Share your experience, tips, advice, questions…
As it seems most communities world-wide are going into voluntary or enforced quarantine that involves staying at home and avoiding physical contact as much as possible, I thought we could have a thread where we could try a bit of mutual support by cheering each other up over the next few days, weeks, months… Who knows?
I don’t know: suggestions on films to watch, books to read, gardening tips, exercise ideas
Usual rules apply plus a guideline. Let’s be kind and supportive to each other.
I have seen three potential defenses: a cure, a vaccine, and herd immunity. The first is at best a long way off (possibly never), the second might not be possible (the common cold is a coronavirus, and there has never been a vaccine), and though recovery is more common than death, those who have recovered (1) might still be infectious; (2) might get re-infected; and (3) often suffer serious and permanent damage to internal organs. Not much cause for optimism there.
Nonetheless, my layman’s understanding of economics is that printing money to give to people unemployed/afraid to venture into crowds is a fairly short-term strategy – eventually, the economy will feel the lack of all the goods and services not being provided to back the money being printed. We’ve seen the runaway inflation this has caused in some nations from time to time.
(Attaching strings to money for small businesses to the point where it’s not worthwhile for them to accept it, while allowing the donor class to use gobs of money to buy back stock and pay themselves huge bonuses while laying off the peons, can be infuriating but purchased political loyalty is not economics.)
What we might have is evolution in action, weeding out those whose immune systems don’t just happen to be suitable to fight a novel virus. Despite lockdowns, we may all end up learning whose immune system is lucky by trial and error. And everyone gets to play.
I predict those with the wealthiest immune systems are going to be the luckiest.
I’m sure that will be the case provided some workable treatment or vaccine is developed. Otherwise, wealth will only go so far in avoiding exposure altogether.
We shouldn’t be too gloomy about the ability of the collective immune system to handle this particular threat without pharmaceutical assistance. It’s been around for millions of years; this isn’t its first rodeo.
Nonetheless, there is a strong correlation, even now, with socioeconomic status.
This is a very miserable layman economics you have there. It is not all about printing money and giving it away. It is about printing money and giving it away in the right proportion.
Printing money and giving it away has always happened everywhere throughout the history of money. It is how any monetary economy works. The difference is in keeping the flow in moderation, and in reaching enough true consumers and true producers, not stop at banks and the elites.
Me! Me! I am! Might be unattainable but I see no reason why with perfect isolation, the disease could not be eradicated, in principle.
Yes, care-home residents don’t have much influence on policy. The homeless, even less. Expendability? Does that enter into calculations?
A friend is convinced, in retrospect, she caught and survived covid-19. She was visited by friends who live in Croatia back in February. They drove here via northern Italy and were stranded there for a few days as there vehicle broke down and they had to wait while repairs were organised. They then stayed with my friend and all three developed bad cases of what they considered flu. An antibody test might confirm the conviction but they are still not available here on demand.
Hope you’re right. I’m sure there are an unknown but huge number of recovered cases of covid we’ll never know about unless antibody testing becomes widespread.
Not just at the extremes. Poorer neighbourhoods are contributing more to deaths. One can of course present numerous hypotheses for the causation underlying this correlation.
Sort of. It’s widely recognised that we all die, some sooner than others! Given finite resources, there is a whole subfield devoted to costing out therapies in terms of years of life. This particular ‘therapy’, lockdown, will have both costs and benefits which aren’t simply monetary.
Or, like action to mitigate climate change, we could make changes as they are worth doing anyway.
It’s not an either/or. But it would be useful to know the causal factors, as they may guide therapy. Hypertension, for example, may conceivably be higher in such groups, which is beginning to come out top in the list of risk factors.
In principle, yes. Shut down everything for 3 weeks, it’ll be gone. I mean everything – water, sewage, food, medicine, mortuary services … people would have to die at home; we’ll pick ’em up in a fortnight. (There should be a black-humour smiley at that point!).
I was thinking a month to be sure. Ah but then the borders would need to stay closed if we can’t coordinate globally. (And given how US and China are cooperating this may be unrealistic.) Not sure how sewage systems are a weak point. OK, maintenance needs doing but I would have thought social distancing was particularly easy to observe in this sphere of activity!
Alan Fox,
Half-seriously, in theory, wouldn’t effective (in the sense of preventing spread of a disease) social distancing eradicate any infectious disease where the only vector is humans?
I may not have thought this through!
Sorry, folks, it’s raining here, so temporary stop on outdoor activity.
Antibody testing at a hospital in Lodi, the province in Lombardy where the first domestic transmission of coronavirus was detected in Italy, has shown that 20% of health workers had contracted the illness without knowing.
Fom here
Exactly.
Its why some forms of wealth distribution are not the death of a country like some (edit-All) Republicans would have you believe. Spent money doesn’t just disappear into thin air, it gets spent by others and then others, spinning the wheels of an economy. I would say spending a billion dollars on a few bombs does a lot less then giving that same money to people who buy food.
And…
I found this Observer article pretty helpful on understanding antibody testing.
Alan Fox,
Lockdown means lockdown! 😁 If sewage workers travelled to work on a bus …
Sure, but your designer has no problem with weapons of war. It can’t be whipped cream all the time can it? Sure, some people will starve but that teaches everyone else strength. A world where everyone is fed and where bombs don’t exist is an impossible dream, where would the fuel for the misery engines that power your deity come from?
It’s all part of the plan phoodoo, why can’t you accept it?
