OT: Corona virus

[Anachro]

ORIGINAL: Olorin

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... us-vaccine

Survival of the vilest.

FYI, for those wondering about this; the claims reported on by various news organizations regarding this were found to be without basis. The company in question itself came out to deny their veracity.

Source: Company's Twitter

[Canoerebel]

Thanks for clearing that up.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

AFAIK and remembering/interpreting what I have heard in those interviews with experts, they look at droplets coughed out but also just at the plain old exhalation from an infected person. Certainly cover your own coughs, and certainly wash your hands, but one of the experts stressed multiple times that so far the evidence was (always might be new evidence by now) that the primary means of transmission was simply breathing.

One of them commented on what he judged the really bad idea of keeping the passengers on cruise ships with infected passengers, because cruise ships (as he said it) are notorious for recirculating the air through the passenger cabins. They (as he said it) basically insured more people would become infected, and IIRC he even termed it a form of torture.

So, I'm sure you can catch it by other means too, but it seems (IIRC) the most insidious route is simply an infected person breaths out and a non-infected person breaths in enough of that, then becomes infected.

That's the sort of thing the media loves to do, take pieces of a scientific study out of context, thus generating more fear and panic (literally their bread and butter). Let's see what the authors of that study really said and did:

First we get the scary headline:

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 can survive in the air for several hours in fine particles known as aerosols, according to preliminary research.

Now the details (but not the important ones):

The coronavirus, which causes the respiratory infection COVID-19, can be detected up to 3 hours after aerosolization and can infect cells throughout that time period, the study authors found. However, the study, first posted March 10 on the preprint database medRxiv, is still preliminary, because it has not undergone extensive peer-review. The authors did receive comments from one prospective scientific journal, and posted an updated version of the study on March 13 reflecting the revisions.

Assuming these initial results hold up to scrutiny, aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appears "plausible," the authors wrote

So it's "plausible", but.....

Morris and his colleagues tested whether viral particles from aerosols could infect cells grown in the lab, not actual human beings. More important, even if aerosol transmission can occur, it's unlikely to be the primary force driving the current pandemic, Morris added.

"The current scientific consensus is that most transmission via respiratory secretions happens in the form of large respiratory droplets ... rather than small aerosols," he said. "Droplets, fortunately, are heavy enough that they don't travel very far" and instead fall from the air after traveling only a few feet.

Maybe we should look at the actual test:

To see how long SARS-CoV-2 survives as an aerosol, the researchers fed samples of the virus through a nebulizer and sprayed the aerosolized particles into a drum-like structure. They then took periodic samples from the drum and analyzed each one for viral genetic material, known as RNA.

The team was able to detect viral RNA throughout the course of their 3-hour experiment, but that alone does guarantee that the remaining virus was viable.

OK, so artificially created aerosols can spread the virus in a lab. But here's the REAL question. Do humans send out virus-infected aerosol plumes?

The notion of viral particles hanging in the air, ready to infect passersby, may seem scary, but to become an aerosol, droplets containing viral particles must first be transformed into a light mist, thin enough to be supported by the air. By definition, aerosols are less than 0.0002 inches (5 microns) in diameter, while typical respiratory droplets exceed this size.

"Based on what we know about other respiratory viruses, we don't think that SARS-CoV-2 gets aerosolized in everyday settings," Morris said. "Rather, aerosolization, if it happens at all for SARS-CoV-2, is likely to happen in health care settings," according to recent studies, Morris said.

Hmmm. It can happen, but not in "everyday settings". Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like an important caveat, yes? So when do humans create aerosolized plumes?

During the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, aerosols drove severe bouts of viral spread in health care settings, Gordon said.

Specifically, the use of intubation — where a tube is inserted into a patient's windpipe — and nebulizers — which transform medicines into an inhalable mist — generated aerosols and increased the risk of viral transmission to health care providers, she said.

So all a person has to do is steer clear of operating rooms during intubation, and they have nothing to worry about? That seems doable. However there is one other method for releasing aerosols, although this one does NOT involve normal people, breathing normally:

Additionally, aerosols released in stool likely drove two SARS superspreader events in non-health care settings, one in an apartment complex and the other in a hotel, she said.

