shifted all political power to the billionaires and the multinational corporations, will be sufficient to convince the American people that their government is not and has not been for decades....their government.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Researchers at Oxford's Centre for Evidence Based Medicine and the University of the West of England have published a pre-print of a scientific paper (i.e. one that has been submitted to a journal for peer review but has not yet been published) which is arguing the point that I have been making in this thread for some time: that a lot of new 'positive' cases are not infectious carriers of the virus, but rather people who got over the infection some time ago but are still shedding unviable viral fragments that are detectable with an RT-PCR test.

A press article about the study:

Coronavirus tests 'may be picking up traces of dead virus'

The preprint itself can be found here:

Viral cultures for COVID-19 infectivity assessment. Systematic review

The authors recommend more effort is made to distinguish between people who are testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 on RT-PCR tests, and those who are actually infectious, by more routine testing by viral culture growth from samples in supposedly infected individuals, better training of PCR testers and the establishment of a cut off in the cycle threshold of detectability in the PCR test in order to declare that someone is positive for the virus. They write "An increasing body of evidence shows that such identification cannot be accurately achieved through the simplistic division of those who test positive and who do not on the basis of the results of RT-PCR [This is nevertheless how it is carried out in practice around the world - AD]. The sensitivity and specificity of RT-PCR needs comparing to the gold standard of infectiousness: the capacity to grow live virus from a specimen.

[...]

"The purpose of viral testing is to assess the relation of the micro-organism and hazard to humans, i.e. its clinical impact on the individual providing the sample for primary care and the risk of transmission to others for public health. PCR on its own is unable to provide such answers.

[...]

"A binary Yes/No approach to the interpretation RT-PCR unvalidated against viral culture will result in false positives with segregation of large numbers of people who are no longer infectious and hence not a threat to public health."

They point out that viral shedding in the upper respiratory tract detectable by RT-PCR testing has been observed to occur up to 83 days after the onset of symptoms, but that the presence of viable virus, necessary for someone to be infectious to others, occurs only for a maximum of 8 days after the onset of symptoms.

Has this been determined to be the cause of the current spikes in new cases we are seeing across Europe, the US and the UK?...

...
 

AD1184

Celestial
Has this been determined to be the cause of the current spikes in new cases we are seeing across Europe, the US and the UK?...

...
It might have been true over the summer in places like London (not the whole of the UK, and definitely not all of the US) when the trend in people being admitted to hospital was flat and very low that a large number of people testing positive were residual infections from earlier in the epidemic who were no longer able to transmit the virus to others. However, since the start of last month, the number of daily hospitalizations has increased about tenfold nationally in this country, and the rate of positivity of tests has increased a lot faster than the increase in the number of new tests being performed.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
New case numbers continue to climb, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and many other states...France, UK, and Spain are starting to lose control of the virus...I don't think we need to lock down either, social distancing and masks wil work if everyone complies for the duration...


Screenshot_20201007-215318.jpg

20201007_220107.png
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
sad part is that government officials have had over a half of a year to formulate some sort of a Covid plan

In Brooklyn and Queens there have been massive spikes and they are selectively locking down certain zip codes. The NYC attempt to reopen schools was an absolute clown show. Appears to be zero preparation and zero plan to accommodate any problems.

The small (and not so small) school districts with a little distance from that particular flavor of management seems to be working. Busses are rolling, kids around here are starting to go back. Marist and Vassar colleges are in session. Mixture of on-site and remote, different days with different staffing. Glad I don't have kids and am not involved. A very close friend is a bus driver and has related all their covid measures and they are definitely banging away at them with a passion.

There's a saying that adversity reveals character it doesn't define it. It reveals incompetence too.
 

Standingstones

Celestial
Although I don’t really follow pro sports I am intrigued by what is going on about Covid. Most of the sports leagues have taken the idea that we must play games no matter what. This attitude is starting to backfire in football and baseball. It seems that more and more players are testing positive. One player brought a woman up to his room for some R&R. I am not sure what he was disciplined with.

I am sure these sports teams are suffering without putting fannies in the stands. I don’t know what the solution may be but the bottom line seems to be behind every decision.
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
Wisconsin, Tennessee, North Carolina, Illinois and a host of other states including New York are experiencing big spikes, Wisconsin is over 2000 today, first time I've seen that high number over there...

...
We been over 2k for WEEEKS! Flirting with 3000. Almost 150 K total cases.
 
Top