Dr. X's Free Associations

Covid Patients Testing Positive After Recovery Aren’t Infectious, Study Suggests

Researchers are finding evidence that patients who test positive for the coronavirus after recovering aren’t capable of transmitting the infection, and could have the antibodies that prevent them from falling sick again.

Scientists from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 285 Covid-19 survivors who had tested positive for the coronavirus after their illness had apparently resolved, as indicated by a previous negative test result. The so-called re-positive patients weren’t found to have spread any lingering infection, and virus samples collected from them couldn’t be grown in culture, indicating the patients were shedding non-infectious or dead virus particles.

Read more.

"When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases."  ---Trump said this today.

Also, if we stopped recording deaths, we'd have no more death.

Trump:

“Katie [Miller], she tested very good for a long period of time, and then all of the sudden she tested positive ... this is why the whole concept of tests aren't necessarily great ... today, I guess, for some reason, she tested positive."

For some reason.

Tony Winning Actor's COVID-19 Ordeal

Tony Award winning actor, Nick Cordero, age 41, remains hospitalized. His wife, Amanda Kloots, wrote about his ordeal:

He went to the ER on March 30th and intubated on a ventilator on April 1,” Kloots wrote. “Since then, has he has suffered an infection that caused his heart to stop, he needed resuscitation, he had two mini strokes, went on ECMO, needed surgery to removal an ECMO cannula that was restricting blood flow to his leg, a faciatomy to relieve pressure on the leg, an amputation of his right leg, an MRI to further investigate brain damage, several bronchial sweeps to clear out his lungs, a septis infection causing septic shock, a fungus in his lungs, holes in his lungs, a tracheostomy, blood clots, low blood count and platelet levels, and a temporary pacemaker to assist his heart.

Two Months Ago

March 9, 2020

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020There

Okay. I'm thinking about that. We have flu vaccines. We don't have a COVID-19 vaccine.

There have been 78,000 deaths since this tweet, most of those occurring during various stages of shelter-in-place restrictions, mask wearing and distancing. Now the president is "lava level mad" about being exposed to someone who tested positive for the virus. Perhaps he needed a personal experience of how many of the rest of us feel.

Think about that.

If you run into an @ssh0le at the supermarket, it's probably me

I started out politely asking people to keep their distance, politely pointing out the one-way markers in the aisle, but I was met with indifference and, in one case, someone who frowned at me and rudely waved me off. Now I'm barking at shoppers who are clearly ignoring the distancing rules to keep them from brushing by me in the aisles when there is room to distance or when they're walking the wrong way. I know some may be absent-minded and some may not have noticed the arrows everywhere, but I've had it. I'm just barking: "Keep your distance!" or "You're going the wrong way!"

I haven't said the following to anyone, but I will if I get push back: "Six people in my family contracted the virus. My 40-year-old cousin is in the hospital* and my 73-year-old aunt is hospitalized on a ventilator. She's expected to die. So I'm not screwing around. Keep. Your. Distance."

So far, barking at people seems to make them much more malleable and accommodating, even without the family health report, which doesn't surprise me. I don't enjoy causing distress in others and, as a rule I avoid it, but they'll recover. If it stings, it may help them be a more conscious of the rights and safety of others, even if they don't care about their own safety.

*My cousin was previously hospitalized with the virus and was quite ill for several weeks. She had just gotten her strength back last week, but this week began to feel ill again and tested positive again.

Virus Update

COVID-19, a hoax perpetrated by fake news, was created in a Chinese lab because Chinese people eat bats & lie, but don't worry because Trump totally has it under control, and old people should die for the economy so it's time to open nail salons at gunpoint.

Ohio lawmaker can't wear a mask because it violates Judeo-Christian Principles

Jaw Drops:

Republican Ohio State Rep. Nino Vitale, who has been a vociferous critic of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, believes wearing a mask to slow the spread of the disease would violate his “Judeo-Christian Principles.” In a lengthy Facebook rant flagged by Ohio Capital Journal reporter Tyler Buchanan, Vitale railed against orders to wear face masks when venturing outside, which he claimed violated God’s teaching. “This is the greatest nation on earth founded on Judeo-Christian Principles,” Vitale wrote. “One of those principles is that we are all created in the image and likeness of God. That image is seen the most by our face. I will not wear a mask.”

