The Coronavirus

[pbrower2a]

(05-04-2020, 10:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-04-2020, 02:43 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-04-2020, 02:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Maybe, we will have significantly advanced in our overall capabilities by the time the 2nd wave hits and it won't be that big of a deal. Hint. The crisis shouldn't be a time for trial and error these days. In the past yes but not today.

The crisis should be a time of trial and error.  It should not be a time for idle hope or wishful thinking.  It should not be a time of hoping we will return to the unraveling which will last forever.  

There is part of the population that wants to pretend no problem exists, and the problem will just go away with no dire changes.  They have believed in small government, low taxes, low domestic spending, and that if you believe hard enough that problems don’t exist they will magically disappear.  I have been saying for decades that such world views and values will not change until there is some major disaster.  I commonly give Atlanta in the Civil War or Hiroshima in World War II as examples.  How many deaths will COVID 19 have to cause before it will have the required effect?  How much will it take to open eyes determinedly closed?

Determine a plan to go back to your job or any job safely.  Apply to your governor to put that plan in place.  See if he will let you.  Don't just gripe and wish.  To sit and do nothing is to have people die.

I don’t anticipate a return to the past.  There are problems that will in time bite you in the rear if you don’t solve them.  These problems have been proven to exist.  Wishful thinking won’t make them go away.

Are you looking at as the culmination or the beginning/trigger? Bob, did American life stop after Pearl Harbor or did Americans still have social gatherings, sports events, go to movies, go out to diner, celebrate Christmas together, watch parades on 4th July, go to bars and so forth during the entire war that followed. COVID19 is a short term problem that's already in the process of ending and we are going through the worst of it right now. The first wave will be the worst and we will be ready and fully prepared for the 2nd come fall. The trial and error is underway and will produce a variety of treatments based on and eventually a vaccine. We want our lives back. I anticipate a return to the past and I expect to be able to be eating at a restaurant with the family or a bar with friends again. The economic aftermath/fallout will be what the crisis will be mainly about in my opinion.

COVID-19 compels many of us to do much that defines us as human. Religious services, rites of passage, holidays... it takes the fun and meaning out of much. It would certainly mess up the traditional wedding and honeymoon even if a pair were able to date... virtually, of course. If the disease does not kill us it can do lasting damage.

What you say about COVID-19 is at best a guess. This respiratory infection has broken the rules by being both unusually severe and unusually easy to spread. Yes, what Americans are being asked to give up is much more extensive than the list of things that Americans had to give up (like pleasure travel and constraints on food and motor fuels) during WWII. As for your description of 'short-term problems' -- is death short-term? People can get life-compromising ailments that hobble their careers, and that is somethng to contemplate for economic impact as well.

I would like to believe that this infernal disease will make one short-term pass over Humanity and die out because it runs out of people to infect. But we must make choices between a 1930's economy and mass death on the scale of the influenza pandemic of a century ago. One difference between the influenza pandemic of a century ago and this one is that the older one happened during the early phase of a 3T and that this one happens when a large majority of Americans are in a 4T mode. In a 4T more people are well-disciplined enough to not do something stupid. In a 3T, hedonism prevails.

When this infernal epidemic is over, certain aspects of life will be back to normal. If we be lucky we will have an safe and effective vaccine to inoculate those who never got the first wave of COVID-19. We will be able again to travel in mass conveyances that make economic life in our giant cities possible again. We will again attend religious services, celebrate weddings in style, and do funerals with dignity possible with dozens instead than with fewer than ten (including the minister and the funeral director). 

This year we cannot celebrate the 75th anniversary of the defeat of the Devil's Reich as is usual in London, Paris, an Moscow -- or in plenty of locations in America. 

I look at some of the anti-shutdown rallies (and yes, the participants typically have the ideological shtick associated with the Tea Party, gun-rights, and MAGA crowds) and see behavior that makes people vulnerable to COVID-19. The schmucks! Our very President has urged people to challenge Democratic politicians who have issued state lockdowns. It may be paradoxical that the limits of size of meetings makes anti-Trump protests difficult. Stopping the spread of COVID-19 is more important to me, as someone in the near-old category, than is going out to protest the sick policies of the President on this and other issues.

We will discover what is safe and what isn't. If we can go for walks we should be able to go for hikes. If we can go out on boats, then we should be able to fish -- and hunt. That includes, for those who most appreciate gun rights for allowing one of their favorite activities... hunting!

70,000 deaths in America alone (which is higher on average than our usual toll in vehicle-related deaths) and people still contacting a disease that kills (so far) about 5% of those who contract it and is fiendishly expensive to treat (there goes the deficit!) for those with slow recoveries. Ideally the adults are in charge -- but Donald Trump is no adult.

[pbrower2a]

(05-05-2020, 01:47 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-05-2020, 11:09 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-05-2020, 09:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The Tea Party never had much appeal to youth...

I agree pretty much with what you say.  The moderates who have been swinging back and forth in the unravelling are also swinging again.  The idea that you should leave neither party in power to long, let neither ideology take hold in power, may end as the Republicans have totally discredited themselves.  Their lack of serving the people, their service to the elites and corporations, their unwillingness to confront problems, have become obvious.  The Tea Party is shrinking.  It is quite possible we will have a crisis heart plus high and awakening making up a new progressive era.  Even the self centered greed of the next unraveling should be built on the baseline of the culture the civics are theoretically about to create.

But right now the conservatives are still expecting a return to the last unraveling.  There have not yet been enough deaths for many of them to embrace a new normal.  

Never fear.  The conservatives are working on it.

Are we now like the closing pitcher in a baseball game facing the team’s most feared slugger(s) in the bottom of the ninth with game on the line?

It is worse. You are the closing pitcher and you have inherited a 3-0 count with the bases loaded and nobody out against a batter who will foul off pitches until he gets the pitch that he can easily hit for a single that can tie the game... or in the event that he gets a horrible pitch easy to hit he might hit a double or home run that turns a lead into a quick loss. If you throw ball four to him he takes a trip to first base and a run scores. Your team still leads, but by only one run, and the opposing team has another such hitter that pitchers prefer to face with nobody on base. 

Say what you want, but it is a hitter like Rod Carew who gets on base a lot who makes a Reggie Jackson all the more dangerous.

......................

We do not quite have the unity necessary for meeting a clear and present danger well. You can say all that you want about someone like Barack Obama being better suited for the role. Obama is far more like FDR or Lincoln than is Donald Trump, but even his wisdom is out of the question for formulating policy because the infantile personality who now takes the role of Top Leader treats him as a pariah for having mocked the current President's "birther" stuff.   Anybody else would see Obama as a treasure for the time. Trump's waste of a competent predecessor to soothe his delicate ego is itself a disgrace.

If voters do not treat Trump appropriately in November (and yes, his dithering has caused nothing but harm) then historians will judge the American people of our time harshly.

