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My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

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Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#111
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masks are considered useless unless you are infected. That's not what the guidelines said. They guidelines were referring only to "hygienic masks" a.k.a. generic surgical masks: The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) does not recommend that people who are well wear hygienic masks (surgical masks). If you are in good health, they do not protect you effectively against an infection with respiratory viruses (i.e. se…

They provide no /self/ protection. As I have said in multiple threads on this topic: we wear astm3 masks to protect /patients/ from /us/. A lot of hospital PPE is oriented towards /patient/ protection. And N95s are heavy and uncomfortable. No one can wear them for long. But if anyone wants to, they’re welcome to it.

N95 masks are used in many industries to protect their wearers from particulates, including wet particulates. Many of them have check valves that make them useless for protecting other people from the wearer. We don't yet know how much protection they provide against SARS-CoV-2 infection, because we don't know how essential saliva droplets are to contagion, but they probably provide some.

Although there are different kinds of N95 masks, the most common kind weighs a few grams; this is not uncomfortable.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#112
post #94

It's going to spread here, I'd rather have it and get immunity sooner than later when it's full swing and treatment might be limited.

you dont get immunity to it. you can re-catch it, at least according to certain sources. woman in japan got it again, or at least it seemed to have gone away entirely, and then came back.

[deleted]

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#113
post #104
post #98

One of the key findings coming out of China is that CT scans can outperform reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) lab tests in diagnosing the Coronavirus[1]. [1] https://www.itnonline.com/content/ct-provides-best-diagnosis... If the CDC's current tests are flawed or too few, then the CDC should provide guidelines to health providers to quickly diagnose potential patients using CT scans.

A CT scan is fairly standard procedure for diagnosing many things. Why do doctors and hospitals need CDC permission to use it to test? This seems like a bad movie where the CDC is not doing much due to political pressure. Why can't doctors act in their patients' best interest on their own?

A CT has a pretty high radiation dose. As far as I understand, for every 2000 people given a chest CT we expect 1 person to get a fatal form of cancer due to the CT.

Compared to the natural incidence of getting a fatal cancer in your lifetime (about 400 in 2000), this is a very low. And for serious conditions, a CT can literally be a life saver.

But if you apply chest CTs to screen for a disease with (let's say) a 0.1% fatality rate, the side effects of your screening increases the fatality rate by 50%.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#114

This helps highlight just how much of this is nothing more than FUD. The CDC counts real flu deaths and estimates infections. It doesn’t test for them. As a result you get a relatively low fatality rate. But for COVID-19 we are using only confirmed deaths and confirmed tested infections to come up with a fatality rate that seems much higher than it actually is because most infections go unreported. This is just a rea…

Medical statisticians are not tards, and the math used to estimate CFRs is reasonable. Yes, there's uncertainty, because when something is massively growing, it's not meaningful to test the population at large and ordinary surveillance mechanisms are not effective yet. We also don't really have serological testing (allegedly Singapore has a good serological assay?) which doesn't help.

It's worth noting that the real issue is that CFR skyrockets when the medical system saturates. With good medical care available, the CFR is still much higher than the flu but less crazy. The problem is, COVID-19 can create enough severely ill cases to saturate medical systems with uncontrolled spread.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They need to prevent panic as much as possible, prevent economic collapse, etc. The response to events like this can be worse than the initial problem. If this event is half as bad as all the literature out of China is suggesting, panic is the least of our worries. What a responsible government should do is initiate some sort of recommendation for gradual stockpiling of goods - perhaps a lottery just to encourage th…

>If this event is half as bad as all the literature out of China is suggesting, panic is the least of our worries No. The risk of dying from this disease is negligible for most American adults. The real issue with the corona virus is economic disruption and overburdening of the healthcare system. All of which is significantly exarbarated by panic.

Say what you want, but 2% is not negligible. That's 1 of every 50 people. With 330,000,000 population that's over 6.5mil people.

Yes, the mortality changes with age younger people are about 0.2% but older are close to 15%.

Having health issues such as cardiovascular or diabetes increases the risk further, and Americans aren't the healthiest people.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#116
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rounding up .5 is considered proper form.

I agree. If you only have two significant digits to work with, pretending to have more precision is a different kind of dishonesty.

100 - (3.5 +/- epsilon) is 96.5 +/- epsilon.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#117

So is there a way to prepare our bodies for getting sick? Me and my wife and our 8 month old live 40 hours a week in public, so it's going to happen. We already eat healthy, me and the wife workout. But the kid? Not sure how to prepare him.

There is a potential risk with having a very healthy immune system in cases like this. It's called 'Cytokine release syndrome' and happens in healthier and younger individuals and it is far deadlier than the viral infection itself.

I don't believe that applies here. I remember seeing on another thread that you would expect to see lots of 20-50 year old deaths with CRS, like the Spanish flu. From what I've seen, COVID mortality seems to be proportional to age, with a lot of very old people succumbing.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Surgeon General dismissed medical masks, which are useless against this virus, they were not talking about masks that are sealed to your face and actually filter germs. Your post itself is misinformation.

I don't think most people know how to properly fit test an N95 respirator though.

Assuming they actually have one and not a fake one from amazon

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#119
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CT scan is fairly standard procedure for diagnosing many things. Why do doctors and hospitals need CDC permission to use it to test? This seems like a bad movie where the CDC is not doing much due to political pressure. Why can't doctors act in their patients' best interest on their own?

A CT has a pretty high radiation dose. As far as I understand, for every 2000 people given a chest CT we expect 1 person to get a fatal form of cancer due to the CT. Compared to the natural incidence of getting a fatal cancer in your lifetime (about 400 in 2000), this is a very low. And for serious conditions, a CT can literally be a life saver. But if you apply chest CTs to screen for a disease with (let's say) a 0.…

From what we can tell, SARS-CoV-2 has a 2% mortality rate among those diagnosed. That seems like a pretty decent trade in odds if it accelerates early stage treatment.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#120
post #98

One of the key findings coming out of China is that CT scans can outperform reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) lab tests in diagnosing the Coronavirus[1]. [1] https://www.itnonline.com/content/ct-provides-best-diagnosis... If the CDC's current tests are flawed or too few, then the CDC should provide guidelines to health providers to quickly diagnose potential patients using CT scans.

As someone who interprets CTs, the findings described in that paper are totally nonspecific and just indicate a pulmonary infectious/inflammatory process. The takeaway I have is if the CT is totally clear, COVID is unlikely. Otherwise, you need confirmatory testing to figure out what is going on with the lungs.
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