WHO: COVID-19 in 29 countries last Monday, now 56
npr.org
npr.org
No longer true: CDC Confirms Possible Instance of Community Spread of COVID-19 in U.S.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0226-Covid-19-sprea...
The US is shown has having "local transmission". "Community transmission" is defined as "the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through routine screening of sentinel samples".
Maybe this is just a terminology issue... "spreading freely in communities" could refer to "community transmission" defined above.
Testing it should be free (based on symptoms) if US wants to stop the disease from spreading.
Hello,
Just giving a heads up to what I and my doctor both considered a very fucked up situation. I just spent a week in Japan, a country at high risk for COVID-19. I wore a mask and essentially tried to stay away from most touristy places (not my first time there), but trains and stations are still packed with people, so there's really not much you can do.
On arriving back to America (3 days ago), I developed a 102F fever, coughing, and aches. I went to a local hospital in Brooklyn's ER. I informed them of my travel, they provided me a mask, and redirected me to a private room and followed infection protocols (full face covers, gloves, aprons, etc.). I had a chest x-ray and testing for flu/cold/pneumonia/and about 25 other viruses. They all came back negative.
At this point, the hospital called the CDC requesting permission to perform the COVID-19 testing. The CDC denied the request on the ground that I did not have the most life-threatening symptoms: chest pain and shortness of breath. According to everything I read it's very likely not to have these symptoms if you're in your 30's and relatively healthy.
And... that was that. They discharged me, said I don't have Corona virus, since they didn't test me for it, and said I can ride the subway, return to work, do whatever I want.
Of course my doctor disagreed. She said I should treat myself as if I am infected. My partner is currently staying in a nearby hotel since we live in a studio apartment. I've performed a self-quarantine for 14 days. Fortunately I can work from home and my partner can deliver me groceries if I run out.
But I don't think that many people are aware of the fact that they're actively not testing people for COVID-19, even people who have travel history to high-risk places.
Do I still have symptoms? Yes, Fever is current 101.6 (as of a couple hours ago), aches, and a cough that is persistent. I'm taking Tylenol and drinking a lot of water.
Do I just have the flu? Well, not according to my screens I don't.
Is this real? It's as real as I said it is. I returned from Japan. I'm sick. The symptoms are similar to COVID19 and I was refused testing.
You can believe whatever you want, I don't care.
A channel NY1 reporter reached out to connect with the individual, so perhaps if validated, it won’t “stay hidden very long”. And to your point, it’s not a cluster. But how would you have a cluster if each given patient is handled this way?
The individual case is less interesting than the protocol.
EDIT: Now reported by media: https://abc7ny.com/5974999/
That’s 7.0 miles from where I am, so of course I’m concerned.
The Santa Clara County health department
You mean if everyone took this seriously. Which is obviously a lot more difficult. It would probably not be possible to get everyone to agree that the sky is blue or 2+2=4.
From the long incubation time my gut feeling is that it probably couldn't have been. International airtravel speeds things up, it also didn't make a difference in 1918 when intercontinental traffic was by boat. Lindbergh didn't make his flight until 1927.
Instead there's a discourse vacuum where people seem to decide what's going to happen more on the basis of pre-existing narratives than reality. Examples; People mistrust the US believed it's all exaggerated to hurt China, for a while some "journalists" wrote more about racism and stigma than the actual ongoing development, politicians kept ringing the everything's OK alarm, and finally, mindless optimists are the worst.
The Chinese government decided to establish an economy-crippling quarantine on January 23rd with only 1000 confirmed cases. Something was awry. And in the following week all the warning sings have been available (the quick spread, reports of CCP measures and life in Wuhan, research papers about the spread, incubation, etc). But for a month now the WHO refused to read the writing on the wall, only god knows why.
As a case study, for some days half of all confirmed cases outside of China were in the Diamond Princess, and the proportion held until very recently with 1000+ cases worldwide (sans China). Why? Sampling bias. Even arguing that a cruise is more virus-friendly cannot possibly account for a single ship holding half of the world's cases. And then came about Iran and Italy, with no clear path of spread. It's hurtfully evident that there are so many more cases and there's a huge visibility issue, and the WHO delaying measures aggravates the matter dramatically.
That just means the upper bound of the potential quality of the Chinese numbers is better, not that the actual quality of the numbers is better. Just because they are gathering more information doesn't mean they are publicly reporting it accurately.
That is, the Chinese potentially internally have more complete data, because they are doing more surveillance. That doesn't mean that the numbers they are reporting are more trustworthy.
If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%.
This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.
— New England Journal of Medicine, Feb 28, 2020
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?query=rec...
Well sure, if one assumes that, you can easily make yourself feel better. But is there a specific reason to believe this? The widespread contact tracing and testing in SK, Singapore, and Italy are not comforting. If there was a huge number of asymptomatic cases, wouldn’t they be finding them?
Choosing a denominator of only people with COVID who go on to develop pneumonia, results in a rate of 2%.
