marsh
On TB every waking moment
16:!6 min
Friday 14 Feb, COVID-19 Case numbers
3rd video of the day
CORONA Main Coronavirus thread
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16:!6 min
Friday 14 Feb, COVID-19 Case numbers
3rd video of the day
Doomer Doug
TB Fanatic
Um, we have a virus infected woman driving around London in a uber car, and a guy running around Hawaii, before he goes back to Japan. Yep, it will continue to spread widely. The two people here likely infected dozens, hundreds thousands?
Swamp Wallaby
International Observer
I've been wondering for a few days now if something like this could be the reason that most of the cases outside China - where the viral load is, so far, lower - have tended to be mild. We've had a couple of cases now with what seemed to be a super-long 'incubation' period but which were re-assessed and discovered to be re-infections: asymptomatic the first time around but more serious after reinfection. There's also the fact that the first SARS vaccine developed actually sensitized the mice it was tested on to the virus, causing, essentially, a cytokine storm when their immune systems were challenged by the real thing.
So this (if true) could be an answer to the question, 'why do the Chinese have such a large percentage of cases in serious condition when most cases outside China are mild or asymptomatic?' Many of those serious cases may be on their second round, having had a 'cold' or 'flu' earlier in the winter that they ignored.
(I've also wondered if this could be why the second wave of the Spanish flu killed so many so fast when viruses usually mutate to be less pathogenic. If those people got a mild case the first time around and were sensitized, like those mice with the SARS vaccine, their lungs would have 'exploded' with cytokine activity the second time around. This is pure speculation, of course!)
Regardless, if this is true, this is a game-changer. Usually you can rely on the immunity of those who recover from a pandemic to provide roadblocks - or at least speed-bumps - to the spread of a pathogen in the future. You also have a group of people that can get back to work in safety and keep things going while the next wave of people recover. If we have to quarantine the recovered as well as the non-exposed, and if there's sensitization instead of immunity... Wow. I don't even know where to start calculating the effects on the epidemiology of this virus.
This also has really bad implications for the potential development of a vaccine.
ETA: okay, after catching up on the last dozen pages, looks like A) the report re. the second infection being worse is on the dodgy side and refers to heart failures specifically, and B) a ton of people got there before me.
Last edited:
Profit of Doom
Dismember
For what fluids? ORS?
Or should it be RRS?
jward
passin' thru
this might answer some of the ?s that've been posed---
Here’s what coronavirus does to the body
From blood storms to honeycomb lungs, here’s an organ-by-organ look at how COVID-19 harms humans.
11 Minute Read
By Amy McKeever
PUBLISHED February 14, 2020
Much remains unknown about the novel coronavirus ripping through China, but one thing is certain. The disease can cast a storm over the whole human body.
Such has been the nature of past zoonotic coronaviruses, ones that hopped from animals to humans like SARS and MERS. Unlike their common-cold-causing cousins, these emergent coronaviruses can spark a viral-induced fire throughout many of a person’s organs, and the new disease—dubbed "COVID-19" by the World Health Organization on Tuesday—is no exception when it is severe.
That helps explain why the COVID-19 epidemic has killed more than 1,300 people, surpassing the SARS death toll in a matter of weeks. While the death rate for COVID-19 appears to be a tenth of SARS, the novel coronavirus has spread faster.
Confirmed cases rose to more than 60,000 on Thursday, nearly a 50 percent jump relative to the prior day. This leap reflects a change in the way Chinese authorities are diagnosing infections instead of a massive shift in the scope of the outbreak. Rather than wait for patients to test positive for the virus, diagnoses now include anyone whose chest scan reveals COVID-19’s distinctive pattern of pneumonia. This method will hopefully allow authorities to isolate and treat patients more quickly.
If this outbreak continues to spread, there’s no telling how harmful it could become. A leading epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong warned this week that COVID-19 could infect 60 percent of the globe if left unchecked. On Thursday, China’s National Health Commission said more than 1,700 health care workers are ill with the new virus, and the announcement came just a day after the WHO wrapped a summit on the best protocols for hospital care and the development of therapeutics, like vaccines.
But what actually happens to your body when it is infected by the coronavirus? The new strain is so genetically similar to SARS that it has inherited the title SARS-CoV-2. So combining early research on the new outbreak with past lessons from SARS and MERS can provide an answer.
The Lungs: Ground zero
For most patients, COVID-19 begins and ends in their lungs, because like the flu, coronaviruses are respiratory diseases.
They spread typically when an infected person coughs or sneezes, spraying droplets that can transmit the virus to anyone in close contact. Coronaviruses also cause flu-like symptoms: Patients might start out with a fever and cough that progresses to pneumonia or worse. (Find out how coronavirus spreads on a plane—and the safest place to sit).
After the SARS outbreak, the World Health Organization reported that the disease typically attacked the lungs in three phases: viral replication, immune hyper-reactivity, and pulmonary destruction.
Not all patients went through all three phases—in fact only 25 percent of SARS patients suffered respiratory failure, the defining signature of severe cases. Likewise, COVID-19, according to early data, causes milder symptoms in about 82 percent of cases, while the remainder are severe or critical.
Look deeper, and the novel coronavirus appears to follow other patterns of SARS, says University of Maryland School of Medicine associate professor Matthew B. Frieman, who studies highly pathogenic coronaviruses.
In the early days of an infection, the novel coronavirus rapidly invades human lung cells. Those lung cells come in two classes: ones that make mucus and ones with hair-like batons called cilia.
Mucus, though gross when outside the body, helps protect lung tissue from pathogens and make sure your breathing organ doesn’t dry out. The cilia cells beat around the mucus, clearing out debris like pollen or viruses.
Frieman explains that SARS loved to infect and kill cilia cells, which then sloughed off and filled patients’ airways with debris and fluids, and he hypothesizes that the same is happening with the novel coronavirus. That’s because the earliest studies on COVID-19 have shown that many patients develop pneumonia in both lungs, accompanied by symptoms like shortness of breath.
That’s when phase two and the immune system kicks in. Aroused by the presence of a viral invader, our bodies step up to fight the disease by flooding the lungs with immune cells to clear away the damage and repair the lung tissue.
When working properly, this inflammatory process is tightly regulated and confined only to infected areas. But sometimes your immune system goes haywire and those cells kill anything in their way, including your healthy tissue.
“So you get more damage instead of less from the immune response,” Frieman says. Even more debris clogs up the lungs, and pneumonia worsens. (Find out how the novel coronavirus compares to flu, Ebola, and other major outbreaks).
Lungs 101 The lungs replenish the body with life-giving oxygen. Learn about the anatomy of the lungs, how the organs make respiration possible, and how they are vulnerable to illnesses.
