SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 Update 2-27-2020

30 thoughts on “SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 Update 2-27-2020”

1. This is the first of what will eventually become nation wide school closings —

   ———–
   Bothell High School closing Thursday for cleaning due to coronavirus concerns

   BOTHELL, Wash. — The superintendent of Northshore School District said Wednesday in an email to families one of its high schools will be closed Thursday after a staffer’s family member was placed in quarantine for possible coronavirus.

   Northshore School District superintendent Michelle Reid said Bothell High School will be closed Thursday “out of an abundance of caution.”

   Reid said a staff member at Bothell High School returned to work Monday after a week of international travel. ***The staffer said a family member traveling with them became sick Tuesday and was taken to the hospital. The family member is being treated, monitored and quarantined at the hospital for possible coronavirus***. The test results for the sicked family member may take 5-7 days.

   Reid said the school staffer is not sick, but remains in self-quarantine at their home.

   https://komonews.com/news/local/bothell-high-school-closing-thursday-due-to-coronavirus-concerns

2. This is uber-bad news on the COVID-19 infection from Japan.

   Re-infection of “Recovered” by COVID-19 is a thing.

   ————–

   Recovered Japanese female tour guide infected with virus again
   China | 27 Feb 2020 10:50 am

   Officials of Osaka prefecture in western Japan, say a woman in her 40s, who had been treated for symptoms of the new coronavirus that emerged in China, and left hospital early this month, has again tested positive, local broadcaster NHK reports.

   The woman is a tour guide living in the city of Osaka.
   She was on a bus carrying tourists from Wuhan, China, in mid-January, and tested positive on January 29.

   The woman was discharged from a local medical institution on February 1, and was confirmed as virus-free on February 6.

   But on February 19, she felt throat and chest pain. After several visits to the doctor, she was tested a week later and tested positive again.

   The woman reportedly wore a mask and stayed at home after leaving the medical institution.

   She did not go to work, and had no close contact with anyone. She is now hospitalized in the prefecture.

   Prefectural officials believe that either viruses that remained in the woman multiplied, or the woman was re-infected.

   An expert on infectious diseases at Osaka University says people who are infected develop antibodies, so they can usually avoid re-infection by the same virus.

   However, if there had not been enough antibodies, that individual could have been prone to re-infection or viruses that had been undetected in the body could have multiplied.

   https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/3/142715/Recovered-Japanese-female-tour-guide-infected-with-virus-again

3. Comment via an e-mail list on the article above:

   Or the testing was bad when they released her – the test kits seems to fail at least 50% or more of the time yielding false negatives. If she was feeling better, symptoms abated, and they tested her they assumed she was cured. But she was not.

   NB the cases in China with repeat tests failing despite X-rays showing infection.

   YMMV

4. “it lacks FDA approval”

   The part of emergency planning our “elites” always seem to overlook is the fact that it’s an emergency.

5. “vice President Pence, the former governor of India”

   These Globalists get everywhere!

6. It is also significant to recall that many of the deaths in the 1918 flu were from empyema, a collection of infected fluid between the lung and chest wall seen in pneumonia going back to Hippocrates. The treatment of empyema was unknown until the “Empyema Commission”, which was chaired by Evarts Graham, described the use of water seal to prevent lung collapse when draining empyema or pneumothorax. These conclusions led to the successful use of thoracic surgery to treat lung conditions such as cancer and tuberculosis.

   Evarts Graham performed the first successful lung removal of cancer in 1933. He was also a pioneer in the role of smoking in lung cancer. Himself a smoker, he died of lung cancer in 1957. His cancer patient was at his funeral.

   The treatment of empyema may have been more important in the pre-antibiotic era but does illustrate the progress of care since the 1918 pandemic.

7. “Re-infection of “Recovered” by COVID-19 is a thing.”
   We’ve “known” that there’s no acquired immunity, from reports from China from a month ago.

   Japan is closing all schools, basically indefinitely. Just the flu, amirite?

   It would have been better, all around, for the world to have “overreacted” a month ago when Wuhan was placed in lockdown. “Overreacting” now will be better than trying to do so in another month. We’re about to see a *lot* of positive tests for it here, if/when we actually start testing, and it’s going to cause panic, and it’s all so unnecessary, because the prep work for the public hasn’t been done–i.e., who should seek medical help, when, etc.

8. Google “is the pope sick” and ask yourself what the public reaction is going to be if he and other senior religious/political figures (i.e., old dudes) start dropping like flies during Lent.

   Just the flu though.

9. Someone could put together a list of all the fatal traffic accidents which happened worldwide yesterday — it would be a very long list!. And the death toll would be horrendous — about 3,700 for just one day. And tomorrow there will be 3,700 more deaths on the roads, and the day after that too, on & on. Oh well! At least once WHO starts handing out money to assist countries with coronavirus deaths, the situation will resemble what happened with AIDS: people dying in traffic accidents in Africa will be listed as virus-related deaths.

