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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2020 22:44:58 GMT -6
A few friends of mine got it and lived in NYC. All are relatively fit and healthy adults in their 30s and 40s. It was hell on earth for them.
One of my friends, a dude in his 40s, was too sick to even go to a hospital but survived. He never had any respiratory symptoms. He just woke up one day with a fever, no sense of taste, and a bump at the back of his throat. This was stable until the night sweats. With the AC on, he would soak multiple shirts and sheets, waking up in a puddle of his own sweat, forcing water down in a battle for life. He progressed to a fever of 104 degrees until he took a high dose of a Russian brand of acetaminophen and dextromethorphan that he happened to have in his appartment that made him high out of his body with loud temporary tinnitus. He felt that he would die alone in his appartment. Thankfully, he woke up with a 101 degree fever after deciding to nuke himself a second time. Then the next day he had no fever and his taste slowly came back after a few more days. He lost 12 pounds in 7 days. The positive test only came back after his fever went away.
That would've killed anyone with any pre-existing conditions. This is no mere influenza. Stay safe everyone!
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Post by the other mark williams on Apr 8, 2020 23:12:30 GMT -6
NJ / NYC hospitals and morgues are hell on earth right now. If it’s not as bad where you are then consider yourselves lucky and I hope it doesn’t get as bad for you as it is here this week. I want to apologize to you and the whole board for my “divorce = hell on earth” humor. I was trying to clear the air of tension, but in retrospect, it sounds very insensitive. I sincerely hope it wasn’t taken as making light of the suffering caused by the virus, but can absolutely understand if it came across that way. Everything I’ve read from people who’ve been hit hard by it does indeed describe it as hell. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I’m going to edit the original post now. Sorry, everyone. Want to make sure you saw this, too, @tomegatherion |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2020 23:47:15 GMT -6
You're good. This is pandemonium. People won't quarantine and stay at home where I'm at. They're playing frisbee, "exercising" in groups, and families are picnicing together. Stay inside and try to keep the Hell on Earth on your computer.  |
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Post by Johnkenn on Apr 9, 2020 7:56:05 GMT -6
Here is the full chart: View AttachmentThe flatness of the curve suggests that the authors refuse to speculate on the future. If so, it's a wise decision. "Only" 60 thousand dead. More than died in Vietnam, and we built a memorial for that sacrifice. Who will speak for the 10/20/30/60/100/500 thousand dead this time? No one, I'm afraid- the world, in it's eternally fractured political and social discourse, will be too busy blaming each other to remember and appropriately honor the involuntary sacrifice of so many. I hope I'm wrong, but it's already happening. Has been happening- and will surely continue. Franklin Graham is correct: the world is fallen. The proof is not in the virus itself, but in how all too many governments and leaders -and the media- have responded. When no one is responsible, everyone is responsible. We are all in it, up to our necks. Too bad so many people fail to understand this truth, which should be self-evident. Be safe out there! Well, the IHME model has been adjusted what - 3 times in ten days? What’s to say it doesn’t keep falling. Also - we have 45,000 die of the flu every year. Nearly as many as the Vietnam war. No memorials for that either. |
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Post by Johnkenn on Apr 9, 2020 8:03:58 GMT -6
Ok. Maybe it's just a chronology thing. When someone says "the numbers offered these scenarios and what we see is.....blah blah blah" and then you post right after that saying, "But what about the 'hell on earth' stuff' huh?", it looks like you're responding to the conversation you're posting in. If that's not the case and you're just posting general thoughts without regard to what's been said right before, then I see where my last couple questions wouldn't make sense. Come on man, let's just drop it. The conversation started long before any of my posts this morning. I got up late....  If I'm going to post ANYthing, it's going to be after SOMEone else post unless I start a new thread. I know how to tag, and I know how to quote. And I'll leave it at that. Well, the media absolutely painted this as a doomsday, hell on earth situation. I guess there’s a fine line between fear-mongering and responsible proactiivity. |
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Post by chessparov on Apr 9, 2020 12:40:30 GMT -6
IMHO this has both been a Tragedy. And over-hyped by the news. Wouldn't put the reality as a happy medium, but somewhere in the middle nonetheless. My expectation is that the deaths worldwide, will be roughly equal to the same for Conventional Flu's over time.
