Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Biogen?

This is probably not the best way to cite the numbers because it doesn’t control for age. Older people are much more likely to have all these conditions. This is from the study, what happens when you control for age:

After adjusting for age and smoking status, patients with COPD (HR 2.681, 95%CI 1.424-5.048), diabetes (HR 1.59, 95%CI 1.03-2.45), hypertension (HR 1.58, 95%CI 1.07-2.32) and malignancy (HR 3.50, 95%CI 1.60-7.64) were more likely to reach to the composite endpoints [meaning both requiring critical care and dying] than those without. As compared with patients without comorbidity, the HR (95%CI) was 1.79 (95%CI 1.16-2.77) among patients with at least one comorbidity and 2.59 (95%CI 1.61-4.17) among patients with two or more comorbidities.

Explanation of HR:

In survival analysis, the hazard ratio ( HR ) is the ratio of the hazard rates corresponding to the conditions described by two levels of an explanatory variable. For example, in a drug study, the treated population may die at twice the rate per unit time as the control population. The hazard ratio would be 2, indicating higher hazard of death from the treatment. Or in another study, men receiving the same treatment may suffer a certain complication ten times more frequently per unit time than women, giving a hazard ratio of 10.

Hazard ratios differ from relative risks (RRs) and odds ratios (ORs) in that RRs and ORs are cumulative over an entire study, using a defined endpoint, while HRs represent instantaneous risk over the study time period, or some subset thereof. Hazard ratios suffer somewhat less from selection bias with respect to the endpoints chosen and can indicate risks that happen before the endpoint.

So basically hypertension and diabetes aren’t massive deals in themselves. Like if the risk of dying for your age group is 0.1%, their best guess is that if you have diabetes, it’s instead 0.159%.

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Of course that’s where 4 Czechs contracted it.

Bet there’s a shitload more in Boston than the 28 confirmed on March 8th.

The New York Times should endorse both.

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Well in the US for the most part the people who live in big cities and young people have been at least taking it somewhat seriously. The only people scoffing at the whole thing are deplorables and country club republicans who tend to not congregate in huge groups, don’t kiss on the face to greet each other, and don’t get drunk and hug each other.

That’s what I’m going with.

70 infected people linked to a Biogen conference that had people come from all over the place. So it is possible that Boston isn’t as infected as it seems as there could have been one superspreader at the conference, and then these people all dispersed back to wherever they came from. I work right in the heart of this shit in Cambridge. I’m so glad I bailed on 2 local conferences in the last couple of weeks.

I’m just about at the point where I’m going to tell my company that I’m working remotely, period. Nothing I do except “face time” with my direct reports cannot be done remotely. And I’m sure they wouldn’t mind skipping out on the face time right now either.

That’s actually pretty impressive.

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My university just canceled in person classes. I may be working from home indefinitely starting tomorrow. Bummer part is we just started a new project and I actually have stuff to do now.

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And effective. People will do what they have to do.

At the doctor’s office for my girl’s one year appointment. Signs everywhere saying that people can’t just walk in and get tested for covid-19 even if they have symptoms. Thanks, Obama.

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Congrats bro you’re living my dream

I specifically said IF he developed shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.

Severe cases usually (but not always) have a high fever, based on the report out of China that I linked twice in this thread, I believe. IIRC it was 102+. Shortness of breath is the indicator that it has moved into the lungs.

I would have much more confidence in an ER doc knowing the clinical diagnosis indicators here than a primary care doc. I’m guessing very few primary care docs know more than the basic stuff the US government is announcing and the news is covering. How many primary care docs do you think have read the stuff out of China?

That might have been me, I bought one on Amazon for $15. The report indicates below 93 is the indicator of COVID-19 attacking the lungs. I’m pretty sure below 90 is problematic in any scenario.

It’s still heavily restricted in Washington. If you’re outside of King and Snohomish counties you need exposure to a confirmed case, severe respiratory failure, or have traveled to an at risk country (which includes King and Snohomish counties).

Ok, thanks. I’m pretty sure the thing I read said below 90 is a problem. But honestly if I’m reading all 99’s, and then get sick and start pumping numbers below 95, I’m picking up the phone for a conversation with the doc.

My brother who was already concerned about this said an expert was on Joe Rogan today and now he is even more terrified.

Edit: so if anyone wants some confirmation bias I would start there.

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I’ve told this story before, but a close friend of mine who is 64 had a heart attack about a year ago now. He was seemingly in quite good health and worked physically and went hiking a lot - up Mt. Whitney a bunch of times and not very long ago. He luckily had a very minor heart attack and they found all his arteries were like 80%+ blocked. He was at very high risk to drop dead at any time. Had open heart surgery and has recovered well. He had recently had like an EKG or whatever and it showed nothing. They have to put the scope up in there to know. His doctor said that basically everyone his age should just lie and say they have chest pain in order to get scoped.

Well that would do it then. Two people came back from there and got two others infected.


The fact that they aren’t providing many details on the new cases in the CR leads me to believe that most of them are community-spread cases. They discussed ones that were travel-related but nothing about the others.

Man that cab driver who became the first community spread case here probably hates himself. Guy drove around 90 people in his Uber while experiencing coronavirus symptoms. On top of that, he rents flats to foreigners meaning he was in a number of flats potentially spreading the illness there as well.

Despite that, I’m pretty grateful that swift action was taken. CR has been ahead of the curve pretty much the whole way on trying to restrict this. In hindsight, it could have been done better but it’s a bit hard to complain when comparing the current state of affairs to other countries who were either unlucky or poorly prepared.

I just vigorously washed my hands then came back and touched the same mouse and keyboard I’ve been using all day, and now I’m eating dried mango with my hands. Am I going to die?

You will definitely die and I’m willing to swap wills with you as a wager.

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https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1237519854204342273?s=09

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