I know ACE inhibitors are sometimes prescribed to people with Type 1 diabetes. I wonder to what extent ACE inhibitors are responsible for both high-BP and diabetes being risk factors for covid19 severity.
We hear stories about production ramps for personal protective equipment, for healthcare providers and regular citizens. But what are the actual projections for the need-curve vs. the availability-curve of those commodities in various places?
I don’t know about the US but at least in Norway it’s stated as a reason. Age, geography and diagnosis is sometimes enough to identify a person, and there are regulations governing that here.
What are the current projections of test-kit availability vs. need for different regions? E.g., when do we expect that doctors can test everyone that suspect of having covid19?
We actually need more testing than that. Yes, we should be testing every suspected case, but we should also be mass testing everybody, or, at least random samples of everybody. We need to know where this virus is and is not and what the extent of asymptomatic carriers is. Information is the only weapon we currently have against this virus, and we have shockingly little.
The origin of the virus. The mainstream media assumes the virus was created in a natural process of mutation and jumping species, while there's this little paper [1] in Nature Medicine from 2015 where authors (virologists) confirm that they created a novel, human-transmisible coronavirus, based on a new virus they discovered among bats. Some of the authors of the paper are from Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology...
"This was created in a lab" has been the whisper of conspiracy-theorists. How likely is it? And a vial broke and it got released like in a Marvel comic?
Coronaviruses are actually created in labs as part of virology research (see my original link). It just seems that, in light of links that people posted, it did not escape/was released from the Wuhan lab - the strain that created the pandemic originated via natural processes.
Nah, see my comment above. Those links only tell us that we did not find evidence of the use modern gene-editing technology in the virus. It's misdirection with a straw man.
The lab was breeding viruses the old-fashioned way long before modern gene-editing technology was invented. Bat coronaviruses would be mixed with other viruses and repeatedly passed through human cells. That leaves no evidence in the genome. It looks just like natural selection.
The virus labs in China have had several other dangerous accidents that let viruses get out. Those previous accidents were gotten under control. With this one, we weren't so lucky. I think the lesson is clear: don't screw around making deadly viruses when your biohazard containment is substandard. Maybe just don't attempt it under any conditions.
There is a difference between "seems obviously correct" and "proven well enough to avoid a lawsuit".
China exerts control over American media companies. Ones that don't play ball get banned in China. Remember that these companies are usually involved in many businesses, including the sale of movies to China's large population. Everybody is afraid to upset China.
Even the publisher of Nature has ditched about 1000 articles that were upsetting to the Chinese government.
Much of the US media is strongly in opposition to the US president. (They even stopped airing his virus updates, despite good ratings, because it was making him look good.) There is no desire to spread any news that could support his opposition to China.
1. The Chinese initially tried cover up and conceal reports new of the virus. E.g., the police intimidation of Dr. Li Wenliang before he succumb to the virus.
2. Wuhan, where the virus was first reported, is coincidentally China's best and only BSL-4 virus research lab, specifically focused on SARS. COVID is a close relation to SARS.
3. Chinese were caught doing unethical and dangerous DNS editing on human embryos. China later sent this "rouge" scientist to prison after a raucous global outcry.
4. Its been reported some Chinese researchers sell laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them.
All this said, I don't think China deliberately released released virus. More likely, this will turn out to be China's Chernobyl. Plain and simple greedy incompetent people.
That article is misdirection. It says that we have not been able to find anything in the genome that proves modern gene editing technology was used.
Well, so what? People aren't generally making that claim. The only thing disproven is a straw man.
Nothing in the article rules out the possibility of a lab creating the virus via conventional breeding, by passing the virus through human cells and/or by infecting cells simultaneously with human viruses. Nothing in the article rules out the possibility of a lab accident; indeed there have been several lab accidents in China that released dangerous viruses.
It is 2008 research from the lab in Wuhan. They created a virus by combining SARS-CoV with HIV, targeting the human ACE2 molecule as receptor. These features match those of our current pandemic. (India reported the HIV link, and the use of ACE2 is widely known)
We shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility. Note also that China is actively trying to point people away from this line of inquiry. We should resist that effort.
It's worth remembering that the very term "conspiracy theory" was first used to deflect attention from an actual conspiracy. It was a very successful psy-op, and it lives on to this day.
I spent 5 years doing QA on synthetic oligos/genes used by just about everyone in synthetic biology. In my experience, edits are easy to detect if you know where to look--methylation patterns, unusually large numbers of start codons, and relatively few areas of high GC content.
But I'm also a Chinese agent, so take that with a grain of salt.
By "edits", you seems to be referring to something else. I think you mean something like CRISPR Cas9.
That is a straw man. I'm definitely not claiming that any such technology was used. The virus modifications in the Wuhan lab are older than the existence of most of that technology.
We didn't need modern technology to create the dog from the wolf. It's the same here, with viruses.
Breeding viruses in a lab is not detectable compared to what happens in nature.
