COVID-19 >>"True and Helpful" Covid Information Thread

[cc]

Yes. This is the Chinese study I had mentioned a few days ago.



Not sure how much I trust it being as it was done in China - however, it was published in Family Medicine



While numbers in test were low, 37 I think



I fing it confusing as It says "A Chinese study published this week in Nature followed 37 people in Wanzhou District in China who did not show any outward signs of the disease, despite testing positive when their respiratory tracts were swabbed and being kept in hospital for observation.



.. yet it compares duration of infection with those who had symptoms



While confusing and small and from China,  it is discouraging to see such reference to the antibody  drop off



Note: Some vaccine work targets elements and methods beyond implanting antibodies directly

[Anonymous]

Yes. This is the Chinese study I had mentioned a few days ago.



Not sure how much I trust it being as it was done in China - however, it was published in Family Medicine



While numbers in test were low, 37 I think



I fing it confusing as It says "A Chinese study published this week in Nature followed 37 people in Wanzhou District in China who did not show any outward signs of the disease, despite testing positive when their respiratory tracts were swabbed and being kept in hospital for observation.



.. yet it compares duration of infection with those who had symptoms



While confusing and small and from China,  it is discouraging to see such reference to the antibody  drop off

I wonder how effective the testing was.

[cc]

Yes. There's that element also.  Some testing has been very poor



Still, it raises concerns about duration .. larger and better studies are needed

[Anonymous]

Yes. There's that element also.  Some testing has been very poor



Still, it raises concerns about duration .. larger and better studies are needed

Yes, and the sooner they get on with it, the better.

[Gaon]

Country losing control of virus, Israel Society for Infectious Diseases warns

Medical union says average age of patients rising, effective action required immediately; PM: Ministers will approve new restrictions; death toll at 318



The head of the Israel Society for Infectious Diseases on Sunday wrote to the director-general of the Health Ministry, warning that the country was on the verge of losing control of the coronavirus epidemic.



In a letter to Chezy Levy, Israel Society for Infectious Diseases head Miri Weinberger warned the Health Ministry that not only was the number of cases increasing, but so was the age of those infected, an indicator that patients could be more severely affected.



"Over the past two weeks, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of daily infections of the coronavirus. In recent days there has also been a rise in the ages of those diagnosed and hospitalized," Weinberger wrote.



Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel's "coronavirus cabinet," tasked with leading the government's response to the virus outbreak, would convene to reimpose some restrictions on gatherings amid the rising infections, as well as increased enforcement of the regulations.



In an interview with Channel 12 news on Saturday, Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch said possible measures proposed by the Health Ministry would include limiting youth programs over the summer break, limiting the size of gatherings, and requiring "capsules" at educational institutions and at workplaces, with set groups of employees working the same shifts.



Recent days have been showing 400-500 new patients a day on average, numbers not seen since early April.



Figures from last week showed that 2,907 were infected over seven days, more than the number for all of May.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/country-losing-control-of-virus-israel-society-for-infectious-diseases-warns/">https://www.timesofisrael.com/country-l ... ses-warns/">https://www.timesofisrael.com/country-losing-control-of-virus-israel-society-for-infectious-diseases-warns/



Some restrictions are coming in Israel. The country is so small, it makes social distancing difficult.

[Anonymous]

No symptoms, big problems: Scientists still puzzled by asymptomatic coronavirus cases



Months into a pandemic that has caused more than 500,000 deaths worldwide, scientists are still trying to answer crucial questions about the coronavirus. Chief among them: everything about asymptomatic patients.



People who contracted COVID-19 but didn't get sick and had no symptoms have been one of the most confounding factors of the public health emergency. The United States has more than 2.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, but it's likely that many asymptomatic people have fallen through the cracks of official counts.



Now, scientists say that without a better understanding of how many people have been asymptomatically infected, it's difficult to know precisely how they contribute to the spread of the virus and whether they have developed antibodies or other protections that would confer some type of immunity against reinfection.



Dr. Jorge Mercado, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at New York University's Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, said scientists still aren't sure why some people who have been exposed to the virus get very sick, while others develop no symptoms.



"We really don't know much about this disease," he said. "We know a little more than we did three months ago, but there are still a lot of things we don't have answers to."



Public health officials are struggling to get a handle on the true number of people who have been infected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. — including those that are asymptomatic — may be 10 times higher than what has been reported, meaning the true case count could be closer to 23 million.



