COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

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Looks like Remdesivir will get the green light from the FDA to help treat some COVID-19 patients:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/health/gilead-sciences-remdesivir-covid-19-treatment/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/us/coronavirus-usa-cases-deaths.html

Sounds like the data suggests a 31% improvement in patients who took the drug during a trial period. While that's not the cure everyone is hoping for, a 31% improvement could mean the difference between being on a high flow O2 in a standard hospital room instead of being on a ventilator in the ICU.
 
While we're still far from Covid-19 free down here in Australia we are hitting some pretty good milestones. In my state we've just hit seven days with no new cases. Only three more weeks of zero cases and we can resume some sort of normality here, but with increased testing of aged care and healthcare workers with no symptoms I'm not too sure we'll make it. Even if we do go the full 28 days with no new cases we'll still have to be closed off to the rest of Australia and the world :boggled:.

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Australia is looking like a fantastic success story right now - long may it continue to be the case 👍

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In another piece of good news, my sister's friend's mother, who is in her late 80's and suffering from dementia, and who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 a couple of weeks ago has, apparently, not developed COVID-19 and has now tested negative... pretty unbelievable!

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Also, the WHO are saying that there is not a single proven case of child (under 10) to adult transmission of the virus recorded anywhere in the world...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ing-coronavirus-adult-exists-evidence-review/
 
I've only watched the first 10 minutes of this video and am now wondering why these doctors are saying it's just like the flu? The video had 5 million views on youtube before it got deleted. Are the even real doctors?

And another Perspectives on the Pandemic video was uploaded. I still have to watch it but it's time for me to go to bed. Just leaving it here for anybody interested.
 
I've only watched the first 10 minutes of this video and am now wondering why these doctors are saying it's just like the flu? The video had 5 million views on youtube before it got deleted. Are the even real doctors?

And another Perspectives on the Pandemic video was uploaded. I still have to watch it but it's time for me to go to bed. Just leaving it here for anybody interested.

I hope they are right... but one look through the comments section (I know, I shouldn't...) shows what an effect these videos can have, and so they'd bloody well better be right - but who's to say they are? The trouble with YouTube is that basically anyone can say anything they like and even if content is taken down, the damage can already have been done. I'm not saying these people are wrong - but I sincerely hope they are not wrong, and I have no particular reason to believe them.

I've not watched the whole video with Knut Witkowski, but I don't like what I'm hearing so far... some of what he is saying is pretty dumb to say the least.
 
Also, the WHO are saying that there is not a single proven case of child (under 10) to adult transmission of the virus recorded anywhere in the world...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ing-coronavirus-adult-exists-evidence-review/

Interesting. I'm sure that's not actually the case, I'm sure somewhere a child gave it to an adult. But I interpret this to mean that it's not particularly prevalent, which makes sense.

How does an asymptomatic individual spread a virus anyway? I mean, I've heard of "shedding" virus, but it seems.... less effective. I guess if you kiss someone, or share a bottle (or needle)... but without the coughing and sneezing and general mucus trail, I it seems like an asymptomatic person would have an "R" number (according to the movie Contagion) that was low, meaning the number of people they can be expected to infect would be low. It also seems like the contagious period would be shorter.
 
Interesting. I'm sure that's not actually the case, I'm sure somewhere a child gave it to an adult. But I interpret this to mean that it's not particularly prevalent, which makes sense.

How does an asymptomatic individual spread a virus anyway? I mean, I've heard of "shedding" virus, but it seems.... less effective. I guess if you kiss someone, or share a bottle (or needle)... but without the coughing and sneezing and general mucus trail, I it seems like an asymptomatic person would have an "R" number (according to the movie Contagion) that was low, meaning the number of people they can be expected to infect would be low. It also seems like the contagious period would be shorter.

I guess it's all still not fully understood. My own personal anecdote: my daughter has been sharing a house in the Netherlands during the lock-down with two other people, her boyfriend & another young woman - all in their 20's. Her boyfriend has been sick for a week & a half - feverish, body aches, fatigue, difficulty breathing at times & a cough. Not serious enough to be hospitalized, but very unpleasant. The other woman has been sick but more mildly, my daughter has no noticeable symptoms at all.
 
There was a comment in The Times pointing to a reason why Boris Johnson had a more serious reaction to the Covid-19 infection than others of Parliment, was down to his unhealthiness and being overweight for his height.

Younger, active people aren't likely to be cardiovascularly unfit, so there should be some corralation there, hopefully.
 