As it is we can deal with COVID-19 piecemeal to the benefit of states with Governors wise enough to do right if the others pay the price in mass death.

[Classic-Xer]

(05-05-2020, 03:02 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: My father during his lifetime refused to buy a German or Japanese car.  As he saw it, they stole four years of his life.  They didn’t deserve his money.  He had just finished just before Pearl Harbor taking a course teaching him how to fix telephones.  In the war, guess what, he wound up in the Signal Corps fixing telephones.  (The course they gave him on entering the Signal Corp was the exact same course as he took in civilian life.)  During his first day on the job in the army at R.O.T.C. Carnage Tech, they gave him an extra corporal’s stripe because the cadets didn’t listen to privates, and told him to go watch a Pirates game.  So, yes, in some ways American life went on.  He turned in his hours, then he was in the middle of a big city.  Not so much after he was transferred to Italy, but still he had his chances.

But the stock market crash was different from the three military triggers and was different from the Coronavirus.  Different problems effect different people and have different solutions.  Do you expect each crisis to be a duplicate of one before?  If crisis wars were made obsolete by nukes, were you expecting the same response as to a crisis war?  Where did that come from?

You really ought to read S&H for comprehension.  Past crises changed America greatly.  We didn’t go back and didn’t want to go back.  I am projecting that something similar will happen again.

Conservatives generally don’t want change, but guess what is to be expected in a crisis?

So, I am looking at both the beginning and the result.

I view change as part of life. You say that we seem to want to go back to the 3T. It's true, if we be 4T there's no turning back because turning back will only make matters even worse for most this time. I have been saying that our people want to get back to their regular lives and they understand that the only way to do that is by moving forward and coaxing liberal governors to stop stalling and get the lead out so to speak. Time matters and every on the the right understands the relevance of not taking our sweet time about getting the country/economy back on track.

Life in America went on during World War II. My mom met my dad met at a high school dance during World War II. My dad and mom played sports and hung out with their friends during World War II. Moms and dads made babies during World War II. People got married and went to weddings during World War II. My grand parents went about their daily lives while their oldest son was taking part in large scale naval battles and invasions out in the Pacific. People died and went to funerals during World War II. Life went on for most during the Great Depression too.

I bet you and others here would have wanted to go back to the 3T after Pearl Harbor and all through World War II. You have been promoting, advocating and voting for a repeat of the last 4t and another 80 years of the Progressive way of doing things and a return to the way things were during the 1950's.

[Classic-Xer]

(05-05-2020, 02:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 70,000 deaths in America alone (which is higher on average than our usual toll in vehicle-related deaths) and people still contacting a disease that kills (so far) about 5% of those who contract it and is fiendishly expensive to treat (there goes the deficit!) for those with slow recoveries. Ideally the adults are in charge -- but Donald Trump is no adult.

I don't know where your getting your information but the 5% mortality rate that you are using is way off. Like Bob, you have to double check the information and make sure that it's current because the information is changing by the day. The guru''s have already determined the overall death rate will be less than a percent once the testing is up to speed based on the testing that has already been done so far.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-05-2020, 09:55 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I view change as part of life. You say that we seem to want to go back to the 3T. It's true, if we be 4T there's no turning back because turning back will only make matters even worse for most this time. I have been saying that our people want to get back to their regular lives and they understand that the only way to do that is by moving forward and coaxing liberal governors to stop stalling and get the lead out so to speak. Time matters and every on the the right understands the relevance of not taking our sweet time about getting the country/economy back on track.

Life in America went on during World War II. My mom met my dad met  at a high school dance during World War II. My dad and mom played sports and hung out with their friends during World War II. Moms and dads made  babies during World War II. People got married and went to weddings during World War II.   My grand parents went about their daily lives while their oldest son was taking part in large scale naval battles and invasions out in the Pacific. People died and went to funerals during World War II. Life went on for most during the Great Depression too.    

I bet you and others here would have wanted to go back to the 3T after Pearl Harbor and all through World War II. You have been promoting, advocating and voting for a repeat of the last 4t and another 80 years of the Progressive way of doing things and a return to the way things were during the 1950's.

Again, I don’t know why one would expect every crisis to be the same and the sacrifices one must make for the common good be the same.  Where do you get that idea? Is the Turning Fairy supposed to make it so with her sparkly magic wand?

Yes, most during World War II might have wished themselves back in the late gilded age, but they knew their duty and strove to do it.  That is not yet true of many conservatives in the current crisis.  I don’t know if their unravelling values are particularly more selfish than in the past, but many are declining to adapt the new values.  They still see it as being about themselves, not about the common culture.

Part of it is that COVUS 19 is not as obvious as Pearl Harbor.  They are not aware of turning theory generally, and it is not as obvious that they can’t go back.  Change is coming.  Change is to be expected from a crisis.  But many don’t know it yet.

Given the perspective of history, it would be far better (and far more possible) to go forward through the crisis to the 1950s high rather than back to the 1920s late gilded age.  Again, many are not aware of or ready to embrace the benefits of the sacrifices made in a crisis.

I see the number of people that an infected person infects (the doctors call this number R0) as being a variable rather than a constant.  It depends on the population density of one’s state, one’s age, the degree of isolation one strives for and whether one has to enter a high risk environment such as a hospital, nursing home, meat packing plant or prison.  Even if one washes all these things out and forces R0 to a single average low number, one percent of most everybody is too many according to my values.  

Your values might be different.

Many conservatives take personal comfort to simplifying RO to a single low number, and don’t consider that some people are being forced into a much higher number.

It is not an ignorance or R0 that is important, but how important one considers the implications of R0.  Simply, are you willing to kill grandma for money?

But a lot of it is a hesitancy to do the trial and error.  Some value life.  Some value the economy.  Some such as myself recognize that these are much the same, that you have to cut the deaths before restarting the economy.  Nobody seems ready to restart the economy safely, to put extra precautions in place as one returns to the job.  They insist on the old normal.  

Unlikely.

[pbrower2a]

(05-05-2020, 10:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-05-2020, 02:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 70,000 deaths in America alone (which is higher on average than our usual toll in vehicle-related deaths) and people still contacting a disease that kills (so far) about 5% of those who contract it and is fiendishly expensive to treat (there goes the deficit!) for those with slow recoveries. Ideally the adults are in charge -- but Donald Trump is no adult.

I don't know where your getting your information but the 5% mortality rate that you are using is way off. Like Bob, you have to double check the information and make sure that it's current because the information is changing by the day. The guru''s have already determined the overall death rate will be less than a percent once the testing is up to speed based on the testing that has already been done so far.

Wikipedia. The high number is the right one because the number includes releases of death data from earlier in which COVID-19 is a major cause. The number so far seems to be rising about 2000 a day. I look at the ratio of deaths to total cases. 

