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2 minutes ago, Derrico said:

No it’s only the flu guys.  It’s only an American political issue.  Who here got the flu shot???

I did. We have immuno-compromised people around and this was my first/second year of getting it. 

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I have no idea if this is worse or not worse then the flu.  The economic response to this situation is near hysterical.  However so far the Flu has had a far greater impact on the US and it's people.  Here are the CDC's numbers on the flu.  https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

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Key Points:

Outpatient ILI and clinical laboratory data remain elevated but decreased for the third week in a row.

Nationally, influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses are now the most commonly reported influenza viruses this season. Previously, influenza B/Victoria viruses predominated nationally.

Overall, hospitalization rates remain similar to this time during recent seasons, but rates among school aged children and young adults are higher at this time than in recent seasons and rates among children 0-4 years old are now the highest CDC has on record at this point in the season, surpassing rates reported during the second wave of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

Pneumonia and influenza mortality has been low, but 136 influenza-associated deaths in children have been reported so far this season. This number is higher for the same time period than in every season since reporting began in 2004-05, except for the 2009 pandemic.

CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 34 million flu illnesses, 350,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths from flu.

Antiviral medications are an important adjunct to flu vaccine in the control of influenza. Almost all (>99%) of the influenza viruses tested this season are susceptible to the four FDA-approved influenza antiviral medications recommended for use in the U.S. this season.

 

 

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1 minute ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I have no idea if this is worse or not worse then the flu.  The economic response to this situation is near hysterical.  However so far the Flu has had a far greater impact on the US and it's people.  Here are the CDC's numbers on the flu.  https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

 

You don't know if it's worse or not? The best news we've heard lately is that the mortality rate is only 1%, not 3.4%. 1% is ten times the mortality rate of the flu.

The following is pretty troubling news, but might explain how highly contagious the disease is:

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The test results suggest that humans could be infected by the disease simply carried through the air or on a solid surface, even if direct contact with an infected person does not occur. That finding, if accepted, would come in stark contrast to previous media reports that suggested the virus was not easily transmittable outside of direct human contact.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/487110-tests-indicate-coronavirus-can-survive-in-the-air

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9 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

You don't know if it's worse or not? The best news we've heard lately is that the mortality rate is only 1%, not 3.4%. 1% is ten times the mortality rate of the flu.

The following is pretty troubling news, but might explain how highly contagious the disease is:

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/487110-tests-indicate-coronavirus-can-survive-in-the-air

I don't think they actually know how contagious or how lethal this virus is.  If it so contagious how were the Chinese able to keep that cases down to 80K in a city of 10 mill and a country of 1.2 Billion.  My guess is that there has been a 1 million people in China with the virus (or about 1/10th of 1% of the population) and it's been going on since the Oct. with death rates similar to the flu, but maybe worse for the elderly and better for kids.  Even with the vaccines, the Flu has reached 10% of the US population according to the CDC.

Edited by GASabresIUFAN
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7 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

the mortality rate is only 1%, not 3.4%

In all honesty, until there is a vigorous regimen to test, those numbers will float all over the place. Numbers do tell stories though. At one point(yesterday I believe)South Korea was testing more people/day than we had tested in total. Just food for thought.

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Reading further into the CDC test kit rollout failures seems to me  to be a typical government red tape failure.

Apparently the original test kits had a bad negative control included in them. In other words, the nucleic acid control they included in the test kits were giving positive results which will render all patient samples tested on that PCR plate invalid.

The CDC had published the PCR primers included in the kits which would allow many public health labs to "homebrew" their own test kits, however it appears that at least initially the CDC/FDA did not allow this to happen. For example, most labs would almost certainly have purified influenza or non COVID-19 coronavirus RNA on hand that could be employed as a negative control. Pairing such a negative control with the published primers that can be easily synthesized, a working diagnostic test could have been quickly rolled out by individual labs while the CDC worked on its manufacturing troubleshooting. 

 

 

 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Claude_Verret said:

Reading further into the CDC test kit rollout failures seems to me  to be a typical government red tape failure.

Apparently the original test kits had a bad negative control included in them. In other words, the nucleic acid control they included in the test kits were giving positive results which will render all patient samples tested on that PCR plate invalid.

The CDC had published the PCR primers included in the kits which would allow many public health labs to "homebrew" their own test kits, however it appears that at least initially the CDC/FDA did not allow this to happen. For example, most labs would almost certainly have purified influenza or non COVID-19 coronavirus RNA on hand that could be employed as a negative control. Pairing such a negative control with the published primers that can be easily synthesized, a working diagnostic test could have been quickly rolled out by individual labs while the CDC worked on its manufacturing troubleshooting. 

 

 

 

 

 

Oof...

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33 minutes ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I have no idea if this is worse or not worse then the flu.  The economic response to this situation is near hysterical.  However so far the Flu has had a far greater impact on the US and it's people.  Here are the CDC's numbers on the flu.  https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

 

 

13 minutes ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

SO we have had 126,000 confirmed cases (4600 deaths) world wide compared to 34,000,000 flu cases in the US which lead to 350,000 hospitalizations.  

OK, so here's the deal. We're in what, like week 4 of this? I don't know how varied flu is by season, but let's pretend flu drops to near zero in August in the US and picks us through the winter. We're in "September" right now for COVID-19, and you're saying, "See, this thing isn't bad at all." when the entire winter flu season is to yet to come.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that China seems to have plateaued after locking large parts of the country down. The US has no appetite for that, so it's just going to spread here.

