I had read the Diamond Princess analysis earlier today, and agree that it is well reasoned and apt.
There are still a lot of variables and unknowns, and some of the commenters point them out, but it is about as literal a petri dish as one can put a reasonable sample size of humans exposed to this virus to run the experiment.
And, as Willis Eschenbach illustrates, it is mostly all good news, given the circumstances.
Willis always does an excellent job. It was his post I referenced regarding the math of epidemics. If one were to design a perfect experimental system for this virus the Diamond Princess was made to order. The major question is why is the CDC ignoring/downplaying the results of this data? This whole thing is starting to look like more political than scientific. And now with panic, fueled by the media, the federal government must act to contain the panic as much as the virus itself.
physicsguy,
First, I want to emphasize, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! But, then again, neither does anyone else. There were medical experts in China, South Korea, Italy, U.K., Spain and Iran…and every night on my TV I watch well intended, extremely well educated medical experts disagreeing wildly on what next week and next month will look like in these United States. But that is the nature of the enemy, not an example of incompetence on their part. There are a lot of variables and a lot of estimates each has to make on a new virus as they anticipate the future.
There are certainly some idiots using this for political effect, but I think this is more a factor of what some people are trained in and what they are being asked to do. If one tells an epidemiologist the goal is to minimize mortality, well then the answer is to have everyone stay away from everyone else and not touch anything for weeks and months. I noticed a similar thing with security experts after 9/11. They were recommending extremes; no public events, shut down sports, no college commencements, nationwide curfews.
I don’t think many Governors want to hold a meeting with their state’s medical team AND their state’s economists and do some risk analysis on impacts to find a happy medium between mortality and economic slowdown. It’s political suicide if the media leaks such a meeting to the public. So the tendency is to react extremely on the minimize mortality side of the equation.
Rufus, that was exactly my point. It’s way past time for politicians to do anything but what is happening now. The Diamond Princess data however, could be used to maybe help tamp down some of the panic.
Amazing article. I’d guess that the reason that the 10-19 aged group (a small sample) had a strong propensity to contract the virus compared to other younger groups is because these kids are running all over the ship putting their hands on everything.
That the 20-29 aged group are dramatically more likely to be symptomatic compared to all other age groups is astonishing. Or should we be more astonished that maybe 48% of the infected adult population will be symptom free; given that we’ve chosen to push the entire global economy into the mouth of the bubbling volcano?
TommyJay:
The choice that “we” made? When you write “we,” do you mean Americans? Do you mean human beings? Do you think that the closings were the choice that “pushed the entire global economy into the mouth of the bubbling volcano”? Do you think the stock market wasn’t already falling because of the virus and all the repercussions worldwide? Do you think people were going to continue to go to restaurants and sporting events and that would have been better? Do you think it wouldn’t have led to more deaths and subsequently more panic rather than less?
Those aren’t rhetorical questions, they’re real questions.
I think Governors are looking at the trend lines and asking themselves which role they want to be compared to; President Whitmore from “Independence Day” or Mayor Vaughn of Amity in “Jaws?”
Neo,
Forget about the stock market. Thousands of businesses and millions of jobs are being destroyed, right now, by a small number of our political leaders. That’s just a fact. But “we” elected them didn’t we.
My county has thousands of square miles in it. But because TWO PEOPLE, in some unknown place, tested positive, some idiot county healthcare official shut the whole county down. We were functioning cautiously but functioning fine, until then.
Do I think a hundreds of fatalities nationwide or many thousands is a cause for mass hysteria. No I don’t. The economic calamity will be very much worse.
Dr. Oz has been speaking loudly about how S. Korea did not do shelter-in-place shutdowns of large portions of the country. OK, another celebrity physician I don’t like.
They tested the hell out of the citizenry, and then they locked down those who tested positive. What a radical concept.
But the CDC is in control and they’ve got some 40 year old playbook, and they don’t spend testing money on folks who aren’t likely to test positive. Penny wise and pound foolish. As I posted before, it’s more complicated than that, but still. They (CDC and related people) screwed up big time.
Yes, we have tough real questions and we’re getting the wrong answers.
