Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #43

[EmilyVan]

Sign me up for this trial!

Chloroquine/ Hydroxychloroquine Prevention of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in the Healthcare Setting - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov

 

[jjenny]

Sign me up for this trial!

Chloroquine/ Hydroxychloroquine Prevention of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in the Healthcare Setting - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov

Are you a health care worker at significant risk?

 

[gregjrichards]

The Covid denier: Belarus President says it will be beaten with vodka, saunas and working on tractors so his people are reduced to spray painting the death toll in graffiti

In a bizarre speech, Lukashenko insisted working on tractors would protect people from the virus. 'There shouldn't be any panic,' he said. 'You just have to work, especially now, in a village.

Tractors will cure everyone! The field heals everyone!' Lukashenko also said daily shots of vodka would kill the virus.

'I don't drink but recently I've been saying people should not only wash their hands with vodka but also poison the virus with it,' he said.

'You should drink the equivalent of 40-50ml of rectified spirit daily. But not at work.'

The Covid denier: Belarus President says it will be beaten with vodka | Daily Mail Online

I feel sorry for the people of Belarus they are in an even worse situation than us.

 

[gregjrichards]

Top White House health official warns Americans NOT to go to the grocery store or pharmacy if it's not essential in next two weeks with coronavirus hotspots set to hit peak death rate in six to seven days

• Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said the next two weeks are essential to breaking through the outbreak
• Residents in Pennsylvania, Colorado and Washington, D.C. in particular are told that they must stay in place to prevent the outbreak from worsening
• She warned even grocery stores and pharmacies must be avoided if possible
• 
  Top White House health official warns Americans NOT to go to the grocery store if it's not essential | Daily Mail Online

 

[EmilyVan]

Are you a health care worker at significant risk?

Short answer: yes.

I'm an RN at a Denver METRO hospital. While my unit is currently "non-COVID" the floor above, the floors below, PACU and our Cardiac tower are now COVID units. We've had patients transfer in and out of our unit due to their current COVID status'. Today I got a patient from a COVID+ floor who was deemed negative due to history of COPD and cardiac history. He presented to the ED yesterday due to shortness of breath/hypoxia and was put on 15 liters of O2. He was weaned down to 7L today (what he's on at home). He underwent chest Xray in ED which showed no significant change from CXR in November so was not candidate for CT Chest. He has a heavy productive cough - which he states is baseline. We gave him some suction for sputum.

Yesterday we transferred 2 patients out of our unit due to suspected COVID. 1 was mine.

Side note: we've only had 4 people pass away in my hospital from COVID. We currently have 36 vented.

 

[Sundog]

I agree that all animal cruelty is wrong, it’s why I don’t consume animal products. I support the huge movement against animal cruelty in industrial farming. I am glad for the animal cruelty laws which exist in the USA and most countries.

I’m not sure but I think by the ellipsis, you are equating domesticated dogs and cats, people’s pets, being snatched and tortured to death to the treatment of farm animals? I never understood this comparison. If I am misunderstanding you my apologies.

Since the coronavirus is believed to have started at one of these “wet markets” in China, it should be important to everyone.

Spoiler: Animal abuse described

Should festivals (I previously said Wuhan, but the yearly dog and cat festival is in Yulin) like this continue? Should families at a restaurant watch the dog they are about to eat boiled alive (they remove the collar first if it is a stolen pet), continually pushed back in the boiling pot while it screams until boiled alive? Or they watch it slowly blow torched to death with its legs tied behind it?

Most people do not openly celebrate the horrible abuse of animals, I just know of people who work against cruel treatment of animals. I believe most people balk at the extreme torture of any animal, not just dogs and cats.
I just read that one Chinese city, Shenzhen, became the first Chinese city to ban the eating of dogs and cats. Hurrah! So glad that some Chinese people disagree with this horrible tradition of suffering and want it stopped. I have hope!

Sometimes I don’t express myself very well, so I’ll let someone from China explain it to you:

Chinese city bans eating cats and dogs after coronavirus linked to wildlife meat

These are great developments, and people have to keep working toward animal rights in China. They will get there, but it is a long road. The concept of "companion animals" is relatively new to China. During Mao's years, people were starving in China, and having companion animals was something that only the "bourgeoisie" did.

