I’m now of the opinion that most of us are all going to get the coronavirus eventually. In my honest opinion, heard immunity has been the only way to deal with this all along.
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Coronavirus (Stay on Topic)
- Thread starter GaWx
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ForsythSnow
Moderator
It's more about slow exposure to reduce impact of at risk individuals. Spikes are not slow exposure. Exposing too quickly is what spreads it to nursing homes and elderly quickly which in turn spikes hospitalizations and deaths. A hospital performs better and can save lives better if it isn't overwhelmed.
Georgia reports 1,018 new cases
Maybe so. There are so many reports and studies out that seemingly conflict with each other. Hospitals are going to be inundated. The virus is mutating more aggressively. The virus is mutating less aggressively. Hospitals are listing Covid for everything. Zinc helps. Zinc doesn't help. A vaccine will save us. A vaccine will only be 20% effective. It's been around since the Fall of 2019. It just got here in January. It came from the wet market. It didn't come from the wet market. You can catch it from asymptomatic people. You can't catch it from asymptomatic people. Etc etc etc.
D
Deleted member 1449
Guest
welcome to the misinformation age!
snowlover91
Member
Texted the person I was exposed to on Sunday and she is still dealing with it. She said it was like the flu on steroids with lots of bad aches, fever and some shortness of breath which makes sleeping difficult. Her doctor told her around day 7 is when most people take a turn for the worse... she’s waiting on confirmation of the results and should find out Monday or Tuesday.
GeorgiaGirl
Member
Hmmm that actually times up just about perfectly with the time that the protests began in Atlanta, to combine with Memorial Day travel.
JHS
Member
JHS
Member
Agree with this 100%.
JHS
Member
NCSNOW
Member
It will be like " Chaz" which is ok with a lot more folks than Id care to add up.
NCSNOW
Member
Anyone think Hospitalizations might be going up because we started back with elective sugeries etc? Not like it was and only covid patients was being accepted
NoSnowATL
Member
I don’t think so, more testing equals more positives I think. Hospitals around here have plenty of room. I understand some states are having more issues but it’s really not serious here, I think it would take a huge increase in hospitalization and deaths to go backwards and even then I don’t see a lockdown ever happening again. I’ll give it a few weeks and see how it goes but schools are opening up on time and people are going back to work. Really seems like a afterthought now.
GeorgiaGirl
Member
I might just need to be near the situation to know, but having been in all 3 hospitals at least a few times...
www.wrdw.com
At least as of yesterday, Augusta's still pretty much fine with hospitalizations, which is what I'm mainly worried about (and they're probably not just taking people from in and directly near the county either to be honest). AU Health is absolutely gigantic and if you're not used to that hospital, you can easily feel overwhelmed in there. University/Doctor's Hospital are both pretty big too (and with University it might be counting two hospitals). Biggest concern with Doctor's Hospital is they're the only burn center for a while in multiple directions however if they were to be overwhelmed with COVID cases.
By the numbers: Latest stats on COVID-19 in CSRA, vaccines
Get a look at continuously updated COVID-19 and vaccination statistics of interest in the CSRA as well as the two-state region at-large.
www.wrdw.com
At least as of yesterday, Augusta's still pretty much fine with hospitalizations, which is what I'm mainly worried about (and they're probably not just taking people from in and directly near the county either to be honest). AU Health is absolutely gigantic and if you're not used to that hospital, you can easily feel overwhelmed in there. University/Doctor's Hospital are both pretty big too (and with University it might be counting two hospitals). Biggest concern with Doctor's Hospital is they're the only burn center for a while in multiple directions however if they were to be overwhelmed with COVID cases.
smast16
Member
Pandora's box has already been opened. There is no putting this back in the box
Mutated coronavirus strain is much more transmittable, study shows
A mutation in the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, strengthens the spikes on the outside of the virus, allowing it to better latch on to its host.
www.jpost.com
MichaelJ
Member
Since the shutdown began, (as of 2 weeks ago) over 100,000 small businesses have closed permanently and one expert predicted it will be over 300,000 by August. I am giving it two more months before I make a final decision whether to shut down permanently or not. I pray for those that have lost theirs every night and hope others pray for them as well.
