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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 10:57 pm 
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The Center for Disease Control's guidelines for reopening the US Economy. They leave some questions begging, like what to do with children who can't go to school when their parents are supposed to go back to work; but they're reasonably comprehensive. Also a very tall order, and not yet officially adopted.

A strong hint that using PPE properly helps. Which is a bit of a no-brainer, but nice to know.

The current baby step: most folks who get Covid-19 produce antibodies. The severity of the infection doesn't seem to influence that. The next step? Finding out how much that might matter; we still don't have any idea how much immunity against reinfection this might confer or for how long. Happily there's folks trying to find this out.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 12:39 pm 
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It would seem that in South Dakota, the Sioux Indian reservation has set up Covid-19 checkpoints on the roads leading into and through their reservation (which is apparently their right under the treaty setting up the reservation). The governor of South Dakota, for her own reasons, ordered them to stop. They politely declined.

I've seen it noted that Covid 19 can cause neurological damage, liver damage, inflammation, immune system problems, long term lung damage and who knows what else. While there are apparently limited short term effects on the young, we don't actually know if there are any long term problems that will start to turn up over time. All in all, it might be a bit premature to simply toss off anyone who survives as 'recovered' as if that's automatically equivalent to 'healthy'.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 7:20 pm 
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There have clearly been some economic effects of the virus. Here in the US we've seen 36.5 million unemployment claims filed (2.9 million in the past week); which would be a hair over 36% of the people who had jobs on February 1. Heck, even the White House is admitting that the unemployment rate next month will be at least 20%, which is within a point or two of the worst years of the Great Depression. Meanwhile 27 million people have lost their employer provided health insurance, and consumer spending is down over 20% (it was 32% before the $1200 stimulus payments started arriving).

Incidentally, that last link uses private business data to reveal a bunch of interesting things; it's worth a glance.

But with that said, the head of the Federal Reserve, who never says in so many words that it's up to Congress to stick a crowbar in their wallet and spend money because the Fed's in over its head, has said just that. The times, they are getting interesting.

The only silver lining in all this seems to be that the same preventive steps which keep SARS-Cov-2 from spreading also keep the coronavirii which cause the common cold from spreading; so to the extent we get a handle on Covid-19 we're also defeating the sniffles.

Oh, and the 7:00 PM cheer for health care workers is still a New York City thing. In case you were wondering.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 9:58 pm 
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The CDC just released 6 checklists similar to this about how to reopen businesses, schools, and etc. Granted that a lot of the localities reopening don't meet the guidelines listed or those in the White House guide, but that's what's now available.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 12:56 am 
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You may have noted the stories about folks who recovered from Covid testing positive again. A study done in Korea indicates that they're just shedding dead virus. Which doesn't mean they can't get it again, but it does apparently rule out the virus going latent and surfacing again being a thing.

Meanwhile the testing situation in the US is improving, but there are still problems.

Finally a study which indicates that cat's can't spread Covid-19, but would if they could.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 8:53 pm 
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Thanks to testing done by the state of New York which told us that as of May 1 there were really 1.7 million Covid 19 infections (officially 166,000), and reliable local death statistics which told us that 23,000 died because of it (officially 13,000), we know the lethality rate of Covid 19 in New York City. It's 1.4%, with the deaths heavily weighted towards the older and sicker folks who got it. How that compares to other localities would probably depend on how heavily weighted towards older or sicker inhabitants the other locality is compared to NYC.

Thanks to the Federal Reserve, the financial system barely dodged a bullet back in March. Impressive for a virus that was once hoping a bat would cough.

In case you missed it, stick to on-label uses for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. They're worse than useless in the current epidemic.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 5:27 pm 
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A vaccine against Covid-19 has just entered stage two testing. Having passed its first human test it's now going to be given to 600 people in 8 states. Whether it winds up working out or not that's remarkably fast.

Also: that's some extreme social distancing.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2020 9:05 pm 
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Go back a couple of posts and you'll see a story about anti-malarial drugs. Turns out the data it was based on is a trifle suspect. As in, literally written by a science fiction writer and a nude model level suspect. Good grief.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2020 12:58 am 
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For the first time since March 11, no one died of Covid 19 in New York City today. So far as we can tell, anyway. Shutting down worked. Now I'd like to hope it'll stay there, but that's just not going to happen any time soon; especially not as businesses start to reopen. Well, here's hoping there's no second spike in town.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2020 11:16 am 
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Well, well. It seems that there's an anti-inflammatory drug out there that significantly reduces the death rate for Covid 19 patients with lung problems. It cuts the death rate for those on oxygen by a fifth, and for those who have been intubated by a third. It's also fairly inexpensive: in Britain it costs about five quid a day (roughly $8 USD) to administer. That puts it in reach for a lot of hospitals in poorer countries and backward parts of more developed ones, which means a fair number of lives could be saved this way.

A real game changer? No, but if I were one of the folks facing intubation who's odds just went from one in two to two in three I wouldn't be complaining at all.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:29 am 
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The CDC has reported to Congress on it's conclusions regarding underlying conditions (read: preexisting) and Covid-19. The takeaway:
Washington Post wrote:
About 45 percent of patients with underlying conditions were hospitalized, compared with 7.6 percent of those who did not have significant preexisting conditions. Deaths were 12 times as high among patients with these underlying conditions (19.5 percent) compared with those without reported conditions (1.6 percent).
This disparity was also noted among younger victims, with patients in their 20s or 30s being 6 times as likely to be hospitalized.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:34 pm 
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An interesting data site: 91-DIVOC lets you assemble graphs and charts in a whole number of interesting ways, including a display of just those counties you happen to care about (assuming you care about American counties).

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 10:53 am 
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This is a site which considers reopening strategies, and among their data visualization aides they post a map which shows how states are doing (getting better, treading water, getting worse). Unless you think things are going really well, there aren't many surprises. Yesterday four states were shown in green, and three of them are what New York City residents refer to as the tri-state area (the other, interestingly enough, is North Dakota).

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2020 9:09 pm 
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Apparently we've got a new ally in the struggle with SARS-Cov-2: Llamas. There's a quirk in one kind of anti-body in the Llama that seems to make it readily adaptable to helping humans fight off the virus. And we thought they were merely our benevolent overlords. Silly us.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2020 9:16 pm 
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Weremensh wrote:
Apparently we've got a new ally in the struggle with SARS-Cov-2: Llamas. There's a quirk in one kind of anti-body in the Llama that seems to make it readily adaptable to helping humans fight off the virus. And we thought they were merely our benevolent overlords. Silly us.


ALL HAIL THE LLAMA!

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