Coronavirus

[sighyoung]

My mother has had it for a couple of weeks now. She's now being treated for pneumonia, which is likely due to a weakened immune system as her body dealt with the coronavirus.

She's o.k. otherwise--she was asymptomatic for the longest time until her appetite diminished. But she's hung in there.

[pioneer98]

WELP hope I don't need to go to the hospital any time soon

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... Ir9zccpzlQ

The entire state of Iowa is now out of staffed beds, Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa, told me. Worse is coming. Iowa is accumulating more than 3,600 confirmed cases every day; relative to its population, that’s more than twice the rate Arizona experienced during its summer peak, “when their system was near collapse,” Perencevich said. With only lax policies in place, those cases will continue to rise. Hospitalizations lag behind cases by about two weeks; by Thanksgiving, today’s soaring cases will be overwhelming hospitals that already cannot cope. “The wave hasn’t even crashed down on us yet,” Perencevich said. “It keeps rising and rising, and we’re all running on fear. The health-care system in Iowa is going to collapse, no question."

What's the governor have to say?

What I do not understand is why the hospitals are not raising hell right now. And the nurse's unions. They are being worked to the bone. I know some nurses and they have put all vacation days on hold and most are working 7 days per week. I don't think the hospitals give a [expletive], which surprises me. Not sure what I expected.

[sighyoung]

WELP hope I don't need to go to the hospital any time soon

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... Ir9zccpzlQ

The entire state of Iowa is now out of staffed beds, Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa, told me. Worse is coming. Iowa is accumulating more than 3,600 confirmed cases every day; relative to its population, that’s more than twice the rate Arizona experienced during its summer peak, “when their system was near collapse,” Perencevich said. With only lax policies in place, those cases will continue to rise. Hospitalizations lag behind cases by about two weeks; by Thanksgiving, today’s soaring cases will be overwhelming hospitals that already cannot cope. “The wave hasn’t even crashed down on us yet,” Perencevich said. “It keeps rising and rising, and we’re all running on fear. The health-care system in Iowa is going to collapse, no question."

What's the governor have to say?

What I do not understand is why the hospitals are not raising hell right now. And the nurse's unions. They are being worked to the bone. I know some nurses and they have put all vacation days on hold and most are working 7 days per week. I don't think the hospitals give a [expletive], which surprises me. Not sure what I expected.

This is the nation's safety net: working people to death.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

My wife and I both have symptoms now. She got tested this morning and I'm getting tested in about an hour. So far our kids do not have symptoms knock on wood. Our kids schools are going 100% online starting Monday for at least 2 weeks, but I bet it will be until January.

This graph seems concerning

Hope you get to feeling better, 98.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I just [expletive] hate all of this COVID [expletive]. It has hurt so many people in so many ways.

I hope we can have a big party one day to celebrate overcoming all of this and life going on. I hope that happens one day.

Agreed.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Hopefully this meshes with some of the things AW has been seeing/reading/sharing. Just be forewarned: this is a long article with lots of good (and technical) information:

'Breakthrough finding' reveals why certain Covid-19 patients die

Dr. Megan Ranney, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Brown University, has learned a lot about Covid-19 since she began treating patients with the disease in the emergency department in February. But there's one question she still can't answer: What makes some patients so much sicker than others?

Advancing age and underlying medical problems explain only part of the phenomenon, said Ranney, who has seen patients of similar age, background and health status follow wildly different trajectories.

In some cases, provocative new research shows, some people — men in particular — succumb because their immune systems are hit by friendly fire. Researchers hope the finding will help them develop targeted therapies for those patients.

In an international study in Science, 10% of nearly 1,000 Covid-19 patients who developed life-threatening pneumonia had antibodies that disable key immune system proteins called interferons. These antibodies — known as autoantibodies, because they attack the body itself — weren't found at all in 663 people with mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 infections. Only four of 1,227 healthy patients had the autoantibodies. The study was led by the Covid Human Genetic Effort, which includes 200 research centers in 40 countries.

