Ponzio

Ponzio

Audioholic Samurai
I saw no mention of July 2019, but the paper says the SARS-Cov-2 virus was already in Italy by September 2019. Their evidence is pretty good.

In an Italian-sponsored clinical trial of lung cancer screening methods, 959 people, without lung cancer symptoms, were enrolled. Blood samples were taken and archived. Later, these blood samples were tested for SARS-CoV-2, using a test specific for antibodies directed against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. These antibodies are said to be specific for SARS-CoV-2 and do not cross-react with antibodies directed against other corona viruses. The tests showed overall that 111 (11.6%) individuals out of 959 were positive for SARS-CoV-2. 14% of these positive blood samples were taken as of September 2019. None of these people had any known symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The Wuhan, China outbreak occurred at the end of December 2019. Now, there's good evidence for SARS-Cov-2 circulating among asymptomatic people in Italy several months earlier. We have to rethink the origins of this virus, and be open to reshaping the history of the pandemic.
My understanding is that US intelligence was vaguely aware of it in September of 2019, per an article I read in the NY Times in late January(?) 2020 ... memory of a goldfish :p ... and was confirmed by December 2019, and that it originated in Wuhan, China, at a morning briefing for DJT. They recommended he re-establish the medical task-force, which he abolished in 2017, to prepare for it. At that time he refused to do so.

Italy became the beachhead in Europe initially because it's a popular destination for Chinese tourists, who they suspect introduced the virus to the country.
 
Verdinut

Verdinut

Audioholic Spartan
My mistake. I thought spose told me Jul as I didn't dwell into it but she did say Sep.
Still, as you indicate, we need to rethink where this originated and that will take more research of similar blood samples of similar timeframe from many other countries.

Just like the Spanish flue that didn't originate there, just first publicly published there.
Interesting.
My understanding is that the flu was called "Spanish Flu" as Spain had the worst outburst of cases, but it indeed originated in the US.

I guess there is a strong possibility that this Covid-19 will be called the American flu as it will be the country with the worst experience.
 
mtrycrafts

mtrycrafts

Seriously, I have no life.
My understanding is that the flu was called "Spanish Flu" as Spain had the worst outburst of cases, but it indeed originated in the US.

I guess there is a strong possibility that this Covid-19 will be called the American flu as it will be the country with the worst experience.
Yes, indeed. Spain was neutral in WWI and had no restriction on information unlike in many other countries involved in WWI.
So, when the flu got there and increased in numbers, the papers published it broadly. Wasn't really the case here as then president kept it quiet and had no morals sending troops in the death ships where half would perish on the journey to Europe.
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
This appears to be good (albeit preliminary) news:

>>>Immunity to the Coronavirus May Last Years, New Data Hint
Blood samples from recovered patients suggest a powerful, long-lasting immune response, researchers reported. . . .

The team tracked four components of the immune system: antibodies, B cells that make more antibodies as needed; and two types of T cells that kill other infected cells. The idea was to build a picture of the immune response over time by looking at its constituents.

“If you just look at only one, you can really be missing the full picture,” Dr. Crotty said.

He and his colleagues found that antibodies were durable, with modest declines at six to eight months after infection, although there was a 200-fold difference in the levels among the participants. T cells showed only a slight, slow decay in the body, while B cells grew in number — an unexpected finding the researchers can’t quite explain.<<<

 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
This is somewhat interesting:

>>>Common Cold Coronaviruses Tied to Less Severe COVID-19 Cases

The infection rate for SARS-CoV-2 was no different between those who had a recently recorded endemic coronavirus infection (eCoV+) and those who did not have a positive test (eCoV-). This led the authors to conclude that a recent infection with endemic coronaviruses did not keep SARS-CoV-2 at bay—both groups were just as likely to become infected with the pandemic virus.

When the researchers peered closer at the data, they observed an important difference between the two groups. “The COVID-19 disease is actually much less severe in those patients who had documented endemic coronavirus infections,” says Sagar. The odds of intensive care unit (ICU) admission were significantly lower in eCoV+ than in eCoV- patients, and there was “a trend towards lower odds of mechanical ventilation,” the authors write in their report.

The data also show that among hospitalized patients who had previous positive test results for endemic coronavirus, 4.8 percent of them died compared with 17.7 percent among those in the group without such a test result.<<<

 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
Thanks, that Italian INT paper looks good. They looked in the archived blood samples taken from volunteers in a lung cancer trial.