Gee, that sounds familiar. If only somebody would post more information on that! [:D]

Next up, I'll address the "airborne circulation on cruise ships" canard.

[Canoerebel]

In Georgia, we refer to "aerosols released in stool" as a poot.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

One of them commented on what he judged the really bad idea of keeping the passengers on cruise ships with infected passengers, because cruise ships (as he said it) are notorious for recirculating the air through the passenger cabins. They (as he said it) basically insured more people would become infected, and IIRC he even termed it a form of torture.

Oh man. The lawyers are lining up already. This method of transmission is so terrible it's "a form of torture".

Here's one example of the media speculation (please note, the link is provided simply to prove I'm not making this up...no need to click it):

Scientists in Singapore may have found a clue as to how so many people aboard cruise ship the Diamond Princess ended up getting infected with COVID-19.

It appears the virus might be able to spread through air conditioning systems.

Just over a month ago, samples were taken from three isolation rooms at an outbreak centre in Singapore. Two of the rooms had their samples taken after routine cleaning - they consistently tested negative for SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the virus which causes COVID-19.

The third room however had samples taken before cleaning, and it tested positive. Thirteen out of 15 spots in the room had positive test results for the virus - including air outlet fans.

Super scary!! And if it goes through cruise ship vents, why not those in homes, apartments and condos!? [X(]

Maybe we should get more information on the actual study, to make sure we know what it was about:

The findings from the NCID study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last Wednesday, had found that a Covid-19 patient with mild symptoms could cause "extensive environmental contamination" in an isolation room, before it was cleaned.

Samples taken from the toilet bowl and sink used by one patient had tested positive for the presence of the virus, although post-cleaning samples were negative, suggesting that current decontamination measures are sufficient.

The study also suggested that "small virus-laden droplets may be displaced by airflows and deposited on equipment such as vents", prompting international headlines on how this could be a route of transmission.

Not a lot to go on. Maybe we need a little more information from the guy who ran the study:

Prof Leo explained that the purpose of the study was to look into environment contamination rather than how the virus spreads.

"It is not so much to prove if it is an airborne condition or not; it is just merely telling you that the virus is scattered around in the isolation facilities."

Pretty simple. The study looked at one thing and the media excerpted it into something completely different. But still....the virus was on vents! That should be worrisome, yes? Ummm.....no:

Associate Professor Kenneth Mak, director of medical services at the Ministry of Health, who was also on yesterday's panel, said the findings from the NCID study were consistent with what is currently known about how the virus spreads through respiratory droplets.

He noted that the air-conditioning systems in isolation rooms were not like those in homes.

Prof Mak noted that air-conditioning units in homes are usually located at the top, with air circulating around the room.

But in isolation rooms, the vents are located at the bottom, and airflow is tightly controlled so air is prevented from "spilling over" into other spaces.

"So when you take a swab and find viruses around the vents, it is actually a combination of droplets falling by gravity into those areas, as well as a bit of airflow that comes through," said Prof Mak.

Deadly Cruise Ship air conditioning systems? No.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

In Georgia, we refer to "aerosols released in stool" as a poot.

"Farts of Death"

God help us, I can see the headlines now.... [8|]

[Canoerebel]

A few years ago, a statistic came out that each poot contains 1/464th of a gram (or something like that) of fecal matter. Unintentionally doing the the math wrong, I came up with the horrible notion that 464 poots would yield a pound (!) of the real stuff. Shoot, some men could produce that much per day. The thought was dismaying.

[HansBolter]

Condos are typically constructed with individual dedicated air conditioning systems for each unit, that do not include mixing air from more than one unit.

Apartment buildings however, often have large areas served by any given air handler as is the same for most office buildings.

Ask an architect.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe




From what I read, it is more similar to the SARs virus. In fact, if the vaccine for that would have been made, that vaccine might provide some immunity to this latest Corona virus.

Do you have a background that's relevant to vaccines and virology?

Yes, I do. I am a somewhat literate barbarian who can understand and remember some things.