Then around 15 years ago, incredible wealth existed in Chinese cities and companion animals became a thing for everyone, mostly ownership of dogs. But the cities are incredibly densely populated, as everyone knows, and there were too many dogs, at least where we lived in Beijing. And people found that they were difficult to keep dogs in their tight quarters, and soon they were abandoned. Dogs would gather in packs, a natural thing I guess with dogs, I had never seen it before. They would be running through the cities in packs. Then the authorities would round them up and truck them out of the cities, to what has historically been their fate in a country that has faced incredible starvation and of meat protein, which until recently was very rare, and still is for much of China.

So it will take time, and the newly created animal rights groups in China are working very hard. I have a friend who studied at Columbia and worked many years for fortune 500 companies, and then decided to move back to China and she opened a veterinarian clinic. She opened it in the embassy area of Beijing, as there were a lot of ex-pats working there from various countries (U.S., Britain, France, Australia, etc.) and at the time, there were no companion animal vets in the city. Graduates of vet schools in China were mainly farm animal vets. So she would hire them and train them on how to be vets for companion animals. It took her some time, but she developed a successful practice. She had her own pets, and when she went back to China after a long career in the U.S. as an M.B.A., she wanted to do this so that her own pets and others could get the kind of care she wanted them to have.

Through her, in China, I met others who work on animal rights. They have done amazing things, but there is still a long way to go.

 

[jjenny]

Top White House health official warns Americans NOT to go to the grocery store or pharmacy if it's not essential in next two weeks with coronavirus hotspots set to hit peak death rate in six to seven days

• Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said the next two weeks are essential to breaking through the outbreak
• Residents in Pennsylvania, Colorado and Washington, D.C. in particular are told that they must stay in place to prevent the outbreak from worsening
• She warned even grocery stores and pharmacies must be avoided if possible
• 
  Top White House health official warns Americans NOT to go to the grocery store if it's not essential | Daily Mail Online

Yep, we are not really in lock down, because people are still going to grocery stores, supermarkets, etc. And then people can't figure out how they are still getting infected. Well, you go out, you are exposed to a bunch of people, that's how. We are only now being told to cover face, we should have been told that from the start. Maybe we wouldn't have ended up in this predicament if authorities didn't tell public that masks don't help.

 

[gregjrichards]

Paedophile who raped boy, 12, is freed early after cellmate dies of coronavirus

Glenn Christie, 54, who is convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy, has been freed from the Massachusetts Treatment Centre in Bridgewater, USA after his cellmate died of Covid-19

Paedophile who raped boy, 12, is freed early after cellmate dies of coronavirus

Insanity @margarita25 The prisons should do everything possible to prevent prisoners getting coronavirus and of course they should receive medical care if they contract it. But they should not be freed under any circumstances just in case they catch it if they are paedophiles, sex offenders or have committed murder.

 

[jjenny]

Short answer: yes.

I'm an RN at a Denver METRO hospital. While my unit is currently "non-COVID" the floor above, the floors below, PACU and our Cardiac tower are now COVID units. We've had patients transfer in and out of our unit due to their current COVID status'. Today I got a patient from a COVID+ floor who was deemed negative due to history of COPD and cardiac history. He presented to the ED yesterday due to shortness of breath/hypoxia and was put on 15 liters of O2. He was weaned down to 7L today (what he's on at home). He underwent chest Xray in ED which showed no significant change from CXR in November so was not candidate for CT Chest. He has a heavy productive cough - which he states is baseline. We gave him some suction for sputum.

Yesterday we transferred 2 patients out of our unit due to suspected COVID. 1 was mine.

Side note: we've only had 4 people pass away in my hospital from COVID. We currently have 36 vented.

Then you might be eligible to sign for it.

