GrumpyBiker tested Positive in early April:

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...35/m/7620097764/p/13

I may not fully understand these charts, but the way Covid-19 deaths are counted takes into consideration deaths from other causes.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm


Table three: 1) Covid-19 deaths, 2) pneumonia deaths, 3) deaths from pneumonia with Covid-19, and 4) flu deaths.

Notes:

1 Deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1.

2 Pneumonia death counts exclude pneumonia deaths involving influenza.

3 Influenza death counts include deaths with pneumonia or COVID-19 also listed as a cause of death.


You can get Covid-19, pneumonia, or the flu individually. With pneumonia, you don't have to have the flu or covid-19 - you can have pneumonia on its own with another cause.

These numbers tell me that any death where Covid-19 is involved (whether or not it was the actual cause of death) is counted as a Covid-19 death.

In other words, if you have Covid-19 only and die, its a Covid-19 death.
If your are already hospitalized with pneumonia and going down hill then happen to test positive for Covid-19, it is counted as both a Covid-19 death and a pneumonia death.
If you have the flu and you die of the flu, but also test positive for Covid-19, it is counted as both a flu death and a Covid-19 death.

So, any time Covid-19 is present in a flu or pneumonia victim, even if it wasn't the principal cause of death, it is counted as a Covid-19 deaths.

So, for example, if we see a figure for 5,000 Covid-19 deaths, 5,000 pneumonia deaths, and 5,000 flu deaths, that's not necessary 15,000 dead. It could be 5,000 dead if they had all three at the same time.

If anyone can explain this better or if I'm wrong, let me know. It just seems to me that all these death figures for different things may count a single death multiple times if the death involved more than one illness.

That's basically just an artifact of the way they record cause of death, which uses a labeling system called "ICD-10."

There are a bunch of codes relating to flu, including a number of them that are "flu with pneumonia," so in a patient that dies of flu with pneumonia, they get a single "flu with pneumonia" code rather than a flu code and a pneumonia code.

COVID-19 is new. It wasn't in ICD-10. So they just made up a new code for COVID-19, but it's just one code, for having COVID-19 (well, with two subcodes, one for having a positive laboratory diagnosis and one without a positive laboratory diagnosis but where COVID-19 is still the assumed cause of death). Instead of having a whole bunch of codes with all the other factors added in, they just use the one COVID-19 code plus another code for the other factor.

Also, "pneumonia" basically just means irritated lungs with fluid in them. It can be caused by a lot of things, including COVID-19. So calling someone who dies because they can't get oxygen because of pneumonia caused directly by COVID-19 "a pneumonia death, not a COVID-19 death" is not really reasonable.

Of course, someone with a really nasty bacterial pneumonia who dies while happening to have mild COVID-19 probably shouldn't be counted as a COVID-19 death.

Last fall, Harris County (the most populated county of Houston metropolitan area) elected an inexperienced Millennial to be their county judge (in Texas, County Judge is the emergency manager) by about 1/2% over the man who lead us through Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Ike, and Hurricane Harvey. She is a GDC lemming.

Today, she issued a mask in public order for 30 days. Houston's NBC affiliate added a little Sigmonkey inspired levity:

quote:

Originally posted by Redhookbklyn:
Have any Forum members or their family members caught this virus?

No family, and I'm good to go for now (knock on wood).
A handful of co-workers got it. A few in my district and on my watch. Most of the guys are back to work.
Department wide, we're about 300 positive cases or so. 3 deaths.
Two I know had underlying health issues.

quote:

Originally posted by Redhookbklyn:
Have any Forum members or their family members caught this virus?

I have a suspiscioun that I had it back in January along with several of my coworkers in the ER. We all had coughs that lasted for weeks, fevers, tested negative for flu & strep, and antibiotics did not help.

I personally know 3 people that tested positive. They were pretty sick for two weeks but have recovered.

I think starting to open things back up on May 1st is reasonable. NYC might be an exception, due to their population density.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Last fall, Harris County (the most populated county of Houston metropolitan area) elected an inexperienced Millennial to be their county judge (in Texas, County Judge is the emergency manager) by about 1/2% over the man who lead us through Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Ike, and Hurricane Harvey. She is a GDC lemming.

Today, she issued a mask in public order for 30 days. Houston's NBC affiliate added a little Sigmonkey inspired levity:

Masks may be the midle ground in this. We can't stay home, but need to prevent a spike. I'm not sure what good homemade masks do though.

quote:

Originally posted by Ackks:
Masks may be the midle ground in this. We can't stay home, but need to prevent a spike. I'm not sure what good homemade masks do though.

Even a homemade mask may lessen the distance that an infected person projects their “cooties.” Anything short of a properly fitted and worn N95 respirator is going to do little more for the wearer than remind him not to tough his face, but it may protect others.

A lot of it seems like COVID theater, much like the security theater that TSA practices.

The Surgeon General addressed the homemade mask issue at yesterday's briefing. He explained that the virus won't prevent you from getting the virus but it helps prevent you from transmitting the virus.