Apparently on May 1st, Texas will start a soft re-opening of retail, restaurants, malls, & theaters, maintaining every business can only have 25% occupancy & full safe-guards in place. However, Dallas' County Judge is possibly going to bypass this stating that places like theaters aren't what one would assume to be part of the 1st group of businesses to reopen.

As Touring Mars alluded between both our countries, Dallas is stuck in a stubborn rate. Last 5 days worth of cases: 80, 70, 70, 105, 91. We seem to be either increasing/declining in rates of 10-20 over the course of a few days. It has not dropped below 70 since 4/13.
Numbers went up. Record high 135 new cases yesterday, 112 today.

According to the Wiki timeline, Texas saw a 2.7%, 3.5%, & 3.4% as of today number of cases. What seems troubling imo, is the number of death percentages went up over that time frame: 2.3%, 4.1%, & 6.1% as of today. 6.1% increase in the number of deaths is the highest it's been in nearly 2 weeks.
 
Here’s a video to help visualize the problems starting to impact the supply chain of the food industry. Not so much what the guy is talking about, but just the piles of onions.

 
Cpt. Tom Moore - a British WW2 veteran who initially planned to raise £1000 for the NHS by walking 100 lengths of his garden - turns 100 years old today. Meanwhile, his fund has now reached a staggering £30 million.

His birthday would normally have been marked by a letter from HM The Queen (as is customary for all people who reach 100 y.o.) but today his birthday has been additionally marked with a message from the Prime Minister, a flypast of Spitfires by the Royal Air Force, and an honorary promotion to the rank of Colonel.

Numbers went up. Record high 135 new cases yesterday, 112 today.

According to the Wiki timeline, Texas saw a 2.7%, 3.5%, & 3.4% as of today number of cases. What seems troubling imo, is the number of death percentages went up over that time frame: 2.3%, 4.1%, & 6.1% as of today. 6.1% increase in the number of deaths is the highest it's been in nearly 2 weeks.
I would go on the Daily New Cases as a better metric to watch - Deaths lag behind New Cases, and New Cases lag behind actual infections, so it is to be expected that death rates can increase while new cases may be going down. In both cases, the numbers are pretty noisy, and hence it takes at least a week to be able to see any clear trend in the data, hence it may still be a few weeks until most states can safely say that the infection rate is low enough to remove certain restrictions.

It is a very tough judgement call though, because it is not a question of if but when lockdowns are lifted... eventually (and quite soon) they will do more damage than they are intended to prevent. The worst case scenario, however, is that in our rush to restore normality (and to save our economies from greater harm), we run the risk of reopening the doors to unacceptably high transmission rates again.

I hope, however, that general adherence to some far less onerous 'restrictions' (e.g. wear a mask inside a store or public place) will mean that life can return to something like normal and keep the transmission rate as low as it is today.

From @Touring Mars's article:This would be huge... huuuuuge... for so many people.
There was already some evidence to suggest that shutting down schools was only very meagerly effective. It is a virtual certainty that some kids can and will spread the virus, but it also looks pretty clear that the risk from re-opening schools is nowhere near as high as it might be otherwise.

On the question of how asymptomatic people can spread a virus, I guess it depends on the virus, but people sneeze, cough, spit, and some generally practice poor personal (and public) hygiene all the time, and thus a virus that can spread through the air via aerosols and can persist on solid surfaces for up to 72 hours is very well suited to spreading even without a person reporting that they are ill.
 
The more we learn about the virus more flaws in handling the situation will be found. Yesterday my wife asked me why countries like Japan, Korea and China can handle this so much better than us. And the first thing I could think is discipline. You tell them to use prophylaxis and practice social distances everybody will follow. Japan in particular. It's not unusual to se children wearing mask in Schools there. That is also a reason why Sweden can handle the situation better than others. I believe.
Another thing I can't understand. 2 months ago I felt uncomfortable wearing a mask outside. Now I can't go out without one. Was it just because I was afraid of being judged by others?
 
Some evidence from South Korea suggests that people testing positive for a second time are false positives and are not becoming re-infected...

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php...SwzK4b9r37RcqHUxevuTCKXuadu9kRkw8va-0Ufmb_8Bw

It does stand to reason, since it would be weird for people who have already got the virus once to get it a second time, even though the vast majority of the country is on lockdown.

For reference, some 263 people have tested positive a second time (after having tested positive then negative prior to that), but South Korea has only seen 789 new cases in the entire country in a whole month (April), which either means people who have had the virus are super-likely to become reinfected (not likely) or these tests are false positives...

edit: It could well be that negative tests are also wrong...
 
