COVID COVID-19 Coronavirus Containment Efforts

[vela]

Why would it matter? If you got the virus, would you plan on dousing your body with microwaves?

Shooting microwaves at surfaces might not be quite as dangerous as that, but would likely be dangerous. Cataracts, anyone?

I think the question might have been if you can disinfect objects by nuking them.

 

[phinds]

I think the question might have been if you can disinfect objects by nuking them.

Jeez, vela, nuclear bombs are definitely overkill.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Jeez, vela, nuclear bombs are definitely overkill.

But if it saves Just One Life...

 

[BillTre]

Relevant info (with respect to cloth masks) from the eyebank I work for:

There are different ways to clean these cloth masks:

1. Soak in HOT BOILING water and let air dry
2. Dip in 91% alcohol and let air dry
3. Put in microwave for 20 or so seconds

 

[kolleamm]

Relevant info (with respect to cloth masks) from the eyebank I work for:

There are different ways to clean these cloth masks:

1. Soak in HOT BOILING water and let air dry
2. Dip in 91% alcohol and let air dry
3. Put in microwave for 20 or so seconds

Then out of all those the microwave seems to be the most practical.
(Assuming the object has no metal parts)

 

[phinds]

Then out of all those the microwave seems to be the most practical.
(Assuming the object has no metal parts)

Does that damage/degrade the elastic?

 

[Rive]

Does that damage/degrade the elastic?

Maybe no, but may stink

 

[OmCheeto]

Then out of all those the microwave seems to be the most practical.
(Assuming the object has no metal parts)

My guess, based on the following video, is that the masks must be either completely soaked with water,



or contained in some type of microwave steamer/sterilizer.

In any event, the microwaves don't/won't destroy the viruses directly, it's the heat that does the job.

 

[anorlunda]

Stupid question: does certifying recovered patients to return to work create an incentive for others to try to expose themselves to the disease?

Yeah, that is why having documentary evidence that you are recovered would be important.

Unfortunately, everyone is scrambling so much to prevent spread and to care for the sick, I expect that near zero effort will be provided to those recovered. They probably never will get documentation.

Example, in Florida the government unemployment benefits office is completely overwhelmed with new applications. Then the governor offered help from 25000 other state employees to help with processing those applications, employees like police, highway maintenance, social workers, prison guards, and so on. That is a sign of desperation.

 

[kyphysics]

Synthetic antibodies might offer a quick Coronavirus treatment

In the search for a treatment for COVID-19, researchers are exploring a wide range of approaches, including antibiotics (which ordinarily aren’t effective against viruses), a drug used for malaria (also not a virus) and of course the gold standard for viral disease, a vaccine (which is probably at least a year away). Another approach is to harvest antibodies, protective substances produced in response to an infection, from the blood plasma of people who have been infected.

That, however, is a slow process, and there are no guarantees it will work; you have to recruit patients to donate plasma, and then collect and process it into a form that can be used therapeutically.

Dr. Jacob Glanville, one of the researchers featured in the Netflix documentary “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak,” thinks he has found a shortcut. Glanville is the president of Distributed Bio, a computational immunoengineering group that focuses on making antibody therapeutics and vaccines. For weeks, Glanville and his team braved long shifts in the lab to engineer a possible treatment for COVID-19, and last Wednesday, April 1, he announced via Twitter that they had achieved a breakthrough. Yahoo News spoke to the scientist that evening.

“For the last nine weeks we have been working on creating an antibody therapy to neutralize and therefore cure the novel Coronavirus in patients who need it.”

Antibodies are proteins that are produced by the immune system to help stop intruders and pathogens, such the coronavirus, in order to prevent sickness and harm.

“We are engineering very specific antibodies that are really good at this, to be able to go block the virus.”

Glanville told Yahoo News that in order to save time and arrive at these results, he went back to antibodies that had proven effective 18 years ago in the fight against SARS.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/syntheti...-a-quick-coronavirus-treatment-132122036.html

Any thoughts, guys?