TommyJay:
One advantage the Chinese have is that all the experts and technocrats know that there are definite penalties for failure, stupidity, incompetence when the chips are down. Penalties that will not just be a slap on the wrist, not just affect them, but very likely blight the futures of their children.
In Burnham’s Brave New Managerialist World, our Bugmen Overlords only ever fail upwards or at the very worst sideways.
There is of course some invisible ceiling at play here. Very hard to point the finger at precisely where the people who never pay for their mistakes begin in an organizational chart… but Google, LinkedIn always tells the tale.
We have to bring back the element of fear. I’m not talking Stalin… but still this culture of complacency and impunity must be destroyed. It was a luxury we could never afford.
If it is a test case, it must be remembered that the experience on the cruise ship was one of very concerned people probably doing the best version of social distancing they could accomplish. It was not a test case of a group of people behaving ordinarily.
It is clear that there is a mania of some kind—or more than one kind. I think it is still too early to tell how much of the measures being taken are overreaction. Didn’t Britain backtrack from their policy of isolating only at risk groups? What a painful and destructive episode we are living through. I hope we can look forward to a future where we are better prepared. And one in which we maintain a capacity to produce all things outside China, at least enough to fulfill a portion or our usual demand and more in an emergency.
Matthew M,
I think the opposite is true. During the time “Patient Zero” was contagious and asymptomatic there would have been no realization of any problem on the ship so folks were probably interacting very typically. And there were multiple patient zeroes who were simultaneously contagious and asymptomatic.
As Eschenbach wrote:
As you might imagine, before they knew it was a problem, the epidemic raged on the ship, with infected crew members cooking and cleaning for the guests, people all eating together, close living quarters, lots of social interaction, and a generally older population. Seems like a perfect situation for an overwhelming majority of the passengers to become infected.
I should add that cruise ships seem to be even more optimal for disease spread than other, real world situations, as we have seen from many other cruise related quarantines. It would be wonderful news if the Diamond Princess statistics are indicative of the worst possible trend we see in the next few weeks.
One other, feint hope:
With the amount of daily travel between the U.S. and China it seems very unlikely this thing just showed up on our shores in February. I have read a lot of accounts in comments of folks complaining of similar symptoms in January, December, even November. The stories are similar. Symptoms match Coronavirus, but they tested negative for influenza and eventually got better. Even medical professionals state this was a higher than normal flu season in the U.S.
If many of those flu cases were actually Coronavirus, maybe we are further along the curve than it seems.
The current emphasis on testing in order to quarantine as many of the carriers as possible means infected rates will naturally skyrocket now, and that is what we see, but it would be good news if thousands in the U.S. have already worked through it in the past 3 months.
Neo’s comment earlier should be reviewed, especially in light of the WaPo simulator that’s been linked a couple of times.
One comment about it was that the simulation didn’t have any of the dots “die” like real people would.
And Neo’s remark about the people being taken off the ship before all of them were infected also is not addressed in the simulation.
However, they were only on the ship for a finite amount of time after the disease hit. A few weeks, if I’m not mistaken.
About a fifth of the people on the ship contracted the virus in that time. If that had continued on the ship, do you really think that would have been the total number of people infected? I see no reason to think that.
However, the more valid numbers – which have been discussed here, are that about 1% of infected people on the ship died. This was in a population that trended to the elderly, although the death rate among the actual very elderly people on the ship was significantly higher than that. If the disease had gone unchecked on the ship for a year, for example, probably most of the people would have gotten it and at least 1% would have died.
The people who were very ill on the ship got the best of medical care because they were taken off and treated in Japan. They didn’t overwhelm facilities there because the number of people on the ship was already very finite.
Oh please, we and our betters know next to nothing about the corona virus. If I am missing something please correct me. Like all viruses, corona is mutating every minute.
Commenter on the WUWT post has an interesting point that Willis didn’t address, so far as I could see.
Karen Smith March 16, 2020 at 7:52 pm
I didn’t see anyone mention the studies that show two different strains of the virus. Wouldn’t make more sense (taking into account Italy and Spain) that the cruise ship just had the less virulent strain of the virus? Hence less infected, and less serious cases. The cruise ship would be a perfect place for this to occur, only one patient bringing on the strain, whereas in a country like Italy, you have multiple vectors of infection… ??
