COVID-19

[Whoops]

Totally, agree since US ability to handle this sort of thing is quite a bit higher than Germany’s or any other nation in the world.

No it's not. US ability to handle this sort of thing is pre-historic compared to Germany.
The official number of infected people in the US is much lower than reality since few people are being tested, it's dangerous for every country, it's even more dangerous in the US at the moment.
It also doesn't help that the US has a Clown as a president.

I really hope for you guys that at the moment you look to Germany example, and start doing tests.



America’s shamefully slow coronavirus testing threatens all of us
The US lags just about every developed country on testing for Covid-19 disease.

By Brian Resnick and Dylan Scott  Updated Mar 12, 2020, 11:25am EDT


https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/12/21175034/coronavirus-covid-19-testing-usa



HEALTH
The 4 Key Reasons the U.S. Is So Behind on Coronavirus Testing
Bureaucracy, equipment shortages, an unwillingness to share, and failed leadership doomed the American response to COVID-19.

OLGA KHAZAN
MARCH 13, 2020

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why-coronavirus-testing-us-so-delayed/607954/

 

[JohnRoberts]

In the post World War II era, other examples of U.S. research aimed at developing biological weapons have emerged, some of which have recently received media attention. One such example occurred this past July, when the U.S. House of Representatives demanded information from the U.S. military on its past efforts to weaponize insects and Lyme disease between 1950 and 1975.

The U.S. has claimed that it has not pursued offensive biological weapons since 1969 and this has been further supported by the U.S.’ ratification of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which went into effect in 1975. However, there is extensive evidence that the U.S. has continued to covertly research and develop such weapons in the years since, much of it conducted abroad and outsourced to private companies, yet still funded by the U.S. military. Several investigators, including Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, have documented how the U.S. produces deadly viruses, bacteria and other toxins at facilities outside of the U.S. — many of them in Eastern Europe, Africa and South Asia — in clear violation of the BWC.

Aside from the military’s own research, the controversial neoconservative think tank, the now defunct Project for a New American Century (PNAC), openly promoted the use of a race-specific genetically modified bioweapon as a “politically useful tool.” In what is arguably the think tank’s most controversial document, titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons, including the following sentences:

“…combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes…advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”

Though numerous members of PNAC were prominent in the George W. Bush administration, many of its more controversial members have again risen to political prominence in the Trump administration.

Several years after “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” was published, the U.S. Air Force published a document entitled “Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens,” which contains the following passage:

“The JASON group, composed of academic scientists, served as technical advisers to the U. S. government. Their study generated six broad classes of genetically engineered pathogens that could pose serious threats to society. These include but are not limited to binary biological weapons, designer genes, gene therapy as a weapon, stealth viruses, host-swapping diseases, and designer diseases (emphasis added).”

Concerns about Pentagon experiments with biological weapons have garnered renewed media attention, particularly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top funder of the controversial “gene drive” technology, which has the power to permanently alter the genetics of entire populations while targeting others for extinction. At least two of DARPA’s studies using this controversial technology were classified and “focused on the potential military application of gene drive technology and use of gene drives in agriculture,” according to media reports.

The revelation came after an organization called the ETC Group obtained over 1,000 emails on the military’s interest in the technology as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Co-director of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this technology may be used as a biological weapon:

“Gene drives are a powerful and dangerous new technology and potential biological weapons could have disastrous impacts on peace, food security and the environment, especially if misused, The fact that gene drive development is now being primarily funded and structured by the US military raises alarming questions about this entire field.”

CJ-

It is not against the rules to cut and paste but we generally try to keep them short, and always with attribution for the source of the text... longer articles can just be referenced by links... If you actually wrote this excuse me.

JR 

 

[JohnRoberts]

Moderna’s mRNA treatments, including its mRNA vaccines, were largely developed using a $25 million grant from DARPA and it often touts is strategic alliance with DARPA in press releases. Moderna’s past and ongoing research efforts have included developing mRNA vaccines tailored to an individual’s unique DNA as well as an unsuccessful effort to create a mRNA vaccine for the Zika Virus, which was funded by the U.S. government.

