Taking it to the Streets - Covid-19 #12

[Fragile Bird]

3 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I cut out a piece of a shop vac hepa filter and then folded a bandana around that, seems to work pretty well but it fogs my glasses up like a mofo.

I read a story that vacuum filters work really well to filter out particles, but the problem is they are very difficult to breathe through. 

[Fez]

On the vaccine front, this seems promising...

And further in the article,

Quote

The institute last week began a Phase I clinical trial involving 1,100 people. Crucially, next month it will begin a combined Phase II and Phase III trial involving another 5,000. Unlike any other vaccine project now underway, that trial is designed to prove effectiveness as well as safety.

ETA: This is the same group that said a couple weeks ago that they thought there could be a vaccine ready within 6 months. And was in talks with the British government to begin funding production in advance so that if the trials were successful distribution could begin immediately.

[Fragile Bird]

20 minutes ago, Fez said:

On the vaccine front, this seems promising...

And further in the article,

ETA: This is the same group that said a couple weeks ago that they thought there could be a vaccine ready within 6 months. And was in talks with the British government to begin funding production in advance so that if the trials were successful distribution could begin immediately.

These are the guys I posted about a couple of pages ago!

[JoannaL]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Found it.

 

Thank you! This is a really interesting study. It would mean that a high percentage of the population may have a kind of "background" immunity. If this proves to be true, that would explain the mild cases or the ones without any symptoms. Perhaps we all could just get the common cold more often (because the immunity does not last more than half a year or so) and get at last some protection against Covid-19. More studies have to be done to be sure though.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

These are the guys I posted about a couple of pages ago!

It does also have an answer to the question we were debating back then about what stage of trials they were in, saying that they're starting a combined phase 2 and phase 3 trial next month.

1 hour ago, JoannaL said:

Thank you! This is a really interesting study. It would mean that a high percentage of the population may have a kind of "background" immunity. If this proves to be true, that would explain the mild cases or the ones without any symptoms. Perhaps we all could just get the common cold more often (because the immunity does not last more than half a year or so) and get at last some protection against Covid-19. More studies have to be done to be sure though.

One complication would be that only a small percentage of colds are caused by a coronavirus (Wikipedia says 15%), and if there was any cross-immunity presumably it would be just from them.

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, williamjm said:

 

One complication would be that only a small percentage of colds are caused by a coronavirus (Wikipedia says 15%), and if there was any cross-immunity presumably it would be just from them.

Yes. 

I do wonder at the infection incidence of people with young children, whether it's lower or higher, whether the course of symptoms are milder or not, since children tend to be magnets for colds.

[felice]

3 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I cut out a piece of a shop vac hepa filter and then folded a bandana around that, seems to work pretty well but it fogs my glasses up like a mofo.

That means air is escaping at the top of the mask, which isn't ideal. Including a pipecleaner at the top that can be bent to match the shape of your nose can help. Or roll up some tin foil, if you don't have access to pipecleaners. Also, if you have more than one pair of glasses, some frames are better than others at working with the mask.

[Zorral]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/covid-19-death-toll-undercounted/?

Quote

 

In the early weeks of the coronavirus epidemic, the United States recorded an estimated 15,400 excess deaths, nearly two times as many as were publicly attributed to covid-19 at the time, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.

The excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — occurred during March and through April 4, a time when 8,128 coronavirus deaths were reported.

The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents. But in any pandemic, higher-than-normal mortality is a starting point for scientists seeking to understand the full impact of the disease. [....]

The analysis suggests that the deaths announced in the weeks leading up to April 4, based on reports from state public health departments, failed to capture the full impact of the pandemic. Those incomplete numbers were widely cited at a time when many states were making critical decisions about closing businesses and taking other actions to stem the spread of the virus.

The analysis also suggests that the death toll from the pandemic is significantly higher than has been reported, said Daniel Weinberger, a Yale professor of epidemiology and the leader of the research team. As of Sunday, more than 54,000 people had been killed by the novel coronavirus, according to numbers reported by state health departments and compiled by The Post.