During the third phase, lung damage continues to build—which can result in respiratory failure. Even if death doesn’t occur, some patients survive with permanent lung damage. According to the WHO, SARS punched holes in the lungs, giving them “a honeycomb-like appearance”—and these lesions are present in those afflicted by novel coronavirus, too.
These holes are likely created by the immune system’s hyperactive response, which creates scars that both protect and stiffen the lungs.
When that occurs, patients often have to be put on ventilators to assist their breathing. Meanwhile, inflammation also makes the membranes between the air sacs and blood vessels more permeable, which can fill the lungs with fluid and affect their ability to oxygenate blood.
“In severe cases, you basically flood your lungs and you can’t breathe,” Frieman says. “That’s how people are dying.”
The Stomach: A shared gateway
During the SARS and MERS outbreaks, nearly a quarter of patients had diarrhea—a much more significant feature of those zoonotic coronaviruses. But Frieman says it’s still not clear whether gastrointestinal symptoms play a major part in the latest outbreak, given cases diarrhea and abdominal pain have been rare. But why does a respiratory virus bother the gut at all?
When any virus enters your body, it looks for human cells with its favorite doorways—proteins on the outside of the cells called receptors. If the virus finds a compatible receptor on a cell, it can invade.
What is a Virus? Scientists at USAMRID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious diseases, work with some of the most deadly forms of life on earth, killer viruses. Learn more.
Some viruses are picky about which door they choose, but others are a little more promiscuous. “They can very easily penetrate into all types of cells,” says Anna Suk-Fong Lok, assistant dean for clinical research at the University of Michigan Medical School and former president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
Both SARS and MERS viruses can access the cells that line your intestines and large and small colon, and those infections appear to flourish in the gut, potentially causing the damage or the leakage of fluid that becomes diarrhea.
But Frieman says we don’t know yet if the novel coronavirus does the same. Researchers believe COVID-19 uses the same receptor as SARS, and this doorway can be found in your lungs and small intestines.
Two studies—one in the New England Journal of Medicine and one preprint in medRxiv involving 1,099 cases—have also detected the virus in stool samples, which might indicate the virus could spread via feces. But this is far from conclusive.
“Whether that kind of fecal transmission is occuring for this Wuhan virus, we don’t know at all,” Frieman says. “But it definitely looks like it’s there in the stool and it looks like people do have GI symptoms associated with this.”
Blood storm
Coronaviruses can also cause problems in other systems of the body, due to the hyperactive immune response we mentioned earlier.
A 2014 study showed that 92 percent of patients with MERS had at least one manifestation of the coronavirus outside of the lungs. In fact, signs of a full body blitz have been witnessed with all three of the zoonotic coronaviruses: elevated liver enzymes, lower white blood cell and platelet count, and low blood pressure. In rare cases, patients have suffered from acute kidney injury and cardiac arrest.
But this isn’t necessarily a sign that the virus itself is spreading throughout the body, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and associate research scientist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. It might be a cytokine storm.
Cytokines are proteins used by the immune system as alarm beacons—they recruit immune cells to the site of infection. The immune cells then kill off the infected tissue in a bid to save the rest of the body.
Humans rely on our immune systems to keep their cool when facing a threat. But during a runaway coronavirus infection, when the immune system dumps cytokines into the lungs without any regulation, this culling becomes a free-for-all, Rasmussen says “Instead of shooting at a target with a gun, you’re using a missile launcher,” she says. That’s where the problem arises: Your body is not just targeting the infected cells. It is attacking healthy tissue too.
The implications extend outside the lungs. Cytokine storms create inflammation that weakens blood vessels in the lungs and causes fluid to seep through to the air sacs. “Basically you’re bleeding out of your blood vessels,” Rasmussen says. The storm spills into your circulatory system and creates systemic issues across multiple organs.
From there, things can take a sharp turn for the worse. In some of the most severe COVID-19 cases, the cytokine response—combined with a diminished capacity to pump oxygen to the rest of the body—can result in multi-organ failure. Scientists don’t know exactly why some patients experience complications outside of the lung, but it might be linked to underlying conditions like heart disease or diabetes.
“Even if the virus doesn’t get to kidneys and liver and spleen and other things, it can have clear downstream effects on all of those processes,” Frieman says. And that’s when things can get serious.''
posted for fair use
www.nationalgeographic.com
Here’s what coronavirus does to the body
From blood storms to honeycomb lungs, here’s an organ-by-organ look at how COVID-19 harms humans.
11 Minute Read
By Amy McKeever
PUBLISHED February 14, 2020
Much remains unknown about the novel coronavirus ripping through China, but one thing is certain. The disease can cast a storm over the whole human body.
Such has been the nature of past zoonotic coronaviruses, ones that hopped from animals to humans like SARS and MERS. Unlike their common-cold-causing cousins, these emergent coronaviruses can spark a viral-induced fire throughout many of a person’s organs, and the new disease—dubbed "COVID-19" by the World Health Organization on Tuesday—is no exception when it is severe.
That helps explain why the COVID-19 epidemic has killed more than 1,300 people, surpassing the SARS death toll in a matter of weeks. While the death rate for COVID-19 appears to be a tenth of SARS, the novel coronavirus has spread faster.
Confirmed cases rose to more than 60,000 on Thursday, nearly a 50 percent jump relative to the prior day. This leap reflects a change in the way Chinese authorities are diagnosing infections instead of a massive shift in the scope of the outbreak. Rather than wait for patients to test positive for the virus, diagnoses now include anyone whose chest scan reveals COVID-19’s distinctive pattern of pneumonia. This method will hopefully allow authorities to isolate and treat patients more quickly.
If this outbreak continues to spread, there’s no telling how harmful it could become. A leading epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong warned this week that COVID-19 could infect 60 percent of the globe if left unchecked. On Thursday, China’s National Health Commission said more than 1,700 health care workers are ill with the new virus, and the announcement came just a day after the WHO wrapped a summit on the best protocols for hospital care and the development of therapeutics, like vaccines.
But what actually happens to your body when it is infected by the coronavirus? The new strain is so genetically similar to SARS that it has inherited the title SARS-CoV-2. So combining early research on the new outbreak with past lessons from SARS and MERS can provide an answer.
The Lungs: Ground zero
For most patients, COVID-19 begins and ends in their lungs, because like the flu, coronaviruses are respiratory diseases.
They spread typically when an infected person coughs or sneezes, spraying droplets that can transmit the virus to anyone in close contact. Coronaviruses also cause flu-like symptoms: Patients might start out with a fever and cough that progresses to pneumonia or worse. (Find out how coronavirus spreads on a plane—and the safest place to sit).