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Cpt. Tom Moore - a British WW2 veteran who initially planned to raise £1000 for the NHS by walking 100 lengths of his garden - turns 100 years old today. Meanwhile, his fund has now reached a staggering £30 million.

His birthday would normally have been marked by a letter from HM The Queen (as is customary for all people who reach 100 y.o.) but today his birthday has been additionally marked with a message from the Prime Minister, a flypast of Spitfires by the Royal Air Force, and an honorary promotion to the rank of Colonel.
Isn't he also currently at the top of the hit parade?
Which breaks Tom Jones' record of being the oldest person to occupy the spot.
 
The more we learn about the virus more flaws in handling the situation will be found. Yesterday my wife asked me why countries like Japan, Korea and China can handle this so much better than us. And the first thing I could think is discipline. You tell them to use prophylaxis and practice social distances everybody will follow. Japan in particular. It's not unusual to se children wearing mask in Schools there. That is also a reason why Sweden can handle the situation better than others. I believe.
Another thing I can't understand. 2 months ago I felt uncomfortable wearing a mask outside. Now I can't go out without one. Was it just because I was afraid of being judged by others?

The thing is: initially we were told the masks did nothing. This really seemed counter-intuitive, but given that information, people not used to mark-wearing were understandably not motivated to start wearing them. In many Asian countries mask-wearing seems to have been a fairly normal practice even before this novel coronavirus. I'm wondering if this isn't a big reason for the virus being brought under control so quickly in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan & even China (although many people are extremely sceptical about China's reporting, it seems clear that after the initial failure to act, the Chinese quickly made major inroads into containing the spread). It looks likely that mask-wearing will become a normal thing in Western societies - at least for a while.
 
Boris Johnson is taking the daily press conference for the first time since he contracted the disease.

He has said that UK has passed the peak and that the virus is on the downward slope.
 
California is supposedly set to close all parks and beaches.

This....seems unnecessary. I don't see how it's worse than going to a grocery store with even a moderate amount of people in it. Masks would be a good idea, but closing all of them entirely? Last time I was at a state park (last weekend) the closest I got to anyone was probably 25ft, and everyone seemed to be minding the distancing guidelines. State parks tend to be pretty damn big. Last time I went to the grocery store, some yahoo was walking around with his mask around his neck rather than on his stupid face. I generally fall on Newsom's side (despite his massive schmuckery) but this seems like it will be a real stinker in the court of public opinion.
 
Boris Johnson is taking the daily press conference for the first time since he contracted the disease.

He has said that UK has passed the peak and that the virus is on the downward slope.
Because of lock-down yes. If the restrictions are lifted it will return in force I believe.
 
California is supposedly set to close all parks and beaches.

This....seems unnecessary. I don't see how it's worse than going to a grocery store with even a moderate amount of people in it. Masks would be a good idea, but closing all of them entirely? Last time I was at a state park (last weekend) the closest I got to anyone was probably 25ft, and everyone seemed to be minding the distancing guidelines. State parks tend to be pretty damn big. Last time I went to the grocery store, some yahoo was walking around with his mask around his neck rather than on his stupid face. I generally fall on Newsom's side (despite his massive schmuckery) but this seems like it will be a real stinker in the court of public opinion.
Because people are gathering at the beaches like it's a regular summer day. Now we can't have nice things even in small doses.
 
#liberatecali

Seems a tad aggressive, but who knows. They could've enforced some less stringent restrictions.

Maybe...close the offending beaches rather than all of them. The Bay Area has closed off parking areas to all parks, which makes senses - keep the numbers down. But to close them entirely seems both not-doable and kind of pointless.
 
...Status update from my side: my dad's spare parts franchise store has been operating half-day hours for the past week and a half, yet people are queuing up like mad to buy the parts for their cars. Despite the government saying they can't and only the "tradesmen" working on repairing emergency vehicles are allowed to do so.

Ironically, the hard-to-source masks, which were scheduled to be delivered only after May the 4th (no relation to Star Wars) arrived a couple of days after ordering them through a rather shady-looking website. On the other hand, gloves and other sundry items which were ordered through a lot more reputable service hadn't shown up yet, although I was reassured there were plenty of stock left back when I placed my orders. Go figure. :boggled:

Good thing I found a box of gloves in a local pharmacy and bought that just in case before my dad had to reopen the store...

I've been keeping an eye out on the number of "cured" people whenever that figure comes up, which doesn't seem to be that often. One of the things I noticed is that, regardless of which country it was or when the infection first took hold, the percentage of the "recovered" seems to always hover somewhere around 30% mark. How can it be this consistent, though? Are there reasons for this?
 
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