Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[ceez]

thanks @Insertnamehere , I am still nervous about catching it. I have high blood pressure and last year I caught virus that I believe was some form of covid because I had the same symptoms (shortness of breath, dry cough, dizziness, fever) and my bp shot up even after I was better, so now I'm on two bp medications.

something else I was thinking about today is how much these big corporations got from the stimulus package. a lot of companies are complaining about unemployment fraud because people are taking a leave of absence and collecting unemployment, but I wonder how many companies got stimulus money that never shut down like my job that's not even an essential business. maybe people in the U.S. wouldn't be so pissed off about the whole thing if the government actually made it possible to stay home like some of the other countries that did stimulus checks for four months. I was naive enough to believe the stimulus package would allow the rental offices and landlords to hold off rent for at least a couple months. anyway, maybe it will all get sorted out before the apocalypse

[ceez]

a picture from 1918

[James]

That was very true, thank you for finding and posting this picture, the flu virus in the 20"s killed many people

[Insertnamehere]

@ceez

You have to be extra careful then. You might have caught swine flu back then though, I've heard it can cause similar symptoms (from a few people I know that caught it back in 2010).

I would not be surprised if some versions of these related coronaviruses have been roaming for a while though, as could be evidenced in Spain (apparently, haven't followed through with that bit of news).

MERS-CoV was certainly widespread in camels for at least a decade before it attacked these ungodly primates we call humans (this is from their probably primary source in horseshoe bats). At any given point many different viruses are probably making the species jump but are not all are set to go on full pandemic mode. Until they are set...then they spread.

On another topic, the case in the US you describe seems eerily similar to what has been done here. Many companies are stretching what it means essential and there is little to no incentive by the government to control this. The economy was elevated over lives and we are where we are. Of course the whole economy argument was stupid. If you let a novel virus spread with little to no control in a population, it will wreck havoc on the economy anyway because you'd be forced to bleed money into the health sector when it becomes stressed and you'd also be forced to take the same harsh lockdown measures you refused to do before, except they will last longer because you have an exponentially greater infection rate to overcome. It was nonsensic.

[James]

I would agree mostly with your post except the people in the states that don't have insurance are being charged for care so why would the Government care. Goes back to the almighty dollar and mo compassion for fellow man. The new swine virus in China along with the Blubonic plague discovered , one case, makes me wonder what the world is in for, take care, stay safe, Jim

[Insertnamehere]

^ I am not particularly familiar with the Healthcare in the US. But no insurance does seem very difficult as it is, let alone in a pandemic. So...they are not covered at all? So this is horrible of course. You will obviously choose to go into debt to pay for healthcare bills or if you can't even do that...probably die. Inhumain!

I can obviously only compare so much.

Here, the basic 7% retention from your wage gets you covered by a national healthcare fund (if you chose so, a private insurance company which considers added coverage in private health centers, obviously, if you have the extra money to pay for these plans).

Around 80% of us are in the public system because...wage. Anyone without a source of income would go to any primary care center, fill a form and they would be added to the public system in basic coverage. Not the best deal they can get but at least they can't be refused care in public hospitals.

The biggest issue with the public system has always been underfunding, available public hospitals, health professionals per inhabitant working in the public system and waiting lists which can become a problem in respiratory illness season.

So it was so very important that the virus would be contained aggressively from the get go. The policies adopted by our government refused to do so and cases have reached over 300k (for country with merely 18 million people) which has all intensive and critical care units around 85-90% occupied. So the government has been forced to pour money into the system all at once to attempt to control the problem (purchasing ventilators, etc.).