After the SARS outbreak, the World Health Organization reported that the disease typically attacked the lungs in three phases: viral replication, immune hyper-reactivity, and pulmonary destruction.
Not all patients went through all three phases—in fact only 25 percent of SARS patients suffered respiratory failure, the defining signature of severe cases. Likewise, COVID-19, according to early data, causes milder symptoms in about 82 percent of cases, while the remainder are severe or critical.
Look deeper, and the novel coronavirus appears to follow other patterns of SARS, says University of Maryland School of Medicine associate professor Matthew B. Frieman, who studies highly pathogenic coronaviruses.
In the early days of an infection, the novel coronavirus rapidly invades human lung cells. Those lung cells come in two classes: ones that make mucus and ones with hair-like batons called cilia.
Mucus, though gross when outside the body, helps protect lung tissue from pathogens and make sure your breathing organ doesn’t dry out. The cilia cells beat around the mucus, clearing out debris like pollen or viruses.
Frieman explains that SARS loved to infect and kill cilia cells, which then sloughed off and filled patients’ airways with debris and fluids, and he hypothesizes that the same is happening with the novel coronavirus. That’s because the earliest studies on COVID-19 have shown that many patients develop pneumonia in both lungs, accompanied by symptoms like shortness of breath.
That’s when phase two and the immune system kicks in. Aroused by the presence of a viral invader, our bodies step up to fight the disease by flooding the lungs with immune cells to clear away the damage and repair the lung tissue.
When working properly, this inflammatory process is tightly regulated and confined only to infected areas. But sometimes your immune system goes haywire and those cells kill anything in their way, including your healthy tissue.
“So you get more damage instead of less from the immune response,” Frieman says. Even more debris clogs up the lungs, and pneumonia worsens. (Find out how the novel coronavirus compares to flu, Ebola, and other major outbreaks).
Lungs 101 The lungs replenish the body with life-giving oxygen. Learn about the anatomy of the lungs, how the organs make respiration possible, and how they are vulnerable to illnesses.
During the third phase, lung damage continues to build—which can result in respiratory failure. Even if death doesn’t occur, some patients survive with permanent lung damage. According to the WHO, SARS punched holes in the lungs, giving them “a honeycomb-like appearance”—and these lesions are present in those afflicted by novel coronavirus, too.
These holes are likely created by the immune system’s hyperactive response, which creates scars that both protect and stiffen the lungs.
When that occurs, patients often have to be put on ventilators to assist their breathing. Meanwhile, inflammation also makes the membranes between the air sacs and blood vessels more permeable, which can fill the lungs with fluid and affect their ability to oxygenate blood.
“In severe cases, you basically flood your lungs and you can’t breathe,” Frieman says. “That’s how people are dying.”
The Stomach: A shared gateway
During the SARS and MERS outbreaks, nearly a quarter of patients had diarrhea—a much more significant feature of those zoonotic coronaviruses. But Frieman says it’s still not clear whether gastrointestinal symptoms play a major part in the latest outbreak, given cases diarrhea and abdominal pain have been rare. But why does a respiratory virus bother the gut at all?
When any virus enters your body, it looks for human cells with its favorite doorways—proteins on the outside of the cells called receptors. If the virus finds a compatible receptor on a cell, it can invade.
What is a Virus? Scientists at USAMRID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious diseases, work with some of the most deadly forms of life on earth, killer viruses. Learn more.
Some viruses are picky about which door they choose, but others are a little more promiscuous. “They can very easily penetrate into all types of cells,” says Anna Suk-Fong Lok, assistant dean for clinical research at the University of Michigan Medical School and former president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
Both SARS and MERS viruses can access the cells that line your intestines and large and small colon, and those infections appear to flourish in the gut, potentially causing the damage or the leakage of fluid that becomes diarrhea.
But Frieman says we don’t know yet if the novel coronavirus does the same. Researchers believe COVID-19 uses the same receptor as SARS, and this doorway can be found in your lungs and small intestines.
Two studies—one in the New England Journal of Medicine and one preprint in medRxiv involving 1,099 cases—have also detected the virus in stool samples, which might indicate the virus could spread via feces. But this is far from conclusive.
“Whether that kind of fecal transmission is occuring for this Wuhan virus, we don’t know at all,” Frieman says. “But it definitely looks like it’s there in the stool and it looks like people do have GI symptoms associated with this.”
Blood storm
Coronaviruses can also cause problems in other systems of the body, due to the hyperactive immune response we mentioned earlier.
A 2014 study showed that 92 percent of patients with MERS had at least one manifestation of the coronavirus outside of the lungs. In fact, signs of a full body blitz have been witnessed with all three of the zoonotic coronaviruses: elevated liver enzymes, lower white blood cell and platelet count, and low blood pressure. In rare cases, patients have suffered from acute kidney injury and cardiac arrest.
But this isn’t necessarily a sign that the virus itself is spreading throughout the body, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and associate research scientist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. It might be a cytokine storm.
Angela Rasmussen, virologist
Cytokines are proteins used by the immune system as alarm beacons—they recruit immune cells to the site of infection. The immune cells then kill off the infected tissue in a bid to save the rest of the body.
Humans rely on our immune systems to keep their cool when facing a threat. But during a runaway coronavirus infection, when the immune system dumps cytokines into the lungs without any regulation, this culling becomes a free-for-all, Rasmussen says “Instead of shooting at a target with a gun, you’re using a missile launcher,” she says. That’s where the problem arises: Your body is not just targeting the infected cells. It is attacking healthy tissue too.
The implications extend outside the lungs. Cytokine storms create inflammation that weakens blood vessels in the lungs and causes fluid to seep through to the air sacs. “Basically you’re bleeding out of your blood vessels,” Rasmussen says. The storm spills into your circulatory system and creates systemic issues across multiple organs.
From there, things can take a sharp turn for the worse. In some of the most severe COVID-19 cases, the cytokine response—combined with a diminished capacity to pump oxygen to the rest of the body—can result in multi-organ failure. Scientists don’t know exactly why some patients experience complications outside of the lung, but it might be linked to underlying conditions like heart disease or diabetes.
“Even if the virus doesn’t get to kidneys and liver and spleen and other things, it can have clear downstream effects on all of those processes,” Frieman says. And that’s when things can get serious.''
posted for fair use
Here’s what coronavirus does to the body
From blood storms to honeycomb lungs, here’s an organ-by-organ look at how COVID-19 harms humans.
www.nationalgeographic.com
jward
passin' thru
continued
Here’s what coronavirus does to the body
From blood storms to honeycomb lungs, here’s an organ-by-organ look at how COVID-19 harms humans.
