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Covid-19 #15 : It Ain't Over Until It's Over


Fragile Bird

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4 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

 

Apologies, I was in mobile and it's difficult to edit stuff with my thick fingers. I edited it now

Well, the authors believe it might be an error. But if the samples are not contaminated it might be telling us something.

From what I understood, PCR are sensitive to parts of the RNA sequence, not to the whole one. This creates the possibility of cross-reaction with something else. It's not MERS, neither other human-coronaviriae. But then what?

Hopefully the researchers will try to sequence the amplified samples and get something out of them. Maybe also check the medical records of nearby hospitals in the hope to find something that matches.

Someone here was also working in a covid-related research with wastewater, so he/she might be interested in chiming in. @Impmk2

 

Haven't had a long time to look at that paper, though hopefully should get some time today. It's interesting they're using the same viral concentration method we are (PEG6000), we've been getting some grief over that as most are using a filtration based method.

Yeah, I'm doubtful about the March 2019 hit, betting it's a false positive. It's a very late, weak hit with only 2/5 of their diagnostic panel. You're right, there's nothing stopping them sequencing, so personally I wouldn't publish that without checking at least those portions of the viral genome first - both to check it is SARS-COV-2, and to check it isn't identical to anything else they have floating around in the lab (controls etc). 

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13 hours ago, Toth said:

Yeah, earlier on I heard someone comment that we are already getting our ass handed to us by an easy-mode pandemic (especially in how the failings of our education systems gets highlighted by so much stupid swirling vocally through the ether). If this turns out to be the warm-up boss for the zombie apocalypse, we are screwed...

I am now convinced that the people who THINK they are best prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse are in reality the LEAST prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse.  Instead, the survivors of the next ZA or ebola or whatever will be a bunch of weedy kindergarten teachers, librarians, and Cat Rescue ladies who spend all their time washing their hands and avoiding social contact with the outside world.

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Speaking of the HIV pandemic. I was curious to see the death toll in the USA for historic comparison.

The Wikipedia says 700,000 deaths in the USA since the disease was first recognised. It peaked at ~42,000 deaths in 1995. The wiki also says about 13,000 people with AIDS die every year in the USA. That seems quite high for a disease that the media keeps telling me is no longer a death sentence because of the very effective therapies that are available. Is this an indication that the therapies are not as effective as we have been told, or are these deaths among people who can't afford the therapies and so just die of AIDS the same as back in the bad old days?

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3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Speaking of the HIV pandemic. I was curious to see the death toll in the USA for historic comparison.

The Wikipedia says 700,000 deaths in the USA since the disease was first recognised. It peaked at ~42,000 deaths in 1995. The wiki also says about 13,000 people with AIDS die every year in the USA. That seems quite high for a disease that the media keeps telling me is no longer a death sentence because of the very effective therapies that are available. Is this an indication that the therapies are not as effective as we have been told, or are these deaths among people who can't afford the therapies and so just die of AIDS the same as back in the bad old days?

The 2nd one. HIV is manageable in most cases if you can afford the therapies. 

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16 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

The 2nd one. HIV is manageable in most cases if you can afford the therapies. 

That's unconscionable! Up to 13,000 preventable deaths per year purely from inability to afford the necessary therapeutics that are readily available. But worse still almost 1 million deaths globally right now, still in the top 15 causes of death globally. Why isn't this still much more in the public eye?... Silly question, it's gays and poor countries that are suffering, obviously that's not worth talking about.

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Just to follow up my earlier post on the paper up thread. Having had a bit more of a look at the paper and discussed it with a few colleagues. We're all of the opinion that the March 2019 hit is almost certainly a false positive, it's probably been included in the paper only to grab headlines and boost the profile of the publication. Otherwise the paper is utterly unremarkable, and it's very light on detail of their actual methodology. Actually it pisses me off a little. 

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's unconscionable! Up to 13,000 preventable deaths per year purely from inability to afford the necessary therapeutics that are readily available. But worse still almost 1 million deaths globally right now, still in the top 15 causes of death globally. Why isn't this still much more in the public eye?... Silly question, it's gays and poor countries that are suffering, obviously that's not worth talking about.

