COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[Beet]

Highest testing states:
https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1245838887135481857
Lowest testing states:
https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1245838564404998144

These stats is by the way fairly misleading, too.

As far as I know most states have similar policy — test only people with symptoms. So states with more infected people per capita will test more per capita. It should be very strong correlation there.

Death is very good (but lagging) proxy for infected people. So take a look
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/coronavirus-maps-charts-states-testing-deaths



See the correlation with your stats?


For instance New York test 10 more people per capita than Alabama, but also has 20 more deaths per capita (https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-us-maps-and-cases/). Then you can say that AL test 2 more than NY per dead person.

As I said death is lagging proxy. About 2-4, perhaps. Therefore, NY, perhaps or even likely, test more than AL per infected but not a lot more. 100% not 10 less per infected as your highly misleading stat might have suggested for people who not good at stats and logic.

Hopefully, you understand what I mean. From Russia with Stats Explaining! 

Except your entire "misleading" criticism is also misleading-- because the only way a "death" can be confirmed as due to COVID19 is from testing.

Don't test -- death not due to COVID19 = low deaths per capita.

Simple and obvious. If you have lower tests per capita you will also have lower deaths per capita. The only way to be sure is either to test broadly, or compare total mortality statistics compared to a normal baseline.

[Beet]

Here is some important context, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert



2016 USDA map. According to the Medley Food Desert Project,[6] nearly 24 million Americans live in food deserts. Food deserts are heavily concentrated in southern states, which correlates with concentration of poverty. The map presents percentages of people without cars living in areas with no supermarket within a mile.

You can complain that there are so much poor people in US/these states (it's a tragedy) and that the [southern] states didn't fix that, but you can't complain that these people didn't stop "travel more than 2 miles". They doesn't have that privilege.

By the way -- this criticism of my post is also misleading.

The data looks like it correlates, but actually doesn't.

One of the biggest food deserts is West Virginia/Eastern Kentucky -- but you see strong social distancing practices being put forward in those areas. West Virginia issued a statewide lockdown on March 24. Kentucky Gov. signed a similar order on March 25.

Therefore "Food Deserts" are no excuse.

[Beet]

https://twitter.com/ilyseh/status/1246055366716198914

[Beet]

OK,

You have countries like Spain, Italy, Germany and France daily growth well under 4,000 for the 3 per. moving average but worldometers shows growth of well over 4,000 for all of them. How does that compute?
Spain +7,134
Germany +6,365
France +5,233
Italy +4,585

[Beet]

(Minor) good news- we finally have a study of the vulnerability of the virus to various household cleaners. Previous studies published relied on testing done on other, similar viruses, such as SARS-1 or other coronaviruses. The EPA approved list is simply compiled based on products proven to work on "hard to kill" viruses.

Tables:
https://www.thelancet.com/cms/10.1016/S2666-5247(20)30003-3/attachment/34ed069e-7268-42ae-8627-df3aa869d81b/mmc1.pdf
Full Study:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(20)30003-3/fulltext#seccestitle10

The following disinfectants work at 5 minutes' exposure at 22degC (or 71degF):
Household bleach (1:49)
Ethanol (70%)
Povidone‐iodine (7.5%)
Chloroxylenol (0.05%)
Chlorhexidine (0.05%
Benzalkonium chloride (0.1%)

It also confirms the virus is sensitive to heat. At 37degC (99degF) the logarithmic decay after 1 day was about 50%, whereas the same decay at 22degC (71degF) took 7 days, and there was almost no logarithmic decay even at 14 days at 4degC (39degF).

[Beet]

Temperatures across the South are mercifully getting to that summer level, which is going to severely help cover up the negligence of the Governors in those areas. I'd rather they make decisions that are boneheaded and manage to escape the consequences than that catastrophe happens. I'm rooting for Florida.

Here's another one:

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1247357060943142916

https://twitter.com/ossoff/status/1247275032109334528

They knew.

[Beet]

I'm literally f__king CRYING of laughter. This guy is funnier than any comedian ever has been or ever could be.

https://youtu.be/zi_qX50zv7k

Who ever said evangelical Republicans were good for nothing?

Looks like he can barely container his own laughter

Its funny until you realize he's worth $760 million.

[Beet]

https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1248315818854748160

Never heard of anything with a combination like this before: asymptomatic transmission for weeks; efficiency of spread; can live for 3 days on some surfaces, like plastic & steel; a new study showing a median R0 value of 5.7; possible transmission via simply talking & breathing; etc.... & now it can "reactivate."

Wtf is going on!?

Yeah, it infects both the upper and lower respiratory tracts, the digestive system, and the central nervous system, and despite theorized zoonotic origin it already had a spike protein very good at recognizing human ACE2 cell receptors. It's like the "perfect virus" or the "nightmare virus" in terms of transmissibility; take your pick.

[Beet]

In the vast majority of cases where DNA or RNA mutates, it is a debilitating mutation.

I thought most mutations basically have no effect.

You are right. However, when it does have an effect, it is more likely to be debilitating. On the other hand, high mutations make it hard to develop a vaccine, so overall a low mutation rate is still better.

[Beet]

Very bad news, especially for the attractiveness of the herd immunity route:

In those who survived mild and severe disease alike, the researchers found that many of the biological measures had “failed to return to normal.”