Here are a couple of videos from the WUWT commenters that were interesting.
I am still of the opinion that while it is a lethal virus it is no worse than swine flue in the Obama era. What has changed is the unwillingness to let anyone die if it can be prevented. I think there are some very positive things likely to come out of this, an end to sourcing of major parts of the supply chain to China being the most significant. Time to decouple from China.
Here are some significant snips from the article:
The major issue is if your lungs get damaged enough, you can lose the ability to breathe on your own. Once a patient gets severe lung issues, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome, which requires ventilation, 86% of these patients statistically go on to die.
SARS-CoV-2 replicates faster than the older SARS-CoV virus. Viral swabs of COVID-19 are one thousand times higher than those of SARS-CoV from 2003.
Front line health care workers like ER doctors, even younger ones, are getting sicker from the corona virus than the rest of the population, other than the elderly. Two US doctors with COVID-19 are in critical condition at the time of writing this article.
COVID-19 goes into the body by “binding” to a receptor called the angiotensin-converting enzyme II, or the ACE2 receptor … ACE2 is expressed (lives) in a variety of tissues in your body. For example, it lives throughout the mucosal lining of your mouth (oral cavity). … The tissue with the next highest ACE2 receptors are your lungs. Extremely high levels of ACE2 expression occur throughout all lung cells[
There is a long section on blood pressure medication worth reading if you are using it
There are no COVID-19 fatalities under the age of 9[45].
If young kids get COVID-19, they often don’t get very ill and the symptoms tend to stay away from the lungs[46].
What’s a huge difference between youth and adults? The day and night sleep hormone, melatonin. Kids have a lot more melatonin.
The rise of melatonin starts in the third trimester of pregnancy[47] and continues to be highest at ages one through five. Then melatonin blood levels start to slowly decline[48] and become very low in the elderly.
long discussion on melatonin (note to self – find out who makes it and buy their stock)
this virus is alive and has “consciousness,” so it is evolving and mutating and the newer forms may have different presenting symptoms.
Many people have insufficient blood levels of vitamin A and C. These nutrients have antiviral abilities and are able to support the immune system when it is under viral attack.
avoid refined sugar completely. For a few hours after consuming refined sugar, white blood cells don’t perform optimally. This is proven, replicated science.
Dehydration worsens any infectious process. Remember to drink water.
the death rate from this new coronavirus strain is most likely not going to be as severe in the U.S. as the recent statistics are suggesting.
She has some specific advice on vitamins and melatonin at the end.
When the coronavirus epidemic started late last year in China, the World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with German researchers, rapidly developed a test for the coronavirus. This is the test used by every other country except the U.S.!
The CDC insisted that only its test, not the one developed by the WHO, could be used on suspected cases, and these CDC “designed and approved” tests would be administered under limited circumstances[13].”
In contrast, test kits are widely available in many other countries, including Iran, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and China. Because they are using the WHO kits. In fact, hundreds of thousands of coronavirus tests have been run in other countries.
Our medical protectors are standing in the way. The culture of the CDC and FDA are toxic and locked in and need a major investigation and restructuring. The people staffing these agencies are the worst sort of Swamp Creatures, smug self-important idiots.
Sorry to nit pick Mr. Illyes, but even placed within quote marks using the term consciousness in reference to a virus (to my simple understanding) just doesn’t make sense of either the entity virus or the concept of consciousness.
Not to say either term is particularly sacred in the ordinary sense of the sacred, but just that both virus and consciousness, each on their own pose near impossibly difficult conundra to thought (well, or to my goofy thought, anyway).
Are viruses life, for instance? So we say kinda yes and kinda no. They don’t act like living beings when they’re sitting on glass, say, but more like non-living bundles of agglomerated crystals; and yet, they’re parasitical reproducers in or upon other living beings, and share this aspect with the living that they cause themselves to be copied, and in copying occasionally mutate (some mutations being deleterious to the virus’ reproduction and some smaller number result in net benefits from the viral reproductive point-of-view), but that copying behavior seems to be the sole gross commonality with the living.