11 Minute Read
By Amy McKeever
PUBLISHED February 14, 2020
Liver: Collateral damage
When a zoonotic coronavirus spreads from the respiratory system, your liver is often one downstream organ that suffers. Doctors have seen indications of liver injury with SARS, MERS, and COVID-19—often mild, though more severe cases have led to severe liver damage and even liver failure. So what’s happening?
“Once a virus gets into your bloodstream, they can swim to any part of your body,” Lok says. “The liver is a very vascular organ so [a coronavirus] can very easily get into your liver.”
Your liver works pretty hard to make sure your body can function properly. Its main job is to process your blood after it leaves the stomach, filtering out the toxins and creating nutrients your body can use. It also makes the bile that helps your small intestine break down fats. Your liver also contains enzymes, which speed up chemical reactions in the body.
In a normal body, Lok explains, liver cells are constantly dying off and releasing enzymes into your bloodstream. This resourceful organ then quickly regenerates new cells and carries on with its day. Because of that regeneration process, the liver can withstand a lot of injury.
When you have abnormally high levels of enzymes in your blood, though—as has been a common characteristic of patients suffering from SARS and MERS—it’s a warning sign. It might be a mild injury that the liver will quickly bounce back from or it could be something more severe—even liver failure.
Lok says scientists don’t completely understand how these respiratory viruses behave in the liver. The virus might be directly infecting the liver, replicating and killing off the cells itself. Or those cells might be collateral damage as your body’s immune response to the virus sets off a severe inflammatory reaction in the liver.
Either way, she notes that liver failure was never the sole cause of death for SARS patients. “By the time the liver fails,” she says, “oftentimes you’ll find that the patient not only has lung problems and liver problems but they may also have kidney problems. By then it becomes a systemic infection.”
Kidney: It’s all connected
Yes, your kidneys are caught up in this mess, too. Six percent of SARS patients—and a full quarter of MERS patients—suffered acute renal injury. Studies have shown the novel coronavirus can do the same. It may be a relatively uncommon feature of the disease, but it is a fatal one. Ultimately 91.7 percent of SARS patients with acute renal impairment died, according to a 2005 study in Kidney International.
Like the liver, your kidneys act as a filter your blood. Each kidney is filled with about 800,000 of microscopic distilling units called nephrons. These nephrons have two main components: a filter to clean the blood and a little tubes that return the good stuff back to your body or send the waste down to your bladder as urine.
It’s the kidney tubules that seem to be most affected by these zoonotic coronaviruses. After the SARS outbreak, the WHO reported that the virus was found in kidney tubules, which can become inflamed.
It’s not uncommon to detect a virus in the tubules if it’s in your bloodstream, says Kar Neng Lai, a professor emeritus at the University of Hong Kong and consultant nephrologist at Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital. As your kidneys are continuously filtering blood, sometimes the tubular cells can trap the virus and cause a transient, or milder, injury.
How Flu Viruses Attack See how a flu virus attacks, mutates, and becomes contagious—perhaps resulting in an outbreak or even pandemic.
That injury could become lethal if the virus penetrates the cells and begins to replicate. But Lai—who was also a member of the first group of researchers reporting on SARS and contributed to the Kidney International study—says there was no evidence that the SARS virus was replicating in the kidney.
That finding, Lai says, suggests acute kidney injury in SARS patients might be due to a diverse set of causes, including low blood pressure, sepsis, drugs, or a metabolic disturbance. Meanwhile, the more severe cases that led to acute renal failure showed signs of—you guessed it—a cytokine storm.
Acute renal failure can also sometimes be brought on by antibiotics, multi-organ failure, or being connected to a ventilator for too long. Everything is connected.
Pregnancy and coronavirus?
It’s the great irony of the Twitter age that we know too little about the novel coronavirus as we drown in information updates about it. Medical journals have published several studies about this outbreak—some more vetted than others as researchers rush to feed the maw. Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting every development. All this information whirls around the internet where discerning fact from fiction is a notorious challenge.
“This is really unprecedented in terms of the up-to-the-minute reporting on what’s going on in these studies,” Rasmussen says. “It’s really tricky trying to sort through all of the information and figure out what’s really supported, what’s speculative, and what’s plain wrong.”
For example last week, doctors at a hospital in Wuhan reported that two infants tested positive for the novel coronavirus, one just 30 hours after birth. Naturally, this troubling headline spread across news organizations, given it raised questions of whether pregnant women can infect their unborn children in utero or whether the disease can be transmitted during birth or through breast milk.
But let’s pump the breaks. Mother-to-infant transmission wasn’t observed with SARS nor MERS despite numerous cases involving pregnant women. Plus, there are other ways a newborn could catch the coronavirus, Rasmussen says, such as by being born at hospital overrun with infected patients during a hectic emergency.
In fact, a new study published Thursday in The Lancet offers preliminary evidence that the coronavirus cannot be passed from mother to child.
In the report, researchers observed nine women in Wuhan who had COVID-19 pneumonia. Some of the women had pregnancy complications, but all cases resulted in live births without evidence of transmitting the infection. While this study doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of transmission during pregnancy, it underscores the need to exercise caution in speculating about this disease.
“There needs to be a high standard of evidence before you can say that’s happening definitively—and certainly before you start making changes to how cases are managed clinically or in terms of public policy,” Rasmussen says.
Frieman agrees. He hopes this epidemic will prompt more funding for coronavirus research like the recent pledges from the European Union and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Frieman wants the support and interest to last even if this outbreak eventually fizzles out, unlike what happened with SARS research.
“Right after the SARS outbreak, there was a big bunch of money and then it went away,” Frieman says. “Why don’t we have these answers? Nobody funded these things.”
Here’s what coronavirus does to the body
From blood storms to honeycomb lungs, here’s an organ-by-organ look at how COVID-19 harms humans.
11 Minute Read
By Amy McKeever
PUBLISHED February 14, 2020
Liver: Collateral damage
When a zoonotic coronavirus spreads from the respiratory system, your liver is often one downstream organ that suffers. Doctors have seen indications of liver injury with SARS, MERS, and COVID-19—often mild, though more severe cases have led to severe liver damage and even liver failure. So what’s happening?
“Once a virus gets into your bloodstream, they can swim to any part of your body,” Lok says. “The liver is a very vascular organ so [a coronavirus] can very easily get into your liver.”
Your liver works pretty hard to make sure your body can function properly. Its main job is to process your blood after it leaves the stomach, filtering out the toxins and creating nutrients your body can use. It also makes the bile that helps your small intestine break down fats. Your liver also contains enzymes, which speed up chemical reactions in the body.
In a normal body, Lok explains, liver cells are constantly dying off and releasing enzymes into your bloodstream. This resourceful organ then quickly regenerates new cells and carries on with its day. Because of that regeneration process, the liver can withstand a lot of injury.
