Coronavirus

[LongTermGuy]

`Barr and Mnuchin are saying May! Wanna bet they know something we don't know?!?`

Attorney General Barr: End 'draconian' lockdown by May 1

We can't 'just tell people to go home and hide under the bed'


https://www.wnd.com/2020/04/attorney...ockdown-may-1/

[Drummond]

Hearing on the radio this very second, that a GRANT COUNTY RESIDENT HAS DIED FROM THE VIRUS. That's my county. They said the person was over 80 years old. So there we go, one dead in my county, out of the 3 reported infected.

We'll see what the numbers for today are after 2:00PM.

EDIT: And they just CLOSED DOWN all our state parks too, because "people weren't following social distancing rules."

As I posted on another thread .. one of our police forces gets tough if you're just deemed to have made a 'nonessential journey'. You get followed by drones ! Doesn't matter if there's nobody within several hundred yards of you ... the drone is still watching ...

See ....

http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthre...546#post955546

[Kathianne]

Some of the topics that I've been following, including the use of ventilators, that have been troubling but difficult to understand. My guess, like the ventilators more will be coming out shortly:

https://hotair.com/archives/allahpun...ered-patients/

Hoo Boy: South Korean Study Finds Virus Might Be “Reactivating” In Some Recovered Patients
ALLAHPUNDITPosted at 7:21 pm on April 9, 2020

This is at least the third story in the last few weeks to suggest that patients who’ve had coronavirus and been “cured” don’t always enjoy immunity. First was the report from China about some patients testing negative after recuperating — and then testing positive on a follow-up test. Second was yesterday’s news of a Chinese study that found some people who’ve recovered from the disease had few antibodies in their blood afterward, suggesting that they might be vulnerable to reinfection.


Now there’s a study from South Korea that sounds a lot like the first story I mentioned, but with a new theory to explain what’s happening. As in China, some patients in Korea who seem to have beaten the disease are testing negative and then … positive. Leading doctors to wonder: Are some “cured” patients really not cured? If so, how many others spanning the world are walking around right now, believing they’re out of the woods when in fact they’re still infected?


And how many of them, in so doing, are inadvertently spreading the virus to others in the belief that they’re no longer contagious because they tested negative?


The coronavirus may be “reactivating” in people who have been cured of the illness, according to Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


About 51 patients classed as having been cured in South Korea have tested positive again, the CDC said in a briefing on Monday. Rather than being infected again, the virus may have been reactivated in these people, given they tested positive again shortly after being released from quarantine, said Jeong Eun-kyeong, director-general of the Korean CDC.


“While we are putting more weight on reactivation as the possible cause, we are conducting a comprehensive study on this,” Jeong said. “There have been many cases when a patient during treatment will test negative one day and positive another.”


One possible explanation is errors in testing. Maybe patients are seeing false negatives in their initial post-recuperation test only to receive a more accurate positive result in their second one. If that sounds familiar, remember that experts in the U.S. believe that as many as one in three COVID-19 tests here may be producing false negatives. One would think, though, that South Korean tests must be dependable in light of the fantastic success they’ve had in containing their outbreak. If they’re letting people out of quarantine due to a meaningful number of false negatives, we’d expect a wider outbreak there.


Then again, that’s why they do two post-recuperation tests. Two false negatives are much less likely than one. Another possibility: Maybe the nose and mouth, which are swabbed for the test, are cleared of the virus relatively early in the recovery process whereas other parts of the body remain infected a bit longer. Could it be that the remnants of the virus in the throat or lungs or wherever might “migrate” to the nose and mouth in some patients between the first and second test?


Any scenario here would be more hopeful than a “reactivating” virus.


While we’re on the subject of the strange ways in which the virus operates, the WSJ has a nice explainer about the “cytokine storms” it sometimes triggers. Some patients die not because COVID-19 directly attacks their tissue but because it triggers an immune response in the patient so intense that the resulting inflammation proves fatal.


The out-of-control immune response eventually causes the patients’ lungs to stop delivering oxygen to the rest of organs, leading to respiratory failure and in some cases death, the experts say. The malfunctioning immune system may be driving the rapid decline in lung function experienced by some patients, including younger and relatively healthy ones, after the initial onset of symptoms, doctors say…


In the most severe coronavirus patients, the disease appears to have two stages, doctors and researchers say. First the immune system fails to respond quickly or effectively enough to the virus. Then the immune response becomes too aggressive and floods the body with cytokines.


The surge of cytokines damages blood vessels and allows fluids to seep into the lungs, filling them up like water balloons, doctors say.


The key word there is “rapid.” A recurring theme in interviews with doctors and nurses over the last few weeks is the sheer speed with which some coronavirus patients go from normal-ish to critical. This new report from Reuters is especially vivid. “It’s insane how sick they get, how quickly,” said one nurse at Mt. Sinai in New York. Another said she was “paranoid, scared to walk out of their room” because they “look fine, feel fine, then you turn around and they’re unresponsive.” If it really is cytokine storms that are causing those sudden collapses then I wonder if it explains why — ta da — hydroxychloroquine might be beneficial in some cases. Hydroxychloroquine is an immunosuppressant, used by rheumatological patients to fight inflammation; if an overreacting immune system is what’s killing some people, logically an immunosuppressant to calm that system would make sense. The Journal story notes, in fact, that doctors are already testing other immunosuppressants as possible treatments. The *possible* efficacy of HCQ in small trials might prove in time to have been an early clue as to why COVID-19 is so lethal.


