[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

[Defiant]

Doctors discover why severe coronavirus cases are more common in men

A new study shows that the women might recover faster than men because the coronavirus binds to a substance that’s found in the testicles, not just the lungs, heart muscle, kidneys, and GI tract.

[Isgrimnur]

[Blackhawk]

Ah, nuts.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Good thing I've already scheduled my elective testectomy.

[Paingod]

So what was changed with the mask? I remember back in January when I wrote about wearing mask is better than not wearing one. People seemed to agree that mask was almost useless.

I'm seeing the masks I have as a way to prevent me from spreading any contagion I may have more than me avoiding catching it. I don't have an N95 mask; save those for the people who need them. Mine is basic cotton, and I'm just hoping it turns my exhaled breath from a cone of potential infection up to 6' away into a small bubble of potential infection by killing the particulate momentum as I breathe out.

In no way do I expect a simple cotton face mask to act as a salvation against coronavirus.

[Combustible Lemur]

So what was changed with the mask? I remember back in January when I wrote about wearing mask is better than not wearing one. People seemed to agree that mask was almost useless.

I'm seeing the masks I have as a way to prevent me from spreading any contagion I may have more than me avoiding catching it. I don't have an N95 mask; save those for the people who need them. Mine is basic cotton, and I'm just hoping it turns my exhaled breath from a cone of potential infection up to 6' away into a small bubble of potential infection by killing the particulate momentum as I breathe out.

In no way do I expect a simple cotton face mask to act as a salvation against coronavirus.

This.

For people working in proximity the cloth masks are just above useless because the aerosol droplets pass through and around the fabric/edges to create a 5'11" cloud around people.
The clothe masks do stop the spittle droplets, mainly yours from flinging about. Enough so that if you stay your six feet and wash and sanitize and wipe and generally minimize contact if afford s some level of mitigation.
The n95s create a soft seal and force the areosoled droplets into their filters, effectively protecting your airways until its removed or you whip your face with viral load because your eyes hurt depositing covid into your sinuses. (pure speculation about tearduct vulnerability.)


Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[hitbyambulance]

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-wor ... -patients/

Although there was no consensus on the biology of why this was happening and what could be done about it, many came to believe the clots might be responsible for a significant share of U.S. deaths from covid-19 – possibly explaining why so many people are dying at home.

In hindsight, there were hints blood problems had been an issue in China and Italy as well, but it was more of a footnote in studies and on information-sharing calls that had focused on the disease’s destruction of the lungs.

“It crept up on us. We weren’t hearing a tremendous amount about this internationally,” said Greg Piazza, a cardiovascular specialist at Brigham and Women’s who has begun a study of bleeding complications of covid-19.

Helen Boucher, an infectious-disease specialist at Tufts Medical Center, said there’s no reason to think anything is different about the virus in the United States. More likely, she said, the problem was more obvious to American doctors because of the unique demographics of U.S. patients, including large percentages with heart disease and obesity that make them more vulnerable to the ravages of blood clots. She also noted small but important differences in the monitoring and treatment of patients in ICUs in this country that would make clots easier to detect.

“Part of this is by virtue of the fact that we have such incredible intensive care facilities,” she said.

[Daehawk]

I found out last night thanks to the news and the inventor of the N95 masks returning to work on a new mask at age 90+ that the N95 mask also has holes larger than the viri it stops but uses static charge to attract them and hold them. Kinda scary. I guess if they were small enough to stop a virus like I actually thought it would be too small to breath through.

Makes me wonder if repeated washings ruin their effectiveness due to loss of the charge.

[LawBeefaroni]

I found out last night thanks to the news and the inventor of the N95 masks returning to work on a new mask at age 90+ that the N95 mask also has holes larger than the viri it stops but uses static charge to attract them and hold them. Kinda scary. I guess if they were small enough to stop a virus like I actually thought it would be too small to breath through.

Makes me wonder if repeated washings ruin their effectiveness due to loss of the charge.

It does. I just saw news of a study where they showed that one cleaning method effectively turns them into N30 masks. But that is still effective for many uses, including wearing out and about for most people.

“The sterilized masks lost two-thirds of their filtering efficiency, essentially turning N95 into N30 masks,” says Cramer. But why the deterioration?

