Coronavirus Emerged In Italy Earlier Than Thought, Study Shows (reuters.com) 185
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy since September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows, signaling that COVID-19 might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought. The Italian researchers' findings, published by the INT's scientific magazine Tumori Journal, show that 11.6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020, had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February.
A further specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same research titled "Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy." It showed that four cases dated back to the first week of October were also positive for antibodies neutralizing the virus, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters.
"This is the main finding: people with no symptoms not only were positive after the serological tests but had also antibodies able to kill the virus," Apolone said. "It means that the new coronavirus can circulate among the population for long and with a low rate of lethality not because it is disappearing but only to surge again," he added. Italian researchers told Reuters in March that they reported a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 in a sign that the new coronavirus might have circulated earlier than thought.
A further specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same research titled "Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy." It showed that four cases dated back to the first week of October were also positive for antibodies neutralizing the virus, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters.
"This is the main finding: people with no symptoms not only were positive after the serological tests but had also antibodies able to kill the virus," Apolone said. "It means that the new coronavirus can circulate among the population for long and with a low rate of lethality not because it is disappearing but only to surge again," he added. Italian researchers told Reuters in March that they reported a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 in a sign that the new coronavirus might have circulated earlier than thought.
The study is very controversial (Score:5, Insightful)
It was published on a low-impact-factor journal from the same institution, the huge conflict of interest has not been disclosed, the peer review has been made in one day, there is no data on the methods and procedures, the conclusions extrapolate too much from the evidence.
There are too many signs of pathological science...
Re:The study is very controversial (Score:5, Interesting)
Italian here and following the news closely, I wanted to post the same. It is very early to say whether this is bogus or not. Most experts seem to agree that it is very, very unlikely that the virus was circulating so early, and in any case not with such numbers.
However, consider the following: we know (by the satellite images of lines of ambulances in front of Wuhan hospitals) that the virus started spreading in China probably from end August. Northern Italy (in particular the Milan area) has very tight commercial connections with China, specifically in the textile industry. So it is not unthinkable that the virus jumped from China to Italy so early.
Re: The study is very controversial (Score:3)
> we know (by the satellite images of lines of ambulances in front of Wuhan hospitals) that the virus started spreading in China probably from end August.
No. No you don't. Suspect all you like, but you do not know.
Re: The study is very controversial (Score:4, Insightful)
> we know (by the satellite images of lines of ambulances in front of Wuhan hospitals) that the virus started spreading in China probably from end August.
No. No you don't. Suspect all you like, but you do not know.
Back in Early 2020, there were credible reports from exchange-students that Wuhan had seen an unusually large number of cases of pneumonia as far back as August and September.
Given the large Chinese expat-community in Northern Italy and that Wuhan is a major transportation hub, it's not inconceivable that it was spread to Europe rather quickly.
As we've seen, it takes a while to develop "critical mass" for the virus - and unless you are really testing a lot, a lot of mild cases just never register on the radar.
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Back in Early 2020, there were credible reports from exchange-students that Wuhan had seen an unusually large number of cases of pneumonia as far back as August and September.
No there weren't. Chinese hospitals didn't abnormally high cases of pneumonia until mid November. This is verifiable information, and not some crack report by some exchange students. It was the investigation of these elevated cases which identified the novel coronavirus as the cause.
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The Chinese government wants to save face, but they aren't that nonsensical.
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Back in Early 2020, there were credible reports from exchange-students that Wuhan had seen an unusually large number of cases of pneumonia as far back as August and September.
There were also reports of large increase of flu cases in the US in late 2019 before 2020
Given the large Chinese expat-community in Northern Italy and that Wuhan is a major transportation hub, it's not inconceivable that it was spread to Europe rather quickly.
Oh, right, it's also not inconceivable that it was spread from Europe to China rather quickly.
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However, consider the following: we know (by the satellite images of lines of ambulances in front of Wuhan hospitals) that the virus started spreading in China probably from end August.
That research did not pass peer review [google.com] and has since been [bbc.com] rebut [archives-ouvertes.fr]:
This claim received widespread media coverage despite the lack of validation from peers. This review serves as a pre-publication evaluation of the study. We identify several problems, even questionable research practices, including but not limited to: inappropriate and insufficient data,misuse and misinterpretation of statistical methods, and cherry-picking internet search terms. We also reflect on scientific publishing in a time of public emergency.
Besides, how well did using satellite images as proof on politically charged issues work out prior to the Iraq War [nti.org]?
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However, consider the following: we know (by the satellite images of lines of ambulances in front of Wuhan hospitals) that the virus started spreading in China probably from end August.
No such thing happened in August. It wasn't until November that cases of pneumonia even started appearing questionably high.
That's not to say that it's not unthinkable that there was a spread before this time, but the reality is the date of August is just being randomly pulled out of some places where the sun doesn't shine.
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Or from Italy to China, because, as you know, planes rarely fly somewhere and then don't come back.
