Coronavirus

[KCLarkin]

Interesting, a country with 90M people and 0 deaths...

 

My point wasn’t about Vietnam. It was about you blatantly lying when you said I considered Europe a successful model.

 

And if it is so easy for you to lie about my positions when there is a written record, how easy is it to lie to yourself?

[Gregmal]

If I got your take wrong, I apologize. At least you didnt counter with "bbbut 225k deaths!". However my recollection is that you've been ultra critical of the US specifically(without calling out the worst offenders like NY/NJ/MA), and spent time justifying lockdowns and draconian government power grabs. Which under no circumstance, given the data we have now, are warranted.

[Gregmal]

Speaking of hoarding....my neighborhood has toilet paper everywhere. Looks like the kids were active last night. Or maybe just lazy benevolence....putting a few rolls up in the trees for everyone just in case there are shortages later.

[Guest cherzeca]

Speaking of hoarding....my neighborhood has toilet paper everywhere. Looks like the kids were active last night. Or maybe just lazy benevolence....putting a few rolls up in the trees for everyone just in case there are shortages later.

 

I remember those days fondly.  on a clear night with a full moon, TPing a tree had an unmatched beauty

[RichardGibbons]

Hey Dickie you weren't in charge of that French track and trace program were ya?

 

I'm pretty sure you're trying to insult me, but I can't quite figure it out.

 

Good luck, orthopa.

[Investor20]

...

Yes CFR has gone down.  That could be because of virus itself attenuating.  I dont have citation but the concept I read is the virus mutation that causes less severe disease spreads more than the virus mutation that causes more severe disease since the person who has more severe symptoms would quarantine irrespective of any mandates and it is the asymptomatic person who would go around more spreading the virus.

Yes it may be because of better treatments except not many clinical studies I am aware showing positive results of treatment of hospitalized patients (except Dexamethasone may be). 

Regarding the inoculation level, I posted an article by several doctors from many top medical schools across US and world saying it works other way round.  That the masks increase inoculation of infection at early stages.  This is disputed area of research.

Please see below

...

Reduction of Self-Reinoculation

...

---The attenuating theory is possible but does not fit with present data for the following reasons:

-coronaviruses are not recognized for unusually high mutation rates

-genomic follow-up studies have not consistently shown changes in correlation with significant changes in contagiousness or virulence

-the Italian studies published around June that suggested this phenomenon were of poor quality and confounded improved levels of care and seasonality with virus attenuation (present trends also discredit those theories)

-the extent of survival rates and time frame (just a few weeks) simply don't fit with an attenuating virus:

 

From the NY Langone team study

 

---The self-inoculation theory is possible but very unlikely and, even if 'right', unlikely to be significant. The reasons are numerous and include coherence, disease transmission mechanisms etc.

-----

@Investor20

Thank you for the ideas that can be (IMO) characterized as unconventional. i feel that the communication between us is sometimes deficient and i take full responsibility for it. The ideas that you suggest make me consider alternative theories.

When reading your posts, i'm reminded of what happened with the inoculation controversy that happened in Boston in the early 1720s when a group (mostly led by religious characters) were pushing for self-inoculation of the smallpox virus in order to decrease individual and population harm. This group was resisted by various scientific and established dogma groups. There were even unconstructive personal attacks and of course, the tribal crowd got involved, making matters even more complicated. Still, in that specific case, the group pushing for self-inoculation was right and even if there were risks with their approach which included unnecessary deaths, they had the most solid experimental thought process and were eventually proven right. Even decades later when Mr. Jenner 'invented' vaccines (from a cow related disease, cow=vacca--)vaccine), the initial reactions from the establishment were negative and even derisive.

Contrarians are not always wrong. :)

Edit: for spelling mistakes

 

Cigar...its just not the recovery in hospitals improved.  The hospitalizations themselves reduced. 

 

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/why-coronavirus-hospitalization-rates-are-lower-so-far-in-the-second-wave/ar-BB1ayhlb?parent-subcat=foodnews

Why coronavirus hospitalization rates are lower so far in the second wave

 

CDC is also not showing increasing hospitalizations.

 

 

[Cigarbutt]

@Investor20

You have mentioned this aspect (declining hospitalization rates) before (replies 7792 and 7939) and have made it a central tenet of conclusions. You may want to re-visit reply 7943 which described the limitations of CDC data for this aspect. Just like for the percent positive rate trends, the CDC data is often not reflecting the real-time developments due to less comprehensive scope and lag. Whatever leaning you may have for decisions, you have to agree (i assume here) that precise and timely information is critical for cost-effective decision making.