Edit: Why do you ask that question and are you trying to make an issue of something? [&:]

I asked because I was curious if you had any citations handy about this virus being similar to others, because every report I've read has said 1 to 1.5 years to have any kind of vaccine available. Not necessarily mutually exclusive if the virus that causes SARS is similar and a claim that if a vaccine had been developed for SARS we would be closer to a COVID-19 vaccine, but I don't have the biological expertise to figure anything out beyond what is listed in the executive summaries of medical papers.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Kull

There's a lot of talk about "hospital bed count", but the important number is "Critical Care Beds". Attached is an interesting chart, showing CCBs per 100,000 inhabitants. With a population of about 60M, that means Italy has 7500 CCBs. The current worlodometers chart says there are 1672 serious/critical Covid-19 cases in Italy, so at a minimum that's consumed 22% of all national CCBs. And since those are sprinkled around the country and the majority of Italian cases are in Lombardy, the real bed consumption rate in the affected zones could be 2-4 times higher.

By contrast, Germany has vastly more CCBs (almost 25K) and few reported serious/critical patients. Which means CCB availability is not an issue (at least for now), and is probably at least one reason why the death rate is so much lower. It also suggest that Germany can weather a lot more critical cases before the system is "stretched" and the death rate increases. Something to watch going forward (the same applies to the US).

We keep hearing about "not exceeding healthcare system limits", and this gives a way to analyze and predict what might be coming (i.e. how close is it to Italy)

Coming back to this.

This is just critical care beds of all types, yes? What's important is the number of critical care devices that can assist patients with symptoms of severe respiratory infections - so respirators/ventilators and any other devices that can assist in breathing for a patient. It's notable because what's going on in Italy is they are having to decide which patients get the ventilator when it's available and which don't.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Condos are typically constructed with individual dedicated air conditioning systems for each unit, that do not include mixing air from more than one unit.

Apartment buildings however, often have large areas served by any given air handler as is the same for most office buildings.

Ask an architect.

I don't have to. My girlfriend lived in a condo which was converted from apartments. Four units shared each roof air-conditioner. Moot point, of course. [:)]

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

Coming back to this.

This is just critical care beds of all types, yes? What's important is the number of critical care devices that can assist patients with symptoms of severe respiratory infections - so respirators/ventilators and any other devices that can assist in breathing for a patient. It's notable because what's going on in Italy is they are having to decide which patients get the ventilator when it's available and which don't.

In general, we aren't talking about just the bed, but the unit and it's support capabilities for "X" number of CCBs. I haven't been able to find any stats relative to "ventilators per CCB", but it's got to be very high, although it may vary from country to country. There are interesting stats at the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, in particular:

Mechanical ventilation is one of the most common interventions implemented in the intensive care unit. More than half of the patients in the ICU are ventilated the first 24 hours after ICU admission; comprised of individuals who have acute respiratory failure, compromised lung function, difficulty in breathing, or failure to protect their airway.

And this:

790,257 hospitalizations involving mechanical ventilation in 2005, representing 2.7 episodes of mechanical ventilation per 1000 population; estimated national costs were 27 billion representing 12% of all hospital costs.

That means there have to be a lot and given the regulatory environment, it wouldn't surprise me if a high ratio was mandated (possibly even 1-to-1).

Here's some information on ventilators from the American Thoracic Society. What they do, how they work, and more.

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

....
I asked because I was curious if you had any citations handy about this virus being similar to others, because every report I've read has said 1 to 1.5 years to have any kind of vaccine available. Not necessarily mutually exclusive if the virus that causes SARS is similar and a claim that if a vaccine had been developed for SARS we would be closer to a COVID-19 vaccine, but I don't have the biological expertise to figure anything out beyond what is listed in the executive summaries of medical papers.

Loka, see informative posts by Chickenboy early on (especially page one, and also re-posted a page or two back) in which goes into detail. He thought (at that time, three weeks ago, and therefore subject to revision based upon additional info) that a vaccine might be possible in considerably less than a year, perhaps less than six months.

[spence]

According to the Mr Fauci today the first test of a vaccine happened/is happening today but the vaccine consists of two shots taken a month apart so the experimental vaccine is not exactly a perfect solution for those who are going to get sick in the next month.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: spence

According to the Mr Fauci today the first test of a vaccine happened/is happening today but the vaccine consists of two shots taken a month apart so the experimental vaccine is not exactly a perfect solution for those who are going to get sick in the next month.

