Coronavirus - how much do you worry ?

[ross]

Thanks KB I’m just a results oriented country boy & still sorting things .

[WLLady]

The thing with MERS is it didn't get out-they contained it before it did, partially because of great work on the part of the health workers that went in a stopped and partially due to the fact that MERS doesn't have a groovy little furin cleavage site making it a lot more pathogenic (like SARS-CoV-2 does). The SARS-CoV virus also doesn't have that groovy little furin cleavage site in it, so it's also not as easily spread as SARS-CoV-2 (the one that causes covid-19) does. Even though SARS did go around, it finally died out because it wasn't spreading easily enough between people. So. The biology of the virus has fundamentally changed in that it binds to the same proteins on cells to get in (ACE2) but it has to have this cleavage event to get internalized a lot better than the other 2 viruses did. IF-and this is the HUGE "if"-they had locked down EVERYTHING the INSTANT the first doctors talked about it, SARS-CoV-2 had a chance of being cut off as well. However, patient 21 (i think that was the number) that attended mass services did that in...and spread it far and wide. Not to mention certain gov denying there was a problem.....sigh. all it takes is a matter of a day or two to make the difference.

One thing that may help us all is there was a group working on SARS vaccine, and when SARS basically fizzled out, they ran out of money and shelved it, partially completed. They have Covid-19 money now and have reopened those old books and samples and might have saved a lot of time on developing a newer vaccine. Because SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are very very similar (like you can almost overlay the protein folding maps of the two!) it's highly likely any vaccine for the one will recognize the other. Fingers crossed.

I honestly do not think the virus appeared in Canada much before we started seeing the cases in the news. There was a flu that hung on for a lot of people this year, started in october or so which was an influenza B strain. Influenza A and B both overlapped this year, with B emerging first, which tends to be worse than A. and the vaccine didn't hit B this year. The vaccine for A this year actually didn't seem too far off and did help.....no, I don't think Covid-19 was around before it was in the news....I do think the young lady student at UWO that arrived in january that had it was the first....and she was awesome and it was totally contained. i think we likely had cases arrive shortly after that that no one knew about. So i would think likely feb it was circulating around but in a very very small portion of people, but it would take time to get off the ground here. So I seriously doubt that there's been widespread infection in jan/feb. And it would definitely shock me if i heard that there was. We would see it in the retirement homes pretty instantly, and those have just recently had problems. if it's carried easily (which it is spread easily), we would have seen it before in the elderly from family visiting. To me the signs of an earlier infection aren't there, not in the numbers we would expect. (the numbers that have hit us since).
i could be wrong though-certainly there was something went through my workplace in february....there were 3 days when i was the only person there working-and i'm uber anal about washing hands at work because i share an office with a married couple with kid in school under the age of 10, and they pick up EVERYTHING and bring it to work. I managed an additional 10 days before i woke up one morning and told my DH i feel like crap. just like crap and if my students were not writing an exam today i'd stay home.....sigh i was just wiped, so tired. but then i'd also had ablation surgery, and my back is buggered again, and working 50 hours a week....so. was it tired or was it flu or was it something else? no clue. Until we get an antibody test we'll never know. Once we get that antibody test though it will be super interesting to see what proportion of the population has antibodies and then figure it out retrospectively.

[poultry_admin]

What does it enable u do ?
So why test seems like a waste of time & resources

two scenarios:
one is trying to reduce the spread. So if you assume (!) that one spreads the virus for 10 days between getting it and becoming symptomatic and testing positive. THEN one can go back to the social interactions for those 10 days and quarantine all those people (and the people they met since, ...). It's a hell of a lot of work. And needs good records of all people contacted. That's where a phone app is really helpful. South Korea, Taiwan, and China have done this successfully. This can be done with fairly low number of tests. Keep testing people repeatedly well past the incubation period or until they don't spread it for at least twice in a row. Then allow those to leave quarantine. This approach would allow a "normal" life for the rest of the population.

second is determining a snapshot of herd immunity. This needs a lot of tests and you also need to have repeat tests. This would only help at the very end of the pandemic when you want to find out if herd immunity is far enough progressed to let everyone go back to normal.

Neither is required to get out of lockdown. You can wait for the body count of deaths, but now you are 3wks behind the time of infection, not 10 days. Sorry, I know this is morbid and insensitive. I mean no disrespect! But in countries where the testing numbers are too low, that number or the hospitalizations are a fairly reliable way to track it as well. Just waaaaaaay too late to effectively quarantine.