When you have abnormally high levels of enzymes in your blood, though—as has been a common characteristic of patients suffering from SARS and MERS—it’s a warning sign. It might be a mild injury that the liver will quickly bounce back from or it could be something more severe—even liver failure.
Lok says scientists don’t completely understand how these respiratory viruses behave in the liver. The virus might be directly infecting the liver, replicating and killing off the cells itself. Or those cells might be collateral damage as your body’s immune response to the virus sets off a severe inflammatory reaction in the liver.
Either way, she notes that liver failure was never the sole cause of death for SARS patients. “By the time the liver fails,” she says, “oftentimes you’ll find that the patient not only has lung problems and liver problems but they may also have kidney problems. By then it becomes a systemic infection.”
Kidney: It’s all connected
Yes, your kidneys are caught up in this mess, too. Six percent of SARS patients—and a full quarter of MERS patients—suffered acute renal injury. Studies have shown the novel coronavirus can do the same. It may be a relatively uncommon feature of the disease, but it is a fatal one. Ultimately 91.7 percent of SARS patients with acute renal impairment died, according to a 2005 study in Kidney International.
Like the liver, your kidneys act as a filter your blood. Each kidney is filled with about 800,000 of microscopic distilling units called nephrons. These nephrons have two main components: a filter to clean the blood and a little tubes that return the good stuff back to your body or send the waste down to your bladder as urine.
It’s the kidney tubules that seem to be most affected by these zoonotic coronaviruses. After the SARS outbreak, the WHO reported that the virus was found in kidney tubules, which can become inflamed.
It’s not uncommon to detect a virus in the tubules if it’s in your bloodstream, says Kar Neng Lai, a professor emeritus at the University of Hong Kong and consultant nephrologist at Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital. As your kidneys are continuously filtering blood, sometimes the tubular cells can trap the virus and cause a transient, or milder, injury.
How Flu Viruses Attack See how a flu virus attacks, mutates, and becomes contagious—perhaps resulting in an outbreak or even pandemic.
That injury could become lethal if the virus penetrates the cells and begins to replicate. But Lai—who was also a member of the first group of researchers reporting on SARS and contributed to the Kidney International study—says there was no evidence that the SARS virus was replicating in the kidney.
That finding, Lai says, suggests acute kidney injury in SARS patients might be due to a diverse set of causes, including low blood pressure, sepsis, drugs, or a metabolic disturbance. Meanwhile, the more severe cases that led to acute renal failure showed signs of—you guessed it—a cytokine storm.
Acute renal failure can also sometimes be brought on by antibiotics, multi-organ failure, or being connected to a ventilator for too long. Everything is connected.
Pregnancy and coronavirus?
It’s the great irony of the Twitter age that we know too little about the novel coronavirus as we drown in information updates about it. Medical journals have published several studies about this outbreak—some more vetted than others as researchers rush to feed the maw. Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting every development. All this information whirls around the internet where discerning fact from fiction is a notorious challenge.
“This is really unprecedented in terms of the up-to-the-minute reporting on what’s going on in these studies,” Rasmussen says. “It’s really tricky trying to sort through all of the information and figure out what’s really supported, what’s speculative, and what’s plain wrong.”
For example last week, doctors at a hospital in Wuhan reported that two infants tested positive for the novel coronavirus, one just 30 hours after birth. Naturally, this troubling headline spread across news organizations, given it raised questions of whether pregnant women can infect their unborn children in utero or whether the disease can be transmitted during birth or through breast milk.
But let’s pump the breaks. Mother-to-infant transmission wasn’t observed with SARS nor MERS despite numerous cases involving pregnant women. Plus, there are other ways a newborn could catch the coronavirus, Rasmussen says, such as by being born at hospital overrun with infected patients during a hectic emergency.
In fact, a new study published Thursday in The Lancet offers preliminary evidence that the coronavirus cannot be passed from mother to child.
In the report, researchers observed nine women in Wuhan who had COVID-19 pneumonia. Some of the women had pregnancy complications, but all cases resulted in live births without evidence of transmitting the infection. While this study doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of transmission during pregnancy, it underscores the need to exercise caution in speculating about this disease.
“There needs to be a high standard of evidence before you can say that’s happening definitively—and certainly before you start making changes to how cases are managed clinically or in terms of public policy,” Rasmussen says.
Frieman agrees. He hopes this epidemic will prompt more funding for coronavirus research like the recent pledges from the European Union and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Frieman wants the support and interest to last even if this outbreak eventually fizzles out, unlike what happened with SARS research.
“Right after the SARS outbreak, there was a big bunch of money and then it went away,” Frieman says. “Why don’t we have these answers? Nobody funded these things.”
Here’s what coronavirus does to the body
From blood storms to honeycomb lungs, here’s an organ-by-organ look at how COVID-19 harms humans.
jward
passin' thru
Hey don't forget my taxi driver in Tokoyo--- he's fueling my personal nightmare.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
‘I had no choice but to be strong’: a coronavirus survivor’s tale
Feng Chuncui, a gynaecologist from Hubei province, was diagnosed with the illness during the Lunar New Year holiday and spent weeks in quarantine.
www.scmp.com
‘I had no choice but to be strong’: how one Chinese doctor survived coronavirus
Kristin Huang
Published: 10:30am, 15 Feb, 2020 | Updated: 10:30am, 15 Feb, 2020
- Feng Chuncui, a gynaecologist from Hubei province, was diagnosed with the illness during the Lunar New Year holiday and spent weeks in quarantine
- The 53-year-old describes what it was like to learn she was suffering from Covid-19 and how she fought her way to a full recovery
One of those affected was Feng Chuncui, a gynaecologist from Xiaogan, a city 60km (37 miles) from Wuhan, where the disease first appeared.
The 53-year-old was diagnosed over the Lunar New Year holiday and left fearing for her life, but after just over two weeks of quarantine and treatment she made a full recovery and was discharged from hospital on Wednesday.
This is her story in her own words.
Around January 10, I met a patient who had a fever and told her to go to the fever clinic. I am not sure whether the very limited contact with this person infected me.
I work in Xiaogan Central Hospital and I learned that one of my colleagues was confirmed as a coronavirus patient before the Lunar New Year.
At that time, I was pretty calm and never thought I would get infected. Looking back, I was too optimistic and underestimated the then-unknown virus.
I worked a 24-hour shift on January 23, just one day before Lunar New Year’s Eve, and on the morning of January 24, I left hospital and drove back home.
