Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[BobbyPhil1781]

9 minutes ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

People blaming protests must live in an area that’s different that what I’ve seen the last 2-4 weeks.

Throughout Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee (only places I’ve been the last few weeks) people give less than a 💩 about distancing and masks by and large. Gatlinburg/Smokies were PACKED with people and maybe 1/20-30 were wearing a mask.  No one was distancing. 
 

Putting this all on protesters is either naive or purposefully disingenuous.

I feel it's the "straw the broke the camel's back". The places you mentioned can be packed and they were going to be regardless, yes. Now scale that to the number of people attending the protests. Which were larger by a massive margin?? I don't ever leave my house these days bc I'm doing my part to help this 💩 go away so I haven't been to the Smokies but my guess is there weren't tens of thousands of people huddled together. Is that accurate?

Yes, it's a combination of many, many things that is going to give us no college season but to deny the protests being a main culprit, if not the main culprit, is incorrect IMO.

Edited June 13, 2020 by JTagg7754

[Shanedorf]

13 hours ago, JTagg7754 said:

Good News Guy here to save you all !! Some potentially great news on the treatment front in severe cases.

"First Clinical Use of Lenzilumab to Neutralize GM-CSF in Patients with Severe and Critical COVID-19 Pneumonia"

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.08.20125369v1

 

Lenzilumab is a way to treat severely sick patients and the way it works is by stopping the "over-reaction" from your body to the virus. Part of the respiratory distress these patients have is due to all of the immune cells flocking to the lungs to fight off the invader. But too large a response -  and your lungs essentially drown in immune fluids. Lenzilumab neutralizes the progenitor cells ( Colony Stimulating Factor-  CSF) and stops them from ramping up the immune response

It's an interesting strategy and it seems to be working well - and we are learning more each day. But this shines a light on the challenge of dealing with a novel virus - even if you have the right tools in your chest, you don't know enough about the pathology to use them. Now they do.

more details below from an earlier post:

"What happens in corona patients is that the infection causes the alveoli in their lungs to become leaky - 
which leads to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome
Instead of these air sacs being oxygen transporters, they fill with fluid and become water balloons. ( that fluid is loaded with immune cells and cyokines)
Pulmonary edema ensues and the patients essentially drown. For those that don't succumb to the edema, the secondary effect is that the body initiates repairs by putting down layers of fibroblasts to patch those leaks. Those fibroblasts in turn block the passage of oxygen from the lung into the capillaries and the patients die of suffocation."

The fibroblasts that are used to repair the leaky lung sacs are causing the scarring seen in some post-COVID patients -  and those people will live with impaired lungs for the rest of their lives.

[BobbyPhil1781]

There are certainly a lot smarter people here than me lol. Thanks for the detailed explanation

[TVScout]

The free:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/

The maybe free:

Mutation Allows Coronavirus to Infect More Cells, Study Finds. Scientists Urge Caution.

Geneticists said more evidence is needed to determine if a common genetic variation of the virus spreads more easily between people.

Quote

Researchers at Scripps Research, Florida, found that the mutation, known as D614G, stabilized the virus’s spike proteins, which protrude from the viral surface and give the coronavirus its name. The number of functional and intact spikes on each viral particle was about five times higher because of this mutation, they found. These spike proteins must attach to a cell for a virus to infect it. As a result, the viruses with D614G were far more likely to infect a cell than viruses without that mutation, according to the scientists who led the study, Hyeryun Choe and Michael Farzan.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-mutation-genetics-spike.html?campaign_id=154&emc=edit_cb_20200612&instance_id=19370&nl=coronavirus-briefing&regi_id=127802529&segment_id=30823&te=1&user_id=0ec3b530f45ff5c070e34ae9b6fc8ea1

 

Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html

Probably not free:

Beijing goes into ‘wartime mode’ as virus emerges at market

Quote

A district in central Beijing has gone into “wartime mode” after discovering a cluster of coronavirus cases around the biggest meat and vegetable market in the city, raising the prospect of a second wave of infections in the sensitive capital, the seat of the Chinese Communist Party.

 

The discovery of dozens of infections, both symptomatic and asymptomatic, underscores the perniciousness of the virus and its propensity to spread despite tight social controls.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/beijing-goes-into-wartime-mode-as-virus-emerges-at-market-in-chinese-capital/2020/06/13/65c5aac8-ad40-11ea-868b-93d63cd833b2_story.html

 

 

[mission27]

1 hour ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

People blaming protests must live in an area that’s different that what I’ve seen the last 2-4 weeks.

