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Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

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181–190 of 197 posts

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#181

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From the article: Patients who had heart disease before their coronavirus infections were much more likely to show heart damage afterward. But some patients with no previous heart disease also showed signs of cardiac damage. In fact, patients with no preexisting heart conditions who incurred heart damage during their infection were more likely to die than patients with previous heart disease but no COVID-19-induced c…

That's circular logic. If patient A dies of heart failure during a covid-19 infection, you should not be concluding that the patient likely had a heart issue prior to the covid-19 infection. Sure, it might be the case, but you cannot draw any conclusion here unless you compare it to other pneumonia cases.

The heart damage would be more meaningful in patients who have had clean EKGs prior to being diagnosed with covid-19. Here in the US covid symptoms are most likely causing a good number of adults to see a doctor after decades of no medical checkups or for for the first time.

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#182

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Would you prefer them to say “psychogenic”?

Yes. Because then they have the duty to explicitly rule out non-psychogenic causes (like a pinched vagus nerve, viral infections, a pulmonary oedema, etc). Sometimes it feels just like the "panic attack" is a wild card they default to when the investigation would be too complicated and the patients looks like anxious anyway (which is probably because the patients' body is playing castanets, who would not be scared of…

Horses, not zebras.

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#183

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> The most likely cause of the heart damage by far is the systemic inflammation induced by pneumonia Isn’t this premature given the lack of data? We’re seeing an anomaly documented and being studied. It’s not cause for alarm. But neither does it merit such dismissal.

I don't think it's premature, no. We have a lot of data indicating that it's a respiratory disease. It should be studied, almost any coronavirus anomaly is worth studying, but we know what conclusion to expect.

There are doctors on the front lines who would disagree. See interview of Cameron Kyle-Siddell: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/928156 Other info on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronks

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#184
post #52

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Speculation on treatments for Covid-19 has already killed people: https://ktla.com/news/arizona-man-dies-after-taking-form-of-...

This man was killed because he drank fish tank cleaner. Frankly, I don’t believe his death is causally linked to certain people speculating that hydroxychlorouine might be an effective treatment.

So he came up with the idea of drinking this chemical by himself?

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#185
post #166

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If 70% of people get it, you have a baseline risk of 30% of getting it. My assumption is that a sizeable fraction of people either: * Already got it * Don’t take hand washing seriously or do it wrong * Are bad at avoiding touching their face * Unnecessarily touch surfaces when out (i.e. door with hand, rather than sleeve/bag, whatever) * Don’t practice distancing well * Are in a job where they must interact with the…

I'm trying to understand your numbers and I'm hung up on what may just be a coincidence. You say if 70% of people get it, you have a baseline risk of 30% of getting it. Is that the normal way of phrasing risk? My expectation would be that there is a 30% chance of not getting it. Am I misreading your comment or is my definition of risk somehow backward?

Oops. Just a typo. I meant baseline chance of 30% of not getting it. So I figure, with precautions, you have a more than 30% chance of being in that 30%.

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#186

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All good points. But paulsutter's message remains: young people are at significant risk. Yes, the risk for older people and those with pre-existing conditions in higher. But the parent poster's characterization of the risk for young people as "very little" is dangerous.

This is also why I don't really like that some propose various "herd immunity" schemes - we simply don't know what the virus actually does to people in practice, even if it does not outright kill them. So it seems very irresponsible to propose schemes like that at this point in time.

Exactly. I know I'm waiting until they have herd immunity available for everyone.

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#188
post #148

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Probably not for even another month. Because it will stop working, for practical reasons. People will have to go back to work, or be evicted. Go out for necessities, shopping around to find any, increasing their exposure instead of decreasing it. Go job interviewing. All sorts of fallout, which actually increases travel and potential infection, instead of reducing it. Its easy for us middle-class folks to say "Just s…

Right. What I'm really hoping is that those of us who were going into an office to do a job that everyone involved fully well knew could be done from home (e.g., software dev) won't be forced back into close-quarters again just because a "safe-at-home" order has been lifted (besides, I have asthma and my wife has hypertension). Until we beat this thing (which probably means a vaccine being widely-available, so... ano…

exactly my thoughts. yet in my country some especially non-essential people are still being forced into their offices. their only job is to increase future dividends. which, at this point, is a longshot to be civil...

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#189
post #135

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I totally agree with your "wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy" - this is probably the worst pneumonia-flu-like sickness I went (still going?) through. I am now convinced that if I will catch it (or some mutated off-spring of this) again, I might not make it. Looks like I got it too about 3 or 4 weeks ago. No cough, no fewer, just a growing chest pain. Went to doctor back then, he prescribed antibiotics against pneu…

Covid-19 is a type of virus that does not mutate much at all. It has error correction in replication. Across all the variants found globally so far, there have only been changes to 20 base pairs - most of which (possibly all) do absolutely nothing. Your immunity will likely make any re-infection much much lighter - even many years from now. Interestingly, Coronaviruses generally, can still re-infect you even after yo…

can you, or someone who understands this, explain to the layperson what this means.

the last sentence in particular, what does reinfection have to do with error correction (what is error correction (assuming it has to do with the genome)?)

why is that an advantage over influenza?

Re: Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling Covid-19 patients

#190
post #173

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Well, all the individual maintenance is being cancelled. Home maintenance; dentist appointments; tax accountant meetings; checkups; physical therapy. Heck even housecleaning, haircuts and sports. There will be a cost to all this - small business starts that fail across the board, loans and mortgages in default, cars repossessed, restaurants closing everywhere. Hard to get a job for most people with so many businesses…

Home Depot is still open. Plumbers, electricians, AC guys, etc., are essential businesses. Your tax accountant can work with you over the phone. Cancelled checkups and dentist appointments are an unfortunate consequence of living with this virus. Lifting the lockdown on them may well result in more net damage to people's health at this point - but maybe not. This is one of the first things we need to think about re-o…

No doubt its necessary. But it comes with a cost, which I think we agree on. And it will be a surprisingly high cost, for all sorts of unexpected reasons. Possibly resulting in a recession.
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