Then if you add that the precarious conditions that most low income and middle class people are in right now due to both not shutting things down early and giving cash transfers, we are in a vicious circle. Lack of government aid forcing the choice between continuing work and staying home, lead to exponential contagion which eventually forced lockdown, but these are extended due to obvious unsuccessful decrease in mobility, because, again, lack of government aid forced people to continue to work which then puts further stress to the public health system and so on and so on. It was never a good idea to initially favor economic output by keeping most things functioning because it would lead to the uncontrolled contagion we saw and then extended lockdowns and finally government tapping into reserves to go in the aid of the better part of the population, which would have been less extensive because by containing the spread sooner, less people would have needed it. And mind you this aid, they are still DISCUSSING what it will finally be- Their initial solution was something like 100 USD and a few goods for SOME lower income families and for the rest a f**ing credit. First case was detected on March 3th and here we are still waiting an unresponsive government discussing what aid they can give.

A complete and utter disastrous handling of the crisis if you ask me. And in this regard, the issue of money over people is what I deem similar to the American case.

But what you describe there when people have no insurance is just out of this world.

[James]

So very true, not just here but in many corners of the world, all we can do is try and protect ourselves and hope for the best, just as a post note, the Pentagon during the Vietnam war had an acceptable casuality list for every operation. I am sure I am on a list as I sent them a mail asking if my life was acceptable, yours, Jim

[CellarDweller]

Fauci Calls White House Attacks On Him 'Bizarre'

Tamara Keith


Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, said recent White House attacks on his record are backfiring, calling the episode "bizarre" in interviews with [i]The Atlantic.[/i]

The magazine published Fauci's comments after one of President Trump's senior advisers on trade and China, Peter Navarro, wrote an op-ed for[i] USA Today [/i]in which he argued that Fauci "has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on."

It was one of a series of salvos against the immunologist by the White House, which has struggled to explain why top aides appear to be at open war with a widely respected scientist whom an overwhelming majority of Americans say they trust more on the coronavirus than the president, or almost anyone else.

"I cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that. I think they realize now that that was not a prudent thing to do, because it's only reflecting negatively on them," Fauci told [i]The Atlantic. [/i]"I can't explain Peter Navarro. He's in a world by himself."


https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus...de-adviser

[CellarDweller]

First we had this:




Then we had this:





and now we have this:


Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain dies after battle with coronavirus

PUBLISHED THU, JUL 30 2020  Kevin Breuninger


Herman Cain, a former presidential hopeful who was once considered by President Donald Trump for the Federal Reserve, has died after being hospitalized with the coronavirus. He was 74.

Cain’s death was announced Thursday on his website by Dan Calabrese, who edits the site and had previously written about his colleague’s diagnosis.

“Herman Cain ”“ our boss, our friend, like a father to so many of us ”“ has passed away,” Calabrese said in the blog post. “We all prayed so hard every day. We knew the time would come when the Lord would call him home, but we really liked having him here with us, and we held out hope he’d have a full recovery.”

Cain was among the highest-profile public figures in the United States to have died from Covid-19. Less than two weeks before receiving his diagnosis, Cain attended Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had been staged despite concerns about mass gatherings during the pandemic.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/former-g...virus.html

[Insertnamehere]

Found a new paper that attempts to track evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2 by first identifying and removing recombinant genome that would make difficult to assess phylogeny. They established potential divergence dates that would indicate early circulation in horseshoe bat populations, most likely carrying the Spike protein Receptor-Binding Motif that when mutated in the right way, and via an intermediary species, allows adherence to ACE2 receptors in human host cells (and therefore infection) as it was not a recombinant trait nor acquired recently. 


"It is clear from our analysis that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 have been circulating in horseshoe bats for many decades. The unsampled diversity descended from the SARS-CoV-2/RaTG13 common ancestor forms a clade of bat sarbecoviruses with generalist properties””with respect to their ability to infect a range of mammalian cells””that facilitated its jump to humans and may do so again. Although the human ACE2-compatible RBD was very likely to have been present in a bat sarbecovirus lineage that ultimately led to SARS-CoV-2, this RBD sequence has hitherto been found in only a few pangolin viruses. Furthermore, the other key feature thought to be instrumental in the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect humans””a polybasic cleavage site insertion in the S”‰protein””has not yet been seen in another close bat relative of the SARS-CoV-2 virus."


Here it is for everyone who wants to take a look (Boni et al., 2020. Nature Microbiology)