In lieu of an exit question, here’s a doctor in New York discussing yet another strange quirk of the virus. He was quoted in the Stat article I highlighted last night about doctors possibly overusing ventilators for treatment. My COVID-19 patients aren’t suffering from lung failure, he says, they’re suffering from something that looks more like altitude sickness. So why are we forcing them to let a machine breathe for them, knowing that the ventilator might itself damage their lungs?

[High_Plains_Drifter]

Some of the topics that I've been following, including the use of ventilators, that have been troubling but difficult to understand. My guess, like the ventilators more will be coming out shortly:

Well that's some scary shit right there... as if people aren't freaked out enough already.

I'm out of milk. Maybe I'll stay out of milk and not go to the store...

[High_Plains_Drifter]

Going to have to go out again today. Out of milk, and almost eggs.

When you were raised in the "Dairy State," being out of milk is a true emergency...

[Drummond]

Going to have to go out again today. Out of milk, and almost eggs.

When you were raised in the "Dairy State," being out of milk is a true emergency...

Keep clear of Lefties ... & you'll be OK ...

[High_Plains_Drifter]

Keep clear of Lefties ... & you'll be OK ...

Very few people in the store this early. Was a good time to go.

But the check out girl said that she's seen "lots" of strange people in the store, inferring people she's never seen and doesn't recognize. Evidently word has gotten out that our little grocery here is quite well stocked, so people are making the trek to our little town just to horde buy out all our stuff. I can guarantee you, that's the sort of thing that will piss off the towns people here.

[Kathianne]

Very few people in the store this early. Was a good time to go.

But the check out girl said that she's seen "lots" of strange people in the store, inferring people she's never seen and doesn't recognize. Evidently word has gotten out that our little grocery here is quite well stocked, so people are making the trek to our little town just to horde buy out all our stuff. I can guarantee you, that's the sort of thing that will piss off the towns people here.

Understandable if they shoot those infringers, no?

[High_Plains_Drifter]

Understandable if they shoot those infringers, no?

Are we back to being nasty to each other now or what?

I was really enjoying it the other way.

[High_Plains_Drifter]

This is interesting...

----------------------

Many coronavirus patients show signs of heart damage, and doctors aren't sure what it means

It could have significant treatment implications

Many patients who die of COVID-19 show signs of heart damage, and some of those are dying of heart failure and cardiac arrest even when they aren't suffering from the respiratory symptoms more commonly associated with the novel coronavirus, Kaiser Health News reported.

Ditch the fake news ==> Click here to get news you can trust sent right to your inbox. It's free!
Doctors observing this trend are now concerned about what this could mean for how the coronavirus is treated, and how it might impact the way they respond to patients who come in with heart failure who haven't been tested for the coronavirus.

Some doctors have found that COVID-19 can create the false appearance of a heart attack:

That work has already resulted in changes in the way hospitals deal with the cardiac implications of COVID-19. Doctors have found that the infection can mimic a heart attack. They have taken patients to the cardiac catheterization lab to clear a suspected blockage, only to find the patient wasn't really experiencing a heart attack but had COVID-19.
That finding could change the way heart attack patients are evaluated:

"We're taking a step back from that now and thinking about having patients brought to the emergency department so they can get evaluated briefly, so that we could determine: Is this somebody who's really at high risk for COVID-19?" said Dr. Sahil Parikh, an interventional cardiologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, according to KHN. "And is this manifestation that we're calling a heart attack really a heart attack?"

Still there are questions about whether COVID-19 is causing heart damage and cardiac arrest by infecting the heart, or whether the heart issues are a byproduct that is occurring when patients become seriously ill. Any serious medical event has the potential to stress the heart to the point of damaging it, KHN reported.

Heart damage has been found in nearly 20% of coronavirus patients, according to one initial study. This damage has shown up in patients with no previous heart illness.

"We have to assume, maybe, that the virus affects the heart directly," said Dr. Ulrich Jorde, the head of heart failure, cardiac transplantation and mechanical circulatory support for the Montefiore Health System in New York City, according to KHN. "But it's essential to find out."

https://www.theblaze.com/news/many-c...zyJClwpD13Yct0

[Kathianne]

Listening to the president and committee on Coronavirus:

* WHO $$ from US will be discussed-a lot-next week
* Social distancing is working-NY and NJ on downside. Boston and Chicago going up still, but slowing the multipliers. LA is also leveling off.
* Quick tests are going up in production, may be able to send to other countries in near future.

[Drummond]

Given that Covid-19 has attracted its 'share' of conspiracy theories ... I think I may have found a major source of them. He turns out to be a British nutter.

This immediately, of course, prompts the question: did he once work for the BBC ?