"Our best estimate right now is that for every case that's reported, there actually are 10 other infections," Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, said Thursday.







Early on, many asymptomatic cases went unnoticed because states were dealing with dire shortages of test kits and supplies, which limited testing capacity to only the sickest patients. Many asymptomatic people likely had no idea they were ever positive, said Dr. Marybeth Sexton, an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University in Atlanta.



"We tend to pick up asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic people when we do contact tracing, so when we get someone who is positive and we start testing people they've been in contact with," she said. "I think it'll be a long time before we know for sure what the true percentage is."



Sexton added that the virus' long incubation period has also led to some confusion over how "asymptomatic" is defined. According to the CDC, it could take up to 14 days after exposure for someone to show any symptoms.



"There are people who are positive but truly have no symptoms, and there are people who go on to develop very mild or atypical symptoms, and then there are people who think they are asymptomatic until you query them about some of the more unusual manifestations of COVID-19," she said. "But sometimes, these all get lumped together as 'asymptomatic.'"



It's thought that people in all three categories — including those who are presymptomatic — can transmit the virus, although there was again some confusion about the nature of asymptomatic spread. In early June, the World Health Organization was forced to clarify that the coronavirus can be spread by people with no symptoms after one of the agency's top infectious disease epidemiologists, Maria Van Kerkhove, said she thought asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 was "very rare."



Van Kerkhove's assessment was roundly criticized by scientists around the world. A day later, she said her response had been based on several studies that hadn't undergone peer review, and she made it clear that the WHO's guidance still stands.



Yet even if scientists are sure that asymptomatic people can be so-called silent spreaders — transmitting COVID-19 even if they show no symptoms — it's not known to what degree they are contributing to the outbreaks.



"It's been very hard thus far to nail down how much of transmission is due to asymptomatic people and how much is due to people who get quite sick," Sexton said.



Another big unknown is how asymptomatic people's immune systems respond and whether they will develop antibodies or other protections against the virus.



A study published June 18 in the journal Nature Medicine was the first to examine the immune responses in asymptomatic coronavirus patients. The researchers followed 37 asymptomatic people in China's Wanzhou district and compared them to 37 people who had symptoms.



Although it was a small study, the scientists found that the asymptomatic patients did develop antibodies, which are protective proteins the immune system produces in response to infections. But the researchers discovered that antibody levels among those people diminished within two to three months.



It's not yet known whether COVID-19 antibodies confer any kind of immunity, but if they do, the recent results suggest that the protections may not last long — particularly among those who are asymptomatic.



Mercado said it's possible that even low antibody levels could afford some protection, although more studies are needed to know for sure.



"There's a glimmer of hope that an antibody response can at least decrease the chances that you'll progress to a severe disease," he said.



Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of the infectious diseases division at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said it's not altogether surprising that asymptomatic patients would have more modest immune responses. But he noted an intriguing finding from the Nature Medicine study that further muddies the definition of "asymptomatic" coronavirus patients.



In CT scans of all the study participants, the researchers found signs of lung inflammation, known as pulmonary infiltrates, even in people who showed no symptoms. Signatures of inflammation were observed in 57 percent of the asymptomatic group, a "surprising" find because it's not common to conduct CT scans on people who aren't exhibiting symptoms of a respiratory infection, Kuritzkes said.



"It makes you wonder if they really were asymptomatic, because clearly they had some pneumonia," he said. "It just goes to show that the absence of symptoms is not the absence of infection."



Sexton said that the recent study, while small, reveals some insights into the immune responses of asymptomatic patients but that the results also show how much remains unknown about this population.



"Until we know how much transmission asymptomatic people are responsible for, it makes an incredible amount of sense to keep stressing that everyone should wear a mask," she said. "If you happen to be in that category and you're wearing a mask, that's going to keep you from infecting people and putting those viral particles out in the environment. And everyone else wearing a mask is doing the same for you."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/no-symptoms-big-problems-scientists-still-puzzled-by-asymptomatic-coronavirus-cases/ar-BB167ALX">https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo ... r-BB167ALX">https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/no-symptoms-big-problems-scientists-still-puzzled-by-asymptomatic-coronavirus-cases/ar-BB167ALX



Asymptomatic patients are a puzzler.

[cc]

Asymptomatic patients are a puzzler.

The asymptomatic element is interesting and surprising .. as is just about every element of this virus



There are so many strange and elusive puzzling elements to this virus. Seems a new puzzler every week.



