How does the coronavirus kill?
sciencemag.org
How does the coronavirus kill?
1–10 of 64 posts
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#2I'm not a science person nor do I know how a virus kills a human body but this one is for sure something amazing. What we can't see can lead you to an absolute death destroying your whole body, it certainly is quite shocking. It's 2020 and we are still losing so many lives, yet we are still lucky to be alive because of the advancement in medicine and health care.
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#3Regarding the oxygen saturation levels that have been so much in focus the last few days (the usual thresholds for starting intubation might be wrong for Covid-19 patients): is this a metric that is measured directly or is it usually derived from proxies? That's what my debugging instincts are shouting whenever I read something about the oxygen saturation mismatch, it would be easy to get misled of the proxies have never been (noticeably) unreliable before.
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#4Regarding the oxygen saturation levels that have been so much in focus the last few days (the usual thresholds for starting intubation might be wrong for Covid-19 patients): is this a metric that is measured directly or is it usually derived from proxies? That's what my debugging instincts are shouting whenever I read something about the oxygen saturation mismatch, it would be easy to get misled of the proxies have n…
It's relatively direct:
https://www.lung.org/lung-health-diseases/lung-procedures-an...
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#5Regarding the oxygen saturation levels that have been so much in focus the last few days (the usual thresholds for starting intubation might be wrong for Covid-19 patients): is this a metric that is measured directly or is it usually derived from proxies? That's what my debugging instincts are shouting whenever I read something about the oxygen saturation mismatch, it would be easy to get misled of the proxies have n…
Pulse oximeters measure the light absorbed by hemoglobin. So that's pretty much a direct measurement, I don't think it could be wrong.
https://opentextbc.ca/vitalsign/chapter/why-is-pulse-oximetr...
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#6Regarding the oxygen saturation levels that have been so much in focus the last few days (the usual thresholds for starting intubation might be wrong for Covid-19 patients): is this a metric that is measured directly or is it usually derived from proxies? That's what my debugging instincts are shouting whenever I read something about the oxygen saturation mismatch, it would be easy to get misled of the proxies have n…
Pulse oximeters measure the light absorbed by hemoglobin. So that's pretty much a direct measurement, I don't think it could be wrong. https://opentextbc.ca/vitalsign/chapter/why-is-pulse-oximetr...
When this first started popping off, I ordered one of them on Amazon. If I get it, it should help give me info on if / when I would need to go to the hospital.
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#7Only one thing is clear about our immune system: it's extremely complex and even after a century of prodding it, we still don't know it well enough to prod it in targeted ways and know what to expect.
Especially, suppressing the immune system is always dicey, since its not just one variable you tune up or down. However, there _is_ a magic bullet of sorts out there, Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG).
IVIG is just concentrated antibodies made from plasma of thousands of donors. Its original use case was to clear out a patients antobodies to suppress any antibody-mediated autoimmune response, but turns out IVIG can have global immunosuppressive effects through other mechanisms as well. Importantly, it's very "benign" - almost no known side effects, and your general immunity is still left intact. This has led to extensive use of this drug off-label for anything dealing with excessive immune responses.
The more and more I think and look, the more I'm convinced IVIG might help worsening covid patients. Indeed, a case study from China suggests it can be beneficial (3 of 3 very sick patients fully recovered) but of course a proper study is needed (IVIG is quite possibly the worst drug to try and ramp up production). On the other side, a pre-covid trial of IVIG on ARDS patients (already on EMCO) showed no effect, though I personally felt the study was too broad. More studies are also needed, because I'm sure any _new_ IVIG made, since it pools thousands of patients' plasma, is bound to have anti-covid antibodies as well, and this could have some potentially dangerous effects as well (Antibody-Dependent Enhancement). But I'm still cautiously optimistic and am hoping to write to some experts after gathering more data to see what they think.
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#8I'm not a science person nor do I know how a virus kills a human body but this one is for sure something amazing. What we can't see can lead you to an absolute death destroying your whole body, it certainly is quite shocking. It's 2020 and we are still losing so many lives, yet we are still lucky to be alive because of the advancement in medicine and health care.
It's a virus that is completely unadapted to the human body, fresh off the boat from whatever animal it evolved on. It's like an early prototype medication: it already has the desired effect (reproduction in a body part that serves as a launch pad for transmission to other hosts), but it's chock-full off side effects. Unfortunately, it is so good at pre-symptomatic transmission that those side effects impose very little selection pressure.
At this point we have an interesting link to the topic of contact tracing apps: if we shift our countermeasures from wholesale isolation to fast, computerized contact tracing that is fast enough to overtake the infectivity/symptom last, it will increase the evolutionary advantage of less damaging strains (asymptomatic cases don't trigger a contacts cascade)
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#9Regarding the oxygen saturation levels that have been so much in focus the last few days (the usual thresholds for starting intubation might be wrong for Covid-19 patients): is this a metric that is measured directly or is it usually derived from proxies? That's what my debugging instincts are shouting whenever I read something about the oxygen saturation mismatch, it would be easy to get misled of the proxies have n…
I read speculation based on protein protein docking, that it could limit ability of hemoglobin to bind oxygen. On the other hand it can't enter red blood cells so it does not make sense.
But I think you would see high blood oxygenation even in a person with CO poisoning as it just measures whether something is bound to hemoglobin
Re: How does the coronavirus kill?
#10Interesting read. My father-in-law died of Covid-19 last week. The thing that got him in the end after a 9 day battle was kidney failure. He had heart problems and diabetes already as underlying conditions.
There’s one thing I take away from all of this and that is to eat and live healthy to reduce the things working against you as you get older. Age is bad enough on its own.