Covid-tracking has much better methodology and, so far, has been more reliable in delineating trends (in real time). The CDC data often ends up (after corrections and updates) showing trends that Covid-tracking showed weeks before.

You seem to suggest that US and CDN hospitalization rates are coming down or at least not correlated to rising cases. This is correct in the sense that younger cohorts are now accounting for a larger share of cases and hospitalization rates are not tightly correlated. But hospitalization rates are going up and this will likely get worse for some time because of the lag effect. This is not fake news.

 

 

In Canada, similar trends are playing out, see page 12 of the document (as of Oct. 24th):

https://health-infobase.canada.ca/src/data/covidLive/Epidemiological-summary-of-COVID-19-cases-in-Canada-Canada.ca.pdf

Yesterday, hospitalizations were at 1179.

 

Just to confirm on a local level (my area has taken the approach that we will breeze through this), after a few phone calls, it became clear that hospital cases are going up. But the virus will eventually go away; that's an incontrovertible fact, almost.

[Spekulatius]

Covid tracker seems to be correct (they add up data from individual states).

https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitalized

It clearly does show rising hospitalization rates.

 

The CDC website is hard to navigate and really doesn’t have well made trend charts. My state MA also has good granular data (down to a town level - the town I life in had 4 new cases last week after being without cases since about late March) but again trendlines are missing.

 

The best tracker I have found for Germany is from the Tagesspiegel newspaper:

https://interaktiv.tagesspiegel.de/lab/karte-sars-cov-2-in-deutschland-landkreise/

 

As we all know from investing, momentum is real and it is even more real when looking at epidemic KPI’s and we need to look where the puck is going not where it is right now. Or at least we need to see if the elevator is going up or down, as Munger would say.

[Investor20]

@Investor20

You have mentioned this aspect (declining hospitalization rates) before (replies 7792 and 7939) and have made it a central tenet of conclusions. You may want to re-visit reply 7943 which described the limitations of CDC data for this aspect. Just like for the percent positive rate trends, the CDC data is often not reflecting the real-time developments due to less comprehensive scope and lag. Whatever leaning you may have for decisions, you have to agree (i assume here) that precise and timely information is critical for cost-effective decision making.

Covid-tracking has much better methodology and, so far, has been more reliable in delineating trends (in real time). The CDC data often ends up (after corrections and updates) showing trends that Covid-tracking showed weeks before.

You seem to suggest that US and CDN hospitalization rates are coming down or at least not correlated to rising cases. This is correct in the sense that younger cohorts are now accounting for a larger share of cases and hospitalization rates are not tightly correlated. But hospitalization rates are going up and this will likely get worse for some time because of the lag effect. This is not fake news.

 

 

In Canada, similar trends are playing out, see page 12 of the document (as of Oct. 24th):

https://health-infobase.canada.ca/src/data/covidLive/Epidemiological-summary-of-COVID-19-cases-in-Canada-Canada.ca.pdf

Yesterday, hospitalizations were at 1179.

 

Just to confirm on a local level (my area has taken the approach that we will breeze through this), after a few phone calls, it became clear that hospital cases are going up. But the virus will eventually go away; that's an incontrovertible fact, almost.

 

CDC budget is about 6-7 billion dollars.  In addition they are given in April another Billion for Covid.  They have 10,000+ employees.

 

You mean to say they cannot add 50 states hospitalization data?

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/02/29/10600-cdc-employees-earn-11-billion-annually/?sh=2d5ca15724da

10,600 CDC Employees Earn $1.1 Billion Annually

 

Come on man.

[Cigarbutt]

CDC budget is about 6-7 billion dollars.  In addition they are given in April another Billion for Covid.  They have 10,000+ employees.

You mean to say they cannot add 50 states hospitalization data?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/02/29/10600-cdc-employees-earn-11-billion-annually/?sh=2d5ca15724da

10,600 CDC Employees Earn $1.1 Billion Annually

Come on man.

No, no...i just mean to say that they use a different method and i offer the opinion that the Covid-tracking method is more reliable and timely.

 

For the CDC, they use a COVID-NET framework which is based on sampling.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covid-net/purpose-methods.html

It's like if you analyze a company and obtain a summary from an analyst who had access to a sample of a few pages of a few of their 10-Ks. You may get a fair idea about the company.