Chief among the worrisome test results were readings that suggested these apparently recovered patients continued to have impaired liver function. That was the case even after two tests for the live virus had come back negative and the patients were cleared to be discharged.

At the same time, as cardiologists are contending with the immediate effects of COVID-19 on the heart, they’re asking how much of the damage could be long-lasting. In an early study of COVID-19 patients in China, heart failure was seen in nearly 12% of those who survived, including in some who had shown no signs of respiratory distress.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-10/coronavirus-infection-can-do-lasting-damage-to-the-heart-liver

Note that this is only for hospitalized patients, so the results may be skewed.

[Beet]

We spent trillions of dollars fighting a war that stemmed from 9/11. We did that because we "never again" wanted to lose 3,000 lives in a terrorist attack. We could have kept the money for tax cuts, infrastructure, whatever you want; and lived with the possibility that another big terrorist attack could happen. But basically everyone supported going to war. So how is this different? Because the people dying will mostly be old? Because we won't lose any buildings? Because we weren't shocked to our core in an instant? Or because you're worried it will be a lot more than 2 trillion lost? Something's different.

We've already eclipsed the 9/11 death toll by a factor of 8!

The coronavirus isn't brown skinned, arab or muslim though, so it's harder to justify to the American people wasting money waging war against it.

This snarky comment isn't too far off the mark. People are far more comfortable with a human enemy. The 1918 flu pandemic killed more people than World War I, but it's the trenches that (until this) got almost all the historical attention. If something is supposed to be scary, we expect it to be big. A missile? That we can understand, even though missiles have killed a grand total of zero people on American soil in all of history. But a virus? It's hard for some people to wrap their heads around being beaten around by a microscopic organism, 0.1 micron in length, something 1/750th the diameter of a human hair, let alone that can't be seen. It's even debatable if it's alive at all.

Even 9/11, was never really grasped. People never really psychologically came to terms with the fact that something that dramatic could be pulled off by just a dozen hijackers funded by some rich guy living in a cave in Afghanistan, and that that was the end of the story. Overthrowing the Taliban didn't seem to be enough, it was too easy. Hence the Iraq War. It took a decade of high drama and a million dead Iraqis for America to get 9/11 "out of its system."

But this virus is even more insignificant than that. When the true enemy is ignorance, stupidity...

[Beet]

Fox News is reporting that sources who have been briefed on details believe initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that "patient zero" worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.

I do find it suspicious. The virus is 96% similar to bat coronavirus, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), China's only Level 4 bioresearch lab, was studying bat coronavirus. We know that there have been past (minor) viral outbreaks based on employees at labs accidentally infecting themselves. There have also been cases of employees at labs taking animals no longer used for testing, and attempting to sell them at markets. And while natural viruses have certainly emerged in China, they typically do farther south, such as Hong Kong, Guangdong province, Guangxi, Yunnan, or even Vietnam or the Philippinnes. Wuhan is awfully far north. Nor is there any report that bats or pangolins were sold at the Huanan Seafood Market.

Further, early in the epidemic, there was heavy speculation that a graduate student whose name is listed on the WIV website but whose photo and bio were scrubbed, was patient zero. When contacted, WIV initially denied her existence until confronted with Internet evidence from their own website. Then, they changed their story to say she left in 2015 and has been healthy ever since living in other provinces. However, despite this, no one has been able to locate her and the government has not produced her, which would have squashed the rumors. The only thing against this theory is that she hasn't published papers since 2015. But it is curious why she is not produced.

Nonetheless, this is separate from the Fox report.

[Beet]

Some potential good news, if this study is right.

Study of 1,200 cases claims that an overwhelming amount (80%) involved indoor transmission between family members, public transportation was involved in the second largest share (34%), but very little outdoor transmission.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdf+html

Suggests while airborne transmission is possible, it is not the main source of transmission. The only problem I have with this study is potential selection effects. Cases are more likely to be connected to each other as part of a single outbreak if transmitted among family.

[Beet]

Some potential good news, if this study is right.

Study of 1,200 cases claims that an overwhelming amount (80%) involved indoor transmission between family members, public transportation was involved in the second largest share (34%), but very little outdoor transmission.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdf+html

Suggests while airborne transmission is possible, it is not the main source of transmission. The only problem I have with this study is potential selection effects. Cases are more likely to be connected to each other as part of a single outbreak if transmitted among family.

If this study was correct, then what would in general be the most common mode of transmission? People touching things?

It would be people living together at home, in close quarters.

[Beet]

Some potential good news, if this study is right.

Study of 1,200 cases claims that an overwhelming amount (80%) involved indoor transmission between family members, public transportation was involved in the second largest share (34%), but very little outdoor transmission.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdf+html

Suggests while airborne transmission is possible, it is not the main source of transmission. The only problem I have with this study is potential selection effects. Cases are more likely to be connected to each other as part of a single outbreak if transmitted among family.

If this study was correct, then what would in general be the most common mode of transmission? People touching things?

It would be people living together at home, in close quarters.

So basically large numbers of people touching the same substances then? (Which is probably hand transmission by proxy?)

Yes, and droplet infection, like being nearby someone who is coughing and breathing in their large droplets (which is different from airborne, which is when the virus suspends in the air for a long period of time & can travel many meters).

[Beet]

Remdesivir major result today is positive from a sample of 125 severe patients in Chicago. I have a good feeling about this drug.