 

[jjenny]

Paedophile who raped boy, 12, is freed early after cellmate dies of coronavirus

Glenn Christie, 54, who is convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy, has been freed from the Massachusetts Treatment Centre in Bridgewater, USA after his cellmate died of Covid-19

Paedophile who raped boy, 12, is freed early after cellmate dies of coronavirus

Insanity @margarita25 The prisons should do everything possible to prevent prisoners getting coronavirus and of course they should receive medical care if they contract it. But they should not be freed under any circumstances just in case they catch it if they are paedophiles, sex offenders or have committed murder.

He is probably already infected if he shared a cell with a guy who had it.

 

[Sundog]

Desperate Britons are putting their lives at risk by taking anti-malaria tablets in a 'misguided' attempt to fight Covid-19, experts warned last night. They dismissed claims by French researchers that the decades-old drugs could 'cure' patients and called a controversial study published last month that appeared to show benefits 'deeply flawed' and 'dangerous'.

The pills, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, were once commonly used to protect travellers from contracting malaria when abroad.

However, they are rarely prescribed for this use today – as the malaria parasites that cause the disease have become resistant to the drugs.

The treatment is also known to cause worrying side effects, including heart-rhythm problems that can lead to a sudden, fatal cardiac arrest.

SPECIAL REPORT: Forget Donald Trump's foolish tweets - malaria pills aren't the magic bullet | Daily Mail Online

It is the antibiotic that is coupled with hydroxychloroquine that is not indicated for patients with heart problems. So some doctors are using a different antibiotic (not the z-pac) that is safer for those particular patients. This isn't about Trump, it is about medicine that could have a therapeutic impact on the progress of the infection.

 

[BHughes]

In response to this and the earlier, detailed post about China's mitigation measures, all of it will come to naught if the wet markets in China are truly opening up again.
Bats, (if I recall, mainly fruit bats), were the reservoir for Ebola, too. It started with a little boy playing in a hollow tree trunk which was infested with bats and bat guano. It was near the Ebola River, hence the name. My source is Richard Preston's books, The Hot Zone and The Demon in the Freezer. Both were terrifying but IMO so interesting. Of course Ebola seemed too distant to be an actual threat to the US, until we wound up with several cases.
I read these both some time ago, way before Coronavirus. Ebola's method of transmission is very different than Coronavirus, but they both began with bat viruses making the leap to humans. I understand wet markets are a way of life in China, but if they are not eliminated it will all start over again, despite whatever means the Chinese government claims they are using to eradicate the virus.

Bats are the carrier of many virus because of their immune response which makes them ideal hosts. I agree the wet markets need to halt these sales because you never know what animal is infected with what UNTIL humans consume it. Other animals, like the pangolins, can get the virus from the bats and transfer to humans. I think pangolins are linked because they have similar strains compared to the SARS COV 2. Strong similarities still don't give the answer though. I'm sure more studying of the virus is needed for anyone to conclude how this virus was transfered from animals to humans. Bats were also in connection with SARS and MERS.

 

[KALI]

Rich people travel.
Rich people picked up virus and brought it home.
Not their fault. They did not know. My opinion.

Yale study: Connecticut’s first coronavirus cases have roots in Washington state, not foreign countries

[Edited for brevity]

A new study by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health shows that the vast majority of Connecticut’s first coronavirus cases have roots in Washington state, and that the danger of domestic travel has exceeded the danger of international travel since early- or mid-March.

“There’s so much transmission happening within the United States now that we really need to focus on what is happening within our own borders,” said lead researcher Nathan Grubaugh.

The study does not challenge the initial origin of the coronavirus — which is believed to have originated in Wuhan, China — but rather the virus’ route to Connecticut.

The study also points to a need for local responses to the virus, as opposed to international travel bans or restrictions. While officials were focused on monitoring international travel, the study suggests it was actually domestic travel that brought the virus to the state.

The researchers, led by Grubaugh, looked at the genetic code of the viruses in nine of Connecticut’s first cases. They then constructed what Grubaugh said is essentially a family tree, backtrack the viruses’ lineage.

Grubaugh said he and his team found that seven of the nine cases were “very similar” to viruses sequenced in Washington state. Although there’s some data still missing at this point, Grubaugh said it appears that the virus didn’t travel directly from Washington state, but instead first spread to states such as Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, before journeying into Connecticut.