In other words, having lots of people traveling from China to Italy means that you also have many people traveling from Italy to China.
So, the virus could have easily spread from Italy to China, because, as you said, Italy has very tight commercial connections with China.
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So, the researchers found COVID-19 in samples from sewage from several cities in Italy, the earliest 2 sewage samples from 2 different cities are dated 19th December 2019. The virus was not found in sewage samples dated earlier than that 19Dec-19.
I'm keen to hear how you think this is 'Pathological
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I read something similar several months ago, I believe it was in Spain, they'd back-tested sewage for COVID and discovered it there before the outbreak started, perhaps in Dec (sorry, in a rush and don't have time to find the article again.) If keen on this do a search, there's already some precedent for detection of it before the main outbreak.
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The title of that paper you reference is "SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating in northern Italy since December 2019: Evidence from environmental monitoring". Scanning the article says it had been sampled for before that time but came up squat.
Now, about that voltage on your light bulb, it's too low.
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bat natural habitat (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps cov-19 originated in Italy and not in some Chinese marketplace. {...} It puzzles me how the article jumps to the conclusion that the virus "may have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought", they seem to be stuck on the "China virus" hypothesis.
Because the phylogenetic analysis of its genome [nextstrain.org](*) point to extremely probable origin coming from bat viruses (a.k.a.: it's a zoonosis. An originally-animal virus, which somehow managed to jump species and cross-infect humans).
The bats in question (that carry that virus) have their natural habitat in China. That's also where the previous bat-to-human specie-jumping virus occurred (SARS-CoV). This past SARS pandemic in itself prompted further research into coronaviruses affecting bats (that's why there are a couple of laboratories in the region, no matter what the "bioweapon" conspiracy theorists would like to believe), and among other lead to discoveries that a certain (although low, but still surprising) percentage of farmers in the region had antibodies to bat coronaviruses (example of report of ~3% seroprevalence [nih.gov]). That means in this is a virus that has plenty of opportunity to jump species on a regular basis in that region (most likely caused by reduction of the bats' natural habitat, and bats coming in much closer contact with farmer and livestock then before).
All this point to a very likely origin of SARS-CoV-2 as a bat virus that jumped specie (like often before) and managed to actually propagate well in humans (un-like most of the other sporadic occurrence of specie jump).
This does not *exclude* that there are some other animal reservoirs else where were this could also be happening (in fact that's how MERS occured).
But currently all this points toward SARS-CoV-2 being yet one additional of those specie jumps that regularly happens in China, except that one managed to be successful in its newfound host (even slightly more successful at spreading than SARS-CoV).
Regarding the market place:
Though some point at lots of wild animals packed closely with poor hygiene condition as a possible source of the virus actually emerging *in* the market *itself* (see the internet memes about bat-soup), the whole region has the bats' natural habitat diminishing and the bats coming increasingly in contact with farmers (See the above mentioned prevalence of seropositive farmers in the country side). It's entirely possible that the virus emerged elsewhere in the region (a farmer got it from a bat at home) and the market place mainly played the role of being a place with a lot of people meeting at very close range and thus merely contributed as a "densely crowded place" (instead of the presence of pangolins in cages).
It could have traveled from Italy to China and then mutated to a more deadly form, perhaps?
Unlikely. "Mutations" make a cool plot-twist for a film but don't happen as often and as dramatically as their movie-universe counterparts.
Also, evolution pressure would favour mutations that increase the reproduction of viruses.
So a mutation that increase human-to-human transmission, in a virus that already does bats-to-human in a regular fashion? Yes, it's plausible: it's a small step (basically one or two critical tweak of a surface protein), and it would vastly increase the possibility of a virus to spread to further host by opening an entire new specie to spread into and thus natural selection will favour it (basically, it will give rise to even more virus copies at the "next round of the game of life", and thus will get retained).
But a mutation which suddenly causes the humans to die a lot faster? Not so likely: if suddenly a virus starts to kill faster, it will get less opportunity to spread further before the current host dies. This basically diminishes the spreading opportunities for the virus and wi
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
It's one of the handful meaningful comments here.
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Thus, ~20% of new infections are caused by asymptomatic people: people who will never develop COVID-19 at all.
If you have a citation for this one, I'd like to see it.
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The bats in question (that carry that virus) have their natural habitat in China.
Bats also have their natural habitats around the world including Europe [wikipedia.org]:
Flight has enabled bats to become one of the most widely distributed groups of mammals. Apart from the high Arctic, the Antarctic and a few isolated oceanic islands, bats exist in almost every habitat on Earth.
Given your conscious / subconscious bias, the rest of your comment is ignorable.
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While an italian origin is plausible, I wouldnt bet my life savings on it. The reality is, the virus strongly resembles similar coronaviruses found in horseshoe bats found in caves in inland china. The likelyhood is one of the bats took a crap on a fish shipment (bats shit *everywhere*, they really are messy little things), the virus jumped ship onto a human handling it, and the rest is brutal history.