In the overall, seems we know so little about it after months of it



It acts differently than the consistent patterns of all previous viruses which is very strange and I find extremely suspicious



Personally I'm convinced it was not released by accident - rather that it was engineered to be deceptive and full of surprises such that it would continue throughout the rest of the world for a long time and do great damage to enhance China's world position

[Anonymous]

Asymptomatic patients are a puzzler.

There are so many strange and elusive puzzling elements to this virus. Seems a new puzzler every week.



In the overall, seems we know so little about it after months of it



It acts differently than the consistent patterns of all previous viruses which is very strange and I find suspicious



Personally I'm convinced it was not released by accident - rather that it was engineered to be deceptive and full of surprises such that it would continue throughout the rest of the world for a long time and do great damage to enhance China's world position

It never came from a wet market in Wuhan.

[cc]

Exactly  .. That was a red Herring from the gitgo .. and China's stooges have also floated the "accidental" release to cover that base



 and that conveniently covers the "deliberate" angle





Remember, this "accidental release" came right at the very moment when T had China right where he wanted it (and right were it belonged)



On major items, I do not believe in coincidences ... nor do I believe in things that "conveniently" help one side greatly while also damaging the other side to "just happen"

[Anonymous]

Exactly  .. That was a red Herring from the gitgo .. and China's stooges have also floated the "accidental" release to cover that base



 and that conveniently covers the "deliberate" angle





Remember, this "accidental release" came right at the very moment when T had China right where he wanted it (and right were it belonged)



On major items, I do not believe in coincidences ... nor do I believe in things that "conveniently" help one side greatly while also damaging the other side to "just happen"

Originating in a wet market was too ridiculous to take seriously.

[Odinson]

She makes an interesting point..



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhIZhsDJAXo&feature=emb_title">

[Anonymous]

She makes an interesting point..



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhIZhsDJAXo&feature=emb_title">

[Anonymous]

She makes an interesting point..



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhIZhsDJAXo&feature=emb_title">

[Anonymous]

We are going to be be going back to more restrictions across the continent.



Saskatchewan considering mandatory masks if cases rise

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/07/01/mask-advice-could-change-depending-on-covid-19-spread-saskatchewans-top-doctor-says.html">https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/202 ... -says.html">https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/07/01/mask-advice-could-change-depending-on-covid-19-spread-saskatchewans-top-doctor-says.html

REGINA—Saskatchewan's top doctor says his advice on wearing masks to protect against COVID-19 could change in the coming months.



Wearing a mask in Saskatchewan isn't mandatory now, but chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab says it may become a rule if there's an uptick in transmission rates.



"I may give a recommendation to wear a mask all the time when you're indoors, in a setting where you can't reliably maintain two-metre separation," he said.

[Anonymous]

Hydroxychloroquine is being used successfully with azithromycin around the world to treat COVID patients. As usual, progs in the US ignore science.



Hydroxychloroquine helped save coronavirus patients, study shows; Trump campaign hails 'fantastic news'



https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hydroxychloroquine-helped-save-coronavirus-study">https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hydrox ... irus-study">https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hydroxychloroquine-helped-save-coronavirus-study

Researchers at the Henry Ford Health System in Southeast Michigan have found that early administration of the drug hydroxychloroquine makes hospitalized patients substantially less likely to die.





The study, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, determined that hydroxychloroquine provided a "66% hazard ratio reduction," and hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin a 71 percent reduction, compared to neither treatment.



In-hospital mortality was 18.1 percent with both drugs, 13.5 percent with just hydroxychloroquine, 22.4 percent with azithromycin alone, and 26.4 percent with neither drug. "Prospective trials are needed" for further review, the researchers note.



"Fortunately, the Trump Administration secured a massive supply of hydroxychloroquine for the national stockpile months ago," a statement read. "Yet this is the same drug that the media and the Biden campaign spent weeks trying to discredit and spread fear and doubt around because President Trump dared to mention it as a potential treatment for coronavirus."



It added: "The new study from the Henry Ford Health System should be a clear message to the media and the Democrats: stop the bizarre attempts to discredit hydroxychloroquine to satisfy your own anti-Trump agenda. It may be costing lives."



The findings, conservatives said, highlighted efforts by media partisans to undermine confidence in the drug simply to undercut the president.



The Federalist's Sean Davis added: "Media and incompetent corrupt government officials lied to you about social distancing. They lied to you about hydroxychloroquine. They lied to you about risks to children and the general population. They lied not to help you, but to control you, and they're not going to stop."