General Coronavirus (COVID-19) chat

[Brainaddict]

the picture is far from a simple: get CV and survive = have long term physical health problems.

No-one has said that though. But there are figures available for SARS (one study said 17% of SARS survivors hadn't been able to return to work one year later, but I think that was severe hospitalised cases) and there is increasingly data available for CV-19. The CV-19 symptoms tracker app says that 1 in 10 people who got the virus that they've been tracking have had longer term symptoms. Which is not insignificant, and very different from, say, a bad cold, which lots of people wanted to compare milder cases to.

 

[zahir]

Unpicking the reason for long term symptoms and problems post some illnesses are complex though. Some of it can be physical health issues (damage, muscle wastage, etc) some of it can be mental health issues, and some is the interplay between the two.

I wonder if there’s a risk here of blurring the difference between cognitive issues to do with the effects of the virus and depression and other mental health issues. I’d hope that people facing cognitive issues don’t just get offered a couple of sessions of CBT over the phone.

Anyway, this will also be playing out with CV, so the picture is far from a simple: get CV and survive = have long term physical health problems.

Yes, I think my case is relatively mild but at the moment I’m not assuming that at some point everything is going to get back to normal.

 

[existentialist]

No-one has said that though. But there are figures available for SARS (one study said 17% of SARS survivors hadn't been able to return to work one year later, but I think that was severe hospitalised cases) and there is increasingly data available for CV-19. The CV-19 symptoms tracker app says that 1 in 10 people who got the virus that they've been tracking have had longer term symptoms. Which is not insignificant, and very different from, say, a bad cold, which lots of people wanted to compare milder cases to.

But lots of people ARE saying that! There's a very well-entrenched view that "it's just a flu", and that both severity and mortality are being exaggerated by those with vested interests. I'm in the middle of some very uncomfortable discussions with just one such person, who insists she's already had it (probably unlikely), that it's being made a big deal of to serve ulterior motives, and that the restrictions are excessive and politically motivated.

For those of us who can see past a few soundbites, it's probably fairly obvious that a serious respiratory infection is likely to have further-reaching consequences, at least in some cases, but we would be wise not to assume that everyone realises this.

 

[IC3D]

Interesting this discussion is playing out already by floating ideas of mental health issues in regard to symptoms. I hope research can be done so this cohort suffering long term symptoms can getaway from the syndrome label. Living with CFS is made tenfold worse when people don't believe you. Yes it leads to depression as any long term illness does and reading these accounts has reminded me about what I went through. Mental health professionals in this instance should hold back for the time being and hopefully good research on the phsysiology of post viral illness will bepu lished.

 

[zahir]

See this from the NHS site:

Patients who have been in hospital or suffered at home with the virus will have access to a face-to-face consultation with their local rehabilitation team, usually comprising of physiotherapists, nurses and mental health specialists.

Following this initial assessment, those who need it will be offered a personalised package of online-based aftercare lasting up to 12 weeks, available later this Summer.

Accessible, on-demand, from the comfort of their own home, this will include:

• Access to a local clinical team including nurses and physiotherapists who can respond either online or over the phone to any enquiries from patients;
• An online peer-support community for survivors – particularly helpful for those who may be recovering at home alone;
• Exercise tutorials that people can do from home to help them regain muscle strength and lung function in particular, and;
• Mental health support, which may include a psychologist within the online hub or referral into NHS mental health services along with information on what to expect post-COVID

 

[zahir]

Obviously it’s a good thing that this is being planned for but it does make me wonder how appropriate the ‘mental health support’ is going to be.

 

[existentialist]

Obviously it’s a good thing that this is being planned for but it does make me wonder how appropriate the ‘mental health support’ is going to be.

Oh, I expect they'll contract Serco to train up a few thousand school leavers to run some kind of CBT-based manualised bullshit along the lines of the IAPT thing they had a crack at a decade or so ago. They'll start with something nicely one-size-fits-all, and dumb it down to the point of uselessness. Think "Turkish PPE".

 

[LDC]

Obviously it’s a good thing that this is being planned for but it does make me wonder how appropriate the ‘mental health support’ is going to be.

Depends, mental health care in the NHS is like all the other parts of it; underfunded, etc etc.

