I work in an medical ICU and flu pneumonia’s is one of our patient populations. It’s just supportive care for viral infections, i.e. resp support, renal support, hydration, tube feeds etc. I don’t think I’ve never seen a death from the flu in a normal healthy patient. All that have died have some other underlying factor that caused them to have a poor response to their viral infection. One of the most overlook factors is morbid obesity, for some reason it causes an ARD’s response. Others that are highly susceptible are ones that are transplant and auto-immune patient’s due to their immune suppression meds.
The stats posted above on the international cases did not originate with me. Someone else did the work.
But one question remains. What if First-World countries get swamped too?
Then I think the death rate may go up to 3%
I’ve puzzled over the resentment and rejection I have seen as I put the “this is a serious pandemic” viewpoint out to family, friends and coworkers using a low key, just the facts tone. Some are angry at me. Some roll their eye (rejection of the viewpoint and contempt for the speaker). I was surprised.
They are mad when I point out that every appliance in their home and garage was made in China and that China is the manufacturing center of much of the globe. China is the major global steel maker.
They do not want this to be true and actively are defending against it.
"I am not going to sh*t my pants over this." "You are spreading negativity." "I refuse to live in fear." (Don't scare me with this information.) "I choose to live in the present moment." "God (and my angels) will keep me safe. That is all I need to know." "We got over MERS and SARS and we will get over this." "The markets are fine. Look, they are up again today."
Very very good point (post #12)
If I get infected I have a 25% chance of having a severe reaction. At the time of my infection my regional hospital system is overwhelmed and I am sent home with a hope and a prayer. [With a severe infection, and] without hospital treatment I have a 100% chance of death. Therefore if I get infected I consider my chance of dying as 25% not 3% or 4%.A severe infection in the setting of no ICU beds might become a 20%-25% fatality situation.
I posted in the pandemic prep thread already. The second article article offers a glimmer of hope this might be the worst for asian males, and others might be less at risk for cytokine storm/sepsis. Check the other thread for how to make Knotweed tincture, other herbs that may be effective ARBs for inhibiting coronovirus infection.
Findings By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients had been identified as having laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection. Most of the infected patients were men (30 [73%] of 41); less than half had underlying diseases (13 [32%]), including diabetes (eight [20%]), hypertension (six [15%]), and cardiovascular disease (six [15%]). Median age was 49·0 years (IQR 41·0–58·0). 27 (66%) of 41 patients had been exposed to Huanan seafood market. One family cluster was found. Common symptoms at onset of illness were fever (40 [98%] of 41 patients), cough (31 [76%]), and myalgia or fatigue (18 [44%]); less common symptoms were sputum production (11 [28%] of 39), headache (three [8%] of 38), haemoptysis (two [5%] of 39), and diarrhoea (one [3%] of 38). Dyspnoea developed in 22 (55%) of 40 patients (median time from illness onset to dyspnoea 8·0 days [IQR 5·0–13·0]). 26 (63%) of 41 patients had lymphopenia. All 41 patients had pneumonia with abnormal findings on chest CT. Complications included acute respiratory distress syndrome (12 [29%]), anemia (six [15%]), acute cardiac injury (five [12%]) and secondary infection (four [10%]). 13 (32%) patients were admitted to an ICU and six (15%) died. Compared with non-ICU patients, ICU patients had higher plasma levels of IL2, IL7, IL10, GSCF, IP10, MCP1, MIP1A, and TNFαNote: Interleukins IL-2, IL-7, TNF-alpha, IP-10 chemokine, Granulocyte colony stimulating factor (GCSF). Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP1), Macrophage Inflammatory Protein 1AAnti-inflammatory: IL-10.LSS: those who died exhibited higher levels of pro-inflammatory molecules (which normally do increase as this part of a normal immune response to infection) but these levels indicate presence of an immune overreaction/cytokine storm. More research needed to understand mechanisms behind this (genetic studies that my indicate presence of known or new mutations that up regulate/exaggerate inflammatory immune response relative to those without mutations).Other salient points:However, few patients with 2019-nCoV infection had prominent upper respiratory tract signs and symptoms (eg, rhinorrhoea, sneezing, or sore throat), indicating that the target cells might be located in the lower airway. Furthermore, 2019-nCoV patients rarely developed intestinal signs and symptoms (eg, diarrhoea), whereas about 20–25% of patients with MERS-CoV or SARS-CoV infection had diarrhoea.I must say I am very impressed with the quality of the papers published in the past few days concerning novel CoV. True, they are not peer reviewed, in order to get the information out in a timely manner.. Papers like this would normally take a year or more to get researched, written, reviewed and published. Believe it our not, these are excellent in their clarity, oftentimes papers from China are difficult o parse, more from an English as second language situation than purposeful obfuscation. These researchers are likely working in extremely difficult conditions. I applaud their efforts, apparent transparency and the fact so far the key papers are free and available in their entirety online.https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1.full
Just published two days ago by Chinese researchers investigating the pathogenicity of 2019-nCov.