Both DNA and mRNA vaccines involve the introduction of foreign and engineered genetic material into a person’s cells and past studies have found that such vaccines “possess significant unpredictability and a number of inherent harmful potential hazards” and that “there is inadequate knowledge to define either the probability of unintended events or the consequences of genetic modifications.” Nonetheless, the climate of fear surrounding the coronavirus outbreak could be enough for the public and private sector to develop and distribute such controversial treatments due to fear about the epidemic potential of the current outbreak.

However, the therapies being developed by Inovio, Modern and the University of Queensland are in alignment with DARPA’s objectives regarding gene editing and vaccine technology. For instance, in 2015, DARPA geneticist Col. Daniel Wattendorf described how the agency was investigating a “new method of vaccine production [that] would involve giving the body instructions for making certain antibodies. Because the body would be its own bioreactor, the vaccine could be produced much faster than traditional methods and the result would be a higher level of protection.”

According to media reports on Wattendorf’s statements at the time, the vaccine would be developed as follows:

“Scientists would harvest viral antibodies from someone who has recovered from a disease such as flu or Ebola. After testing the antibodies’ ability to neutralize viruses in a petri dish, they would isolate the most effective one, determine the genes needed to make that antibody, and then encode many copies of those genes into a circular snippet of genetic material — either DNA or RNA, that the person’s body would then use as a cookbook to assemble the antibody.”

Though Wattendorf asserted that the effects of those vaccines wouldn’t be permanent, DARPA has since been promoting permanent gene modifications as a means of protecting U.S. troops from biological weapons and infectious disease. “Why is DARPA doing this? [To] protect a soldier on the battlefield from chemical weapons and biological weapons by controlling their genome — having the genome produce proteins that would automatically protect the soldier from the inside out,” then-DARPA director Steve Walker (now with Lockheed Martin) said this past September of the project, known as “Safe Genes.”

Conclusion

Research conducted by the Pentagon, and DARPA specifically, has continually raised concerns, not just in the field of bioweapons and biotechnology, but also in the fields of nanotechnology, robotics and several others. DARPA, for instance, has been developing a series of unsettling research projects that ranges from microchips that can create and delete memories from the human brain to voting machine software that is rife with problems.

Now, as fear regarding the current coronavirus outbreak begins to peak, companies with direct ties to DARPA have been tasked with developing its vaccine, the long-term human and environmental impacts of which are unknown and will remain unknown by the time the vaccine is expected to go to market in a few weeks time.

Furthermore, DARPA and the Pentagon’s past history with bioweapons and their more recent experiments on genetic alteration and extinction technologies as well as bats and coronaviruses in proximity to China have been largely left out of the narrative, despite the information being publicly available. Also left out of the media narrative have been the direct ties of both the USAMRIID and DARPA-partnered Duke University to the city of Wuhan, including its Institute of Medical Virology.

Though much about the origins of the coronavirus outbreak remains unknown, the U.S. military’s ties to the aforementioned research studies and research institutions are worth detailing as such research — while justified in the name of “national security” — has the frightening potential to result in unintended, yet world-altering consequences. The lack of transparency about this research, such as DARPA’s decision to classify its controversial genetic extinction research and the technology’s use as a weapon of war, compounds these concerns. While it is important to avoid reckless speculation as much as possible, it is the opinion of this author that the information in this report is in the public interest and that readers should use this information to reach their own conclusions about the topics discussed herein.

looks like another unattributed cut and paste?

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

No it's not. US ability to handle this sort of thing is pre-historic compared to Germany.

I am almost tempted to ask for specifics, but think I will pass...

The official number of infected people in the US is much lower than reality since few people are being tested, it's dangerous for every country, it's even more dangerous in the US at the moment.