“Our hypothesis is that ionizing radiation of whatever kind likely decharges the electrostatic filtration of the mask,” says Gupta. “The mechanical filtration of gauze can trap some particles, but radiation interferes with the electrostatic filter’s ability to repel or capture particles of 0.3 microns.”

Gupta is nevertheless pleased by the study’s results. “Even with lowered efficiency, these N95 masks are much better than the surgical masks we use,” he says. “Instead of throwing out N95 masks, they could be sterilized and used as N30 masks for the kind of procedures I do all day long.”

[dbt1949]

I just read where Denmark just reopened their schools.
They're trying to keep the kids six feet apart in school and outside during recess.
As a passing I thought they used metric there.

[hitbyambulance]

I just read where Denmark just reopened their schools.
They're trying to keep the kids six feet apart in school and outside during recess.
As a passing I thought they used metric there.

2m !

[em2nought]

I just read where Denmark just reopened their schools.
They're trying to keep the kids six feet apart in school and outside during recess.
As a passing I thought they used metric there.

2m !

"One coffin length" might be more universal?

[Victoria Raverna]

I just read where Denmark just reopened their schools.
They're trying to keep the kids six feet apart in school and outside during recess.
As a passing I thought they used metric there.

2m !

Closer to 1.8m.

[Max Peck]

I just read where Denmark just reopened their schools.
They're trying to keep the kids six feet apart in school and outside during recess.
As a passing I thought they used metric there.

They do. If you're seeing "six feet" reported anywhere it's because the media is translating 2m into American.

Schools are required to ensure that a distance of two metres (about six feet) is maintained between desks in classrooms and recesses must be organised for small groups.

A headache for teachers is that they must ensure that pupils are never in groups of more than two while inside and five outside.

[Kurth]

From the NYT daily briefing this morning regarding plans to reopen following COVID-19:

Our chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, writes: “Until there is a vaccine or a cure for the coronavirus, the macabre truth is that any plan to begin restoring public life invariably means trading away some lives. The question is how far will leaders go to keep it to a minimum.”

Ok, I get the concerns people have with reopening post-lockdown, but come on! This kind of reporting - which is everywhere - is setting up a false narrative that this kind of choice is somehow novel. It’s not. As a society, we make these policy choices every day. We are always “trading away some lives.” That’s just how things work.

[Unagi]

I'm not as bothered by it (the reporting). I don't hear it as a narrative that this is a new thing, I hear it as asking people what's important to them.

[YellowKing]

In this case, the lives we're trading away could be disproportionately minorities/the poor. That needs to be taken into account. While we trade policy for life in an abstract sense all the time, there is the potential for real abuse here and the ethics need to be considered carefully.

[Paingod]

Since returning to work, my direct manager has been more involved in what I'm doing than ever before. I'm getting the strong impression that the other three owners are pressuring him to justify the staff he has left in our corporate office. While we closed one clinic and reduced the others by 90% staffing, the corporate office had one layoff after a couple weeks (me) and another temp that was let go just before I came back. When they got approval for the Small Business loan, they brought me back.

I was laid off because there was so little for me to do. There's still just as little for me to do; the number of users hasn't magically increased and the maintenance tasks I spent time on to busy myself before being laid off don't need to be redone immediately. Now my big task is to build an intranet from the ground up at no cost, which I pitched years ago but it never got traction because no one had time to invest in it. So it's back - but is it worth my salary to keep me here working on it? It doesn't seem like it to me.

I was laid off for two weeks, now I've been back for 11 days, and I'm already back to wondering when I'm going to be laid off again. I wish they'd figure themselves out, but I know they're just trying to keep the business going week by week, following whatever guidelines the state lays out for when they can open and at what capacity.

Right now they're envisioning a "new normal" that involves six 12 hour days split between two teams of former employees, 36 hours for each group - people would be 3 on, 4 off. It splits the doctors up, cutting the patient load in half per day - and then spreads the patients out to one every 20 minutes instead of one every 15, allowing more time for disinfecting. This also means a 10% pay cut for everyone on hourly wages (dropping from 40 to 36 hours), which is 80% of the employees. They haven't even come close to sorting the logistics out for how to provide face masks and face shields to employees given the extreme shortages, so we're looking at a long term goal here. It's a boatload of suck. All of it is hypothetical, and the owners have nothing but time on their hands to figure it out.

[Jeff V]

In this case, the lives we're trading away could be disproportionately minorities/the poor. That needs to be taken into account. While we trade policy for life in an abstract sense all the time, there is the potential for real abuse here and the ethics need to be considered carefully.