Whereas the others, the living things, the fungus, the single-celled protozoa, the plants, the complex animals? They eat, metabolize, grow, propel themselves through the world with motion or additive growth (thinking bacterial colonies, roots, leaves, vines, etc. there).
And then, somewhere indeterminate along the line, consciousness too comes in. But that — consciousness — is another crazy-quilted pursuit. Anyhow, you know.
Again, apologies for the digression. Just an itch I had to scratch.
Morning update. Fit to curve is cases = 48.294e^0.2896*days. which predicts within less than 1 sigma the number of active cases. No change in the exponential character. The serious cases has jumped from 12 to 64. Given the Willis article yesterday, and some other comments, and with increased testing, not surprising the curve is rising. But how many have already had the disease and recovered without being detected?
The media hype grows. Even Fox is now “infected” I tuned in late to catch Ingrahm, but was treated to now “hourly updates” where they breathlessly update the stats by the hour. Turn off your TV; not good for your mental health except for streaming and binging.
Meanwhile, the battle with the FDA to permit off-label uses of existing approved medicines is on:
Fingers crossed that Trump will triumph over the FDA. If a drug (chloroquine) can be used to get patients who can tolerate it out of ICU, that would clear the worst fear, that people who need ventilators won’t get them, as is said to be happening in Italy. A doctor from Stanford Medical is on Fox Business now talking about this, and he says hospitals in the US are beginning to use the hydroxychloroquine/azythromycin combination now.
This won’t be suitable, probably, for heart patients, but it might significantly reduce the number of critical cases.
Approved for use!
Kate, I’m right there with you. If I didn’t worry about the ICU being clogged, I’d feel a lot better about relaxing the restrictions that are destroying so many jobs. I’m happy to hear US hospitals are starting to use hydroxychloroquine/azythromycin, which seemed so dramatically effective overseas. Contagion never induces so much panic as when people believe there is no effective treatment.
The Carnival cruise ships that I own stock in, likely had 5g systems and radiation. This triggered several problems with upper respiratory and immune conditions, creating a true panic when they assumed all these problems were from a virus.
Well it is pretty hard to escape “radiation.” 🙂
Is there 5g and radiation on the other side of the earth? 🙂
How much prevention is “not enough (too little)” – how much is “too much”. There will never be a definitive answer because of definition differences, but there will be some consensus judgments.
When Trump closed the China “border” end of Jan., Dems said it was “too much”. Now they’re constantly claiming “not enough”. I suspect, and hope, that Reps capture these and claim “just right”. (Trump is actually … Goldilocks! Literally.)
One quite newish recommendation is for the Feds to have some big Prizes for testing & treating & vaccines.
The Stanford Prof who wants a lot more testing, since we actually know so little, is certainly correct that decisions are being made with small info. Not enough effort was put into testing earlier, and it still might be far less than optimally feasible. Naturally it’s less than “optimal”, but like Italy having too few ventilators, now, there’s little feasible way to increase them rapidly. They cost $25,000 – $50,000.
Slovakia has a company that makes them! But the Slovak gov’t is now ordering 100 more from that Slovak company. I’ve seen that there are about 4,500 people per ventilator in Slovakia (Czechia is lower, better), but a better statistic would be ventilators per million. My wife and I will be writing to our Euro Parliamentarian about the EU getting some more for Italy. We should have more in storage, after this crisis, for future crises.
sdferr
This quote: “this virus is alive and has “consciousness,” so it is evolving and mutating” was a bunch of text copied from the link.
It may be a medical usage and mean something to those who study these entities.
I had no intention of engaging in anthropomorphism with a virus.
The Doctor undercut his credibility with me somewhat by repeating the debunked talking points about mismanaged Government Leadership (his sub-head), that is, the alleged elimination of the pandemic team (they were reassigned to a re-organized streamlined department) and the pulling of CDC funds (didn’t happen, although it was suggested) which caused it to “slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak” (actually had to cut back on all the off-mission boutique efforts to make gun control a health problem).