Throughout Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee (only places I’ve been the last few weeks) people give less than a 💩 about distancing and masks by and large. Gatlinburg/Smokies were PACKED with people and maybe 1/20-30 were wearing a mask.  No one was distancing. 
 

Putting this all on protesters is either naive or purposefully disingenuous.

Yeah this has zero to do with protesters.  The places with the most protesters (northeast and midwest) are not seeing a surge.  The places that are seeing a surge are:

1. Southeast where everyone on the east coast flocked for Memorial Day 

2. Southwest is a similar situation and added issue that it is extremely dry

Whats really disappointing is this could all be prevented if people took basic precautions.  The rest of the developed world is opening up on the same timeline and not seeing a surge of the magnitude we are seeing in the southern half of the country.  I hate to say it but the only thing that will solve this problem is a whole bunch of people in that part of the country dying a horrible death to convince folks to take this seriously.  

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

1 hour ago, JTagg7754 said:

I feel it's the "straw the broke the camel's back". The places you mentioned can be packed and they were going to be regardless, yes. Now scale that to the number of people attending the protests. Which were larger by a massive margin?? I don't ever leave my house these days bc I'm doing my part to help this 💩 go away so I haven't been to the Smokies but my guess is there weren't tens of thousands of people huddled together. Is that accurate?

Gatlinburg is packed with tens of thousands of people every day, all summer.

1 hour ago, JTagg7754 said:

Yes, it's a combination of many, many things that is going to give us no college season but to deny the protests being a main culprit, if not the main culprit, is incorrect IMO.

from the photos/videos I’ve seen of protests those folks may not be distancing, but most are at least wearing masks (if for no other reason this to not be identified).
 

Are the protests helping (as it relates to covid)?  Absolutely not.  But they’re far from the sole reason we’re seeing issues.

 

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

Not to make things political, but many of the people saying “it’s the protests” are the same people who think the virus is a hoax/overblown/“just asking questions”/“why aren’t things open already?!?” so it’s not really a good faith concern.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

23 minutes ago, mission27 said:

Yeah this has zero to do with protesters.  The places with the most protesters (northeast and midwest) are not seeing a surge.  The places that are seeing a surge are:

1. Southeast where everyone on the east coast flocked for Memorial Day 

2. Southwest is a similar situation and added issue that it is extremely dry

Whats really disappointing is this could all be prevented if people took basic precautions.  The rest of the developed world is opening up on the same timeline and not seeing a surge of the magnitude we are seeing in the southern half of the country.  I hate to say it but the only thing that will solve this problem is a whole bunch of people in that part of the country dying a horrible death to convince folks to take this seriously.  

Yep, some folks don’t think it’s a thing and they’re “peeing in the pool” that we all have to swim in.

[BobbyPhil1781]

33 minutes ago, mission27 said:

Yeah this has zero to do with protesters.  The places with the most protesters (northeast and midwest) are not seeing a surge.  The places that are seeing a surge are:

1. Southeast where everyone on the east coast flocked for Memorial Day 

2. Southwest is a similar situation and added issue that it is extremely dry

Whats really disappointing is this could all be prevented if people took basic precautions.  The rest of the developed world is opening up on the same timeline and not seeing a surge of the magnitude we are seeing in the southern half of the country.  I hate to say it but the only thing that will solve this problem is a whole bunch of people in that part of the country dying a horrible death to convince folks to take this seriously.  

Ok so let's say your theory that these spikes derive from Memorial Day where thousands of people gathered. What do you feel will happen when the data comes back from gatherings that are 10x the size? I'm going to refrain from using a certain word bc it seems to be rather sensitive to people and I'm almost positive it's giving people a false impression of my thoughts, which I want to note I've never dictated. I'm strictly looking at it from hundreds of thousands of people clamoring together, not social distancing, half not wearing masks, and seemingly not caring we're in the middle of a pandemic. If what you're saying is true and we're seeing spikes from significantly smaller gatherings, what can we assume will happen here? 

The only thing I can think of that may be good here is it's outside but you're claiming these spikes are from other events that were outside so that leads me to believe that we're royally F'd. And yes, I'm generally optimistic but as stated in another thread, I try to be a realist more than anything. 

