by Judith Curry My latest roundup of articles
via COVID discussion thread IV — Climate Etc.
Hats off to Ms. Curry for providing us all with a fine collection of article links for further reading. I have not personally read all of the articles but that’s what weekends are for right?
I cannot believe I missed Threads I through III.
A study published in Nature Medicine found that people infected with novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) start shedding the virus two-three days before symptoms show up. Studying 77 pairs of injector-infected pairs, the researchers estimate that 44% of secondary infected people can spread the virus even before symptoms show up. In a study published recently, researchers […]
Since the proportion of pre-symptomatic transmission is substantial, maintaining hand hygiene and social distancing can play an important role in containing virus spread in the community.
via Substantial coronavirus spread seen before symptoms show up — Science Chronicle
Getting longer…
We began our shelter in place behavior one week before the state formally declared the shutdown. So we’ve been home for a month. In no specific order, here are some of the changes made, some of which could last longer than the than this first shelter in place order. I’m pretty sure a lot of us are going through the same shared experience alone together.
Restaurant meals zero. No lunch out on Saturdays. No pizza nights. No fast food bean burritos. Nada. During the past month we have not even ordered take out curbside or delivery. No restaurant food period. The silver lining? I’ve lost 10 pounds. My jeans fit a hell of lot better than they did just a month ago. I’m cooking more and eating less. Frugality has extended to our home cooked meals. I know lots of people who waste too much food. They refuse to eat leftovers, they toss them away. We’ve been eating more leftovers, sometimes planning our daily menu with specific dishes from the freezer. We are spending less money on food, eating healthier, all while reducing the quantity of UFO’s (unidentified frozen objects).
Online ordering and curbside pick up or delivery are probably here to stay.
I can’t recall exactly when I curtailed my beer consumption. It was probably around the time I came down with a nasty gut bug when most foods were not appealing and I stopped drinking alcohol. The malaise lasted a week and I lost five pounds which I immediately realized weren’t truly lost just hidden somewhere when I started drinking beer again. Correlation is not causation but since the weight gain was immediate I concluded there was causation. So I pretty much stopped drinking beer. I drink whiskey now instead of beer. For longevity, of course.
Online ordering and curbside pick up or delivery are probably here to stay.
The 90+ Study
Major findings
Researchers from The 90+ Study have published many scientific papers in premier journals. Some of the major findings are:
People who drank moderate amounts of alcohol or coffee lived longer than those who abstained.
People who were overweight in their 70s lived longer than normal or underweight people did.
Over 40% of people aged 90 and older suffer from dementia while almost 80% are disabled. Both are more common in women than men.
About half of people with dementia over age 90 do not have sufficient neuropathology in their brain to explain their cognitive loss.
People aged 90 and older with an APOE2 gene are less likely to have clinical Alzheimer’s dementia, but are much more likely to have Alzheimer’s neuropathology in their brains.
I borrowed clippers from my oldest son and buzzed my head three weeks ago. I don’t think I’ll do that again. I miss my barber. So I’m letting my hair grow out until he’s allowed to reopen. This could get ugly. But for some of us (like my younger son) not going to the barber or stylist doesn’t matter much at all.
I haven’t been to the gym and to be brutally honest I don’t miss the lack of exercise. I have some weights at the house and I’ve managed to go for a walk or two. But what I really miss are the social aspects of being in the gym with all of the others going through their routines. Besides, I still need to maintain a BMI > 25 and <29.9 (see point #3 in the 90+ Study findings above).
Happy Sunday everyone – you may have lost track of the days of the week, but in any case we hope you have had a peaceful weekend… we have been keeping up our daily routine, filling the hours with walks, naps, book-reading, occasional outbursts of yelling at the tv, face-timing, zooming, cooking and day dreaming.
Mary Chapin Carpenter
I find myself reading more, writing more and as Mary says day dreaming more. With movements restricted we all have more time to day dream and think long and hard about what we want the world to look like when we all start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Shelter in place orders does not mean all will comply. Easing restrictions for businesses and gatherings does not mean everything returns to “normal”. There are structural behavioral changes that all of us are have made. Nothing will return to “normal” and the best we can hope for is to make the right choices for us all.
“Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
Spock in The Wrath of Khan
I’ve never liked cruises and you won’t find me on a floating petri dish anytime soon. Flying has lost its appeal as well. We’re already talking about driving instead of flying for our next trip to Colorado.
Enough meandering. Time to think about that longevity drink and what UFO to have for dinner. Stay safe, stay well, stay home.
Stay home for these folks. Please.
“Even in a bad flu season, you never see something like this; it’s just unheard of,” said Harlan Krumholz, MD, a Yale cardiologist…”When they get to the ICU, we are seeing lots of people with acute kidney injuries; lots of people developing endocrine problems; people having blood sugar control issues, coagulation issues, blood clots. We are just waking up to the wide range of ways this virus can affect people. Our ignorance is profound,” but physicians “recognize that this thing has the capability of attacking almost every single organ system, and it may or may not present with respiratory symptoms.”
Read the entire Medscape article at Unusual Presentations of COVID-19
This shit is real and it is scary.
But hey, let’s go to the beach!
Photo credit: as noted in the photo but stolen shamelessly from the Twitter feed #FloridaMorons
Click on the link for the NEJM Journal Watch weekly update. NO paywalls on any of the links in this article.
The Latest in COVID-19 News: Week Ending Apr. 18
Meanwhile in Oklahoma…
This is now the third anti-viral therapy to disappoint us within a few weeks (preliminary data on lopinavir/ritonavir and remdesivir were both unimpressive). This raises a question of whether any anti-viral therapies will be beneficial. Especially among the critically ill, patients often present relatively late (at a time-point when viral load is already falling anyway). Much of the pathogenesis of critical illness seems to result from dysregulated inflammation, rather than direct viral cytopathic effect. This raises a question of whether any antiviral treatment will be beneficial for late-presenting patients with severe illness.
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) today announced the launch of MassMutual HealthBridge, which will provide free term life insurance to the brave and resilient frontline healthcare workers across Massachusetts and Connecticut risking their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
MassMutual Donates $3B Of Free Life Insurance To Healthcare Workers
Even if you’re a big insurance company hater you have to admit this is pretty awesome.
Proning intubated patients has become a staple of ARDS care, and has been shown to improve mortality
COVID19 – Awake Pronation – A guest write-up by David Gordon, MD
This article is a clinical piece and mostly for medical professionals.
theaseanpost.com – Hong Kong Nguyen, 13 April 2020 As COVID-19 expands across the southern hemisphere, governments there have a lot to learn from Vietnam’s approach. Clear communication and government-citizen cooperation that leveraged technology are the main reasons why the country has had relatively few cases. Much attention has been paid to other models in Asia. Taiwanese […]
Data source nature.com article link below the graph.
Why daily death tolls have become unusually important in understanding the coronavirus pandemic
Although figures might not always be comparable, more approaches to counting the dead are useful. Diseases have always cut differing paths through communities, says Maia Majumder, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts. “This disease is going to look enormously different from one context to another, and we need to get comfortable with that,” says Majumder.
Meanwhile in Oklahoma…
Data Source: Acute Disease Service, Oklahoma State Department of Health.
*As of 2020-04-12 at 7:00 AM.
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