Deadly Wuhan Coronavirus

nivek

As Above So Below
Chile scientists study potential coronavirus mutation in remote Patagonia

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Scientists in Chile are investigating a possible mutation of the novel coronavirus in southern Patagonia, a far-flung region near the tip of the South American continent that has seen an unusually contagious second wave of infections in recent weeks.

Dr. Marcelo Navarrete of the University of Magallanes told Reuters in an interview that researchers had detected "structural changes" in the spikes on the distinctive, crown-shaped virus. He said research is underway to better understand the potential mutation and its effects on humans.

"The only thing we know to date is that this coincides in time and space with a second wave that is quite intense in the region," Navarrete said.

The Magallanes region of Chile is largely a remote, glacier-strewn wilderness dotted with small towns and the regional hub Punta Arenas, which has seen cases of COVID-19 spike in September and October following a first wave earlier this year.

Hospitals are nearing full occupancy in the hard-hit region. Chilean health ministry officials said they have begun evacuating sick residents from the region to the capital, Santiago. Other studies outside Chile have also indicated that the coronavirus can evolve as it adapts to its human hosts.

A preliminary study that analyzed the virus' structure following two waves of infection in the U.S. city of Houston found that a more contagious strain dominated recent samples. Navarrete acknowledged similar mutations had been observed elsewhere, but he said the relative isolation and harsh climate of the famously cold and windy Magallanes region may have exaggerated its impacts.

"Some of these variables such as cold, wind, are associated with a higher rate of spread in the world," Navarrete said.

Scientists say the mutations may make the virus more contagious but do not necessarily make it more deadly, nor do they necessarily inhibit the effectiveness of a potential vaccine.


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nivek

As Above So Below
COVID-19 cases surge in Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota

A surge of coronavirus cases in Wisconsin and the Dakotas is forcing a scramble for hospital beds and raising political tensions, as the Upper Midwest and Plains emerge as one of the nation’s most troubling hot spots.

The three states now lead all others in new cases per capita, after months in which many politicians and residents rejected mask requirements while downplaying the risks of the disease that has now killed over 210,000 Americans.

“It’s an emotional roller coaster,” said Melissa Resch, a nurse at Wisconsin’s Aspirus Wausau Hospital, which is working to add beds and reassign staff to keep up with a rising caseload of virus patients, many gravely ill.

In North Dakota, which does not require residents to wear masks and whose 770 new cases per 100,000 residents are the highest in the country, 24 more deaths were reported Wednesday, triple the state’s previous single-day record.

In Wisconsin, health officials plan to open a field hospital next week at the state fairgrounds to prevent health care centers from being overwhelmed by virus cases, even as state Republicans challenge Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' mask mandate in court.

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nivek

As Above So Below
More people have died from Covid-19 than in the past 5 flu seasons combined.

Once again, misleading comparisons between the flu and Covid-19 caught widespread attention across the internet.

"Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu," President Donald Trump tweeted. "Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!"


That's not true. Covid-19 is more lethal than the seasonal flu.

Coronavirus


The flu

  • If 22,000 people died between October 1 and May 31, that would be an average of about 91 flu deaths a day over the span of eight months.

And in just eight months, Covid-19 has killed more people than the flu did during the last five flu seasons combined.

As for Trump's claim that the flu kills "sometimes over 100,000" people a year, CDC data from 1976 to 2007 and from 2010 until now show that's not even close.

There are several more reasons why Covid-19 is more dangerous than the flu -- and why extra precautions are needed:


Coronavirus is much more contagious than the flu

Research shows a person with the flu infects an average of about 1.28 other people. But without mitigation efforts such as stay-at-home orders, a person with novel coronavirus infects an average of about 2 to 3 other people.

Coronavirus can be spread for many days without symptoms

With the flu, the incubation period is relatively short. People typically start feeling sick one to four days after infection, with symptoms often showing up within two days, the CDC says.

That means people who get sick from the flu will know they're sick fairly soon and will likely stay home, avoiding contact with others.

But the incubation period with coronavirus is about three to 14 days, and "symptoms typically appear within four or five days after exposure," according to Harvard Medical School.

"We know that a person with COVID-19 may be contagious 48 to 72 hours before starting to experience symptoms," Harvard experts write. "Emerging research suggests that people may actually be most likely to spread the virus to others during the 48 hours before they start to experience symptoms."

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A protester claims Covid-19 is a lie. But it's killed more people than the flu this past year.


It's easy for asymptomatic carriers to infect others, said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiology professor at UCLA's School of Public Health.

"When you speak, sometimes you'll spit a little bit," she said. "You'll rub your nose. You'll touch your mouth. You'll rub your eyes. And then you'll touch other surfaces, and then you will be spreading virus if you are infected and shedding asymptomatically."



You can get a flu vaccine but not a coronavirus vaccine

Experts say the number of flu deaths could be drastically reduced if more people got flu shots. Even if you get a flu vaccine and later catch the flu, the symptoms are usually less severe.

Yet about half of Americans don't get vaccinated, including most children who die from the flu.

But with coronavirus, there's no publicly available vaccine yet. So the best ways to control the spread (while improving the economy) is with personal responsibility -- staying at least 6 feet away from those you don't live with, washing your hands frequently and wearing a face mask.


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nivek

As Above So Below
I don't want to sound like there's a panic but the country (US) needs to get their head out of their ass and make the covid pandemic the MAIN problem before us...There are already forecasts of 400,000 deaths in the US by February, that's almost double the count now, we are in for a really bad winter IMO...We really need to get this pandemic behind us...

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August

Metanoia
Interesting facts.
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide—about one-third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans. The 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the United States and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain. Citizens were ordered to wear masks, schools, theaters and businesses were shuttered and bodies piled up in makeshift morgues before the virus ended its deadly global march.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
The movie 'I am Legend' comes to mind...