Severe infection by 2019-nCov could result in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and sepsis, causing death in approximately 15% of infected individuals1,2.
I had similar reactions from people but I could care less. I shared some reports from here to my office mates which of course have been ignored.
If this spreads to our area and becomes an issue they will be so unprepared. Don’t ask me To bail you out then I’m looking after my people
At any given time approximately how many ICU beds are realistically available? I would suppose many are already in use for regular gravely ill patients. Heart attacks, accidents, end of life, violence, allergic reactions and so on. Can’t fathom there are a bunch of beds waiting for flu or Pandemic patients.
Just wondering.
Those 41 you refer to ALL HAD PNEUMONIA. That’s why they were in hospital. They were the most obvious severe cases!
This is why the international patients are more insightful. Not such a “biased” sample.
And the international patients are now largely “stable” or “recovered”. (See above).
Mind you - they do have good care in place.
I can’t answer for Sandpuppy or for current conditions, but 6 years ago I was working at 3 hospitals in North Texas as an anesthesiologist and we were lucky to have 2-3 beds available at any given time. Often we’d have to let a patient sit in the PACU for 12-24 hours while they got a bed available in the ICU. I’d suspect not much has changed.
My concern is that since hospitals are often running at capacity (more efficient? more profitable?) it wouldn’t take much to overwhelm their ability to take on casualties from a pandemic. Couple that with staff calling in sick and it would’t be a pretty picture.
My husband just died in November from heart failure and he was in the ‘ICU’ for several days before he was transferred back to the general population rooms and put on a a short term of hospice - it wasn’t worth finding a regular hospice spot for him because he didn’t have long. Since I spent a lot of time in the ICU and have hospital experience otherwise, I can tell you ‘not much’ in the way of empty rooms and adequate staffing, especially during the winter normal flu season. It looked like a warehouse for terminally ill patients.
I encourage anyone who is thinking of going to a hospital if they feel unwell to first open up that hospital’s website on line, search under ‘careers’ and look at how many nursing and other technical staff openings they have. I don’t care which hospital you look at, they will have dozens of unfilled spots.
Learn to take care of yourself at home, stock up on flu medications, alcohol, Lysol, gloves - depending on whether you live alone or not - masks to protect others in the household, easy to prepare and consume food. You may be MUCH BETTER OFF staying at home than exposing yourself to the germ soup that is a hospital, and an understaffed overwhelmed hospital at that. Oh, by the way, even the biggest city hospitals only have a few respirators, and they’ll be used by the sickest and/or most politically advantageous (board members and sick staff) patients. Unless you think someone else will get taken off a respirator to give you access to it. People in China are starting to spit on (!) hospital personnel saying ‘if you won’t treat me, I’ll make you sick too’ - and they’re being polite. In the US, all these types of people have guns.
