Covid-19

[sgt.null]

that is exactly whats needed grima

?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

That's a reference to Grima Wormtongue from The Two Towers.

I am more concerned about the FBI having been politicized during the Obama Administration, but that is for another thread. The CDC numbers are accurate--corona simply is not that deadly except to the elderly or those with underlying conditions.

[sgt.null]

I need to re-read LotR someday.

If Trump is re-elected he needs to sweep out the FBI.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Interesting article regarding testing methodology.

But yes-no isn't good enough, he added. It's the amount of virus that should dictate the infected patient's next steps. "It's really irresponsible, I think, to forgo the recognition that this is a quantitative issue," Dr. Mina said.

The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious.

This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are.

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.

On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.

One solution would be to adjust the cycle threshold used now to decide that a patient is infected. Most tests set the limit at 40, a few at 37. This means that you are positive for the coronavirus if the test process required up to 40 cycles, or 37, to detect the virus.

Tests with thresholds so high may detect not just live virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers from infection that pose no particular risk - akin to finding a hair in a room long after a person has left, Dr. Mina said.

Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. "I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," she said.

A more reasonable cutoff would be 30 to 35, she added. Dr. Mina said he would set the figure at 30, or even less. Those changes would mean the amount of genetic material in a patient's sample would have to be 100-fold to 1,000-fold that of the current standard for the test to return a positive result - at least, one worth acting on.

The Food and Drug Administration said in an emailed statement that it does not specify the cycle threshold ranges used to determine who is positive, and that "commercial manufacturers and laboratories set their own."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is examining the use of cycle threshold measures "for policy decisions." The agency said it would need to collaborate with the F.D.A. and with device manufacturers to ensure the measures "can be used properly and with assurance that we know what they mean."

The C.D.C.'s own calculations suggest that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus in a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles. Officials at some state labs said the C.D.C. had not asked them to note threshold values or to share them with contact-tracing organizations.

For example, North Carolina's state lab uses the Thermo Fisher coronavirus test, which automatically classifies results based on a cutoff of 37 cycles. A spokeswoman for the lab said testers did not have access to the precise numbers.

This amounts to an enormous missed opportunity to learn more about the disease, some experts said.

"It's just kind of mind-blowing to me that people are not recording the C.T. values from all these tests - that they're just returning a positive or a negative," said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York.

"It would be useful information to know if somebody's positive, whether they have a high viral load or a low viral load," she added.

Officials at the Wadsworth Center, New York's state lab, have access to C.T. values from tests they have processed, and analyzed their numbers at The Times's request. In July, the lab identified 794 positive tests, based on a threshold of 40 cycles.

With a cutoff of 35, about half of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 70 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30.

In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. "I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one," he said.

Other experts informed of these numbers were stunned.

"I'm really shocked that it could be that high - the proportion of people with high C.T. value results," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "Boy, does it really change the way we need to be thinking about testing."

[Skyweir]

I need to re-read LotR someday.

OMG you do

Cannot believe you havent... crack on with that stat

[Avatar]

For what it's worth, there have already been several confirmed cases of re-infection.

--A

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

For what it's worth, there have already been several confirmed cases of re-infection.

Out of millions of cases, three.

[Avatar]

Point I think is simply that people can get re-infected. (Tied in (I assume) to also reported short life-span of the anti-bodies.)

Not sure we will know the actual scale of that for a while yet, and sure, it may not be significant.

--A

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

T Cell immunity is a thing, though. Reinfection appears to be extremely rare.



As predicted, there's a divorce surge thanks to the lockdowns.

[SoulBiter]

Well here we are at 190K deaths. I am sure someone, somewhere will speak about this number as if it were something we all didnt know was coming. As many know i have been tracking this for some time. But without updating my algorithm, I wanted to see if I would stay pretty accurate for the reset of the year.

I was accurate for a long time, but things have gotten better on the death front. For all you scoffers out there. Stop it.

I had us at 210K By EOD Sept 3. That means there have been 20K deaths less than my predictions. Matter of fact deaths are trending down and will continue to do so. Not because of lockdowns and masks. But because the medical field has learned how to treat this and have more treatments than they had. And yes more are on the way. There is one that is ready for FDA approval that the FDA are dragging their feet on, but it appears the MHRA in the UK is granting them a meeting to look at fast tracking the treatment there.

All things being said things are looking up!