 

[zahir]

Think a 'mild' case of Covid-19 doesn’t sound so bad? Think again | Adrienne Matei

Otherwise healthy people who thought they had recovered from coronavirus are reporting persistent and strange symptoms - including strokes

www.theguardian.com

The article links to this extract from a Dutch report on longer term effects:

https://www.biomax.com/lib/press-releases/Initial-Result-Announcment_English.pdf

The health of many Corona patients who have not been admitted to hospital is still 'frighteningly poor' after months. That's what Longfonds director Michael Rutgers says. Many home patients even have problems walking.

Fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pressure, headaches, muscle aches: almost three months after the first symptoms typical for the virus, part of the Corona patients who were sick at home still have serious complaints. This was the conclusion of a survey carried out by the Dutch Lung Foundation together with the treatment and knowledge centre CIRO and Maastricht University among more than 1600 people with Corona type complains. No less than 95 percent of those surveyed indicated that they had problems with simple daily activities. Longfonds director Michael Rutgers. „We're really shocked by this. More than six in ten even have problems walking.''

Of the people who participated in the study, 91 percent have never been in hospital because of Corona, and 43 percent have not been diagnosed by a doctor. "This is the first time that this large patient group has been identified. These people really need to be seen, heard and helped,'' says Rutgers. „We need to prevent this group of patients from ending up invisible after corona.''

The average age of participants in the study is 53 years. By far the largest group (85 percent) says that their health was good before the Corona infection; now only 6 percent experience good health. Nearly half of them said that they were no longer able to exercise after the corona infection. The health of corona patients who have experienced the disease at home is frighteningly poor,'' explains the Longfonds director. Until now, the focus has been - rightly so - on the people who have ended up in the hospital or even on the ICU. But we shouldn't forget this group of home-based Corona patients.''

Patients with lung problems after Corona can visit an online platform 'Coronalongplein' of the Lung Fund and the Lung Alliance Netherlands (LAN). There is also a 12,000 member Facebook group with Corona experiences and long-term complaints. Rutgers: "That thousands to tens of thousands of people still have complaints is certain; the question is whether that will remain so in the long run.”

Veterinarian Marcel de Kruijff is one of those patients: “The RIVM says that you can go back into the wide world if you are free of complaints for 24 hours, but that's not how it works. Everyone will think: this guy has to get a kick in the ass and then he'll be fine. But it really doesn't work.”

Top 10 most frequently mentioned complaints, almost three months after the first symptoms

Fatigue (87.8%)
Shortness of breath or tightness of breath (74.2%)
Chest pressure (45.4%)
Headache (39.8%)
Muscle pain (36.2%)
Pain between shoulder blades (35.2%)
Palpitations (32.7%)
Increased resting heart rate (30.1%)
Dizziness (28.6%)
Coughing (28.3%)

Source: Lung Fund Survey, treatment and knowledge centre CIRO and Maastricht University

 

[IC3D]

There's plenty of posts on nursing FB groups complaining of long term symptoms.

 

[zahir]

Depends, mental health care in the NHS is like all the other parts of it; underfunded, etc etc.

Also Maslow’s hammer: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

 

[existentialist]

Interesting this discussion is playing out already by floating ideas of mental health issues in regard to symptoms. I hope research can be done so this cohort suffering long term symptoms can getaway from the syndrome label. Living with CFS is made tenfold worse when people don't believe you. Yes it leads to depression as any long term illness does and reading these accounts has reminded me about what I went through. Mental health professionals in this instance should hold back for the time being and hopefully good research on the phsysiology of post viral illness will bepu lished.

I think the problem with a lot of things like CFS, ME, fibromyalgia, etc., is that while there is clearly often a psychological component, people - especially people with conditions such as those - have got so used to being brushed off with excuses like "it's all in the mind" that they can often become actively resistant to the merest idea that state of mind is a factor, either way, in these conditions.

I haven't worked with many people with CFS, but I have a fairly regular stream of clients for whom fibromyalgia is on the list of conditions, and many of them do get at least some relief from a counselling intervention. But it does need to be properly and sensitively done - to be honest, I think the kind of "six sessions of CBT and off you go" approach isn't the best one for conditions like this. But then I would say that, wouldn't I?