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The issue is that the horseshoe bats aren't just found in China. It's commonly found in all of SE and S Asia, where they do trade in pangolin as well as bats for food. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the virus in general doesn't seem to be affecting SE Asia as much despite the fact that they are poorer, and didn't quite use draconian measures because of lack of resources like e.g. Thailand. Those areas populations may have somewhat somewhat naturally immune because they had already something simi
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"However there are a ton of Chinese tourists that go to Italy, Spain, New York, etc. "
There are 500.000 Chinese working in Northern Italy alone in the Pronta Moda industry, up from 350.000 in 2014, making 'Italian' fashion with Chinese wages and traveling to China and back all the time.
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Many people are keenly interested in finding out. Covid-19 is probably one of the most studied diseases of all time by now - but of course some things take time to understand and less than a year just isn't enough to know everything about it. (Most science needs several years just to gather data.)
The DNA evidence is that the strain that hit the west coast came from China. The strain that hit NYC and the east cost first came from Europe (which in turn probably came from China). So NYC probably was hit with E
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"It seems fairly clear that it incubated in China, but the origin could have easily been elsewhere."
It seems fairly clear that many people are racists, and that makes it less likely that it actually came from China.
First detected in Italy: September 2019
First detected in China: November 2019
Yes, clearly came from China.
Re: The study is very controversial (Score:2)
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Bullshit. We know it is true from studies from August: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
No one wants to report the truth or is interested in Science when it comes to COVID. Fucking scary.
The study you link to doesn't seem to be peer reviewed?
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The sewage tests were very interesting, however given that there was one positive test before December with no other confirming tests then it's very reasonable to assume experimental error. For example cross-contamination from the newer sample to one older one. The new patient samples completely change that assumption as well as completely changing the meaning of the Wuhan satellite photos from the summer which were previously completely circumstantial.
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The *science* is a set of methods. Among those methods is publishing on a journal that follows those methods. This is the issue, the low impact factor is the symptom of a juornal having low reputation in that regard.
Begs the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
It showed that four cases dated back to the first week of October were also positive for antibodies neutralizing the virus.
So, we didn't find COVID-19. We found antibodies that match antibodies people are currently making against COVID-19.
Which begs the question...are antibodies unique for each virus they fight? Or, is it possible that the antibodies found were antibodies that the body made previously fighting another coronavirus?
Just trying to connect some dots here...Italy is a -huge- tourism nation. If there was COVID-19 in Italy back in September, we would have noticed something was wrong back in September. It would have spread everywhere, and whole nations would have seen by October or November tourists coming back from Italy bringing Coronavirus with them. But we didn't see that happen in October or November; we saw it happen in February and March. What if the human body makes the same antibodies (or ones similar enough to not be distinguishable in lab tests) to fight other coronavirii as it fights COVID-19? That would explain why a lot of people get COVID-19 but are asymptomatic, because they already have antibodies from other coronavirii that also stop COVID-19. That would fit the existing data we already know about COVID-19.
Is there a doctor in the /. who can help answer these questions?
Re:Begs the question... (Score:5, Interesting)
My dad got very sick with pneumonia in late November 2019, a sickness that took 2 months to get over, a first of its kind case for him. Those around him experienced persistent (yet mild) flu-like symptoms on a ~12-day on/off cycle until summer, also a first. Perhaps this, and the Italian cases, were an ancestor coronavirus strain that predated SarsCov2 and hadn't yet the mutation that increased its virulence (R-factor)? This might explain some of the early antibodies, some odd sicknesses, and also why it wasn't a pandemic at the time.
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OTOH, the wife got a bad cold that resulted in a very bad cough back in January (I had the same but mild and cough cleared up on its own). Within a couple of days of treatment with antibiotics, it cleared right up. This points to a bacterial infection causing the cough, likely triggered by a virus rather then Covid infecting her lungs.
Most every autumn to winter, we get something similar, though without such an extreme cough.
Re: Begs the question... (Score:5, Informative)
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The thing about COVID-19 is so few actually develop functioning antibodies to the virus. The fact that it infects T-helper cells has something to do with this, I believe.
I see the paper you're talking about. Studies of HIV drugs show that lopinavir and similar showed no meaningful effect on the course of the disease despite preventing the infection of those cells, so I'm going to have to assume it isn't infecting them in the same sense that HIV does, and that the reasons for not getting neutralizing antibodies are something other than the depletion of those cells.
But that's just a semi-educated guess. I could easily be wrong.
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> are antibodies unique for each virus they fight?
No, they're specific to a protein expressed by a virus. Those may be unique but we get lucky when they're not.
Much of the low-impact of nCoV-19 in more than a third of the population is due to people having existing antibodies to conserved-region proteins of common-cold beta-coronaviruses. That means structural proteins in the virus that existed in a direct or tree ancestor of nCoV-19.