Maybe you would have more credibility if you checked your guesses against something to which the experts (physicians, nurses, public health experts, and medical scientists contribute.


 The Great Invader: How COVID Attacks Every Organ
By Neha Pathak, MD


[/url]
[url=https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200423/the-great-invader-how-covid-attacks-every-organ]
April 23, 2020 -- We have underestimated and misunderstood COVID-19 since it first appeared.
And as we learn more, it’s clear that COVID-19 can be more than just a respiratory disease. It’s joined the ranks of other “great imitators” -- diseases that can look like almost any condition.


It can be a gastrointestinal disease causing only diarrhea and abdominal pain. It can cause symptoms that may be confused with a cold or the flu. It can cause pinkeye, a runny nose, loss of taste and smell, muscle aches, fatigue, diarrhea, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, whole-body rashes, and areas of swelling and redness in just a few spots.

In a more severe disease, doctors have also reported people having heart rhythm problems, heart failure, kidney damage, confusion, headaches, seizures, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and fainting spells, along with new sugar control problems.

It’s not just a fever and coughing, leading to shortness of breath, like everyone thought at first.
This makes it incredibly difficult to diagnose and even harder to treat.

“This is a disease progression we have never seen for any infection that I can think of, and I’ve been doing this for a couple of decades,” says Joseph Vinetz, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Yale School of Medicine.

How It Invades

When viral particles land in our eyes, nose, or mouth, “spike proteins” on the virus connect with a specific receptor, known as ACE2, on the surface of our cells, allowing entry. ACE2 receptors make a great target because they are found in organs throughout our bodies. Once the virus enters, it turns the cell into a factory, making millions and millions of copies of itself -- which can then be breathed or coughed out to infect others.

In order to evade early detection, the coronavirus uses multiple tools to prevent the infected cells from calling out for help. The virus snips off distress signal proteins that cells make when they are under attack. It also destroys antiviral commands inside the infected cell. This gives the virus much more time to make copies of itself and infect surrounding areas before it is identified as an invader. This is part of the reason why the virus spreads before immune responses, like fever, begin.

Direct Attack

Many with mild or no symptoms are able to fend off the virus before it gets worse. These people may have symptoms only in the upper airway, at the site where they were first infected. But when someone’s body can’t destroy the virus at its entry point, viral particles march deeper into the body. The virus seems to take a few paths from there, either setting up camp in the lungs, fighting its way into the digestive tract, or doing some combination of both.

“There’s clearly a respiratory syndrome, and that’s why people end up in the hospital. Some people get a gastrointestinal illness with diarrhea, maybe some abdominal pain, which may or may not be associated with a respiratory illness,” says Vinetz.







COVID-19 is proving to be far more dangerous to far more parts of the body than previously believed.

Once the virus is deeply embedded in the body, it begins to cause more severe disease. This is where direct attack on other organs that have ACE2 receptors can occur, including heart muscle, kidneys, blood vessels, the liver, and potentially the central nervous system. This may be one reason for the vast array of symptoms COVID-19 can cause.

“It's highly unlikely that any other organs can be affected through direct invasion without severe disease,” Vinetz adds. 

The brain and nerves may also fall prey to direct attack. Kenneth Tyler, MD, chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, cautions that direct central nervous system (CNS) attack is still being worked out at this time. There are many routes a virus could take to invade the CNS. One somewhat disputed view is that the loss of smell could indicate that the nerve responsible for smell is infected and can carry the virus into the CNS, including the brain. “This can be shown to occur in experimental models with non-human coronaviruses and is a potential route of invasion for some other viruses. However, there is no evidence to date establishing that this actually occurs with SARS-CoV-2,” the official name of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Early findings, including those from autopsy and biopsy reports, show that viral particles can be found not only in the nasal passages and throat, but also in tears, stool, the kidneys, liver, pancreas, and heart. One case report found evidence of viral particles in the fluid around the brain in a patient with meningitis.

Collateral Damage That Kills

Severe damage to the lungs may be one trigger that activates and overstimulates the immune system through a barrage of signaling chemicals, known as cytokines. 

The flood of these chemicals can set off what is referred to as a “cytokine storm.” This is a complex interplay of chemicals that can cause blood pressure to drop, attract more killer immune and inflammatory cells, and lead to even more injury within the lungs, heart, kidneys, and brain. Some researchers say cytokine storms may be the cause of sudden decompensation, leading to critical illness in COVID-19 patients.




A new finding suggests there may be another deadly culprit. Many doctors are discovering that abnormal clotting, known as thrombosis, may also play a major role in lethal COVID-19. Doctors are seeing clots everywhere: large-vessel clots, including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in the legs and pulmonary emboli (PE) in the lungs; clots in arteries, causing strokes; and small clots in tiny blood vessels in organs throughout the body. Early autopsy results are also showing widely scattered clots in multiple organs. 
Adam Cuker, MD, a hematologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in clotting disorders, says these clots are happening at high rates even when patients are on blood thinners for clot prevention. In one study from the Netherlands, 31% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 got clots while on blood thinners. 

Cuker says that “new studies validate what we have all been seeing with our eyes, which is that ‘boy, it seems that these patients are clotting a lot.’ … And it could be that the rate of thrombotic events are even higher than we truly recognize.” Though the reason for the clotting is still not clear, it seems to be playing a much larger role in death than previously understood.

Beyond the collateral damage from cytokine storms and clotting, other things like low blood pressure that comes from a severe illness, low oxygen levels, ventilator use, and drug treatments themselves can all harm organs throughout the body, including the heart, kidneys, liver, brain, and other organs.

Double-Edged Sword 

Even though researchers are learning more each day about the virus and how and where it attacks the body, treatment geared toward these targets also pose significant problems. Many drugscome with a risk of destroying the delicate balance that allows the body to help fight the disease or to manage inflammation.



The ACE2 receptor that the virus uses to enter cells is a key player in lowering inflammation and reducing blood pressure. Targeting or blocking this receptor as a treatment strategy to prevent viral entry into cells may actually worsen blood pressure, increase the risk of heart failure and kidney injury, and increase inflammation that may worsen lung injury. 

Drugs that target the immune response to lower the risk of a cytokine storm (comment: that is one of the suspected killers that made the influenza outbreak of a century ago so deadly -- PB) may also tamp down the immune response, making it hard to kill off the virus over the long run.

Using medicines to prevent clotting may end up causing severe bleeding. Cuker points out that “we don’t have a good read on bleeding … we have limited evidence about the clotting risk … we have zero evidence on bleeding risk in these patients, and it’s a real priority to understand this risk, especially because one of our strategies to treat the clotting is stepping up intensity the of anti-coagulation.”

Timing is likely to be key in treatment strategies. For example, patients may need a drug to boost the immune system early on in the disease, and then one to tamp it down if the disease progresses and cytokine markers begin to rise.

Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Cuker says that  what we know about clotting and almost everything else when it comes to COVID-19 “is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Sanober Amin, MD, PhD, a dermatologist in Texas, agrees. She’s been tracking the wide variety of skin findings that dermatologists across the world have been noting on social media.

She recently posted images on social media that show the wide variety of skin findings she has been seeing and hearing about. Her post received a massive response. Amin says that “dermatologists from around the world, from Turkey to France to Canada to the U.S., are sharing information about rashes that they’ve observed in people with COVID-19.”

 Some rashes seem to be consistent with what’s called a viral exanthema, which is a term for a general rash that can happen with almost any virus. But, Amin says, “some skin findings are more consistent with superficial clotting in blood vessels close to the skin.” 

This is what some have started to call “ COVID toes,” also called pernio. Dermatologists are seeing more cases of these small clots in toes and fingers, especially in children.

It’s hard to know which skin conditions are related to COVID-19 because a lot of people without “typical” symptoms are not being tested, Amin says. Researchers will still need to work out which symptoms may be caused by the virus and which may just be unrelated early findings.

Unanswered Questions

For now, much of the information we have about the symptoms of COVID-19 come from hospitalized patients who are very sick by the time they seek care and may not be able to share information about the early signs and symptoms they may have had.

Because of the lag in  testing in the U.S., we still don't know the full extent of what mild and moderate versions of the disease look like, or what effects the disease has on people who have many symptoms but aren’t quite sick enough to be hospitalized.

One open question is what the long-term effects may be for survivors. What does life look like after being on a ventilator or suddenly needing dialysis? Will we see decreases in heart, lung, and kidney function that is long-lasting and permanent, or will patients eventually recover? 

We also don’t know how people will clear infections. If the new coronavirus ends up being an acute infection, like other coronaviruses, most recovered people should develop at least a short-term immunity. It’s also possible that the virus may persist as a latent infection, like chickenpox, lying dormant in the body, only to re-emerge periodically as shingles does, or become a chronic infection, like hepatitis B, living within the body for a sustained period of time, causing long-term damage.

 “It's definitely going to be an acute infection ... there’s no way it’s going to be latent or chronic, no way ... I think so … we’ll see,” Vinetz says.

WebMD Health News Reviewed by Hansa D. Bhargava, MD on April 23, 2020

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200423...very-organ


It could be far worse than you think possible. Don't underestimate this horrible disease.

[pbrower2a]

Now, Classic X'er, do you recognize how insidious COVID-19 is? Organic damage is not to be treated flippantly.

This disease can bring about death in unexpected ways, and even if one recovers one may have crippling sequelae. Such is in ways parallel to the influenza pandemic of a century ago; it shortened life in some who ended up dying unusually young of such consequences as kidney disease.

We have largely been discussing political and economic consequences. You seem to recognize well the hazard of scrapping an economic paradigm to which you have gotten accustomed for personal safety from a dangerous disease.

Big Business is ahead of you. Business as usual can kill us.

[Classic-Xer]

(05-05-2020, 11:26 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Again, I don’t know why one would expect every crisis to be the same and the sacrifices one must make for the common good be the same.  Where do you get that idea?  Is the Turning Fairy supposed to make it so with her sparkly magic wand?

Yes, most during World War II might have wished themselves back in the late gilded age, but they knew their duty and strove to do it.  That is not yet true of many conservatives in the current crisis.  I don’t know if their unravelling values are particularly more selfish than in the past, but many are declining to adapt the new values.  They still see it as being about themselves, not about the common culture.

Part of it is that COVUS 19 is not as obvious as Pearl Harbor.  They are not aware of turning theory generally, and it is not as obvious that they can’t go back.  Change is coming.  Change is to be expected from a crisis.  But many don’t know it yet.

Given the perspective of history, it would be far better (and far more possible) to go forward through the crisis to the 1950s high rather than back to the 1920s late gilded age.  Again, many are not aware of or ready to embrace the benefits of the sacrifices made in a crisis.

I see the number of people that an infected person infects (the doctors call this number R0) as being a variable rather than a constant.  It depends on the population density of one’s state, one’s age, the degree of isolation one strives for and whether one has to enter a high risk environment such as a hospital, nursing home, meat packing plant or prison.  Even if one washes all these things out and forces R0 to a single average low number, one percent of most everybody is too many according to my values.  

Your values might be different.

Many conservatives take personal comfort to simplifying RO to a single low number, and don’t consider that some people are being forced into a much higher number.

It is not an ignorance or R0 that is important, but how important one considers the implications of R0.  Simply, are you willing to kill grandma for money?

But a lot of it is a hesitancy to do the trial and error.  Some value life.  Some value the economy.  Some such as myself recognize that these are much the same, that you have to cut the deaths before restarting the economy.  Nobody seems ready to restart the economy safely, to put extra precautions in place as one returns to the job.  They insist on the old normal.  

Unlikely.

My values must be more practical/realistic than your values. Reds view death as part of life and reds aren't as afraid of death and accept it better than blues. I assume that economics are no longer a reality/concern for most blues these days which makes sense for a have-have not culture/banana republic. I don't care if you and others spend the next year hunkered down and protecting yourselves from certain death/COVID19. Minnesota has set a goal of 20,000 tests per day which is about a month of testing if they intend to test everyone who lives in the state. I'm curious to see if I already had it because if I have then it was already here in early January. I had a weird cold in early January along with several other people that I know personally.

[Classic-Xer]

(05-06-2020, 01:13 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Now, Classic X'er, do you recognize how insidious COVID-19 is? Organic damage is not to be treated flippantly.

This disease can bring about death in unexpected ways, and even if one recovers one may have crippling sequelae.  Such is in ways parallel to the influenza pandemic of a century ago; it shortened life in some who ended up dying unusually young of such consequences as kidney disease.

We have largely been discussing political and economic consequences.  You seem to recognize well the hazard of scrapping an economic paradigm to which you have gotten accustomed for personal safety from a dangerous disease.

Big Business is ahead of you. Business as usual can kill us.

I'm not saying it's not a threat or getting it would be fun. I'm saying it's not as big of a threat as you and others here are portraying it. Like I said, if your governor and other governors like her fuck up, you're going to pay dearly one way or another. I don't live in your state. I'm not reliant upon the generosity of your state, my state, any other blue states or any federal government programs associated with welfare. You do realize that they could all go down together along with most of Europe after this crisis. Hint: Big business doesn't employ as many people or have as much money as all of us combined. News flash, middle America could plant big business on its face anytime it wants these days. Do you remember the little crisis we had back in 2008?  The government stepped in before we decided to cut our losses and pull the plug and drain the swamp ourselves.