Chris
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Post by drbill on Apr 9, 2020 13:46:12 GMT -6
The sad thing is that without the media hype, most of the general public would be happy to carry on with life in blissful ignorance of the 6 million-is people who die as a result of car accidents in the US every year, of the 80,000-ish people who die of flu & pneumonia in the US every year, of the 120,000-ish people who die as a result of Alheimers in the US every year, or the 1.2 Million-ish that die of heart disease and cancer in the US every year. Right now we're looking at roughly 16,000 Covid deaths over approx. 3 months now. It will certainly grow.  If the media hyped those other tragedies like they hype Covid, we'd probably have cures for cancer, and cars that would stop traffic fatalities.... The tragedy is certainly real, but perspective is good too. Because of the hype, we will no doubt find viable treatments much quicker. So there is that.... |
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Post by ragan on Apr 9, 2020 13:47:42 GMT -6
I don't know how many times it needs to be said but the projections for catastrophic death figures were always without massive societal intervention. The projections were always going to shift as it became clear how much massive societal intervention we were going to engage in/put up with.
The flu kills what it kills without massive societal intervention. If we shutdown the whole society every year for flu season it would kill a tiny fraction of what it does presently. Conversely, if we were all going about things as usual this thing would be killing many times the couple thousand (Americans) it's killing a day with the whole society shutdown.
Pundits pretending to make that straight across comparison (COVID with the whole world shutdown vs flu with no shutdown) are, and always have been, being disingenuous.
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Post by ragan on Apr 9, 2020 13:49:26 GMT -6
Re: car crashes or heart disease or any of the other things people use to compare. If you drive by a car crash or hang out with someone with heart disease, you don't contract a car crash or a heart attack. These are completely different things.
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 9, 2020 14:18:30 GMT -6
Also, it wasn’t sensationalist panic to say “hey guys...if we don’t take some serious measures this will probably be really bad”. That position was and is supported by the data. Some of that “panic” is why people have actually taken serious measures. It’s not a reporter getting it wrong to say “if we don’t do x, y and z, a lot of people are going to die”. It’s true. Interesting tidbit. My neighbor is a paramedic and he said they’ve had a suspiciously high number of pneumonia deaths since January, many of which test negative for COVID-19. A firefighter acquaintance in another part of the state said the same thing. Given that the tests are what, 70% accurate at best? the death toll from this may be higher than we know. Or it could be a lot lower (and very likely is.)
Think about it - if there are a large number of unreported cases (false negatives plus people who were refused testing because they weren't sick enough), then the ratio of deaths to actual infections is much lower than calculated. This is precisely the situation being hypothesized in California right now.
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Post by ragan on Apr 9, 2020 14:23:01 GMT -6
Also, it wasn’t sensationalist panic to say “hey guys...if we don’t take some serious measures this will probably be really bad”. That position was and is supported by the data. Some of that “panic” is why people have actually taken serious measures. It’s not a reporter getting it wrong to say “if we don’t do x, y and z, a lot of people are going to die”. It’s true. Interesting tidbit. My neighbor is a paramedic and he said they’ve had a suspiciously high number of pneumonia deaths since January, many of which test negative for COVID-19. A firefighter acquaintance in another part of the state said the same thing. Given that the tests are what, 70% accurate at best? the death toll from this may be higher than we know. Or it could be a lot lower (and very likely is.)
Think about it - if there are a large number of unreported cases (false negatives plus people who were refused testing because they weren't sick enough), then the ratio of deaths to actual infections is much lower than calculated. This is precisely the situation being hypothesized in California right now.
Death rate could be lower, yeah. I mean it's certainly lower than our figures give because there are many untested cases of this out there and deaths are way more likely to be on record vs just cases. Death toll (which I was talking about - just the number, no denominator) is undoubtedly higher. |
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 9, 2020 14:31:26 GMT -6
That’s something I wonder about - obesity/pre-diabetes/diabetes, etc is more prevalent in the South and Midwest. You wonder whether we will see higher instances of hospitalization over the next few weeks in those places. We'll probably never know, since most of those states also have the worst health care and have been slowest in implementing shelter in place, closing nonessential businesses, etc.
And actually, in the blue collar community that I live in in the SF North Bay area, the number of overweight people looks about like it does down south, yet we have some of the best Covid stats in the country.