I had previously heard 2nd or 3rd hand reports of indirect evidence of Covid-19-like diseases in China as early as the summer of 2019. The Italian study makes it clear that the novel coronavirus was out & about both in Asia and Europe much earlier than the Wuhan outbreak in December 2019.
Reuters is now reporting that the Italian study has sparked scepticism.

 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
Reuters is now reporting that the Italian study has sparked scepticism.
Skepticism should always be part of good science. I don't think any of the points mentioned in the Reuters article are wrong, nor are they reason to dismiss the Italian study's findings.

Further tests should be done on the serum from those people who had antibodies for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Do these antibodies cross-react with other known viruses, both corona viruses and others? How specific was the test in this study? Apparently, that work may be planned, or already underway.

The Reuters article has one small error in language. It said:
"It showed that in six cases, the antibodies were able to kill SARS-CoV-2. Four of the cases dated back to October 2019, meaning the patients had become infected in September."​

Viruses are not living organisms and cannot be killed. Antibodies can inactivate them, or cause them to be cleared from circulation in the blood. I attribute this error to the Reuters editors, to an error in translation, or to sloppy word usage by a reporter or scientist.
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
All this other news is small potatoes compared to the big news about two SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

Pfizer today announced it's trial is done. Among 44,000 people, half of whom received the experimental SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, there were 170 cases of Covid-19, 8 on the vaccine arm, and 162 on the control arm, for a calculated efficacy of 95%. Ten Covid-19 cases resulted in severe disease, 1 on the vaccine arm, and 9 on the control arm. The most severe adverse reaction of among those who received the experimental vaccination or booster was fatigue lasting 1 to 3 days. The trial of 44,000 people included enough people from different races and age groups (including the >65 year-old age group) for their results to be considered statistically significant. In baseball terms, these results are an out-of-the-park home run.

Moderna's vaccine trial, which had similarly good interim analysis results, is said to be about a week away from completion.


This Washington Post article also said that the FDA is planning to convene an Independent Advisory Committee that will review Pfizer's data and make its recommendations. That panel of outside experts is likely to meet publicly on the Pfizer application during the 2nd week of December. The committee might also scrutinize data from Moderna's vaccine trial the following week.
 
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davidscott

davidscott

Audioholic Ninja
2 family members in the hospital with covid. This thing is real people and we aren't turning any corner. :(
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
There is increasingly good news about vaccines, with now three very promising candidates, that have good possibilities of being available in a six to eight weeks time frame in limited quantities.

However, the rest of the news is dire, especially up here in the American Midwest.

We are now at or over capacity in Minnesota right now. We had built surge capacity, but there is s severe lack of staff. Mayo has 900 staff out sick, the large Allina group has 800 out sick and a big medical system to the NW out at St. Cloud has about 1000 out sick.

The situation in ND is worse. The governor there has asked staff with Covid-19 to stay at their posts unless too sick to work. This is just plain wrong. Someone we know is on a vent in Grand Forks.

At yesterdays ND webinar, the ID physician for Sanford Health Fargo, admitted they were now sending people home who should be in hospital. This is really grim. He also provided good data that in fact at least 400,000 have now died of Covid-19 in the US and not 250,000. That was as of yesterday. This was based on a careful analysis of excess deaths.

According to figures release Minnesota was at 93% ICU capacity and filling up fast yesterday.

My next door neighbors are a husband and wife team who work for Deloitte and Touche. I leaned today from the husband, that his wife had spent the greater part of the day exploring the options of transferring patients to Canada. I have no idea how much success that was meeting with.

At a news conference earlier in the week, the governor admitted that they were exploring the idea of allowing staff to operate beyond their scope of practice, with immunity from liability. This seems like a really bad idea.

Last night the Governor announced that he will place the state under virtual lockdown for a month. No one from any two households can mix. So only people who reside in a given residence can celebrate Thanksgiving together. Draconian though this may seem, this seems to me far too little to late.

At the Governor's news conference today, I detect an element of panic starting to set in.


According to news reports, FEMA have been asked to provide more ambulances for transfer of patients between institutions.

My contacts tell me that the situation is dire.

This is to a very large extent the fault of President Trump's severe negligence and also disbursing false and misinformation by the shovel full. I hope a way can be found to prosecute him on the charge of hundreds and thousands of counts of negligent homicide. In my view he is now one of the worst mass murderers of history.