Grubaugh’s team looked at travelers flying into Bradley, Boston Logan and John F. Kennedy airports, from five hot-spot countries and five hot-spot states. With that data, tempered by how accurately those hot spots were measuring their own outbreaks, the researchers created a “risk estimate” for how many infected people could have been flying into Connecticut.

And they found that, by early- to mid-March, “the risk shifted from international importations to domestic,” Grubaugh said. The research team believes that shift would be even more apparent if they had also accounted for train and car travel.

In follow-up studies, the researchers are looking at more recent coronavirus cases. So far, Grubaugh said, many of those cases appear to have roots in New York state.

“Now we’re seeing new ones that look to be introductions coming from New York,” Grubaugh said. “We’re getting that spillover coming in.”

The study’s implications bolster the argument for a domestic — not international — response to the coronavirus.

“We really need to focus on local surveillance and testing and isolating patients who are infected,” he said. “It needs to be a localized response."

This story has been updated.

Author: Emily Brindley can be reached at [email protected].

 

[Sundog]

Bats are the carrier of many virus because of their immune response which makes them ideal hosts. I agree the wet markets need to halt these sales because you never know what animal is infected with what UNTIL humans consume it. Other animals, like the pangolins, can get the virus from the bats and transfer to humans. I think pangolins are linked because they have similar strains compared to the SARS COV 2. Strong similarities still don't give the answer though. I'm sure more studying of the virus is needed for anyone to conclude how this virus was transfered from animals to humans. Bats were also in connection with SARS and MERS.

I recall reading that MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) was related to bats possibly infecting camels?

 

[gregjrichards]

US sets a grim global record with 1,497 virus dead in one day with almost half of those in NYC, as cases jump by 35,000 past 300,000 and deaths hit 8,500 as hospital corridors are littered with body bags

US sets a grim global record with 1,497 virus dead in one day with almost half of those in NYC | Daily Mail Online

I am really sorry for how much America is suffering. My heart breaks for every life lost.

 

[10ofRods]

My understanding is that that pangolin data isn't just a 'strong similarity.' These pieces of DNA are lengthy and specific, found in pangolin viruses - but now, for the first time, inserted into a fragment of bat virus.

It would be like a very long password with tons of special letters and unusual symbols suddenly popping up used by two neighbors.

 

[jjenny]

It is the antibiotic that is coupled with hydroxychloroquine that is not indicated for patients with heart problems. So some doctors are using a different antibiotic (not the z-pac) that is safer for those particular patients. This isn't about Trump, it is about medicine that could have a therapeutic impact on the progress of the infection.

That's not exactly accurate.
" Antimalarial drugs can cause ventricular arrhythmias, QT prolongation, and other cardiac toxicity, which may pose particular risk to critically ill persons. Given these serious potential adverse effects, the hasty and inappropriate interpretation of the literature by public leaders has potential to do serious harm. "
Use of Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Annals of Internal Medicine | American College of Physicians

 

[jjenny]

Rich people travel.
Rich people picked up virus and brought it home.
Not their fault. They did not know. My opinion.

Poor people travel too. US population in general just travels a lot.

 

[jjenny]

While we are talking about drugs that might or might not work, something that would have worked is if everybody had access to PPE and was encouraged to wear it. Instead people were discouraged from wearing masks, and claims were made that masks would actually hurt you instead of helping. And look at how covid spread. It's a respiratory virus, it's blatantly obvious people should have been told to wear masks in public. But instead of encouraging people to wear masks, authorities actually discouraged poeple.
I'd say that's pretty upsetting.

 

[gregjrichards]

It is the antibiotic that is coupled with hydroxychloroquine that is not indicated for patients with heart problems. So some doctors are using a different antibiotic (not the z-pac) that is safer for those particular patients. This isn't about Trump, it is about medicine that could have a therapeutic impact on the progress of the infection.

I don’t have a problem with a drug being used to see if it will help people who are in serious and life threatening situations under the care of medical professionals. My concern is about people believing it is a miracle cure based on positive statements an individual (who is not a doctor or medical expert) has said on tv and them potentially obtaining it online or by other means when they should not be taking it.