I'm curious to see, when it's finally safe for my local watering hole to reopen, how many of the morbidly obese customers made it....
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Post by rowmat on Apr 9, 2020 17:03:02 GMT -6
I don't know how many times it needs to be said but the projections for catastrophic death figures were always without massive societal intervention. The projections were always going to shift as it became clear how much massive societal intervention we were going to engage in/put up with. The flu kills what it kills without massive societal intervention. If we shutdown the whole society every year for flu season it would kill a tiny fraction of what it does presently. Conversely, if we were all going about things as usual this thing would be killing many times the couple thousand (Americans) it's killing a day with the whole society shutdown. Pundits pretending to make that straight across comparison (COVID with the whole world shutdown vs flu with no shutdown) are, and always have been, being disingenuous. Here in Australia the Federal Government was dragging its feet up until two state governments (Victoria and NSW) decided to go it alone and implement stricter shutdowns including school closures along with bars, restaurants, gyms, cinemas etc. Just two weeks prior to this the Prime Minister was claiming it was still okay to go to the football. A friend’s ex brother in law worked in our local state government and was privy to epidemiological modelling projections based upon doing nothing and a business-as-usual approach. When the projections in terms of numbers were made clear to the bureaucrats, including the State Premier, they “Shit their pants.” - Not my words. Stats were indicating the rate of infection was doubling every 3.5 days in higher density urban areas without NPI and the modelling suggested that delaying the shutdown by an additional two weeks beyond when it was actually implemented would have resulted in dramatic and effectively silent increases in community transmission which would have emerged to overwhelm the healthcare system in the following two to five weeks and exceeded the number of available ICU beds.
So far we are looking pretty good here in Australia but the long term unwinding of the shutdown will be a balancing act and require much more testing both for the antigens and antibodies to see who has had it and recovered with immunity.
So yes forward projections based upon taking proactive measures rather than none at all can result huge differences in the numbers in a very short time period and determine whether or not some dodge a bullet or not. However to say it’s no worse (or will be no worse) than the flu (or the road toll) when comparing a COVID-19 shutdown scenario versus a business-as-usual seasonal influenza scenario is an utterly false equivalency as Ragan pointed out. |
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 9, 2020 17:04:52 GMT -6
A few friends of mine got it and lived in NYC. All are relatively fit and healthy adults in their 30s and 40s. It was hell on earth for them. One of my friends, a dude in his 40s, was too sick to even go to a hospital but survived. He never had any respiratory symptoms. He just woke up one day with a fever, no sense of taste, and a bump at the back of his throat. This was stable until the night sweats. With the AC on, he would soak multiple shirts and sheets, waking up in a puddle of his own sweat, forcing water down in a battle for life. He progressed to a fever of 104 degrees until he took a high dose of a Russian brand of acetaminophen and dextromethorphan that he happened to have in his appartment that made him high out of his body with loud temporary tinnitus. He felt that he would die alone in his appartment. Thankfully, he woke up with a 101 degree fever after deciding to nuke himself a second time. Then the next day he had no fever and his taste slowly came back after a few more days. He lost 12 pounds in 7 days. The positive test only came back after his fever went away. That would've killed anyone with any pre-existing conditions. This is no mere influenza. Stay safe everyone! Taking a high dose of that Russian cold medicine was about the dumbest thing he could possibly have done. Acetominophen (AKA Tylenol) is EXTREMELY toxic to the liver in high doses, exacerbated by combination with alcohol. It's estimated that as few as nine tablets can cause fatal liver damage in some patients.
As a general rule I refuse to take any drug containing acetominophen. There are many, much safer, alternatives (including good ole aspirin) to chose from.
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 9, 2020 17:14:45 GMT -6
The CDC has withdrawn all support for hydroxychloroquine for treatment of Covid-19.
Personally, I don't understand why it was ever considered in the first place, except that it was being very heavily touted by a certain highly placed (and media crazy) politician, who also happens to be totally medically ignorant.
Hydroxychloroquine is an ANTI-MALARIAL drug. Malaria is a BACTERIAL (protozoan) infection; there is no reason whatsoever to think that it might have any effect at all on a viral infection. It's like prescribing penicillin to treat a cold. Really STUPID.
It's that kind of idiocy why I'm constantly going on about the difference between bacterial and viral infections. It's VERY IMPORTANT to understand.