These days, if a plane crashes, a well known politician or celebrity dies, or a disease appears, or anything else dramatic, people will claim it was due to a conspiracy. Typically there even be several mutually contradictory conspiracy theories.
We fully expected an outbreak like this to happen eventually, and yet somehow having the expected result occur has spawned accusations of it being an American or Chinese plot.
Numbers related to the outbreak that are meaningful without denominators (since we don't have any and won't until long after things get back to some semblance of normalcy). Seems like this would be hospitalizations (due to covid) and deaths (due to covid). Those are numbers where the volume (as opposed to the rate) are the signal.
1. How do frequency and density of exposure correspond to infection rate?
I'm assuming there are some basic principles that apply to any virus, but I don't know what they are and have found it difficult to get find meaningful information.
2. If lowering frequency and density of exposure reduces infection rate - as the papers that Google surfaces when querying this kind of thing suggest - does this mean that social distancing could be more than a knee-jerk means of reducing the stress of the healthcare system? Could it form the basis of a long-term containment strategy?
3. Would it be possible to randomly test high-traffic areas (grocery stores and gas stations in the US) to get a better sense for how this disease is spreading? Why are we not doing this?
Reliable data on asymptomatic cases.
The models we have at the moment are trying to fit parameters based on the known data, but of the known data, the only reliable one is the death rate. So there are a lot of degrees of freedom here with regards to the spread of the virus. (Because carriers are only identified on a limited basis, mostly in hospitals, it presents a skewed picture, so this data is not hugely useful)
Once antibodies tests are available, you can get a sense of how many people in a sample population have had the disease with mild-to-no symptoms, and that can say a lot about how it's spread.
What is the true mortality rate? All the numbers are based on positive test counts, but testing isn't being done for most people with nominal (casual) symptoms.
This has led to a situation where we think (for example) 2% of positive cases die, when in reality, there may be millions of positive untested cases resolving without issue.
To what extent will lies, half-truths, spin, and disinformation increase preventable fatalities?
What can be done within existing legal frameworks to stop this disinformation?
e.g. yesterday, Gov. Newsom went on the radio and said something along the lines of "half of people hospitalized were 18-60" (paraphrasing, don't remember the numbers exactly, etc). But something like 2/3rds of our population is that age!
Another thing would be statistics on triage as the outbreak overwhelmed Italy. I'd like to know who was going to the hospitals, who was admitted, who needed to be in the ICU, etc, and how the profile of patients changed as beds got filled.
Nutrition. I've already noticed food purchasing has changed at my local stores. I would like to know if we're exasperating our public health crisis by ruining our diets and if we should be concerned about that moving forward.
And finally, alcohol and drug consumption - particularly by millenials. Anecdotally, many of my peers are drinking a lot more regularly than they normally would during the day and week. There are plenty of memes about it, but I'd like to know if we're looking for hope at the bottom of a bottle for the next few months.
I think we should be following all of these vaccines and clinical trials really closely.
We all watch what the stock market does every day. Let’s start watching what these trials are doing every day. Really put the spotlight on these folks.
I feel like as a population we’re acting too much like victims. Let’s take charge of this.
Is that the rumor? Last I had heard, the best science is essentially a guess, but the thinking is that people will develop some kind of immunity. We know this happens with other coronaviruses, and we have found antibodies in people who have recovered from the disease. I don't really know how we can definitively and ethically say "yes, people do develop some immunity to the virus" without deliberately attempting to reinfect people. Maybe an in vitro study would add to the evidence, but in vitro studies frequently don't scale up to whole humans.
54 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] thread(a) People who have actual, uncontrolled high BP?
(b) People who would have high BP, but don't because it's controlled by medication?
(c) People who are taking specific BP-controlling meds?
(d) Some combo of (a), (b), (c)?
Why be so vague? It seems like more detail would help people identify their personal risk level.
(Edited for tone.)
But I've only heard speculation about this - never an explanation from someone closer to the source.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
The lab was breeding viruses the old-fashioned way long before modern gene-editing technology was invented. Bat coronaviruses would be mixed with other viruses and repeatedly passed through human cells. That leaves no evidence in the genome. It looks just like natural selection.
The virus labs in China have had several other dangerous accidents that let viruses get out. Those previous accidents were gotten under control. With this one, we weren't so lucky. I think the lesson is clear: don't screw around making deadly viruses when your biohazard containment is substandard. Maybe just don't attempt it under any conditions.
There is a difference between "seems obviously correct" and "proven well enough to avoid a lawsuit".
China exerts control over American media companies. Ones that don't play ball get banned in China. Remember that these companies are usually involved in many businesses, including the sale of movies to China's large population. Everybody is afraid to upset China.
Even the publisher of Nature has ditched about 1000 articles that were upsetting to the Chinese government.
Much of the US media is strongly in opposition to the US president. (They even stopped airing his virus updates, despite good ratings, because it was making him look good.) There is no desire to spread any news that could support his opposition to China.
1. The Chinese initially tried cover up and conceal reports new of the virus. E.g., the police intimidation of Dr. Li Wenliang before he succumb to the virus.
