Well, I'm being recruited into the front lines (sort of). They're whipping up some home-made hand-sanitizer in one of the 5-gallon reactors on Monday. I get to assist in the analysis. If it works they're going to scale-up to the 250-gallon reactor. We'll be just supplying our site, but with the big batches we could probably supply other company sites and maybe even help outside the company.
Funny, none of the managers are going in to 'supervise'...
Well, I'm being recruited into the front lines (sort of). They're whipping up some home-made hand-sanitizer in one of the 5-gallon reactors on Monday. I get to assist in the analysis. If it works they're going to scale-up to the 250-gallon reactor. We'll be just supplying our site, but with the big batches we could probably supply other company sites and maybe even help outside the company.
Funny, none of the managers are going in to 'supervise'...
My roommate, who works in a hospital pharmacy, said they are doing the same thing - making their own hand sanitizer from scratch so they don't run out. Maybe not 250 gallons of the stuff, but as much as they can.
Isopropanol & glycerine, that's all you need if you don't mind the smell of alcohol (ethanol works too but you might be tempted to drink it these days instead of blending it).
COVID 19 will gonna be a massive problem for southern cone during the winter.
On a related note, if there's anybody out there hoping that COVID-19 cases will subside during the summer, don't cling to that hope. As I mentioned earlier, I'm in tropical Singapore where the temperature typically hovers around 30C/86F and the virus has absolutely no trouble still spreading and infecting people. It seems to be the same case in other tropical and sub-tropical nations in ASEAN like Indonesia or Malaysia.
Seems like people are afraid nurses and healthcare workers will inevitably get Coronavirus and the remedy landlords are coming to is to toss them out on the streets before that happens.
COVID 19 will gonna be a massive problem for southern cone during the winter.
On a related note, if there's anybody out there hoping that COVID-19 cases will subside during the summer, don't cling to that hope. As I mentioned earlier, I'm in tropical Singapore where the temperature typically hovers around 30C/86F and the virus has absolutely no trouble still spreading and infecting people. It seems to be the same case in other tropical and sub-tropical nations in ASEAN like Indonesia or Malaysia.
So then it is not at all a flu or strain of it. This virus directly attacks the lungs (made to do so?) of humans in any climate. That is fucking scary.
I guess national prayer day didn't fix covid or make tests more accessible huh? More of a shower thought really. Well we’ve tried doing nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.
No need for conspiracy theories. Viruses spread in any season. it is just easier when it is colder because of coughing and sneezing being more prevalent, moisture in the air etc.
I agree that differences between the proportions of infections identified as cases in different countries will account for part of the difference in fatality rates, but I don't think that's the only answer.
A significant difference between the median age of diagnosed cases and population would be expected given that Covid is not only more serious for older people, but also more prevalent. This study based on Wuhan has fed into the evidence base used by the UK. This table taken from that shows the extent to which expected levels of hospitalization change by age.
Older people are a high risk group, so they are more likely to be hospitalized. If your testing is limited to hospitalized and contact cases only, the high risk groups will be overrepresented. You therefore don't know at this point if the virus is more prevalent in the older age group, or if it is an artifact of sampling. It's even explained in the paper you quote. As the authors admit, they are attempting an estimate, because at this point no country is doing a wide enough surveillance to detect all cases and no standardized serological tests are available.
I think I wasn't clear enough in the way I set out my earlier post, but there were two different points being made in that. I'll try to be clearer below.
The point about prevalence you quote above related to the issue about median age of the population compared to median age of infected groups. My statement that the disease was more prevalent in older people wasn't based on the study I referred to - it's generally accepted by the medical profession that the immune system gets weaker in older people. Hence, if all other things were equal, older people will get both more and more severe infections. While specific diseases vary greatly, I don't think any of the data obtained thus far for Covid-19 suggest it doesn't follow this general pattern (rather the reverse in fact).
The data on hospitalization rates I took from that study, was intended to illustrate a separate statistical point. Your contention was that if only hospitalized cases were tested, we would know nothing about the overall population of cases - but that's not true if we know the expected percentage of cases hospitalized. To better illustrate the point I was making, here's a quick spreadsheet (I've exaggerated the real numbers to make the point easier to see).
