Semi-OT: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[azcatz11]

Has anyone had swine flu? I had it in 2009. It was literally horrible and the worst experience I've ever gone thru

I rarely get respiratory tract infections but did I believe get that, possibly related to a plane flight to the USA, as it was the prevalent strain at the time, and was quite symptomatic, but it was annoying rather than debilitating in my case.

I couldn't get out of the bed / couch for a week. I vividly remember the seventh day when I was able to take the trash out and it was a huge accomplishment. I wonder how Corona compares...

[michaelm]

Deleted

[Jay 20]

Has anyone had swine flu? I had it in 2009. It was literally horrible and the worst experience I've ever gone thru

I rarely get respiratory tract infections but did I believe get that, possibly related to a plane flight to the USA, as it was the prevalent strain at the time, and was quite symptomatic, but it was annoying rather than debilitating in my case.

I couldn't get out of the bed / couch for a week. I vividly remember the seventh day when I was able to take the trash out and it was a huge accomplishment. I wonder how Corona compares...

That's where Corona is so weird. I'm pretty sure anyone who got the Swine Flu felt like you. Whereas a lot (definitely not all, but a lot) of people with Corona aren't even symptomatic or only show minor symptoms.

[Bottomsouth]

One would think we’d need a vaccine, verify it works and confirm the side effects before lining up to get whatever comes out to market. But hey whoever wants to be a guinea pig, be my guest.

[azcatz11]

I rarely get respiratory tract infections but did I believe get that, possibly related to a plane flight to the USA, as it was the prevalent strain at the time, and was quite symptomatic, but it was annoying rather than debilitating in my case.

I couldn't get out of the bed / couch for a week. I vividly remember the seventh day when I was able to take the trash out and it was a huge accomplishment. I wonder how Corona compares...

That's where Corona is so weird. I'm pretty sure anyone who got the Swine Flu felt like you. Whereas a lot (definitely not all, but a lot) of people with Corona aren't even symptomatic or only show minor symptoms.

It is scary that it spreads to your lungs though

[Jay 20]

I couldn't get out of the bed / couch for a week. I vividly remember the seventh day when I was able to take the trash out and it was a huge accomplishment. I wonder how Corona compares...

That's where Corona is so weird. I'm pretty sure anyone who got the Swine Flu felt like you. Whereas a lot (definitely not all, but a lot) of people with Corona aren't even symptomatic or only show minor symptoms.

It is scary that it spreads to your lungs though

For sure.

[TMU]

I couldn't get out of the bed / couch for a week. I vividly remember the seventh day when I was able to take the trash out and it was a huge accomplishment. I wonder how Corona compares...

That's where Corona is so weird. I'm pretty sure anyone who got the Swine Flu felt like you. Whereas a lot (definitely not all, but a lot) of people with Corona aren't even symptomatic or only show minor symptoms.

It is scary that it spreads to your lungs though

And the next thing you realize is that you have a breathing tube and stay on a ventilator. And to think that this is just another seasonal flu.

[bondom34]

One would think we’d need a vaccine, verify it works and confirm the side effects before lining up to get whatever comes out to market. But hey whoever wants to be a guinea pig, be my guest.

It's almost like it's going to take so long because they're testing something. Maybe in trials. Maybe clinically. They might even call them "clinical trials" and use them to test side effects and other possible issues.

[Zenzibar]

That's a trial, and not talking about infecting other people. Having a trial is exactly why this is taking 12-18 months, because in trials you find out if there are adverse and extreme side effects.

A vaccine is a small/weakened dose of a virus. That causes your body to react by producing antibodies. Those antibodies are able to fight off the stronger version of the virus (this is a basic explanation but good enough for the time being).

So you can't infect someone because you had a vaccine. And antibodies don't infect people with the virus, they're your defense from it.

Not being a virologist I'm not qualified to agree or disagree with you my man. What I do know is that my body doesn't react well to weakened versions of even the common flu vaccine. Yet I can be around others with the annual flu and not catch it.

Fortunately, my body is pretty strong, given up all meats, milk, eggs and garbage foods has helped a bunch.

So while not advocating to everyone to disregard the Covid vaccine, my personal past experiences tells me to best avoid and not fk around with any of it.
To each their own my brother.

Yeah that's not how viruses work. There's no 100% rate of contraction. Someone could sneeze in your face and you might not catch it, someone else might be a foot away and you do. Its more likely you got something other than the flu right after the vaccine. Vaccines are incredibly helpful and during a pandemic they're even more valuable.

Really appreciate your diags, but the timing was the vaccine.

[Tor_Raps]

One would think we’d need a vaccine, verify it works and confirm the side effects before lining up to get whatever comes out to market. But hey whoever wants to be a guinea pig, be my guest.

It's almost like it's going to take so long because they're testing something. Maybe in trials. Maybe clinically. They might even call them "clinical trials" and use them to test side effects and other possible issues.

Will there be ample time allowed to see the side effects or will be be rushed due to the urgent need?

[BadMofoPimp]

For those who are basically saying that they don't believe in the flu vaccine therefore they won't be getting the Covid-19 vaccine, are you insinuating that the Covid-19 is just another variant of the seasonal flu? Still in denial of how potent this virus is?