If you watch the video I posted above, you will hear medical staff explain that patients who are dying of Covid-19 still believe this pandemic is hoax. It is now well documented that it is not rare, the dying patients still can believe it is a hoax and insist they are being lied to and are actually dying of something else.

As the weather continues to get colder, I fear a real catastrophe developing in the upper Midwest. We can not put up tent hospitals, and could not staff them if we could.

We had a surge hospital set up in the Spring surge in the Twin Cities. However there were no funds to maintain it due largely to lack of availability of Federal funds. This has already been converted to a homeless shelter.

My wife and I are not going anywhere. We are not letting anyone into the home at this time, and probably won't until we are vaccinated. If the situation worsens, and we should fall victim to Covid-19 or even something else, we likely would not take a hospital bed if things worsen. That is probably the right thing to do at our ages, but it would depend on how things develop as far as capacity is concerned. However I expect the situation to worsen over the next few weeks, and quite quickly. Some counties in Minnesota now have over twice the infection rate of the worst affected places in Europe.

One case report from our family, which brings it nearer home. My brother's son and daughter in law came down with moderately severe Covid-19 not requiring hospital about a month ago. Recently his daughter in law was out exercising the dog. She got so short of breath she could not move. She had dial 999, the UK emergency number for and ambulance. She is being worked up for long term illness for Covis-19 and told to do only very light exercise for no longer than 5 minutes. My suspicion is she has myocarditis.

We had a recent case of a 17 year old champion dancer who was severely ill in Children's Hospital Minneapolis recently. According to press reports she has myocarditis. She has been told not to return to dancing.

As far as the report above about the early Italian case, it is probably true. We had a case from my home town reported recently. That had a male die of a strange pneumonia back in early December 2019 in Medway Maritime hospital. They did keep samples. Recently they went back and looked at the samples. It is confirmed he died of Covid-19 according to press reports. So the Chinese hid this from the world for a long time, for which they need to be held to account.

In Denmark there is a row over the culling of mink, with the animal right groups asking for the premiers resignation for ordering the culling of mink, which they say was illegal.

Meanwhile Ireland, which has not had a case of the mutant Covid-19 strain is culling all its mink farms.

So this a collection of the odds and ends I have accumulated lately in no particular order of significance.

The tragedy is that in most of the Western democracies this has been allowed to become far worse than it needed to have been. That is the real tragedy. As soon as this crisis is in the rear view mirror, we need to start mitigation and planning for the next one immediately.
 
GO-NAD!

GO-NAD!

Audioholic Spartan
My next door neighbors are a husband and wife team who work for Deloitte and Touche. I leaned today from the husband, that his wife had spent the greater part of the day exploring the options of transferring patients to Canada. I have no idea how much success that was meeting with.
Doc, I'm a bit sceptical that this will get anywhere. It's starting to look quite grave up here, as well.

"...new modelling from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) shows the number of COVID-19 cases could reach 60,000 a day by the end of December if Canadians increase their current level of contact with other people.

That number could be limited to 20,000 a day if Canadians maintain their current number of personal contacts, according to PHAC."

60,000 cases per day in Canada would equate with 540,000 in the US. That's utterly insane and I expect we would be in a draconian lockdown before it gets that bad. As it stands, without any changes, we'll be looking at numbers similar to the US - 180,000 cases per day.

One case report from our family, which brings it nearer home. My brother's son and daughter in law came down with moderately severe Covid-19 not requiring hospital about a month ago. Recently his daughter in law was out exercising the dog. She got so short of breath she could not move. She had dial 999, the UK emergency number for and ambulance. She is being worked up for long term illness for Covis-19 and told to do only very light exercise for no longer than 5 minutes. My suspicion is she has myocarditis.

We had a recent case of a 17 year old champion dancer who was severely ill in Children's Hospital Minneapolis recently. According to press reports she has myocarditis. She has been told not to return to dancing.
I understand that all cases will vary, but what's the general prognosis of myocarditis cases? Is it a permanent condition, or will it resolve by itself/with medical help? Could it potentially impact lifespan?
In Denmark there is a row over the culling of mink, with the animal right groups asking for the premiers resignation for ordering the culling of mink, which they say was illegal.
This seems odd, since those mink were destined to be coats anyway.