The spreadsheet illustrates that, as expected hospitalization rates increase with age, the difference between the observed case fatality rate and the underlying infection fatality rate reduces because you are taking into account a greater proportion of the underlying population. Though I've exaggerated the differences across age to make that point, the actual figures I showed before vary enough by age that you would not expect a consistent relationship between the observed case fatality rates in Italy and China - if the only reason for a variation between them related to differences in the extent to which the underlying population had been identified.
The above is all a bit by the way though. I accept your general point that the data available is not yet sufficient to make conclusive statements about things like differences in prevalence and fatality rates across age.
I do think though that practical experience to date has provided good evidence that lack of treatment has a significant impact on fatality rates and that's the message that the UK government has got from Italy. The increased social control measures are not simply because modelling showed total fatalities of 250,000. That figure was based on an assumption that treatment would be available for everyone - and the experience from Italy is that fatality rates will be significantly higher if treatment is not available for everyone.
No need for conspiracy theories. Viruses spread in any season. it is just easier when it is colder because of coughing and sneezing being more prevalent, moisture in the air etc.
Biological Warfare exists no conspiracy about it, also does not take away seriousness of COVID-19.
It is not just individuals who are stupid. The UK hotel chain Britania Hotels has probably signed its own death warrant after sacking all their staff and evicting them at the same time, blaiming the covid outbreak. I would urge anyone who comes to the UK after this outbreak has passed, to boycott this business.
No need for conspiracy theories. Viruses spread in any season. it is just easier when it is colder because of coughing and sneezing being more prevalent, moisture in the air etc.
Biological Warfare exists no conspiracy about it, also does not take away seriousness of COVID-19.
I really do not understand what you are trying to say. I do not see the link between the two.
There is zero evidence this was man-made. I've heard more than one epidemiologist say that even if we wanted to, creating one this effective wouldn't be likely. Nature does it just fine on her own. This virus tranferred from an animal to a human in China sometime in late November. That is a fact. It was not made in a lab by one country to attack another, even though 3 separate counties (the US, China and Iran) are basically insinuating it was. Not coincidentally, they are the countries where the initial government response has been most egregious and inept. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Brazilian government hopped on the conspiracy train as well.
@jjstraka34 , @Iroumen, can either of you prove without a doubt that it can't be man made or manipulated in a lab and somehow by mistake or on purpose got out? Not trying to start a debate here but none of us know what is going on. All we know is this shit kills and it's spreading fast. Everything else is unknown.
This isn't Sandy Hook where there was on the ground reporting, you cannot see this enemy. More info will start coming out of China and Iran when the quarantines are lifted, till then it's make sure you live through it.
I have also heard several experts comment that this virus is clearly not manmade... as nature is a vastly superior engineer for this kind of thing. When you have some evidence for that theory then please post it, preferably after running it by some who’s actually qualified to understand it (though they’re probably a bit busy now). Otherwise... spreading distrust at a time when people need to believe in each other is probably not the best thing to be doing.
The point about prevalence you quote above related to the issue about median age of the population compared to median age of infected groups. My statement that the disease was more prevalent in older people wasn't based on the study I referred to - it's generally accepted by the medical profession that the immune system gets weaker in older people. Hence, if all other things were equal, older people will get both more and more severe infections. While specific diseases vary greatly, I don't think any of the data obtained thus far for Covid-19 suggest it doesn't follow this general pattern (rather the reverse in fact).
The data on hospitalization rates I took from that study, was intended to illustrate a separate statistical point. Your contention was that if only hospitalized cases were tested, we would know nothing about the overall population of cases - but that's not true if we know the expected percentage of cases hospitalized. To better illustrate the point I was making, here's a quick spreadsheet (I've exaggerated the real numbers to make the point easier to see).
The disease being more severe in elderly people doesn't mean you can extrapolate the data from the elderly people group to the rest of the population. We have very little data on the numbers of asymptomatic or mild cases at this point. Children could be one such group, since they seem to manage the infection very well on their own. Your own excel spreadsheet doesn't even include anyone under 60.
