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Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

cdc.gov

71–80 of 140 posts

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#71
post #33

If anyone is curious, it's now officially in NYC. Someone came off a plane from Iran. She was officially tested but since she wasn't dying the hospital sent her home for self-quarantine. Feel free to Google it to read it on whatever site you prefer, but here's a snippet from the Weather channel's site (I saw it when checking the weather today): > A woman in her late 30s contracted the virus while traveling in Iran, G…

First tested and confirmed case in NYC. There have been numerous reports from NYC residents who returned from areas with community spread, got sick, tested negative for the flu, and the CDC wouldn’t test them. I think in a few weeks we’ll find out that Coronavirus has actually been spreading in NYC for 3+ weeks. The CDC is incompetent.

I've been in NYC every weekend over the last few months, and all members of my family/household has come down with a cold, cough, and congestion. My wife had it the worst (2 weeks), and I had it just for a day. For what it's worth, my wife works from home and didn't leave the house during those two weeks.

I hate not knowing if we've been exposed or if this is just a typical winter thing. We're all individuals with healthy immune systems, and I'll probably never know.

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#72
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First tested and confirmed case in NYC. There have been numerous reports from NYC residents who returned from areas with community spread, got sick, tested negative for the flu, and the CDC wouldn’t test them. I think in a few weeks we’ll find out that Coronavirus has actually been spreading in NYC for 3+ weeks. The CDC is incompetent.

The CDC doesn't do much local testing. Mainly they provide test kits to local labs which do the tests. Please bear in mind that CDC funding for international coordination on pandemic control was cut by 80% a few years ago, and since 2018 they have not had a representative on the National Security Council, and had their senior Pandemic response positions eliminated. Reports that their overall funding was cut are not a…

>The CDC doesn't do much local testing. Mainly they provide test kits to local labs which do the tests.

Yes, but the CDC first botched their test kits and set ridiculously limited guidelines for testing (recent travel to China) that would have caught community transmission much earlier had they been widened.

If this continues, we’re going to reach a point where states and local authorities are going to start ignoring the lagging directives of the CDC out of self-preservation. This already happened in NYC when they told the CDC to get bent with their botched test kits and just started manufacturing their own.

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#73
post #67
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be calm, I'm all better.

Being calm and following health organizations guidelines (or even common sense) aren't mutually exclusive.

The current guidelines are to test only those with respiratory symptoms who have also traveled to certain countries recently.

Resources are limited, having everyone with a minor case of the sniffles rush the hospitals all at once doesn't sound like a good plan.

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#74

Sent this to my friends and family yesterday: > it is important to note that current global circumstances suggest it is likely that this virus will cause a pandemic. CDC really isn’t mincing words - this is going to be bad and we should start social distancing to slow the spread.

Pandemic is defined when a virus reaches multiple continents so it’s already the case.

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#75
post #3

>This virus is NOT currently spreading widely in the United States. Curious how this is known given practically zero tests have been done and numerous cases with no contact external to the US have been discovered.

Easy. %20 of the cases require some type of hospitalization. %80 are mild and don't require medical attention. If you have Covid-19 rampant in your town - the hospitals will fill with persons experiencing a bad flu - that %20. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-80-percent-cases...

I'm not sure we have the confidence to run the logic that way right now. There are still some ways to harmonize "this hit China really hard" and "this won't impact much of the rest of the world" at this point. I've seen it hypothesized since before it even spread out of China that this may happen to target some people more than others based on different levels that people express the receptor that this virus targets. There's also some reason to wonder if China is getting hammered due to widespread smoking [1], and even more widespread exposure to pollution levels that are not entirely dissimilar to smoking. If, perchance, all of these factors are true at once, then it could be that what was in China was a perfect storm for them, and it'll be just a cold for everybody else.

We still don't really have the evidence in yet to know. At the moment we can fit the facts both to "everyone's in big trouble" and "it isn't that big a deal anywhere else". In some ways, the best possible news would be that it's been spreading in the US for weeks... and we didn't notice, because it's literally not noticeable because it's not that big a deal here. I'm not pitching that as "truth" at the moment, but it's on the table.

