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How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

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Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#51

Post by robbiep »

mcsb4 wrote: post #43

There seems to be a second virus in the west: DMTMW - dont mention the M word - M like mask. Purely looking at the data, the doubling of the infection rate in western countries is between 2-3 days. Looking at Asian countries: Japan: 8-9 days - many people wearing masks Thailand: 10+days - most people wearing masks China: negative values - all people wearing masks (not just in Wuhan) and handsanitizer everywhere Cost…

Masks don’t help for catching the virus (materially) - better to wash hands. Masks do help with curbing transmission from infected, and are also needed for healthcare workers.

Please don’t waste masks when you could get significantly better benefit by regularly washing your hands and not putting your fingers in your mouth

Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#52

Post by raphlinus »

Causality1 wrote: post #44
DoreenMichele wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Onions are good lung support. 2. Watermelon is good kidney support. This is helpful if you are experiencing bloating. 3. Hot peppers are antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal and open a cell channel that helps you dump fluids. 4. Tea is an astringent. Drinking it can help reduce fluid in the lungs. 5. Spicy foods are medicinal. Some stuff that helps combat infection include: onions, garlic, hot peppers, black peppe…

Off the top of my head, half of that is utter bullshit. For example, your diet does not affect the pH of your blood or body, so alkaline foods do nothing.

True, kind, and necessary. Ideally all three, but try for at least two.

Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#53

Post by fma »

robbiep wrote: post #51
mcsb4 wrote: post #43

There seems to be a second virus in the west: DMTMW - dont mention the M word - M like mask. Purely looking at the data, the doubling of the infection rate in western countries is between 2-3 days. Looking at Asian countries: Japan: 8-9 days - many people wearing masks Thailand: 10+days - most people wearing masks China: negative values - all people wearing masks (not just in Wuhan) and handsanitizer everywhere Cost…

Masks don’t help for catching the virus (materially) - better to wash hands. Masks do help with curbing transmission from infected, and are also needed for healthcare workers. Please don’t waste masks when you could get significantly better benefit by regularly washing your hands and not putting your fingers in your mouth

If masks curb transmissions. And everyone wore masks. Wouldn't there be a benefit as a whole?

Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#55

Post by robbiep »

underbluewaters wrote: post #4

I'd like to see more information on what to do if you are sick. Even younger people have gotten serious respiratory complications and it would be great to have information on how to care for yourself or your family short of heading to the hospital and contributing to the overwhelming of their staff.

Medical assistance is ‘supportive’

This means: If you come to hospital, we give you oxygen. Initially through nasal prongs, then progressively through mask and then straight to intubation - ventilator.

If the lungs are completely unable to oxygenate, we will put you on ECMO which can work quite well whilst the lungs recover.... unfortunately not many of them.

We will also take bloods and give IV fluids. If your blood pressure crashes, you may be given inotropes/vasopressors but the case reports about people who make it this far are not good to date (frankly, anyone who needs an ICU bed even today has a 30% mortality rate so there’s always the baseline comparison)

Once ventilated, you will usually be in antibiotics to prevent opportunistic infections.

We have no other ways of helping those who are otherwise able to breathe on their own, besides symptom control (ie fever/aches and pains) however if I were to get this I would ride the fever out (heightened temperature activated immune system, trial in ICU of permissive hyperthermia shows survival benefit, although this is in sepsis patients)

If you have a productive cough (cough usually dry) then chest clearance, breathing exercises may be helpful, but should consider seeking antibiotics for secondary bacterial pneumonia

Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#56

Post by fma »

blendo wrote: post #45

From p28 of the slide deck: “Go outside - sunlight is the best disinfectant”

FWIW, Open Air Treatment was used to fight the 1918 flu pandemic. But I think culturally, we (Americans at least) love our HVAC.

"A combination of fresh air, sunlight, scrupulous standards of hygiene, and reusable face masks appears to have substantially reduced deaths among some patients and infections among medical staff. "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504358/

Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#57

Post by HashBasher »

underbluewaters wrote: post #4

I'd like to see more information on what to do if you are sick. Even younger people have gotten serious respiratory complications and it would be great to have information on how to care for yourself or your family short of heading to the hospital and contributing to the overwhelming of their staff.

Yes, we need more details about how to take care of yourself if you do exhibit those symptoms. Do we just address the symptoms? Anti-fever meds, cough drops?

Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Causality1 wrote: post #44
DoreenMichele wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Onions are good lung support. 2. Watermelon is good kidney support. This is helpful if you are experiencing bloating. 3. Hot peppers are antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal and open a cell channel that helps you dump fluids. 4. Tea is an astringent. Drinking it can help reduce fluid in the lungs. 5. Spicy foods are medicinal. Some stuff that helps combat infection include: onions, garlic, hot peppers, black peppe…

Off the top of my head, half of that is utter bullshit. For example, your diet does not affect the pH of your blood or body, so alkaline foods do nothing.

[deleted]

Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#59

Post by raphlinus »

diggan wrote: post #50
raphlinus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an authoritative source for this other than the French public health authorities? I haven't seen references to it at all in epi Twitter.

Yeah, was published in Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

That paper is about ACE inhibitors, not NSAIDs, and is specifically about patients with hypertension and diabetes, not the general population. Co-morbidity is apparently a huge driver of deaths, so research on these kinds of interactions is very important. But I think parent comment is a data point of evidence that the general public can't be trusted to interpret research.

Re: How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]

#60

Post by raphlinus »

outworlder wrote: post #49
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems you're putting twitter above a country's health authority. That seems odd. Not necessarily wrong, just odd.

Not necessarily wrong? I'm intrigued by the thought process.

I'm very happy to expand on my thought process. By "epi Twitter" I mean specifically experts I follow, over a wide range of specialties including disaster preparedness, epidemiology, public health, and related topics. These are among the best people in the field, and are kind enough to share with each other and the rest of us their expertise and thoughts through Twitter. It is awe-inspiring to see.

At the same time on Twitter, and at much higher volume, is a torrent of bullshit, with apparently some seeding from active disinformation sources. I try to be very careful to filter this out, though it's not always easy (I find my curation much more effective on desktop web than mobile).

Public health sources are sometimes wrong. For example, Ohio's chief public health doctor put out an estimate of 100k cases on 3/12, propagated through official channels including a tweet from the Governor [1], and which #epi Twitter very quickly criticized. Work out for yourself which to trust; among other things, with the CFR we're seeing, if the public health official is right we'd be seeing approximately 1k excess deaths in OH, with a timeframe that would certainly have started emerging by now.

This particular thing (ibuprofen) is in the category of "emerging research which could be very important if and when it checks out."

So basically I'm trying to be very careful to vet the information I transmit. The pipeline from that to actionable advice can sometimes be infuriatingly slow, which no doubt explains why certain things (especially with an easy-to-understand narrative) jump the queue. I will definitely put this in my resource list as soon as I see trustworthy confirmation. And I am confident that if it actually was valid and important, at least one of the experts I follow would have mentioned it by now.

[1]: https://twitter.com/GovMikeDeWine/status/1238177953126604801

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