This is why households with kids have lower mortality - those buggers
Not so easy (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're specific to a protein expressed by a virus. Those may be unique but we get lucky when they're not.
That's correct.
Much of the low-impact of nCoV-19 in more than a third of the population is due to people having existing antibodies to conserved-region proteins of common-cold beta-coronaviruses. That means structural proteins in the virus that existed in a direct or tree ancestor of nCoV-19.
It is entirely a valid hypothesis, I agree. But I haven't read substantial concrete research with results pointing in that direction. (Though it might be just because I definitely don't have the time to read everysingle last publication about SARS-CoV-2).
At best there are several publications that point at cross-reactive T-cells (another target-specific component of the immune system, but how aren't *directly responsible with destroying* the virus itself), and the author hypothetising that the variability of outcomes might be partially caused by that.
TL;DR: I don't say you're wrong, just that I haven't come accross much proof yet.
This is why households with kids have lower mortality - those buggers brought home colds from school that caused an immune response to a protein that still exists in nCoV-19.
Very unlikely. Most of the mortality in COVID-19 is imputable to the inflammatory response in the late stages of the disease, with the lungs self-destructing.
That's why in late stage the corticoids provably help according to several large scale studies - by that time the inflamation is the main cause of bad outcomes and the corticoids help cut the inflammation.
Younger kids have less mature immune systems which are less prone to such mass inflammation - thus younger kids have a lower chance (but not zero !) of self-destructing their lungs.
(It's not the only disease. Smallpox is another disease which tend to be a lot less deadly in small children than, say, a big chunk of the entire adult american indian population).
Full-disclosure: this linkage mechanism is a complete mystery to Orthodox Medical Science (e.g. Surgisphere reviewers).
Parser failure error. Waht ?
We could have just figured out which colds had the best targets and made a vaccine back in March for those cold viruses and gotten 85% effective vaccines by September, in preparation for the Northern Hemisphere winter. Instead we're spending trillions on mRNA vaccines from Big Pharma which are going to have the expected downstream consequences of new technology. The corruption is staggering.
Okay, news flash: Except when you have a robust and well tested procedure in place to produce new vaccine sub-variant in a regular fashion, creating a vaccine takes *multiple years*, up to a decade maybe.
(The only counter example being flu: the whole process is nowadays optimized to the point that from the moment the WHO emits a new list of potential strains to consider, we can have a vaccine ready in time for that winter's hemisphere. And even that perfectly organised pipeline can be disturbed by a sudden bump of demande - like the current recommendation to vaccine against flu, to have at least one less virus causing cold-like symptoms this winter.
And that's after decades of development and fine tuning the current production flow.
There is no other virus with such a quick reaction workflow. Yet. (Coronavirus is probably going to be the next to get one)
Currently the influenza is the sole vaccine where you can reastically fine-tune something in a couple of months).
Another news flash: there isn't currently any vaccine against common cold, including other members of the coronavirus family. So there's no other virus whose vaccine you could have fine tuned to "get effective vaccines by September, in preparation for the Northern Hemisphere winter".
So building a new vaccine (roughly) from scratch is the only way to go.
And now a
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> Is there a doctor in the /. who can help answer these questions?
There are some excellent physicians who keep up on the preprint server research but very, very few.
Oh, hai. Though nowadays I work in research.
And this is why I love Slashdot. There are -real- experts who give -real- answers to questions typically not found on the average internet forum.
Thank you.
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First, thank you for responding to the original poster. His comment was a combination of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and speculation. Great job ...
One comment though:
Re:Begs the question... (Score:5, Informative)
Antibodies are a swiss army knife. They are shaped like a capital Y, with a stem and two arms that are modular and variable. What happens when your body is invaded for the first time by something the body considers foreign or a threat, it activates the immune system by launching a type of antibody called an IgM antibody. These are highly modular, and what happens is the body sends out massive amounts of these with lots of different types of the "arms". The arms bind to antigen, which are the proteins used by the invader that either surround the virus or bacteria, or are put off by the virus or bacteria to initiate some sort of function. Think of the IgM as a rapid prototype; it launches a thousand or even a million variations of the "arms" of the antibody to see which ones either tear teh virus apart or stop the antigen it uses to attack your body, starving the virus of it's target cell to replicate.
Over time the body figures out which is most effective at neutralizing the invader, and it produces IgG antibodies. These are the most common antibodies, and basically it's "arms" now target which parts of the invader it found to be most effective. Maybe it's a surface protein that allows the antibody to tear the virus apart, maybe it's something that starves the virus of a critical life function and it dies off without replicating. The IgM antibody is often why being infected the first time you have a bad response, but the transition to IgG means the next time you have the disease your body is prepared to fight it. This is also by the way how vaccines work; they are attempting to trigger your body's ability to go through the IgM to IgG process, and if you have a lot of the IgG floating around in your body then when you get infected with a disease your body is armed to the teeth to fight it; the virus invades your body but you don't even notice because your immune system is ready.
