Coronavirus

[Halloween Mike]

as of today, why Quebec(2840) has more cases than Ontario(1355) and BC(884)? Is quebec testing more?

At the moment they are, it was said by Legault.

From my understanding right now we still get test result from peoples who got infected 1 week + ago, some travelers who are still coming back, and so on. My hopes are that by mid-April the "curve" has really flattened because why would peoples still get infected with the world on shutdown?

That being said tough peoples like my neighbors still keep receiving friends at his app, so i supose he ain't the only one doing it... probably a lot of tick headed peoples who don't follow the "orders"

What's concerning is that we are not doing a great job flattening the curve, meaning a lot more immune systems are being tested than we would like to see and many cannot handle the infection without treatment. The hospitals could overflow to the point where people will be dying while waiting to get treated.

From what i understand its the problem in Italy and New York even at the moment. A lot of peoples COULD survive but die because decisions are made to heal other patients who are younger, have better chances to live etc. The system is overload and can't process everybody. Wich at the moment is alright in Quebec because they could threat 6000 patients i think, but only 200 less are in hospital.

As i said above, the full lockdown didn't started until what, a week ago, not even? Yes some stuff closed on March 16 but not a lot. So it may take another 2 weeks from today to fully feel the curve flattening.

As for border, im not an expert so i can't know exactly how many products come from the E-U but my understanding is the products themselves are not at risk, only the delivery person who does it, so if he is carefull and follow protocol, it should be fine. I mean yes i eat an orange everyday at breakfast and yes i could live without it for a few months, but it may be a lot more than just a couple things like that.

Anyway, i think we can sustain 2 months of "crap" without issues. Too bad for all the cool stuff we gonna miss but there is always next year. I mean a whole baseball season was thrown away cause of a mid season lockout, so sports will survive, it may just not have a stanley cup or world series winner in 2020... Yes the economy is hit but hopefully it will recover.

But by those 2 months, lets say end of May, im expecting Quebec to be ready to "re-open" at least locally. Im not saying re-open the borders or travels, but local businesses etc and lockdown being done. Cause peoples won't tolerate this for longer im sure. If in 2 months its still a big issue (lots of new cases still) they will think lockdown is just not working and is a waste of time, and they will go with the whole "develop imunity in society" options instead. Hopefully if China could recover, even as badly hit as they were, we can do, USA can too...

 

[The Nature Boy]

Nice article written in lay terms about developed immunity after covid-19 infection and it’s implications

im thinkin these anti body tests are gonna be key on figuring out who we can send back into work force, especially medical practitioners.

Rinzler, this article mentions nothing about a weak immunity provided by covid-19 infection but states rather it’s unknown/uncertain

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/health/coronavirus-immunity-antibodies.html

 

[No_Church_InThe_Wild]

Herd immunity “maybe”

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.for...us-twice-how-does-covid-19-immunity-work/amp/

 

[Rinzler]

some of the papers i provided links to before discuss how its possible that the immune response to sars-cov-2 might be similar to influenza. which means that if a vaccine is found (a big if - more about that here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/29/coronavirus-vaccine-when-will-it-be-ready), a new formulation might need to be administered every year

what is known is that a discernible immune response can be observed in symptomatic patients who managed to clear the virus for at least a few days. for example https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0819-2

the only convincing result so far that infection results in protective immunity is from this study with rhesus macaques that showed that when two of them were reexposed to sars-cov-2, covid-19 didn't develop: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226v1

question is will this immunity last? when it comes down to sars-cov-2 we don't know yet but there are some hints that it might be a challenge

already we know that respiratory rna viruses can evade the innate immune response: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6959104/pdf/jin-0012-0004.pdf

a study done with convalescent sera from people who were infected with sars (the closest virus to sars-cov-2) further shows that it was moderately neutralizing: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15562-9

we know that in people infected with sars the protective immunity doesnt last described here: https://www.jimmunol.org/content/186/12/7264.long

another issue is the potential of genetic drift. we already know that genetic drift occurs in human coronavirus OC43, a related virus which causes the common cold: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11451

in a nutshell, it means through evolution the virus evades neutralizing antibodies that are generated after an infection. so somebody can get infected multiple time by the virus because the conformation of the major antigens keep changing. that's one of the reasons why people keep catching colds from that type of virus

its the one of the reasons that explains why every year we need a new flu vaccine. now at least the flu vaccine confers some protective immunity for a while. there are other viruses that the generation of neutralizing antibodies is not effective a producing a protective immunity because of genetic drift. hiv-1 is the best example i can think of

discussed here in the context of influenza: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1007291&type=printable

an example with hiv-1: https://jvi.asm.org/content/jvi/79/4/2097.full.pdf

hopefully the immune response to sars-cov-2 over time is different and infection confers lasting protective immunity but i have doubts

 

[Jonathankeeves2]

I believe this was ruled out as being Fake News earlier. That shrimp vendor is actually in South Korea.

Interesting. I saw this on couple sources. The article says the person termed ‘patient zero’ is one among first 27 people who contracted this virus.

 

[gaby]

Il semble bien dans le meilleur des scénarios que la reprise normale se fera en Juin ici comme aux States.......même Trump ----qui a retardé fin Avril la distanciation---semble finalement de cet avis.....son medical task force a finalement réussi à lui faire entendre raison........ cela nous permettrait enfin de retourner tranquillement à une vie normale et profiter de l'été.