[BobbyPhil1781]

28 minutes ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

Gatlinburg is packed with tens of thousands of people every day, all summer.

from the photos/videos I’ve seen of protests those folks may not be distancing, but most are at least wearing masks (if for no other reason this to not be identified).
 

Are the protests helping (as it relates to covid)?  Absolutely not.  But they’re far from the sole reason we’re seeing issues.

 

You seem to think I'm saying these gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people are the sole reason. I've never stated such a thing. Please remember that. 

I've been to Gatlinburg many times and also never seen it that crowded but it has been about 7 years since I was last there so maybe it's changed.

[BobbyPhil1781]

Good news, NZ! I'm jelly...... Maybe we'll get to do that in 2021.

https://apnews.com/d47ede495574d8096e73074bcc16cc40

 

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

26 minutes ago, JTagg7754 said:

You seem to think I'm saying these gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people are the sole reason. I've never stated such a thing. Please remember that. 
 

fair enough.

26 minutes ago, JTagg7754 said:

I've been to Gatlinburg many times and also never seen it that crowded but it has been about 7 years since I was last there so maybe it's changed.

I mean, 12.5 million people visit the park there every year, mostly during the summer and fall.

https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/visitation-numbers.htm

I’ve been there many times as well and it’s ranged from “busy” to “holy hell get me out of this obnoxious crowd of neckbeards”.  This last trip 2 weeks ago was far and away the slowest, but there were still crowds of people in the park at the trailheads and pull offs as well as through Sevierville, PF, and Gatlinburg, most of whom weren’t wearing masks.

[BobbyPhil1781]

25 minutes ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

fair enough.

I mean, 12.5 million people visit the park there every year, mostly during the summer and fall.

https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/visitation-numbers.htm

I’ve been there many times as well and it’s ranged from “busy” to “holy hell get me out of this obnoxious crowd of neckbeards”.  This last trip 2 weeks ago was far and away the slowest, but there were still crowds of people in the park at the trailheads and pull offs as well as through Sevierville, PF, and Gatlinburg, most of whom weren’t wearing masks.

I guess I just don't go to specific spots. I just play putt putt at different spots every day, twice a day bc there's enough courses to do that for a week. Maybe race a go kart or five. But really though, we just take chairlifts up, go to PF and eat on the strip and do horseback riding through the mountains so yeah, maybe it's what I'm doing where I don't see all these people. The town can get busy but it's never that crazy, at all. 

And thanks for acknowledging I'm not solely blaming the hundreds of thousands gatherings. Is it a problem? Absolutely. It's the opposite of what we're supposed to be doing in this pandemic. I just hope I'm 100000000% wrong about what's going to happen as a result though. I've never wanted to be more wrong in my entire life. 

[vikesfan89]

I don't think anybody is completely blaming the protests for the current struggles

[mission27]

1 hour ago, JTagg7754 said:

Ok so let's say your theory that these spikes derive from Memorial Day where thousands of people gathered. What do you feel will happen when the data comes back from gatherings that are 10x the size? I'm going to refrain from using a certain word bc it seems to be rather sensitive to people and I'm almost positive it's giving people a false impression of my thoughts, which I want to note I've never dictated. I'm strictly looking at it from hundreds of thousands of people clamoring together, not social distancing, half not wearing masks, and seemingly not caring we're in the middle of a pandemic. If what you're saying is true and we're seeing spikes from significantly smaller gatherings, what can we assume will happen here? 

The only thing I can think of that may be good here is it's outside but you're claiming these spikes are from other events that were outside so that leads me to believe that we're royally F'd. And yes, I'm generally optimistic but as stated in another thread, I try to be a realist more than anything. 

I think the reason for the spikes is the absolutely inexcusable and disgusting behavior of large numbers of people in a certain part of the country (refusing to wear masks for example).  Memorial Day was the spark in certain areas, but you don't leave gasoline and newspapers lying around a fire and expect nothing to happen.  

I'm not saying there wont be a spike from the protests.  But the spike we are seeing right now is in places that had much less protest activity and the places that had the most protests are seeing cases continue to decline steadily.  So if the protests are going to lead to a spike it is not the spike we are seeing right now.  I'd watch numbers in Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, etc. over the next week or two.  Personally I'm less worried about the protests because we know this disease spreads mostly indoors, in confined spaces, with prolonged close contact.  As you say these protests are taking place outdoors and most of the people participating in the protest have a world view that actually acknowledges this virus exists and tend to wear masks.