I doubt any effective vaccine is coming anytime soon...

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Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine study paused due to unexplained illness in participant

The study of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine has been paused due to an unexplained illness in a study participant.

A document sent to outside researchers running the 60,000-patient clinical trial states that a “pausing rule” has been met, that the online system used to enroll patients in the study has been closed, and that the data and safety monitoring board — an independent committee that watches over the safety of patients in the clinical trial — would be convened. The document was obtained by STAT.

Contacted by STAT, J&J confirmed the study pause, saying it was due to “an unexplained illness in a study participant.” The company declined to provide further details.

(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below
Scientists Confirm Nevada Man Was Infected Twice With Coronavirus

A 25-year-old was infected twice with the coronavirus earlier this year, scientists in Nevada have confirmed. It is the first confirmed case of so-called reinfection with the virus in the U.S. and the fifth confirmed reinfection case worldwide.

The cases underscore the importance of social distancing and wearing masks even if you were previously infected with the virus, and they raise questions about how the human immune system reacts to the virus.

The two infections in the Nevada patient occurred about six weeks apart, according to a case study published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet. The patient originally tested positive for the virus in April and had symptoms including a cough and nausea. He recovered and tested negative for the virus in May.

But at the end of May, he went to an urgent care center with symptoms including fever, cough and dizziness. In early June, he tested positive again and ended up in the hospital.

"The second infection was symptomatically more severe than the first," the authors of the study write. The patient survived his second bout with COVID-19.

Ecuador also suffered a more serious case of COVID-19 the second time they were infected with the virus.

Scientists are unsure why this might be. In theory, the body's immune system should make antibodies after the first infection that help it combat the virus more effectively if the person is exposed to the same virus again.

"There are many reasons why a person might get sicker the second time around," explains Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale University who was not involved in the Nevada study. For example, "they may have been exposed to a lot higher levels of the virus the second time around," she says, or the immune response from the first infection might be making the disease worse rather than better.

But, she stresses, "this is all very speculative" because scientists still have very little information about the mechanisms at play.

One of the biggest outstanding questions is how widespread reinfection might be. It's difficult to confirm cases in which a person is infected twice. Scientists must have the nasal swabs from both the first and second infection in order to compare the genomes of both virus samples.

Only the most advanced hospital and laboratory facilities have the equipment and personnel to do the genome sequencing and analyze the results. As a result, most cases of reinfection are likely going undetected.

Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, says it seems that about 90% of people who have experienced "a clear, symptomatic infection" have the antibodies to fight off another infection, "perhaps for about a year."

"Of course, that leaves 10% who don't" have sufficient antibodies to fight off a second infection, he wrote in an email to NPR. "[T]hey have precisely the same risk as anyone out there, thus a small but significant number of reinfections."

The authors of the new study also raise the possibility that cases of people being infected multiple times could have implications for the efficacy of a coronavirus vaccine, since some people exposed to the virus may not be mounting sufficient immune responses to protect themselves from a second infection.

But Iwasaki says such cases have no bearing on the efficacy of a future vaccine. The virus can deploy proteins to get in the way of the immune response, whereas a vaccine has none of those proteins, she explains. "The good thing about a vaccine is that it can induce much better immunity, a much longer lasting immunity, than the natural exposure to the the virus," she says.

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AD1184

Celestial
I have seen a name put to a social phenomenon that I have observed since this pandemic took hold in the west: pandemic paradox.

This refers to the fact that the more effective are legal and voluntary measures in containing a pandemic, the more certain quarters feel that they are unnecessary, and so fight against them. Thus many governments are caught in a bind between the need for measures to suppress the virus, and those in their populations who have been persuaded by the effectiveness of those measures to believe that they are unnecessary.
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
I have seen a name put to a social phenomenon that I have observed since this pandemic took hold in the west: pandemic paradox.

This refers to the fact that the more effective are legal and voluntary measures in containing a pandemic, the more certain quarters feel that they are unnecessary, and so fight against them. Thus many governments are caught in a bind between the need for measures to suppress the virus, and those in their populations who have been persuaded by the effectiveness of those measures to believe that they are unnecessary.

I think part of this comes from 'pandemic fatigue' since the first round of lockdowns did not work well, and at least here in the US, it did not work well because the entire country was not onboard, some states locked down, others didn't and the reasons for that are varied...The current rising divide between support for and against another round of lockdowns is creating quite a problem for everyone across the board, all the while the death count continues to increase...Everyone seems to have the answer yet most of what we hear is finger-pointing all around in news media, social media, and even in adverts now...There's also an ungodly amount of misinformation circulating in regards to covid now and there seems to be no stopping that flow, I see new misinformation come up every day now...

We have already shot ourselves in the foot, it looks like we're about to cut off one of our hands, I think the other foot hasn't dropped yet and this winter may turn out to be even worse than it was in the spring because of this 'pandemic paradox'...

Worse case through winter?...Maybe see what happened to Italy, Spain, and New York occurring in every corner of the western world...

Best case through winter?...Maybe we see that Italy, Spain, NY scenario in small pockets that resisted more restrictive measures whilst everyone else is locked down...

Likely case through winter?...The spikes in new infections and deaths will keep coming on, up and down, and in a steady upward trend...

Its also likely that through time and ignorance herd immunity will be forced upon the western population whether we want it or not because of the 'pandemic paradox', and an incredible amount of people will die as a result...Even if a vaccine is developed and ready to administer quickly, there is already a divide on who wants to take a vaccination and those who are refusing, and that doesn't even count the antivax groups and idealists...

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nivek

As Above So Below
Never underestimate the ability and timing of people in making a situation much worse for themselves first before making it better...

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