Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #55

[MsArk]

That's not a good sign. Is testing accessible where you live?

Yes. If I’m feeling like this in the morning I will get tested.

Edit. I’ve really done my best to be careful.

 

[otto]

Yes. If I’m feeling like this in the morning I will get tested.

Edit. I’ve really done my best to be careful.

Most people are very careful, but they are going out for groceries or to work. It is highly contagious, lives on many surfaces for up to 72 hours. It can come from the mail.

In 1918, the mayor of a town knew the virus was coming closer so he put "quarantine" signs on all roads into town even though no one was sick. The only person who came and left every day was the postman. Everyone in the town got sick. (ref:1918 Documentary posted earlier)

 

[Yvettea]

Thank you Otto. I am having a hard time falling back to sleep. My legs are killing me. I think I’m off the soak in a hot bath.

My legs are killing me too but I’ve never heard that as a symptom of CoVid other than the generic label body aches. My symptoms would fill a thread so I won’t list them. Just this one question. So many people of varying experience post here so someone may have heard of this. My skin feels like it’s burning hot but I don’t have a fever (tried two thermometers.) I don’t even feel like I’m running a fever, no sweating, none of the usual malaise of a fever, just skin that is hot to my touch.

Has anyone experienced this?

 

[otto]

My legs are killing me too but I’ve never heard that as a symptom of CoVid other than the generic label body aches. My symptoms would fill a thread so I won’t list them. Just this one question. So many people of varying experience post here so someone may have heard of this. My skin feels like it’s burning hot but I don’t have a fever (tried two thermometers.) I don’t even feel like I’m running a fever, no sweating, none of the usual malaise of a fever, just skin that is hot to my touch.

Has anyone experienced this?

Yes, I've read about muscle ache and skin rash.

Q&A on coronaviruses (COVID-19)

 

[otto]

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) – Symptoms

 

[Yvettea]

Yes, I've read about muscle ache and skin rash.

View attachment 246158

Q&A on coronaviruses (COVID-19)

View attachment 246160

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) – Symptoms

Very helpful links for symptoms. Thank you.

 

[otto]

Very helpful links for symptoms. Thank you.

I think the difficulty with identifying a common thread with symptoms is that no one really knows anything about this virus, so they're shooting in the dark. Loss of taste and smell, pinkeye, shortness of breath, skin rash. Who would look at those symptoms and think it has the same cause?

Scientist need to look deeper, find the common thread, and stop looking at the lazy option of repurposing other drugs that so far have shown no success.

 

[otto]

Eyes, nose, skin, taste/tongue, skeletal muscles, lungs, kidneys, digestive system, heart, liver, brain, blood - what doesn't the virus attack and what is at the core of our bodies that connects all this together?

Blood? That doesn't explain conjunctivitis (pinkeye) and loss of smell.

 

[Tripod]

I don't recall if I've mentioned this here already, but I had my husband basically shave all my hair off a week and a half or so ago. I really did. I've kept short hair for quite a while now, and it's gray, and I'm not quite the spring chicken I used to be, lol.
I just couldn't stand my hair anymore and went all the way, lol! Me and my buzz cut

 

[otto]

The virus gets close to USA President:

"Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary, Katie Miller, has tested positive for coronavirus. The president said during a roundtable Friday that "Katie" in Pence's office had tested, positive, and CBS News can confirm he was referencing the vice president's press secretary.
...

It's not clear when Miller, who is also the wife to top Trump aide Steven Miller, last interacted with the president or vice president, but CBS News can confirm she was within close proximity to the vice president."​

Pence press secretary Katie Miller tests positive for coronavirus

 

[HongKongPhooey]

Got my test results back early this afternoon--NEG. That was fast, and I live in a small rural area in VA. Now, what is going on with me? Though I don't have the cough or breathing issues, I have several of the other symptoms and they came on so quickly. Like a virus does. My Dr. says I still need to isolate 10 days from the start of the symptoms, then 3 days symptom-free.

So glad Sally! Feel better soon, whatever it is xX

 

[HongKongPhooey]

And if it ends badly he may have your Stylist on speed dial lol. Remind him your not spending money on anything else right now.

I am saving so much money on hair appointments it has seriously made me reconsider their value. £100 per month at least. I'm easily taking care of it at home as well.