Edited by MattPie
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2 minutes ago, MattPie said:

 

OK, so here's the deal. We're in what, like week 4 of this? I don't know how varied flu is by season, but let's pretend flu drops to near zero in August in the US and picks us through the winter. We're in "September" right now for COVID-19, and you're saying, "See, this thing isn't bad at all." when the entire winter flu season is to yet to come.

Actually I think we are in March for this virus as well.  The spring heat in the South and then then summer in the North should put a serious dent in CV19.

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Just now, GASabresIUFAN said:

Actually I think we are in March for this virus as well.  The spring heat in the South and then then summer in the North should put a serious dent in CV19.

I do agree with that; we're "lucky" that it's happening now and not 4 months ago.

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My wife's sister is at Millard Suburban, 2 patients currently confirmed, one in serious condition, she's being tested as I type this.

I work at Oxy, as a permanently assigned contractor, plant makes base products for hand sanitizer, bleach, and of course, Chlorine, a majority of which helps clean a large percentage of the nations drinking water. Major meeting today on this. There is concern.

If you still believe this to be overblown, PM me. You'll be surprised.

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The important difference to note between COVID-19 and the regular flu is not the mortality rate or severity of the illness, rather it's the incubation period.    

The regular flu has an incubation period (you're a carrier spreading the contagion, but showing no symptoms) of 1-4 days (2 days on average).  

COVID-19 has an incubation period of 2-14 days (per the CDC)... some reports indicate even longer incubation periods.    The numbers are changing as we learn more about the virus, but average is believed to be in the 5-6 day range.

Assuming you quarantine yourself when you begin experiencing symptoms, a single individual infected with COVID-19 can spread the virus to 2 to 3 times as many people vs the standard flu.... which has a multiplicative effect.

If I had to make a prediction, assuming we take appropriate preventative measures, this should settle down sometime around Memorial Day.

Edited by pi2000
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Note: as a rule, I take Communist China's numbers with a huge dollop of salt.  Given their history with epidemics, natural disasters, etc., my rule of thumb is the number of people infected is ten times what the rest of the world is told.  At best, they show up a day late and a dollar short with information until either enough time has passed, something more important happens, or people get so concerned about their own countries -- then the truth is quietly released. 

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6 hours ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I have no idea if this is worse or not worse then the flu.  The economic response to this situation is near hysterical.  However so far the Flu has had a far greater impact on the US and it's people.  Here are the CDC's numbers on the flu.  https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

 

I reiterate, America’s greatest fault is it’s people have stopped trusting science.   Every worldwide scientific, medical organization is telling you this is significantly worse than the flu and you still doubt.

 

#facepalm

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1 hour ago, Weave said:

I reiterate, America’s greatest fault is it’s people have stopped trusting science.   Every worldwide scientific, medical organization is telling you this is significantly worse than the flu and you still doubt.

 

#facepalm

Any doctor or scientist who is telling you that covid19 is a more or less serious disease than the flu at this point in time is not correct.  The scientific truth continues to be we dont know yet, and on a scientific level we wont know until all the reliable data is gathered and analyzed.

I think the main problem is not that people dont trust the scientific experts, although there will always he a good measure of that, it's with people making definitive statements (doctors and scientists in included) based on incomplete data, like we are seeing everywhere now. 

As a a pandemic, thiis could end up being much worse, the same or milder than H1N1pdm09. We simply wont know until we know.

I'm continuing to look towards the experts who tell us to follow all the prudent steps based on what is known about respiratory viruses in general, who at the same time refrain from making definitive statements about covid19 based on incomplete and constantly evolving data.

 

 

 

Edited by Claude_Verret
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9 minutes ago, Claude_Verret said:

Any doctor or scientist who is telling you that covid19 is a more or less serious disease than the flu at this point in time is not correct.  The scientific truth continues to be we dont know yet, and on a scientific level we wont know until all the reliable data is gathered and analyzed.

I think the main problem is not that people dont trust the scientific experts, although there will always he a good measure of that, it's with people making definitive statements (doctors and scientists in included) based on incomplete data, like we are seeing everywhere now. 

As a a pandemic, thiis could end up being much worse, the same or milder than H1N1pdm09. We simply wont know until we know.

I'm continuing to look towards the experts who tell us to follow all the prudent steps based on what is known about respiratory viruses in general, who at the same time refrain from making definitive statements about covid19 based on incomplete and constantly evolving data.

 

 

 

I know you are in the medical field.  As an engineer I am ill equipped to debate you on a medical subject.  Maybe this is a counterpoint of word choice and semantics, but published death rates and infection rates are higher than influenza, and the major world medical science organizations are treating this much more cautiously than influenza.  This all points to current data suggesting a more dangerous situation than influenza.  Are we reading that wrongly?

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6 hours ago, SwampD said:

I did!

But you knew that.

I was being facetious.  You think this is still just the flu?

Also, to those that continue to plead how many more people die of the flu each year then the virus all I can say is brush up on how exponential math works.  When this is all said and done deaths from Covid 19 will significantly outpace the flu.  The other major concern is the rate at which the virus requires hospitalization of the host.  Our hospitals are going to be completely over run just as it is in Europe right now.  Do we start including deaths from people that may die of heart attack, stroke, cancer etc that now can’t be saved due to the lack of health care resources due directly to Covid 19?

Edited by Derrico
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