The P&R Plague Thread (Covid-19)

[RedDenver]

1 hour ago, DevoHusker said:

 

Thanks Captain Obvious, I would never have guessed. The definition of that term, btw, is the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient. 

 

However, since I only began hearing that term in April, I did some research on it. And come to find out, it does not explain the fact that your obesity and hypertension caused you to perish from a disease that, without obesity and hypertension, you probably would never even have known you were infected. 

I'm not sure what you want then. You asked for a term that describes "the patient's hypertension/diabetes/obesity was exacerbated by contracting Covid 19, and the patient succumbed to the virus' combined effects post infection", which is what comorbidity means:

 

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/comorbidity

Quote

 

What is comorbidity?

Comorbidity is the state of having multiple medical conditions at the same time, especially when they interact with each other in some way.

Morbidity is the state of being sick or having a disease.

Comorbidity refers to an overlap of different conditions. When medical conditions are comorbid, they often impact each other, even though their causes may be unrelated.

 

[knapplc]

On 8/31/2020 at 2:29 PM, admo said:

 

 

 

 

 

I wear a mask because it hides my facial shortcomings.

 

Some say I've never looked better!

[JJ Husker]

12 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

I wear a mask because it hides my facial shortcomings.

 

Some say I've never looked better!

Some? You’re just being modest. Everyone says that 

[Moiraine]

[TGHusker]

14 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

I wear a mask because it hides my facial shortcomings.

 

Some say I've never looked better!

It also hides the lettuce that may be stuck between the teeth after eating.   See, a mask has it's benefits.

[BigRedBuster]

15 hours ago, Moiraine said:

It would be interesting to know, at the peak in late April, were deaths out numbering births?  Meaning, for a short time, was our population actually decreasing because of the excessive deaths?

I know, it was be an extremely small amount.

[Danny Bateman]

Found this Scientific American article on a few of the new studies on coronavirus with one showing pretty bleak outlooks.

 

COVID-19 Can Wreck Your Heart, Even if You Haven't Had Any Symptoms

 

Quote

Here’s the background: Myocarditis appears to result from the direct infection of the virus attacking the heart, or possibly as a consequence of the inflammation triggered by the body’s overly aggressive immune response. And it is not age-specific: In The Lancet, doctors recently reported on an 11-year-old child with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C)—a rare illness—who died of myocarditis and heart failure. At autopsy, pathologists were able to identify coronavirus particles present in the child’s cardiac tissue, helping to explain the virus’ direct involvement in her death. In fact, researchers are reporting the presence of viral protein in the actual heart muscle, of six deceased patients. Of note is the fact that these patients were documented to have died of lung failure, having had neither clinical signs of heart involvement, nor a prior history of cardiac disease.

Ossama Samuel, associate chief of cardiology at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York, told me about a cluster of younger adults developing myocarditis, some of them a month or so after they had recovered from COVID-19. One patient, who developed myocarditis four weeks after believing he had recovered from the virus, responded to a course of steroid treatment only to develop a recurrence in the form of pericarditis (an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart). A second patient, in her 40s, now has reduced heart function from myocarditis, and a third—an athletic man in his 40s—is experiencing recurring and dangerous ventricular heart rhythms, necessitating that he wear a LifeVest defibrillator for protection. His MRI also demonstrates fibrosis and scarring of his heart muscle, which may be permanent, and he may ultimately require placement of a permanent defibrillator.
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According to some reports, as many as 7 percent of deaths from COVID-19 may result from myocarditis. (Others feel that estimate is too high.) The arrhythmia that sometimes accompanies it is also worrisome, and researchers have found that to be fairly common among COVID-19 patients. In J.N.’s case, he noticed his heart racing on several occasions into the 130 beats per minute range. And while the prevalence of this in virus patients is not known exactly, a study found that ventricular arrhythmias occurred in 78 percent of patients without COVID-19, with up to 30 percent of them experiencing serious arrhythmias 27 months later.