[WLLady]

This test it tells you you don’t have now but does it tell it’s not in your system as I’ve heard it could be there & incubate for 14 days & show up and test is good for today but not down rd ? Would u have to be tested every so many weeks ? Confused

@ross
So the swab test that they use to diagnose if you have the virus is done when you are shedding virus. This seems to be between 72 hours and 14 days between when you are infected....let me back up. You get infected by person A. This is day 0. Then, you will not test positive until the virus attached to your cells, gets in, highjacks the cell machinery, makes copies of itself and then releases those copies back out of the cells and into your airways, and you breath them out. The swab can detect the copies that are on the surface of your cells, and in your mucus, saliva, or the few cells that get scraped off with the swab. At this point you are likely at a testing center because you feel like crap. So all we can say is by the swab test you are positive, which means you were infected between 72 hours and 14 days ago. Then, your body keeps making and shedding virus that is picked up by the swab test for up to 21 days after you are symptomatic. So you get symptoms sometime between 72 hour and 14 days after you are infected, and then you have another 21 days to go. You would test positive at this point on the swab test AND by a blood test. There are several types of blood tests for viruses. 1) there's a test for the virus itself-that uses the same principles as the swab test. These detect the RNA from the virus. If you are infected, and shedding viruses, some of those viruses will likely get into your blood stream either through release of the cells into the vessels directly, or through spots that are bleeding from the coughing etc. 2) your body starts to make antibodies against the virus once it is detected as foreign. So the second kind of test we could do is looking for the antibodies in your blood that would detect the virus. If you have those antibodies you have had the virus in your body at some point, and your body tried to fight it off. These antibodies are what they are trying to transfer between people when they take blood from people that have recovered already and give it to people before they get sick. So we can test if a person already had the virus by looking in their blood for antibodies that they would have made to the virus. This is the kind of test we'll need eventually. It's also called doing titres....if you have ever had your hep titre done by blood test, they've tested how many hep antibodies you have in your blood.
This test would be used to see how many people have antibodies and can be used to tell how much of the population has already had the virus. This is the testing we would need in order to send people back to work if we choose to go the route of only immune people go back to work, and non-immune stay isolated until vaccination.
So the swab test will tell if there's active infection-infection that can be spread. The blood test for the antibodies would tell who has been exposed, gotten better and is now immune for a period of time. The blood test to test for infective and shedding just is a bit more labor intensive and invasive than the swabs....but there are some in production now, but that also would test for active infection-and would be useful for getting infected and spreading people away from noninfected.....

[ross]

Thank you all that helps , I think lol
In the mean time this is me if I go anywhere there’s folks & my rubber scrub gloves plus safety glasses
Luck all

[LongCrow]

An update for all those who felt I was fear mongering and spreading gossip. It is looking more and more each day that the virus was man-made in the Wuhan lab. The lab that Trudeau supported with a generous Canadian tax dollar $830,000 donation to impress other supporters like Bill Gates and USA $3.4 million dollar donation during Obama years. Dr. Fauci is even on record from a few years ago predicting Trump would face a major pandemic.

As I said, history will most likely prove facts will be way different then many in power want us to believe.

Personally I'm still more concerned on the economic factors this will cause. I still think it will lead to much greater pain and suffering than the virus. Yesterday crude oil sold for minus $37 a barrel. They paid people to take it. Why are there no models showing what economic fall out will be. Lots of pandemic models.

[Killerbunny]

I am not getting into politics but the other thing that concerns me is that in Ottawa various surgeries including some cancers have been called "elective" and put on hold. Now having been there I wanted that sucker out asap and it turned out mine was very aggressive which the original biopsy didn't show so I would have likely been put on hold with potentially a worse outcome. I am sure there are others who are now waiting and are very anxious. Stress isn't what you need at a time like that.

[poultry_admin]

Personally I'm still more concerned on the economic factors this will cause. I still think it will lead to much greater pain and suffering than the virus. Yesterday crude oil sold for minus $37 a barrel. They paid people to take it. Why are there no models showing what economic fall out will be. Lots of pandemic models.

Have a look here:
https://www2.deloitte.com/ca/en/pages/a ... board.html

It's not bad news or sensational, so it's not on the cover page. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I would be super surprised if our politicians don't have the pandemic forecasts, economic forecasts AND the current polls and forecasts in front of them all the time. They need to keep a close eye on all three to ensure they get through this AND win the next election.

[LongCrow]

Have a look here:
https://www2.deloitte.com/ca/en/pages/a ... board.html

It's not bad news or sensational, so it's not on the cover page. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I would be super surprised if our politicians don't have the pandemic forecasts, economic forecasts AND the current polls and forecasts in front of them all the time. They need to keep a close eye on all three to ensure they get through this AND win the next election.

Very interesting data on the past and present but very little forecast information. Are the $500,000 houses suddenly only going to be worth half that. Due to massive spending are interest rates going back to double digits from inflation? Many of us remember mortgage rates as high as 18% in what seems not that long ago.
I'm not saying they will but it could happen. This would instantly bankrupt numerous households. This is just one example, world shortages of many products will also drive inflation.

[Killerbunny]

i well remember those mortgage rates and in the UK they were variable too so you really didn't know how much each month. Mortgages there were also very difficult to get at the time.