I was working as a medical transcriptionist in the medical records dept which is usually situated a long ways away from the patient care area (usually a dungeon of a basement somewhere); when I was hired by Kaiser Permanente in Portland, OR in January of 2010, I was required to sign a document that ‘in the event of extraordinary circumstances’ meaning anything from a terrorist attack to a pandemic, that I would be reassigned to any needed position for the duration. Moving patients around from a room to the xray or lab, sure… but one wonders if they think a typist would be any good at intubating grandpa, or whatever, fill in the blank. A sane doc or nurse once the pandemic really gets going is going to go home, self isolate, and not bring it home to their family. Most professionals are sane, and not Mother Teresa. I have no idea who the hell China thinks is going to magically appear to staff those 1000 bed hospitals they’re building in five days flat. (And why don’t they just use their ghost cities?) If this gets going one iota more than it is currently, they’re not going to need hospitals, they’re going to need crematoriums. The population load I’m seeing in those photographs of business as usual in China are mind boggling. Megacities are death traps. So glad I moved to rural Tennessee a few years ago…
Suspect that few actually believe (feel?) that something like a pandemic virus, economic collapse, war, etc. could/would happen to them (directly). Psychological defense mechanism? Add in some Media fed Stockholm Syndrome (daddy will take care of you) and you’ve got a pretty effective mental bulwark against any reality that might spook the herd.
So what will it ultimately take to break the spell of “it couldn’t happen”?
For many the answer is:
It has been my experience that will people WILL step up to the plate in a public health emergency(though some will call in understandably and rightly) As we saw with Ebola, a bigger risk to staffing could be illness among first line providers. There ARE a few saints out there and many who place their safety in danger every day on the job as you know. Not only doctors and nurses. For many health care workers the prospect of getting injured or sick is normal to them. And many do, even though it isn’t discussed much with the public.
It may not be enough but they are out there. I have seen it. (edited for punctuation)
Did PeakProsperity get something from the Chinese authorities?
https://gab.com/StevenKeaton/posts/103566586502612802
I take alot of knotweed, and you dont need to tincture it, as a matter of fact Buhner says that it is best to just take the powder, and cheaper. People take the tincture for convenience, but then that expense can keep people from taking enough. A pound of the powdered knotweed is under $30. I mix mine, and the other powdered herbs, cordyceps mushroom powder, etc… with some protein shake mix twice a day, for the third time a day I either mix with water, have some encapsulated ( so you can put the powder into capsules, or buy that way) or if realy busy, take the tincture. That is for the knotweed.
There are 2 herbs I take specifically for cytokine remodulation, and those I tinctured at home, salvia miltiorrhiza and scutellaria baicalensis .
But, I take herbs for Lyme disease, so not the same as his recommendations for a corona virus, although both use knotweed
To see his corona virus recommends, this is from his facebook page:
".... Corona virus treatment. I have an analysis of how corona viruses infect tissues, what tissues they infect, and the herbs that are useful to interrupt that process, as well as the herbs useful to shut down the cytokine cascade they create on pages 52-55 of Herbal Antivirals. It is useful reading in that it can inform treatment from a knowledgeable place (there are also some suggestions, not often used by medical professionals, for specific pharmaceuticals that have been found to be useful). Here is a sample protocol. Please note it is rather more extensive than the ones i normally suggest, this is because the particular corona virus that is now spreading world wide is exceptionally potent in its impacts. Again, this is only a suggested protocol, but all the herbs are specific in one way or another for this virus. A number of the herbs are strongly antiviral for corona viruses. In general, I would only begin using these formulations IF there is good reason to believe that the virus is entering your area. The formulations are preventative as well as specific for acute infections, the only alteration is the dosage. Three tincture formulations and one tea.Core tincture formulation: Baikal skullcap (3 parts), japanese knotweed root (2 parts), kudzu (2 parts), licorice (1 part), decocted elder leaf tincture (1 part). Note, the berry will do i guess but it is about 1/3 as effective as the decocted leaf (which no one sells, you have to make it yourself). Dosage: 1 tsp 3x day, 6x if active infection. Immune system, cellular protection, cytokine interruption tincture formulation, supportive for core tincture activity: Cordyceps (3 parts), Dong Quai (2 parts), rhodiola (1 part), astragalus (1 part). Dosage: same as above. Cellular protection, cytokine interruption, spleen/lymph support tincture formulation: Dan Shen (3 parts), red root (2 parts), cinnamon (1 part). same dosage as above. With active infection: very strong boneset tea, to 6x day. I have used this with other corona virus infections, including SARS, it works well. ..."