 

The Covid-tracking people suggested early on that the data was imprecise and not timely. They have tried to put in place a way to obtain directly the data from all states and to aggregate the data sytematically. And they've noted obstacles.

https://covidtracking.com/blog/whats-going-on-with-covid-19-hospitalization-data

Many others have tried to do the same and have come up with similar results but the Covid-tracking team seems to be the group that gained the widest recognition.

It's like if you analyze a company and obtain a summary from an analyst who went deeper and in more details. It's not enough but it's a good starting point.

 

"Come on man"

i wonder if you watch too much of a certain kind of entertainment:

This is not an endorsement or opportunity to mock; it's simply an attempt at humor given the very poor opportunity set.

[Investor20]

CDC budget is about 6-7 billion dollars.  In addition they are given in April another Billion for Covid.  They have 10,000+ employees.

You mean to say they cannot add 50 states hospitalization data?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/02/29/10600-cdc-employees-earn-11-billion-annually/?sh=2d5ca15724da

10,600 CDC Employees Earn $1.1 Billion Annually

Come on man.

No, no...i just mean to say that they use a different method and i offer the opinion that the Covid-tracking method is more reliable and timely.

 

For the CDC, they use a COVID-NET framework which is based on sampling.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covid-net/purpose-methods.html

It's like if you analyze a company and obtain a summary from an analyst who had access to a sample of a few pages of a few of their 10-Ks. You may get a fair idea about the company.

 

The Covid-tracking people suggested early on that the data was imprecise and not timely. They have tried to put in place a way to obtain directly the data from all states and to aggregate the data sytematically. And they've noted obstacles.

https://covidtracking.com/blog/whats-going-on-with-covid-19-hospitalization-data

Many others have tried to do the same and have come up with similar results but the Covid-tracking team seems to be the group that gained the widest recognition.

It's like if you analyze a company and obtain a summary from an analyst who went deeper and in more details. It's not enough but it's a good starting point.

 

"Come on man"

i wonder if you watch too much of a certain kind of entertainment:

This is not an endorsement or opportunity to mock; it's simply an attempt at humor given the very poor opportunity set.

 

CDC and Covid tracking are reporting two different numbers. 

 

CDC is reporting NEW hospitalizations (hospitalization rates).  One of the Covid-net data is date admitted.

Covid tracking is reporting Currently hospitalized.

 

CDC is sampling through a network of "over 250 acute-care hospitals in 14 states". But it is still  actual  admissions data of Covid positive patients. Not clear where Covidtracking is getting their numbers but they repeatedly say its erratic in their own blog.

 

CDC is also sampling ILI and CLI  (Influenza like and Covid like symptoms hospital visit). Even this does not show uptick.

 

"Two syndromic surveillance systems, the U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet) and the National Syndromic Surveillance Project (NSSP), are being used to monitor trends in outpatient and emergency department (ED) visits that may be associated with COVID-19 illness. Each system monitors activity in a slightly different set of providers/facilities. ILINet provides information about visits to outpatient providers or emergency departments for influenza-like illness (ILI; fever plus cough and/or sore throat) and NSSP provides information about visits to EDs for ILI and COVID-like illness (CLI; fever plus cough and/or shortness of breath or difficulty breathing). "

 

Every one of the below reporting from CDC, there is substantial improvement.

 

It was a light hearted comment.  But to tell after 7 billion dollars spent on CDC, paying highly qualified people (averaging over 100K) for 10,000 employees at CDC, you are telling that we need to go to a volunteer based Covid tracking system and ignore CLI-net, ILI-net, NSSP, Covid-net by CDC.

 

 

[Cigarbutt]

^They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What about two pictures?

-The first picture is the CDC hospital data as of July 18th 2020, with the information they knew then.

-The second picture is also from the CDC and is simply a reflection of the weekly updates they do regularly and the graph shows how the data has been updated over time with updated data as of July 18th 2020 markedly different from initially reported (and matching reality better) and with recent data (as of October 24th 2020) which may not reflecting what will be shown in a few weeks for the same period.

Why don't you commit to show an update of this in 4 to 6 weeks?

[Investor20]

^They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What about two pictures?

-The first picture is the CDC hospital data as of July 18th 2020, with the information they knew then.

-The second picture is also from the CDC and is simply a reflection of the weekly updates they do regularly and the graph shows how the data has been updated over time with updated data as of July 18th 2020 markedly different from initially reported (and matching reality better) and with recent data (as of October 24th 2020) which may not reflecting what will be shown in a few weeks for the same period.

