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My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

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Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#201

Post by dolguldur »

redwood wrote: post #85
dghughes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say you're doing the only thing a person can. You see many people speak of "boosting your immune system" but it's pure quackery. A person's immune system is many layers and types, a system, it's not a single thing that can be adjusted at will. The way I see my immune system is a 100 liter tank of water. You can't overfill it but it can be low. At most it can only be 100 liters. Your immune system can only be as g…

Get enough sleep.

Yes. Pure speculation, but lack of sleep might have been a factor in relatively young doctors in Wuhan dying from the virus. And quantity of viral matter might also be an important factor.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#202

Post by vkou »

rrss wrote: post #97
garmaine wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC doesn't run the tests. The hospitals and independent labs do. There has been some issues with the test kits distributed by the CDC, but since the virus genome has been sequenced you don't actually need a test kit (it's just a faster process if you have one). However the CDC has enacted emergency powers to make it illegal for hospitals to use their own testing equipment, which they have in-house, to test their…

> the only confirmed case of community-spread COVID-19 There are now 4 confirmed cases of community-spread COVID-19. 2 in california, 1 in oregon, 1 in washington. https://abcnews.go.com/US/high-school-student-washington-lat...

There's now a nursing home in Washington with a staffer, and a resident[1][2] confirmed to have COVID-19, and ~50 people in that nursing home showing symptoms. But, since only those 2 people have been tested, the national stats look amazing! Only 4, no, scratch that, 6 transmissions!

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/02/two-new-us-coron...

[2] Neither of them have been to China.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#203

Post by ImaCake »

heyoni wrote: post #199
pmiller2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't understand why it's literally illegal to take a swab and run a PCR against the known, published viral sequence. Forget "any self-respecting wetlab biologist," I'm pretty sure an undergrad with a year's worth of lab experience could run the test, at least under supervision. Edit: I suppose you do need a "self respecting wetlab biologist" to synthesize the primers, but running the test itself is pretty si…

Running the test is simple but getting good primers nowadays is easy because they can be bought and arrive 24 hours later. If the sequence is published, then even the lab manager can get them.

Yes, labs don't synthesize their own primers. They buy them from suppliers. The kind of primers you would use for SARs-Cov2 would be about $10-$20AUD (similar for USD) a vial and be sufficient for several hundred reactions (maybe a hundred or so tests with triplicate replicates, pos and negative controls). The thermocycler and the technician doing the pipetting are the expensive bits, not the primers!

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#204

Post by pombrand »

vanusa wrote: post #24
sschueller wrote: post #8

The Swiss government issued the following guidelines [1] to prevent further spread of the virus. Masks are considered useless unless you are infected. - Wash your hands thoroughly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvcvvRp3lsY - Cough and sneeze into a paper tissue/handerchief or the crook of your arm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_rFPtQgKE - If you experience shortness of breath, have a cough or fever: • Stay at…

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…

N95 masks may only be effective used with eye protection. Surgical masks may not help at all.

Looked for interventional studies testing whether face masks and eye protection work in humans to protect against airborne viral particles. A big issue with many such studies is that medical staff only use masks and/or eye protection at work, opening them to being infected outside of work.

Found a small study [1] getting around this problem by exposing subjects (n = 28, avg age 30.5 years) to monodispersed live attenuated influenza vaccine particles by placing them in front of a vibrating-orifice aerosol generator for 20 minutes, subsequently testing for infection using RT-PCR and culture in nasal washes.

RESULTS

- No precautions: 4 out of 4 infected.

- Ocular exposure only: 4 out of 4 infected.

- Surgical mask only (3M 1818): 5 out of 5 infected.

- Surgical mask with eye protection (Z87 Uvex non-vented): 5 out of 5 infected.

- N95 mask (3M 1860/1860S) only: 3 out of 5 infected.

- N95 mask with eye protection: 1 out of 5 infected.

1. Bischoff WE, Reid T, Russell GB, Peters TR. Transocular entry of seasonal influenza-attenuated virus aerosols and the efficacy of n95 respirators, surgical masks, and eye protection in humans. J Infect Dis. 2011;204(2):193–199.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#205

Post by dillonmckay »

gdubs wrote: post #172
rrss wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stupid, mostly-unrelated question: how does 'call a doctor' usually work? do most people have a doctor that they can just call? If I had a need to call a doctor (fortunately I don't at the moment), but don't know any doctors, what should I do?