[Classic-Xer]

(05-06-2020, 12:37 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-05-2020, 10:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-05-2020, 02:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 70,000 deaths in America alone (which is higher on average than our usual toll in vehicle-related deaths) and people still contacting a disease that kills (so far) about 5% of those who contract it and is fiendishly expensive to treat (there goes the deficit!) for those with slow recoveries. Ideally the adults are in charge -- but Donald Trump is no adult.

I don't know where your getting your information but the 5% mortality rate that you are using is way off. Like Bob, you have to double check the information and make sure that it's current because the information is changing by the day. The guru''s have already determined the overall death rate will be less than a percent once the testing is up to speed based on the testing that has already been done so far.

Wikipedia. The high number is the right one because the number includes releases of death data from earlier in which COVID-19 is a major cause. The number so far seems to be rising about 2000 a day. I look at the ratio of deaths to total cases. 

Maybe you would have more credibility if you checked your guesses against something to which the experts (physicians, nurses, public health experts, and medical scientists contribute.


 The Great Invader: How COVID Attacks Every Organ
By Neha Pathak, MD


[/url]
[url=https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200423/the-great-invader-how-covid-attacks-every-organ]
April 23, 2020 -- We have underestimated and misunderstood COVID-19 since it first appeared.
And as we learn more, it’s clear that COVID-19 can be more than just a respiratory disease. It’s joined the ranks of other “great imitators” -- diseases that can look like almost any condition.


It can be a gastrointestinal disease causing only diarrhea and abdominal pain. It can cause symptoms that may be confused with a cold or the flu. It can cause pinkeye, a runny nose, loss of taste and smell, muscle aches, fatigue, diarrhea, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, whole-body rashes, and areas of swelling and redness in just a few spots.

In a more severe disease, doctors have also reported people having heart rhythm problems, heart failure, kidney damage, confusion, headaches, seizures, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and fainting spells, along with new sugar control problems.

It’s not just a fever and coughing, leading to shortness of breath, like everyone thought at first.
This makes it incredibly difficult to diagnose and even harder to treat.

“This is a disease progression we have never seen for any infection that I can think of, and I’ve been doing this for a couple of decades,” says Joseph Vinetz, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Yale School of Medicine.

How It Invades

When viral particles land in our eyes, nose, or mouth, “spike proteins” on the virus connect with a specific receptor, known as ACE2, on the surface of our cells, allowing entry. ACE2 receptors make a great target because they are found in organs throughout our bodies. Once the virus enters, it turns the cell into a factory, making millions and millions of copies of itself -- which can then be breathed or coughed out to infect others.

In order to evade early detection, the coronavirus uses multiple tools to prevent the infected cells from calling out for help. The virus snips off distress signal proteins that cells make when they are under attack. It also destroys antiviral commands inside the infected cell. This gives the virus much more time to make copies of itself and infect surrounding areas before it is identified as an invader. This is part of the reason why the virus spreads before immune responses, like fever, begin.

Direct Attack

Many with mild or no symptoms are able to fend off the virus before it gets worse. These people may have symptoms only in the upper airway, at the site where they were first infected. But when someone’s body can’t destroy the virus at its entry point, viral particles march deeper into the body. The virus seems to take a few paths from there, either setting up camp in the lungs, fighting its way into the digestive tract, or doing some combination of both.

“There’s clearly a respiratory syndrome, and that’s why people end up in the hospital. Some people get a gastrointestinal illness with diarrhea, maybe some abdominal pain, which may or may not be associated with a respiratory illness,” says Vinetz.







COVID-19 is proving to be far more dangerous to far more parts of the body than previously believed.

Once the virus is deeply embedded in the body, it begins to cause more severe disease. This is where direct attack on other organs that have ACE2 receptors can occur, including heart muscle, kidneys, blood vessels, the liver, and potentially the central nervous system. This may be one reason for the vast array of symptoms COVID-19 can cause.

“It's highly unlikely that any other organs can be affected through direct invasion without severe disease,” Vinetz adds. 

The brain and nerves may also fall prey to direct attack. Kenneth Tyler, MD, chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, cautions that direct central nervous system (CNS) attack is still being worked out at this time. There are many routes a virus could take to invade the CNS. One somewhat disputed view is that the loss of smell could indicate that the nerve responsible for smell is infected and can carry the virus into the CNS, including the brain. “This can be shown to occur in experimental models with non-human coronaviruses and is a potential route of invasion for some other viruses. However, there is no evidence to date establishing that this actually occurs with SARS-CoV-2,” the official name of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Early findings, including those from autopsy and biopsy reports, show that viral particles can be found not only in the nasal passages and throat, but also in tears, stool, the kidneys, liver, pancreas, and heart. One case report found evidence of viral particles in the fluid around the brain in a patient with meningitis.

Collateral Damage That Kills

Severe damage to the lungs may be one trigger that activates and overstimulates the immune system through a barrage of signaling chemicals, known as cytokines. 

The flood of these chemicals can set off what is referred to as a “cytokine storm.” This is a complex interplay of chemicals that can cause blood pressure to drop, attract more killer immune and inflammatory cells, and lead to even more injury within the lungs, heart, kidneys, and brain. Some researchers say cytokine storms may be the cause of sudden decompensation, leading to critical illness in COVID-19 patients.




A new finding suggests there may be another deadly culprit. Many doctors are discovering that abnormal clotting, known as thrombosis, may also play a major role in lethal COVID-19. Doctors are seeing clots everywhere: large-vessel clots, including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in the legs and pulmonary emboli (PE) in the lungs; clots in arteries, causing strokes; and small clots in tiny blood vessels in organs throughout the body. Early autopsy results are also showing widely scattered clots in multiple organs. 
Adam Cuker, MD, a hematologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in clotting disorders, says these clots are happening at high rates even when patients are on blood thinners for clot prevention. In one study from the Netherlands, 31% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 got clots while on blood thinners. 

Cuker says that “new studies validate what we have all been seeing with our eyes, which is that ‘boy, it seems that these patients are clotting a lot.’ … And it could be that the rate of thrombotic events are even higher than we truly recognize.” Though the reason for the clotting is still not clear, it seems to be playing a much larger role in death than previously understood.

Beyond the collateral damage from cytokine storms and clotting, other things like low blood pressure that comes from a severe illness, low oxygen levels, ventilator use, and drug treatments themselves can all harm organs throughout the body, including the heart, kidneys, liver, brain, and other organs.

Double-Edged Sword 

Even though researchers are learning more each day about the virus and how and where it attacks the body, treatment geared toward these targets also pose significant problems. Many drugscome with a risk of destroying the delicate balance that allows the body to help fight the disease or to manage inflammation.



The ACE2 receptor that the virus uses to enter cells is a key player in lowering inflammation and reducing blood pressure. Targeting or blocking this receptor as a treatment strategy to prevent viral entry into cells may actually worsen blood pressure, increase the risk of heart failure and kidney injury, and increase inflammation that may worsen lung injury. 