------

Any such cardiac sequelae lingering weeks to months after the fact is clearly concerning, and we’re seeing more evidence of it. A German study found that 78 percent of recovered COVID-19 patients, the majority of whom had only mild to moderate symptoms, demonstrated cardiac involvement more than two months after their initial diagnoses. Six in 10 were found to have persistent myocardial inflammation. While emphasizing that individual patients need not be nervous, lead investigator Elike Nagel added in an e-mail, “My personal take is that COVID will increase the incidence of heart failure over the next decades.”

 

I believe the last study was one of the ones used by the B1G as rationale for delaying the season. People had beef with their methodology, so the original research team issued corrections summarized here. Of note, they believe it did not change the majority of significant findings from the original report.

 

Bottom line: there's still so much that we don't know about this and won't, for some time. It stands to reason that younger, healthier people are probably safer than other populations. But anyone telling you with certainty they're completely safe is right now is misinformed.

 

 

[FrantzHardySwag]

13 minutes ago, Danny Bateman said:

I believe the last study was one of the ones used by the B1G as rationale for delaying the season. People had beef with their methodology, so the original research team issued corrections summarized here. Of note, they believe it did not change the majority of significant findings from the original report.

Here was a Q&A done by a Cardiologist and Eike Nagel (Senior Author of the now famous Myocarditis study). They're both European so  the "shut down of sport" is directly referring to the B1G. 

 

Q. Should people use your study to shut down sport in USA?

A. I have no comment on that. We DEFINITELY didn't say to do that in the paper. I don't know why they would use our paper to say that.

 

Q. Aren't you reassured that the CRP and Troponin is pretty normal in the revised data? Would you stop such patients doing sport?

A. After a bad infection, I would encourage them to only gradually ease themselves back into heavy activity.

 

Q. What about ordinary people wondering if Coronavirus has infected them without their knowledge and is causing heart disease?

A. I don't think ordinary people should worry about this at all.

 

Q. Don't most severe virus infections hospitalising people cause problems all over the body including the heart, which then fades away all over the body, including the heart?

A. Yes but people haven't studied it comprehensively for other viruses. Ours is the first for Covid.

 

Q. What is the main message you want to convey to people?

A. After coronavirus, there are subtle but definitely visible abnormalities in the scans (but not the blood tests) that are beyond what are found in the risk factor matched controls. We don't know whether these are harmful in the long term, or whether they will just be there like a little scar in the skin after a cut. In other conditions these features can be the precursor of heart problems many years later. We will be studying these patients in the long term to see what impact these actually have. We did try to make this clear in the paper: the need for more research.

 

I agree there could be side effects of this down the road - but we won't know the extent of that for years and years. 

 

[Danny Bateman]

18 minutes ago, FrantzHardySwag said:

I agree there could be side effects of this down the road - but we won't know the extent of that for years and years. 

 

Yep. The thrust of my point is we should probably ignore people making definitive statements right now because they're based on inconclusive, incomplete evidence.

[Moiraine]

Found out a friend of mine I don't always keep in touch with had Covid and was in the hospital for 2 months in the spring and he has a lot of damage to various organs. He advised that I should try to avoid getting it.

[Undone]

I was reading an ESPN article on Friday about how France has had a surge of cases lately and how they're going to handle the French Open. A friend of my sister-in-law's lives in France now and is back to spend time with family in Lincoln for the summer. I've been chatting with her about how France has handled COVID and she confirms that they're strict about masks and distancing.

 

The narrative that I've seen many people on this forum purport is that Europe has been way ahead of the U.S. in how they've contained Coronavirus.

 

This ESPN article about the French Open says that France has confirmed 30,000 total COVID deaths. This is .000447 of France's total population of 67 million.

 

If we have 170,000 total COVID deaths, that is roughly .000515 of our total population.

 

To me it just seems clearer and clearer that this virus is very contagious, and it's going to go through populations pretty much no matter what - unless a country breaks down and does an extreme lockdown like New Zealand. But, even France's lockdowns have apparently been pretty strictly enforced, and they still are seeing a surge in cases.

 

Continuing to flatten the curve is important. But I think over the medium-to-long term, most western countries will wind up having roughly the same ratio of per capita COVID deaths; physical distancing and maks help greatly with flattening the curve but it does not eliminate the virus and it will not eliminate the virus.