The Dumbest Article on the Internet

Okay, I can't really say it's the dumbest article because there are so many competitors for the title, but this analysis (via author's tweet) is extraordinarily stupid.

Commenting on COVID-19 modeling, a reporter for The Washington Times writes:

That’s not good. But it’s not as bad as the 2017-2018 flu season, when 80,000 -plus perished. And it’s a long cry from what all the experts were warning about just a few weeks ago: First, they predicted 1.7 million Americans dead; then they redid the models (this time apparently entering a few more “facts”) and said 100,000-240,000 dead. Now, a major model relied on by the White House Coronavirus Task Force predicts about 70,000 dead by the end of August.

To address the last sentence, we are a day or two away form 70,000 deaths, today, May 4. But more problematic is the suggestion that earlier predictions were wrong because the numbers so far haven't reached the levels initially predicted. The initial number was predicated upon doing nothing to stop the spread of the virus. We've been locked down, social distancing, washing hands and doing school and work from home for several weeks. Of course, the numbers are far lower than the predictions for deaths without major intervention. Still, even with all the restrictions and precautions, we've had approximately 60,000 deaths in the last month. That's a shocking figure given all the precautions we've taken, but we didn't shut down to avert 60,000 deaths (now nearly 70,000). We shut down to avert 1/2 million to 2 million deaths. We've seen what can happen with no vaccine or immunity in the population when a deadly pandemic sweeps the nation: an estimated 657000 people died in the US as a result of the 1918 flu pandemic with a population less than 1/3 the current US population.

Regarding the comparison with the 2017-2018 flu season, I'd first note that the CDC counts the period from Oct 1 to March 31 -- a full six months as flu season, with four of those months being especially active. Even the peak month does not rival the month of April for COVID-19. Additionally, the estimate of 80,000 dead from the flu in 2017-2018 was a preliminary estimate that the CDC updated with an estimate that 61,000, most of those presumably occurring over the four-month peak season.  And that was without any real coordinated precautions other than the vaccine. WHICH. WE. DON'T. HAVE. FOR. COVID-19.

If you want to discuss poor track records for predictions, in February Donald Trump predicted that COVID-19 cases would shortly go from low double digits down to zero. He also said: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” He also said “I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that’s a beautiful date to look forward to.”

On an anecdotally-related personal note, six family members in New York have contracted the virus, two have been hospitalized, and one is still hospitalized in critical condition. I never heard of anyone in my family being hospitalized for the flu other than, possibly, my great grandmother, then in her 40s and her daughter, in her late teens, who died within a week of one another during the 1918 flu pandemic, though I don't know whether or not they were actually hospitalized. Back in those days, who knows?

COVID-19 Update

US COVID-19 death count: 68,465

Incapable of telling the truth or unable to handle the truth?

The only reason the U.S. has reported one million cases of CoronaVirus is that our Testing is sooo much better than any other country in the World. Other countries are way behind us in Testing, and therefore show far fewer cases!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 29, 2020

The numbers:

Remdesivir

This drug does sound promising.

What Does Covid-19 Have To Do With the Season Finale of The Bachelor?

Ratings

“President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.’ Numbers are continuing to rise...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2020

...On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen — ‘Monday Night Football’ numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites, and the audience is expanding. On Monday, Fox News...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2020

Just wait until the virus hears about the ratings. It'll hop the first freighter back to China.

Meanwhle, in China...

Wuhan reported only about 2,500 #coronavirus deaths, but 5,000 urns were delivered to one mortuary over just 2 days. “Wuhan has seven other mortuaries.” https://t.co/32sIwcJYRq @shanghaiist

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) March 27, 2020

After Chinese 640,000 test-kits were reported duds in Italy, now a report from Netherlands that says half of the 1.3 million face-masks supplied by China are defective. In other words, the only quality commodity coming out of China right now is propaganda. https://t.co/YlynJIcd7V

— Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) March 28, 2020

Local Update

It has seemed to me that almost everyone here is compliant with social distancing, though there were problems on the Lakefront and at the 606 Trail (an elevated trail like the NYC High Line) over the weekend, so the mayor has ordered both closed. Yesterday, I drove along the lakefront and CPD had it locked down tight with patrol cars at every pedestrian entrance.

As of yesterday, we had 26 confirmed COVID-19 related deaths, which is very few compared with New York where they had over 100 deaths in a single day. Perhaps we're lagging behind by a couple of weeks, but I'm hoping that we've slowed things down here.