Developing a vaccine you think will work is one thing, proving that it does work requires its use over a significant period of time. So producing quantities, rolling it out to a given sector, testing heavily to monitor trends - that is the part that takes a good chunk of time. Certainly it would not be rolled out worldwide until there was good evidence of results.

EDIT to add: Vaccines work in the negative - that you see fewer or no cases - and that is tricky to track. An actual treatment or cure would yield more immediate results.

[Canoerebel]

"Recovered" case data in Korea has leaped forward.

Just a week ago, maybe less, the number of deaths in Korea was 51, recovered cases was 118.

There have been 24 deaths and more than 1,000 recoveries reported since then.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna




Do you have a background that's relevant to vaccines and virology?

Yes, I do. I am a somewhat literate barbarian who can understand and remember some things.

Edit: Why do you ask that question and are you trying to make an issue of something? [&:]

I asked because I was curious if you had any citations handy about this virus being similar to others, because every report I've read has said 1 to 1.5 years to have any kind of vaccine available. Not necessarily mutually exclusive if the virus that causes SARS is similar and a claim that if a vaccine had been developed for SARS we would be closer to a COVID-19 vaccine, but I don't have the biological expertise to figure anything out beyond what is listed in the executive summaries of medical papers.

It was also mention in an interview with the medical detective that was interviewed. The link was provided by George. The medical detective is an expert at the University of Minnesota. If I ever get there again, maybe I will write a letter to drop off with some ideas that I have had and if he thinks that they would be viable. This would be more in the way of the Lyme disease that was mentioned.

BTW, there is a disease that if you had it then you were protected from smallpox. The Doctor Jenner (If I remember correctly) was investigating a means of preventing smallpox and said something to a young woman with a milkmaids complection about smallpox when she said that she could not get it because she had cowpox, which is a very mild disease. So protection from one disease can prevent other diseases. This could also explain why some people don't get sick while other people do get sick.

[obvert]

Interesting on the Diamond Princess tack here, bridging off fro Kull's post.

Thanks for the rundown on those two studies by the way. That is good sleuthing, and you should write notes to the articles that misrepresented the data. Big bad there. We don't need that right now. [:-]

I saw this and it got me thinking.

[font="Trebuchet MS"]The report from the Chinese CDC said 1.2% of patients were asymptomatic. (That's counted separately from the 80% who have mild cases.) A higher portion of asymptomatic cases was found on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where 380 of the 691 people tested positive but showed no symptoms.

That means the real number of asymptomatic patients could be higher, since patients who don't realize they're sick don't seek testing or medical care.[/font]

What they didn't mention in this report was that they showed no symptoms at time of testing. So that doesn't help a lot, but is still interesting.

That made me search, and found this little article that tries to show how the DP and Chinese numbers could show a quite low mortality rate of 0.5% taking into account how many undiagnosed cases and asymptomatic cases were out there.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cor ... death-rate

Imagine though if 1.2% of cases are asymptomatic completely? So even in Korea, with it's amazing testing program, if 10k people have tested positive, there could be 120 people going about business as usual (not being tested since they have no symptoms) not knowing they're passing the disease on to dozens of people a day perhaps.

This made me again consider the different methods of tackling this. This sets up four scenarios of different methods of isolating people to different degrees.

If there are any asymptomatic cases, the quarantine will not work, eventually. It'll just become the single infected person spreading to multiple people daily again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... Fstory-ans

[RangerJoe]

Somebody told me today that the bad colds with possible alimentary distress going around since December may have been the COViD-19 virus. She said that a nurse told her.

I will do a quick look for further information.

[tolsdorff]

Serious work by the Dutch RIVM showed that in Holland, having 1000 known cases, of which 200 were semi-serious, and at that time, 12 deaths, meant there had to be in excess of 6000 carriers with no symptoms.

meaning, people will get sick, but many, many will live and many of those will have no symptoms whatsoever.
.
In the mean time, the economy has been shut down. That will cause a LOT more damage, than this virus ever will.