Choosing a denominator of all people with laboratory confirmed cases of COVID, results in a rate of 1.4%.
Clearly a denominator of “everyone who was infected with COVID” is larger than the denominator of “everyone with a laboratory confirmed case”.
The question is, how much larger? The number of reports of asymptomatic and mild cases which are asked not to go to a hospital are specific reasons why the true fatality rate is less than 1.4% and may be considerably less than 1%.
Total speculation. There is no reliable data on how many uncounted people there are. I've been watching your comments on here for days and it's clear you want this to be overblown, as we all do, but you're intentionally twisting the uncertainty in the evidence and data to try and downplay things. Things could turn out to be worse than we think, not better. Look at the death rates in Italy and Iran. Not to mention how high hospitalization rates could overwhelm our medical infrastructure and push the mortality rate even higher.
In short, unless you're a working expert in a relevant field, there's exactly zero reason to listen to you. I'll continue to listen to what health officials are saying, and watch what they're doing. And when I do that, it's pretty clear that you and others like you who claim this is overblown and no big deal are almost certainly wrong.
FYI, the italicized portion was a quote from the New England Journal of Medicine from a working expert in a relevant field.
Agreed. There are a few users on here who are almost 'hysterically' downplaying things and it's fascinating. I imagine these are the types of people who would get busy rearranging deck chairs as the Titanic went down, so to speak.
So it's going to popup everywhere. Any town with an international airport or university with international students will be flooded with cases in a month. Absolutely no-one has immunity since it's never existed before and since everyone feels entitled to still go to work or shop while very sick, it will spread like wildfire.
Also remember there are millions upon millions in the USA without any kind of insurance or easy access to healthcare.
Second community acquired infection and it's in the heart of the valley.
If it wasn't possible to be reinfected, I'd say the wise thing to do would be to get yourself infected now, while you can still get a respirator in the hospital.
I don't think this is true, and since we still don't know enough about true fatality rates outside of China (yet) it seems foolish to be fatalistic at this stage about containment. There's no "shoring up the [US] health care system". We can't build hospitals out of thin air (China's attempt notwithstanding), and we can't apparate more medical devices, whose supply chains are broken because of our dependence on China. Limiting infections - especially in higher risk demographics - seems critical at this point.
>If it wasn't possible to be reinfected, I'd say the wise thing to do would be to get yourself infected now, while you can still get a respirator in the hospital.
Uhhh no. This would needlessly stress the existing infrastructure. If you're young and healthy, don't soak up resources that should be used to care for at-risk populations. WFH and wash your hands.
We've already failed at this - it's in the community, cases are popping up with no known contact with an infected person. Asymptomatic cases are contagious for several days, and in a large chunk of patients it presents as a common cold that they won't go to the hospital for, and even if they could there isn't enough capacity to do the necessary testing. Game over.
Seems like a lot of “we can’t” assertions. If any country started seeing ~1M deaths per month or something, I bet they’d somehow figure out a way to do it.
I hope that, deep in the Pentagon, someone is asking these questions. Not necessarily because of COVID-19, but just in general.
I'm assuming you can get it twice, based on recent news[1], that's why I said:
> If it wasn't possible to be reinfected
[1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...
Long duration shedding even after recovery is a more likely explanation than than re-infection. But even that's not good news if someone is contagious after they've recovered. https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1231662145156374528
Possibly those weeks could make a difference; I'd imagine vaccine development is highly parallelised relative to a normal year, and there may be something in the next 6 months. 4 weeks in that scenario could be huge.
> Marks said a real late-stage trial to test a vaccine is likely “months away.” One concern is that some previous coronavirus vaccines have caused worsening of the disease, not improvement.
> “We have to make sure that as we proceed with development, we’re not creating problems,” Marks said. It might be realistic, he said, for studies of vaccines to begin by the summer, although that timeline is still aggressive.
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-vaccines-are...
There are only 3 countries outside of China which have had at least 10 COVID deaths.
The story at this point has been blown massively out of proportion relative to a typical flu season. How many more people died last week from flu-related complications than died of COVID?
It’s wise to take precautions, but it should be done rationally. IMO, I think prophecies of WWIII level calamity should be flagged, as it’s not healthy discussion but more like gruesome fan fiction.
In the moment, when reactions are snowballing, it's hard to be the one who doesn't cancel an event. And then of course there will be the people who claim next month that all the economic fallout was worth it because a pandemic never materialized.
Personally, I think it's not terrible to have a good solid Stress Test for "Disease X", but it's also very much nothing to worry about. Hopefully the over-reaction this time doesn't lead to an under-reaction if it's ever truly needed.
Only in areas where it’s common to have close contact with infected during their dying days while they are vomiting and hemorrhage blood can Ebola spread with an R0 approaching even 1.5.
The scientific facts are simple and clear. R0 is between 2 and 3, fatality rate is around 1%.
Even if it's not containable, actions should be taken to buy us more time before an effective vaccine is produced.