I just got back rom China and this is an update on what I saw.
I flew back from China. I left China via Kunming International Airport in southwest China. When I arrived at the Kunming airport, there were two guards at the door. They were nice enough, but they would not let me enter unless they took my forehead temperature with a handheld thermometer. Thankfully, everything was fine.
I then flew from Kunming to Seoul, South Korea for my connecting flight. Most people on the flight (and in the Seoul-Incheon airport were wearing masks) included some with true respirator masks. I could see no scanning of incoming passengers at Seoul at all. That doesn’t mean that there was no monitoring since I know that Hong Kong airport has technology to automatically monitor the temperature of arrivals even though it is not apparent to passengers.
After about a five hour delay, I boarded for the overnight flight to JFK airport in New York. Again, most - but not all of the passengers (including myself) wore masks. I felt that was especially important since airplane air is re-circulated. Additionally, there were some people coughing on the flight. Not a lot, but it was noticeable under the circumstances.
Upon arriving at JFK, there was no health monitoring that I could see. Again, that doesn’t mean that there was no monitoring since I know that Hong Kong airport has technology to automatically monitor the temperature of arrivals. In any event, there was no obvious monitoring.
I was asked by a customs agent in New York - where I had flown in from? I told them that I had come from China and I was asked about the conditions there. I told them what I had seen. But I got the impression that the customs agent knew little about the situation other than as reported on the news. I may be wrong about that, but that was the impression that I was left with.
Don’t forget police and firefighters. Both occupational groups are required by conscience and departmental policies to show up for work, especially in the worst of crises. So not many will stay home as a precaution (at least not until it truly becomes apocalyptic). That means they will come to work sick, as they usually do, and especially for police will be exposed daily to whatever communicable disease is ravaging the community. You can be absolutely sure the police department will not encourage employees with flu symptoms to stay home. So, even assuming 100% nobility and devotion to duty, police in particular will start falling ill and staying home when they literally can’t drag themselves out of bed. Not only that, many hospital personnel will surreptitiously move seriously sick police and firefighters to the front of the line for things like ICU beds and new vaccines out of gratitude for their service and hoping to expedite their return to duty for the sake of the public.
Police response times will start getting longer and longer, even for the most serious calls like “burglary in progress” or “man with a gun.” Imagine waiting 20-30 minutes or more for police and ambulance response to a robbery in which the victim was shot in the chest. Calls to 9-1-1 may start getting busy signals, especially in big cities where police can’t even keep up on a “normal” day.
The worst will come when the criminal underclass (that 5% of the population that engages in crime daily as a lifestyle choice) gets wind that police are understaffed and response times are much longer than usual. They will be emboldened and a crime wave will result in the midst of the the larger pandemic crisis, even in “safe” communities.
As you’re running out for elderberries and N95 masks, you might want to consider stopping in at the local gun store, especially if you live in a state that has a 3-10 day wait before picking up a firearm you bought. It’s too late to get serious training, but untrained but armed people save lives every day. It’s better than nothing. If you live in places like NJ, Chicago, Australia or the U.K., disregard that advice and do what you usually do when faced with the threat of violent crime. Maybe just do more and more of it as the risk gets higher and higher.
”Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
A full moon cycles
People says we have scary virus
The pheasant sleeps
99 inflected. 11 dead. Full hospital care.
Pdf report.
https://marlin-prod.literatumonline.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S0140673620302117.pdf