I will definitely get the Covid Vaccine. I think jobs will require it. As far as the flu, after seeing people get sick after getting it and hearing some still getting flu after getting vaccine, I didn't want nothing to do with that.

[bondom34]

Not being a virologist I'm not qualified to agree or disagree with you my man. What I do know is that my body doesn't react well to weakened versions of even the common flu vaccine. Yet I can be around others with the annual flu and not catch it.

Fortunately, my body is pretty strong, given up all meats, milk, eggs and garbage foods has helped a bunch.

So while not advocating to everyone to disregard the Covid vaccine, my personal past experiences tells me to best avoid and not fk around with any of it.
To each their own my brother.

Yeah that's not how viruses work. There's no 100% rate of contraction. Someone could sneeze in your face and you might not catch it, someone else might be a foot away and you do. Its more likely you got something other than the flu right after the vaccine. Vaccines are incredibly helpful and during a pandemic they're even more valuable.

Really appreciate your diags, but the timing was the vaccine.

Yes, that doesn't mean it caused it.

https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/qa/can-flu-shots-cause-the-flu

The flu shot is made from dead viruses and cannot "give" you the flu. However, the vaccine can trigger an immune response from your body, so you may have a few mild symptoms, like achy muscles or a low-grade fever.

The nasal flu vaccine, FluMist, is made with a weakened live flu virus. It also cannot give you the flu, but is more likely to cause symptoms such as achy muscles or a low fever. It's recommended as an option only for non-pregnant, healthy people between the ages of 2 and 49.

If I went out to a bar one night and got the flu, that doesn't mean I got the flu because I went to the bar.

[bondom34]

One would think we’d need a vaccine, verify it works and confirm the side effects before lining up to get whatever comes out to market. But hey whoever wants to be a guinea pig, be my guest.

It's almost like it's going to take so long because they're testing something. Maybe in trials. Maybe clinically. They might even call them "clinical trials" and use them to test side effects and other possible issues.

Will there be ample time allowed to see the side effects or will be be rushed due to the urgent need?

That's what the 12-18 months are for. They'd be the same as any other drug, I don't think the FDA tends to flinch on their standards, that's why GMPs are set and followed, I'd say its the same for this if not stricter.

[zimpy27]

Just a brief wrap-up on something touched upon a few pages ago in this thread. I'm putting this here to shoot down the more radical interpretation of events that was being considered. This is a new report on the investigation of the origins of the virus.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-officials-investigation-coronavirus-wuhan-lab

U.S. officials and the intelligence community have confirmed to Fox News that they have taken the possibility of the coronavirus being man-made or engineered inside China as some sort of bioweapon off the table and have ruled it out at this point.

Sources point to the structure of the virus, in saying the genome mapping specifically shows it was not genetically altered. The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there -- and then went into the population in Wuhan.

So, the bioweapon hypothesis (and, apparently, the "altered virus structure" hypothesis) is now firmly returned to the conspiracy theory corner. It's official.


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Interesting study out of Stanford (Covid antibody testing in California):
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf

Summary:
- Number of actual infected persons may be 50-85 times higher than known
- CFR (mortality rate) of Covid (at least in California) may be around .12% to .20%


This data is similar to what a German study found (0.37% CFR):
https://reason.com/2020/04/09/preliminary-german-study-shows-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-of-about-0-4-percent/

It's also not so far off of the current figures in Iceland. Iceland is the most tested nation per capita in the world on the virus. That makes them possibly the best "not antibody researched" study of what the Covid CFR may be.

Iceland ----------> 9 deaths/1754 cases = 0.51% CFR

A virus with a .1% CFR will kill 1 in 1000 people who catch it. A virus with a .5% CFR will kill 5 in 1000 (1 in 200) people who catch it.

As many have suspected, there are likely a lot more people who have, or have had, the virus in the USA than we know about. The current "known" CFR of the virus in the USA is around 4.6% (30,449 deaths from 666,573 cases). Data from here:
https://covidtracking.com/data

Picking a number between 0.1% and 0.5%, let's just say that the virus CFR is 0.3%. That would make the virus about 15 times less deadly than it currently appears to be based on the known numbers. That's a welcome thought.

Of course, the CFR for the virus is a lot higher for certain populations (elderly, those with per-existing conditions).


Comparisons:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_severity_index#Guidelines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E2%80%9358_influenza_pandemic
https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=208914

Average flu ----------> 0.1% CFR (or less; kills roughly 291,000 to 646,000 globally per year)
1957 flu --------------> 0.3% CFR (in the UK; killed 1-2 million people globally)
Spanish flu ----------> 2.0%+ CFR or higher (killed 17-100 million globally)

People usually differentiate between CFR (case fatality rate) and IFR (infection fatality rate). CFR uses confirmed cases as the denominator, while IFR uses all infected. So you can't really be wrong about the CFR. IFR is the more interesting and difficult question, but scientists believed it to be a lot lower than some of those CFRs for a while. For example the Imperial College Study (the one that predicted 2.2 million deaths in the US without intervention) was published a month ago and assumed an IFR of 0.9% and a study focused on estimating IFR published in late March found a 0.4 %- 1.3% confidence interval for IFR.