Why don't you commit to show an update of this in 4 to 6 weeks?

 

I added a rectangle to help see the data better. 

 

Between June 20 July 04:

 

CDC reported 4 - 5.5 hospitalizations per 100,000 in July 18 Report

CDC reported 4 - 6.0 hospitalizations per 100,000 in October Report.

 

There are small corrections but not a major correction. 

Only the very last week they are off...ok....just look two weeks prior data till date. The main point that Covid like symptoms hospital visits from two surveillances and  hospitalization rates have not ticked up till mid October.

 

Your argument that CDC cannot produce such simple information with 10,000 employees and 7 billion budget if correct makes US having much bigger problem than Covid.

[Spekulatius]

Covid risk calculator from Everest health. It calculates the risk to get admitted to the hospital, get upgraded to an ICU room and come out with the feet first. Enjoy:

https://calculator.covid-age.com/

 

Mine are roughly 5% / 1.5% /0.22%

[Peregrine]

Covid risk calculator from Everest health. It calculates the risk to get admitted to the hospital, get upgraded to an ICU room and come out with the feet first. Enjoy:

https://calculator.covid-age.com/

 

Mine are roughly 5% / 1.5% /0.22%

 

Thanks. I'm guessing the last number is the estimate for your IFR?

[Cigarbutt]

Covid risk calculator from Everest health. It calculates the risk to get admitted to the hospital, get upgraded to an ICU room and come out with the feet first. Enjoy:

https://calculator.covid-age.com/

Mine are roughly 5% / 1.5% /0.22%

Thanks. I'm guessing the last number is the estimate for your IFR?

It's not clear what the percentages indicate (and it's not clear how they come up with such precise numbers). The simple way to build a model here is to use CFRs, adjusted for region and adjusted for risk factors defined per CFR from different sources: CDC etc.

i assume the percentages apply if and once you're Covid+. (?)

It may be more conceptually sound to go through a simple exercise (which will correlate with common sense) and use a risk stratification. Alberta has put up a 3-level risk (low-intermediate-high) system:

https://www.alberta.ca/lookup/COVID-19-personal-risk-severity-assessment.aspx

An interesting aspect is that the Alberta site does not require a US zip code and, at least for me, adding dementia to the risk factors does not significantly change the risk level.

The Sanford Health group also has a nutrition coach subsidiary.

https://www.profileplan.com/

[Spekulatius]

Covid risk calculator from Everest health. It calculates the risk to get admitted to the hospital, get upgraded to an ICU room and come out with the feet first. Enjoy:

https://calculator.covid-age.com/

Mine are roughly 5% / 1.5% /0.22%

Thanks. I'm guessing the last number is the estimate for your IFR?

It's not clear what the percentages indicate (and it's not clear how they come up with such precise numbers). The simple way to build a model here is to use CFRs, adjusted for region and adjusted for risk factors defined per CFR from different sources: CDC etc.

i assume the percentages apply if and once you're Covid+. (?)

It may be more conceptually sound to go through a simple exercise (which will correlate with common sense) and use a risk stratification. Alberta has put up a 3-level risk (low-intermediate-high) system:

https://www.alberta.ca/lookup/COVID-19-personal-risk-severity-assessment.aspx

An interesting aspect is that the Alberta site does not require a US zip code and, at least for me, adding dementia to the risk factors does not significantly change the risk level.

The Sanford Health group also has a nutrition coach subsidiary.

https://www.profileplan.com/

 

Yes, the percentages apply once you have COVID-19, so the last number is the CFR rate (I think). I don’t know how the calculator works, but it is normalized to 0.25% and I suspect it has multipliers based on your inputs that either increase or decrease the three risk metrics it calculated.

I played with my numbers and increasing the blood pressure seems to have the largest impact. In my case, I lost a few years of my COVID-19 age due to having pretty good blood pressure values generally.

[Cigarbutt]

I went through the charts today and SD has a positivity rate of 38.2%?

https://public.tableau.com/profile/peter.james.walker#!/vizhome/COVID-19SeeYourState/YourStateKeys

Very little testing -2k tests daily. That’s nothing even for a state with low population like SD. I guess they like sticking their head in the sand.

It would be easy to dismiss SD but there is so much to learn.

Those in charge (holding responsibility) in South Dakota recently reported that their assessment of the situation (rising cases and rising hospitalizations) was a result of more testing in some areas of the state (!) and due to people now reaching hospitalization stage for other conditions because of delayed care as a result of Covid restrictions (!). They can also boast a CFR going from 1.4% to 1.0% as a proof of excellent governance and care..