 

[editor]

This is going to screw with Trump's racism

Exclusive: Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes

Coronavirus may have lain dormant across the world and emerged when the environmental conditions were right for it to thrive rather than starting in China, an Oxford University expert believes. Dr Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), at Oxford...

uk.news.yahoo.com

 

[existentialist]

This is going to screw with Trump's racism

Exclusive: Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes

Coronavirus may have lain dormant across the world and emerged when the environmental conditions were right for it to thrive rather than starting in China, an Oxford University expert believes. Dr Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), at Oxford...

uk.news.yahoo.com

Nah, he'll just go "fake nooos", and make extra China jokes at his next speech.

 

[two sheds]

There was a cruise ship that went from South Georgia to Buenos Aires, and the passengers were screened and then on day eight, when they started sailing towards the Weddell Sea, they got the first case. Was it in prepared food that was defrosted and activated?

A bit concerning (possibly).

 

[elbows]

A bit concerning (possibly).

Like several other parts of the article, I thought this bit was weak. 8 days for a case to emerge, presumably via symptoms emerging, does not require special explanations. Nor should the idea that passengers were initially 'screened' imply much, such screening processes cannot begin to identify everyone who may already be infected.

Articles like this are good when they encourage people to keep questioning stuff and not rely on assumptions. They should also give people a sense of just how poorly many things are understood and how relatively little effort went into improving our understanding over many decades. But when the people involved in these articles sound too keen to find 'things that can only be explained by our own pet theories' then I go off them and start to nit pick at their ideas.

The idea that it was in sewage in europe in 2019 is also unconfirmed at this time, as usual multiple explanations for the initial studies findings exist. Was coronavirus really in Europe in March 2019?

I'm not necessarily keen on language about the virus 'remaining dormant' either. For me I find it easier to believe it wasnt totally dormant, but that all manner of viruses exist without us noticing them unless they have a really obvious burden on health of plenty of people. Thinking of it as dormant is a rather human-centric stance that hints at some of our blind-spots. I dont know its history pre Wuhan, I only know that in Wuhan it caused enough of a health impact that people noticed it for the first time. We know there are viruses out there which have animal hosts to thrive in, and that will sometimes have the opportunity to infect some humans. This probably happens far more than we will ever know. The big question is whether these viruses are then capable of spreading effectively in human populations in ways that are very hard to stop, or whether they fizzle out, or whether their healtchcare buden is great enough for anyone to really notice. I dont understand the blokes surprise about SARS 1 disappearing, it looked like a case of a virus that could spread between humans in certain settings but that wasnt quite as rampant as this SARS2, so when humans became aware of the SARS outbreaks they were able to get them under control and the outbreaks did not seem to extend much beyond the identified clusters. So transmission was successfully controlled and there was then no further spread in the general population. There are a whole bunch of influenza viruses that we have noticed in animals or the resulting small, controlled human outbreaks, which are considered to have pandemic potential, giving scientists sleepless nights and reasons to put in funding requests, but most of these may never unlock that potential and there are so many uncertainties that I feel this side of disease surveillance is still in its infancy in some ways.

As for the faecal transmission stuff, thats another lesson from known SARS 1 outbreaks and should not be a surprise. I think it should have been focussed on a little more with the basic public health messages, god knows I've brought it up enough since February but there you go. SAGE were certainly looking at the stacked risks from public toilets some time ago, I think I quoted them on that subject recently.

 

[elbows]

And I would always invite people to think about how much of the picture we were missing by virtue of simply not looking.

In the UK in February the virus was not actually dormant as far as those vulnerable to death from it were concerned, its just we werent looking for it unless the people in question had an absurdly specific and narrow travel history. And it wasnt prevalent enough to cause the sorts of levels of healthcare burden that would sound the alarm on their own. Once we actually started looking we quickly found deaths, and then the number of infections also got to the level where the healthcare burden became obvious. But there were still periods where the virus was doing things here that could still be dismissed by certain mindsets as the virus being dormant, when it was anything but. As we come out of the other side of the first wave there may be plenty of times and places that, if we were not now actively seeking to find cases, could easily be considered to be virus-free if we didnt know better.

Even without the influence of mutations over time, a virus that can cause a dramatic, world-changing pandemic in one period can be an irrelevance that would hardly be noticed or cared about at others. It is convenient to attach simplistic explanations to these phenomenon, such as 'it mutated to become less dangerous', or that the virus somehow has its own mind and rhythm, when really its probably interplay between a whole bunch of factors, some which we have some reasonable understanding of and some that we probably dont. So its not terribly surprising that even many experts in relevant fields may be searching for a theory to comfort their sense that 'something doesnt add up', or interested laypersons like me who from time to time go on about 'still expecting a twist or two in the story of this virus'.