[Gaius Octavius]

The "short antibody lifespan" is a misnomer. Your body can continuously produce antibodies via plasma cells. The problem is the virus can mutate rapidly to the point where your antibodies against COVID don't work against the mutated strain.

[SoulBiter]

The "short antibody lifespan" is a misnomer. Your body can continuously produce antibodies via plasma cells. The problem is the virus can mutate rapidly to the point where your antibodies against COVID don't work against the mutated strain.

100% agree! Any vaccine will be like a flu vaccine that will have to be updated each year. You will get some protection from previous anti-bodies but there can also be years where its almost a clean miss.

That is why I am looking forward to some of the treatments that are on the verge of approval. I believe that is where we will get our bang for the buck. There is only one treatment that has been able to show significant safety and efficacy in mild to moderate Covid patients vs placebo. It is on the verge of approval. That will be what finally gives people a sense that we have this under some control.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I am glad that we have only two more months to worry about corona--miraculously on 4 November corona will suddenly no longer be that big of an issue. What are the odds?

[Avatar]

The "short antibody lifespan" is a misnomer.

Good point. Also, we just haven't had time to do enough studying yet. Since I posted that I've seen new research that says maybe one vaccine will be enough for all strains.

Should just stop following this crap.

--A

[Skyweir]

I am glad that we have only two more months to worry about corona--miraculously on 4 November corona will suddenly no longer be that big of an issue. What are the odds?

How so? Genuinely curious.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Corona has been more of a political weapon than an actual threat; therefore, once the election is over it won't be needed as a political weapon.

The pandemic we had during 1968-1969 killed a higher percentage of people and yet we did not shut down any part of the economy. In fact, we landed on the Moon and held Woodstock while it was ocurring!

People who were invested in stocks on 1 January 2020 have, by now, regained all their losses and have started to make money for the year. About 2/3 of all people who lost their jobs when their businesses were closed out of misinformed panic have regained their job--despite the best efforts of Democrats to kill the economy, it has a life of its own.

[Gaius Octavius]

Now Donald Trump is spreading the disgusting lie that only 9000 people died from COVID-19. This man is shameless.

[Skyweir]

Corona has been more of a political weapon than an actual threat; therefore, once the election is over it won't be needed as a political weapon.

Trump has made the rona political .. its a virus .. it doesn't care about politics.

[Avatar]

To be fair, he's not the only one.

And look, to an extent, I agree with Hashi...in terms of real numbers, relatively few people have died, and most (although certainly not all) have been people approaching the end of what we consider a natural lifespan anyway.

The economic damage has been far greater than the loss of life it seems.

Would it have been better to have it the other way around? Not sure, but we can't change that now.

--A

[Skyweir]

All of that is arguable nevertheless

There is a machine of false information being disseminated on social media about COVID.

The US death rate projected by the IHME model, which has been cited by the White House coronavirus taskforce, would more than triple the current death rate of some 850 per day.

"We expect the daily death rate in the United States, because of seasonality and declining vigilance of the public, to reach nearly 3000 a day in December," the institute, which bills itself as an independent research centre, said in an update of its periodic forecasts.

And it is being pushed by Trumps fave conspiracy theorists: qanon

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it has been deluged with queries about false rumours the official tally of Covid-19 deaths is drastically lower than the publicised headline figure of about 185,000.

Social-media posts making this bogus claim have been circulating widely on the internet.

And one re-tweeted by President Trump was removed by Twitter for breaching its guidelines.

What exactly is the claim?
The claim, being amplified by supporters of QAnon conspiracies and others, is only 6% of the total number of people with coronavirus on their death certificate actually died from the virus.

This is misleading and not true.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53999403

However, 92% of the total clearly state Covid-19 as the underlying cause of death. So while a patient may have had lung problems or diabetes referred to on their certificates, coronavirus has been given as the main cause of death.

The CDC also says the death certificates may include conditions caused by coronavirus, such as respiratory issues.

Variations of the claim, promoted by those looking to downplay the extent of the pandemic, have been circulating on Twitter since at least mid-June.
But the allegations went seriously viral only at the end of August, when shared by a number of influential accounts, including President Trump's.
Some Twitter users have since even changed their names to include "6%".

In the World Trade Centre terrorist attacks resulted in 2,996 premature deaths .. and the world changed entirely.

The US to date has 193,253 premature deaths from COVID and although it is a small percentage of the overall population it is not insignificant.