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Corona Virus

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MaineYooper said:
I believe you need about 90% of the population immunized for herd immunity. That is why I tell folks who say they never get the flu that they get a shot to help others. In a typical flu season, I believe we only get, at best, 50% of adults to get their shot.
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I typically get a flu shot each year as do my wife and son. Unfortunately recently we've seen increasing numbers of people who are of the opinion that no one should be able to tell them what to do.
 
NurseDave said:
This started with healthy and “young” people not needing to worry too much about contracting it, to there being people younger than myself without a medical history being admitted to our hospital. Now, is that mutation or just getting more information about the same thing?
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It may be that the virus is mutating...not sure how much evidence there is to support it quite yet...but it definitely wouldn't surprise me if it was. But just looking at straight up number in my state and nation wide...the overwhelming number of deaths from COVID-19 are coming from the 70+ range and then the 60-70 age range. The numbers in just the cases are more interesting. In Louisiana the 50-59 age range has more cases than the other groups, BUT in each decade group starting with the 30 year group...there is less than a 1000 cases per group. Children ages are really statistically insignificant. Less than 500 cases in this group and two deaths. In one of the cases of death it was a 17 year old boy and there is some debate in what he actually died of, The other case was an infant who was born premature becasue of complications from the mother who had COVID 19. The infant was not infected. As a side note...there is very little info out there on pregnancy and COVID 19. To my knowledge there is only one study peer reviewed and published at the time on the topic, and unfortunately, it's from Chinese sources. So take it for what it's worth. But while there is the possibility of infection of COVID 19 within in the womb...it doesn't seem likely.

jamanetwork.com

Neonatal Early-Onset Infection With SARS-CoV-2 in 33 Newborns Born to Mothers With COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

This cohort study examines medical records of 33 neonates born to women with COVID-19 to provide information on maternal-child transmission and infant outcomes.
jamanetwork.com jamanetwork.com

But back to my original thought on the ages. There is a lot of information coming out on Vitamin D and COVID 19. This is interesting because certain groups of people are naturally deficient in Vitamin D and all of our levels seem to lower as we age. As mentioned before though...don't just start taking a bunch of Vitamin D without checking with your health care professional first. Too much supplementation of Vitamin D can be a really bad thing.

news.northwestern.edu

Vitamin D appears to play role in COVID-19 mortality rates

After studying global data from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, researchers have discovered a strong correlation between severe vitamin D deficiency and mortality rates.
news.northwestern.edu news.northwestern.edu

SSRN Electronic Library

papers.ssrn.com


MntnMan62 said:
I typically get a flu shot each year as do my wife and son. Unfortunately recently we've seen increasing numbers of people who are of the opinion that no one should be able to tell them what to do.
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I have been seeing this also. Not sure the actual motivation behind it...but I think with people seeing numbers go in the right direction...or at least stay the same...I think fatigue of the whole situation is seeping into thoughts and minds.

My own mother the other day started showing this attitude. It's disturbing and interesting all the same.
 
My thoughts on testing are probably not in line with everyone else. Sure to test someone to see if they have the virus is important to identify if that person has it or not to prescribe a course of treatment. But I think we are at the stage that ramping up the testing to identify the active virus is kind of a waste of time! We should be ramping up testing of antibodies to see who actually had COVID 19. Only then are we going to get a true rate (or as close to true as we can get) of infection. One of our hospital systems here is using the Mayo Clinic 48 hour turnaround antibody test. They have given it out to all their offices, facilities, and clinics, and as long as you make an appointment...you can get the test. Insurance covers it 100% now (well, at least mine does). My office where I visit my Nurse Practitioner is one of these places and I have an appointment early next month. I don't have any reason to think I have had the virus...but...I'm going to get the test anyway.

Just my thoughts.
 
My fear with testing is that many people will make assumptions that shouldn’t be made with the results. You’re correct, the main benefit of rapid testing is starting treatment sooner or get someone at home to put themselves in isolation. Or in a hospital’s case being able to remove isolation and stop burning up PPE use on that patient. A negative tells you next to nothing.
 
The Monkey said:
What is the end game? How does this end?

So is the goal of all this to:
1. stretch things out that the virus will eventually die out?
2. Stretch things until / hoping that we develop a vaccine?
3. Stretch things out to build a herd immunity without overwhelming the medical system.
4. Just hide.
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Your question is probably the biggest reason people are beginning to revolt in areas where their activity (and liberties) have been severely restricted for an extended period of time. The problem, as I am personally experiencing it in California, is we have a collective number that looks bad but much of the ‘bad’ is concentrated in 3-4 major regions so most people (geographically) don’t actually see what’s happening. Making it all worse, from the very beginning, the communication from ALL sources has been poor. The early messaging WAS “slow the spread, flatten the curve so we don’t overwhelm the medical system”. The implicit statement was that we were not trying to eliminate all chances of exposure until a vaccine could be developed, only turn exponential growth into a more gentle linear type growth. In fact, our California governor once uttered the words ‘here immunity’ in the context of it being part of our long term goal. So, what is the end game? I think our “leaders” (plural...as in the ones with local control) need to revisit this and all get on the same page THEN tell us so we know.

NurseDave said:
No sir. Most of the talk is about testing. Which confuses me about all the ramp up in testing. There are many rapid tests that we refuse to use because of the inaccuracies. You get a false negative and boom, you’re out there spreading your seed thinking you’re safe.
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Sing it brother. Everytime I hear the “testing, testing, testing” mantra (because saying anything three times means it’s important right?) I wonder if they have thought it through. Testing is absolutely wonderful and so powerful but the way they’ve been doing it in my county minimally useful for anything more than trend tracking and after the fact tracing. With tests that take days to report you have positives who don’t know they are positive and might be exposing others (because they better go get their toilette paper before they know for sure) and negatives who become positive while waiting for results then go out and spread thinking they have proof they aren’t positive. For testing (say it 3 times) to be really powerful like they imagine it would be, you need to be able have fast reasonably accurate results and the ability to test large numbers of people in a geographic area all at once. Then we lockdown that area and test the next etc. d
MaineYooper said:
I believe you need about 90% of the population immunized for herd immunity. That is why I tell folks who say they never get the flu that they get a shot to help others. In a typical flu season, I believe we only get, at best, 50% of adults to get their shot.
Click to expand...
Herd immunity thresholds are different depending on the disease. How a disease is spread, rate of transmission and mortality rates are the biggest factors in determining the herd immunity threshold. Highly contagious but not very deadly diseases like measles require a Herd immunity above 90% but something very deadly like Ebola only requires herd immunitybetween 1/3 and 2/3. Many/most of the virus’s that come to mind require a herd immunity in the high 70% or 80% but influenza (flu) is actually quite low, typically below 50%. They are currently estimating COVID19 to require a herd immunity threshold between 30% and 75% (still a new game).
The thing with herd immunity is, it doesn’t keep you/others from getting sick. Herd immunity thresholds are the levels that keep the rate of spread in an ‘endemic steady state’. That just means the ‘curve’ is flat, the number of people getting sick (and presumably dying) is steady.
 
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