Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

Post Reply New Topic

This morning, they have said on the news it is debunked.
Hydroxychloroquine doesn't work, apparently. <shrug>

Shock finding on Trump’s ‘COVID-19 cure’

US President Donald Trump’s potential cure for COVID-19 has been found not to work by a new study in the US and it could set patients back in their re...

Pet cats test positive for coronavirus

Two household cats have become the first pets in the US to contract the infection. It comes as Australian researchers close in on whether animals can ...

Health officials in Santa Clara County on Wednesday described three newly confirmed deaths from the coronavirus — including one that counts as the nation’s first — as the tip of an “iceberg,“ with more previously undetected Covid-19 fatalities expected to be confirmed.

The officials late Tuesday revealed the finding that the first death to occur in the county from Covid-19 happened on Feb. 6 — three weeks before Washington state reported its Feb. 29 death, which at the time was believed to have been the first in the nation. The three earlier Santa Clara County deaths were not associated with travel to highly infected areas, indicating the virus was spreading in the U.S. much earlier than previously thought.

“What these deaths tell us is that we had community transmission probably to a significant degree far earlier than we had known, and that indicates that the virus was probably introduced and circulating in our community, again, far earlier than we had known,” Sara Cody, the county’s public health officer, said during a news conference Wednesday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday he’s requested that coroners review cases across the state as far back as December and he expects subsequent announcements to be made “by similar efforts all across the state of California.”

The Santa Clara County medical examiner-coroner conducted autopsies on three people who had flu-like symptoms and died at home — a 57-year-old woman who died Feb. 6, a 69-year-old man on Feb. 17 and a 70-year-man on March 6 — and tested samples for Covid-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed those results Tuesday.

The new finding also places a Covid-related death in Santa Clara about a month before the county confirmed its first such death on March 9.

Cody said the robust influenza season — combined with lack of testing and narrow criteria for evaluating potential cases — made it “extraordinarily difficult” to distinguish the flu from the coronavirus.

When a patient dies or is in the intensive care unit for Covid-related illness, “that means there’s some iceberg of cases of unknown size that underlie those iceberg tips,” Cody said. “With three of them, that tells us there must have been a somewhat significant degree of community transmission.”

Santa Clara County, an early U.S. epicenter of the disease, had previously confirmed its first coronavirus infection on Jan. 31 — a case associated with travel to China — and its first example of community transmission on Feb. 28. The county coordinated with five other Bay Area counties to impose the nation's first regional shelter-in-place order on March 16.

While the previously undetected Covid deaths show the virus was circulating in the community earlier than thought, experts cautioned that this does not provide evidence that more people have developed antibodies that protect them from being reinfected.

Cyrus Shahpar, a director at Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit that combats global epidemics, said much still needs to be learned about asymptomatic infections and transmissions. “We don’t know anything about levels of the immunity and duration of immunity,” said Shahpar, a Bay Area epidemiologist who previously led the CDC’s Global Rapid Response Team.

In Los Angeles County, where the pandemic was confirmed later than in the Bay Area but has since caused more infections, health experts said they may not be able to test people who died in February or earlier. But Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles' public health department, said the county has already started conducting tests on people who died from respiratory illnesses who were not screened earlier for the virus.

In hindsight, we should've probably looked more carefully, particularly at deaths. But I think hindsight is beneficial as we move forward; it doesn't really help us understand what might have happened in the past," Ferrer said at a briefing Wednesday. "It's unfortunate we might not have that information, but we would anticipate that across the country, particularly in travel hubs, like L.A. County is, that we were probably seeing some infection much earlier on than what we were able to diagnose."

County officials expect to associate additional deaths with the virus as they continue their investigation.

“We anticipate this pandemic is going to be going on for a very, very, very long time. We know we do not have immunity in the population, nor do we have a vaccine,” Cody said. "Anytime that we let up on our mitigation measures, we are going to expect to see a spike in cases hospitalizations and deaths. That is certain."

30 different genetic mutations of COVID-19
The novel coronavirus has mutated into at least 30 different genetic variations, according to a new study in China.

Officials in China are racing to contain a deadly new strain of virus that has infected almost 450 people and left almost 20 dead. Over the weekend, the number of cases of the "2019 novel coronavirus" or "2019-nCoV" quadrupled — and U.S. health officials confirmed the first case in the United States on Tuesday, in a man in his 30s who had recently traveled from Wuhan, China, to Seattle.

The outbreak began in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people. Many of the patients have reportedly been linked to Hua Nan Seafood Wholesale Market, a large seafood and animal market in the city, according to CBS News' Ramy Inocencio. But a rising number of people have apparently contracted the virus without exposure to the market, according to Chinese officials. On Monday, a Chinese scientist confirmed that there can be human-to-human transmission of the respiratory illness.

The virus has spread to at least five countries, including the U.S. On Tuesday, federal health officials said a man in Seattle, Wash., who had recently traveled to Wuhan is infected. The case marks the first in the country since the outbreak began. While the virus originated in China, cases have also been reported in Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and now the United States.

The news comes as top officials in China have reportedly warned lower-level officials to not cover up the spread of the new coronavirus, which began at an animal and seafood market in the city of Wuhan and is now said to be transmissible between humans.

Any lower-level officials who attempt to conceal new cases would “be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity,” officials with the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, a top political body in the country that handles law and order, allegedly said, according to the BBC.

The warning was sparked after information was reportedly withheld from the public at the start of the outbreak. More specifically, the number of cases was underreported and the risks of the new coronavirus were understated.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has since pushed for all information regarding the outbreak to be made readily available, according to the BBC, which cited Chinese state media. He reportedly added that “all-out efforts” are being made to control the spread of the virus.

Officials with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are working on a vaccine to combat the deadly Chinese coronavirus that’s sickened more than 400 people and killed at least 17, an NIH spokesperson told Fox News on Wednesday. The news comes as Chinese officials are reportedly warning against any attempts at a cover-up as the pneumonia-like disease continues to spread.

"Wuhan-400 is a perfect weapon."

Some interesting fiction, published in 1981.

Don’t forget: before our “sedentary lifestyle,” the human lifespan was at least 20 years lower than what it is now. Statistically, it was way lower than 20 years lower.

I do believe we have to build immunity to COVID19 through.....catching COVID19.

Paradoxically, because many people caught COVID19 this time around in NYC, it’s possible that we NYers have built up a “herd immunity,” which would make us relatively impervious to what might happen in a “second wave” of COVID19 come autumn. That we had to sacrifice over 10,000 people to obtain this “herd immunity” is absolutely atrocious.

Don’t forget the fact that 3/4’s of Native Americans died of the measles became measles was a “novel” virus to the New World,

The virulence of COVID19 could very well be a product of its “novelty.”

Data gathered from 2,634 patients who either died or were discharged from the hospital showed that 12 percent of them were placed on ventilators and of those who were, 88 percent of them died.

What Jimmy related is confirmed by the mortality figures provided by the NYC Department of Health, via www1.nyc.gov.