Drugs that target the immune response to lower the risk of a cytokine storm (comment: that is one of the suspected killers that made the influenza outbreak of a century ago so deadly -- PB) may also tamp down the immune response, making it hard to kill off the virus over the long run.

Using medicines to prevent clotting may end up causing severe bleeding. Cuker points out that “we don’t have a good read on bleeding … we have limited evidence about the clotting risk … we have zero evidence on bleeding risk in these patients, and it’s a real priority to understand this risk, especially because one of our strategies to treat the clotting is stepping up intensity the of anti-coagulation.”

Timing is likely to be key in treatment strategies. For example, patients may need a drug to boost the immune system early on in the disease, and then one to tamp it down if the disease progresses and cytokine markers begin to rise.

Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Cuker says that  what we know about clotting and almost everything else when it comes to COVID-19 “is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Sanober Amin, MD, PhD, a dermatologist in Texas, agrees. She’s been tracking the wide variety of skin findings that dermatologists across the world have been noting on social media.

She recently posted images on social media that show the wide variety of skin findings she has been seeing and hearing about. Her post received a massive response. Amin says that “dermatologists from around the world, from Turkey to France to Canada to the U.S., are sharing information about rashes that they’ve observed in people with COVID-19.”

 Some rashes seem to be consistent with what’s called a viral exanthema, which is a term for a general rash that can happen with almost any virus. But, Amin says, “some skin findings are more consistent with superficial clotting in blood vessels close to the skin.” 

This is what some have started to call “ COVID toes,” also called pernio. Dermatologists are seeing more cases of these small clots in toes and fingers, especially in children.

It’s hard to know which skin conditions are related to COVID-19 because a lot of people without “typical” symptoms are not being tested, Amin says. Researchers will still need to work out which symptoms may be caused by the virus and which may just be unrelated early findings.

Unanswered Questions

For now, much of the information we have about the symptoms of COVID-19 come from hospitalized patients who are very sick by the time they seek care and may not be able to share information about the early signs and symptoms they may have had.

Because of the lag in  testing in the U.S., we still don't know the full extent of what mild and moderate versions of the disease look like, or what effects the disease has on people who have many symptoms but aren’t quite sick enough to be hospitalized.

One open question is what the long-term effects may be for survivors. What does life look like after being on a ventilator or suddenly needing dialysis? Will we see decreases in heart, lung, and kidney function that is long-lasting and permanent, or will patients eventually recover? 

We also don’t know how people will clear infections. If the new coronavirus ends up being an acute infection, like other coronaviruses, most recovered people should develop at least a short-term immunity. It’s also possible that the virus may persist as a latent infection, like chickenpox, lying dormant in the body, only to re-emerge periodically as shingles does, or become a chronic infection, like hepatitis B, living within the body for a sustained period of time, causing long-term damage.

 “It's definitely going to be an acute infection ... there’s no way it’s going to be latent or chronic, no way ... I think so … we’ll see,” Vinetz says.

WebMD Health News Reviewed by Hansa D. Bhargava, MD on April 23, 2020

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200423...very-organ


It could be far worse than you think possible. Don't underestimate this horrible disease.

Show me the fucking numbers, all the fucking numbers and I will prove that you're wrong. You're the one posting information on a public forum as if it's true not me. Do you like scaring people to obey and like whipping up hysteria? Is that what you need to win?

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-06-2020, 03:19 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Show me the (expletive deleted) numbers...

How do you do that when the administration is blocking the tests?

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-06-2020, 02:08 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: My values must be more practical/realistic than your values. Reds  view death as part of life and reds aren't as afraid of death and accept it better than  blues. I assume that economics are no longer a reality/concern for most blues these days which makes sense for a have-have not culture/banana republic. I don't care if you and others spend the next year hunkered down and protecting yourselves  from certain death/COVID19. Minnesota has set a goal of 20,000 tests per day which is about a month of testing if they intend to test everyone who lives in the state. I'm curious to see if I already had it because if I have then it was already here in early January. I had a weird cold in early January along with several other people that I know personally.

An illustration of why we need the tests. People who have already had it, who have an immunity, could be released to the economy with much less issue. A youngish person who takes sensible precautions, especially around older folk, should be able to return to work.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-06-2020, 02:08 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: My values must be more practical/realistic than your values. Reds  view death as part of life and reds aren't as afraid of death and accept it better than  blues. I assume that economics are no longer a reality/concern for most blues these days which makes sense for a have-have not culture/banana republic. I don't care if you and others spend the next year hunkered down and protecting yourselves  from certain death/COVID19. Minnesota has set a goal of 20,000 tests per day which is about a month of testing if they intend to test everyone who lives in the state. I'm curious to see if I already had it because if I have then it was already here in early January. I had a weird cold in early January along with several other people that I know personally.

I don’t know that ‘practical’ is the right word. R0 is just low for you, and you don’t care that it is much higher for others, or that you are forcing others to roll the dice with their lives. For you it is about me me me. Others can drop dead.

Then too are the values involved. The unraveling is a time of selfishness. Solving the problem at the core of the crisis involves working together for the sake of the community. Some are just locked in the unraveling mode.

[Warren Dew]

(05-06-2020, 06:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: People who have already had it, who have an immunity

There's no actual indication that already having it gives one immunity.  That does not happen to any significant extent for that other coronavirus caused disease, the common cold.

[pbrower2a]

(05-06-2020, 03:19 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-06-2020, 12:37 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-05-2020, 10:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-05-2020, 02:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 70,000 deaths in America alone (which is higher on average than our usual toll in vehicle-related deaths) and people still contacting a disease that kills (so far) about 5% of those who contract it and is fiendishly expensive to treat (there goes the deficit!) for those with slow recoveries. Ideally the adults are in charge -- but Donald Trump is no adult.

I don't know where your getting your information but the 5% mortality rate that you are using is way off. Like Bob, you have to double check the information and make sure that it's current because the information is changing by the day. The guru''s have already determined the overall death rate will be less than a percent once the testing is up to speed based on the testing that has already been done so far.

Wikipedia. The high number is the right one because the number includes releases of death data from earlier in which COVID-19 is a major cause. The number so far seems to be rising about 2000 a day. I look at the ratio of deaths to total cases. 

Maybe you would have more credibility if you checked your guesses against something to which the experts (physicians, nurses, public health experts, and medical scientists contribute.


 The Great Invader: How COVID Attacks Every Organ
By Neha Pathak, MD


[/url]
[url=https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200423/the-great-invader-how-covid-attacks-every-organ]
April 23, 2020 -- We have underestimated and misunderstood COVID-19 since it first appeared.
And as we learn more, it’s clear that COVID-19 can be more than just a respiratory disease. It’s joined the ranks of other “great imitators” -- diseases that can look like almost any condition.


