COVID-19 virus thread (formerly Wuhan coronavirus)

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amadeus said:
So receiving the antibody would help those infected, but not prevent infection like a vaccine?
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yes
And slightly better worded:
So receiving the antibody would help those infected, but not prevent infection like a vaccine? learn your immune system to make the specific antibodies faster to prevent a big outbreak of an infection like a vaccin does.
 
So, I have gone to supermarket today. I have taken everything we need for a week, as usual.
No more than 150 people is allowed at the same time. I have 3 conclusions:

1) people thinks that WC paper prevents from the virus
2) people is stupid
3) I hate people
 
IT companies in Moscow are closing offices, switching to work from home. Just 45 registered cases in Russia so far, hope we will prevent large scale outbreak.
We are working from home next week too, but it's not yet obligatory.
 
Hrothbern said:
Getting the vaccin is therefore the best way to deal with this virus, also because it can be given preventative. But it takes longer time for our scientists to develop.
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The main problem is the testing. You need to make sure that the vaccine is safe to use. If it had a fatality rate of just 0.1% and you give it to two billion people, you would look at 2 million deaths. And you need to test it on a lot of people to make sure there is no harm on this level. And then you need to see whether it is actually effective, which means you need to intentionally expose people to the virus and see if they can fight it off better.

With antibodies, the testing is a bit more straightforward, because you can give it to people who already have a high risk of dying. So it doesn't have to be that safe and you will learn quickly whether it helped or not.

I expect several promising remedies fairly quickly, but the testing will take a very long time.
 
uppi said:
The main problem is the testing. You need to make sure that the vaccine is safe to use. If it had a fatality rate of just 0.1% and you give it to two billion people, you would look at 2 million deaths. And you need to test it on a lot of people to make sure there is no harm on this level. And then you need to see whether it is actually effective, which means you need to intentionally expose people to the virus and see if they can fight it off better.

With antibodies, the testing is a bit more straightforward, because you can give it to people who already have a high risk of dying. So it doesn't have to be that safe and you will learn quickly whether it helped or not.

I expect several promising remedies fairly quickly, but the testing will take a very long time.
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yes, yes and yes.


Reminds me BTW of a scientist (IIRC working at the Oppenheimer project) who said: "our whole problem is making our mistakes as quickly as possible"
 
red_elk said:
IT companies in Moscow are closing offices, switching to work from home. Just 45 registered cases in Russia so far, hope we will prevent large scale outbreak.
We are working from home next week too, but it's not yet obligatory.
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People keep saying this in general but it’s frustrating me. What is the statistical link between cases found and population tested? If Russia has only tested 50 people, then either they are very good at correctly identifying high-probability cases, or (possibly) that not enough testing has been done.

This would also be true for Japan where I live: they’ve tested some 10,000 people and it sounds like 700 positive cases. How many have they tested in Italy or Korea? Maybe many magnitudes more, and is that because there are more people who need testing or what?

But it seems like the number of confirmed cases does not tell us a lot on its own. I hope that Russia has as few cases as they are reporting.
 
Hrothbern said:
yes
And slightly better worded:
So receiving the antibody would help those infected, but not prevent infection like a vaccine? learn your immune system to make the specific antibodies faster to prevent a big outbreak of an infection like a vaccin does.
Click to expand...

Small addendum: there is somethong called passive vaccination https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_immunity , which is basically giving someone who is at risk these antobodies. It's a short-tetm measure though. This is less common and less known, but maybe helps to explain the confusion.
Otherwise fully correct :).


EDIT: Just got pics from a basically empty supermarket in the Netherlands o_O. Seems to be an exception though.
 
amadeus said:
People keep saying this in general but it’s frustrating me. What is the statistical link between cases found and population tested? If Russia has only tested 50 people, then either they are very good at correctly identifying high-probability cases, or (possibly) that not enough testing has been done.

This would also be true for Japan where I live: they’ve tested some 10,000 people and it sounds like 700 positive cases. How many have they tested in Italy or Korea? Maybe many magnitudes more, and is that because there are more people who need testing or what?

But it seems like the number of confirmed cases does not tell us a lot on its own. I hope that Russia has as few cases as they are reporting.
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Notice that I wrote 45 registered cases. It's just a reference, the real number is likely much higher, as it is everywhere else.
I don't know how many people were tested precisely, but general approach in Russia is similar to other places, as far as I understand. We've set up several dedicated hospitals and people with suspicious symptoms get hospitalized, tested and quarantined.
 
amadeus said:
People keep saying this in general but it’s frustrating me. What is the statistical link between cases found and population tested? If Russia has only tested 50 people, then either they are very good at correctly identifying high-probability cases, or (possibly) that not enough testing has been done.

This would also be true for Japan where I live: they’ve tested some 10,000 people and it sounds like 700 positive cases. How many have they tested in Italy or Korea? Maybe many magnitudes more, and is that because there are more people who need testing or what?