 

[tresir2012]

How scared are you?

The stories are daunting. Young people dying of coronavirus seemingly everyday. How common is this, or do we just hear virtually every story of this type?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/

No national mortality data is available, which is remarkable but another story, so I go to Massachusetts mortality data.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-may-7-2020/download

And I ask, what is my risk of dying from Coronavirus? Age 57, no pre-existing condition.

From Massachusetts data, population 7 million, 4552 deaths, average age of death is 82, 98.3% with pre-existing conditions. Taking age group data, I broke it down the MA numbers with respect to risk based on pre-existing condition (PEC) or not.

Columns-
Age group
Reported deaths within the age group
% of total MA population that falls within each age group
Population of each age group
Calculated deaths in each age group with PEC
Calculated deaths in each age group without PEC
% chance of dying within age group with PEC
% chance of dying within age group without PEC
1 in x chance of dying within each age group with PEC
1 in x chance of dying within each age group without PEC

View attachment 246139

Since the chance of death percentages are so small, they can be hard to interpret, thus the "1 in x" chance columns. This is historical data up to today. If you are reading this, you are alive.
Since this is prior data, I would look at this as future risk going into the next five months, when deaths totals may double.

So how screwed am I? Well, age group 50-60 without PEC says I have a 0.0003% chance of ending up dead. Better yet, I'd say it is a 1 in 355,000 chance of dying. I'll take those odds.

If I had a pre-existing condition, I would start to get worried and take serious precautions. The odds of dying are still pretty low, but I would worry about a prolonged hospital stay and the potential for lasting damage (don't know this risk though).

The real danger is for those over 80 with around a 1% chance of catching CV and dying from it. Note, most won't catch it, but if you do, the outlook is much worse.

Ages from 0-20 have a much greater chance of dying from the seasonal flu.

Note that if you go to lengths to protect yourself, your odds improve.

These are numbers that should roughly represent the national story, but certainly there will be differences. If you think it is 10x worse somewhere else, then move a decimal point.

Pre-existing conditions come in many flavors, so this exercise doesn't represent a breakdown of individual risks.

The numbers also don't speak of permanent damage from coronavirus, but there is not much available information. My non-educated guess would be a large percentage of those with lasting effects were those on respirators. Certainly others issues have been reported but we don't have an idea of the prevalence, other than these issues are not very prevalent.

And it is just a thought exercise to put context into what general risk there is for age demographics in the context of the never ending onslaught of death totals.

I just realised if the deaths were also broken down by sex and race it could be even less of a risk.

 

[tmar]

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, China forces out foreign reporters

China correspondent Bill Birtles in Beijing
4 hrs ago
...
After 24 years reporting in China, Chris Buckley — a highly regarded and experienced foreign journalist — has been forced to leave the country he has devoted his career to amid a worsening crackdown on foreign media.

The Australian reporter for the New York Times left Beijing with his wife on Friday bound for Sydney after China's Government refused to renew his press card when it expired in mid-February while he was reporting in Wuhan.

He is the 19th foreign journalist expelled or forced to leave China in the past 12 months, and the second Australian.
...

 

[tmar]

Malaria drug touted by Trump for coronavirus fails another test

Gene Emery
1 day ago
...
The malaria treatment repeatedly championed by U.S. President Donald Trump as a "game changer" in the fight against the novel coronavirus has again failed to show a benefit in patients hospitalised with COVID-19, according to a study released on Thursday.

While the study being published in the New England Journal of Medicine had certain limitations, doctors reported that the use of hydroxychloroquine neither lessened the need for patients requiring breathing assistance nor the risk of death.

"We didn't see any association between getting this medicine and the chance of dying or being intubated," lead researcher Dr. Neil Schluger told Reuters in a telephone interview. "The patients who got the drug didn't seem to do any better."

 

[CeeCeeCat]

I am saving so much money on hair appointments it has seriously made me reconsider their value. £100 per month at least. I'm easily taking care of it at home as well.

Me too! Just before lockdown, I splurged on a good scalp treatment, shampoo and a hair mask - if I’m going to have Rapunzel-locks by the end of this, I might as well have shiny hair
I haven’t been to the hairdresser since February. Cutting my own fringe is a doddle and as it’s nearly summer, I can scoop my hair up and out of the way.

