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COVID-19 #13 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Disease


Mr. Chatywin et al.

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With all of these super-early cases stretching back to November, it seems the likeliest explanation is that COVID-19 somehow mutated into a much more transmissible and/or deadly form over the New Year. I can't think of any other reason why these early cases wouldn't have resulted in epidemics, especially considering it was winter in the northern hemisphere.

If so, that's a concerning sign for a vaccine. Coronaviruses supposedly don't mutate all that much, but this might be evidence that COVID-19 has already done it once.

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1 hour ago, Jeor said:

With all of these super-early cases stretching back to November, it seems the likeliest explanation is that COVID-19 somehow mutated into a much more transmissible and/or deadly form over the New Year. I can't think of any other reason why these early cases wouldn't have resulted in epidemics, especially considering it was winter in the northern hemisphere.

yes

it also raises questions about the possible origins

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3 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

Hang on. I'm no doctor but scans reveal forms of pneumonia, not what caused the pneumonia. There's no way to be absolutely certain that this was Covid-19 with a simple scan, is there?

This being said, it's true there were some very weird flu/-cold-like infections going around the Parisian area through December-January, with symptoms that included shortness of breath. In fact, it's very anecdotal but when I caught the Covid for certain in March the first thing I wondered was whether I could have had it since January.

I have no idea what it all might mean. It does suggest mutation.
I rmember one article somewhere in which a specialist explained that the coronavirus was here to stay, that like the flu it would become a seasonal disease. I think this is what we can expect.

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3 hours ago, Jeor said:

With all of these super-early cases stretching back to November, it seems the likeliest explanation is that COVID-19 somehow mutated into a much more transmissible and/or deadly form over the New Year. I can't think of any other reason why these early cases wouldn't have resulted in epidemics, especially considering it was winter in the northern hemisphere.

If so, that's a concerning sign for a vaccine. Coronaviruses supposedly don't mutate all that much, but this might be evidence that COVID-19 has already done it once.

Wouldn't the more optimistic (no idea if its more likely) explanation be that this is another sign, along with the mass serological tests in NYC, and the various reports of things like "90% of this prison/homeless/other defined population tested positive positive but almost none show symptoms", that perhaps there really are many, many more mild/asymptomatic cases than realized? So the virus was starting to spread back in November/December, and where we thought we were in late February is actually where we were back then?

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4 minutes ago, Fez said:

Wouldn't the more optimistic (no idea if its more likely) explanation be that this is another sign, along with the mass serological tests in NYC, and the various reports of things like "90% of this prison/homeless/other defined population tested positive positive but almost none show symptoms", that perhaps there really are many, many more mild/asymptomatic cases than realized? So the virus was starting to spread back in November/December, and where we thought we were in late February is actually where we were back then?

It's a more optimistic view, but if so, where were all the acute, hospitalised cases back then? Surely even if there were lots of mild or asymptomatic cases back in November/December, a certain percentage of them should have been deadly and raised the alarm. It seems weird that it could have incubated for months before then suddenly turning into a deadly disease, and if that was the case, then that would probably just bring us back to the idea that COVID-19 was harmless at first but mutated into something worse. Which has frightening implications for a vaccine. (But also holds out hope it could mutate to something more harmless).

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Just now, Jeor said:

It's a more optimistic view, but if so, where were all the acute, hospitalised cases back then? Surely even if there were lots of mild/asymptomatic cases back in November/December, a certain percentage of them should have been deadly. It seems weird that it could have incubated for months before then suddenly turning into a deadly disease, and if that was the case, then that would probably just bring us back to the idea that COVID-19 was harmless at first but mutated into something worse.

Misdiagnosis? If that percentage is low enough that when the population of infected people is small enough, I'd think it would be easy for the number of critical cases to be misdiagnosed as pneumonia from other cases. There are a certain number of people who do need ventilators for other issues after all. And if this scenario did happen, and major hospitals were only seeing a few extra cases, it might not be that hard for health care providers to assume it was just a really bad flu season or that some other normal thing was happening.

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It’s a fucking mad house out there today. I suppose VE Day, plus beautiful weather, plus cabin fever, plus hints the lockdown was going to be loosened tomorrow was always going to result in chaos. But there’s a street party going on outside. I despair. 

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15 minutes ago, Fez said:

Misdiagnosis? If that percentage is low enough that when the population of infected people is small enough, I'd think it would be easy for the number of critical cases to be misdiagnosed as pneumonia from other cases. There are a certain number of people who do need ventilators for other issues after all. And if this scenario did happen, and major hospitals were only seeing a few extra cases, it might not be that hard for health care providers to assume it was just a really bad flu season or that some other normal thing was happening.

Yeah, that's possible - hospitals could have assumed it was flu/pneumonia. I would still think the chances of some hospital picking it up as a new virus would have happened though if it had been circulating for months and causing deaths.