As far as the Stanford Study goes, ideally you would want a random sample of a population. But this is how they found their participants:

We recruited participants by placing targeted advertisements on Facebook aimed at residents of Santa Clara County.

The problem with an approach like this is that you might introduce a bias, for example you end up getting more people that are worried about having covid, because they had symptoms. That could lead to the prevalence being overestimated and the IFR being underestimated.

Also, I was kind of shocked to see those CIs on the sensitivity of the used test:

Our estimates of sensitivity based on the manufacturer’s and locally tested data were 91.8% (using the lower estimate based on IgM, 95 CI 83.8-96.6%) and 67.6% (95 CI 50.2-82.0%), respectively. Similarly, our estimates of specificity are 99.5% (95
CI 98.1-99.9%) and 100% (95 CI 90.5-100%).

At this point we can be pretty certain that the IFR is above 0.2% just by looking at the fatalities in NYC and some of the hard hit regions in Italy.


Imperial College Study:https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019: a model-based analysis: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext

As we discussed before, 0.2% is what the Iceland data shows as the fatality rate but that is an ideal situation, SCC is similar base don this study of antibody tests.

I wouldn't be certain IFR is over 0.2% but IFR will be different in different cities based on population density, demographics, pollution, etc.

[TMU]

For those who are basically saying that they don't believe in the flu vaccine therefore they won't be getting the Covid-19 vaccine, are you insinuating that the Covid-19 is just another variant of the seasonal flu? Still in denial of how potent this virus is?

I will definitely get the Covid Vaccine. I think jobs will require it. As far as the flu, after seeing people get sick after getting it and hearing some still getting flu after getting vaccine, I didn't want nothing to do with that.

I'd re-consider. Flu-like symptoms for a day or two are common after the flu vaccination.

[Tor_Raps]

It's almost like it's going to take so long because they're testing something. Maybe in trials. Maybe clinically. They might even call them "clinical trials" and use them to test side effects and other possible issues.

Will there be ample time allowed to see the side effects or will be be rushed due to the urgent need?

That's what the 12-18 months are for. They'd be the same as any other drug, I don't think the FDA tends to flinch on their standards, that's why GMPs are set and followed, I'd say its the same for this if not stricter.

I recall hearing that those timelines might get pushed because of the urgent need. Now whether that actually happens remains to be seen. But with everything going on in the world and the economy, I'd bet my money that steps get skipped.

[bondom34]

Will there be ample time allowed to see the side effects or will be be rushed due to the urgent need?

That's what the 12-18 months are for. They'd be the same as any other drug, I don't think the FDA tends to flinch on their standards, that's why GMPs are set and followed, I'd say its the same for this if not stricter.

I recall hearing that those timelines might get pushed because of the urgent need. Now whether that actually happens remains to be seen. But with everything going on in the world and the economy, I'd bet my money that steps get skipped.

I'm nearly certain they can't skip a phase. That's legally not allowed and is exactly why the FDA exists. Before it existed there were issues with treatments and it's entire purpose as an agency is to be sure drugs are safe.

It's not legal for them to just "skip" stuff.

[TMU]

That's what the 12-18 months are for. They'd be the same as any other drug, I don't think the FDA tends to flinch on their standards, that's why GMPs are set and followed, I'd say its the same for this if not stricter.

I recall hearing that those timelines might get pushed because of the urgent need. Now whether that actually happens remains to be seen. But with everything going on in the world and the economy, I'd bet my money that steps get skipped.

I'm nearly certain they can't skip a phase. That's legally not allowed and is exactly why the FDA exists. Before it existed there were issues with treatments and it's entire purpose as an agency is to be sure drugs are safe.

It's not legal for them to just "skip" stuff.

Yep, and this sums up why we won't have a vaccine that is readily available to the public in a matter of weeks. Until you have vaccines, you will need more testing.

[BadMofoPimp]

For those who are basically saying that they don't believe in the flu vaccine therefore they won't be getting the Covid-19 vaccine, are you insinuating that the Covid-19 is just another variant of the seasonal flu? Still in denial of how potent this virus is?

I will definitely get the Covid Vaccine. I think jobs will require it. As far as the flu, after seeing people get sick after getting it and hearing some still getting flu after getting vaccine, I didn't want nothing to do with that.

I'd re-consider. Flu-like symptoms for a day or two are common after the flu vaccination.

I have caught the flu one time in about 35 years. How often have you gotten the vaccine?

[TMU]

I will definitely get the Covid Vaccine. I think jobs will require it. As far as the flu, after seeing people get sick after getting it and hearing some still getting flu after getting vaccine, I didn't want nothing to do with that.

I'd re-consider. Flu-like symptoms for a day or two are common after the flu vaccination.

I have caught the flu one time in about 35 years. How often have you gotten the vaccine?

Ah, it now makes more sense why you don't want to get it. I believe in flu vaccination and I get it every year as I'm in health care. A few years ago, I developed a generalized rash that lasted several hours after getting a vaccine - which is pretty rare. I'm still not sure what happened then, but I've had no other issues since.