For many people covid-19 is only a mild infection that the vast majority recover from. I agree the number of reported cases is much lower than the likely total. This appears to be most dangerous for old people (like moi) and older.

We have our share of old people, like other western countries. Probably wise to avoid crowds (social distancing).

It also doesn't help that the US has a Clown as a president.

your opinion has already been registered... I hope it makes you feel better saying stuff like that.

I really hope for you guys that at the moment you look to Germany example, and start doing tests.

we are already copying South Korea with drive thru tests in at least a couple states...

The CDC dropped the ball with compromised early test kits, but these are ramping up and getting out now... There are now tests available from commercial test services.  I expect private companies are pedaling as fast as they can to develop new tests and medicines. We need the testing to identify community spread and where outbreaks to manage are located.

America’s shamefully slow coronavirus testing threatens all of us

sorry .... 

As far as I can tell, all infected Americans were involved in international travel, or had proximity to someone who travelled.

If you want to be concerned about specific countries, how about China's total lack of honest information sharing, Iran seems most challenged right now.

The US lags just about every developed country on testing for Covid-19 disease.

By Brian Resnick and Dylan Scott  Updated Mar 12, 2020, 11:25am EDT


https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/12/21175034/coronavirus-covid-19-testing-usa



HEALTH
The 4 Key Reasons the U.S. Is So Behind on Coronavirus Testing
Bureaucracy, equipment shortages, an unwillingness to share, and failed leadership doomed the American response to COVID-19.

OLGA KHAZAN
MARCH 13, 2020

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why-coronavirus-testing-us-so-delayed/607954/

You didn't mention all the factors but understandable from your sources.

China is already using anti-body testing to identify people who had it and already recovered. (US is developing anti-body tests, but this is not critical path to identify current infectious clusters). Anti-body tests are more useful for completely understanding the disease's transmission behavior.

Some of the testing components are manufactured by Qiagen, a multinational leader in molecular testing headquartered in Germany. Responding to spiking demand for its products, the company increased production to three shifts a day, seven days a week, at plants in Germany and Spain.

"This now is an unprecedented situation," said Qiagen corporate spokesman Thomas Theuringer. "Demand is exploding, especially in the United States ... and this is stretching our capacity."

Having test component availability limited by German production is bad enough, a surprising number of medicines (mostly generics) consumed by Americans are manufactured in China. This is the double edged sword of open markets and free trade where price competition can result in reliance on offshore sources for (now suddenly) critical supplies.

We manage this better for national security materials capability, but this is a new learning experience regarding public health consequences that ultimately can rise to a national security concern.

JR

PS: Caveat Lector... there is a lot of misinformation and biased commentary (I am not a healthcare expert either). Good luck making sense of all this noise. If you are old maybe skip that pub crawl.

 

[Whoops]

It also doesn't help that the US has a Clown as a president.

your opinion has already been registered... I hope it makes you feel better saying stuff like that.

No John, my opinion was not already registered before since I never gave my opinion on the US politics before.
So it was the first time I talked on this forum about the US president.

And no, of course it doesn't make me happy that the US president is a Clown, it makes me extremely unhappy.
It always makes me unhappy when incompetent and ignorant people are put into important roles.

 

[Whoops]

For many people covid-19 is only a mild infection that the vast majority recover from. I agree the number of reported cases is much lower than the likely total. This appears to be most dangerous for old people (like moi) and older.

We have our share of old people, like other western countries. Probably wise to avoid crowds (social distancing).

It's dangerous for everyone, since no Country, no systems, no Hospitals will be able to deal with it if everyone becomes sick at the same time.

So everyone, being young or old should avoid being infected, for themselves and for all other people they can infect.

The only way to stop the rapid spread is isolation.

Having 50.000 infected cases in one month is not the same thing and having 50.000 infected cases over a period of 6 months.

 

[fazer]

Whoops I was reading about the problems Spain is having and similar to Italy.   