China reports 57 new cases.
Snowflowxxl
Member
In GA, 1,018 new cases the last 24 hours. One might think that's a lot, especially for a Saturday, but the key is that there were a lot more tests vs yesterday. Also, hospital admissions, ICU and deaths were significantly lower than yesterday:
- 15,834 tests
- 1,018 cases
- 43 hospital admissions
- 8 ICU
- 28 deaths
Webberweather53
Meteorologist
Well.. you know when China reports 57 cases that number is probably in the thousands again ?
The test turn around though isn’t 24 hours, so the tests performed yesterday are not also the positives from yesterday. The positives we got yesterday are from the past 24-72 hours or more. Not saying what you are saying is wrong, but just can’t necessarily be extracted from the information. Yes, more tests overall will yield more positives, but more importantly, however regarding the above info is that yesterday only had 7772 tests, not 15834, the bigger number counts antibody tests, which is not testing for new cases.
ETA: https://covidtracking.com/data/state/georgia
This site helps sort some of the data more precisely.
Alabama is adding lots of cases in the past few days. Hospitalization has ticked up a little bit, however deaths in the state has remained flat. The interesting part is case numbers per day jumped significantly after ADH noted that there was problem with their dashboard and also something to do with the CDC, so I don't know if they changed something, were samples just disappearing, or they now adding positive antibody tests in as well? Looks like some mass testing going on as well. Looks like the area around Montgomery driving most of the numbers.
Another interesting fact, black Alabamians make up only 27% of the cases but 46% of the deaths. It is really hitting that group hard.
Another interesting fact, black Alabamians make up only 27% of the cases but 46% of the deaths. It is really hitting that group hard.
snowlover91
Member
Yep probably about 100x the official number lol.
Alabama reports 1,018 new cases in the last 24 hours. Not good
Another very interesting thing I've found today. From the beginning of the pandemic in AL, how the hospitalization/ICU ratio has diverged. Either the virus is hitting more healthy individuals or the care of hospital Covid cases has really improved.
JHS
Member
DHEC: 799 new cases of COVID-19, one death in SC
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control announced on Sunday 799 new cases of COVID-19 and 1 additional death.
www.wspa.com
Going on up. Beach counties starting to be hit hard now along with Greenville.
Georgia reports 880 new cases and 5 new deaths in the last 24 hours.
VegasEagle
Member
This article was in the Decatur Daily. Don't know if it was in the Huntsville paper. It is long but informative.
Please read and take seriously the words of Decatur pulmonologist, Dr. Boyle.
'It's not like the flu' — Decatur doctor is on COVID-19 front line
By Eric Fleischauer Metro Editor
If Decatur residents could witness what he sees every day inside Decatur Morgan Hospital, Dr. James Boyle suspects they would all be wearing masks in public and social distancing.
“People say, ‘This is overblown; it’s just like the flu.’ But it’s not like the flu,” said Boyle, a pulmonologist and medical director of the intensive care and critical care units at Decatur Morgan Hospital. He is overseeing the treatment of about 20 patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19 and another 20 “persons under investigation” who are awaiting test results. “It’s 10 times worse than the flu. It’s not the same. It’s much worse, and we’re dealing with lots more.”
Boyle said three people had died of COVID-19 at Decatur Morgan Hospital as of Friday, and four were on ventilators — a last-ditch step he only takes when patients are not responding to other treatments. No COVID-19 patients have successfully been removed from ventilators, although he said he expects the patients now on them to recover.
According to Alabama Department of Public Health data, two Morgan County residents have died of COVID-19, and no residents of Lawrence or Limestone counties have died of the disease. Assistant State Health Officer Dr. Karen Landers on Friday said the discrepancy between the hospital's death count and the ADPH numbers could be explained if the Decatur Morgan Hospital deaths involved people residing outside the three counties, or it could be due to ADPH delays in confirming a death was caused by COVID-19.