Assuming you’re in the US and have insurance you can usually go on your insurance company’s website and find a local provider (doctor). You can then just call them up and say you’re looking for a new primary care physician. Also, many areas have urgent care centers for things that are serious but maybe not emergency room serious. Unfortunately, cost is a variable in the US and I can’t give any good guidance on that.…

Good luck with using the insurance company’s website. The doctors they list in my area seem to either be deceased or not accepting new patients.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#206

Post by vanusa »

Barrin92 wrote: post #194
vanusa wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The risk of dying from this disease is negligible for most American adults. Can you tell us please: (1) What your numeric definition of "negligible" is (2) And on what math this is estimate based?

current risk for healthy adults appears to be 0.1-0.2% which is comparable to a bad flu season while the chance of getting infected is lower by several magnitudes given how relatively few numbers of cases there are even if you assume there's a lot of asymptomatic cases. If we take China as a comparison, a country with urban agglomerations of 50 million people and more and the 80k cases as rough estimate then the chan…

Current risk for healthy adults appears to be 0.1-0.2% which is comparable to a bad flu season while the chance of getting infected is lower by several magnitudes given how relatively few numbers of cases there are even if you assume there's a lot of asymptomatic cases.

Not sure what to do here. This isn't even a coherent sentence. Nevermind the handwavey logic.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#207

Post by swsieber »

dredmorbius wrote: post #178
swsieber wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least in China, somebody knew the ground truth. I wouldn't go that far, judging from reports of death certificates with "Unknown viral pneumonia". But I agree that China seemed a little more on top of it... once the world got wind of it.

China didn't know what it was dealing with, how to assess it, or who to test. It did the legwork on all of that, for which the rest of the world should be grateful. Test-kit availability has been constrained throughout the epidemic, and yes, that means that full confirmation has been only partial and lags outbreaks. But information I've seen is that once China was aware of what it was dealing with, it was testing as…

Oh, don't get me wrong. The U.S. totally botched this, and it seems like it has had one of the worst responses of countries I've followed closely.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#208

Post by vanusa »

prostheticvamp wrote: post #188
vanusa wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please clarify: (1) Which category of mask are you saying provides "no" self protection -- ASTM 3 and N95? (I've read over your post multiple times, and not entirely clear). (2) So to be clear - are you saying that N95s provide "no" self protection? Not just that they can be misused; or that protecting against surface droplets is more important; but literally "no" self protection? (3) And if the answer to (2)…

Sorry if I was unclear. ASTM3s do not provide self protection. They are estimated to reduce ambient virion uptake by about 2/3 - which just isn’t enough to make a meaningful difference most of the time, as 1/3 of the usual droplet output is already more than is needed to cause infection.

Thanks for clarifying.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#209

Post by dredmorbius »

swsieber wrote: post #207
dredmorbius wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China didn't know what it was dealing with, how to assess it, or who to test. It did the legwork on all of that, for which the rest of the world should be grateful. Test-kit availability has been constrained throughout the epidemic, and yes, that means that full confirmation has been only partial and lags outbreaks. But information I've seen is that once China was aware of what it was dealing with, it was testing as…

Oh, don't get me wrong. The U.S. totally botched this, and it seems like it has had one of the worst responses of countries I've followed closely.

I'm not going to say flat out the worst. But relative to capabilities, knowledge, and experience, the furthest from potential.

Otherwise agreed.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#210

Post by drclau »

dredmorbius wrote: post #175
drclau wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was your critique of China's measures? To me the extreme measures were just an indication that they understood better than they let the rest of the world know what they are dealing with. I mean, they locked down entire cities at who knows what costs, and they were _disinfecting the streets_. Or maybe they did let everyone know via official channels. Frankly, I was surprised that WHO didn't treat this as an emerg…

I criticised the initial response , largely from ~mid December 2019 - ~21 January 2020, specifically attempts to shut down any and all discussion of the outbreak initially, as well as downplaying reports. See from three weeks ago this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22274827 In terms of the actual epidemiological response, most especially since ~22 January, limiting travel, events, large congregations of…

Thanks for clarifying and for adding more info.
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