   But there is no need for a Doomer Porn Blitz about traffic deaths. The Europeans are on top of the situation. Recently they decided to eliminate all traffic accident deaths by 2050. Not that they needed to bother — “Climate Change” will have eliminated the human race and destroyed the planet long before 2050 — just ask Greta.
   https://www.curbed.com/2020/2/25/21150851/stockholm-declaration-road-safety-vision-zero

   Now the unfortunate CNN viewer is paralyzed. If the whole world becomes like that cruise ship in Japan (as is inevitable with an infection where the majority of people infected never suffer any symptoms and the incubation period can last a month), 1 in 1,000 of us will eventually die from the virus (weighted towards the old & infirm). But if the CNN viewer drives to the pharmacy to buy a mask, he risks becoming one of those 3,700 who will die on the roads today. What to do?

   We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

10. The link to the St. Louis article on the 1918 flu pandemic is flawed; should be

    https://www.biomerieuxconnection.com/2018/10/25/how-public-health-policies-saved-citizens-in-st-louis-during-the-1918-flu-pandemic/

    The link in the article had a space between flu- and pandemic

    As far as driving to the pharmacy to buy a mask, don’t bother- too late.

11. Google “is the pope sick” and ask yourself what the public reaction is going to be if he and other senior religious/political figures (i.e., old dudes) start dropping like flies during Lent.

    If Franky the Red and most of his cohorts in the curia dropped dead from this, the Catholic Church MIGHT be saved.

12. And the death toll would be horrendous — about 3,700 for just one day. And tomorrow there will be 3,700 more deaths on the roads, and the day after that too, on & on.

    That’s a linear progression, and one with a slope of zero to boot. Corona-virus is spreading exponentially. You would be wise to learn the difference.

13. This guy has had accurate info from Iran since the outbreak went public there:

    https://twitter.com/hectorology/status/1233094993398550528
    Mr. Harichi, the deputy Minister of Health to Iran allegedly says there are 1,400 dead in Iran and over 10,000 infected. Keep in mind he himself came down with #covid19 and tested positive.

14. Bernie Sanders is unlikely to survive the year. IMO he has a 50/50 chance of getting to the election. He’s 79 with a recent heart attack. Given the age of the Democratic presidential field, their nominees for both President and Vice-President might croak before the election. Trump will be 74 but is in fine health, and Pence only 61.

    OTOH, Trump’s Tuesday speech was so pollyannaish that it is clear he is clueless on this and just accepts the advice of his “top men” on the subject. He has a short window to change that before his re-election lock tubes to defeat. The big rallies he depends on for his campaign will become Sioux “Ghost Dances”, with the participants becoming ghosts.

    Sarcastic prediction – the Democrats might be better off if both their nominees croak before the election. Then they’d win in a landslide with “generic Democrat”.

    Sarcasm off – but, if we’re lucky, the Democratic National Committee would then draft Rahm Emanuel and win outright with him. He is very competent and would be a fine President during a national emergency.

15. Mkent: “Corona-virus is spreading exponentially.”

    Indeed! The horse is out the barn. Because of the long incubation period, most of us will eventually get exposed to the virus — but, despite that, the great majority of us will not contract the infection.

    Some of us will get infected, but the majority of us who get infected will never know it. The few of us who do show symptoms will probably mistake it for a mild cold. Unfortunately, some of us will get seriously sick, just as happens every year in flu season. A very small percentage of us will die — mostly those of us who have already led a long life and, if not knocking on Heaven’s Door already, at least are able to see where it is.

    It is a safe bet that, over the next year, about 1,350,000 human beings will die violent deaths in traffic accidents. It is a fair bet that, over the next year, the number of us who die in our beds from this virus will be less than that.

    As for the number of people who die from the economic disruptions caused by over-reacting to the virus, that is impossible to predict — but could well be larger than the number killed directly by the virus.

16. The big rallies he depends on for his campaign will become Sioux “Ghost Dances”, with the participants becoming ghosts.

    Good point although I disagree about his press conference. More important is the interview with a Trump admin guy, Peter Navarro, on Hugh Hewitt.

    Well, let’s see – no plan, no urgency. We have a plan. We’ve been moving in Trump time, which is to say as quickly as possible, since January 29 when the President courageously pulled down those flights from China. Let me lay the plan out for you, Hugh. And it’s a four-pronged strategy that we have to deal with. The first thing is on the front lines, the personal protective equipment that we need to have for our health professionals, folks in nursing facilities, things like that. What are that? That’s the gloves, that’s the goggles, that’s Tyvek suits. It’s the masks, the N95 masks. The second thing that we need are treatment options. The third is the vaccine development, and the fourth is the point of care diagnostics. Hugh, we’ve been moving very rapidly on all four fronts. Today, for example, on the personal equipment front, HHS is putting out a half a billion dollar proposal to rapidly get manufacturers of face masks in to get that done. If you look at the treatment options, this is what’s interesting, Hugh. If somebody gets Corona, and they’re moderately to severely infected, there’s, first of all, there’s a drug called Remdesivir. It’s made by Gilead. What we’ve done there are a number of things. First of all, we’ve secured the 4,500 doses that they have. In addition, as a cost of almost $200 million, we’re moving to secure the other 90,000 doses they have in involved material. Now the Chinese have been famously uncooperative, so what we’re doing with that drug is going to clinical trials in Japan as well as in Nebraska, where we have some patients.