“While the process is as expedient as possible, there can be periodic delays due to obtaining medical records or other information,” Landers said.
The only drug that’s shown significant benefit in
treating the new coronavirus, remdesivir, was not available in Alabama on Thursday or Friday.
Landers said ADPH exhausted its supply of remdesivir Thursday, but expects to receive more this week.
Boyle said remdesivir is most effective when administered early. His daily routine, until the state ran out, was to evaluate each of his confirmed COVID-19 patients and to score the unconfirmed cases to determine if they were likely to have the disease. He used that information to issue a request for the appropriate number of remdesivir doses, which are administered through a five-day course of injections, sometimes followed by another five days.
“We’ve got a few doses left, and we hope it will get us through,” Boyle said. “In my estimation, that’s the treatment of choice. I believe that remdesivir helps early on, so we try to get that to people as soon as we can when they come to the hospital.”
It's a bad time to be without the drug. ADPH reported 39 new cases of COVID-19 in Morgan County on Friday and 37 on Saturday. Of the 553 cases in the county, more than half have been reported in the last two weeks. Morgan County has more confirmed COVID-19 cases than Madison County, despite having one-third the population. Statewide, 888 new cases were reported Saturday, the highest daily count since testing began. It was the third consecutive day of record highs.
ADPH typically distributes remdesivir to hospitals the day after they request it — and not by FedEx.
“The vast majority of remdesevir is delivered to hospitals by couriers from the Attorney General's Office,” Landers said. “The attorney general has graciously allowed ADPH to utilize the AG investigative staff to provide this most needed service.”
Boyle said the first phase of COVID-19 is similar to influenza.
“With this COVID-19 virus you do have that first phase of illness just like the flu, where you have the fevers and the chills and the body aches. As that starts to go down, we have to deal with something cal
led the cytokine storm. As the virus is going away, now your immune system is kicking in,” he said.
The immune response can be deadly.
“Influenza is a virus that predominantly affects the lungs. But COVID-19 is a systemic virus. It affects every single organ. We’re seeing effects to the brain; we’re seeing effects on the heart and in the gut; we’re seeing kidney failure,” he said.
Another unique symptom of COVID-19 is that it causes abnormal blood clotting, or coagulopathy.
“For the coagulation part, we’re using blood thinners. As (coagulation increases) we’re using more and more of the blood thinner to see if we can keep the people from getting clots and strokes and things associated with this virus,” he said.
Boyle does not use steroids during the viral stage of the disease because it suppresses the immune system, but he uses steroids and other immunosuppressants during the cytokine storm.
“The cytokine storm is a lot like the rheumatoid diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases where your immune system is really what we’re fighting at this point. We’re starting to fight an immune system that’s gone out of whack,” he said.
While shortness of breath is considered a classic symptom of COVID-19, Boyle said it’s not always present, and it does not correlate with the dangerously low blood-oxygen levels — called hypoxemia — he sees in some patients.
A person with healthy lungs typically has a blood-oxygen level over 95%. “We get a little nervous when it’s less than 90, a little more nervous when you’re less than 85. … If I can’t get you above 80%, you’re probably not going to survive.”
‘Happy hypoxemia’
The problem is that people infected with the coronavirus may be hypoxemic without knowing it.
“What we see is these people coming in and they may be a little disoriented or maybe a little bit sick. They may be talking and they won’t say they’re short of breath, but their oxygen level will be 60%.
“There’s a term that’s going around w
ith this pandemic. It’s called ‘happy hypoxemia,’ because people come in and appear to be OK, but they’re profoundly hypoxemic, to the point they can’t support their organ systems. That’s probably why some people get in trouble at home, because the normal signal that you’re in trouble — that you need to go to the hospital — is that you’re short of breath. This illness does not necessarily have that.”
Boyle said patients with a severe case of the flu are sometimes put on ventilators, basically to give their lungs time to heal. Those experiencing a cytokine storm, however, have a much worse prognosis.