I am not sure that is the right way to read these statistics. Although the CDC website says there were 15,820 deaths among adults and adolescents diagnosed with HIV in 2018, it also says "These deaths may be due to any cause." That doesn't sound to me like they are just counting deaths due to "opportunistic infections" which would not kill someone who did not have a compromised immune system. Precisely because we have the medications that allow people to live with HIV as a chronic disease, we are now at the point where the majority of people living with HIV in the USA are over 50 years old. (New infections tend to be among the young, but so many have survived decades now that the young are no longer the majority of all of those living with HIV.)  Many of those deaths may be due to the increased risk of cardiovascular disease that persons with HIV have, or even other issues that aren't related to their HIV at all. As the American Heart Association says, we still need a lot more research on the health consequences of living with HIV for a long time even when the drugs prevent a collapse of the immune system.

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/06/03/as-hiv-patients-live-longer-heart-disease-might-be-their-next-challenge

 

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2 minutes ago, Ormond said:

I am not sure that is the right way to read these statistics. Although the CDC website says there were 15,820 deaths among adults and adolescents diagnosed with HIV in 2018, it also says "These deaths may be due to any cause." That doesn't sound to me like they are just counting deaths due to "opportunistic infections" which would not kill someone who did not have a compromised immune system. Precisely because we have the medications that allow people to live with HIV as a chronic disease, we are now at the point where the majority of people living with HIV in the USA are over 50 years old. (New infections tend to be among the young, but so many have survived decades now that the young are no longer the majority of all of those living with HIV.)  Many of those deaths may be due to the increased risk of cardiovascular disease that persons with HIV have, or even other issues that aren't related to their HIV at all. As the American Heart Association says, we still need a lot more research on the health consequences of living with HIV for a long time even when the drugs prevent a collapse of the immune system.

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/06/03/as-hiv-patients-live-longer-heart-disease-might-be-their-next-challenge

 

It's tricky quoting the Wiki I guess. I did make sure to see whether the Wiki said deaths in people with HIV infection or deaths from AIDS. They are very different but related things. If a publication says "death from AIDS" it means AIDS was the principle cause of death. The Wiki said AIDS not HIV. If CDC says HIV then the Wiki is misquoting. Similar to death from COVID-19 vs death while SARS-COV-2 infection is present.

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4 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Just to follow up my earlier post on the paper up thread. Having had a bit more of a look at the paper and discussed it with a few colleagues. We're all of the opinion that the March 2019 hit is almost certainly a false positive, it's probably been included in the paper only to grab headlines and boost the profile of the publication. Otherwise the paper is utterly unremarkable, and it's very light on detail of their actual methodology. Actually it pisses me off a little. 

Thanks for  your replies, very much appreciated.

One of the things it bugs me by reading around, is that SARS-COV-2 appeared in its "final form" in Wuhan and has mutated very little since the earliest identified samples. This is unlike SARS and MERS where mutation chains were clearly identified. It is also not expected to happen in zoonotic events where a period of adaptation to the human hosts need to occur. The only possibility is the virus has been circulating undetected earlier than the official timeline and acquired its most virulent traits in Wuhan around November.

For example, there is quite a certainty that the virus was circulating in Europe in December 2019, however it didn't create a large outbreak, or it did but it wasn't detected due to lower virulence (?).  There are cases of COVID-19-like illness in November 2019 and the French claim that their team came back from Wuhan with some sickness late October. I have in my bookmarks some suspicious pneumonia outbreaks around the world in the second half of 2019 and IIRC @The Anti-Targ was reporting very early in these threads of a pneumonia epidemic in Iran of unknown origins. I didn't believe him at first but now I'm far more inclined to listen.

So,I think countries really need to look back and check medical records, blood samples and environmental monitors to look for suspicious signals. Maybe veterinarians should also have a look too.

In the future, there is certainly a need to improve the virus monitoring systems, there is a high chance that this one slipped right under our noses/

 

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6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's unconscionable! Up to 13,000 preventable deaths per year purely from inability to afford the necessary therapeutics that are readily available. But worse still almost 1 million deaths globally right now, still in the top 15 causes of death globally. Why isn't this still much more in the public eye?... Silly question, it's gays and poor countries that are suffering, obviously that's not worth talking about.

We shouldn't discard the bold. We have seen that in the COVID pandemic. As long as it was confined to China, everybody was just shrugging it off. Etc.