Later the article says:

It also is effective immediately, Glanville said. “With a vaccine, that shot has little pieces of the virus in it, and so when you get injected with it, your immune system starts to learn how to attack those pieces of the virus, and that takes time; that takes many weeks, might be six or seven weeks before you have protection with an antibody. With a therapeutic, that syringe or IV bag contains the antibodies directly. So when they infuse it into you, your body doesn't need to do anything.”

Despite these benefits, a vaccine is still the gold standard. “A vaccine could give you a year, even up to five years of protection, where an antibody, when you inject them into your body, they only really last about eight weeks, maybe 10 weeks,” Glanville explained.

[moderator: gaudy red font removed.]

 

[kyphysics]

My thought is sometimes having something is better than nothing as we wait for a vaccine.

 

[atyy]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/syntheti...-a-quick-coronavirus-treatment-132122036.html

It's a similar idea to blood plasma treatment, where we give a patient plasma from people who have recovered because the plasma has antibodies against the virus. It could work, but I think it will also have to go through the whole safety and efficacy testing for approval, which will be slow. Antibody treatments are also typically very expensive. So this will not be a "quick treatment".

 

[bhobba]

Why would it matter? If you got the virus, would you plan on dousing your body with microwaves?

Shooting microwaves at surfaces might not be quite as dangerous as that, but would likely be dangerous. Cataracts, anyone?

I think it's about something like a plastic container, where a virus can live for 72 hours, when used as a container to heat food, if it gets killed. Heat kills it, so it's highly likely so does microwaves.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

Any thoughts, guys?

Worth a try.

Thanks
Bill

 

[kyphysics]

Antibody treatments are also typically very expensive. So this will not be a "quick treatment".

Many health insurers are waiving COVID-19 treatment costs. Not sure if they'd cover preventative costs, but if it really is going to be expensive, I do hope the U.S. government can have grants for it.

 

[mfb]

Even if it works it's probably not for prevention, but would be given to patients already in a hospital. Maybe even limited to ICU patients.It's not just Italy now, Spain's ICU bed demand goes down, too.

Germany has 4 times as many free ICU beds as COVID-19 patients in ICU beds (and at least the same number as additional improvised ICU beds), looks like a good safety factor, especially as new confirmed cases seem to be on a downward trend now, too (https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/politik/inland/debatte-um-intensivbetten-in-deutschland-100.html).

 

[atyy]

One of the difficulties with many approaches to developing a treatment, is that often by the time the patient is in ICU, the viral load is low - so it is not clear from the basic biology whether it is too late to start antivirals, or antibodies etc that help to clear the virus. IIRC, there have been cases reported in which the virus has been cleared below detectable levels from the body, yet the patient still dies several weeks later. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/thailand-records-first-covid-19-death-coronavirus-12487738 (the dengue part of that report might not be correct, as Covid-19 true positives can lead to false positives on Dengue).

So perhaps the drugs should be given early. But the drugs are too expensive to give to everyone early, so we would like to know which patients are at risk, and give the drugs early to them. But at present, I think it is not clear to whom the limited supply of drugs should be given to obtain the most benefit. Anyway, this consideration has been known for quite some time, and hopefully the clinical trials going on will help to provide empirical answers.

 

[atyy]

Malaysian man walks 120km home after returning from Japan to avoid infecting anyone with coronavirus
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/s...ing-from-japan-to-avoid-infecting-anyone-with

There's a dog in the story.

 

[wukunlin]

Some doctors are saying ventilators may be overused
I find it a bit confusing...

Many patients have blood oxygen levels so low they should be dead. But they’re not gasping for air, their hearts aren’t racing, and their brains show no signs of blinking off from lack of oxygen.

even when it does say later in the article

One reason Covid-19 patients can have near-hypoxic levels of blood oxygen without the usual gasping and other signs of impairment is that their blood levels of carbon dioxide, which diffuses into air in the lungs and is then exhaled, remain low. That suggests the lungs are still accomplishing the critical job of removing carbon dioxide even if they’re struggling to absorb oxygen.