For the sake of the future, people and planet it would be very convenient if I could believe that there was a 'magic factor' which made this virus gain its devastating impact on human health, and that it turned out to be various forms of industrial and transport pollution, that would really upset the apple-cart in ways that could actually aid human progress eventually after much pain and transition. The virus that ate cars. If I had a different attitude to reality then I would probably be trying to peddle that idea, crudely fitting the 'facts' to serve my theory. Instead I will just be found occasionally bringing the theme up but not expecting it to go anywhere really, just one of many angles to muse over, just another thing that is unlikely to be a good fit for the complexities of this universe. Just another passing blip on the radar that I cannot afford to become too attached to.

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

As for the faecal transmission stuff, thats another lesson from known SARS 1 outbreaks and should not be a surprise. I think it should have been focussed on a little more with the basic public health messages, god knows I've brought it up enough since February but there you go. SAGE were certainly looking at the stacked risks from public toilets some time ago, I think I quoted them on that subject recently.

When I did the quarantine here, they gave us tablets to put in the cistern of our toilet, and a special sachet of chemicals to pour over our shit before we flushed. Taking no chances.

 

[Yossarian]

This is going to screw with Trump's racism

Exclusive: Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes

Coronavirus may have lain dormant across the world and emerged when the environmental conditions were right for it to thrive rather than starting in China, an Oxford University expert believes. Dr Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), at Oxford...

uk.news.yahoo.com

Seems like one of the more leftfield theories about the spread of the virus - his research also seems to have been on the sloppy side.

As an example of this possibility, he pointed to the isolation of Western Samoa, which lost 22% of its population to Spanish Flu in 1918, and claimed the islands had no contact with the outside world. However, it is well documented that Spanish Flu arrived on board the SS Talune on 7 November, 1918, when six infected passengers from New Zealand were allowed ashore.[9][10].

 

[zahir]

More on long term symptoms

Coronavirus: Thousands say debilitating symptoms last 'for weeks'

Thousands of people with Covid-19 report recurring symptoms for far longer than 14 days.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Badgers]

 

[bimble]

Well this is terrifying.

Warning of serious brain disorders in people with mild coronavirus symptoms

UK neurologists publish details of mildly affected or recovering patients with serious or potentially fatal brain conditions

www.theguardian.com

 

[LDC]

Well this is terrifying.

Warning of serious brain disorders in people with mild coronavirus symptoms

UK neurologists publish details of mildly affected or recovering patients with serious or potentially fatal brain conditions

www.theguardian.com

They'll be lots of this stuff, and some of it will be proven to be true over time, and some of it won't, but will make great (read scary) headlines in the meantime. The numbers in that study are really small too compared to total infections, so they're not that concerning tbh.

 

[platinumsage]

This is going to screw with Trump's racism

Exclusive: Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes

Coronavirus may have lain dormant across the world and emerged when the environmental conditions were right for it to thrive rather than starting in China, an Oxford University expert believes. Dr Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), at Oxford...

uk.news.yahoo.com

Nah, he'll just go "fake nooos", and make extra China jokes at his next speech.

Even a stopped clock.... That article is a complete crock of shite containing as much woo as homeopathy.

Of course the Chinese state love it: www.twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1281141150628249600

Thread:

 

[Artaxerxes]

I picked up what claim to be some KN95 masks recently, how useful are these?

 

[Supine]

I picked up what claim to be some KN95 masks recently, how useful are these?

what do you want to use them for?

 

[Artaxerxes]

what do you want to use them for?

Tube travel, they seemed a better idea than cotton masks

 

[Supine]

Tube travel, they seemed a better idea than cotton masks

you certainly wouldn’t be underprepared

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

I picked up what claim to be some KN95 masks recently, how useful are these?

These are what I would wear indoors. They protect you as much as protecting other people. Since there seems to be a low uptake in people wearing masks, these are the most useful kind.

Where did you get them?

 

[Artaxerxes]

These are what I would wear indoors. They protect you as much as protecting other people. Since there seems to be a low uptake in people wearing masks, these are the most useful kind.

Where did you get them?

eBay, they are about all that are available on there of you look for ffp2 masks.

Paranoid they are a crock of shit fake of course.