“If you end up on a life support machine, it’s not a short course. You’re not on it for three days, not for five days. You’re likely to be on it for three weeks or longer. If the inflammatory response just continues, and we’ve seen this occur, those lungs just get progressively worse,” Boyle said.
COVID-19 patients are sedated before being put on a ventilator, and sometimes drugs are used to paralyze them.
“There are two reasons we paralyze you. One is you require less oxygen when we paralyze you. But the primary reason we do that is that we have to have maximum control over your breathing. If we don’t paralyze you then you will cough and you will try to breathe against the machine and you’ll generate really high pressure that will do more damage to your lungs. We’re trying to maximize our ability to oxygenate you, but sometimes even that is not enough,” he said.
He said one patient died after being on the ventilator 26 days. Another died after about 23 days on life support.
If the ventilator is not raising the blood-oxygen levels enough, Boyle and his team will flip the unconscious patients onto their belly, called “proning.”
“It sounds simple, but it’s not,” Boyle said. “We don’t typically have IV access to your backside. So you now have a tube in your windpipe. You’ve probably got a tube in your nose that’s going into your stomach. And then you probably have on
e
Please read and take seriously the words of Decatur pulmonologist, Dr. Boyle.
'It's not like the flu' — Decatur doctor is on COVID-19 front line
By Eric Fleischauer Metro Editor
If Decatur residents could witness what he sees every day inside Decatur Morgan Hospital, Dr. James Boyle suspects they would all be wearing masks in public and social distancing.
“People say, ‘This is overblown; it’s just like the flu.’ But it’s not like the flu,” said Boyle, a pulmonologist and medical director of the intensive care and critical care units at Decatur Morgan Hospital. He is overseeing the treatment of about 20 patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19 and another 20 “persons under investigation” who are awaiting test results. “It’s 10 times worse than the flu. It’s not the same. It’s much worse, and we’re dealing with lots more.”
Boyle said three people had died of COVID-19 at Decatur Morgan Hospital as of Friday, and four were on ventilators — a last-ditch step he only takes when patients are not responding to other treatments. No COVID-19 patients have successfully been removed from ventilators, although he said he expects the patients now on them to recover.
According to Alabama Department of Public Health data, two Morgan County residents have died of COVID-19, and no residents of Lawrence or Limestone counties have died of the disease. Assistant State Health Officer Dr. Karen Landers on Friday said the discrepancy between the hospital's death count and the ADPH numbers could be explained if the Decatur Morgan Hospital deaths involved people residing outside the three counties, or it could be due to ADPH delays in confirming a death was caused by COVID-19.
“While the process is as expedient as possible, there can be periodic delays due to obtaining medical records or other information,” Landers said.
The only drug that’s shown significant benefit in
treating the new coronavirus, remdesivir, was not available in Alabama on Thursday or Friday.
Landers said ADPH exhausted its supply of remdesivir Thursday, but expects to receive more this week.
Boyle said remdesivir is most effective when administered early. His daily routine, until the state ran out, was to evaluate each of his confirmed COVID-19 patients and to score the unconfirmed cases to determine if they were likely to have the disease. He used that information to issue a request for the appropriate number of remdesivir doses, which are administered through a five-day course of injections, sometimes followed by another five days.
“We’ve got a few doses left, and we hope it will get us through,” Boyle said. “In my estimation, that’s the treatment of choice. I believe that remdesivir helps early on, so we try to get that to people as soon as we can when they come to the hospital.”
It's a bad time to be without the drug. ADPH reported 39 new cases of COVID-19 in Morgan County on Friday and 37 on Saturday. Of the 553 cases in the county, more than half have been reported in the last two weeks. Morgan County has more confirmed COVID-19 cases than Madison County, despite having one-third the population. Statewide, 888 new cases were reported Saturday, the highest daily count since testing began. It was the third consecutive day of record highs.
ADPH typically distributes remdesivir to hospitals the day after they request it — and not by FedEx.