Realizing that cloth must be a one way fabric I'll make a homemade mask and wear it inside out, that way it can protect me from the virus. I have to find the guy that Jack bought his beanstalk beans form and get some one way cloth.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
The main danger from this virus? The lies surrounding it.

I don’t think truer words have been said.

A Silver Lining to the Pandemic Could Be Economic Distancing From China

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...a9fe28d1d9-238318549

The COVID-19 pandemic is going to have serious implications for how businesses think about China. Souring sentiment against the Chinese communist regime over the past few weeks may force many corporate boards to alter their whole supply chains in a very short time.

There will be a “forced decoupling” from China, meaning cutting off economic ties for national and strategic reasons, according to Kyle Bass, hedge fund manager and founder of Hayman Capital Management.

“The misery that China has brought to the rest of the world with this virus has really been shining a disinfecting light on global supply chains,” Bass said, in an interview for The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” program.

“Think about this, we have Western democracies relying almost completely on a supply chain in a totalitarian, communistic nation. It’s actually insane when you lay it out like that.”

If there’s a silver lining to this pandemic, Bass notes, it will be the acceleration of the decoupling.

According to a survey in March conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce and consulting firm PwC, one in five large American companies operating in China reports that coronavirus will speed up the process of decoupling. They now indicate greater potential for economic decoupling between the two countries compared to a similar survey in 2019.

More than 40 percent of the respondents, however, still believe that it would be impossible to cut economic ties with China.

Bass criticized U.S. companies for turning a blind eye to China’s human rights abuses.

“Can you imagine if you explain to someone that you’re doing business with a regime that has more than a million prisoners of conscience locked up, and it is executing live organ harvesting on this population of political prisoners on a daily basis? And yet people like Blackstone can’t wait to invest another dollar in China. People like Sheldon Adelson can’t wait to open another casino in Macau,” Bass said.

“Because they just let money blind them to the blatant human rights abuses of maybe one of the most tyrannical regimes that have ever lived. It’s crazy.”
Holding China Accountable

Public opinion in the United States has shifted significantly against the Chinese regime in recent weeks, as most people blame the CCP for covering up the origin of the virus and withholding information about the scope of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

According to a Harris Poll survey conducted from March 14 to April 5, 72 percent of Americans blame the Chinese government for inaccurately reporting the impact of the virus in China.

Another survey by Pew Research Center in March found that roughly two-thirds of Americans now have an unfavorable view of China.

A growing number of legislators in the United States, the UK, Australia, and Canada have started talking about “reparations and getting the Chinese government to pay for their malign actions,” Bass said.

He noted that think tanks and law professors have already floated the idea of legal and financial liability of China for the outbreak.

“There are plenty of things the government can do here to make China pay for its actions,” Bass said.

He suggested that the U.S. government could go after the Chinese state-owned enterprises and take over their international assets such as properties in the United States and stocks issued in Western financial markets. The United States could even cancel its trillion dollars of U.S. Treasury securities held by China, he said.

China owned about $1.09 trillion in U.S. debt as of February, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. China is the second-largest U.S. foreign creditor, following Japan, at $1.26 trillion.

“What we can do is we can use the foundational bedrock of our countries, the rule of law, and we can exercise and enforce our laws on them for their malfeasance,” Bass said. “That is how we level the playing field against such a tyrannical, lying actor.”
Japan Offers Money for Decoupling

The Japanese government announced recently that it would support domestic firms that move production out of China. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is setting aside nearly $2.25 billion from the stimulus package to help Japanese firms in decoupling their supply chains from China, especially those in high value-added manufacturing.

Bass believes the U.S. government should do the same.

It’s a “moral imperative” for the U.S. government to set aside capital to help American companies leave China, he said.

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order that would help relocate medical supply chains from overseas to the United States since the outbreak exposed a dangerous level of dependence on China.

Bass said the pandemic has forced the U.S. government to revisit America’s over-reliance on China in medical drugs and equipment.

Many believe that the global dominance of Beijing in the manufacturing of medicine and medical equipment poses a national security threat to the United States and other nations.

U.S. companies, however, may face challenges in moving production away from China.

For the past few years, the companies operating in China have been blocked from transferring their profits out of the country, and for the past few weeks, the Chinese regime has started to require permits in moving supply chains, Bass said.

“Companies that do business in China, whether you’re Intel or Sony or BMW or Chevron, haven’t been able to get their dollar profits out of China since the fourth quarter of 2016,” he said. “And now we’re being told that maybe you can’t get your supply chains out.”
Moving Out of China

Most large companies have heavily invested in facilities and human resources in China to gain access to the Chinese market, and they have already “given up” their intellectual properties as a price of entry, says Steve Abbott, consultant at Patina Solutions, a supply chain consultancy.

Companies can move sourcing out of China “so long as contractual agreements do not prohibit the change of supply sources,” he told The Epoch Times.