Australia is starting to open up now, although quite cautiously. Keeping international travel ban on which is good. The next month or so will be interesting to see if we've really got a hold of this thing or whether it'll start spiking again. A small spike would be manageable (in the sense that our hospitals have now had time to ramp up and prepare) so wouldn't be a cause for immediate alarm, but it will probably take weeks to know for sure.

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It's also possible that a less infectious "original" strain also led to fewer severe cases.

I know infectiousness and lethality are not necessarily correlated in viruses/diseases, but maybe in this case they were.

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24 minutes ago, Fez said:

Misdiagnosis? If that percentage is low enough that when the population of infected people is small enough, I'd think it would be easy for the number of critical cases to be misdiagnosed as pneumonia from other cases. There are a certain number of people who do need ventilators for other issues after all. And if this scenario did happen, and major hospitals were only seeing a few extra cases, it might not be that hard for health care providers to assume it was just a really bad flu season or that some other normal thing was happening.

Of course is possible that it was misdiagnosed, but the number must remain below a certain threshold before alarms start to ring. This goes against our current understanding of the disease, because, after what we witnessed in Italy, Spain, etc, it is difficult to imagine an scenario where you have this virus circulating and keeping the hospitalizations low enough to not raise eyebrows.

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1 hour ago, rotting sea cow said:

Yes, I think the same, but how is possible we still don't know that?

While I am sure that some part of why we "don't know things yet" about Covid-19 is from the malfeasance of certain governments, surely most of the explanation is simply that good science takes time, and it's only been a bit over FOUR MONTHS since China reported "pneumonia of unknown cause" to the World Health Organization. The name Covid-19 was only created on February 11. Let us not forget how quickly all this developed. 

Real life is not an episode of a TV show. Finding out all we need to know just couldn't possibly happen in just four months and eight days.

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18 minutes ago, Ormond said:

While I am sure that some part of why we "don't know things yet" about Covid-19 is from the malfeasance of certain governments, surely most of the explanation is simply that good science takes time, and it's only been a bit over FOUR MONTHS since China reported "pneumonia of unknown cause" to the World Health Organization. The name Covid-19 was only created on February 11. Let us not forget how quickly all this developed.

It was a bit of rhetorical question actually, because I know all of that.

Still. if there was a less contagious, less dangerous strains circulating before, what the heck happened in Wuhan in December that suddenly became nasty?  Why are we so sure it started there?

If there is no other strains, what factors made the only strain we know to become a global threat.

Aren't there warning systems in place to check for novel circulating viruses? Reportedly at least few infected reached the hospitals. No attempts were made to identify the virus?

Why are too many people seemingly immune? Is it related?

ETA: Of course assuming that the reports are correct and the virus (or a strain of it) was circulating late last year. This is still not certain.

 

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3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Hang on. I'm no doctor but scans reveal forms of pneumonia, not what caused the pneumonia. There's no way to be absolutely certain that this was Covid-19 with a simple scan, is there?

This being said, it's true there were some very weird flu/-cold-like infections going around the Parisian area through December-January, with symptoms that included shortness of breath. In fact, it's very anecdotal but when I caught the Covid for certain in March the first thing I wondered was whether I could have had it since January.

I have no idea what it all might mean. It does suggest mutation.
I rmember one article somewhere in which a specialist explained that the coronavirus was here to stay, that like the flu it would become a seasonal disease. I think this is what we can expect.

This thing was going around Canada too in November/ December. I caught some  type of mild flu or cold late in December and the damn thing would not leave me. My daughter kept telling me to see a doctor about it as she said I had pneumonia symptoms including shortness of breath. I am fine now but I have to say I only just shook it off  completely last week.

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2 hours ago, Hereward said:

But there’s a street party going on outside. I despair. 

Yeah, same here. All the talk of what the government's going to do about lockdown is a little beside the point with the pretty clear decline in social distancing that's been going the last few weeks. What the government needs is a plan for how they're going to manage the situation as people take it into their own hands.

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Harvesting, is what they call it; it's already happening, but now it will go into hyperdrive, since here in the USA this is what we want: no tests, no testing, no tracking, no tracing, no medical supplies except those that the private crony corruption has created, and they don't work.

There was a big announcement in NYC that bloomb was going to finance and direct a big tracking-tracing taskforce and agency, but that has utterly disappeared.  Instead, the mayor has chosen to remove the epidemiology for tracking and tracing from its traditional part in the City Health Agency and do ... what with it?  He announced this today, and it makes no fracking sense, particularly since this effort has been handled so well in NYC by the Agency for HIV, ebola and many other diseases.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/08/care-home-residents-harvested-left-to-die-uk-government-herd-immunity

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19056405

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