 

[gll]

i think trump was listening to EB's pulmonologist instead of the experts. by early march there was a chorus of epidemiologists warning of dire consequences and trump was still saying "its very mild" "i'm not concerned at all" it will go away. just stay calm. it will go away" of course even when people are dying, he is still entirely focused on trump "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president." total buffoon. unfortunately, its not funny.

 

[cloudsurf]

The trouble with listening to a guy like Beav`s pulmonologist is that as good a doctor as he may be , he probably knows shit about epidemics and a novel virus.

 

[The Nature Boy]

hopefully the immune response to sars-cov-2 over time is different and infection confers lasting protective immunity but i have doubts

Thanks for posting and summaries! Much appreciated. I’ll get through them. Let’s hope if prior infection doesn’t provide long term immunity subsequent infections will be milder.

 

[jalimon]

Cloud it's clear any scientist who were still doubting about the severity of the virus early March are completely disconnected from their practices field. That can also happen to older scientist who watch too much Fox and do not read enough publication from their own medical association.

 

[Doc Holliday]

The trouble with listening to a guy like Beav`s pulmonologist is that as good a doctor as he may be , he probably knows shit about epidemics and a novel virus.

Exactly. And doctors are human also & quite often wrong in their diagnostics. That's why people go to other doctors for second & third opinions. A few weeks ago the doctor at my job site wrote a memo trying to reassure everyone that the virus was 'very difficult to get from others'. I wrote a note on the memo which said "yeah, right...dumbass!" People who saw the memo chuckled at my note but i was being serious.

The problem at the time is that many doctors hadn't fully done the research as much as other regular people (such as myself) had done & simply relied on word-of-mouth from colleagues & what they heard on tv (e.g. Fox News). Trust me, doctors make a lot of mistakes also. They're profession often involves judgement & making a decision and they aren't always the right ones. They're human beings.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Cloud it's clear any scientist who were still doubting about the severity of the virus early March are completely disconnected from their practices field. That can also happen to older scientist who watch too much Fox and do not read enough publication from their own medical association.

Republican Senator Rand Paul is a physician and he didn't wait to mingle with others, have dinner with colleagues & hang out at the gym for a week or two before he got his test results which indicated he had tested positive for COVID-19.

 

[jalimon]

Leaving China, Russia and Iran asides as I do not trust these country at all. The USA seems to be by far the worst hit country of all. The US is testing less (per capita) then many other country yet still have the fastest positive infection cases by far. If you look at the rate per day it's very scary. Next was Italy. And Italy has one of the best healthcare system in the world, easily on par with the USA.

 

[The Nature Boy]

It’s not just Italy, northern Italy, Milan and especially Bologna have some of the best physicians and facilities anywhere.

What is the scene in MTL? R people listening to the stay @ home order or are you seeing people out and about other than groceries and the pharmacy?

Are there contingency plans for auxiliary hospital facility sites?

their changing some of the football and cricket pitches to hospitals soon here in UK

 

[gll]

there is a difference between clinicians and scientists. most clinicians have never been involved in research and may not be on top of recent research findings. also, they may be more swayed by anecdotal evidence than a scientist who has been subject to the rigors of actually "proving" something. fauci is a scientist and has been involved in research his entire career. he is surely on top of much of the research and would also know which experts in the research community to contact for advice.

 

[EagerBeaver]

Cloud it's clear any scientist who were still doubting about the severity of the virus early March are completely disconnected from their practices field. That can also happen to older scientist who watch too much Fox and do not read enough publication from their own medical association.

This was NOT early March, as I said earlier, it was back in December. And I posted his opinion in the thread at the time it was made and nobody had any reaction to it back then. You included. I think the medical opinions changed from December to March, but it's my opinion that if the medical opinion had been universal back in December, we would be a lot better prepared for what happened. In any event we were not, so the finger pointing now doesn't solve anything. We have to move forward. And figure this thing out.

 

[The Nature Boy]

Fauci is both clinician and researcher I believe, he’s an infectious disease dr. Still sees patients I’m pretty sure. Clinicians or doctors have to maintain continuing education requirements that test them often on latest research and treatment trends or else they can’t maintain their certification with respective boards.

Clinicians who blew off covid-19 prob did so because they have never seen shit like this before. U can be a physician, extremely intelligent but have a mindset when ur not used to seeing anything anyone else has ever seen.

Its like Ivy League educated lawyers and judges who will tell you Trump did nothing impeachable, lol. Not trying to be political, but like covid-19, it’s shit no ones ever seen

 

[cloudsurf]

What is the scene in MTL? R people listening to the stay @ home order or are you seeing people out and about other than groceries and the pharmacy?

Quebec is doing a good job of restricting social interactions. The death rate is relatively low so far.
I went to a local grocery outlet last week and the measures taken where quite strict and stringent.
There was a security guard making sure that you sanitize your hands. Another sanitized your cart and only 1 peron was allowed in every minute. 2 meter distancing was mandatory at the cash where plexi-glass separations protected cashiers and customer from infecting each other. Everyone wore gloves and sanitizers were at every cash.

 

[TheJames101]

I said 100% closed. They still working on NY. It will bring CV.

The border with NY is closed to all but essential travel. In any case, as I said... supply chains must remain operational.

 

[EagerBeaver]

If the supply chain didn't remain operational where would Quebec be getting its produce from right now?