However, breaking contractual agreements in joint ventures where contracts involve equity, revenue, or capital sharing will be heavy lifting for many U.S. corporations, he said.

Abbott believes governments can support resourcing to domestic operations by providing capital or low-cost loans to build domestic capacity. These funds can also be used to offset the penalties potentially imposed by China.

Without this kind of support, companies “will find it very difficult to walk away from these relationships,” he said.

Near 90% Mortality Rate in Intubated COVID-19 Patients in NYC

— Comorbidities appeared to play a major role

https://www.medpagetoday.com/i...isease/covid19/86101

Mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in New York City reached a whopping 88% for those requiring ventilators, researchers found.

Among all patients who received mechanical ventilation, the mortality rate was 76.4% for adults ages 18 to 65, and nearly all patients over age 65 died (97.2%), reported Karina Davidson, PhD, of Northwell Health in New York City, and colleagues, writing in JAMA.

By contrast, mortality rates among these age groups who did not receive mechanical ventilation were 19.8% and 26.6%, respectively.

Outcomes were assessed for 2,634 COVID-19 patients who died or were discharged from 12 New York City area hospitals, where 14% were treated in the intensive care unit (ICU), 12.2% received invasive mechanical ventilation, and 21% died.

Of patients who died, the authors found that those with diabetes were more likely to have mechanical ventilation or care in the ICU versus those who did not. Similar findings were seen for patients with hypertension.

The percentage of patients developing acute kidney injury also increased among subgroups with diabetes versus those without diabetes, the authors said. Among patients with outcome data, 3.2% were treated with kidney replacement therapy.

Overall, 5,700 consecutively hospitalized patients from March 1 to April 4 were included in the analysis. Patients were a median age of 63, and almost 40% were women. About 40% were white and 23% were African American. At triage, 31% were febrile, 17% had a respiratory rate greater than 24 breaths per minute, and 28% received supplemental oxygen. About 2% of patients had respiratory co-infections.

Similar to prior data, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes were the most common comorbidities. The authors noted that the median score on the Charlson Comorbidity Index was 4, indicating an estimated 10-year survival rate of 53% and "significant comorbidity burden" in this population.

Among 373 patients admitted to the ICU, the median age was 68, and a third were women, the authors said.

Length of stay was a median of 4 days, though 2.2% of patients were readmitted during the study period, with a median time to readmission of 3 days. The authors noted that readmission rates for patients discharged to a facility, such as a nursing home or rehabilitation center, increased for progressively older age groups versus patients discharged home. Notably, 3,066 patients remained hospitalized at the final study follow-up date, they said.

There were no deaths among patients younger than age 18. Among those with outcome data, 436 patients were younger than age 50 with a score of 0 on the Charlson Comorbidity Index, and only nine died.

Researchers also attempted to shed light on angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEi) and angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) use by examining home medication reconciliation information from 2,411 patients who had been discharged or died. Of these, about 8% were taking an ACEi and about 11% were taking an ARB.

"ACEi and ARB medications can significantly increase mRNA expression of cardiac angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), leading to speculation about the possible adverse, protective, or biphasic effects of treatment with these medications," they wrote. "This is an important concern because these medications are the most prevalent antihypertensive medications among all drug classes."

Of the patients taking an ACEi or ARB at home, about half continued to do so in the hospital, while half discontinued their medication. Mortality rates for patients not taking an ACEi or ARB were 26.7%, while they were 32.7% for those taking an ACEi and 30.6% for those taking an ARB, but the authors cautioned these data were unadjusted for known confounders.

Limitations to the data included the New York City study area, that data were collected from an electronic record database and lacked detail of a manual medical record, and that clinical outcome data were only available for less than half of admitted patients, which could have biased the findings, the authors said

Apparently - intubation also plays a key role.

quote:

Originally posted by Redhookbklyn:
Have any Forum members or their family members caught this virus?

Yes.
We lost an otherwise perfectly healthy 30-year old to it; a cousin's son.

Did they die because they were on ventilators or Were they on ventilators because they were dying?

"correlation does not imply causation"

If true, good news for me!

“French researchers are planning to trial whether nicotine patches will help prevent - or lessen the effects of - the deadly coronavirus.

Evidence is beginning to show the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population.

Scientists are now questioning whether nicotine could stop the virus from infecting cells, or if it may prevent the immune system overreacting to the infection.”

https://mol.im/a/8246939

https://www.breitbart.com/heal...leave-new-york-city/

USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship that docked in New York Harbor earlier this month to provide relief to hospitals overrun by an influx of Chinese coronavirus patients, is ready to return to its Virginia home port.

The ship, equipped with 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms, and 1,200 personnel, never came close to reaching its capacity during its assignment

The vessel was docked at Pier 90 on the west side of Manhattan for three weeks

the Comfort had treated 179 patients as of Tuesday, with 56 still on board at the time. The New York City health system has handled about 36,000 coronavirus hospitalizations since the start of the outbreak.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo offered to have the ship deployed to another hard-hit area during a Tuesday meeting with the president.