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Post by matt@IAA on Apr 9, 2020 17:20:39 GMT -6
Two proposed methods of action for HCL:
One is that zinc was shown to mess up the RNA replication activity inside cells for SARS. But it's hard to get zinc into the cell. By using a zinc-lovin' molecule to bring it through the cell wall, you can get the zinc up in there. Chloroquine acts to get zinc into cells. And, if you have more zinc in the body, you get more of an effect. HCL or cholorquine + zinc = RNA disruption = less virus = winning.
The other is that both HCL and azithromycin both suppress certain parts of your immune system. Azithromycin is an antibiotic which is what most of us have used it for, but it also does something to certain specific parts of your immune system. Both HCL and azithromycin inhibit certain chemicals called cytokines (specifically interleukin 6, IL6, and others). Cytokines are small proteins that are made by your immune cells and act as signals to your body to control your immune response. This is why people with RA or lupus take HCL regularly, as immune system suppressants.
When you're very sick with covid19, it seems in some cases people may into a positive feedback autoimmune spiral called a cytokine storm. White blood cells release those cytokines, which trigger more white blood cells, which release more cytokines, in a positive feedback loop. This causes inflammation and damage, which in your lungs leads to swelling -> hypoxia -> death. (This is also thought to be one of the causes of death for the Spanish flu).
High IL6 seems to be an indicator of a worse infection even early on.
HCL + azithromycin both reduce cytokines including IL6 = dampen out that positive feedback loop = no cytokine storm = no ARDS = no death = winning.
The first would be why it would work as a preventative measure. The second would be why it could help with severe cases (not all cases have cytokine storms). It may be doing both. It may be doing something else entirely that's also working. It may be doing neither. There are a *lot* of drugs that we don't know why they work, we just know they do. Medicine is hard.
The good news is that if IL6 is the right "lever" to push, there are other drugs that also work on that, so even if HCL isn't the silver bullet for severe cases there probably is one out there, and I'm optimistic we'll find it.
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 9, 2020 17:22:12 GMT -6
I don't know how many times it needs to be said but the projections for catastrophic death figures were always without massive societal intervention. The projections were always going to shift as it became clear how much massive societal intervention we were going to engage in/put up with. The flu kills what it kills without massive societal intervention. If we shutdown the whole society every year for flu season it would kill a tiny fraction of what it does presently. Conversely, if we were all going about things as usual this thing would be killing many times the couple thousand (Americans) it's killing a day with the whole society shutdown. Pundits pretending to make that straight across comparison (COVID with the whole world shutdown vs flu with no shutdown) are, and always have been, being disingenuous. Pundiots (unfortunately) will be pundits.
(Typo intentionally left in.)
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 9, 2020 17:26:41 GMT -6
Come on man, let's just drop it. The conversation started long before any of my posts this morning. I got up late.... If I'm going to post ANYthing, it's going to be after SOMEone else post unless I start a new thread. I know how to tag, and I know how to quote. And I'll leave it at that. Well, the media absolutely painted this as a doomsday, hell on earth situation. I guess there’s a fine line between fear-mongering and responsible proactiivity. Media does whatever will sell papers, amass page clicks, attract viewers, whatever. Some outlets are less responsible than others.
But one thing's for sure - sensationalism always sells.
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Post by drbill on Apr 9, 2020 17:29:44 GMT -6
You guys kinda missed my point....
That's OK.
I'm not speaking to the severity of the disease - it's horrible, it's worse than the flu.
I'm not comparing it directly to car crashes or pneumonia. I was speaking to how the press handles THOSE situations, vs. how they have handled THIS situation.
At this point, I don't really care anymore. Feel how you feel. Luckily, things in most areas are looking significantly better than they were 2 weeks ago.
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Post by drbill on Apr 9, 2020 17:31:51 GMT -6
Well, the media absolutely painted this as a doomsday, hell on earth situation. I guess there’s a fine line between fear-mongering and responsible proactiivity. Media does whatever will sell papers, amass page clicks, attract viewers, whatever. Some outlets are less responsible than others.
But one thing's for sure - sensationalism always sells.