[1]: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202002.0051/v1 - note this preprint disagrees with the "differential expression" theory; given it's "early days" I'm taking this merely as a data point, not proof yet. This could explain how it's a catastrophe in a high-pollution city and just "a cold" everywhere else. This scenario raises the interesting possibility that covid-19 could have started anywhere, and it simply wasn't noticed until it happened to get to Wuhan through normal mechanisms. What if "patient 0" turns out to be an asymptomatic business traveler from $NOT_CHINA? I'll call this a low-probability outcome, but what if we start widespread testing in the US only to discover that almost everyone already has it?

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy. %20 of the cases require some type of hospitalization. %80 are mild and don't require medical attention. If you have Covid-19 rampant in your town - the hospitals will fill with persons experiencing a bad flu - that %20. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-80-percent-cases...

Is it still the case that you have a two week latency before symptoms? If so, that would make detecting the early stages of an outbreak without testing exceptionally hard.

I think that's true only if transmission is possible before noticing symptoms.

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#77
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First tested and confirmed case in NYC. There have been numerous reports from NYC residents who returned from areas with community spread, got sick, tested negative for the flu, and the CDC wouldn’t test them. I think in a few weeks we’ll find out that Coronavirus has actually been spreading in NYC for 3+ weeks. The CDC is incompetent.

The CDC doesn't do much local testing. Mainly they provide test kits to local labs which do the tests. Please bear in mind that CDC funding for international coordination on pandemic control was cut by 80% a few years ago, and since 2018 they have not had a representative on the National Security Council, and had their senior Pandemic response positions eliminated. Reports that their overall funding was cut are not a…

I would upvote 100 times if I could.

The two World Wars of the last century (and again 9/11) have driven home the concept that military security in an interdependent world requires a global perspective. Now is the time to understand that health security needs the same perspective, or even more so - because nature does not care about political borders.

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First tested and confirmed case in NYC. There have been numerous reports from NYC residents who returned from areas with community spread, got sick, tested negative for the flu, and the CDC wouldn’t test them. I think in a few weeks we’ll find out that Coronavirus has actually been spreading in NYC for 3+ weeks. The CDC is incompetent.

I've been in NYC every weekend over the last few months, and all members of my family/household has come down with a cold, cough, and congestion. My wife had it the worst (2 weeks), and I had it just for a day. For what it's worth, my wife works from home and didn't leave the house during those two weeks. I hate not knowing if we've been exposed or if this is just a typical winter thing. We're all individuals with he…

You might know if one day you get tested for whatever reason, they will pick up the antibodies.

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#79
post #59
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is more serious than the flu, but not as serious as MERS or SARS. Like the seasonal flu, the main worry is older people and/or people who are already respiratory compromised. I don't want to catch this much like I don't want to catch the flu, but my main worry is for my parents and grandparents.

This is way more serious than the flu in multiple ways. First of all, estimates show that the case fatality ratio (CFR) is around 2%, which is 20x higher than the flu. This number is likely to rise when ICUs are becoming over-constrained and cannot take new patients. This is already happening in the north of Italy as we speak. Second, the transmissibility of the SARS-nCov-2019 (the virus causing COVID-19) is much hig…

> Third, there are reports showing lasting damage to kidney and lung tissue (sponge-like structures). Even when surviving COVID-19, previously healthy people might become chronically ill.

you can't say that and not point to a source.

Re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Situation Summary

#80
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, correct, scores of people in the areas the CDC report there being cases, and in which they say people are at increased risk. That's not 'widely in the united States'. They also say that widespread transmission is eventually likely to occur. They are simply, and as far as I can tell very clearly and responsibly, drawing a distinction between what is happening now and what is likely to occur in the future.

As there has been community transmission and aren't actively testing symptomatic people (unless in known direct contact with someone who has traveled to an affected area, or traveled there themselves), it's questionable if they have a sufficient grasp on "what is happening now".

>and aren't actively testing symptomatic people

The article even has pictures of the test kits they've been distributing.

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