But it seems like the number of confirmed cases does not tell us a lot on its own. I hope that Russia has as few cases as they are reporting.
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It's easy to assume we should just test everyone who comes in with a cough. But testing is expensive, time consuming and removes medical professionals from the work of actually caring for the sick. So it makes sense to triage and only test those you know might actually be at risk. Like those that traveled abroad recently or had contact with people or areas where cases have been confirmed. And the people doing that are going to be good at their job, as evidenced by the fact we aren't having a Spanish Flu style disaster on our hands right now. So whilst I would not be surprised if there were say 1 undiscovered case for each discovered one I would be shocked if the differences were in terms of orders of magnitude.
 
This article:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
is trying to make the case for shutting down everything yesterday. Along the way it addresses ways of guessing the true number of infections from the reported cases and reported deaths. It is filled with lots of data from China and other places. It is depressing and hopeful at the same time.

P.S. I've never heard of this guy or the website. Does anyone have thoughts about their trustworthiness?
 
red_elk said:
Notice that I wrote 45 registered cases. It's just a reference, the real number is likely much higher, as it is everywhere else.
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Sorry! Didn’t mean to imply that you had said or thought otherwise.

PPQ_Purple said:
It's easy to assume we should just test everyone who comes in with a cough. But testing is expensive, time consuming and removes medical professionals from the work of actually caring for the sick. So it makes sense to triage and only test those you know might actually be at risk.
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I know medicine is a finite resource, I just mean more than I don’t think Russia is such a poor or isolated country where there would be so few cases when the spread has played out the way it has in other industrial nations. Maybe they are testing everyone who needs it and Russia, for whatever reason yet unknown to us, is a statistical outlier. Maybe there’s something that could be learned from it?
 
Sofista said:
@Valka, pets don't carry the virus. In fact, taking your dog for a walk is one of very few chances one has to legitimately leave home here - it has become a coveted thing to do. One of my colleagues posts in our whatsapp chat that her dog is enthusiastic about being taken to the park by all family members in turn (you can't do that in groups, or even pairs).
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Yes, I am aware of that.

I do need to be careful, though. If I get sick enough that I can't care for my cat, there's nobody else here to do it.
 
amadeus said:
I know medicine is a finite resource, I just mean more than I don’t think Russia is such a poor or isolated country where there would be so few cases when the spread has played out the way it has in other industrial nations. Maybe they are testing everyone who needs it and Russia, for whatever reason yet unknown to us, is a statistical outlier. Maybe there’s something that could be learned from it?
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Well they did close their borders with China fairly early and they aren't on a major crossroads of travel like central Europe or america. So those two are probably major contributing factors.
 
amadeus said:
I know medicine is a finite resource, I just mean more than I don’t think Russia is such a poor or isolated country where there would be so few cases when the spread has played out the way it has in other industrial nations. Maybe they are testing everyone who needs it and Russia, for whatever reason yet unknown to us, is a statistical outlier. Maybe there’s something that could be learned from it?
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We closed border with China quickly, almost as soon as serious quarantine measures were declared there. Not closing border with EU was a mistake (most of these 45 cases came from Italy), but travelling to/from EU was "naturally" limited because of visa requirement.
 
Hrothbern said:
A more strict version would be to close AND define the exceptions by authorities (to keep your nurses etc functioning)
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That's what happened here (in Lower Saxony, anyway). Schools have shut down for the next 5 weeks at least (includes the 2-week Easter break), and are offering 'daycare' for children whose parents do essential jobs (emergency services, etc.), but no-one else.

Luckily, my wife's firm also told her to do home office for the next two weeks. I can do some home office as well if necessary, though I'd still have to go in a couple of times a weeks to pick up/ drop off my assignments.
amadeus said:
Concerning the two bolded parts here, what’s an antibody vs. a vaccine? If it blocks the coronavirus, isn’t that the same as a vaccine? Pardon my science pea brain.
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An antibody is a short-term treatment. Antibodies themselves don't 'teach' an immune system to do anything, all they do is 'tag' a pathogen so that the immune system can recognise it as such.

Antibodies for use as disease treatments are usually generated by injecting the pathogen (active or inactive) into a non-susceptible animal (such as a rabbit or mouse), letting its immune system 'simmer' for a couple of days/weeks, and then extracting and centrifuging the animal's blood plasma, and filtering it (simplification, but that's effectively what happens) to purify and extract the antibodies.

A vaccine is usually an (inactivated) fragment of the pathogen itself (e.g. a virus coat protein fragment), which is injected in order to 'teach' the immune system to make its own antibodies to that pathogen (i.e. essentially, using the patient in place of the rabbit).

Making vaccines is thus dicier than making antibodies, because of the danger of giving the patient a disease accidentally (the original smallpox-vaccine pioneered by Edward Jenner was actually live cowpox virus, which was relatively safe since cowpox didn't/doesn't kill humans). That's why all vaccines have to be extensively safety-tested before they're made available for general use.

EDIT: I should really get into the habit of reading all posts to date before replying... :crazyeye:
 
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