My eyebrows, on the other hand, ugh. I miss threading and I’m too short-sighted to attempt wielding the tweezers.

 

[tmar]

Trump officials reportedly dispute the US COVID-19 death toll, floating a far-fetched theory that hospitals may be inflating cases to get more funding

Ashley Collman
1 day ago
...

• President Donald Trump believes that the US coronavirus death count is being exaggerated, Axios reported Wednesday, citing unnamed senior administration officials.
• The sources said some of the president's aides believed that hospitals might be misdiagnosing patients with the novel coronavirus to get a 20% bonus from Medicare.
• Medicare is offering the bonus to hospitals treating coronavirus patients because they have had to postpone a lot of the normal care that contributes to a health system's revenue.
• Misdiagnosing a patient is fraud, and there is no public evidence to show hospitals have been abusing this system.
  Experts believe that the coronavirus death toll is being underreported, if anything.

USA Today reported.

Misdiagnosing a patient is fraud, and while no one in the administration has publicly leveled that accusation, a senior official told Axios he expected the president to start speaking publicly soon about his misgivings with the data.

There is no public evidence that hospitals have been abusing this system,
Dr. Scott Jensen, a physician and Minnesota senator, had suggested to Fox News' Laura Ingraham in early April that this was a possible "avenue" to securing more Medicare funds and that administrators might feel the pressure to diagnose run-of-the-mill pneumonia cases as coronavirus because of it.

 

[tresir2012]

Well - yes, but the virus would mostly or entirely spread among the unvaccinated - they will have made a decision to get CV-19.

For the rest of us, it seems likely that the vaccine will not provide 100% protection, but it will be close. One thing that it's predicted to do is to decrease severity in the few people who still get it. That's simply not as unlikely as it sounds, since we know that most people have either no symptoms or mild symptoms.

People don't understand vaccines, sadly. I do think people will change their minds once those of us who have the vaccines live to tell about it. At any rate, it will take some meditation and work on my part to deal with people who refuse to have vaccines.

Good luck to the unvaccinated because once the vaccine is widely available, the economy can open and the rest of us can go safely about the world.

While Oxford is making great progress and UK has secured a manufacturing partner in India for when the vaccine is through testing, their plan is to make about 20-40 million doses in the next year - enough for UK adults.

The vaccine that's furthest along is from SinoVac, in China. They plan 100 million doses within a year - so not enough even for China.

For those of us in the US, our researcher/manufacturer is Pfizer, which intends "millions" of doses by December/January - not nearly enough for 330 million Americans.

So most people reading here won't be getting that vaccine until sometime in 2021, if then - unless some governmental agency devotes resources to scaling up production in the U.S. I can't even imagine how they'll make decisions about who gets the "millions" that Pfizer is supposed to have available in the upcoming winter. Military? White House and Congress? Doctors and nurses? Essential workers next? Hotspots?

At any rate, I guess I'm resigning myself to not even having the opportunity for a vaccine before I age another couple of years. Fortunately, standard of care will surely improve.

End of the beginning for COVID-19 vaccines

^Article shows timelines for testing and production - there's a fourth one I didn't mention, another one in China with scant data on when it might have a vaccine ready.

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End of the beginning for COVID-19 vaccines
Copying the graphic from your link into my post for reference.

 

[gngr~snap]

Eyes, nose, skin, taste/tongue, skeletal muscles, lungs, kidneys, digestive system, heart, liver, brain, blood - what doesn't the virus attack and what is at the core of our bodies that connects all this together?

Blood? That doesn't explain conjunctivitis (pinkeye) and loss of smell.

Blood vessel function explains it.
Both are necessary to prevent the eye redness and the olfactory organ.
Moo

 

[gngr~snap]

I don't recall if I've mentioned this here already, but I had my husband basically shave all my hair off a week and a half or so ago. I really did. I've kept short hair for quite a while now, and it's gray, and I'm not quite the spring chicken I used to be, lol.
I just couldn't stand my hair anymore and went all the way, lol! Me and my buzz cut

Go you! I so want to do that! My new gray hair is wild and won't behave no matter what I do.
My son is supposed to be having his wedding in September. (We'll see)
I have to d I a mother son dance with him! I need a wig!!!
This hair... ugh!
Moo