YES, he did. At one time, decades ago, he was quite a respectable, and respected, BBC sports commentator.

Then, he turned nuts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke

Originally working as a BBC television sports presenter, Icke claims he saw former British Prime Minister Ted Heath's eyes turn black while the two waited for a Sky News interview in 1989. In 1990, while spokesman for the Green Party, he visited a psychic who he said told him he had been placed on earth for a purpose and would begin to receive messages from the spirit world. These events led him to announce the following year that he was a "Son of the Godhead" and that the world would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes, a prediction he repeated on the BBC's primetime show Wogan. The show turned him from a respected household name into the subject of widespread public ridicule.

Over the next 11 years Icke wrote The Robots' Rebellion (1994), And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999), and Children of the Matrix (2001), in which he developed his worldview of New Age conspiracism. His endorsement of the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in The Robots' Rebellion and And the Truth Shall Set You Free led his publisher to refuse to publish his books, which were self-published thereafter.

Icke believes that the universe is made up of "vibrational" energy and consists of an infinite number of dimensions that share the same space. He believes that an inter-dimensional race of reptilian beings called the Archons (or Anunnaki) have hijacked the earth and that a genetically modified human–Archon hybrid race of shape-shifting reptilians known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, the Illuminati, or the "elite", manipulate global events to keep humans in constant fear so the Archons can feed off the "negative energy" this creates.

He claims many prominent public figures belong to the Babylonian Brotherhood and are propelling humanity toward an Orwellian global fascist state, or New World Order, a post-truth era where freedom of speech is ended. Icke believes that the only way this 'Archontic' influence can be defeated is if people wake up to the truth and fill their hearts with love. Critics have accused Icke of being a Holocaust denier and an anti-semite, with his theories about reptilians being a deliberate "code"; claims that Icke denies ......

Now, why have I posted all this ? For one reason: Icke has been pushing the theory that 5G spreads Covid-19.

I strongly suspect that it started with him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52198946

YouTube has banned all conspiracy theory videos falsely linking coronavirus symptoms to 5G networks.

The Google-owned service will now delete videos violating the policy. It had previously limited itself to reducing the frequency it recommended them in its Up Next section.

The move follows a live-streamed interview with conspiracy theorist David Icke on Monday, in which he had linked the technology to the pandemic.

YouTube said the video would be wiped.

During the interview, Mr Icke falsely claimed there "is a link between 5G and this health crisis".

And when asked for his reaction to reports of 5G masts being set on fire in England and Northern Ireland, he responded: "If 5G continues and reaches where they want to take it, human life as we know it is over... so people have to make a decision."

Several users subsequently called for further attacks on 5G towers in the comments that appeared alongside the feed.

Mr Icke also claimed that a coronavirus vaccine, when one is developed, would include "nanotechnology microchips" that would allow humans to be controlled. He added that Bill Gates - who is helping fund Covid-19 vaccine research - should be jailed. His views went unchallenged for much of the two-and-a-half-hour show.

Well, I dunno. I feel that British-originated conspiracy theories have a certain class, a certain quality, to them ... that distinguishes them from all the other half-baked stuff out there.

A British conspiracy theory can be guaranteed to be fully-baked, so there !!! ... and our Mr Icke is an institution unto himself.

That he also belongs in one, is a 'happy' coincidence .....

By original courtesy of the BBC ..........

[Kathianne]

Sometimes Darwin just won't quit. First Mardis Gras, now this:

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/49...irus-satan-and

Louisiana church expecting 2,000 at Easter service despite coronavirus: 'Satan and a virus will not stop us'
BY BROOKE SEIPEL - 04/10/20 05:12 PM EDT

...

[Kathianne]

Anyone else getting sick of hearing, "US has more deaths and infections than Italy." It's like saying, "NYC has more deaths than St. Louis!" Populations are in no way similar other than the fact they are both populated by humans.

I don't know is the whole of Western Europe has 300M people, but if so, then a fair comparison would be US and Western Europe when both are finished with rise and fall.

[Kathianne]

Germany's rate is lower, but there's been some controversy on how and whom they've counted. In general, US seems to have been doing pretty good. Look at 'Confirmed Case Fatality Rate' Just realized the titles were cut off, it's the percentage number:


Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Fatalities:

Global | United States

Country	Deaths	Deaths / 1M pop	New Deaths	Tests	Confirmed Cases	Confirmed Case Fatality Rate
United States	19,833	60.6	+1,086	2,578,931	508,575	3.90%
Italy	19,468	322.2	+619	963,473	152,271	12.79%
Spain	16,353	350.0	+272	355,000	161,852	10.10%
France	13,197	197.0	-	333,807	124,869	10.57%
United Kingdom	9,875	148.5	+917	334,974	78,991	12.50%
Iran	4,357	53.3	+125	251,703	70,029	6.22%
Belgium	3,346	292.9	+327	102,151	28,018	11.94%
China*	3,339	2.4	+3	-	81,953	4.07%
Germany	2,736	33.0	-	1,317,887	123,826	2.21%
Netherlands	2,643	153.4	+132	101,534	24,413	10.83%
Full Global List of Coronavirus Fatalities