"This is one of the most important things we've learned about the immune system since the start of the pandemic," said Dr. Eric Topol, executive vice president for research at Scripps Research in San Diego, who wasn't involved in the new study. "This is a breakthrough finding."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-covid-19 ... 11975.html

I also wanted to include this part of the article, not because the person quoted has a comical last name, but because of what has been discovered thanks to COVID-19:

Significantly, patients didn't make autoantibodies in response to the virus. Instead, they appeared to have had them before the pandemic even began, said Paul Bastard, the antibody study's lead author, who is also a researcher at Rockefeller University.

For reasons that researchers don't understand, the autoantibodies never caused a problem until patients were infected with Covid-19, Bastard said. Somehow, the coronavirus, or the immune response it triggered, appears to have set them in motion. "Before Covid, their condition was silent," Bastard said. "Most of them hadn't gotten sick before."

Bastard said he now wonders whether autoantibodies against interferon also increase the risk from other viruses, such as influenza. Among patients in his study, "some of them had gotten flu in the past, and we're looking to see if the autoantibodies could have had an effect on flu."

Wow. Great article. Thanks for sharing. It's becoming apparent with each passing day that regardless of the outcome of this pandemic the amount of time, money, and most importantly brain power put into the various areas of medicine due to it will have long lasting effects in a positive way.

First and foremost, I'm not in the medical field so anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt. And, this study has stuff I do not fully understand. But there are some things I do understand and it's, as you said, technical. Trying to type my understanding is going to be a challenge and long. But, here goes:

It should be noted, we're only talking about 10% of severe cases, regardless, the results are incredibly telling and fall directly in line with everything we've been talking about.

We have talked about the innate arm of the immune system and how individuals whose innate arm kills the virus fare better than those whose adaptive arms kill it. Innate is faster. Adaptive takes weeks. Innate doesn't care what it is. Adaptive has to know what it is...which is problematic if it's a new virus.

Interferons are a part of the innate arm. And they're good to have to kill viruses. This study says an inactive autoantibody in the body activates and prevents interferons from being made when infected with Sars Cov 2. So, even at 10% or more this pushes the point that the innate arm is important. (I watched a video on youtube about a therapeutic back in like July that included interferons and can't find it now....but it was very successful but the sample size was incredibly low and a lot of stuff was coming out....I'm not perfect...I'll look for it more later).

I was gonna finish this post but just went back and am rewatching the videos where they talk about interferons. I'll just post them and go to bed...maybe.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib0UyBqwzjI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1dA9VhL60A

They go into depth about interferons and what not. Watch if you want. The first one is incredibly in depth and I don't understand most of it but it has the complete chemical chain. The 2nd one breaks down the numbers and shows that even with the small sample size the statistical significance was present. Everyone should watch the 2nd video.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Oh, importantly, I underlined the stuff above because as a Type I diabetic it's long been hypothesized but never proven afaik that viruses can somehow cause diabetes in a select percent of people. This lends a lot of credence to that, and even if not reversible, allows a path to prevent it.

[pioneer98]

My covid test came back positive. Still waiting on my wife's result but it's pretty much a forgone conclusion

[Fat_Bulldog]

I hope you are over this soon and back to grilling in those comfy, white, dad New Balance shoes in no time.

[mikechamp]

WELP hope I don't need to go to the hospital any time soon

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... Ir9zccpzlQ

The entire state of Iowa is now out of staffed beds, Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa, told me. Worse is coming. Iowa is accumulating more than 3,600 confirmed cases every day; relative to its population, that’s more than twice the rate Arizona experienced during its summer peak, “when their system was near collapse,” Perencevich said. With only lax policies in place, those cases will continue to rise. Hospitalizations lag behind cases by about two weeks; by Thanksgiving, today’s soaring cases will be overwhelming hospitals that already cannot cope. “The wave hasn’t even crashed down on us yet,” Perencevich said. “It keeps rising and rising, and we’re all running on fear. The health-care system in Iowa is going to collapse, no question."

What's the governor have to say?

Per the article in The Atlantic:

Trump won Iowa by eight points, which Governor Kim Reynolds took as validation of the state’s COVID-19 response thus far. Bars, restaurants, and schools in Iowa are still fully open, and a recently announced mask mandate applies only for gatherings of 25 people or more.

I'd share more thoughts, but this is the wrong thread.