It can be a gastrointestinal disease causing only diarrhea and abdominal pain. It can cause symptoms that may be confused with a cold or the flu. It can cause pinkeye, a runny nose, loss of taste and smell, muscle aches, fatigue, diarrhea, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, whole-body rashes, and areas of swelling and redness in just a few spots.

In a more severe disease, doctors have also reported people having heart rhythm problems, heart failure, kidney damage, confusion, headaches, seizures, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and fainting spells, along with new sugar control problems.

It’s not just a fever and coughing, leading to shortness of breath, like everyone thought at first.
This makes it incredibly difficult to diagnose and even harder to treat.

“This is a disease progression we have never seen for any infection that I can think of, and I’ve been doing this for a couple of decades,” says Joseph Vinetz, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Yale School of Medicine.

How It Invades

When viral particles land in our eyes, nose, or mouth, “spike proteins” on the virus connect with a specific receptor, known as ACE2, on the surface of our cells, allowing entry. ACE2 receptors make a great target because they are found in organs throughout our bodies. Once the virus enters, it turns the cell into a factory, making millions and millions of copies of itself -- which can then be breathed or coughed out to infect others.

In order to evade early detection, the coronavirus uses multiple tools to prevent the infected cells from calling out for help. The virus snips off distress signal proteins that cells make when they are under attack. It also destroys antiviral commands inside the infected cell. This gives the virus much more time to make copies of itself and infect surrounding areas before it is identified as an invader. This is part of the reason why the virus spreads before immune responses, like fever, begin.

Direct Attack

Many with mild or no symptoms are able to fend off the virus before it gets worse. These people may have symptoms only in the upper airway, at the site where they were first infected. But when someone’s body can’t destroy the virus at its entry point, viral particles march deeper into the body. The virus seems to take a few paths from there, either setting up camp in the lungs, fighting its way into the digestive tract, or doing some combination of both.

“There’s clearly a respiratory syndrome, and that’s why people end up in the hospital. Some people get a gastrointestinal illness with diarrhea, maybe some abdominal pain, which may or may not be associated with a respiratory illness,” says Vinetz.







COVID-19 is proving to be far more dangerous to far more parts of the body than previously believed.

Once the virus is deeply embedded in the body, it begins to cause more severe disease. This is where direct attack on other organs that have ACE2 receptors can occur, including heart muscle, kidneys, blood vessels, the liver, and potentially the central nervous system. This may be one reason for the vast array of symptoms COVID-19 can cause.

“It's highly unlikely that any other organs can be affected through direct invasion without severe disease,” Vinetz adds. 

The brain and nerves may also fall prey to direct attack. Kenneth Tyler, MD, chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, cautions that direct central nervous system (CNS) attack is still being worked out at this time. There are many routes a virus could take to invade the CNS. One somewhat disputed view is that the loss of smell could indicate that the nerve responsible for smell is infected and can carry the virus into the CNS, including the brain. “This can be shown to occur in experimental models with non-human coronaviruses and is a potential route of invasion for some other viruses. However, there is no evidence to date establishing that this actually occurs with SARS-CoV-2,” the official name of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Early findings, including those from autopsy and biopsy reports, show that viral particles can be found not only in the nasal passages and throat, but also in tears, stool, the kidneys, liver, pancreas, and heart. One case report found evidence of viral particles in the fluid around the brain in a patient with meningitis.

Collateral Damage That Kills

Severe damage to the lungs may be one trigger that activates and overstimulates the immune system through a barrage of signaling chemicals, known as cytokines. 

The flood of these chemicals can set off what is referred to as a “cytokine storm.” This is a complex interplay of chemicals that can cause blood pressure to drop, attract more killer immune and inflammatory cells, and lead to even more injury within the lungs, heart, kidneys, and brain. Some researchers say cytokine storms may be the cause of sudden decompensation, leading to critical illness in COVID-19 patients.




A new finding suggests there may be another deadly culprit. Many doctors are discovering that abnormal clotting, known as thrombosis, may also play a major role in lethal COVID-19. Doctors are seeing clots everywhere: large-vessel clots, including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in the legs and pulmonary emboli (PE) in the lungs; clots in arteries, causing strokes; and small clots in tiny blood vessels in organs throughout the body. Early autopsy results are also showing widely scattered clots in multiple organs. 
Adam Cuker, MD, a hematologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in clotting disorders, says these clots are happening at high rates even when patients are on blood thinners for clot prevention. In one study from the Netherlands, 31% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 got clots while on blood thinners. 

Cuker says that “new studies validate what we have all been seeing with our eyes, which is that ‘boy, it seems that these patients are clotting a lot.’ … And it could be that the rate of thrombotic events are even higher than we truly recognize.” Though the reason for the clotting is still not clear, it seems to be playing a much larger role in death than previously understood.

Beyond the collateral damage from cytokine storms and clotting, other things like low blood pressure that comes from a severe illness, low oxygen levels, ventilator use, and drug treatments themselves can all harm organs throughout the body, including the heart, kidneys, liver, brain, and other organs.

Double-Edged Sword 

Even though researchers are learning more each day about the virus and how and where it attacks the body, treatment geared toward these targets also pose significant problems. Many drugscome with a risk of destroying the delicate balance that allows the body to help fight the disease or to manage inflammation.



The ACE2 receptor that the virus uses to enter cells is a key player in lowering inflammation and reducing blood pressure. Targeting or blocking this receptor as a treatment strategy to prevent viral entry into cells may actually worsen blood pressure, increase the risk of heart failure and kidney injury, and increase inflammation that may worsen lung injury. 

Drugs that target the immune response to lower the risk of a cytokine storm (comment: that is one of the suspected killers that made the influenza outbreak of a century ago so deadly -- PB) may also tamp down the immune response, making it hard to kill off the virus over the long run.

Using medicines to prevent clotting may end up causing severe bleeding. Cuker points out that “we don’t have a good read on bleeding … we have limited evidence about the clotting risk … we have zero evidence on bleeding risk in these patients, and it’s a real priority to understand this risk, especially because one of our strategies to treat the clotting is stepping up intensity the of anti-coagulation.”

Timing is likely to be key in treatment strategies. For example, patients may need a drug to boost the immune system early on in the disease, and then one to tamp it down if the disease progresses and cytokine markers begin to rise.

Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Cuker says that  what we know about clotting and almost everything else when it comes to COVID-19 “is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Sanober Amin, MD, PhD, a dermatologist in Texas, agrees. She’s been tracking the wide variety of skin findings that dermatologists across the world have been noting on social media.

She recently posted images on social media that show the wide variety of skin findings she has been seeing and hearing about. Her post received a massive response. Amin says that “dermatologists from around the world, from Turkey to France to Canada to the U.S., are sharing information about rashes that they’ve observed in people with COVID-19.”