Maybe because I am a doctor, my sense of danger about the virus was higher than most people’s. So when I reached home, I told my husband that we need to stay about 1.5 metres apart from each other, and in the meantime, I made a lot of calls to my parents, who are in their 80s, and other relatives that I could not join their dinner any more because I might infect them all.
On January 25, I felt a little dizzy and began to have a stuffy nose, symptoms very similar to a cold. My intuition told me that I might be in the early stages of infection from the coronavirus.
Whether or not I had contracted the virus, the symptoms were already there, so I took some amoxicillin pills and herbal Chinese medicine to relieve the discomfort.
That day I made more calls to relatives and friends, asking them to stay at home and not attend any gatherings.
The next day, I felt even worse. My throat was painful and all my muscles ached, but I did not have a fever. I immediately notified my supervisor, which was a routine report because I was due to go back to work one day later, and my supervisor asked me to come to hospital to do some general tests, which all proved negative.
After a good sleep I felt relatively better the next morning.
But this was a false feeling and it was only when I tried to speak that I found I could no longer say a word.
I took a throat swab test in the morning on January 27, and waited all day for the result, feeling very anxious and hoped the result would still be negative.
But at around 8pm, I was told that I had contracted the virus. I felt calm after getting the result, and then quietly went to sort out my stuff in the office. I was finally hospitalised at around 11pm that day.
In the beginning, I felt more happy than sad, because I kept a distance from my relatives, preventing them from being infected by me.
But when a nurse I know came to my ward and asked about my condition, I suddenly collapsed and cried on her shoulder.
At the bottom of my heart, I was really worried, as this virus is highly contagious and can lead to death. My parents are in their 80s and need me to take care of them, what if they fall ill and I am stuck here? But the doctors and nurses soon made me feel better, and I knew I had no choice but to be strong.
Doctors used some antiviral and anti-inflamation drugs, such as moxifloxacin and Avigan on me, and my health soon improved.
But the CAT scan showed my lungs were infected. It made me uneasy and a bit afraid and wondering why my lungs were getting worse while all my other indicators were good.
On February 5, I did another throat swab test, and the result was negative. I stayed for several more days until my lungs were back to normal. And I was finally discharged on Wednesday, bringing only essential items with me and didn’t have to pay any expenses.
When I drove back home after leaving the hospital, my world was completely different. I could see the whole of Xiaogan city was locked down, only policemen and security officers were on the streets, checking passers-by.
And in my heart, it’s the new beginning of my life, a life that survived the virus outbreak.
Thinking about this ordeal makes me cry a lot. Feeling alive is very good, and health is really priceless.
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Thanks for taking the time to post them!
The only complaint I have about the new board is the small size of pics...
So many helpful graphics, graphs, and charts cannot be uploaded due to their size being too big.
jward
passin' thru
here's our happy video o' the day- kleenex not required:
China Daily
@ChinaDaily
18m
#OneMoment
The old saying goes that people fight like cats and dogs, but this pair are the best of friends!
View: https://twitter.com/ChinaDaily/status/1228582249169211392?s=20
China Daily
@ChinaDaily
18m
#OneMoment
The old saying goes that people fight like cats and dogs, but this pair are the best of friends!
View: https://twitter.com/ChinaDaily/status/1228582249169211392?s=20
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
New coronavirus cases further spread in Japan, some infection routes unknown - The Mainichi
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Infections of a new coronavirus originating in Wuhan further spread in Japan among people with no direct connections to China as new
mainichi.jp
New coronavirus cases further spread in Japan, some infection routes unknown
February 14, 2020 (Mainichi Japan)
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Infections of a new coronavirus originating in Wuhan further spread in Japan among people with no direct connections to China as new cases were reported in Tokyo, Aichi, Hokkaido and Okinawa on Friday.
The latest cases in Tokyo and Hokkaido involved people with no recent travel history to China and came on the heels of Japan's first coronavirus death -- that of a woman in her 80s in Kanagawa Prefecture, whose son-in-law, a taxi driver, was also found to be infected with the virus.
The Tokyo metropolitan government said two additional people in Tokyo who have tested positive for the virus had been in close contact with the taxi driver, with both hospitalized but not in serious condition.
One was a worker on a traditional "yakatabune" roofed party boat on which the taxi driver attended a New Year's party held Jan. 18 with his wife, while the other did not attend the party but is a staffer of a taxi union the driver belongs to, the Tokyo government said.
The boat worker had also previously come into contact with travelers from China's Hubei Province, it said.
The government will carry out tests on some 100 people, including around 80 party attendees, who came into close contact with the taxi driver. Around 10 have so far complained of a fever and other symptoms, it said.
So far, more than 250 people in Japan -- 218 of whom are passengers and crew from a cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama -- have been found to be infected with the pneumonia-causing virus.
While health minister Katsunobu Kato said there is "no reason for changing the government position that it has yet to reach a state of epidemic in Japan," infection of a Hokkaido resident in his 50s with no recent history of traveling abroad has been confirmed, the Hokkaido government said. The man is being treated at a hospital where he remains in serious condition.
In Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, a man in his 60s who recently returned from a trip to Hawaii has tested positive for the coronavirus, the city government said. He has not visited China recently.
In cases reported Thursday in the western prefecture of Wakayama, a route of contraction is not known, either.
A man in his 70s who was treated at a hospital in Wakayama where a doctor was confirmed to have been infected with the virus has also tested positive for it, local officials said Friday, adding that the two apparently never had any contact.
Wakayama Gov. Yoshinobu Nisaka said, however, he does not think infections are spreading inside the Saiseikai Arida Hospital in Yuasa, where the man, a farmer, was briefly hospitalized from last week.
A local government official warned that infections could be spreading outside of the medical facility as the man developed symptoms before he visited the hospital on Feb. 6.
The surgeon in his 50s at the hospital was confirmed Thursday to have become the first doctor in Japan to be infected with the virus that causes the disease now known as COVID-19.
The surgeon has not traveled overseas recently or had close contact with visitors from China.
The farmer, whose infection with the virus was also confirmed Thursday, has developed severe pneumonia and is now being treated at a different medical facility, the prefectural government said.
A health-care center is working to confirm who has been in close contact with him, the local government said, adding it is currently unknown whether he recently traveled overseas.
Besides the surgeon and the farmer, another doctor and two patients at the hospital have developed pneumonia. One of the patients, a woman, has already tested negative for the virus, but local authorities say they will conduct a fresh test on her and also screen the doctor and the other patient.
Elsewhere in Japan, a female taxi driver in her 60s in Okinawa tested positive for the virus, becoming the first confirmed case of infection in the country's southernmost island prefecture or the Kyushu region, local authorities said.
The quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess previously made a stop in Naha, the Okinawa Prefecture capital.