I hope you're not expecting the most unethical administration in the history of this country and the most racist since Andrew Jackson to be even vaguely concerned about such things.

[LawBeefaroni]

In this case, the lives we're trading away could be disproportionately minorities/the poor. That needs to be taken into account. While we trade policy for life in an abstract sense all the time, there is the potential for real abuse here and the ethics need to be considered carefully.

Trading the lives of the poor and marginalized for the economic survival of the wealthy. What could be more American?

[stessier]

In this case, the lives we're trading away could be disproportionately minorities/the poor.

We do that every day too - it's just a little more obvious in this situation.

[Jeff V]

In this case, the lives we're trading away could be disproportionately minorities/the poor.

We do that every day too - it's just a little more obvious in this situation.

If there was an industry that used to carcasses of minorities and the poor to generate cash, you better believe the current administration would put all of it's support behind it.

[LordMortis]

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Pande ... tsrc=MEDWP

The first modern pandemic
The scientific advances we need to stop COVID-19.
By Bill Gates
| April 23, 2020 24 minute read

Reading now...

[ImLawBoy]

While there will be some inevitable overlap, let's remember that there is a separate forum with corresponding topics if you want discuss the politics of the current crisis.

[gameoverman]

In this case, the lives we're trading away could be disproportionately minorities/the poor. That needs to be taken into account. While we trade policy for life in an abstract sense all the time, there is the potential for real abuse here and the ethics need to be considered carefully.

I agree.

edit: I'll move the rest of this post to R&P just in case it belongs there.

[Isgrimnur]

[em2nought]

How can we ever open up for business again, just think of the traffic fatalities that will start occurring again.

[RunningMn9]

How can we ever open up for business again, just think of the traffic fatalities that will start occurring again.

Like I get that you are just trolling, but even so, like 110 people were dying per day from traffic fatalities. I assume that people are capable of understanding that over the last 18 days, more people have died from this virus than an entire year’s worth of traffic fatalities, right.

Every day for 18 days, this virus has been killing the same amount of people as 20 days of traffic accidents.

Every day for 18 days, this virus has been killing more people than cancer and traffic accidents combined. Neither of which is contagious simply from breathing.

And that’s 18 days while most of the country has been at a standstill. And that’s with 281 million people still waiting to be infected (and that’s best case scenario - where we’ve only found 2% of infected people (which I *highly* doubt is true).

This is the number one cause of death in the US, and it has been for a couple of weeks now. While we’ve all been in lockdown to prevent the spread.

[Freyland]

How can we ever open up for business again, just think of the traffic fatalities that will start occurring again.

Like I get that you are just trolling, but even so, like 110 people were dying per day from traffic fatalities. I assume that people are capable of understanding that over the last 18 days, more people have died from this virus than an entire year’s worth of traffic fatalities, right.

Every day for 18 days, this virus has been killing the same amount of people as 20 days of traffic accidents.

Every day for 18 days, this virus has been killing more people than cancer and traffic accidents combined. Neither of which is contagious simply from breathing.

And that’s 18 days while most of the country has been at a standstill. And that’s with 281 million people still waiting to be infected (and that’s best case scenario - where we’ve only found 2% of infected people (which I *highly* doubt is true).

This is the number one cause of death in the US, and it has been for a couple of weeks now. While we’ve all been in lockdown to prevent the spread.

You know how to treat trolls, right? The "Ignore" button. It's certainly more effective than ingesting bleach.

[Kraken]

MA was supposed to peak this weekend. Instead, yesterday brought the highest single-day jump in new cases yet. Nothing's going to reopen here anytime soon.

[em2nought]

How can we ever open up for business again, just think of the traffic fatalities that will start occurring again.

This is the number one cause of death in the US, and it has been for a couple of weeks now. While we’ve all been in lockdown to prevent the spread.

You have to admit that the numbers are all over the place though. How many people have died from cancer and heart disease during the last 18 days? If it's not anywhere close to normal then we have a problem with the way deaths are being categorized.

You know how to treat trolls, right? The "Ignore" button. It's certainly more effective than ingesting bleach.

Who's trolling now?

[Zarathud]

The problem is that the troll is infected with a stupid idea that will kill people if it spreads. I’m not worried about most people here, but those unsuspecting people with vulnerability.

