Coronavirus prep

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  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    SModa61 wrote: »
    @GaleHawkins Can you tell me why a second and third wave can be worse than the first? Curious what factors lead to this. TIA

    Arizona during the heat of our Summer had the highest per capita on the planet.

    Probably not. The early outbreaks were way undercounted due to a severe shortage of testing. Just look at the death rates in the early states (esp NY/NJ).
    My strong belief is that when they opened up gyms, bars and restaurants it spread quickly indoors. While our numbers are slightly up again, nothing like they were in the Summer. I felt, even with a high amount of universities, that cooling temps would help and it seems like it has.

    Contrast that with the Midwest and the Northeast. Schools and universities back in session, flu season and everyone indoors. Add to it the Holiday gatherings and the numbers from Spring will be dwarfed. The only good news is that Coronavirus has mutated to be less deadly, but also more contagious.

    I think they will be up vs the summer, because of the weather, as you say, but I would be shocked if the areas that got very hard hit in the spring (the NE, parts of the midwest like Chicago, perhaps Michigan) actually got hit harder than in the spring. Then, we had had lots of unchecked spreading with no precautions at all before the outbreak started to hit. Even with the uptick, NY's numbers (such as positivity rate) is still extremely good, and absolutely nothing compared with the spring. Chicago's uptick and deaths still leave us looking much better off than in the spring and early summer.

    Knock on wood and all that.

    Michigan cases do appear to be rising, with daily new-case counts now reaching and exceeding what we saw in Spring. According to Bridge Michigan (generally regarded as a sound news source), the 7-day average new case count is the highest ever.

    But that's statewide. The per-capita regional patterns are very different.

    Of course the raw case numbers are high in the densely-populated Detroit area (where Spring's Covid impact was profound). But per capita, the case levels are highest now in some medium-density and low-density regions that were not hit hard as hard in Spring. Among those are the upper peninsula (very sparsely populated by most people's standards, around 300k people spread over a very large region, bigger than some states) and West to Southwest Michigan (probably medium density population with some cities like Grand Rapids, Muskegon, and others).

    Of the areas with high per capita rates, I believe (relying on memory, not data) the greater Grand Rapids area had a meaningful outbreak in the Spring (GR = 200k population, Kent County, where it's located, 657k). I believe most of the other regions with high per capita rates now were quite low in Spring.

    To a cynic (me) who lives here, the geographic pattern looks not so much like a 2nd wave in Michigan, as a "people don't learn from other people's experience" kind of thing. There are also some demographic and political dynamics that would amplify that effect, with outstate Michigan (perhaps especially the West and far North) inclined to see greater Detroit as "those people", not "us". When "they" were dying in Spring, hospitals, morgues and funeral homes getting overwhelmed, I believe many would've seen that as something that couldn't happen in their part of the state, for a variety of reasons.

    Yeah, that's similar to here, and what's generally happening around the country, as areas not hit before and non large cities get hit. NPR had an interesting piece on that: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/22/914578634/americas-200-000-covid-19-deaths-small-cities-and-towns-bear-a-growing-share

    https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/22/926264615/covid-19-surges-in-rural-communities-overwhelming-some-local-hospitals

    Re: cases vs deaths, back on April 28, Illinois had 2,219 new cases and 144 deaths (with a large portion, around half, in Chicago, with the next largest amount being in suburban Cook Co and then other suburban Chicago counties like DuPage). Most of the state had few cases.

    Now, today we announced 4000 new cases, and 46 deaths, so you can see the numbers aren't the same. Chicago itself had 652 new cases but only 3 new deaths -- so very different than in the spring even though total state cases are higher and Chicago cases aren't too different than they were back then on many days.

    What is worrisome is that our local positivity rate (which had been hovering just below 5% for some time) is spiking up to 7.8%, but back in the spring it was more like 25% or more, and in NY was at 50% for some time.

    That said, even if we do get another bad outbreak in Chicago, I don't think it would qualify as a second wave, but the first wave continuing to bounce around the state and the country.
  • lokihen
    lokihen Posts: 382 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    SModa61 wrote: »
    https://www.wkdzradio.com/2020/10/25/sunday-kentucky-covid-19-update/

    From the news it sounds like Covid-19 number of cases are setting records in USA and Europe. The USA had some hot spots 6 months ago but now is wide spread with more nursing home involvement than ever in our region. Hope the talk of turning the corner in 2022 turns out to be correct.

    i am so hoping you meant to type 2021.

    I don't have a whole lot of hope that 2021 is going to be better...if anything, I think it may be worse. It's only October and we're already seeing record numbers across the US and Europe. In NM we hit a new record of cases every single day right now and we're at record hospitalizations. Mortality seems to be down, but our hospitals are around 90% capacity right now for intensive care and they're talking about setting up the army tent hospitals again...I just don't think that's going to miraculously go away in the coming months as we head into 2021.

    I have to go get tested again...I went into the office on Monday and popped on the thermometer 4 times with a temp of 100.5...I don't have any other symptoms, but I have to have a negative test before they will allow me to go back to work...unfortunately, the number of people I know personally who have contracted the virus is growing as well. I was supposed to get tested today, but we had a big freak snow storm and everything is closed, so I have to wait until Thursday.

    SD is the same with daily record breaking. One difference is October has been, by far, the deadliest month.

    The trending data shows pretty clearly that this is the first wave here.
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  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,023 Member
    SModa61 wrote: »
    @GaleHawkins Can you tell me why a second and third wave can be worse than the first? Curious what factors lead to this. TIA

    I think this is an assumption, and as someone else said, if it turned out to be the case, I'd bet it was due to pandemic fatigue. If this is a second wave, I'd also guess it could be worse because it is happening during flu season, which makes hospital overcrowding and healthcare rationing more likely. Also, since it is happening all across the country at once, it will be less likely that different states can help each other by sending doctors/nurses/equipment to hard hit areas. There is no virology or epidemiology based reason why subsequent waves would be worse.
  • Diatonic12
    Diatonic12 Posts: 32,344 Member
    edited October 2020
    @snowflake954 Will you be doing all of your cooking at home for awhile. No more wonderful meals out. Sigh.