So to your question. Your antibodies are unique to you in the "stem" but are generally similar amongst species so all humans are pretty similar. However there is a weak point in each invader that due to the immune system's ability to rapidly prototype, it will eventually find that weakpoint. The weakpoint is specific to the invader, so the "arm" of the antibody ends up being specific to the virus regardless of whether you or I have different genetics. So that's a long winded answer, but the answer is YES, at this stage of detection they are finding IgG antibodies and they are virus specific, and different people will generally have over time the exact same "arm" of the antibody to a specific disease.
Also, by the way, this is worth reading up on. The immune system and how it functions is utterly fascinating the more you dig into it.
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
The first sensible response in a rubbish thread full of conspiracy theories.
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You're already at +5, so just a thank you for writing out this explanation.
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Ezayak ya ebn baladi ...
I an not a doctor, but I was a pharmacist.
Antibodies are formed as a response to proteins on the surface of pathogens (bacteria, fungi, viruses, ...). Proteins are just a sequence of amino acids that are folded into a particular 3D shape.
It has been known even before the discovery of bacteria
So... (Score:2, Funny)
So, can we now call it the Italian flu? And make sure to pronounce it "aye-talian".
I was sick with COVID symptoms in NYC in December (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I was sick with COVID symptoms in NYC in Decemb (Score:4, Informative)
You could take an antibody test https://www1.nyc.gov/site/coro... [nyc.gov] it's free. Couldn't find T-cell immunity tests in the 15s i was willing to spend searching, you might have better luck.
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Without any kind of diagnosis I would suggest that you avoid trying to read too much into what you had.
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This is absolutely right. It could be tremendously politically uncomfortable to discuss your likely COVID symptoms.
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Did you have loss of taste or smell?
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What you got may have been COVID or some other severe respiratory illness. The symptoms are shared with other pneumonia, ...etc.
You can rule out if what you got was COVID or not by taking an antibody test. If you don't have the antibodies, then what you got was most likely not COVID. If you have the antibodies, it could have been from December 2019, April 2020, or September 2020. So no sure way to tell if you got it before 2020, or later.
Re:I was sick with COVID symptoms in NYC in Decemb (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually work as a systems administrator for an apparels company that often travels to Italy and China and I got really really sick in December with all the now classic COVID symptoms.
You think that's bad. I've had classic COVID symptoms nearly every year for most of my life. Hell in 2009 I ended up in hospital with a severe pneumonia infection as a result.
It's amazing how many times I've had "COVID symptoms" during the standard flu/common cold season.
I think that we've already figured it out (Score:2)
Like this is some surprise to us now?
Anyone capable of putting the pieces together has realized this for at least 4 months now.
And in particular, it means that this virus will not be under control until there is absolutely universal and ubiquitous testing. That means every single person, adult or child, who ever has any occasion whatsoev
Here's the bit from the paper you need to see. (Score:5, Interesting)
The serologic assay used in this study is an in-house designed RBD-based ELISA, namely, VM-IgG-RBD and VM-IgM-RBD, and is a proprietary assay developed by using spike glycoprotein ...
(Emphasis mine)
ELISA tests can cross react with similar antigens (e.g. proteins from other coronaviruses), which is why they're usually not considered a gold-standard test. They're good enough for screening and for diagnosing in a situation where you've got other supporting evidence, but maybe not to prove something with a low Bayesian prior probability. Also tests are only as good as the reagents you're using, and these reagents are proprietary. A test designer's assertion of his test's capabilities isn't something you can take uncritically; the test needs to be verified by other researchers before you rely on it.
That doesn't mean the paper is wrong. It just means nobody should be drawing any conclusions from it yet.
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole thing is idiotic. COVID has been around a long time. We just didn't know about it because the media and the Internet didn't latch onto it. If this was the 1990s no one would have even have known.
LOL. No, I'm pretty sure people would've noticed when the hospitals ICUs were suddenly filled beyond capacity.
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Definitely not this strain.. yes there are other covid strains which fall under the common cold!
And yes the last suspected covid related pandemic was 1890-1895!
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Indeed, and that did not happen. Something changed in 2020, and it is not quite clear what. It could be a mutation, a different strain, a co-infection etc. We still have a lot to learn about viruses in general and this one in particular.
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, except that never happened. And no, they wouldn't have noticed. ICUs do "fill up". I realize this is the first media-hyped virus you guys have encountered, and you are IT guys, but you should have paid attention in school. This whole breathless media "reporting" of ICUs "only having 20% capacity left" is completely idiotic.
You are right. ICUs do fill up. They fill up when there is a hurricane. A large earthquake, stuff like that. They fill up at specific hospitals in specific areas where they routinely run up to capacity. But they don't fill up simultaneously in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, at hospitals all across each of these states...hospitals which typically run well below capacity. They typically don't require the USNS comfort to dock in New York when there isn't a natural disaster.