The stories are easily found on the Webz.
However, I’ve come to expect that kind of mindless mantra massaging from just about anyone not an avowed conservative.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
I had read the Diamond Princess analysis earlier today, and agree that it is well reasoned and apt.
There are still a lot of variables and unknowns, and some of the commenters point them out, but it is about as literal a petri dish as one can put a reasonable sample size of humans exposed to this virus to run the experiment.
And, as Willis Eschenbach illustrates, it is mostly all good news, given the circumstances.
Willis always does an excellent job. It was his post I referenced regarding the math of epidemics. If one were to design a perfect experimental system for this virus the Diamond Princess was made to order. The major question is why is the CDC ignoring/downplaying the results of this data? This whole thing is starting to look like more political than scientific. And now with panic, fueled by the media, the federal government must act to contain the panic as much as the virus itself.
physicsguy,
First, I want to emphasize, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! But, then again, neither does anyone else. There were medical experts in China, South Korea, Italy, U.K., Spain and Iran…and every night on my TV I watch well intended, extremely well educated medical experts disagreeing wildly on what next week and next month will look like in these United States. But that is the nature of the enemy, not an example of incompetence on their part. There are a lot of variables and a lot of estimates each has to make on a new virus as they anticipate the future.
There are certainly some idiots using this for political effect, but I think this is more a factor of what some people are trained in and what they are being asked to do. If one tells an epidemiologist the goal is to minimize mortality, well then the answer is to have everyone stay away from everyone else and not touch anything for weeks and months. I noticed a similar thing with security experts after 9/11. They were recommending extremes; no public events, shut down sports, no college commencements, nationwide curfews.
I don’t think many Governors want to hold a meeting with their state’s medical team AND their state’s economists and do some risk analysis on impacts to find a happy medium between mortality and economic slowdown. It’s political suicide if the media leaks such a meeting to the public. So the tendency is to react extremely on the minimize mortality side of the equation.
Rufus, that was exactly my point. It’s way past time for politicians to do anything but what is happening now. The Diamond Princess data however, could be used to maybe help tamp down some of the panic.
Amazing article. I’d guess that the reason that the 10-19 aged group (a small sample) had a strong propensity to contract the virus compared to other younger groups is because these kids are running all over the ship putting their hands on everything.
That the 20-29 aged group are dramatically more likely to be symptomatic compared to all other age groups is astonishing. Or should we be more astonished that maybe 48% of the infected adult population will be symptom free; given that we’ve chosen to push the entire global economy into the mouth of the bubbling volcano?
TommyJay:
The choice that “we” made? When you write “we,” do you mean Americans? Do you mean human beings? Do you think that the closings were the choice that “pushed the entire global economy into the mouth of the bubbling volcano”? Do you think the stock market wasn’t already falling because of the virus and all the repercussions worldwide? Do you think people were going to continue to go to restaurants and sporting events and that would have been better? Do you think it wouldn’t have led to more deaths and subsequently more panic rather than less?
Those aren’t rhetorical questions, they’re real questions.
I think Governors are looking at the trend lines and asking themselves which role they want to be compared to; President Whitmore from “Independence Day” or Mayor Vaughn of Amity in “Jaws?”
Neo,
Forget about the stock market. Thousands of businesses and millions of jobs are being destroyed, right now, by a small number of our political leaders. That’s just a fact. But “we” elected them didn’t we.
My county has thousands of square miles in it. But because TWO PEOPLE, in some unknown place, tested positive, some idiot county healthcare official shut the whole county down. We were functioning cautiously but functioning fine, until then.
Do I think a hundreds of fatalities nationwide or many thousands is a cause for mass hysteria. No I don’t. The economic calamity will be very much worse.
Dr. Oz has been speaking loudly about how S. Korea did not do shelter-in-place shutdowns of large portions of the country. OK, another celebrity physician I don’t like.
They tested the hell out of the citizenry, and then they locked down those who tested positive. What a radical concept.
But the CDC is in control and they’ve got some 40 year old playbook, and they don’t spend testing money on folks who aren’t likely to test positive. Penny wise and pound foolish. As I posted before, it’s more complicated than that, but still. They (CDC and related people) screwed up big time.