Incidentally, I met in my past life (it almost feels so) someone who was working with AIDS patients of neglected social segments. They aren't just the gays we always like to talk about who had an unlucky night. No, they are often drug addicts, trans and street sex workers. Their health, psychological, social and general human problems are on different scales which makes them very difficult to work with. The nurse I met was working in a house for those inpatients and robbery, escapes, fights, assaults, suicide attempts and even murder were unfortunately too frequent.  The people who we all prefer to ignore they exist.

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1 hour ago, rotting sea cow said:

We shouldn't discard the bold. We have seen that in the COVID pandemic. As long as it was confined to China, everybody was just shrugging it off. Etc.

Incidentally, I met in my past life (it almost feels so) someone who was working with AIDS patients of neglected social segments. They aren't just the gays we always like to talk about who had an unlucky night. No, they are often drug addicts, trans and street sex workers. Their health, psychological, social and general human problems are on different scales which makes them very difficult to work with. The nurse I met was working in a house for those inpatients and robbery, escapes, fights, assaults, suicide attempts and even murder were unfortunately too frequent.  The people who we all prefer to ignore they exist.

Yes, I should have acknowledged those other "disposable" members of society that polite company doesn't talk about.

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13 minutes ago, Fez said:

I sure hope this doesn't backfire at all...

I wonder if other countries will start doing this and what the ramifications will be.

Very doubtful most other countries would dare do such a thing.

Hope it works out for the soldiers, being turned into guinea pigs... 

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Obviously, this was China's grand plan all along.  They had the vaccine ready before they released their virus on the world and now their Covid-immune armies will sweep across the world as the other nation's armies huddle in their homes too sick to fight back.

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4 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

well I guess thats one way we will find out quicker if it really is safe and works.    well we would if China was more open with their data sharing.

The potential problem with that is that if China are being honest about the number of cases they have then the soldiers might not be exposed to the virus in the first place so we don't learn anything about whether the vaccine would offer any protection.

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28 minutes ago, williamjm said:

The potential problem with that is that if China are being honest about the number of cases they have then the soldiers might not be exposed to the virus in the first place so we don't learn anything about whether the vaccine would offer any protection.

Well we might not know if it's effective with an honest China, But we might have learnt about side effects.  I suspect if there are any nasty supprises we are not going to be told.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

Well we might not know if it's effective with an honest China, But we might have learnt about side effects.  I suspect if there are any nasty supprises we are not going to be told.

 

 

I think it’s a joint project between a Canadian company and a Chinese company, so I sure the hell hope they share data!

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A couple of not so great headlines I saw today:

US CDC thinks the virus is so deep into the US population that there is no hope of controlling it. So, what now? Just open up and try to pretend like things are normal? Some measure of control is going to be needed to minimise the extent to which the health system gets overwhelmed. But it sounds like that level of pessimism coming out of CDC means an overwhelmed health system may be unavoidable?

New 'flu strain found in people working on pig farms and slaughterhouses in China, possible human to human spread. May be sufficiently distinct from current vaccine strains as to not have any cross-immunity (unlike 2009 swine 'flu strain). So in normal years this could potentially be a pandemic strain. In this COVID year, hopefully with travel blocks in place already, the strain will burn out in China and not reach beyond its borders and / or the strain will be incorporated into the vaccine cocktail before it goes beyond China.

Good that China appears to be a lot more transparent about this possible new 'flu strain. But that is probably only "thanks" to SARS-COV-2 and China being less transparent than they should have been with that virus.

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9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

New 'flu strain found in people working on pig farms and slaughterhouses in China, possible human to human spread. May be sufficiently distinct from current vaccine strains as to not have any cross-immunity (unlike 2009 swine 'flu strain). So in normal years this could potentially be a pandemic strain. In this COVID year, hopefully with travel blocks in place already, the strain will burn out in China and not reach beyond its borders and / or the strain will be incorporated into the vaccine cocktail before it goes beyond China.

Not only that. All preventive measures that most of the (reasonable) world population is taking against COVID-19 will also help to prevent the Flu (masks, social distancing, washing hands and so on). If things continue that way, I predict a very mild flu season the coming winter. In some South American countries, the health authorities consider SARS-CoV-2 the only circulating virus around. How are things in that respect in N. Zealand?

 

 

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