2. Wuhan, where the virus was first reported, is coincidentally China's best and only BSL-4 virus research lab, specifically focused on SARS. COVID is a close relation to SARS.
3. Chinese were caught doing unethical and dangerous DNS editing on human embryos. China later sent this "rouge" scientist to prison after a raucous global outcry.
4. Its been reported some Chinese researchers sell laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them.
All this said, I don't think China deliberately released released virus. More likely, this will turn out to be China's Chernobyl. Plain and simple greedy incompetent people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/world/asia/china-coronavi...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-la...
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-...
https://www.genengnews.com/insights/guilty-as-charged/
The absence of a confirmed source does not put disproven conspiracy theories about its origin on the same footing as actual science.
Well, so what? People aren't generally making that claim. The only thing disproven is a straw man.
Nothing in the article rules out the possibility of a lab creating the virus via conventional breeding, by passing the virus through human cells and/or by infecting cells simultaneously with human viruses. Nothing in the article rules out the possibility of a lab accident; indeed there have been several lab accidents in China that released dangerous viruses.
Look at this research:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18077725
It is 2008 research from the lab in Wuhan. They created a virus by combining SARS-CoV with HIV, targeting the human ACE2 molecule as receptor. These features match those of our current pandemic. (India reported the HIV link, and the use of ACE2 is widely known)
We shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility. Note also that China is actively trying to point people away from this line of inquiry. We should resist that effort.
It's worth remembering that the very term "conspiracy theory" was first used to deflect attention from an actual conspiracy. It was a very successful psy-op, and it lives on to this day.
But I'm also a Chinese agent, so take that with a grain of salt.
That is a straw man. I'm definitely not claiming that any such technology was used. The virus modifications in the Wuhan lab are older than the existence of most of that technology.
We didn't need modern technology to create the dog from the wolf. It's the same here, with viruses.
Breeding viruses in a lab is not detectable compared to what happens in nature.
We fully expected an outbreak like this to happen eventually, and yet somehow having the expected result occur has spawned accusations of it being an American or Chinese plot.
Then bonus points would be a column showing the mortality rate of a person in that country.
For instance an 80 yo in the US has a 6% mortality.
I'm assuming there are some basic principles that apply to any virus, but I don't know what they are and have found it difficult to get find meaningful information.
2. If lowering frequency and density of exposure reduces infection rate - as the papers that Google surfaces when querying this kind of thing suggest - does this mean that social distancing could be more than a knee-jerk means of reducing the stress of the healthcare system? Could it form the basis of a long-term containment strategy?
3. Would it be possible to randomly test high-traffic areas (grocery stores and gas stations in the US) to get a better sense for how this disease is spreading? Why are we not doing this?
This would allow crowd sourcing and statistics to be applied by the best minds in the world.
I know regulations can make this difficult but many difficult boundaries are being pressed now.
I've read a few things from epidemiologists, but there seems to be little discussion in the wider media.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...
2. What's going on with the PCR reagent shortage? Where are they produced? Why is it hard to make it quickly? etc.
In China: Total Confirmed = 81,782 Total Recovered = 74,181 Total Dead = 3,291 -------------------------- Remaining = 4,370
* I am assuming the number 4,370 will fall either into Recovered or Dead.
Can someone confirm this theory?
Is this going to the same for US?
Total Confirmed Cases = 69,684 Total Recovered = 619 Total Dead = 1,049 -------------------------------- Remaining = 68,016
Does this mean the fate of 68,016 not known yet in US? A similar concerning number exists for Italy too.
15-20% will need hospitalization. ~5% will need ICUs.
0.5%-5% will die depending on whether the medical system is overwhelmed.
Back of the napkin numbers to get someone's attention:
In much more detail:http://hyperdrive.ca/coronavirus/index.php
And in the "4 out of 5 dentists agree" category:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/experts-say-the-coronav...
This has led to a situation where we think (for example) 2% of positive cases die, when in reality, there may be millions of positive untested cases resolving without issue.
e.g. yesterday, Gov. Newsom went on the radio and said something along the lines of "half of people hospitalized were 18-60" (paraphrasing, don't remember the numbers exactly, etc). But something like 2/3rds of our population is that age!
Another thing would be statistics on triage as the outbreak overwhelmed Italy. I'd like to know who was going to the hospitals, who was admitted, who needed to be in the ICU, etc, and how the profile of patients changed as beds got filled.
Nutrition. I've already noticed food purchasing has changed at my local stores. I would like to know if we're exasperating our public health crisis by ruining our diets and if we should be concerned about that moving forward.
And finally, alcohol and drug consumption - particularly by millenials. Anecdotally, many of my peers are drinking a lot more regularly than they normally would during the day and week. There are plenty of memes about it, but I'd like to know if we're looking for hope at the bottom of a bottle for the next few months.
We all watch what the stock market does every day. Let’s start watching what these trials are doing every day. Really put the spotlight on these folks.
I feel like as a population we’re acting too much like victims. Let’s take charge of this.