[FrantzHardySwag]

8 minutes ago, Undone said:

I was reading an ESPN article on Friday about how France has had a surge of cases lately and how they're going to handle the French Open. A friend of my sister-in-law's lives in France now and is back to spend time with family in Lincoln for the summer. I've been chatting with her about how France has handled COVID and she confirms that they're strict about masks and distancing.

 

The narrative that I've seen many people on this forum purport is that Europe has been way ahead of the U.S. in how they've contained Coronavirus.

 

This ESPN article about the French Open says that France has confirmed 30,000 total COVID deaths. This is .000447 of France's total population of 67 million.

 

If we have 170,000 total COVID deaths, that is roughly .000515 of our total population.

 

To me it just seems clearer and clearer that this virus is very contagious, and it's going to go through populations pretty much no matter what - unless a country breaks down and does an extreme lockdown like New Zealand. But, even France's lockdowns have apparently been pretty strictly enforced, and they still are seeing a surge in cases.

 

Continuing to flatten the curve is important. But I think over the medium-to-long term, most western countries will wind up having roughly the same ratio of per capita COVID deaths; physical distancing and maks help greatly with flattening the curve but it does not eliminate the virus and it will not eliminate the virus.

Total number of deaths is flawed, France got slammed early. Right now US is peaking at 1100 deaths a day, right now France is peaking at 25 deaths a day. Adjusted for population that would be like the US having 150 deaths a day. They have it a lot more under control than us at this moment. 

[Undone]

6 minutes ago, FrantzHardySwag said:

Total number of deaths is flawed, France got slammed early. Right now US is peaking at 1100 deaths a day, right now France is peaking at 25 deaths a day. Adjusted for population that would be like the US having 150 deaths a day. They have it a lot more under control than us at this moment. 

 

This is actually another thing that I've talked about over and over again here (and I was possibly guilty of it in my post above): The "current situation" isn't the only thing that matters. The big question will be where these totals stand probably in the neighborhood of 12-18 months from now.

 

You bring up something that very few people talk about in the media IMO - it's the question of how widespread COVID was around that 3/07/2020 mark in any given population when the entire world realized this truly was a global pandemic. That is absolutely a very important factor when comparing two different countries' data, I totally agree there.

[FrantzHardySwag]

2 minutes ago, Undone said:

 

This is actually another thing that I've talked about over and over again here (and I was possibly guilty of it in my post above): The "current situation" isn't the only thing that matters. The big question will be where these totals stand probably in the neighborhood of 12-18 months from now.

 

You bring up something that very few people talk about in the media IMO - it's the question of how widespread COVID was around that 3/07/2020 mark when the entire world realized this truly was a global pandemic. That is absolutely a very important factor when comparing two different countries' data, I totally agree there.

Absolutely, I think both you and I had discussed we were hopeful that the virus had gone through the vulnerable population in NY, FL, CA, TX, AZ and we would see this thing flatten out. Arizona and Texas has seen covid hospitalizations shrink big time, death numbers are still too high, but that's a lagging indicator - I'm hopeful that deaths start to see a big decline soon.

[Undone]

5 minutes ago, FrantzHardySwag said:

Absolutely, I think both you and I had discussed we were hopeful that the virus had gone through the vulnerable population in NY, FL, CA, TX, AZ and we would see this thing flatten out. Arizona and Texas has seen covid hospitalizations shrink big time, death numbers are still too high, but that's a lagging indicator - I'm hopeful that deaths start to see a big decline soon.

 

Yep, I believe we had discussed that yeah.

 

You're probably the closest thing we have to an "expert" on this forum (unless there are others in the medical profession here who just don't chime in on these threads). Another thing that I've though a ton about over the past two months is this, and let's take France as an example.

 

Let's say France did a much better job at quarantining a large portion of its population than the U.S. did (which I'd assume is almost certainly the reality). Ok, great. But then that chunk of the populous integrates back into daily life.

 

A portion of them will get exposed. It's not even really a burning question to be answered by an expert; in my opinion it's just common sense. 

 

My assumption is they'll see more "mini-spikes" because of this. And from what I've read, they actually are. For some reason I've noticed quite a few Americans not really wanting to acknowledge this, and it strikes me as odd...