Miscellany about COVID

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by LaurV

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(we guess we haz to open a condoms shop and get rich..)

Like Ellen used to say, boneheads...

Note: per the flyer, unprotected sex with truly wild, non-native animals appears to be OK, though, so you may just have to do your hiking farther afield in order to find safe invasive-species dating prospects which fit your wild-n-crazy latex-free lifestyle. :)

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by LaurV

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(we guess we haz to open a condoms shop and get rich..)

Like Ellen used to say, boneheads...

If this was an English translation of a health warning in a non-English-speaking country, I could entertain the notion of "sex" being a translation oopsadaisy for "contact" or some such. But Australia? It's a bit hard to explain, short of mischief.

Hmm, you were just in Australia, weren't you?

[LaurV]

Well... technically, if it is not native, then it is feral... Actually, that is a good question, are the rabbits, for example, feral? Or the foxes? They were never "domesticated" stuff, they were introduced from the start like wild animals, to pray on some local (or introduced, in case of foxes) species, but on the other hand, once humans took them under their "wings", they are feral, even if they escaped and went wild, or were released deliberately.

To reply to Dr.S, yes, we were there, where we could only see Chinese/Asian and Indian/Indonesian people everywhere, and in all social hierarchy, so what you say in the other part of your post, about "lost in translation" may be totally true... But it is funny anyhow.

[Dr Sardonicus]

The term "native" would include all indigenous wildlife -- kangaroos, koalas, dingoes, etc.

Usually, "feral" means something like "a captive or domesticated species gone wild." I suppose that would include the camels and house cats running around the countryside.

However, introduced ("alien") non-domesticated, non-captive animal species -- rabbits, foxes, mice, etc -- do not appear to fall under any of the warned categories. (My understanding is, the rabbits, like the foxes, were introduced "for sport" rather than as captive animals.)

I think the warning would be clearer (though still extremely comical and nonsensical) if all the modifiers of the word "animals" were dropped.

My febrile fertile imagination has concocted another possible scenario for its genesis: hasty editing. Things would at least make sense if the last warning were replaced by two:

• Avoid unprotected sex

• Avoid contact with [domesticated, feral, or native] animals

I can just see it. The warning is all ready, then some suit says, "You have to shorten the list!"

[a1call]

Canadian Health Minister States that asymptomatic people do not transmit the virus.

https://globalnews.ca/video/rd/e17a6...3/?jwsource=em

Makes you kind of proud to be a Canadian and not to give in to unjustified panic like most of the rest of the world.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by a1call

Canadian Health Minister States that asymptomatic people do not transmit the virus.

https://globalnews.ca/video/rd/e17a6...3/?jwsource=em

Makes you kind of proud to be a Canadian and not to give in to unjustified panic like most of the rest of the world.

And the Canadian Health Minister has how many Canadian cases on which to base this sweeping claim?

Here the latest 2019-nCoV news roundup over on NC, which is not known for being a sky-is-falling kind of blog:

China Coronavirus Watch: Transmission Methods, Travel, Potential Mutation, AIDS Connection Debunked | naked capitalism

I draw your attention to 4 snippets - first from the "Once again, from Bloomberg" article:

The novel coronavirus was detected in the loose stool of the first U.S. case — a finding that hasn’t featured among case reports from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. However, that doesn’t surprise scientists who have studied coronaviruses, nor doctors familiar with the bug that caused SARS.

Squat latrines, common in China, lacking covers and hands that aren’t washed thoroughly with soap and water after visiting the bathroom could be a source of virus transmission, said [John Nicholls, a clinical professor of pathology at the University of Hong Kong], who was part of the research team that isolated and characterized the SARS virus.

A virus-laden aerosol plume emanating from a SARS patient with diarrhea was implicated in possibly hundreds of cases at Hong Kong’s Amoy Gardens housing complex in 2003. That led the city’s researchers to understand the importance of the virus’s spread through the gastrointestinal tract, and to recognize both the limitation of face masks and importance of cleanliness and hygiene, Nicholls said.

So there is a wide range with respect to 'symptomatic' - absent other clear symptoms, most people would not consider a bout of diarrhea as 'symptomatic' of something. Second, transmission doesn't get much more asymptomatic than via an inanimate surface - this from the American Society for Microbiology "fomites" paper linked/excerpted:

Virus spread by person-to-person contact can be interrupted with isolation of the viral carrier. Yet, isolation may prove to be impractical or difficult if there are many people or if the source of infection is unknown (69). Consequently, interrupting disease spread via indoor fomites is one of the more practical methods for limiting or preventing enteric and respiratory viral infections.

A majority of respiratory viruses are enveloped (parainfluenza virus, influenza virus, RSV, and coronavirus) and survive on surfaces from hours to days….

Studies have demonstrated that viral transfer from hands to surrounding surfaces is possible in 7 out of 10 viruses reviewed.

Third, here is the New England Journal of Medicine (a reader posted this in the comments section of the above NC article) on the first confirmed U.S. case of 2019-nCoV:

...We report the first case of 2019-nCoV infection confirmed in the United States and describe the identification, diagnosis, clinical course, and management of the case, including the patient’s initial mild symptoms at presentation with progression to pneumonia on day 9 of illness...

So not completely asymptomatic, but "initial mild symptoms", the kind that don't cause people to self-isolate or go to hospital. Note the above does not say how the patient contracted the virus - that is typically difficult or impossible to do for any individual case - but presumably the patient was infective during the "initial mild symptoms" phase.

And lastly, from the "one bioinformatics research had to say" about the now-withdrawn bioRxiv manuscript which essentially claimed this had to be an engineered virus, feeding into a popular conspriacy theory making the rounds:

[2019-nCoV's] symptom profile, degree of transmissibility, severity, mortality rate, duration, incubation and latent period, ability to jump from animals to humans, and ability to transmit asymptomatically and by skin contact are all within the precedents established by other human coronaviruses.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

<snip>
Third, here is the New England Journal of Medicine (a reader posted this in the comments section of the above NC article) on the first confirmed U.S. case of 2019-nCoV:

So not completely asymptomatic, but "initial mild symptoms", the kind that don't cause people to self-isolate or go to hospital.
<snip>

This CNN story has a link to another article in NEJM that bears directly on the subject:

(CNN)The nation's top infectious disease doctor says a new study published Thursday night shows people can spread the Wuhan coronavirus before symptoms set in.

German researchers found that the virus was transmitted by people without symptoms in five instances in one cluster of people: from a parent to a daughter; from that daughter to two colleagues; and from one of those colleagues to two other coworkers.

"There's no doubt after reading this paper that asymptomatic transmission is occurring," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "This study lays the question to rest."

[a1call]

Study claiming new coronavirus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed

According to people familiar with the call, she felt tired, suffered from muscle pain, and took paracetamol, a fever-lowering medication. (An RKI spokesperson would only confirm to Science that the woman had symptoms.)

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...onavirus-wrong

[ATH]

Daily reports on the China CDC site:
http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/news/TrackingtheEpidemic.htm

I made 2 charts from the data.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ATH

Daily reports on the China CDC site:
http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/news/TrackingtheEpidemic.htm

I made 2 charts from the data.

So Recoveries overtook Deaths just yesterday, Feb 2. I guess that bespeaks initial lack of detection and treatment, leaving some patients fatally unsupported. It's good to see that countermeasures seem to be taking hold.

[a1call]

More graphs added to an earlier posted link:

https://ncov.r6.no