Yes, we have tough real questions and we’re getting the wrong answers.
TommyJay:
One advantage the Chinese have is that all the experts and technocrats know that there are definite penalties for failure, stupidity, incompetence when the chips are down. Penalties that will not just be a slap on the wrist, not just affect them, but very likely blight the futures of their children.
In Burnham’s Brave New Managerialist World, our Bugmen Overlords only ever fail upwards or at the very worst sideways.
There is of course some invisible ceiling at play here. Very hard to point the finger at precisely where the people who never pay for their mistakes begin in an organizational chart… but Google, LinkedIn always tells the tale.
We have to bring back the element of fear. I’m not talking Stalin… but still this culture of complacency and impunity must be destroyed. It was a luxury we could never afford.
If it is a test case, it must be remembered that the experience on the cruise ship was one of very concerned people probably doing the best version of social distancing they could accomplish. It was not a test case of a group of people behaving ordinarily.
It is clear that there is a mania of some kind—or more than one kind. I think it is still too early to tell how much of the measures being taken are overreaction. Didn’t Britain backtrack from their policy of isolating only at risk groups? What a painful and destructive episode we are living through. I hope we can look forward to a future where we are better prepared. And one in which we maintain a capacity to produce all things outside China, at least enough to fulfill a portion or our usual demand and more in an emergency.
Matthew M,
I think the opposite is true. During the time “Patient Zero” was contagious and asymptomatic there would have been no realization of any problem on the ship so folks were probably interacting very typically. And there were multiple patient zeroes who were simultaneously contagious and asymptomatic.
As Eschenbach wrote:
I should add that cruise ships seem to be even more optimal for disease spread than other, real world situations, as we have seen from many other cruise related quarantines. It would be wonderful news if the Diamond Princess statistics are indicative of the worst possible trend we see in the next few weeks.
One other, feint hope:
With the amount of daily travel between the U.S. and China it seems very unlikely this thing just showed up on our shores in February. I have read a lot of accounts in comments of folks complaining of similar symptoms in January, December, even November. The stories are similar. Symptoms match Coronavirus, but they tested negative for influenza and eventually got better. Even medical professionals state this was a higher than normal flu season in the U.S.
If many of those flu cases were actually Coronavirus, maybe we are further along the curve than it seems.
The current emphasis on testing in order to quarantine as many of the carriers as possible means infected rates will naturally skyrocket now, and that is what we see, but it would be good news if thousands in the U.S. have already worked through it in the past 3 months.
Neo’s comment earlier should be reviewed, especially in light of the WaPo simulator that’s been linked a couple of times.
One comment about it was that the simulation didn’t have any of the dots “die” like real people would.
And Neo’s remark about the people being taken off the ship before all of them were infected also is not addressed in the simulation.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/03/16/covid-19-we-are-all-lady-macbeth-now/#comment-2484814
Oh please, we and our betters know next to nothing about the corona virus. If I am missing something please correct me. Like all viruses, corona is mutating every minute.
Commenter on the WUWT post has an interesting point that Willis didn’t address, so far as I could see.
Here are a couple of videos from the WUWT commenters that were interesting.
Short demonstration of how bacteria mutate to overcome antibiotics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8&feature=youtu.be
Mutation and strains of the coronavirus, much longer (put it on fast speed!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYPZHA-UjUY&feature=youtu.be
This Stanford professor of medicine, epidemiology, biomedical data science, and statistics says we really don’t know much yet:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
This length;y article is the best coverage I have seen: https://drlindseyberkson.com/coronavirus-update-integrative-natural-answers/
I am still of the opinion that while it is a lethal virus it is no worse than swine flue in the Obama era. What has changed is the unwillingness to let anyone die if it can be prevented. I think there are some very positive things likely to come out of this, an end to sourcing of major parts of the supply chain to China being the most significant. Time to decouple from China.
Here are some significant snips from the article:
The major issue is if your lungs get damaged enough, you can lose the ability to breathe on your own. Once a patient gets severe lung issues, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome, which requires ventilation, 86% of these patients statistically go on to die.