In the US,  I’m reading about all my musical friends having all their gigs cancelled and therefore wondering how to pay their bills.   

Going to the grocery store is A shock. To see the empty shelf’s and carts full of can goods and anything Food wise to have at home.  Schools in Colorado are all closing yesterday through the end of the month for spring break which is usually one week and now are closed for 3 to 4 weeks.  With the parents working it creates hardships that require us all to pitch in to get by. 

These are new experiences that havent been felt in my lifetime in the US.  I still feel we will make it and may influence our future with work forever.  This City state world with all these wide open space outside the city seems perplexing and should be questioned as to the ability to spread people out more for work.  School can became more of an online experience in some areas at least.   

No matter who you want to blame, it is what it is and will require new thinking.  It challenges global thinking as the answer to everything as well as open borders to say the least.  This requires commitment to stabalize areas threaten by war or corruption but how?

Good news for young people is us boomers may be checking out faster and allow them to have jobs and not have to foot our social security tab. ;D    Peace brother!

 

[JohnRoberts]

No John, my opinion was not already registered before since I never gave my opinion on the US politics before.
So it was the first time I talked on this forum about the US president.

Sorry I obviously confused your comment with the sundry other similar statements that have been verbalized here over the last few years.

Media has apparently latched onto calling President Trump a clown as a coordinated partisan smear (Wash Post, NY Daly News, even Iranian leadership) to diminish him prior to the Nov Elections.  The more books I read about persuasion the easier it is to see the fingerprints left by the men and women behind the curtains, manipulating public sentiment.

And no, of course it doesn't make me happy that the US president is a Clown,

do you realize this characterization is an opinion? (and perhaps not even your own.)

it makes me extremely unhappy.

You shouldn't let opinions (your's or the ayatollah's) make you unhappy.

It always makes me unhappy when incompetent and ignorant people are put into important roles.

That unfortunately is the nature of government.  We are all ignorant, incompetence varies within populations, but numerous examples of incompetence can easily be found in government (like the CDC dropping the ball on early COVID-19 test kits).

I hope you can make yourself happier, it weakens your immune system to be unhappy (exercise helps).

Depression is a whole-body disorder. There's accumulating evidence that the illness has deleterious effects on the heart, the brain, the bones and metabolism. Now comes proof that it undermines the immune system as people age.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

It's dangerous for everyone, since no Country, no systems, no Hospitals will be able to deal with it if everyone becomes sick at the same time.

True but unlikely, unless we ignore all health professional's advice en masse.

So everyone, being young or old should avoid being infected, for themselves and for all other people they can infect.

True, our personal behavior can expose every one we have regular contact with to infection... If living with parents or older relatives, behave like you are their age wrt risk taking.

The only way to stop the rapid spread is isolation.

For confirmed cases, a counter productive over-reaction if done without cause. The current rational strategy for uninfected is called social distancing,  to reduce opportunity for spreading infection. After community spread is identified within a given community, then isolation makes more sense for that community.

Having 50.000 infected cases in one month is not the same thing and having 50.000 infected cases over a period of 6 months.

Hard to argue with that, but increased testing will lead to more confirmed cases. This increased knowledge will improve our ability to damp down community spread where discovered.

The nature of this disease makes it hard (for me) to trust published numbers as being fully accurate. As usual it can take months to figure out what is happening right now around the world. Media are doing their best "Chicken Little" imitation breathlessly reporting every tidbit of negative news, to scare their viewers.

JR

 

[dogears]

Wrote this to share with family and friends. If you want to exclude yourself as my friend, feel free not to read it.  ;D

Some information you may find useful about the disease itself.

Of particular note, shared by an Infectious Disease doctor I know through my university forum:
-Doctors are saying this virus is unique, and once you see it a few times it's easy to spot. Very different in its clinical characteristics from flu.

-Runny nose, congestion, etc are rare. If you have that you probably have a cold or the flu. Combined with absence of or short lived fever excludes the diagnosis.