    Sidenote: I like the sound of boosted immunity for the elderly. Who in the kale would argue with that. Really.
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    This is a good overview of how various countries are doing at managing the pandemic. The New Zealand number is off from what gets reported to the WHO, but I think it's only counting local transmission, not all the cases contracted oversees.

    https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries
  • Gisel2015
    Gisel2015 Posts: 4,131 Member
    I have a feeling somewhere back in the multiple pages of this thread something about plasma donation. Plasma taken from recovered Covid cases is apparently helpful in treating severe cases.

    Does anyone have any insights as to why it’s necessary for plasma donors to be substantially overweight? Is it a blood volume issue?

    My daughter registered her interest in plasma donation as soon as she recovered and received a call from the National Blood Transfusion Service this evening. Amongst the eligibility questions asked were height and weight.

    She is 5’5” and around 9st. So her BMI is about midway in the normal BMI range.

    They told her she couldn’t donate, and in fact told her that as a woman of 5ft 5ins she’d need to be at least 12st 2lbs! That’s towards the top end of an overweight BMI.

    To me, that’s just crazy! 🤯

    I searched for eligibility criteria for donating plasma after COVID-19 infection, but I didn't find anything related to BMI. In India, a donor has to be above 50kg to donate, and older than 17 years old. That is the only info that I saw related to weight.

    However, even if donations are still recommended, so far the results have not been clinically significant. Probably because immunity doesn't seem to be very lasting or impressive according with the latest research. See the article below.

    Study finds that plasma of recovered Covid-19 patients is of limited use as a treatment
    Convalescent plasma, which delivers antibodies from Covid-19 survivors to infected people, failed to reduce death rates or halt progression


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/23/study-finds-plasma-recovered-covid-19-patients-limited-use-treatment/


  • Gisel2015
    Gisel2015 Posts: 4,131 Member
    From Dr. Sanjay Gupta

    Why we won’t feel the full impact of vaccines until next year

    There’s a lot of hope pinned to vaccines, but it’s important that people understand that even if a vaccine is authorized soon, we won’t fully feel the effects of it until next year. It will take time to vaccinate the initial groups of people and frontline workers with the required two doses that many of the early vaccine candidates require, according to former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb.

    “The vaccine is not going to affect the contours of what we’re going to go through in the next two or three months,” he said.

    So even if we have a vaccine, we won’t be able to let up on masking and physical distancing in the near future.

    What’s also important to note is that we won’t know from the vaccine trials if these vaccines will actually save lives. Rather, the ongoing trials are only designed to show if the vaccines prevent infection – and most infections are mild, said Peter Doshi, a drug development specialist at the University of Maryland.

    "None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus," Doshi wrote in the the medical journal BMJ.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said this week, “The primary thing you want to do is that if people get infected, prevent them from getting sick, and if you prevent them from getting sick, you will ultimately prevent them from getting seriously ill.”

    Fauci agreed that a vaccine which prevents infection would be even better.

    “If the vaccine also allows you to prevent initial infection, that would be great,” he said, “But what I would settle for – and all of my colleagues would settle for – is the primary endpoint to prevent clinically recognizable disease.”

  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    Gisel2015 wrote: »
    I have a feeling somewhere back in the multiple pages of this thread something about plasma donation. Plasma taken from recovered Covid cases is apparently helpful in treating severe cases.

    Does anyone have any insights as to why it’s necessary for plasma donors to be substantially overweight? Is it a blood volume issue?

    My daughter registered her interest in plasma donation as soon as she recovered and received a call from the National Blood Transfusion Service this evening. Amongst the eligibility questions asked were height and weight.

    She is 5’5” and around 9st. So her BMI is about midway in the normal BMI range.

    They told her she couldn’t donate, and in fact told her that as a woman of 5ft 5ins she’d need to be at least 12st 2lbs! That’s towards the top end of an overweight BMI.

    To me, that’s just crazy! 🤯

    I searched for eligibility criteria for donating plasma after COVID-19 infection, but I didn't find anything related to BMI. In India, a donor has to be above 50kg to donate, and older than 17 years old. That is the only info that I saw related to weight.

    110 is a standard lower limit for blood donations in the US too. I've seen it often.
  • Gisel2015
    Gisel2015 Posts: 4,131 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    Gisel2015 wrote: »
    I have a feeling somewhere back in the multiple pages of this thread something about plasma donation. Plasma taken from recovered Covid cases is apparently helpful in treating severe cases.

    Does anyone have any insights as to why it’s necessary for plasma donors to be substantially overweight? Is it a blood volume issue?

    My daughter registered her interest in plasma donation as soon as she recovered and received a call from the National Blood Transfusion Service this evening. Amongst the eligibility questions asked were height and weight.

    She is 5’5” and around 9st. So her BMI is about midway in the normal BMI range.

    They told her she couldn’t donate, and in fact told her that as a woman of 5ft 5ins she’d need to be at least 12st 2lbs! That’s towards the top end of an overweight BMI.

    To me, that’s just crazy! 🤯

    I searched for eligibility criteria for donating plasma after COVID-19 infection, but I didn't find anything related to BMI. In India, a donor has to be above 50kg to donate, and older than 17 years old. That is the only info that I saw related to weight.

    110 is a standard lower limit for blood donations in the US too. I've seen it often.

    Agree, that is why I can't donate blood :'(