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

9 hours ago, Ran said:

Found it.

 

Interesting, could be nothing, but it could also explain partly why 80% of cases are mild to asymptomatic. If there is some cross immunity to common cold covids which underlies quicker immune response in most people who get SARS-COV2 infected then that could be useful. You mentioned variolation previously. And while I think variolation with SARS-COV2 would be a really bad idea, variolation with common cold covids may have potential.

The cross reactivity of the Helper T cells is for a protein that is homologous across human covids, which does imply it is of limited use in a strong immune response. Because if a homologous part of a virus elicits a strong immune response then there will be good immunity to a variety of virus strains from a single infection event, and we know there is not strong cross immunity to common cold strains. And of course Helper T cells don't attack pathogens directly. Helper T cells activate and magnify the response of the actual virus killers: killer T cells, macrophages and B lymphocytes (antibody factories). But if these virus killer cells have no useful memory of SARS-COV2 then the Helper T reaction may not lead to any real action.

It's interesting, but not the silver bullet that vaccination will be if we get one.

[The Anti-Targ]

6 hours ago, Fez said:

Maybe its time to buy some stockings. I don't think I have any nylon right now.

I've been dual layering bandanas and folding them over twice when I go out, which means I have 8 layers of cloth between my nose/mouth and the outside air. The bandana cloth is pretty thin, but I'm hoping that having it layered that many times helps make it more effective.

Just remember, you are protecting others from yourself by wearing a mask, a bandana mask (and pretty much any other homemade mask) is not protecting you from others.

 

[Fez]

39 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Just remember, you are protecting others from yourself by wearing a mask, a bandana mask (and pretty much any other homemade mask) is not protecting you from others.

 

Not sure about that. Pretty sure I saw an article suggesting that cloth masks have maybe a 20% efficacy of protecting the wearer. Not great, but not nothing either. If I can bump that up to 30%, I'd absolutely do it. Still not great odds, but a big jump up.

[The Anti-Targ]

So, we have achieved elimination of the disease according to announcements today:

Quote

Covid-19 has currently been eliminated.

Asked about the low number of new cases, Bloomfield (DG of Min of Health) said: "That does give us confidence that we have achieved our goal of elimination."

However, he pointed out that elimination never meant getting new cases to zero – "but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from".

Elimination is different from eradication – whereby the virus is completely stamped out in New Zealand.

By contrast, elimination means the reduction of new Covid-19 cases to either zero, or a very low defined rate.

We are in day 1 of level 3 lockdown, which meant I was able to go to a local bakery and by croissants and scones. But frustratingly KFC is not open today even though they can be. McDs in some parts of the country have been doing ridiculous amounts of business with some McDs having people queue up at the drive thrus at 4AM.

 

[Jeor]

10 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So, we have achieved elimination of the disease according to announcements today:

Nice work from NZ. Even if there are a handful of new cases, to know exactly where they came from and be able to do the contact tracing will mean good control over the virus.

Hopefully Australia is not too far behind. May 11 will be an interesting day because that's when schools are supposed to start gradually reopening (at least in NSW), which will be a good indicator of peoples' confidence about this.

[The Anti-Targ]

Erratum: the elimination talk previously was a bit loose. The DG of health at today's press conference clarified that NZ has achieved it's goals under level 4 lockdown of working towards elimination. Which means we are on track to achieving elimination but not yet eliminated. I think they are confident we have eliminated community spread, which would be the key goal for level 4.

Level 3 should be getting several days in a row with no new confirmed cases if it's to be judged as achieving it's goals for working towards elimination. We are getting some odd numbers being officially reported with one day being -1 cases and other days having a low increase in total number of cases but a higher number of new cases. What happens is say 8 new people are detected with the virus or are classed as probable cases, but 5 people that were probable cases are ruled out. That means our case total only goes up by 3, but in reality 8 more people got the disease. Bot the total number of cases and number of new infections are important. But the number of new infections is more important because that tells us what is happening with infection right now (or rather 5-14 days ago when those people are most likely to have been infected).