The tragedy is that in most of the Western democracies this has been allowed to become far worse than it needed to have been. That is the real tragedy. As soon as this crisis is in the rear view mirror, we need to start mitigation and planning for the next one immediately.
I agree with you, but I expect that as soon as this crisis is resolved we will all go back to sleep.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Doc, I'm a bit sceptical that this will get anywhere. It's starting to look quite grave up here, as well.

"...new modelling from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) shows the number of COVID-19 cases could reach 60,000 a day by the end of December if Canadians increase their current level of contact with other people.

That number could be limited to 20,000 a day if Canadians maintain their current number of personal contacts, according to PHAC."

60,000 cases per day in Canada would equate with 540,000 in the US. That's utterly insane and I expect we would be in a draconian lockdown before it gets that bad. As it stands, without any changes, we'll be looking at numbers similar to the US - 180,000 cases per day.


I understand that all cases will vary, but what's the general prognosis of myocarditis cases? Is it a permanent condition, or will it resolve by itself/with medical help? Could it potentially impact lifespan?

This seems odd, since those mink were destined to be coats anyway.


I agree with you, but I expect that as soon as this crisis is resolved we will all go back to sleep.
I know, I think transfer to Canada is a lost cause. I doubt we will learn the lessons we need to from this crisis.

Unfortunately though the next few months will be so grim, we just might.
 
Trell

Trell

Audioholic Spartan
In Denmark there is a row over the culling of mink, with the animal right groups asking for the premiers resignation for ordering the culling of mink, which they say was illegal.
This seems odd, since those mink were destined to be coats anyway.
These people (I live in Scandinavia) are pretty weird to begin with. Many of them, not all, believes that the culling is murder. Now and then some of them "liberate" some minks in a farm, with the usual effect of killing most small animals in the surrounding area: minks are predators.
 
Trell

Trell

Audioholic Spartan
I know, I think transfer to Canada is a lost cause. I doubt we will learn the lessons we need to from this crisis.

Unfortunately though the next few months will be so grim, we just might.
And Trump sabotaging the transition handover have deadly consequences. I'm aghast that so many people think this is just left vs right!
 
davidscott

davidscott

Audioholic Ninja
Thankfully my sister seems to be getting better but her husband getting worse might have to go on a ventilator. They are now added to the nightly news covid new hospitalization counts. Yet their president (they are big Trump fans) hasn't taken the time away from his frenzied conspiracy theory tweeting to address our nations full blown pandemic. Un Fn Believable. :(
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
The CDC posted a report today that mask mandates reduced COVID spread in Kansas earlier this year. I suspect the mandates would be even more effective if people consistently complied with the mandates, and if people wore properly-fitted N95 masks.

I find myself wondering why the idiot known as Scott Atlas continues to assert that masks don't work.

>>>The governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring wearing masks in public spaces, effective July 3, 2020, which was subject to county authority to opt out. After July 3, COVID-19 incidence decreased in 24 counties with mask mandates but continued to increase in 81 counties without mask mandates.<<<

 
davidscott

davidscott

Audioholic Ninja
The CDC posted a report today that mask mandates reduced COVID spread in Kansas earlier this year. I suspect the mandates would be even more effective if people consistently complied with the mandates, and if people wore properly-fitted N95 masks.

I find myself wondering why the idiot known as Scott Atlas continues to assert that masks don't work.

>>>The governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring wearing masks in public spaces, effective July 3, 2020, which was subject to county authority to opt out. After July 3, COVID-19 incidence decreased in 24 counties with mask mandates but continued to increase in 81 counties without mask mandates.<<<

Scott Atlas idiot - agreed but really just another Trump yes man posing as an "expert". His field is radiology not infectious disease but he does say what Trump tells him to. :(
 
GO-NAD!

GO-NAD!

Audioholic Spartan
If anyone is wondering "How the hell did things fall apart so quickly?", this is how it's unfolding in Nova Scotia right now: September - 3 new cases, October - 21 new cases, November (so far) - 70. I realise that most of you will consider these numbers to be miniscule. But, you all had miniscule numbers at the beginning.

Our new infections are being driven by 18-35 YO's being "too social". Last week, the NS Premier and Chief Medical Officer verbally tore a strip off young people and told them to smarten up. Did they listen? Ppppffffttt!
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
The Oxford vaccine is showing "up to" 90% effectiveness, and the caveats seem a little confusing. The advantages are easier manufacturing and transport:

 

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