The paper you quote is talking about too:
"Quantifying the extent of infection overall in the population (including those infected with either mild, non-specific symptoms or who are asymptomatic, as depicted in the bottom of Figure 1) requires random population surveys of infection prevalence. Serological assays provide the best option for obtaining this denominator; however, robust assays are not currently available. The only such data providing an assessment of the level of infection in a subset of the population not presenting with symptoms at present is therefore the PCR infection prevalence surveys conducted in international residents of Wuhan that have been repatriated to their home country. "
"It is clear from the data that has emerged from China that there is a significant increase in the CFR with age. Our results suggest a very low fatality ratio in those under the age of 20. However, as there are very few cases in this age-group, it remains unclear whether this reflects a low risk of death or a difference in susceptibility. Serological testing in this age-group will therefore be critical in the coming weeks to understand the significance of this age-group in driving population transmission. "
At the moment no country is doing random population surveys and serological tests are only being approved. We don't see consistent data between countries, because different testing approaches result in more or less unconfirmed cases slipping through undetected.
The spreadsheet didn't include all age groups because more data would just have obscured the point of it. I wasn't using real data, but making the point that it is possible to know something about the total infected population just from hospital data - at the extreme, if everyone infected in a particular age group were hospitalized the hospitalized numbers would equal the whole infected population. The higher the proportion that requires hospitalization, the more accurately you can assess the infected population, irrespective of whether you do any testing outside the hospital.
To explain the consistent relationship between case fatality rates in China and Italy on the basis of failures to test, it would be necessary not just that there were overall differences in the level of testing between the countries, but that there were differences in the profile of testing across different age groups. While not impossible, that seems to me to be an unlikely explanation - and one that would then conflict with what I think is observed reality.
The essential point of my earlier posts was to explain how the observed higher death rates in Italy are consistent with the underlying detailed statistics. You've criticized the methodology I used for that, but it's not clear to me whether you believe that the death rates in Italy are not in fact higher. If that is your belief, why not explain what leads you to believe that? I suspect that might lead to a more productive discussion than continuing a debate on methodology that I imagine is of little interest to others (if you do wish to do the latter though, I would be happy to do so via PM).
@jjstraka34 , @Iroumen, can either of you prove without a doubt that it can't be man made or manipulated in a lab and somehow by mistake or on purpose got out? Not trying to start a debate here but none of us know what is going on. All we know is this shit kills and it's spreading fast. Everything else is unknown.
This isn't Sandy Hook where there was on the ground reporting, you cannot see this enemy. More info will start coming out of China and Iran when the quarantines are lifted, till then it's make sure you live through it.
Having worked in virology I can say that it is extremely unlikely. I read the nature paper (the proximal origin of sars-cov-2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9) where it shows part of the generic code and there are just too many variants for it to be man-made.
It takes great effort to make even one generic mutation that can be reproduced stably in laboratory environments. The subpart which they zoom into for the covid-19 virus that is responsible for some of its malevolent features shows numerous mutations from normal corona RNA strands.
If it was that easy to make RNA mutations aimed specifically to create a certain effect then everybody would be doing it, especially to cure diseases. Genetics is just not that far advanced yet. Only for certain diseases of which we know a whole lot (50+ years experience) has modern medicine been able to develop something in the lines of DNA/RNA manipulation.
Man-made viruses are either dumb luck or stuff for the 2100s or beyond... if the world survives the stupidities of mankind not being able to live in peace and in harmony with nature.
Went to the grocery store right at opening at 7 this morning. As I walk into the parking lot, I see at the door at last 25 people standing shoulder to shoulder with each other waiting to get in. After I wait and let the initial crowd in before I enter, I observe everyone inside. I was probably the single, solitary soul in the entire establishment attempting to keep their distance from other people. We are so screwed. This is not getting through outside of the major hot zones. At all.
A pity that people do not take preventive measures when they can, instead of acting desperately when it is too late.
Look at what is happening in Europe...
Went to the grocery store right at opening at 7 this morning. As I walk into the parking lot, I see at the door at last 25 people standing shoulder to shoulder with each other waiting to get in. After I wait and let the initial crowd in before I enter, I observe everyone inside. I was probably the single, solitary soul in the entire establishment attempting to keep their distance from other people. We are so screwed. This is not getting through outside of the major hot zones. At all.