SARS-CoV-2 replicates faster than the older SARS-CoV virus. Viral swabs of COVID-19 are one thousand times higher than those of SARS-CoV from 2003.
Front line health care workers like ER doctors, even younger ones, are getting sicker from the corona virus than the rest of the population, other than the elderly. Two US doctors with COVID-19 are in critical condition at the time of writing this article.
COVID-19 goes into the body by “binding” to a receptor called the angiotensin-converting enzyme II, or the ACE2 receptor … ACE2 is expressed (lives) in a variety of tissues in your body. For example, it lives throughout the mucosal lining of your mouth (oral cavity). … The tissue with the next highest ACE2 receptors are your lungs. Extremely high levels of ACE2 expression occur throughout all lung cells[
There is a long section on blood pressure medication worth reading if you are using it
There are no COVID-19 fatalities under the age of 9[45].
If young kids get COVID-19, they often don’t get very ill and the symptoms tend to stay away from the lungs[46].
What’s a huge difference between youth and adults? The day and night sleep hormone, melatonin. Kids have a lot more melatonin.
The rise of melatonin starts in the third trimester of pregnancy[47] and continues to be highest at ages one through five. Then melatonin blood levels start to slowly decline[48] and become very low in the elderly.
long discussion on melatonin (note to self – find out who makes it and buy their stock)
this virus is alive and has “consciousness,” so it is evolving and mutating and the newer forms may have different presenting symptoms.
Many people have insufficient blood levels of vitamin A and C. These nutrients have antiviral abilities and are able to support the immune system when it is under viral attack.
avoid refined sugar completely. For a few hours after consuming refined sugar, white blood cells don’t perform optimally. This is proven, replicated science.
Dehydration worsens any infectious process. Remember to drink water.
the death rate from this new coronavirus strain is most likely not going to be as severe in the U.S. as the recent statistics are suggesting.
She has some specific advice on vitamins and melatonin at the end.
When the coronavirus epidemic started late last year in China, the World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with German researchers, rapidly developed a test for the coronavirus. This is the test used by every other country except the U.S.!
The CDC insisted that only its test, not the one developed by the WHO, could be used on suspected cases, and these CDC “designed and approved” tests would be administered under limited circumstances[13].”
In contrast, test kits are widely available in many other countries, including Iran, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and China. Because they are using the WHO kits. In fact, hundreds of thousands of coronavirus tests have been run in other countries.
Our medical protectors are standing in the way. The culture of the CDC and FDA are toxic and locked in and need a major investigation and restructuring. The people staffing these agencies are the worst sort of Swamp Creatures, smug self-important idiots.
Sorry to nit pick Mr. Illyes, but even placed within quote marks using the term consciousness in reference to a virus (to my simple understanding) just doesn’t make sense of either the entity virus or the concept of consciousness.
Not to say either term is particularly sacred in the ordinary sense of the sacred, but just that both virus and consciousness, each on their own pose near impossibly difficult conundra to thought (well, or to my goofy thought, anyway).
Are viruses life, for instance? So we say kinda yes and kinda no. They don’t act like living beings when they’re sitting on glass, say, but more like non-living bundles of agglomerated crystals; and yet, they’re parasitical reproducers in or upon other living beings, and share this aspect with the living that they cause themselves to be copied, and in copying occasionally mutate (some mutations being deleterious to the virus’ reproduction and some smaller number result in net benefits from the viral reproductive point-of-view), but that copying behavior seems to be the sole gross commonality with the living.
Whereas the others, the living things, the fungus, the single-celled protozoa, the plants, the complex animals? They eat, metabolize, grow, propel themselves through the world with motion or additive growth (thinking bacterial colonies, roots, leaves, vines, etc. there).
And then, somewhere indeterminate along the line, consciousness too comes in. But that — consciousness — is another crazy-quilted pursuit. Anyhow, you know.
Again, apologies for the digression. Just an itch I had to scratch.
Morning update. Fit to curve is cases = 48.294e^0.2896*days. which predicts within less than 1 sigma the number of active cases. No change in the exponential character. The serious cases has jumped from 12 to 64. Given the Willis article yesterday, and some other comments, and with increased testing, not surprising the curve is rising. But how many have already had the disease and recovered without being detected?
