[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

[Daehawk]

I have to visit town this week maybe multiple times and visit many many stores to play virus roulette. By going out many times to many places I may get to stay home.....its no bueno

[gameoverman]

"Virtual bitchslap" lol

I like that guy. Even I could understand what he was explaining.

[hitbyambulance]

Gov. Inslee says, due to rural areas of WA starting with the outbreaks, that 'further containment measures may be necessary'. we'll be sure to pilot the new restrictions for the rest of the country and let you know how they are.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Senior WHO adviser appears to dodge question on Taiwan's Covid-19 response

A senior advisor at the World Health Organization (WHO) appeared to hang up on a journalist who asked about Taiwan’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and then dismissed further questions because they had “already talked about China”.

It comes amid continued criticism of the WHO’s approach towards both Taiwan and China. Taiwan has been excluded from participating in the World Health Assembly after heavy lobbying from China, which considers Taiwan part of its territory.

The WHO’s effusive praise and acceptance of China’s claims about its success in managing the outbreak has also drawn skepticism.

On Friday Hong Kong’s RTHK interviewed Dr Bruce Aylward, a Canadian physician and epidemiologist, and assistant director-general at the WHO.

The interview, conducted via video-link, was about international responses to the pandemic, and in particular Taiwan’s, where they have recorded a low rate of infection and low rate of fatalities.

Asked by the RTHK reporter, Yvonne Tong, if the WHO would reconsider Taiwan’s membership, Aylward didn’t respond for several seconds, before saying he couldn’t hear the question.

Tong offered to repeat it but he cut in: “no, that’s OK, let’ move to another one then.”

“I’m actually curious to talk about Taiwan as well,” Tong said.

Aylward then appeared to either hang up the call, or get disconnected. RTHK called Aylward back, and Tong asked if he could comment “on how Taiwan has done so far in terms of containing the virus”.

Aylward responded: “Well, we’ve already talked about China. And when you look across all the different areas of China, they’ve actually all done quite a good job.”

“With that I’d like to thank you very much for inviting us to participate,” he said, ending the conversation.

On Sunday the WHO acknowledged Aylward “did not answer a question on Taiwan’s response” but said it was working with Taiwanese health experts. It said questions of membership were up to member states, not WHO staff.

The WHO, and in particular its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, have been accused of being too deferential to China and accepting of China’s claims about the virus outbreak despite evidence it initially covered it up.

[Victoria Raverna]

When the world need to work together, why the reporter try to provoke conflict between China, WHO and Taiwan by asking question about the status of Taiwan?

Is she an anti China activist?

[Kasey Chang]

It could be that the guy don't know anything about Taiwan and didn't want to admit it.

I think I linked their COVID response paper earlier. It's remarkably... efficient. I think the story was if your tracker (basically a burner phone with a special app) ran out of battery, cops started to rap on your door to make sure you didn't break quarantine.

[Max Peck]

When the world need to work together, why the reporter try to provoke conflict between China, WHO and Taiwan by asking question about the status of Taiwan?

Is she an anti China activist?

Maybe it's just because Taiwan has been exceptionally successful in managing its COVID-19 response. Not everything about Taiwan is actually about China.

Also, since the reporter in question works for Radio Television Hong Kong, a government-funded broadcaster, you're essentially suggesting that the Chinese government is trying to provoke conflict between China, WHO and Taiwan.

[Anonymous Bosch]

8 strains of the coronavirus are circling the globe. Here's what clues they're giving scientists.

SAN FRANCISCO — At least eight strains of the coronavirus are making their way around the globe, creating a trail of death and disease that scientists are tracking by their genetic footprints.

While much is unknown, hidden in the virus's unique microscopic fragments are clues to the origins of its original strain, how it behaves as it mutates and which strains are turning into conflagrations while others are dying out thanks to quarantine measures.

Huddled in once bustling and now almost empty labs, researchers who oversaw dozens of projects are instead focused on one goal: tracking the current strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that cause the illness COVID-19.