Shouldn't the lack of oxygen still have an effect?

 

[atyy]

Some doctors are saying ventilators may be overused
I find it a bit confusing...

I'm not entirely sure what the article is saying, but I here is my interpretation about the parts you asked about.

Low oxygen will kill. However, the body doesn't sense when to take a breath depending on sensing a low blood oxygen level. Rather, the body senses when to take a breath depending on a high blood carbon dioxide level. So if somehow blood oxygen is low, and blood carbon dioxide is also low, then the body might not sense that it needs to breathe more.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482456/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4559867/

 

[mfb]

It has been reported that New York City has a lot of deaths at home that are currently not tested for COVID-19. About 20-25 per day normally, but ~200/day now. News report
New York wants to count them now, too.

She didn’t say when the city would begin reporting suspected deaths along with the overall count. But the new protocol is likely to add thousands to the toll.

The official count for NYC is 4111 deaths (April 7).

 

[anorlunda]

It has been reported that New York City has a lot of deaths at home that are currently not tested for COVID-19. About 20-25 per day normally, but ~200/day now. News report
New York wants to count them now, too.

That is understandable. If those victims are buried without an autopsy, we'll never know for sure if they really had COVID-19. So even in the future, we'll never have an accurate count of deaths, only estimates.

People who get the virus at home are advised to stay in bed, and family members are instructed to isolate themselves from the patient. That means there could be periods of 8 hours or more when nobody monitors the patient's breathing. If there are only two people in the house, and both get sick, and nobody calls 911, then the chances of 1 or 2 deaths increase.

Our grandparents were more familiar with deadly infectious diseases at home. Having family elders live with their children instead of living independently in a far-away state would provide more supervision and support during emergencies. That brings economics in. Before old people had living pensions, they could not afford to go away and live independently.

My wife and I are both 75. Our closest family member is nearly 1000 miles away. We love our independence, and defend it vigorously. But we must accept that independence changes the risk profile.

 

[Astronuc]

NY State is tracking comorbidity with COVID-19. It reports: Top 10 Comorbidities by Age Group (4,732 out of 5,489 (86.2%) total fatalities have at least one comorbidity)
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.go...ker-Fatalities?:embed=yes&:toolbar=no&:tabs=n

Top 10 Comorbidities are: Hypertension, Diabetes, Hyperlipidemia, Coronary Artery Disease, Renal Disease, Dementia, COPD, Cancer, Atrial Fibrilation, and Congestive Heart Failure.

 

[anorlunda]

NY State is tracking comorbidity

I'm surprised that smoking is not on the list.

 

[Astronuc]

I'm surprised that smoking is not on the list.

I expect that smoking is distributed among those with COPD, hypertension, cancer (doesn't distinguish among types of cancer), and others. Smoking is a behavior, rather than a medical condition. I would also expect that some probably have two or more conditions. Some people close to me were smokers (some still are), and they have COPD + cancer, hypertension, early stages of coronary artery disease. Some colleagues in my age group, and who are not smokers, take numerous medications for some of those conditions. It seems somewhat subjective as to which one of two or more conditions would be selected for cause of death.

My mother had dementia, hypertension and atrial fibrillation, and she had some level of hyperlipidemia. In the end, her heart gave out (before n-coronavirus). My dad has been treated for colon cancer, and now has COPD.

A patient who died with COVID-19 in New Jersey described by CNN as "A 69-year-old man from Bergen County who was treated at Hackensack University Medical Center died March 10. He had a history of diabetes, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, gastrointestinal bleeding and emphysema, said Judith Persichilli, the state's health commissioner. The man, who traveled regularly to New York City, had a heart attack a day before he died and was revived. He died after having a second heart attack."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/health/coronavirus-united-states-deaths/index.htmlLA Times - Coronavirus kills some people and hardly affects others: How is that possible?
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-04/why-coronavirus-kills-some-people-and-not-others

We know COVID-19 is more deadly the older you get. It’s also more dangerous for those who have chronic lung disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, weakened immune systems and other https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/underlying-conditions.html.