The media hype grows. Even Fox is now “infected” I tuned in late to catch Ingrahm, but was treated to now “hourly updates” where they breathlessly update the stats by the hour. Turn off your TV; not good for your mental health except for streaming and binging.
Meanwhile, the battle with the FDA to permit off-label uses of existing approved medicines is on:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/waiting-for-the-fda.php
Fingers crossed that Trump will triumph over the FDA. If a drug (chloroquine) can be used to get patients who can tolerate it out of ICU, that would clear the worst fear, that people who need ventilators won’t get them, as is said to be happening in Italy. A doctor from Stanford Medical is on Fox Business now talking about this, and he says hospitals in the US are beginning to use the hydroxychloroquine/azythromycin combination now.
This won’t be suitable, probably, for heart patients, but it might significantly reduce the number of critical cases.
Approved for use!
Kate, I’m right there with you. If I didn’t worry about the ICU being clogged, I’d feel a lot better about relaxing the restrictions that are destroying so many jobs. I’m happy to hear US hospitals are starting to use hydroxychloroquine/azythromycin, which seemed so dramatically effective overseas. Contagion never induces so much panic as when people believe there is no effective treatment.
The Carnival cruise ships that I own stock in, likely had 5g systems and radiation. This triggered several problems with upper respiratory and immune conditions, creating a true panic when they assumed all these problems were from a virus.
Well it is pretty hard to escape “radiation.” 🙂
Is there 5g and radiation on the other side of the earth? 🙂
How much prevention is “not enough (too little)” – how much is “too much”. There will never be a definitive answer because of definition differences, but there will be some consensus judgments.
When Trump closed the China “border” end of Jan., Dems said it was “too much”. Now they’re constantly claiming “not enough”. I suspect, and hope, that Reps capture these and claim “just right”. (Trump is actually … Goldilocks! Literally.)
Here’s a good list of economic actions to be taken by Tyler Cowen, economist of Marginal Revolution:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sf2ZtjSwANDNP4yATuvwwMMPlTE5DhXccVpEK73av5U/preview
One quite newish recommendation is for the Feds to have some big Prizes for testing & treating & vaccines.
The Stanford Prof who wants a lot more testing, since we actually know so little, is certainly correct that decisions are being made with small info. Not enough effort was put into testing earlier, and it still might be far less than optimally feasible. Naturally it’s less than “optimal”, but like Italy having too few ventilators, now, there’s little feasible way to increase them rapidly. They cost $25,000 – $50,000.
https://hcpresources.medtronic.com/blog/high-acuity-ventilator-cost-guide
Slovakia has a company that makes them! But the Slovak gov’t is now ordering 100 more from that Slovak company. I’ve seen that there are about 4,500 people per ventilator in Slovakia (Czechia is lower, better), but a better statistic would be ventilators per million. My wife and I will be writing to our Euro Parliamentarian about the EU getting some more for Italy. We should have more in storage, after this crisis, for future crises.
sdferr
This quote: “this virus is alive and has “consciousness,” so it is evolving and mutating” was a bunch of text copied from the link.
It may be a medical usage and mean something to those who study these entities.
I had no intention of engaging in anthropomorphism with a virus.
Dick Illyes on March 19, 2020 at 8:05 am said:
This lengthy article is the best coverage I have seen: https://drlindseyberkson.com/coronavirus-update-integrative-natural-answers/
* * *
I read through that very long article and there were some good suggestions and interesting medical information.
The Doctor undercut his credibility with me somewhat by repeating the debunked talking points about mismanaged Government Leadership (his sub-head), that is, the alleged elimination of the pandemic team (they were reassigned to a re-organized streamlined department) and the pulling of CDC funds (didn’t happen, although it was suggested) which caused it to “slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak” (actually had to cut back on all the off-mission boutique efforts to make gun control a health problem).
The stories are easily found on the Webz.
However, I’ve come to expect that kind of mindless mantra massaging from just about anyone not an avowed conservative.