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".hospitals which typically run well below capacity."
A hospital that "typically runs below capacity" is a hospital that gets closed. They typically run over 80%-85% capacity. It's how they stay open and in business.
"They typically don't require the USNS comfort to dock in New York when there isn't a natural disaster."
You mean the the hospital ship that was pretty much unused? Or the convention center set up for overflow that was unused? Or the temporary overflow hospitals they set up that were never re
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Informative)
The cases were doubling every 3-4 days or so when NY decided to lockdown. What do you think would have happened if there were no lockdown? The fact that they were close to capacity at the peak infection rate (which peaked at the time only due to the lockdown). Without it, the peak would have been much higher and the hospital system in NYC would have been completely overwhelmed.
What is happening right now is that state governors who have fiercely resisted restrictions are starting to impose them. Why? Their hospital systems are showing signs of strain and they can't find any alternative way to combat the virus.
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Don't get me wrong, NYC was hit hard -- but they never came close to hitting capacity for care.
You're like a y2k denier.
We fixed the problem (lockdowns) so there wasn't a problem (hospitals getting overwhelmed).
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Every ICU nurse I know (I know 4 personally) say the same thing; ICUs are always managed to around 90-95% capacity at all times; it's the most cost efficient way to manage an ICU.
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the USNS Comfort was needed. It was intentionally used to handle non-covid patients...so that, as much as possible, we didn't have covid patients and non-covid patient in the ICU together. But even so, the mere fact that they deployed it there (and that fact that they went out of their way to start setting up field hospitals) are evidence that hospitals were filling to capacity. They just had no idea how much worse it was going to get. Those field hospitals don't get completely setup overnight. It takes time and planning to get the supplies and staffing there. If you wait until you've already exceeded capacity to start preparing, you are too late.
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So many people here refuse to read anything that doesn't fir their worldview. Scary stuff.
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It treated less than 200 people and only stayed three weeks. It wasn't needed. The reason they deployed it there was because they weren't sure. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/1... [cnbc.com]
So many people here refuse to read anything that doesn't fir their worldview. Scary stuff.
I'm not sure how you are disagreeing with the grandparent post? That said explicitly:
The hospital might not have been strictly needed for actually treating patients. It was needed in order to ensure that there was available capacity whic
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As the other poster just said, I don't see how you are disagreeing with me. You seem to have lost track of the entire context of this thread. This start with a ridiculous claim that nobody would've even noticed covid were it not publicized, and then (after I mentioned hospitals filling up) a suggestion that hospital levels during the virus peaks were just routine, and that this happens all the time and nobody would've noticed it otherwise. The fact that they sent the ship there and setup the field hospital
Re: No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's a large part of the population that doesn't seem capable of thinking. Read an article yesterday, nurse in one of the Dakota's, on how people on their deathbed were still denying the virus was real. Pretty sad and another thing that leads to burnout in the medical people, and it's the staffing needed for ICU's that is the limiting thing, not the number of beds.
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No, this is a "zebra" reaction.
There was this theory to explain why so few large animals in Africa, including zebras, could not be domesticated. The theory was that since they co-evolved with us, and we had big brains very good at predicting their behavior to their detriment, they evolved to be capricious and unpredictable.
I don't know if that theory is true. But it seems to me it's a common, and in a way reasonable, response to being manipulated. If you feel that you're being manipulated, but you can't fig
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Have a look here. This shows a graph of deaths in the US with the normal expected death rate. Note: the data for recent weeks is incomplete as there is a time-lag in reporting data, so the last few weeks on the graph will still change. There is also a time lag in getting sick, then going to a hospital and dying so if you get sick at the beginning of October, you might die in the middle of November and be reported sometime in December. The current "wave" isn't properly represented in this data yet.
https://ww
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"I guess all of those ice trucks full of bodies were just a liberal hoax and that the doctors are all lying to us. 250k dead is no big deal."
Two different things. Slowing the spread of the virus doesn't make it less lethal to the same number of people. It just draws out how long it would take for 250k people to die. While also devastating our economy and an almost certainty of countless deaths from untreated and diagnosed diseases.
Single example (there are countless): Did you know that diagnosis' for lu
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No you moron, slowing the spread contains the number of people who need ICUs at the same time. ICUs are a limited resource. If you get into an ICU, chances are you will walk out of it. If you need an ICU but none is available, chances are you are going to die fast.
Not slowing the spread of the virus results in the death of scores of people who would otherw
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Actually, the limit is the people who operate the ICU units. There's only so many nurses and Doctors and they can only put in so many hours.
Re: No kidding (Score:4, Informative)
Oh really? Then tell us what's happening in Utah [newsweek.com].
Better tell your story to the governor of Wyoming [wyofile.com] who stated:
"Our hospitals are overwhelmed today,"
Parts of Wisconsin has their hospitals at capacity [nypost.com], including the Mayo Clinic Health System.
Des Moines, Iowa has at least one health system at capacity [kcci.com].
