Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Coronavirus: The Plague of The 21st Century?

At our current level of quarantine, most Americans will be infected by about April 15th. By April 30th, most of those will be either recovered or dead. The ratio of fatalities if good treatment is available can be seen in the Korean data: It's about 1.4% fatality overall. But in America, we are already over the numbers of infected for most people to get good treatment. When you run out of ventilators, the fatality rate jumps to over 5%. So instead of 4.6 million dead, we will have more like 16 million. Most of these will be old people, but it will affect every age group.

Clamping down the quarantines today could lower that number, but I think we already have too many people infected to get everybody who needs a ventilator to have one. But flattening the curve can help it be closer to the lower number dead.

One reason almost everybody will get infected is we have a very leaky quarantine. For example, one researcher found that 50% of Wuhan victims reported extreme diarrhea as their first symptom. Most information sources are ignoring this, but it is very good evidence that infection through food is possible. A lot of the media are promoting take-out food, but a single asymptomatic food service worker in a restaurant kitchen could contaminate every take-out order. And who works in restaurant kitchens? A lot of young people who come to work even if they are mildly sick.

So Trump gets his wish: Mostly it will be over by April 30th. But a lot of us will not be here.

I have now moved into the RV. I woke this morning at 1 am with a persistent cough. I did not want to spread it within the house, so... we've got the internet set up, I have my own bed, bathroom, etc. I will need to stock the fridge, but we got an advantage most people don't have - someplace to quarantine me. No fever, thankfully.

Did you have digestive upsets like bloating and the runs, fiery hot lave style as a first symptom?

Only some mild upset over the last week.

Coming SOON to US life insurance companies, count on it.
In fact, given who runs things here right now, count on Republicans to GRANT life insurance companies special exemptions to get away with this.

One of Australia's biggest life insurers moves to cut off payouts to customers who die from COVID-19, including frontline doctors.

I think it might be an advantage to get GI symptoms first, so you start making antibodies before it gets in your lungs. Just a theory. It could also be that people on high-dose Vitamin D daily don't get very severe lung infections from Covid-19. High D versus insufficient D (<25) yields a 70% protective effect against respiratory tract infections. This is based on a peer-reviewed British medical journal paper analyzing multiple good double blind studies with a total N of over 10,000 patients. This is the real thing folks, not tabloid or Vitamin nut propaganda.

When you do get lung symptoms, it's very good to have a pulse oximeter available. They sold a few weeks ago on Amazon for $15-$20, but they may not have any left. If your SpO2 drops below 90, you are in trouble. If it gets much lower and is heading down, you need oxygen. Call your medical group's nurse or covid hotline and tell them your pO2 to ask for instructions.

I see Doctor Trump's expert gut is telling him New York needs way fewer ventilators than Cuomo asked for. This would be the 16 million die-off plan, for getting rid of a lot of old unproductive folks. Honestly, we need about 16 million respirators nation-wide to handle the peak load. Now doctors are talking about doubling up or even putting four patients on each ventilator. Then we will just need about 4 million! We have maybe 100,000? they are all peeing into an empty swimming pool, and expecting the level to rise enough to notice. New York state alone needs about 800,000, or 200,000 if they go four to a ventilator. Cuomo asked for 30,000. Trump is sending 4000.

Some other developed countries have more ventilators per capita, but they are in a similar situation. In the rest of the world, deaths will be in the 5% to 15% range.

My wife and I have come to the conclusion that EVERYBODY will eventually have to deal with Covid-19. The only real question is WHEN? There are a LOT of people working on Covid-19, worldwide, and our hope is that we can last long enough to be able to have better medicine available when our time comes.

If said better medicine comes from outside America I also hope that whoever is in charge here will allow that medicine into the country. (unlike, for instance, the tests that we decided not to use but make ourselves (which was not exactly a great idea, I think).

So far the drugs that look promising are all drugs you can get in the US, however we probably do not have near enough to treat everybody who could use them. Some of the generic drug makers and some drug companies in India say they are ramping up production. (US drug companies actually get a LOT of their drugs from India.) But if they said hydroxychloroquine was the key, it would be almost impossible to get near enough made and in the hands of everyone who needs it in the US in time with the big peak around April 15th. They might have larger stockpiles in tropical countries, since it is cheap and still used to treat malaria but they might just want to keep their supply for their own people. Unless it is controlled by the rich who decide to sell it to the US and screw their own people!

This is nice:
Somebody notices early GI symptoms



There are a lot of different causes for GI symptoms, like flu, but if you have them and then a few days later get respiratory tract symptoms you should suspect Covid-19. Also suspect you were contagious for a few days before the first GI problems.

Here's another interesting finding: Adequate sleep in a very dark room is helpful. We have T-cells that kill infected cells and the binding mechanism has all been worked out. The T-cells have a receptor that is activated by neuro-hormones like adrenaline and serotonin that are elevated when you are awake. This receptor makes a substance that turns off the T-cell binding to infected cells. This means the T-cell protective mechanism works a lot more when you are asleep. Like twice as well, according to a recent peer-reviewed paper.

This T-cell attack is the first line defense against corona viruses. They tested subjects response to a mild virus placed in their noses, and the subjects with adequate sleep were three times more resistant to infection. This is huge. These neuro-hormones are also elevated by the fight/flight response to panic, so not watching TV shows that induce panic and remaining calm might help, too.

Researchers noticed a long time ago that in cancer experiments any light at all, even red light, in the animal's room during sleep increased their susceptibility to cancer. So they went to very dark rooms during the "night" period. Note that it has nothing to do with the position of the sun. Night shift workers can benefit from very good curtains or even just a piece of cardboard stuck in their window while they sleep. I just saw this study and I'm cutting some cardboard to make our bedroom very dark while we sleep.