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Covid 19 virus

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Nusa:

--- Quote from: Cerebus on March 21, 2020, 12:21:10 am ---
--- Quote from: Sredni on March 21, 2020, 12:10:12 am ---I am just curious: do you happen to own a red baseball hat?

--- End quote ---

Now keep it civil, he's clearly not that deluded.

--- End quote ---

Nothing wrong with my Cardinals hat!

Cerebus:

--- Quote from: Nusa on March 21, 2020, 12:41:13 am ---Nothing wrong with my Cardinals hat!

--- End quote ---

You have my sympathy. (Hoping that this joke works for American team supporters the same way that it does for British team supporters)  :)

DrG:

--- Quote from: Cerebus on March 20, 2020, 11:46:18 pm ---
--- Quote from: imo on March 20, 2020, 11:06:34 pm ---
--- Quote from: Cerebus on March 20, 2020, 10:42:25 pm ---.. This is a disease with a basic reproduction number (R0) of 2.3 at best current estimates. That means that without containment every person who is infected infects another 2.3 people. It has an overall case fatality rate of 1.2% on current best (age adjusted) estimates. Those two figures alone combine to make this serious. The (age adjusted) case fatality rate for seasonal flu is around 0.01% (typical year, western countries with good health care), R0 for typical seasonal flu is 1.2.

--- End quote ---
There is also a parameter called "viral load".
An expert from a virology lab [no reference, sorry] was talking on the cov19 vs. flu and he mentioned "..the viral load of the sars-cov-2 in the samples of our asymptotic patient was unbelievably high compared to influenza-A, the same load with flu and you would be dead.."
How the viral load could affect those calculations?

--- End quote ---

It doesn't. R0 and case fatality ratio may be an effect of viral load, but they measure end points that might be affected by viral load not something that you can then add a 'viral load' factor to.

--- End quote ---

I don't know the reference you referred to (if you meant that there is one) or if it was just from a talk. No comment either on the hyperbole or conclusions (same load with flu....). I think that is more complicated - certainly more complicated for me.

What I think that is very important is that the emerging picture is that asymptomatic folks (or folks with very mild symptoms) can be carrying around a similar viral load as symptomatic folks. Intuitively, that means that they are infectious (this is the load estimate in the upper respiratory tract).

Please, don't jump on me and say that everyone knows this already. In fact, hard data like the cases that appeared yesterday in this NEJM letter are not yet so commonplace and the report is only from one asymptomatic case and seventeen systematic symptomatic cases. This is anecdotal in contrast to a controlled study. IOW they analyzed swabs from patients during treatment - the asymptomatic guy was swabbed and tracked because of a contact association, if I read correctly.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2001737

For TL;DR, reluctantly, two short quotes are below, but reading the short report is a good idea in my view (how many times have you said - Read the ^%$#*& data sheet? Same idea :).

Patient Z reported no clinical symptoms, but his nasal swabs (cycle threshold [Ct] values, 22 to 28) and throat swabs (Ct values, 30 to 32) tested positive on days 7, 10, and 11 after contact.


The viral load that was detected in the asymptomatic patient was similar to that in the symptomatic patients, which suggests the transmission potential of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic patients. These findings are in concordance with reports that transmission may occur early in the course of infection5 and suggest that case detection and isolation may require strategies different from those required for the control of SARS-CoV. How SARS-CoV-2 viral load correlates with culturable virus needs to be determined.

Reference # 5 is https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32003551?dopt=Abstract

DrG:
....only because laughter can help get through tough times....


not1xor1:

--- Quote from: Kleinstein on March 20, 2020, 09:12:57 pm ---The Spanish flu some 100 years ago was pretty nasty and devastating - let us hope it does not get that bad. So it depends on which flu season one compares. A big difference with the flu is that at least the medical personal is usually vaccinated. So treatment in the hospitals is much easier - much less personal and masks needed. Still the death toll from the regular flu can be pretty high, but it is largely unnoticed as is does not overwhelm the medical system so easy. Most of the years the flu shot is pretty effective so the spread is slowed down and limited.

--- End quote ---

most deaths were not caused by the virus itself, in many cases they were bacteria (we had to wait until WW II for penicillin) in many other cases it was even just aspirin overdose

reference: Salicylates and Pandemic Influenza Mortality, 1918–1919 Pharmacology, Pathology, and Historic Evidence

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