The governor of North Dakota said all hospitals in the state are at 100% capacity [kfyrtv.com].
But please, tell us again how we're not close to hitting capacity.
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Might add to that, that the guy we can thank for blowing the whistle on this virus, Li Wenliang [wikipedia.org]. He was a healthy 33-year old, who nonetheless died from the virus. We can only speculate why, but if medical personnel are quitting in desperation from overwork in my lightly hit region, I can only imagine what it was like in Wuhan.
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Your link about Utah is about a SPECIFIC hospital, not the State. According to the article, there are 111 people in UT in ICU with CoVID. But UT has 564 ICU beds [covidactnow.org] Last I checked, 111/564 wasn't close to capacity.
By those number, just give the exponential growth two more doublings, and you are then on the precipice of being seriously overcommitted.
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Your statement was we haven't come close to capacity, then ranted about only one hospital in New York. I gave multiple examples from several different states where hospitals, plural, or a hospital, singular, are at capacity.
You can't move the goalposts now, moron. Accept that you've been called out and slink away to lie another day.
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Slowing the spread of the disease allows for improved treatments as well as the development of a vaccine. Both of these will reduce the death rate. So the more we slow it down, the fewer people will die.
There is no doubt that there will be side effects (e.g. people not going to the doctor when they should). But this would happen regardless of whether there are lockdowns or not. People - especially older people who are more likely to have cancer - are scared of going to the doctor for fear of catching the di
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Jesus. Let's explain it again, shall we?
Slowing the spread of the virus NOW will likely make it much less lethal SOON, once vaccines and improvement treatment is available.
The original quote was
Slowing the spread of the virus doesn't make it less lethal to the same number of people
You completely changed the feel of the sentence. If there is that big of a disconnect between what's in your head and what ends up in print, you should proof-read before submitting.
I'd much rather catch it NEXT YEAR when treatment is improved (or better yet, not catch it all due to vaccination immunity) than catch it THIS YEAR with neither of those advantages.
With passage of time, more is known about this virus, so later patients have an advantage. The Pfizer vaccine is said to have side effects of flu-like symptoms lasting "a few days". Even taking the vaccine you need to take time off work just in case those symptoms aren't just side effects of the shot.
If your country gets far more cases this year due to widespread infection, then you will have much higher fatality rate from COVID.
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"Slowing the spread of the virus NOW will likely make it much less lethal SOON, once vaccines and improvement treatment is available."
You cant shut things down for 2-3 years without severely damaging not just the economy, but overall public health.
Except that nobody is seriously suggesting a 2-3 year shutdown, not even public health officials.
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So ... yes ... many people died in a short time period due to COVID.
However, many families struggled with how to obtain the bodies of loved ones, do funerals (or ... something), etc as well. So the morgues filling was also driven by the social distancing rules making it difficult to empty them.
It's grim to speak of people that way. But an effect can have more than one contributing factor. And a contributing factor to the need for ice trucks was the inability for families to collect and bury their love
Re: No kidding (Score:3)
Smoking and heart disease do not spread virally. I cannot catch those things because someone in another town decided to have a party.
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We knew about this starting EARLY LAST FALL and were posting about it six months ago. But that makes it a conspiracy theory because CNN didn't say it. DIAF, BeauHD and EditorRetard.
The first public announcement worldwide regarding COVID-19 was in December 2019, although an unknown (at the time) disease was starting to show up in 4th quarter 2019. US newspapers put Trump impeachment on their front page, so most Americans didn't even hear about this strain of coronavirus until the end of January or beginning of February. As this was a newly discovered virus, we didn't know what to expect. Those of us old enough remember the scares surrounding the swine flu or bird flu and how underwhelm
Re: No kidding (Score:2)
The total deaths are well above the normal levels. See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/... [cdc.gov] (scroll down for a chart).
If what you are suggesting is true, then deaths would still be around normal levels. At most, the actual death count during the Covid period would be lower than the sum of expected deaths plus deaths attributed to Covid.
But actual deaths are greater than the sum. This means Covid deaths are likely undercounted, and your hypothesis is incorrect.
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Double that number and you will get the number of Americans who die of smoking every year. Quadruple it and you will get the number of Americans who die of heart disease. Every year. Year in. Year out. Get a grip.
What is it with you Covid-denier snowflakes and your false equivalencies? Why are you so terrified of being wrong?
Besides, if you count the start of the pandemic being roughly April 1st, we are well on track for fatalities to double by then. Plenty of time for you snowflakes to figure out how to move the goalposts again...
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TFA specifically refutes the assertion that this started in April.
And the TFA doesn't make a definitive case for that assertion of Sept 2019 being the starting line. But rather it's an interesting retrospective study, that's about all at the moment without further evidence.
Besides, the comparison to other diseases was US-only, not Italy. And when I set the starting line at April, it's arguably when the community-spread of the virus had hit critical mass such that it's lethality was beginning to be felt in the US population.