Labs around the world are turning their sequencing machines, most about the size of a desktop printer, to the task of rapidly sequencing the genomes of virus samples taken from people sick with COVID-19. The information is uploaded to a website called NextStrain.org that shows how the virus is migrating and splitting into similar but new subtypes.

While researchers caution they're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, the tiny differences between the virus strains suggest shelter-in-place orders are working in some areas and that no one strain of the virus is more deadly than another. They also say it does not appear the strains will grow more lethal as they evolve.

“The virus mutates so slowly that the virus strains are fundamentally very similar to each other,” said Charles Chiu, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.



The SARS-CoV-2 virus first began causing illness in China sometime between mid-November and mid-December. Its genome is made up of about 30,000 base pairs. Humans, by comparison, have more than 3 billion. So far even in the virus's most divergent strains scientists have found only 11 base pair changes.

That makes it easy to spot new lineages as they evolve, said Chiu.

“The outbreaks are trackable. We have the ability to do genomic sequencing almost in real-time to see what strains or lineages are circulating,” he said.

So far, most cases on the U.S. West Coast are linked to a strain first identified in Washington state. It may have come from a man who had been in Wuhan, China, the virus’ epicenter, and returned home on Jan. 15. It is only three mutations away from the original Wuhan strain, according to work done early in the outbreak by Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutch, a medical research center in Seattle.

On the East Coast there are several strains, including the one from Washington and others that appear to have made their way from China to Europe and then to New York and beyond, Chiu said.

Also, shelter-in-place efforts do appear to be helping in California:

Shelter in place working in California

Chiu’s analysis shows California’s strict shelter in place efforts appear to be working.

Over half of the 50 SARS-CoV-2 virus genomes his San Francisco-based lab sequenced in the past two weeks are associated with travel from outside the state. Another 30% are associated with health care workers and families of people who have the virus.

“Only 20% are coming from within the community. It’s not circulating widely,” he said.

That’s fantastic news, he said, indicating the virus has not been able to gain a serious foothold because of social distancing.

It's like a wildfire, Chiu said. A few sparks might fly off the fire and land in the grass and start new fires. But if the main fire is doused and its embers stomped out, you can kill off an entire strain. In California, Chiu sees a lot of sparks hitting the ground, most coming from Washington, but they're quickly being put out.

[Skinypupy]

45 of 60 choir members infected, three dead.

Sixty singers showed up. A greeter offered hand sanitizer at the door, and members refrained from the usual hugs and handshakes.

“It seemed like a normal rehearsal, except that choirs are huggy places,” Burdick recalled. “We were making music and trying to keep a certain distance between each other.”

After 2½ hours, the singers parted ways at 9 p.m.

Nearly three weeks later, 45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead.

Yikes.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Also, you know you're a gaming junkie when this:



Immediately brings this to mind:

[Smoove_B]

Yikes.

Not surprising at all. There's been documented TB outbreaks from being around people that are singing - when you're pushing all that air out of your throat you're spreading all those infectious droplets.

[Smoove_B]

That viral clade article from USA today is good stuff. The information it'll give related to spread is invaluable. The added info about shelter-in-place orders seeming to be effective are also quite encouraging.

[gbasden]

Also, you know you're a gaming junkie when this:



Immediately brings this to mind:

Absolutely! My first thought was that they got the colors wrong.

[Combustible Lemur]

Yikes.

Not surprising at all. There's been documented TB outbreaks from being around people that are singing - when you're pushing all that air out of your throat you're spreading all those infectious droplets.

There's a performing arts saying, "If you're not spraying you're not saying".

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[em2nought]

I saw mention that this virus is very slow to mutate into a worse version of itself because it doesn't need to as it is so easy to transmit, but what if we starve it with social distancing? Can a virus react to that somehow? If it can't find enough hosts will it be inclined to mutate?

[Daehawk]

Getting it in close proximity reminds me of Legionaries Disease. As a kid the name and getting it in gatherings kinda scared me.

[dbt1949]

All these people still getting together.
Like they say....you just can't fix stupid.

[Smoove_B]

All these people still getting together.
Like they say....you just can't fix stupid.

For example:

Ginnie Springs remains open for visitors and they're making the most of the opportunity, even amidst worries of the coronavirus.