 Some rashes seem to be consistent with what’s called a viral exanthema, which is a term for a general rash that can happen with almost any virus. But, Amin says, “some skin findings are more consistent with superficial clotting in blood vessels close to the skin.” 

This is what some have started to call “ COVID toes,” also called pernio. Dermatologists are seeing more cases of these small clots in toes and fingers, especially in children.

It’s hard to know which skin conditions are related to COVID-19 because a lot of people without “typical” symptoms are not being tested, Amin says. Researchers will still need to work out which symptoms may be caused by the virus and which may just be unrelated early findings.

Unanswered Questions

For now, much of the information we have about the symptoms of COVID-19 come from hospitalized patients who are very sick by the time they seek care and may not be able to share information about the early signs and symptoms they may have had.

Because of the lag in  testing in the U.S., we still don't know the full extent of what mild and moderate versions of the disease look like, or what effects the disease has on people who have many symptoms but aren’t quite sick enough to be hospitalized.

One open question is what the long-term effects may be for survivors. What does life look like after being on a ventilator or suddenly needing dialysis? Will we see decreases in heart, lung, and kidney function that is long-lasting and permanent, or will patients eventually recover? 

We also don’t know how people will clear infections. If the new coronavirus ends up being an acute infection, like other coronaviruses, most recovered people should develop at least a short-term immunity. It’s also possible that the virus may persist as a latent infection, like chickenpox, lying dormant in the body, only to re-emerge periodically as shingles does, or become a chronic infection, like hepatitis B, living within the body for a sustained period of time, causing long-term damage.

 “It's definitely going to be an acute infection ... there’s no way it’s going to be latent or chronic, no way ... I think so … we’ll see,” Vinetz says.

WebMD Health News Reviewed by Hansa D. Bhargava, MD on April 23, 2020

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200423...very-organ


It could be far worse than you think possible. Don't underestimate this horrible disease.

Show me the (expletive deleted) numbers, all the fucking numbers and I will prove that you're wrong. You're the one posting information on a public forum as if it's true not me. Do you like scaring people to obey and like whipping  up hysteria? Is that what you need to win?

Numbers? Any numbers in this article would now be obsolete. It is over 70,000 deaths by now.

This material comes from apolitical, non-partisan WebMD, in case you failed to check the source! It is from April 23, so numbers from then are terribly obsolete. The material is gleaned from medical professionals and has no political agenda. But symptoms and consequences are real. Saying that this material, which is more descriptive of medical sequelae than is good at giving the latest statistics is like denying the consequences of cirrhosis of the liver because the medical description lacks the latest death toll. 

I had an uncle by marriage who bragged about all the places he had been, but he seemed to tag them with "oh, did I get drunk there".  When he was dying of it in a hospital he was shown while anesthetized to medical students. The professor and the students mocked him. "This is what happens to alcoholics. Don't be a heavy drinker!"

If you wondered how I estimated a death rate I divided deaths into total cases. Can the death rate change? Sure, but beware of the cytokine storms that may have killed so many apparently-healthy young people in the influenza pandemic of a century ago. 

COVID-19 is more dangerous than you would like to believe. It is a medical disaster for a patient, a tragedy for loved ones, a fiscal disaster for governments, and what looks like the start of a serious meltdown for the overall economy.

[David Horn]

(05-06-2020, 09:15 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-06-2020, 06:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: People who have already had it, who have an immunity

There's no actual indication that already having it gives one immunity.  That does not happen to any significant extent for that other coronavirus caused disease, the common cold.

The myriad viruses that cause the Common Cold are unstable, so vaccination is clearly impossible. This virus seems to follow a different, more stable paradigm. Note: if immunity from having the disease is nonexistent, then a successful vaccine seems unlikely.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-06-2020, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-06-2020, 09:15 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-06-2020, 06:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: People who have already had it, who have an immunity

There's no actual indication that already having it gives one immunity.  That does not happen to any significant extent for that other coronavirus caused disease, the common cold.

The myriad viruses that cause the Common Cold are unstable, so vaccination is clearly impossible. This virus seems to follow a different, more stable paradigm. Note: if immunity from having the disease is nonexistent, then a successful vaccine seems unlikely.

I am also assuming that if one of the common cold viruses were more deadly, it wouldn't be ignored and treated as the common cold.

[Eric the Green]

(05-06-2020, 11:24 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-06-2020, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-06-2020, 09:15 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-06-2020, 06:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: People who have already had it, who have an immunity

There's no actual indication that already having it gives one immunity.  That does not happen to any significant extent for that other coronavirus caused disease, the common cold.

The myriad viruses that cause the Common Cold are unstable, so vaccination is clearly impossible. This virus seems to follow a different, more stable paradigm. Note: if immunity from having the disease is nonexistent, then a successful vaccine seems unlikely.

I am also assuming that if one of the common cold viruses were more deadly, it wouldn't be ignored and treated as the common cold.

Since it the COVID-19 virus also called SARS-2, one might assume that it would follow a similar path as SARS. It seems SARS-2 is far more contagious, but immunity might be possible for it to be as well-controlled, as SARS was, and in China the new virus seems well-controlled already.

[Eric the Green]

(05-06-2020, 12:37 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: How It Invades

When viral particles land in our eyes, nose, or mouth, “spike proteins” on the virus connect with a specific receptor, known as ACE2, on the surface of our cells, allowing entry. ACE2 receptors make a great target because they are found in organs throughout our bodies. Once the virus enters, it turns the cell into a factory, making millions and millions of copies of itself -- which can then be breathed or coughed out to infect others.

ACE2 receptors..... hmmmmmmmm no entiendo...........
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensi...g_enzyme_2

Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is an enzyme attached to the outer surface (cell membranes) of cells in the lungs, arteries, heart, kidney, and intestines. ACE2 lowers blood pressure by catalysing the hydrolysis of angiotensin II (a vasoconstrictor peptide) into angiotensin (1–7) (a vasodilator). ACE2 counters the activity of the related angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) by reducing the amount of angiotensin-II and increasing Ang(1-7) making it a promising drug target for treating cardiovascular diseases.

[Eric the Green]

(05-06-2020, 03:19 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Show me the fucking numbers, all the fucking numbers and I will prove that you're wrong. You're the one posting information on a public forum as if it's true not me. Do you like scaring people to obey and like whipping  up hysteria? Is that what you need to win?

You guys, financed by right-wingers like Betsy DeVoss, are the ones whipping up hysteria on the grounds that the measures needed to protect ourselves from this virus are curtailing our freedom. It is you guys, led by the Liar in Chief, the fake president, who are whipping this hysteria up so that this tyrant can get himself re-elected because the economy is rebounding. Failing that, he will use you guys, with guns in hand, to carry out a coup attempt on Jan.20, 2021.