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Let us know when you can catch smoking from the guy in the grocery store.
Quadruple it and you will get the number of Americans who die of heart disease.
Heart disease is contagious? You mean I can get it from the guy next to me in line? Quick, notify the medical community!
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"Let us know when you can catch smoking from the guy in the grocery store."
Well, you can. You have your actual genetic viruses, and you have your memetic viruses, viruses of the mind. Both can be contagious.
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The covid deaths [jhu.edu] are in addition to, and on top of, the existing death levels. Just like the yearly WWII deaths [va.gov] were. Yet you never hear anyone minimize WWII deaths, even though annual covid deaths are running three times the WWII death rate [slashdot.org].
That minimization is a really bizarre thing, frankly.
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With perfect knowledge I'm sure a less invasive set of measures could be taken. But absent widespread test availability and confirmation of relative risk of each activity then it's not unreasonable to take some mitigating actions out of "an abundance of caution".
It seems to me that many of the mandates would not have been necessary if people had been willing to take sensible precautions voluntarily.
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Re:No kidding (Score:5, Informative)
I am an IT Guy who works for a Hospital, I report on these numbers and track the data.
if 80% of the ICU is needed for Covid-19 that is allowing only 20% for all other health problems and services. That is dangerous and problematic. This means a lot of "Elective" Surgeries are going to be put off, where people may suffer for longer times, or be unable to work, or have their condition worsen to a point where it becomes an emergency.
Yes there are sometimes where an ICU will fill up, where a hospital will need to transfer a patent somewhere else. But this is often for just a day, where many of the cases the patients are out within 24 hours. However with 80% or even just 10% of the rooms being filled with COVID cases where the patients may be there for days or weeks. That means these peak ICU days are going to happen much more commonly. Where it was something that may happen a few times a year, is happening a few times a week.
Many Hospitals are located in City areas, where Property cost is at a premium. Having a 1/4 mile long strip dedicated to a Hospital is expensive. When planning the hospital, they are going to build enough beds, to support the population for most cases. Because you are not going to have a Hospital that can serve 2,000 beds where you normally peak at 500, and a couple times a year you get 520 patients in demand)
If you lack any good evidence on what is going on, I would suggest that you don't blame the Media for what it is reporting, take it as general information meant for the general public to get a general knowledge on what is going on. However if you feel the need to dispute any claim, please do research on what is happening at the moment, and if you find what someone says to be counter to your experience, that means you must research more. Not just wave your hands in the air and go well those guys must be corrupt.
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Insightful)
COVID has been around for a while. But the COVID-19 Strain is very infectious, it also has a long time where people are infectious while not showing symptoms. That the major part of the problem. Flu and Pneumonia can be deadly ask Kermit the Frog, it is easier to manage the infection, as when people get symptoms to when they are spreading are much closer together, so they are spreading the virus around all their areas for weeks, until they think they need to go to the Doctor.
People get into Car accidents, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make cars safer.
People get shot by guns, that doesn't mean we should hand out hand guns to everyone.
People get Cancer, that doesn't mean we should not care about radiation, or just start Smoking.
Viruses do happen, however that doesn't mean we should all go "Well it happens" however we should see what we can do to slow it, and protect yourself and others from it.
For heavens sake, just put on your mask (around your noes too!) and keep your distance from other people, and wash your hands. This is just public safety regulations not some restriction on your rights. It is as much restriction of your rights as if you are going to get arrested for defecating in the middle of a grocery store aisle.
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Jesus Fucking Christ, how many times do the statistics have to be trotted out. COVID-19 is far more dangerous than the flu. Qui lying, even if it is to yourself. Grow the fuck up, little child.
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
Covid has been around a long time. The Covid-19 variant is what is new now.
There is quite some evidence that the Russian flu of 1889 was caused by Coronavirus HCov-OC43 (though Influenca viruses H3N8 and H2N2 also are candidates). Symptoms and long-term effects were similar to today's Covid-19. It killed about 1 million worldwide. Despite the lack of of an Internet back then, the media managed to report on it.
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Informative)
Covid has been around a long time. The Covid-19 variant is what is new now.
COVID-19 is the name of the disease associated with a certain Coronavirus. It's not the name of the symptoms or the virus, but specifically the disease resulting from that virus. There is no COVID other than COVID-19. COVID by itself is not the name of anything.
I'm sure you just mistyped but given that Tucker Carlson actually said on Fox that this is the 19th COVID I feel the need to point out such minor errors.
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I'm sure you just mistyped but given that Tucker Carlson actually said on Fox that this is the 19th COVID I feel the need to point out such minor errors.
While I don't know for sure that Tucker Carlson did or did not make that claim, I do know that Rush Limbaugh made that exact claim.
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You have my doubting myself. I could very well have gotten my right wing societal shitstains confused.
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Four people did, yesterday.
Re: No kidding (Score:2)
I thought this shit was supposed to be gone after the election
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