    The drug is likely to be more important than the vaccine.

17. Just why would it take a month or more to get funding from Congress? The Dems have made it priority one, right? Great.

18. In Sacramento is the first case of it being publicly transmitted to someone who wasn’t traveling. They were talking about it on Tom Sullivan’s show today. The woman lives in Solano County, near Travis AFB. Being treated at UCD medical center in Sacramento.

19. It would be interesting if the woman in CA is an AF dependent and used the Travis PX.

20. Mike, I just read the press conference full transcript and Trump wasn’t as bad as I thought. He is pretty clearly clueless, but not all of the “top men” he relies on are. It was fun when he started going off the rails and Secretary Azar slammed him back with an authoritative interruption of “It’s going to get worse.”

    So my panic about the clips I saw, and the excerpts I read, were way overblown. He still might screw up but at least some of the people he relies on here know what’s coming.

    And, if it’s that bad, Bernie Sanders is unlikely to survive the year.

21. Google “xi in public” and you’ll see nothing for weeks. Why? According to the Chinese authorities coronavirus has been pretty much completely wiped out in China except for around Wuhan.

    Don’t believe it for a second.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/interview-with-a-beijing-doctor-the-true-situation_3253249.html
    “Despite efforts by top communist officials to protect Beijing from the Coronavirus outbreak at all cost, COVID-19 is rapidly spreading throughout the city, and a number of hospitals located in the Xicheng District are treating people who have become infected through person-to-person transmission. The Xicheng District is home to the Zhongnanhai compound that houses the offices of top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials.”

22. Wednesday last week was 19 FEB 2020.

23. count your fingers today … and a year from now count them again … in both cases you will still be at a higher number than Americans who will die due to corana over the next year …

24. Another excellent tracking tool is:

    https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

25. Everything we are doing with this virus is wrong.
    Containment is already broken
    It is being spread on fomites, products from China. This is how people who have no evident contacts are getting it
    All forms of quarentine other than individual, only creates incubators for the spread of the disease
    The disease must be allowed to spread normally through the population .
    Only then will immunity develope
    If this is not done the second round will be worse
    Concentrate money on vaccine research and medical supplies and distribution
    Over concentration on this virus in the news is causing panic
    We do not have near the numbers to make valid inferences about total cases and mortality rate
    Dr. Richard Adler
    Philadelphia

26. The word is out to anyone who wants to know that Iran is covering up a serious outbreak:
    https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1233438301786443779
    BREAKING: At least 210 people in Iran are believed to have died of coronavirus, according to the BBC, citing hospital sources. The official death toll is 34.
    (Recall my post yesterday of reports of 1400 dead.)

    There is some confusion about this, but it seems likely that the spread to Europe was via Iran, so Iran is a few weeks (at least?) ahead in terms of the outbreak. Italy seems to be doing a commendable job in isolating the first region to see an outbreak, the question is whether they were early enough. Probably not, but it’s their only chance.
    see, e.g.,
    https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/02/28/coronavirus-la-diretta-821-casi-in-italia-regione-lombardia-per-il-10-necessario-passaggio-in-terapia-intensiva-se-il-contagio-si-estende-gli-ospedali-andranno-in-crisi/5719824/
    “The spread of the virus is still limited and the incidence is high in some areas equal to about 4% of the regional population – reads a note – In high-incidence areas hospitals have had to face emergency situations both for the high number of cases and for 11% of positivity concerns health workers. If the spread spreads, hospitals will go into serious crisis not only for coronavirus hospitalizations but for all patients.” [google translate]
    i.e., if “only” 10-20% of people who get the virus need ICU care, the health system will be completely unable to keep up. So we have to hope to limit the spread and take serious measures to prevent community outbreaks.

27. First US death, previously unknown case in the wild, 19 years old. Extremely bad news. And because nothing was done to prepare people, panic is going to be very hard to prevent at this point.
    Like I said recently, from this point it’s going to kill everyone the flu would have killed, plus a lot more. The media and the Dems are going to make sure it’s all a massively partisan issue, which we don’t have time for. Since we idled away the time while it was spreading in the community, the health system is going to be swamped very quickly.

28. full disclosure: conflicting reports on age of the deceased. Everything about the above stands though.

29. So far in the first 7 weeks of 2020, the average number of people dying in the US every single day from ordinary influenza/pneumonia has been 530.
    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

    Perhaps the antidote to panic would be to make sure people have a better understanding of the baseline mortality statistics they have been living with all their lives? As Freud is reputed to have said — The voice of reason is small, but very persistent.

30. “King County official Jeff Duchin says that 27 patients and 25 staff members at the long-term care facility in Kirkland, WA are showing symptoms.”

    It’s “just the flu” though, thank goodness.

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