“The vast majority of remdesevir is delivered to hospitals by couriers from the Attorney General's Office,” Landers said. “The attorney general has graciously allowed ADPH to utilize the AG investigative staff to provide this most needed service.”
Boyle said the first phase of COVID-19 is similar to influenza.
“With this COVID-19 virus you do have that first phase of illness just like the flu, where you have the fevers and the chills and the body aches. As that starts to go down, we have to deal with something cal
led the cytokine storm. As the virus is going away, now your immune system is kicking in,” he said.
The immune response can be deadly.
“Influenza is a virus that predominantly affects the lungs. But COVID-19 is a systemic virus. It affects every single organ. We’re seeing effects to the brain; we’re seeing effects on the heart and in the gut; we’re seeing kidney failure,” he said.
Another unique symptom of COVID-19 is that it causes abnormal blood clotting, or coagulopathy.
“For the coagulation part, we’re using blood thinners. As (coagulation increases) we’re using more and more of the blood thinner to see if we can keep the people from getting clots and strokes and things associated with this virus,” he said.
Boyle does not use steroids during the viral stage of the disease because it suppresses the immune system, but he uses steroids and other immunosuppressants during the cytokine storm.
“The cytokine storm is a lot like the rheumatoid diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases where your immune system is really what we’re fighting at this point. We’re starting to fight an immune system that’s gone out of whack,” he said.
While shortness of breath is considered a classic symptom of COVID-19, Boyle said it’s not always present, and it does not correlate with the dangerously low blood-oxygen levels — called hypoxemia — he sees in some patients.
A person with healthy lungs typically has a blood-oxygen level over 95%. “We get a little nervous when it’s less than 90, a little more nervous when you’re less than 85. … If I can’t get you above 80%, you’re probably not going to survive.”
‘Happy hypoxemia’
The problem is that people infected with the coronavirus may be hypoxemic without knowing it.
“What we see is these people coming in and they may be a little disoriented or maybe a little bit sick. They may be talking and they won’t say they’re short of breath, but their oxygen level will be 60%.
“There’s a term that’s going around w
ith this pandemic. It’s called ‘happy hypoxemia,’ because people come in and appear to be OK, but they’re profoundly hypoxemic, to the point they can’t support their organ systems. That’s probably why some people get in trouble at home, because the normal signal that you’re in trouble — that you need to go to the hospital — is that you’re short of breath. This illness does not necessarily have that.”
Boyle said patients with a severe case of the flu are sometimes put on ventilators, basically to give their lungs time to heal. Those experiencing a cytokine storm, however, have a much worse prognosis.
“If you end up on a life support machine, it’s not a short course. You’re not on it for three days, not for five days. You’re likely to be on it for three weeks or longer. If the inflammatory response just continues, and we’ve seen this occur, those lungs just get progressively worse,” Boyle said.
COVID-19 patients are sedated before being put on a ventilator, and sometimes drugs are used to paralyze them.
“There are two reasons we paralyze you. One is you require less oxygen when we paralyze you. But the primary reason we do that is that we have to have maximum control over your breathing. If we don’t paralyze you then you will cough and you will try to breathe against the machine and you’ll generate really high pressure that will do more damage to your lungs. We’re trying to maximize our ability to oxygenate you, but sometimes even that is not enough,” he said.
He said one patient died after being on the ventilator 26 days. Another died after about 23 days on life support.
If the ventilator is not raising the blood-oxygen levels enough, Boyle and his team will flip the unconscious patients onto their belly, called “proning.”
“It sounds simple, but it’s not,” Boyle said. “We don’t typically have IV access to your backside. So you now have a tube in your windpipe. You’ve probably got a tube in your nose that’s going into your stomach. And then you probably have on
e
South Africa reports 4,302 new cases and 57 new deaths.
One of the interesting thoughts I heard on this was that as we are reopening, the higher risk individuals are still remaining mostly at home, therefore the spread has increased but mortality decreased, as more who are catching it are less likely to die. Still at this rate, the unknown of who dies and why (outside of the age/disease) group is still concerning....Diverging...parabolic rise in # of cases and # of deaths is inverse. ?