South Dakota has the highest hospital-bed-per-capita numbers in the US (twice more than MA and four times my area). They also have one of the worst records (absolute numbers per population and trends) for influenza deaths. In this context, so far in 2020 for Covid, South Dakota, as it is reaching its peak, has twice the average annual flu death toll and has reached a rate of flu-death-per-year equivalent every 10 days for the next 6 weeks or so. In terms of hospital capacity, at this point about 15% of their acute care beds and 30% of their intensive care beds are occupied by Covid cases. The impact on 'productivity' at those levels (isolation, extra-steps, protocols) has got to be very significant.

An under appreciated aspect is that the group in SD most at risk for a nervous breakdown are those working as contact and tracers:

https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2020/08/24/covid-19-cases-rise-experts-question-effectiveness-contact-tracing/3430097001/

Follow-up:

It's simply a continuation of previous trends. Positivity rates in SD are now at around 50% (!) and i estimate that 20% of regular hospital beds and 40% of ICU beds are occupied by Covid cases. If you look at their news flow, covid does not appear to be a big deal although there is an article about Sanford Health (the most important owner and managers of SD hospitals and the owner of the sub that designed the Covid-Risk--Calculator that you shared before). They are slowing down on elective procedures. Interestingly, the Sanford Health sub that designed the risk tool is also advising health authorities on how to deal with Covid. Their strategy is not aimed at prevention of spread; it's how to predict and deal with surges ending up in hospitals.. The main news in South Dakota are related to juvenile arrests, a woman dying after shooting herself on a casino dance floor and 'health' tips on how to properly empty your bowels every morning.

https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/south-dakota/

[John Hjorth]

Yesterday, the Danish people got informed by the Danish government, that a mutant variety of SARS-CoV-2 has "jumped" [back again, to human beings] from minks to human beings [mutated] in the northern part of Jutland.

 

The Danish government has decided yesterday to cull all Danish mink stock [included non-infected breeding stock].

 

I'm [as a layman] in no way sure, that I understand the implications of this decision. [My immediate thought is that this is a wrong decision.]

 

What do you think, & why?

[DocSnowball]

Yesterday, the Danish people got informed by the Danish government, that a mutant variety of SARS-CoV-2 has "jumped" [back again, to human beings] from minks to human beings [mutated] in the northern part of Jutland.

 

The Danish government has decided yesterday to cull all Danish mink stock [included non-infected breeding stock].

 

I'm [as a layman] in no way sure, that I understand the implications of this decision. [My immediate thought is that this is a wrong decision.]

 

What do you think, & why?

 

 

This is what I could find online - a mutation in the spike protein, along with 12 human cases. Don't have competence in this area to give a good answer, but on the surface of it, this is similar to what is done to prevent emerging avian flu outbreaks when a new strain is detected that transmits to humans from animals.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmark-mink/denmark-tightens-lockdown-in-north-mink-cull-devastates-industry-idUSKBN27L2JT

 

In a report published on Wednesday, the State Serum Institute (SSI), the authority dealing with infectious diseases, said laboratory tests showed the new strain had mutations on its so-called spike protein, a part of the virus that invades and infects healthy cells.

 

“The danger is that the mutated virus could then spread back into man and evade any vaccine response which would have been designed to the original, non-mutated version of the spike protein, and not the mink-adapted version.”

 

Authorities in Denmark said five cases of the new virus strain had been recorded on mink farms and 12 cases in humans.

 

It always made me nervous that we never got to find out the animal reservoir, if any, in China from where the virus could have jumped into humans. There wasn't much info offered about any analysis from Wuhan Seafood market or other areas in China. One can only assume that animal reservoir hasn't been the source of more animal-to-human transmission given the low numbers in China, but who knows.

[John Hjorth]

Thank you, Doc,

 

However, your post does not change, that I'm deeply & seriously worried about how this situation evolves locally, regional, national etc.

 

Does this "jump" [back, & mutated] from minks to homo sapiens imply, that this may [in worst case] mean another wave of SARS-CoV-2 [v2]? - A pandemic v2 as a layer on v1?, [- v2 timely delayed compared to v1?] [As if things weren't already screwed up, dearly?!]

[Spekulatius]

Thank you, Doc,

 

However, your post does not change, that I'm deeply & seriously worried about how this situation evolves locally, regional, national etc.