Even if you are psychotic enough to agree to the risk of exposure after understanding the magnitude of the threat, the only way to control risk from the Coronavirus epidemic is staying home. There are no treatments like seat belts and air bags for accidents. No flu shot. No angioplasty or blood pressure meds for heart attacks. No radiation or chemo for cancer. Nothing.

The only thing to do is shelter if you can. It’s common sense — if something’s going to kill you and you can’t make it safe, then stop doing it.

[Alefroth]

How can we ever open up for business again, just think of the traffic fatalities that will start occurring again.

What did your brain tell you you'd accomplish by posting this? I'd tell you what you did accomplish, but personal attacks are verboten.

[malchior]

MA was supposed to peak this weekend. Instead, yesterday brought the highest single-day jump in new cases yet. Nothing's going to reopen here anytime soon.

Our idea of social distancing is going to turn out to be not strict enough + Americans are too stubborn to change fudge factor thrown in = Worse than expected results. However the results are still magnitudes of order better than doing nothing.

[Smoove_B]

Our idea of social distancing is going to turn out to be not strict enough + Americans are too stubborn to change fudge factor thrown in = Worse than expected results. However the results are still magnitudes of order better than doing nothing.

If we were doing contact tracing (Spoiler: we should be doing contact tracing), my guess is we'd discover a black market that exists in NYC and parts of NJ where people are not only doing things they shouldn't be (like getting haircuts) but actively engaging in social events - private parties/dinners with small circles of friends/family they believe are safe.

[malchior]

If we were doing contact tracing (Spoiler: we should be doing contact tracing), my guess is we'd discover a black market that exists in NYC and parts of NJ where people are not only doing things they shouldn't be (like getting haircuts) but actively engaging in social events - private parties/dinners with small circles of friends/family they believe are safe.

Definitely because I know the latter is happening directly across the street from me and on my wife's side of the family. *Sigh*.

In science news, Italian scientists found traces of the virus on air pollution particles. Not enough to say it is complete virii, could infect people, etc but enough to warrant further study.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

Oxley gasped when he got to the patient’s age and covid-19 status: 44, positive.

The man was among several recent stroke patients in their 30s to 40s who were all infected with the coronavirus. The median age for that type of severe stroke is 74.

As Oxley, an interventional neurologist, began the procedure to remove the clot, he observed something he had never seen before. On the monitors, the brain typically shows up as a tangle of black squiggles — “like a can of spaghetti,” he said — that provide a map of blood vessels. A clot shows up as a blank spot. As he used a needlelike device to pull out the clot, he saw new clots forming in real-time around it.
...
Reports of strokes in the young and middle-aged — not just at Mount Sinai, but also in many other hospitals in communities hit hard by the novel coronavirus — are the latest twist in our evolving understanding of its connected disease, covid-19. Even as the virus has infected nearly 2.8 million people worldwide and killed about 195,000 as of Friday, its biological mechanisms continue to elude top scientific minds. Once thought to be a pathogen that primarily attacks the lungs, it has turned out to be a much more formidable foe — impacting nearly every major organ system in the body.
...
Now for the first time, three large U.S. medical centers are preparing to publish data on the stroke phenomenon. The numbers are small, only a few dozen per location, but they provide new insights into what the virus does to our bodies.
...
The analyses suggest coronavirus patients are mostly experiencing the deadliest type of stroke. Known as large vessel occlusions, or LVOs, they can obliterate large parts of the brain responsible for movement, speech and decision-making in one blow because they are in the main blood-supplying arteries.

[malchior]

This thing feels like the reason why it is more deadly is it has so many expressions. In some it may kill lung tissue, weaken your heart, bring cytokine storms, attacks brain/nerves, and now perhaps form clots throughout the body.

[RunningMn9]

If it's not anywhere close to normal then we have a problem with the way deaths are being categorized.

What are you talking about? COVID isn’t the #1 killer because of a sudden and inexplicable drop in cancer deaths. In 2019 there were 606,880 deaths from all cancers in the US. That’s an average of 1662 deaths per day. For the past 18 days COVID has claimed and average of 2110 lives per day.

(1662 + 106) << 2110.

It’s not a problem with the way deaths are being categorized.

[Blackhawk]

Given his history, I assumed he was suggesting that non-COVID deaths are being reported as such as part of the 'hoax.'