The driver is highly likely to have come into contact with someone on the vessel when it arrived on Feb. 1, the Okinawa government said.
Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki said Friday that the woman is currently being treated at a designated medical facility and is in a stable condition.
The health minister indicated the possibility of expanding the scope of screening, which is currently limited to people who have traveled to and from or have had exposure to people from China's Hubei and Zhejiang provinces.
Meanwhile, a group of Japanese nationals who evacuated from Wuhan on the second chartered aircraft sent to the Chinese city by the government amid the virus outbreak departed from state facilities where they have been staying since arriving in Tokyo on Jan. 30.
The 199 returnees all tested negative for the virus following a 12.5-day monitoring period. The first group of Wuhan evacuees left for home Thursday after undergoing the same procedures.
Among people brought back on the third charter flight on Jan. 31 and held under observation since, a woman in her 60s tested positive for the virus, the health ministry said. She has not shown any symptoms, it added.
The government has already sent four chartered planes and repatriated a total of 763 people from Wuhan and other areas of Hubei Province amid a wide-scale lockdown of the area.
It is planning to send a fifth plane on Sunday to bring home more Japanese and family members who wish to leave the city, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said.
Some elderly passengers on the quarantined cruise ship docked in Yokohama, near Tokyo, disembarked from the vessel Friday afternoon and arrived at a state-run facility in Wako, Saitama Prefecture.
With those infected on the Diamond Princess having been taken to hospitals, about 3,400 passengers and crew remain quarantined on the ship. The health ministry had initially planned to keep all of them confined on the vessel until next Wednesday, when the monitoring period ends.
But it decided to allow those aged 80 and older who have pre-existing conditions or are staying inside cabins without windows, together with people traveling with them, to leave the ship after screening for infections.
The health ministry said later Friday that a Kanagawa government official who was supporting the transfer of infected passengers to hospitals has been confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus.
With the government scrambling to contain the virus, the Cabinet has decided to use 10.3 billion yen ($94 million) from Japan's reserve funds for measures to stem the outbreak.
Under a hastily compiled policy package worth 15.3 billion yen in total, the government will allocate most of the funds to meet emergency needs, ranging from developing rapid-test kits and a possible vaccine to enabling more hospitals to better treat symptoms caused by the virus.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
China’s chip makers more resilient amid coronavirus supply chain shocks
(fair use applies)
Coronavirus: China’s chip makers proving resilient to supply chain shocks thanks to automation and clean room environments
Jane Zhang
Published: 6:30am, 15 Feb, 2020 | Updated: 7:02am, 15 Feb, 2020
Wuhan is an important player in the country’s semiconductor industry, with more than 100 chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing companies in operation
The suspension of US-China flights by major US airlines could seriously impact deliveries of finished chip products to US customers
Every morning hundreds of professionals in Wuhan, epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, don protective masks and hazmat-style suits before they enter their workplace.
They are not hospital workers treating patients infected with the virus that has killed more than 1,300 people in China so far. Rather, they work for Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (XMC) and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), which operate hospital-style clean rooms designed to prevent microscopic particles from contaminating silicon wafers.
The fallout from the deadly coronavirus outbreak for the tech industry and the global supply chain has been significant, with Canalys forecasting that China’s smartphone shipments would drop 40 to 50 per cent in the first quarter of 2020.
Yet the semiconductor manufacturing sector has been more resilient to the impact thanks to its higher level of automation and clean room environment on the factory floor.
Jim Handy, semiconductor analyst from Objective Analysis in California, said the “incredibly clean and uncrowded” workplace in chip fabs would probably limit the spread of any disease. Workers often live in dormitories on the company’s campus, so they do not need to take public transport to work, he added.
That view was echoed by Linda Sui, director of Wireless Smartphone Strategies at Strategy Analytics, who said labour-intensive companies like Foxconn have seen a much greater impact because workers returning from their Spring Festival break have had to undergo 14 day quarantines before resuming work.
Foxconn, which makes most of the world’s iPhones, employs more than 1 million people in a dozen factories on the Chinese mainland, including a major facility in Zhengzhou, about 480km (300 miles) from the centre of the outbreak.
China enforced mandatory factory shutdowns in at least 24 of its 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions from January 31 to February 9 in an effort to contain the outbreak, but that order does not appear to have been directed at semiconductor factories which typically operate 24/7.
“There will not be a big impact on chip manufacturers,” Siu said. “The demand [for chips] will fluctuate for sure but in terms of production capacity, these factories work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Their machines keep running even during holidays.”
An XMC spokeswoman told the Post last week that its factory lines have not been interrupted due to the coronavirus and that production continued safely during the Spring Festival holidays.
China is a key part of the global electronics industry’s value chain, with semiconductors critical to the function of everyday consumer electronics, communications and computing products, as well as increasingly sophisticated applications such as 5G and artificial intelligence.
Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province and epicentre of the outbreak, is known as the “Chicago of the East” for its industrial and transport industries.
Apart from being a major supply chain hub in central China, the city is an important player in the country’s semiconductor industry, with more than 100 chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing companies in operation as of August, according to the Hubei government.
XMC and YMTC – both under the state backed Tsinghua Unigroup – specialise in designing and manufacturing memory chips. In statements issued earlier this month they indicated the coronavirus outbreak has had a minimal impact on operations so far.
YMTC did not respond to a request for updated information on Wednesday.
In a document issued to customers earlier this month, XMC said it has appropriately reduced its production capacity, adding that before the Spring Festival holiday it had stocked up on raw materials which will help it continue customer deliveries.
Founded in 2006 in Wuhan, the company focuses on NOR Flash memory and has been providing professional 300mm (12-inch) wafer foundry services since 2008.
However, chip makers are not completely immune from the disruptions. The shortage of manpower and raw materials, the evacuation of foreign engineers from Wuhan and transport restrictions are all challenges facing semiconductor companies in the city, according to Handy.
The suspension of US-China flights by major US airlines could seriously impact deliveries of finished chip products to US customers.
“I don’t anticipate any winners in this situation,” Handy said. “There are companies who compete against Wuhan’s chip makers, but they are still shipping to assembly houses in China, and those assembly houses may buy other chips from Wuhan-based firms which might limit their overall production and cause them to use fewer of the competitors’ chips as well.”
A YMTC spokesman said last week that the lockdown in Wuhan has created some challenges in the supply chain and labour supply, but that it is actively coordinating with raw material suppliers and logistics providers to ensure normal operation of the production line.
Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co said on its official WeChat account at the end of January that there were no cases in its Wuhan factory and that the company puts the health and safety of its employees first.
BOE Technology Group, which began mass production of leading-edge 10.5 generation LCD panels at a clean room facility in Wuhan in December, said that it will reduce its monthly output due to constraints in the materials supply chain.