This is probably the best news we can get I would get...low mortality rate. ?
View attachment 42887
View attachment 42886
Another thing I’ve heard discussed is as of this point a lot of the most susceptible people could have been exposed such as with nursing homes. Nursing homes have been driving a large percentage of the deaths.
Another point could be as well is people who were staying home now are now going back into the public which also means not being afraid to go to the doctor when feeling ill.
For GA (adding to what @Snowfan posted):
24 hour additions reported at website on Fri 6/12:
- 7,493 additional tests reported excluding antibody
- 810 cases
- 108 hospital admissions
- 15 ICU
- 43 deaths
24 hour additions reported at website on Sat 6/13:
- 13,254 additional tests reported excluding antibody
- 1,018 cases
- 43 hospital admissions
- 8 ICU
- 28 deaths
24 hour additions reported at website on Sun 6/14:
- 15,786 additional tests reported excluding antibody
- 880 cases
- 24 hospital admissions
- 5 ICU
- 5 deaths
Keep in mind that reporting of some things tends to come down during the weekend. So, use this data with caution.
24 hour additions reported at website on Fri 6/12:
- 7,493 additional tests reported excluding antibody
- 810 cases
- 108 hospital admissions
- 15 ICU
- 43 deaths
24 hour additions reported at website on Sat 6/13:
- 13,254 additional tests reported excluding antibody
- 1,018 cases
- 43 hospital admissions
- 8 ICU
- 28 deaths
24 hour additions reported at website on Sun 6/14:
- 15,786 additional tests reported excluding antibody
- 880 cases
- 24 hospital admissions
- 5 ICU
- 5 deaths
Keep in mind that reporting of some things tends to come down during the weekend. So, use this data with caution.
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Webberweather53
Meteorologist
The mortality rate is low... for now. When we run out of resources as the hospitals are continuously overloaded because certain people wanted to reopen everything prematurely, that will certainly change for the worse by a lotDiverging...parabolic rise in # of cases and # of deaths is inverse. ?
This is probably the best news we can get I would get...low mortality rate. ?
View attachment 42887
View attachment 42886
The USA reported the lowest number of deaths today since March 26th. However, cases do seem to be at a plateau of sorts now. I’m thinking we may be in a situation where we just see deaths in the hundreds each day for the remainder of the summer. Let’s hope it eventually trails off and doesn’t spike again in the fall.
One thing I’d like to see is data on new hospitalizations for NC. Hospitalizations are relatively high now, but it’s unclear to me whether that is driven by longer stays or by an increased number of new admissions. Unfortunately, I don’t know if that data is available.Diverging...parabolic rise in # of cases and # of deaths is inverse. ?
This is probably the best news we can get I would get...low mortality rate. ?
View attachment 42887
View attachment 42886
The data’s definitely a bit confusing for our state. Cases and hospitalizations continue to look bad, but then deaths have been dropping...there could be some “hot spot chasing” that is driving the increased case counts/high positive test rate, maybe? I don’t really know. I do assume we probably had significantly higher actual cases in April/May that we simply didn’t pick up because testing was so sporadic early on in this state.
To me, the public health data at this point doesn’t support us moving to phase 3 imminently, though economic realities could force this sooner than might be ideal from a public health standpoint. However, I think we’re still a ways away from backsliding into phase 1. We could be in phase 2 for quite a while. At least life has largely returned to normal for me in phase 2, which is a big improvement over phase 0/1, so I could handle this for a while. However, bar, gym, etc. owners on the other hand......
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Deaths and hospitalizations look to continue to look down if this is correct. Although I’m not sure that isn’t a typo. That is a huge change in three days hospital wise.
I’ve noticed in NC that hospitalizations often drop off significantly over the weekend, so it could be correct. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it spike again early this week, though (but hopefully not!).
Yeah I believe that is the issue. I found a good graph showing the weekend drop well.
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