Hundreds of people came to the springs, but visitors say it's still less crowded than usual.

...

Cole Lipscher, who came with family from West Palm, said that "honestly some guy was coming up to our camp and getting really close to us and I was like 'dude...back up.' He was like 'what dude you're into that whole social distancing thing?' And I was like 'yeah, this is our camp you need to chill out dude.'"

[Daehawk]

On the news a doctor from New York said something freaky. He said some of the young patients would have blood oxygen levels so low as to be barely readable and essentially it was like they were dying. But they would be sitting up in bed watching tv or using their iPads. He likened it to climbers on Mt Everest who had theirs get too low and they'd simply fall asleep and never wake up.

[stessier]

All these people still getting together.
Like they say....you just can't fix stupid.

Many cities in SC had started enacting their own bans. The state Attorney General sent out a memo on Friday saying that wasn't allowed based on a 1980 court case. So everything re-opened including the beaches. The governor thought this was fine as he relied on South Carolinians to proceed appropriately. If ever there was a "hold my beer" moment.

It was 87F this weekend and there are some very nice pictures of crowded beaches.

[Kraken]

I saw mention that this virus is very slow to mutate into a worse version of itself because it doesn't need to as it is so easy to transmit, but what if we starve it with social distancing? Can a virus react to that somehow? If it can't find enough hosts will it be inclined to mutate?

That's not how evolution works. Its mutation rate will remain steady absent environmental factors like pollutants or radiation that alter its RNA. What drives its evolution is selection pressure. If some variants spread more efficiently, they will out-compete the less efficient variants. The virus is very well adapted as-is, hence not much selection pressure.

Hypothetically, social distancing could select for variants that are more infectious -- e.g., that survive longer on surfaces, or that remain airborne longer, or that can enter the body through routes other than our airways. But practically speaking, it's more likely to die back than to make those leaps unless those mutations arise naturally and in large numbers.

[Blackhawk]

All these people still getting together.
Like they say....you just can't fix stupid.

Give it a few months. Stupid is stepping up to fix itself.

[Smoove_B]

Many cities in SC had started enacting their own bans. The state Attorney General sent out a memo on Friday saying that wasn't allowed based on a 1980 court case. So everything re-opened including the beaches. The governor thought this was fine as he relied on South Carolinians to proceed appropriately. If ever there was a "hold my beer" moment.

It was 87F this weekend and there are some very nice pictures of crowded beaches.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

All these people still getting together.
Like they say....you just can't fix stupid.

Many cities in SC had started enacting their own bans. The state Attorney General sent out a memo on Friday saying that wasn't allowed based on a 1980 court case. So everything re-opened including the beaches. The governor thought this was fine as he relied on South Carolinians to proceed appropriately. If ever there was a "hold my beer" moment.

It was 87F this weekend and there are some very nice pictures of crowded beaches.

Ah - that explains why on Wednesday I saw a road sign indicating there was a check point preventing people from getting to Folly Beach (in Charleston) but the sign, and presumably the road block, was no longer there on Saturday. Idiot.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

For example:

Ginnie Springs remains open for visitors and they're making the most of the opportunity, even amidst worries of the coronavirus.

Hundreds of people came to the springs, but visitors say it's still less crowded than usual.

...

Cole Lipscher, who came with family from West Palm, said that "honestly some guy was coming up to our camp and getting really close to us and I was like 'dude...back up.' He was like 'what dude you're into that whole social distancing thing?' And I was like 'yeah, this is our camp you need to chill out dude.'"

To be fair, you had about a 50% chance of catching a disease at Ginnie Springs prior to the pandemic, so not much has changed.

[Daehawk]

Why cant the stupid weed themselves out faster and faster while leaving the rest of us alone.

[ImLawBoy]

All these people still getting together.
Like they say....you just can't fix stupid.

Give it a few months. Stupid is stepping up to fix itself.

The problem is it's working on the rest of us, too.

[Daehawk]

Busch will give 500 people 3 months of beer if they foster or adopt a dog.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/29/us/free- ... x.html[url][/url]

[hepcat]

I love dogs, don’t get me wrong. But it seems their priorities are a bit off.