I've noticed the same thing. What's weird is that as a scientist I'm not freaking out about this, but taking basic precautions is not costing me anything, so why not just do it? I just don't get people.
On the good side, my parents are finally taking this seriously!
Seems like people are afraid nurses and healthcare workers will inevitably get Coronavirus and the remedy landlords are coming to is to toss them out on the streets before that happens.
And here I was just thinking that my opinion of humanity couldn't get much lower...
In addition, the true mortality rate is going to get skewed high if more healthcare systems get overwhelmed. Unfortunately it looks like the US is on that trajectory unless something changes.
In addition, the true mortality rate is going to get skewed high if more healthcare systems get overwhelmed. Unfortunately it looks like the US is on that trajectory unless something changes.
That is the problem in Italy. The quality of care in general for EVERYONE has had to be sacrificed to deal with the virus, and they're having to make decisions based on lack of equipment to keep people alive. There are surely people who could have been saved under normal circumstances who aren't making it. Will this happen everywhere in the US?? Of course not, but New York is almost certainly headed in that direction, and without a major supply influx, other metro areas may be as well.
Also, for those who think rural areas are generally "safe", a community in Eagle County Colorado is actually one the nation's more telling clusters:
Moreover, more dire warnings from Italy, which we'll likely ignore like everything else:
A new article authored by a group of physicians in Bergamo, Italy proposes a radical theory of the COVID-19 outbreak and how it must be addressed. (It is published in a new peer-reviewed journal from the New England Journal of Medicine. Article here; write up in StatNews here.) The authors write that “Western health care systems have been built around the concept of patient-centered care,” but that doctors must now move to “community-centered care.”
What does this mean? Concretely it means that hospitals themselves may be a big part of the problem. When lots of COVID-19 patients rush into the hospitals, clinicians are then spreading it within the hospitals. Key quote: “We are learning that hospitals might be the main Covid-19 carriers, as they are rapidly populated by infected patients, facilitating transmission to uninfected patients. Patients are transported by our regional system, which also contributes to spreading the disease as its ambulances and personnel rapidly become vectors.”
The authors argue that doctors should be treating many patients at home, both via telemedicine and house calls. The implications of this are stark and sobering. They grant that for some patients this will mean inferior care individually though better outcomes for the community at large. Again, these are trade-offs and logics American medicine and society are really not prepared to confront. But obviously we’re also not prepared to confront denying potentially life-saving care to all but those with the best chance to survive.
To be clear, it’s not all painful tradeoffs and rationing. Many patients who are seriously but not critically ill can be successfully treated in their homes, they argue, with a mix of telemedicine, home visits and bringing critical supplies of things like oxygen and medicine.
They also recommend creating hospitals exclusively focused on COVID-19c care for those who need critical interventions in order to limit hospitals serving as vectors of spread.
Apparently no one could have seen this one coming. Oh wait........
We are going on lockdown starting Tuesday. Pharmacies and grocery stores are being kept open. We aren't allowed out except for essentials. The claim is that this will last a month. Hahahahhahaha.
We are going on lockdown starting Tuesday. Pharmacies and grocery stores are being kept open. We aren't allowed out except for essentials. The claim is that this will last a month. Hahahahhahaha.
One thing I do like about this panic is how the air pollution levels have dropped down. If the planetary immune system can suppress the human infection without outright killing it, then as a member of the latter I can only be happier.
One thing I do like about this panic is how the air pollution levels have dropped down. If the planetary immune system can suppress the human infection without outright killing it, then as a member of the latter I can only be happier.
How're things in Russia? I've heard rumors that they're worse off then they're letting on...