Thanks John. That was my point exactly, although you were much more succinct. Sensationalism about a new disease that kills, that you can't see, that there is no vaccine for, that has no verifiable treatment (yet) will sell WAY more advertising than Pneumonia or Alzheimers. And man oh man, the media is REALLY good at selling. |
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 9, 2020 17:32:02 GMT -6
Two proposed methods of action for HCL: One is that zinc was shown to mess up the RNA replication activity inside cells for SARS. But it's hard to get zinc into the cell. By using a zinc-lovin' molecule to bring it through the cell wall, you can get the zinc up in there. Chloroquine acts to get zinc into cells. And, if you have more zinc in the body, you get more of an effect. HCL or cholorquine + zinc = RNA disruption = less virus = winning. The other is that both HCL and azithromycin both suppress certain parts of your immune system. Azithromycin is an antibiotic which is what most of us have used it for, but it also does something to certain specific parts of your immune system. Both HCL and azithromycin inhibit certain chemicals called cytokines (specifically interleukin 6, IL6, and others). Cytokines are small proteins that are made by your immune cells and act as signals to your body to control your immune response. This is why people with RA or lupus take HCL regularly, as immune system suppressants. When you're very sick with covid19, it seems in some cases people may into a positive feedback autoimmune spiral called a cytokine storm. White blood cells release those cytokines, which trigger more white blood cells, which release more cytokines, in a positive feedback loop. This causes inflammation and damage, which in your lungs leads to swelling -> hypoxia -> death. (This is also thought to be one of the causes of death for the Spanish flu). High IL6 seems to be an indicator of a worse infection even early on. HCL + azithromycin both reduce cytokines including IL6 = dampen out that positive feedback loop = no cytokine storm = no ARDS = no death = winning. The first would be why it would work as a preventative measure. The second would be why it could help with severe cases (not all cases have cytokine storms). It may be doing both. It may be doing something else entirely that's also working. It may be doing neither. There are a *lot* of drugs that we don't know why they work, we just know they do. Medicine is hard. The good news is that if IL6 is the right "lever" to push, there are other drugs that also work on that, so even if HCL isn't the silver bullet for severe cases there probably is one out there, and I'm optimistic we'll find it. Except that it really doesn't (not with this disease, anyway). Which is why the CDC has (quietly, I guess they're embarassed) withdrawn all support for its use against Covid-19
And what "proposed methods of action" means, translated into English, is that they're really just guessing, they don't know, and there's no proof.
Incidentally, IL6 IS interleukin 6. IL6 is just an abbreviation.
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Post by matt@IAA on Apr 9, 2020 17:35:19 GMT -6
There are currently 60 ongoing trials for HCL and chloroquine. We don’t know that it works any more than it doesn’t.
But it absolutely does work against SARS as a viral RNA disruptor as I described. That’s a known method of action for over a decade.
And it absolutely is an IL6 inhibitor, as is azithromycin. These are not theories, these are known features of both drugs.
Neither mean it it’s necessarily an effective treatment or prophylactic. But it hasn’t been rule out either.
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Post by chessparov on Apr 9, 2020 18:06:17 GMT -6
I'm "Swiss" (neutral) on the HCL/chloroquine thing, until it's tested out more. Seems an interesting potential avenue. I understand and respect John E's point of view too. All for a Swiss Miss, in the meantime though!  . I'm not a "Stay At Home" Critter. Chris |
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Post by ragan on Apr 9, 2020 18:47:58 GMT -6
You guys kinda missed my point.... That's OK. I'm not speaking to the severity of the disease - it's horrible, it's worse than the flu. I'm not comparing it directly to car crashes or pneumonia. I was speaking to how the press handles THOSE situations, vs. how they have handled THIS situation. At this point, I don't really care anymore. Feel how you feel. Luckily, things in most areas are looking significantly better than they were 2 weeks ago. Right, but when the situations are fundamentally different (ie car crashes vs COVID) the coverage of them should be fundamentally different. If it weren't, it would be inaccurate. This doesn't mean there isn't shitty coverage of this thing, for all I know there is, we didn't seem to want to get into examples here. It just means that saying the coverage of COVID isn't like the coverage of car crashes (or whatever) isn't a valid reason why coverage is shitty. |
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Post by seawell on Apr 9, 2020 20:10:56 GMT -6
Humor has been understandably hard to come by but this clip gave me a much needed laugh 🤣
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. I'm not a "Stay At Home" Critter.