D&D and the rising pandemic

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yes verifiable facts.
1. The cat had symptoms consistent with coronoavirus

And many other illnesses

2. The cat tested positive for it

No. The samples of unknown quality tested positive for it. The cat itself will not be tested until it has cleared quarantine.

3. The test had potential to be cross contaminated

Yes. Which is why the veterinarians could not reach a final diagnosis.

The scientific conclusion to draw around those facts is that it was likely the cat had coronavirus - though not certain.

No. The scientific conclusion to draw around those facts is that no conclusions can be reached until further testing can be done. Which is what the vets said.

We just spent thousands on our younger dog. She was quite ill, but is on the mend. Her symptoms had multiple possible origins. The only thing the tests revealed was that her symptoms were not caused by any of the more common, scarier suspects.

The same could be true of the cat.

Consider this:

8 strains of the coronavirus are circling the globe. Here's what clues they're giving scientists.

Scientists sequenced the genomes of eight coronavirus strains circling the globe providing hints about the effectiveness of efforts to halt the virus.

www.usatoday.com

If the cat tests positive for Covid-19, but a different strain, the owner would be presumptively ruled OUT as the source of the cat’s infection.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Wow, and I thought the fake news running rampant at all the US news outlets, and on social media, was bad, but this from China is crazy:

How China’s fake news machine is rewriting the history of Covid-19, even as the pandemic unfolds

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s retweet of an article blaming the U.S. for infecting Wuhan with coronavirus went viral, viewed 160 million times within hours. But where did the story come from?

news.yahoo.com

 

[Ogre Mage]

Washington State sending 400+ ventilators, Oregon sending 140 ventilators to N.Y. and other hard hit states

Dr. Raquel Bono, the retired Navy vice admiral leading Washington state’s coronavirus response, said in a statement that they’d made the decision to send off the ventilators after conferring with the Washington State Hospital Association. “We have seen fewer infections in our communities than anticipated,” Bono said. “Our current status allows us to help others who have a more immediate need.”

“I’ve said many times over the last few weeks, we are in this together,” Gov. Inslee said in a prepared statement Sunday. “This should guide all of our actions at an individual and state level in the coming days and weeks.”

“We’ll be sending 140 ventilators to help NY because Oregon is in a better position right now,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown tweeted Saturday. “Oregon doesn’t have everything we need to fight COVID-19 — we need more PPE and testing — but we can help today with ventilators. We are all in this together.”

Washington State and Oregon sending ventilators to NY and other hard hit states

They're right. We are all in this together.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wow, and I thought the fake news running rampant at all the US news outlets, and on social media, was bad, but this from China is crazy:

How China’s fake news machine is rewriting the history of Covid-19, even as the pandemic unfolds

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s retweet of an article blaming the U.S. for infecting Wuhan with coronavirus went viral, viewed 160 million times within hours. But where did the story come from?

news.yahoo.com

That's old news.

They pressured the WHO to change the name, and blame US/Italy.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

And then we have some hopeful news about using nitric oxide:

How a discovery that brought us Viagra could help those battling the coronavirus

Inhaled nitric oxide appeared to kill the coronavirus that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and it might work on COVID-19 as well.

news.yahoo.com

 

[Umbran]

You mean besides the zoo cats right?

Do you have tigers in your home? If not, they pose no significant risk to you. Tigers are not, in fact, big housecats, so whether they can get covid-19 does not speak to what happens in domesticated cats.

It's hard to take statements like - we have no other cases of this seriously if no one is checking!

Yes, of course, a profession that I just told you has multiple calls a week to disseminate information to its practitioners isn't checking.

In general, you don't start doing large-scale testing in a population if the symptoms of the disease are not seen in the population, or until the epidemiology suggests that animals are a vector, especially when the materials for that testing are in short supply and you need them for other populations that are, in fact, dying.

Veterinarians are not seeing a rise in covid-19 symptoms in animals, despite their being in close proximity to humans. See previous note about a lack of uptick in insurance claims about respiratory symptoms. Epidemiologists are still tracing paths of infection in humans, and none of them have had an animal in the chain.

Do remember that you cannot, in a practical sense, prove a negative. There is, so far, no evidence supporting companion animals getting the disease in any numbers worth discussing. As I said - 1.2 million people. Two cats.

I thought cat's couldn't infect people? So seems to me no one is dying from cat infections of coronavirus.

No, they're just dying in general. And in a thread on the disease that is killing them, and apt to kill hundreds of thousands of people, you want to focus on a thing of only academic interest at this point.

I am not responsible in any way for any one elses actions. That's not how life works.

If this were actually true, you'd be allowed to shout, "Fire!" (or, today, "Gun!" or, "Active shooter!") in a crowded theater. People are influenced by what other people say. A responsible member of a large society has to own that.

 

[Umbran]

And then we have some hopeful news about using nitric oxide:

Maybe? Unfortunately, early reporting about drugs and treatment don't seem serve us well in times of crisis.

Folks talk about chloroquine, and suddenly folks start over dosing on unrelated fish tank additives to protect themselves from the disease. Folks hear other rumors, and suddenly medicines needed to treat rheumatoid arthritis becomes hard to get, and folks start trying to horde drugs used to treat dogs for heartworm. With that headline, folks are going to try to stockpile little blue pills...

 

[Umbran]

No. The scientific conclusion to draw around those facts is that no conclusions can be reached until further testing can be done. Which is what the vets said.

The AVMA has this to say about the cat in Belgium (updated Friday, March 3rd - bolding mine)...

"No conclusions can responsibly be drawn regarding the cat in Belgium because of questions surrounding collection and analysis of samples for testing for SARS-CoV-2 and the absence of an evaluation of that cat for other, more common causes for its clinical signs."

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

IHME at U.Washington has updated their projections. They have COVID-19 deaths in the US overall peaking on APR 16, and then falling to <1 per day by mid June, with a cumulative 82k deaths or so (with huge error bars, of course).

(The big caveat, btw, is that they consistently refer to this current rash of covid as "the first wave".)

Projections for individual states are available at that site, too. Looks like roughly a 6-week spread among all the states' peaks. It will be interesting to see how political pressure to re-open the economy in earlier-peaking states will impact the overall pattern.

 

[ad_hoc]

IHME at U.Washington has updated their projections. They have COVID-19 deaths in the US overall peaking on APR 16, and then falling to <1 per day by mid June, with a cumulative 82k deaths or so (with huge error bars, of course).

(The big caveat, btw, is that they consistently refer to this current rash of covid as "the first wave".)

View attachment 120560

Projections for individual states are available at that site, too. Looks like roughly a 6-week spread among all the states' peaks. It will be interesting to see how political pressure to re-open the economy in earlier-peaking states will impact the overall pattern.

The trick with those predictions is that: "
COVID-19 projections assuming full social distancing through May 2020"


Keep in mind that 18 states do not have stay at home orders and 19 states have not closed non-essential businesses.

The USA has constantly sent the message that this isn't a big deal and it will be over soon. Every 2 weeks they say it's going to be done in 2 weeks.