I heard those rumors too, but so far I'm unaware of any concrete proofs. We do get dozens of new infections per day, compared to single digits in previous weeks, though, and Moscow authorities are apparently serious about quarantine measures... But if it was really bad, I think there'd be more postings in social media about corpses lined up by the corridor walls in hospitals. For now we just stocking up on groceries like true Russians
A flat on our floor has been recently hospitalized after its residents returned from Germany a week ago, dunno if it was due to corona or not... No sign of any symptoms, so it doesn't seem like I'll be able to get in on the fun. So sad
Comments
Isopropanol & glycerine, that's all you need if you don't mind the smell of alcohol (ethanol works too but you might be tempted to drink it these days instead of blending it).
On a related note, if there's anybody out there hoping that COVID-19 cases will subside during the summer, don't cling to that hope. As I mentioned earlier, I'm in tropical Singapore where the temperature typically hovers around 30C/86F and the virus has absolutely no trouble still spreading and infecting people. It seems to be the same case in other tropical and sub-tropical nations in ASEAN like Indonesia or Malaysia.
Anecdotal reports of further incidents have started to appear on social media.
“Today I hear from community nurses that they are being heckled at and verbally abused in the street and called “disease spreaders“.
https://nursingnotes.co.uk/nurses-verbally-abusedspat-evicted-spreading-coronavirus/
Seems like people are afraid nurses and healthcare workers will inevitably get Coronavirus and the remedy landlords are coming to is to toss them out on the streets before that happens.
So then it is not at all a flu or strain of it. This virus directly attacks the lungs (made to do so?) of humans in any climate. That is fucking scary.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/39-year-old-found-dead-in-her-kitchen-her-coronavirus-test-from-four-days-earlier-still-had-not-come-back/
I guess national prayer day didn't fix covid or make tests more accessible huh? More of a shower thought really. Well we’ve tried doing nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.
I think I wasn't clear enough in the way I set out my earlier post, but there were two different points being made in that. I'll try to be clearer below.
The point about prevalence you quote above related to the issue about median age of the population compared to median age of infected groups. My statement that the disease was more prevalent in older people wasn't based on the study I referred to - it's generally accepted by the medical profession that the immune system gets weaker in older people. Hence, if all other things were equal, older people will get both more and more severe infections. While specific diseases vary greatly, I don't think any of the data obtained thus far for Covid-19 suggest it doesn't follow this general pattern (rather the reverse in fact).
The data on hospitalization rates I took from that study, was intended to illustrate a separate statistical point. Your contention was that if only hospitalized cases were tested, we would know nothing about the overall population of cases - but that's not true if we know the expected percentage of cases hospitalized. To better illustrate the point I was making, here's a quick spreadsheet (I've exaggerated the real numbers to make the point easier to see).
The spreadsheet illustrates that, as expected hospitalization rates increase with age, the difference between the observed case fatality rate and the underlying infection fatality rate reduces because you are taking into account a greater proportion of the underlying population. Though I've exaggerated the differences across age to make that point, the actual figures I showed before vary enough by age that you would not expect a consistent relationship between the observed case fatality rates in Italy and China - if the only reason for a variation between them related to differences in the extent to which the underlying population had been identified.
The above is all a bit by the way though. I accept your general point that the data available is not yet sufficient to make conclusive statements about things like differences in prevalence and fatality rates across age.
I do think though that practical experience to date has provided good evidence that lack of treatment has a significant impact on fatality rates and that's the message that the UK government has got from Italy. The increased social control measures are not simply because modelling showed total fatalities of 250,000. That figure was based on an assumption that treatment would be available for everyone - and the experience from Italy is that fatality rates will be significantly higher if treatment is not available for everyone.
Biological Warfare exists no conspiracy about it, also does not take away seriousness of COVID-19.
TR
This isn't Sandy Hook where there was on the ground reporting, you cannot see this enemy. More info will start coming out of China and Iran when the quarantines are lifted, till then it's make sure you live through it.
The spreadsheet didn't include all age groups because more data would just have obscured the point of it. I wasn't using real data, but making the point that it is possible to know something about the total infected population just from hospital data - at the extreme, if everyone infected in a particular age group were hospitalized the hospitalized numbers would equal the whole infected population. The higher the proportion that requires hospitalization, the more accurately you can assess the infected population, irrespective of whether you do any testing outside the hospital.