-COVID19 is consistent fever for days, often very high fever

-Less sharp muscle aches than the flu

-Everyone has a cough at some point

-Symptoms very rare under the age of 12. Kids dont get sick.

-Almost all patients have low lymphocite counts and when they are hospitalized they have mild to moderate liver function test elevations

-All have chest imaging abnormalities and everyone has a mild or even sub-clinical case of viral pneumonia by imaging. This is bilateral. Contrast to influenza which typically causes post viral bacterial pneumonia, rather than primary viral.

-Respiratory failure, if it occurs, is at 7-8 days from onset of symtoms like clockwork. It happens very fast, from mild hypoxia to full blown ARDS is <24 hrs. Docs in Seattle are skipping straight to ventilators when possible instead of progressive breathing assistance.

-A lot of cases which end in death are dying of cardiac arrhythmia.

-The antiviral remdesivir looks promising.

-RNA fragments have been found in liver, kidney, blood. That plus above align with direct viral myocarditis - high blood pressure or other heart conditions are highest comorbidity.

-CDC calls saying some young "otherwise healthy" patients do poorly. Something to keep in mind.

A lot of these echo what was reported early on in China and Italy, so anecdotal evidence here is starting to coalesce.

 

[dogears]

Second half regarding spread.

Everyone is looking at total numbers and sorting by country. This is a bad approach. No one is transferring patients from Milan to Rome or Aberdeen to London. It needs to be regional.

Looking at many European countries per million capita is much better. The smaller the box we look at the more representative it is of the real difference in case outcomes - healthcare overload (ie., access to ventilators).

The leaderboard today of official cases per 1M people is:

Italy (292)
Norway (190)
Switzerland (158)
S Korea (157)
Iran (151)
Denmark (142)
Spain (128)
...
USA (7.1)

Aside - we all know the USA figure is bunk because we've been testing much, much less than everyone else. On the other hand an early study (non peer reviewed, so take it with a grain of salt) indicates the test used in China and possibly Korea had a very high false positive rate.

We also have to consider concentration of those cases. Italy has 60M people, but most of their cases are concentrated in Lombardy, which has 10M people. So even though Italy on the national level is 292 cases / 1M, Lombardy is at 872.

So when China was at 17,000 cases on Feb 2, Wuhan probably represented well over half of the totals. That means they were at very similar levels to what Lombardy is experiencing (~9M people in Wuhan). Let's say 750 cases per million people is trip point for fecal matter in the fan.

Growth without quarantine is 30% ish per day. As an example then, the time to fan-poo-scattering based on current  numbers for Switzerland is about 6 days from today.  :-\

This kind of regional approach is even more needed in the US, because of our size and distribution. The hot spots are in Washington, California, New York...and let's look at Texas.

I arbitrarily assumed that we are testing at 1/10 the rate of Italy. This does not try to estimate "all" cases, just trying to compare our official numbers to theirs.

Then I took the state total population to compare regional cases per 1M capita (mpc for millions - per capita). Then I add a worst case scenario which is all cases in a state are actually in the city listed. The Low number is mpc in the state, the high is cases mpc in the city. By example, this means what if everything we're seeing in Washington state is really just local to Seattle.

I think Washington state is in for a rough week or two. NYC was probably 10-14 days behind, and everywhere else 14-21 days -- exponential growth is fast.

But this makes me think that the rapid implementation of isolation social distancing combined with the end of travel to Europe was good. For example, when Wuhan shut their city down they were seeing 400 new official cases per day. Italy waited one week past that point - when they closed they were at over 1,000.

So be optimistic. We probably jumped on it early enough to not see Lombardy play out here. Except maybe in Washington state.

 

[Whoops]

Do you realize this characterization is an opinion? (and perhaps not even your own.)

Yes, it's my own opinion that US president is an incompetent and ignorant Clown.
Although that opinion is also shared around the World, and for Millions inside the US.

