I frankly think everyone is going to get this virus sooner or later. It just spreads too easily. That is not the point. The point is to slow it down. Enough to make those vaccines available? Maybe. But probably not. Again, that is not the point. The point is to avoid trucks and trucks driving to the dump full of bodies of people who never had any treatment for the virus because our health care system was too overloaded. And without treatment the mortality rate will increase a great deal.
The argument about resistance to disease is total baloney. Because like I said, everyone is going to get this thing eventually, one way or another (vaccine). It would frankly make more sense to just come out and say what they are probably really thinking, which my bet is that we need this virus to kill as many people as possible in order to decrease the surplus population.
Other reports out there are that doctors are being directed to report cause of death to be corona if there are ANY symptoms present at time of death even if it isnât related to the death. Why is this the case, if itâs true?
I do not think that is true. I frequent several doctor groups, and none have mentioned that. Now, there is a lot of indication that unattended deaths at home in New York and elsewhere in the world, particularly Italy and in many third world countries have skyrocketed, and those excess deaths are probably Covid related, so medical examiners may be listing them as Covid related to allow accurate analysis of the data, but I would challenge you to find a directive given to do anything that is not above board.
One of the main reasons I started coming here to BioLogos to bounce some of my questions off of you guys is because I am not a scientist nor a medical doctor (I am professionally trained in the agricultural industry) - I trust science. I have family and friends who are easily swayed by the many theories out there and I want to pass on some of their claims and questions to you guys. So in regards to this particular question - it was coming from a family member who was convinced that there is an inflation in covid-19 cases and the doctors were being forced to register cause of deaths as covid-19 even if there were preconditions (eg. heart failure, etc.). I asked for evidence, and all he could give me was a facebook post with a short video recording. I had to roll my eyes when I saw this was a facebook post, but here it is:
Itâs really too bad that this health issue has become so political.
We should just let our amazing doctors and healthcare workers do their jobs healing people. As I have said from the beginning this not 1918 and we have incredible medical people and technology to treat this virus. Many things that we thought about the virus at the beginning of the outbreak were wrong.
The virus was originally thought to be contact spread only. Instead the virus is incredibly contagious and airborne.
One way or the other the numbers are clearly showing that a very high percentage of people are asymptiomatically infected with a much smaller number showing mild symptoms and smaller again with severe symptoms. The death rate is going way down and that will continue as we get better at treating the virus which is happening in real time. It is also clear that there are a number of particularly high risk people usually with comorbidity most susceptible to bad outcomes.
Our medical system was prepared to treat a respiratory disease with ventilators which was unfortunate as the pathology is showing this to be primarily a vascular disease causing life threatening thrombosis and blood clots. Please take a look at this video regarding the virus induced thrombosis. - YouTube This thrombosis mechanism is very suggestive of particular treatments. I am quite sure that we will be able to treat this thrombosis likely mitigating many of the severe affected patients.
Our medical technology in the next couple of weeks and months will get better treating the disease having an arsenal of drugs and other treatments such as the convalescent plasma and purified immunoglobulins that will be able to successfully treat the most severe patients significantly decreasing severity and death rates. This virus like most viruses will need to be treated early in the infection especially in the higher risk.
Hopefully in the long run of maybe 12 months a vaccine will become available but we will be able to treat this virus in the short term with the drugs and treatments.
The virus as measles another airborne virus will likely wane during the warmer summer months. This is not just because of viral destruction in heat but also because our immune systems are less susceptible to infection during the summer.
As much talk that there is for testing and the virus may be able to go dormant in the infected and relapse where an infected individual could become infectious again as is seen with herpes and varicella viruses.
We donât know whether the antibodies in an infected person will be protective against reinfection. However positive antibodies are likely to have some protective effect against severe symptoms.
I agree with much of what you wrote, but Iâm not aware of data supporting either of these conclusions. What are your sources? As far as I know, most studies have concluded that perhaps 50% of infected people never show any symptoms. I donât know of any studies of changes to the case fatality rate because of improved treatment.
Hereâs a bit more of a summary reply from one of my favorite medical bloggers (who notes a few things he agrees on, a few things that were a little misleading and several things that are horribly wrong):
Unfortunately I came across this the first time because many local pastors started passing it around and it was then seen by our group of friends. Pretty much everyone accepted it Hook line & sinker and Iâm the one that has to work extremely hard to try and demonstrate why these two people were extremely wrong. and it doesnât matter if I demonstrate why I know for sure just using New York cityâs numbers for example why their mortality rate is definitely incorrect. it doesnât matter if I explain why that their methods of inference would have failed if they used it in a 100 level statistics class. And so at the end of the day I spent hours and hours trying to demonstrate why something is wrong and these guys just get a free pass for every claim that they make in the minds of most people. Because itâs common sense. And then I explained why common sense is not a great judge of making epidemiological decisions about a virus you canât even see with your senses. But then because the two have scrubs on and say that theyâre doctors with lots of experience and they make it to Fox News they must be right.
The original death rate when we started experiencing the outbreak was grossly incorrect was projected between 5-2%. many of our policy decisions were based on these numbers. We now are seeing that the virus is incredibly contagious and the number of infected is much higher than we thought based on antibody tests projections. The death rate is now estimated around somewhere between 0.5-0.66%. It is likely to continue to be lowered as the treatment protocols continue to improve.
If you are following what is going on in the medical community the doctors are realizing that their standard respiratory protocols for the treatment of ARDS was not only ineffective but actually may have been doing more harm then good. In fact there are numbers of up to 88% dying on ventilators. The doctors are realizing that this is a different kind of ARDS then their protocols were established. They are developing new protocols to improve survival. This is a new disease and the old Paradigm is not working. Doctors need to be able to be able to respond at the patient level to determine how to best treat the patient. The virus is attacking the endothelial cells and causing wide spread thrombosis in a good percentage of patients. The virus is not one single disease but presenting as a multitude of pathologies that need to be identified and determined how best treat. There are a number of therapies that are showing promise for treatment depending on the particular conditions that will continue to reduce the severity and death rate as we gain more experience.
Yes, I posted that above and was grateful to see that. my EM said, âthis is rare, because the ACEP and AAEM never agree on anything, so you know this is serious.â
That would be a good start.