But seemingly healthy are also dying from COVID-19.

One thing to keep in mind before we continue: It is possible that the information you read below will be contradicted in the coming weeks or that gaps in knowledge today will soon be filled as scientists continue to study the virus.

“There is an explosion of research about this, and what we know about it is changing almost by the hour,” Jones-Lopez said.

 

[BillTre]

Here is a CDC document on face mask use, cleaning and production.
I have pdf of this but could not figure out how to get it into this message.

 

[dlgoff]

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW/AP) --- The Legislative Coordinating Council voted to overturn Gov. Laura Kelly’s newest executive order restricting the size of religious gatherings.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If one looks at the map of cases in New York, one sees a remarkable correlation with affluence. Westchester County, for example, has a factor of two higher case per person ratio than Queens, even though its population density is an order of magnitude lower.

I wonder if this is telling us where the hospitals are - i.e. someone who lives in the Bronx, caught the disease in the Bronx, spread the disease in the Bronx, but once he got sick was sent to a hospital in the next county over so counts in the Westchester statistics. Or is this telling us something about the epidemiology.

 

[atyy]

If one looks at the map of cases in New York, one sees a remarkable correlation with affluence. Westchester County, for example, has a higher case per person ratio than Queens, even though its population density is an order of magnitude lower.

I wonder if this is telling us where the hospitals are - i.e. someone who lives in thge Bronx, caught the disease in the Bronx, spread the disease in the Bronx, but once he got sick was sent to a hospital in the next county over so counts in the Westchester statistics. Or is this telling us something about the epidemiology.

Maybe the richer people traveled to Europe more?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html

There is also the suggestion that the Grand Princess cases in California came from Washington
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03...eak-gene-detectives-see-link-to-seattle-case/

Of course one needs to be careful with these, as they could be independent introductions (ie. correlation is not causation).

https://nextstrain.org/ncov has trees of viral genomes, and one can play about with the display, eg. filtering to highlight the cases from New York.

 

[kyphysics]

I live in the state of Virginia. We have shelter in place rules by our Gov. Northam.

https://www.governor.virginia.gov/media/governorvirginiagov/executive-actions/EO-55-Temporary-Stay-at-Home-Order-Due-to-Novel-Coronavirus-(COVID-19).pdf

I live with and assist my parents, esp. my father, who has an underlying health condition making him vulnerable to COVID-19.

The neighbors have kids (roughly 10 to 14 years in age). They bring other neighborhood kids to their yard to play all sorts of sports (including contact). This is in direct violation of Gov. Northam's executive order to be 6 feet apart in public spaces (except for your own family members).

I get the kids playing with their own family members. But, sometimes, we'll see other neighborhood kids who we know are not related to them playing sports and being within inches of each other. They also COME ONTO OUR PROPERTY (drive-way, grass, and curb) to catch football passes, freesbie, baseball, etc. I don't know if they intend that per se, but it's inevitable when you're playing sports, given errant passes, etc.

QUESTIONS:

1.) How would you handle this if you wanted to get them to stop coming on your property?
2.) Would you ask them to stop playing sports where people are within 6-feet of each other? Exercise is allowed by Northam's order. But, you have to be 6-feet apart from non-family members. Thus, IT IS technically against Ralph Northam's executive order for our state, which lasts through June 10. I think the parents may just be ignorant of the rules. Or, maybe they've told their kids, but the kids don't follow them...well, because sometimes kids don't take these things seriously or don't care...or forget in the heat of the moment.
3.) Would you get aggressive if they break the rules. I could, technically, call police on them.