 

Does this "jump" [back, & mutated] from minks to homo sapiens imply, that this may [in worst case] mean another wave of SARS-CoV-2 [v2]? - A pandemic v2 as a layer on v1?, [- v2 timely delayed compared to v1?] [As if things weren't already screwed up, dearly?!]

 

Yes, the risk of a large animal reservoir is that the virus can remain there, has time to mutate enough to make current treatment ineffective and then eventually jump back to humans and start the whole “game” all over again.

 

I agree with Doc that it’s important to find out (and push China) to do forensics on the origin and try to eliminate the thread that we get a repeat of this in the future.

[Cigarbutt]

^This is outside of my comfort zone but last March 30, i was able to listen to a 10 minute presentation (given by an excellent virologist who spent 3 to 5 minutes on this aspect) and just looked at my notes.

Coronaviruses achieve genetic diversity through either 1-genetic recombination with other CVs or 2-focal mutations ("genetic drift"). Once a stable form exists, it can transmit and can "jump" species using its 'new' genetic configuration. Viruses are very old evolutionary friends and the simple line of defense is to put a safe distance between animals (especially certain kinds) and humans or to eliminate the group at risk once a known source is identified. BTW SARS was eventually eradicated but MERS is still endemic in Saudi Arabia and parts of Middle East. For MERS, camels were potential intermediate hosts and they were not culled. Apparently, an animal vaccine was used. The virologist had given several references (pre and peri-Covid) including the following which has nice and instructive pictures (figures 2 and 3):

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-018-0118-9.

 

As far as the Denmark and Netherlands mink problem, answers are still unknown but it looks like many bright minds are working on that part (the genetic part). CVs are known to mutate relatively slowly. In the grand scheme of things, virus "jumping" form a species to humans is a very rare event and reverse spillover (to a new intermediate host and back to humans) is likely to be even more unlikely or significant. However, a very unusual aspect of Covid-19 is that it has massively spread and has an unusual genetic 'opportunity' to evolve. Also, a specific mutation does not mean that an already proven-to-work vaccine (or naturally acquired immunity) would become ineffective. It may be impossible to identify the ultimate and proximate cause and basic measures to put a safe distance between certain potential intermediate hosts and humans are probably the way to go. An alternative is to pretend it does not exist..

[Spekulatius]

The main news in South Dakota are related to juvenile arrests, a woman dying after shooting herself on a casino dance floor and 'health' tips on how to properly empty your bowels every morning.

https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/south-dakota/

 

There was also questionable nutritional advice about fried sweet potatoes being a healthy. Reading this newspaper feels a bit like reading East German newspapers in 80’s before the wall came down. There was a spurious habit of putting totally meaningless news on front pages and the real interesting stuff was hidden in small articles in the other pages often in between other meaningless articles.

I know that the interested people there were pretty good at reading this code and I do wonder what people in SD have similar filters.

[Pelagic]

Wayyyy back in this thread there was a link to an excellent write-up on the 2003 SARS outbreak and something similar happened with it. After the initial SARS outbreak was contained the virus was found again in an animal host, I believe Civets, and a handful of handlers who worked closely with civets were infected. It was determined that this was a slightly different strain of SARS and that no human-human infections were believed to have occurred. I believe a large culling effort was undertaken and transmission of the secondary outbreak was halted at only a handful of individuals.

 

Managed to find the article, here's the quote from it on the secondary 2004 SARS outbreak.

 

In the small outbreak in Guangzhou in 2004, all four human isolates belonged to a separate sublineage of the concurrent animal isolates that were distinct from the human pandemic or animal viruses in 2003.

 

The article also has a very fascinating discussion on the seroprevalence of antigens in animal handlers relative to the general population.

 

In 17 studies that reported on seroepidemiology, the seroprevalence varied from 0 to 1.81% for the general population, 0 to 2.92% for asymptomatic health care workers, 0 to 0.19% for asymptomatic household contacts, and 12.99 to 40% for asymptomatic animal handlers (28, 37, 45, 69, 117, 141, 198, 201, 203, 207, 209, 228, 352, 369, 387, 406, 429). The last finding is quite expected, since frequent zoonotic challenges by low-level-pathogenic strains of SARS-CoV before 2003 in animal handlers of southern China would probably have caused such a high seroprevalence in this at-risk group.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2176051/?fbclid=IwAR1q-pNdauKdc4my2eIirUmNbu1567Byzjs5382c5JtYZOm__oqKX8P9vvI