To explain the consistent relationship between case fatality rates in China and Italy on the basis of failures to test, it would be necessary not just that there were overall differences in the level of testing between the countries, but that there were differences in the profile of testing across different age groups. While not impossible, that seems to me to be an unlikely explanation - and one that would then conflict with what I think is observed reality.
The essential point of my earlier posts was to explain how the observed higher death rates in Italy are consistent with the underlying detailed statistics. You've criticized the methodology I used for that, but it's not clear to me whether you believe that the death rates in Italy are not in fact higher. If that is your belief, why not explain what leads you to believe that? I suspect that might lead to a more productive discussion than continuing a debate on methodology that I imagine is of little interest to others (if you do wish to do the latter though, I would be happy to do so via PM).
It takes great effort to make even one generic mutation that can be reproduced stably in laboratory environments. The subpart which they zoom into for the covid-19 virus that is responsible for some of its malevolent features shows numerous mutations from normal corona RNA strands.
If it was that easy to make RNA mutations aimed specifically to create a certain effect then everybody would be doing it, especially to cure diseases. Genetics is just not that far advanced yet. Only for certain diseases of which we know a whole lot (50+ years experience) has modern medicine been able to develop something in the lines of DNA/RNA manipulation.
Man-made viruses are either dumb luck or stuff for the 2100s or beyond... if the world survives the stupidities of mankind not being able to live in peace and in harmony with nature.
Look at what is happening in Europe...
I've noticed the same thing. What's weird is that as a scientist I'm not freaking out about this, but taking basic precautions is not costing me anything, so why not just do it? I just don't get people.
On the good side, my parents are finally taking this seriously!
And here I was just thinking that my opinion of humanity couldn't get much lower...
That is the problem in Italy. The quality of care in general for EVERYONE has had to be sacrificed to deal with the virus, and they're having to make decisions based on lack of equipment to keep people alive. There are surely people who could have been saved under normal circumstances who aren't making it. Will this happen everywhere in the US?? Of course not, but New York is almost certainly headed in that direction, and without a major supply influx, other metro areas may be as well.
Also, for those who think rural areas are generally "safe", a community in Eagle County Colorado is actually one the nation's more telling clusters:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/colorado-eagle-county-covid-19-coronavirus-hotspot-avon-vail-health
Moreover, more dire warnings from Italy, which we'll likely ignore like everything else:
A new article authored by a group of physicians in Bergamo, Italy proposes a radical theory of the COVID-19 outbreak and how it must be addressed. (It is published in a new peer-reviewed journal from the New England Journal of Medicine. Article here; write up in StatNews here.) The authors write that “Western health care systems have been built around the concept of patient-centered care,” but that doctors must now move to “community-centered care.”
What does this mean? Concretely it means that hospitals themselves may be a big part of the problem. When lots of COVID-19 patients rush into the hospitals, clinicians are then spreading it within the hospitals. Key quote: “We are learning that hospitals might be the main Covid-19 carriers, as they are rapidly populated by infected patients, facilitating transmission to uninfected patients. Patients are transported by our regional system, which also contributes to spreading the disease as its ambulances and personnel rapidly become vectors.”
The authors argue that doctors should be treating many patients at home, both via telemedicine and house calls. The implications of this are stark and sobering. They grant that for some patients this will mean inferior care individually though better outcomes for the community at large. Again, these are trade-offs and logics American medicine and society are really not prepared to confront. But obviously we’re also not prepared to confront denying potentially life-saving care to all but those with the best chance to survive.
To be clear, it’s not all painful tradeoffs and rationing. Many patients who are seriously but not critically ill can be successfully treated in their homes, they argue, with a mix of telemedicine, home visits and bringing critical supplies of things like oxygen and medicine.
They also recommend creating hospitals exclusively focused on COVID-19c care for those who need critical interventions in order to limit hospitals serving as vectors of spread.
Apparently no one could have seen this one coming. Oh wait........
I can't remember where you're at. Is it Kansas?
How're things in Russia? I've heard rumors that they're worse off then they're letting on...
A flat on our floor has been recently hospitalized after its residents returned from Germany a week ago, dunno if it was due to corona or not... No sign of any symptoms, so it doesn't seem like I'll be able to get in on the fun. So sad