Alan Fox,
Antibody testing is a blunt instrument. Some people will successfully fight off an infection without even generating them, if their other barriers are effective. They are low risk because of their primary barriers, not because of something you could put on a docket.
You presumably are referring to general physical defences to pathogens such as mucous membranes, cilia and actions that expel mucus and embedded pathogens, stuff like that?
Allan Miller,
But how is this a problem? If a statistically important cohort of us didn’t catch covid due to primary barriers, how would this affect results of an antibody survey to render it not useful?
John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/) has some in depth breakdown of recovered vs death, mortality rates , among other things.
The different governmental responses will provide lots of data .
From a Republican!
Not having to take a bus to work probably gives one a better chance not being exposed, like these guys
“ Billionaires seek sanctuary from coronavirus aboard superyachts
Vessels are being booked for months-long charters in remote locations as the rich luxuriously self-isolate in remote destinations.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/03/22/billionaires-seek-sanctuary-coronavirus-aboard-superyachts/
Just thinking of My Warrior President , who urges the common folk to get back to work and start consuming , those he interacts with are tested frequently , so when an aide or a valet is inflected chances of exposure are diminished.
Steve Schmidt, best known for selecting Sarah Palin, is still an Republican. He just wants a competent asshole in charge.
newton,
That’s the point. How bad does a republican have to be for Steve Schmidt to despise you?
Also the ‘innate’ immune response. We have numerous lines of defence.
An antibody survey is fine, it’s when people start to regard a positive antibody test as a return-to-normality criterion.
I’d advise a lot of caution in deriving those statistics from that data.
Please do, Allan. I’m sure it’ll be super informative
Seconded!
Another naïve question: how do we tell the difference between overcoming an infection that is asymptomatic and leaves no antibody trace in comparison to not getting the infection due to non-exposure? What other evidence would there be to allow us to say, where there is no diagnostic evidence of infection and no antibodies, that someone was nevertheless infected and recovered due to another line of defence?
Alan Fox,
I don’t think you can tell, if an infection has left no antibodies.
I speculated on the ‘first-line’ defences after listening to the latest webinar from the Symptom App team, where they mentioned a couple of interesting things: women undergoing HRT, and pregnant women, are substantially underrepresented in serious cases. And women in general do better. It is felt that oestrogen may have a protective effect – such that they are giving ‘compassionate-use’ oestrogen as a potential Covid therapy at a New York hospital. Oestrogen has effects on the immune system, though whether the potential therapeutic effect is via improving the ‘sentinel’ innate system or on suppressing the cytokine storm effect – or whether this amounts to the same thing – I don’t know.
But it is interesting that pregnancy, formerly thought to be a risk, actually seems protective. It raises all sorts of questions on the relationship between pregnancy and immune function.
Well, that seems rather less controversial than bleach. 😉
Heh. They’re only giving it for a week. Just in case … y’know … 😁
Allan Miller,
Seriously, no problem with that. Longer term, for blokes, might be an issue!
It would explain the apparent male/female bias in deaths.
Yes, that’s what I was hinting at! I’ve emerged from Covid with a new act…
Thinking about this, The Donald might be persuaded to try this treatment, which might be of benefit to the wider world, if not to him.
Boris, too, perhaps!
Allan Miller,
I’m terrible at spotting subtle humour!
Partly. They also have less hypertension, until menopause. Hypertension is emerging as the #1 ‘underlying risk’ factor.
Some time back I posted a link to some research along the lines of woman being generally more successful in fighting off respiratory illnesses. However, woman who had their ovaries removed, or on estrogen blockers, faired no better than men. Sounds like these recent observations corroborate those previous results/conclusions/observations.
I read some reports of kaletra (dual HIV drug combo) combined with ribavirin and interferon havig patients fairing better than kaletra alone. There was no arm of the study w/o kaletra, i.e., ribavirin and interferon alone, so there is still the question if ribavirn and interferon (perhaps even pegylated interferon?) might be doing the heavy lifting. From previous reports kaltetra seems to have a modest effect in patients with some reports of lack of any efficacy of kaletra treating cover.
He is damaging the brand, it is not the content, it is that style. Plus Schmidt isn’t making money.
PeterP,
Do you know how the ribavirin was administered, tablets or inhalation?
Also, the side effect profile for interferon + ribavirin (as used for HCV infection) is really nasty.
Finally one underlying risk I don’t have.
This is a good article by Erin Bromage describing the factors that affect transmission risk. It includes some superb data on specific spreading events.
I, initially, only read a press release which lacked significant detail. However, the study is available from Lancet as of a couple of days ago:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31042-4/fulltext
I did not see in the article where it outlined what formulation of ribavirin was administered only that 400 mg 2x per day was prescribed.
I know someone who did the old interferon-ribavirin treatment for HCV back in 2000. He did the treatment for 2 years straight and I thought it was going to kill him. It took him 6 months to test HCV non-detectable then he went on to treat for 18 months after that. He subsequently relapsed and his HCV came back within 3 months of treatment cessation. Only bright side was his liver histology improved from severe fibrosis to a healthy, albeit infected liver. He was cured a couple of years back with the new DAA treatments that are currently the gold standard. The side effects were pretty bad but they, the side effects, took a few weeks to month(s) to manifest. In the timeframe of covid-19 treatment the well established side effect profile in HCV patients does not seem to be an issue. I’m sure it is related to the shortened duration of treatment ~ a week or so.