[Fragile Bird]

Donald Trump claimsthat deaths are being over-counted as coronavirus deaths, just to make him look bad.

The NYT just released a story saying that NYC has 20,000 more deaths than normal that have not been included in coronavirus deaths.

[Jeor]

41 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Donald Trump claimsthat deaths are being over-counted as coronavirus deaths, just to make him look bad.

The NYT just released a story saying that NYC has 20,000 more deaths than normal that have not been included in coronavirus deaths.

Nothing surprises me about Trump, really. In fact, it would have surprised me if he hadn't said something twisted about the deaths.

Overall there have been higher death counts in cities than ones directly attributed to COVID-19, and I know there's been debate about the UK's statistic of in-hospital deaths. But to be honest, counting deaths due to COVID-19 is a very tricky business. How many of those deaths were "directly" attributable to the coronavirus (if such a judgement can indeed be made)? And then how many are deaths from pre-existing conditions (e.g. heart trouble) but the coronavirus just tipped them over the edge, when the same coronavirus in a healthy person would have been a non-fatal outcome? Hard to say, so I don't really know what to think of all those counts.

[DireWolfSpirit]

12 hours ago, felice said:

That means air is escaping at the top of the mask, which isn't ideal. Including a pipecleaner at the top that can be bent to match the shape of your nose can help. Or roll up some tin foil, if you don't have access to pipecleaners. Also, if you have more than one pair of glasses, some frames are better than others at working with the mask.

Also I've found simply getting used to breathing through my mouth, as opposed to through the nose, eliminated any fogging issues for me.

Lucky me I found a brand new unused respirator and two unused n95 masks tucked away in the corner of one of my work lockers. My hoarding ways, I'm sure that bag has been sitting untouched for at least a year. But was happy to find because the company is only handing out one crappy dust mask a week right now. I also have a couple large bandanas and a few homemade masks so I can alternate everything and keep stuff fairly hygienic. Am not looking forward to this type of routine going on until muggy weather though, at that point I will be beyond annoyed.

Fingers worrily crossed.

[ljkeane]

8 hours ago, Fez said:

Not sure about that. Pretty sure I saw an article suggesting that cloth masks have maybe a 20% efficacy of protecting the wearer. Not great, but not nothing either. If I can bump that up to 30%, I'd absolutely do it. Still not great odds, but a big jump up.

It depends what you mean by 20% efficiency. Most of the experts quoted in articles about making your own masks seem to be saying, yes, it's theoretically possible to catch the virus by breathing in droplets or whatever suspended in the air but you're far, far more likely to catch it by touching something, then touching your face. The concern with home made face masks is you might reduce your risk of the very unlikely event of breathing in enough of the virus to be infected but if you end up touching your face a lot to adjust the mask you're increasing the far more likely risk of infecting yourself via transfer from surfaces.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

It depends what you mean by 20% efficiency. Most of the experts quoted in articles about making your own masks seem to be saying, yes, it's theoretically possible to catch the virus by breathing in droplets or whatever suspended in the air but you're far, far more likely to catch it by touching something, then touching your face. The concern with home made face masks is you might reduce your risk of the very unlikely event of breathing in enough of the virus to be infected but if you end up touching your face a lot to adjust the mask you're increasing the far more likely risk of infecting yourself via transfer from surfaces.

 

I think masks are a bad idea for this specific reason. In one meeting last week I watched my coworkers each touch their masks like 10 plus times, and he's the real kicker, the masks they gave us are reversible, so people would take them off in their offices and forget which side they put on. When I was given mine I immediately saw this as a problem and marked one side, and told people to do the same, but most people dismissed it. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

25 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think masks are a bad idea for this specific reason. In one meeting last week I watched my coworkers each touch their masks like 10 plus times, and he's the real kicker, the masks they gave us are reversible, so people would take them off in their offices and forget which side they put on. When I was given mine I immediately saw this as a problem and marked one side, and told people to do the same, but most people dismissed it. 

I saw an older couple walk to the supermarket entrance with face masks dangling round their necks. Plus plenty of couples where one wears a mask but the other isn’t.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone remove their mask in order to cough.