But I will leave your politics wars now, this thread is about the COVID-19 and not about 1 country's politics when there's 195 countries in the World.

Personally an Human Being in the US or China or anywhere else is equally important to me.
This is a World Problem and we ALL are living "new experiences that havent been felt in OUR lifetimes".

I wish all good to all you guys, independently of where you are from.

 

[Scodiddly]

There are certainly those who are blaming the CDC for dropping the ball on testing, but really it's an overall leadership failure. 

Without naming names, can we agree that it was a bad guess for the current administration to downsize the CDC in favor of more resources for the military?

 

[JohnRoberts]

There are certainly those who are blaming the CDC for dropping the ball on testing, but really it's an overall leadership failure. 

In the crystal clarity of hindsight a decades long failure spanning multiple administrations.

Without naming names, can we agree that it was a bad guess for the current administration to downsize the CDC in favor of more resources for the military?

President Donald Trump is taking heat from Democrats for proposing budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid growing fears about a new coronavirus outbreak in the United States, but administration officials say CDC funding has steadily increased since Trump took office.

An ABC News analysis of the president’s budget proposals compared to the congressionally approved spending plans ultimately enacted show both claims are true.

It is a bad guess to accept partisan spin as fact...  President Trump proposed many future budget cuts for 2021 that never happened, as part of the horse trading involved in negotiating federal budgets. Congress increased the actual budget, and President Trump signed the bill approving the increase, so "downsizing the (2021) CDC" DID NOT OCCUR.

Calling this fake news is cliche, but if the shoe fits? BTW ABC news is not friendly to the administration. Politicizing a global pandemic with false claims is low even for politicians (but like the scorpion who stung the frog carrying him across the river, it is their nature).

Caveat Lector (reader beware).

JR

 

[kambo]

Trump haters will need to calm down,
this is not a good time for using inaccurate information for blame game!

 

[Scodiddly]

Trump haters will need to calm down,
this is not a good time for using inaccurate information for blame game!

I'm just saying... seems like every time he makes a big announcement about the virus the market starts tanking again. 

And apparently he did a big talk about a new virus information website that Google is building for the govt, which was a big surprise to Google.

 

[Squeaky]

We've just had a pretty strong border policy put into place over here in New Zealand. As of midnight Sunday 15 March 2020, every returning citizen and resident, and any international visitors, must self-isolate for a fortnight. That is bound to slow down the incoming holiday makers. Our prime minister is calling it the toughest border restriction in the world. Not really sure how it can be policed though (social policing will be the sum of it I suppose). However, I fear that some people just won't isolate, even though they may well face a lot of social backlash. We have 6 confirmed cases for a population of almost 5 million.  Cruise ships are banned until 30 June. Usual stuff, sports events and large gatherings have been cancelled. Batten down the hatches.

 

[dogears]

I'm just saying... seems like every time he makes a big announcement about the virus the market starts tanking again. 

And apparently he did a big talk about a new virus information website that Google is building for the govt, which was a big surprise to Google.

You know that the market rallied 1200 points in 30 minutes after the declaration of emergency, right?

Did you watch it the conference? It was very good.

The website is being built by a Google-parent company Alphabet subsidiary called Verily. Google tweeted out from their communications account:

We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time. We appreciate the support of government officials and industry partners and thank the Google engineers who have volunteered to be part of this effort.

Y’all need to be a little more skeptical of the media you consume ... especially the media you consume second and third hand.  :-\

The breathless partisan gotchas are over the top. Especially right now.

 

[john12ax7]

How many of you have studios or go somewhere similar with mutiroom buildings? I have a room in a building with a bunch of other studios.  Not a ton of foot traffic, but the HVAC system is intertwined.  Is this a cause for concern?

 

[dogears]

There was a study done on a hospital room where they swabbed after a patient was treated. They found very very few viruses in the AC ducts. It doesn’t seem to be broadly aerosolized.