[Jeff V]

Hardly a deal...a 3 month supply of that wretched Busch would be exactly one can.

Spoiler:

which would be thrown at the person who tried to bring more Busch onto my property

[Anonymous Bosch]

Will they ever learn? Chinese markets are still selling bats and slaughtering rabbits on blood-soaked floors as Beijing celebrates 'victory' over the coronavirus

Terrified dogs and cats crammed into rusty cages. Bats and scorpions offered for sale as traditional medicine. Rabbits and ducks slaughtered and skinned side by side on a stone floor covered with blood, filth, and animal remains.

Those were the deeply troubling scenes yesterday as China celebrated its 'victory' over the coronavirus by reopening squalid meat markets of the type that started the pandemic three months ago, with no apparent attempt to raise hygiene standards to prevent a future outbreak.

As the pandemic that began in Wuhan forced countries worldwide to go into lockdown, a Mail on Sunday correspondent yesterday watched as thousands of customers flocked to a sprawling indoor market in Guilin, south-west China.

Here cages of different species were piled on top of each other. In another meat market in Dongguan, southern China, another correspondent photographed a medicine seller returning to business on Thursday with a billboard advertising bats – thought to be the cause of the initial Wuhan outbreak – along with scorpions and other creatures.

The shocking scenes came as China finally lifted a weeks-long nationwide lockdown and encouraged people to go back to normal daily life to boost the flagging economy. Official statistics indicated there were virtually no new infections.

The market in Guilin was packed with shoppers yesterday, with fresh dog and cat meat on offer, a traditional 'warming' winter dish.

'Everyone here believes the outbreak is over and there's nothing to worry about any more. It's just a foreign problem now as far as they are concerned,' said one of the China-based correspondents who captured these images for The Mail on Sunday.

The correspondent who visited Dongguan said: 'The markets have gone back to operating in exactly the same way as they did before coronavirus.

'The only difference is that security guards try to stop anyone taking pictures which would never have happened before.'

[Daehawk]

Almost makes me hope the idiots in that country die off...damn dog and cat eating shits.

[Victoria Raverna]

When the world need to work together, why the reporter try to provoke conflict between China, WHO and Taiwan by asking question about the status of Taiwan?

Is she an anti China activist?

Maybe it's just because Taiwan has been exceptionally successful in managing its COVID-19 response. Not everything about Taiwan is actually about China.

Also, since the reporter in question works for Radio Television Hong Kong, a government-funded broadcaster, you're essentially suggesting that the Chinese government is trying to provoke conflict between China, WHO and Taiwan.

While HK is part of China, it has a separate system. A simple extradition law proposal to allow extradition to China caused months of protests.

A reporter worked for media funded by HK government doesn't have to be pro China.

The reporter didn't just ask about Taiwan COVID-19 response, she asked about Taiwan's WHO membership which is a question about WHO's stance about Taiwan vs China.

[Kurth]

. . .

Just delete this post. Please.

[Daehawk]

I editied it..still feel mad at how mean and dumb they are..like half this country is.

[Blackhawk]

Almost makes me hope the idiots in that country die off...damn dog and cat eating shits.

Seriously, dial it down.

[Daehawk]

You guys can agree with them but to me people who eat dogs and cats can choke and die. The animals are better than them. I have no love for them or the country that would allow that. Never mind allowing all that crap right back to their same old shit that has killed so many loved ones worldwide.

[Unagi]

You are ignorant
and full of mayonnaise

[Daehawk]

The mayo part is true. How am I ignorant though to say dog and cat eaters are shit of the Earth and deserve not to live? You agree its ok and support it? Do you think a counrty that openly allows it is a great country? Do you think allowing them to open the same markets that has killed so many is a great thing? I say you must be the ignorant not mayo one sir,.

[Eel Snave]

Hey, just hopping in to say hi. Here in Wisconsin, we've had a few dead, but my county is relatively unscathed. It's surprising, because this area is normally pretty conservative, but everyone seems to be distancing at a surprising clip.