“It is expected that production capacity growth will slow down, which may further exacerbate the ongoing global supply shortage of ultra-large-sized display screens in 2020,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to a statement issued by Hubei authorities on Thursday, enterprises in the province cannot resume work earlier than midnight on February 20, although those exempted from the rules include companies involved in epidemic prevention and control, public utilities, those providing daily necessities, such as supermarkets, and “other related enterprises” important for the national economy and people's livelihoods.
(fair use applies)
Coronavirus: China’s chip makers proving resilient to supply chain shocks thanks to automation and clean room environments
Jane Zhang
Published: 6:30am, 15 Feb, 2020 | Updated: 7:02am, 15 Feb, 2020
Wuhan is an important player in the country’s semiconductor industry, with more than 100 chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing companies in operation
The suspension of US-China flights by major US airlines could seriously impact deliveries of finished chip products to US customers
Every morning hundreds of professionals in Wuhan, epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, don protective masks and hazmat-style suits before they enter their workplace.
They are not hospital workers treating patients infected with the virus that has killed more than 1,300 people in China so far. Rather, they work for Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (XMC) and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), which operate hospital-style clean rooms designed to prevent microscopic particles from contaminating silicon wafers.
The fallout from the deadly coronavirus outbreak for the tech industry and the global supply chain has been significant, with Canalys forecasting that China’s smartphone shipments would drop 40 to 50 per cent in the first quarter of 2020.
Yet the semiconductor manufacturing sector has been more resilient to the impact thanks to its higher level of automation and clean room environment on the factory floor.
Jim Handy, semiconductor analyst from Objective Analysis in California, said the “incredibly clean and uncrowded” workplace in chip fabs would probably limit the spread of any disease. Workers often live in dormitories on the company’s campus, so they do not need to take public transport to work, he added.
That view was echoed by Linda Sui, director of Wireless Smartphone Strategies at Strategy Analytics, who said labour-intensive companies like Foxconn have seen a much greater impact because workers returning from their Spring Festival break have had to undergo 14 day quarantines before resuming work.
Foxconn, which makes most of the world’s iPhones, employs more than 1 million people in a dozen factories on the Chinese mainland, including a major facility in Zhengzhou, about 480km (300 miles) from the centre of the outbreak.
China enforced mandatory factory shutdowns in at least 24 of its 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions from January 31 to February 9 in an effort to contain the outbreak, but that order does not appear to have been directed at semiconductor factories which typically operate 24/7.
“There will not be a big impact on chip manufacturers,” Siu said. “The demand [for chips] will fluctuate for sure but in terms of production capacity, these factories work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Their machines keep running even during holidays.”
An XMC spokeswoman told the Post last week that its factory lines have not been interrupted due to the coronavirus and that production continued safely during the Spring Festival holidays.
China is a key part of the global electronics industry’s value chain, with semiconductors critical to the function of everyday consumer electronics, communications and computing products, as well as increasingly sophisticated applications such as 5G and artificial intelligence.
Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province and epicentre of the outbreak, is known as the “Chicago of the East” for its industrial and transport industries.
Apart from being a major supply chain hub in central China, the city is an important player in the country’s semiconductor industry, with more than 100 chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing companies in operation as of August, according to the Hubei government.
XMC and YMTC – both under the state backed Tsinghua Unigroup – specialise in designing and manufacturing memory chips. In statements issued earlier this month they indicated the coronavirus outbreak has had a minimal impact on operations so far.
YMTC did not respond to a request for updated information on Wednesday.
In a document issued to customers earlier this month, XMC said it has appropriately reduced its production capacity, adding that before the Spring Festival holiday it had stocked up on raw materials which will help it continue customer deliveries.
Founded in 2006 in Wuhan, the company focuses on NOR Flash memory and has been providing professional 300mm (12-inch) wafer foundry services since 2008.
However, chip makers are not completely immune from the disruptions. The shortage of manpower and raw materials, the evacuation of foreign engineers from Wuhan and transport restrictions are all challenges facing semiconductor companies in the city, according to Handy.
The suspension of US-China flights by major US airlines could seriously impact deliveries of finished chip products to US customers.
“I don’t anticipate any winners in this situation,” Handy said. “There are companies who compete against Wuhan’s chip makers, but they are still shipping to assembly houses in China, and those assembly houses may buy other chips from Wuhan-based firms which might limit their overall production and cause them to use fewer of the competitors’ chips as well.”
A YMTC spokesman said last week that the lockdown in Wuhan has created some challenges in the supply chain and labour supply, but that it is actively coordinating with raw material suppliers and logistics providers to ensure normal operation of the production line.
Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co said on its official WeChat account at the end of January that there were no cases in its Wuhan factory and that the company puts the health and safety of its employees first.
BOE Technology Group, which began mass production of leading-edge 10.5 generation LCD panels at a clean room facility in Wuhan in December, said that it will reduce its monthly output due to constraints in the materials supply chain.
“It is expected that production capacity growth will slow down, which may further exacerbate the ongoing global supply shortage of ultra-large-sized display screens in 2020,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to a statement issued by Hubei authorities on Thursday, enterprises in the province cannot resume work earlier than midnight on February 20, although those exempted from the rules include companies involved in epidemic prevention and control, public utilities, those providing daily necessities, such as supermarkets, and “other related enterprises” important for the national economy and people's livelihoods.
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Post #13,158
I can't get the picture to transfer but look at that...
See a problem?
A patient with the virus, doctor's in full PPE, and on the other side of the curtain, less than a foot away, is an ald man with no glove, no eye protection, and his mask pulled under his chin...
No wonder they can't get a grip on this!
Bridey Rose
Veteran Member
Throw 'em out the high-rise window! They might be infected with COVID19!!
Please forgive my sick sense of humor. I spent the last 2 days up to my eyeballs in pandemic virus presentations, and I just heard the Chinese are up to their old tricks from the time of SARS in that cats and dogs are being ejected from highrise windows because of fear animals can carry COVID19. My bad.
jward
passin' thru
ah well gallows humor is a thing coz it works lol. Sorry you're swamped in the presentations....I got to spend time waiting for a nanny goat to kid, and between getting those triplets on the ground, and listening to RED BARONS music weekend thread, I went hours without thinking of that nasty old germ.... (but freezin' my hind end off!)
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
From the Daily Mail:
Hand dryers won't kill the coronavirus and nor will UV lamps: World Health Organization debunk 13 of the biggest myths surrounding the outbreak
- The WHO also said dousing the body with alcohol spray or sesame oil won't work
- Myths include that drugs and vaccines exist to treat the virus - they don't
- Authorities have tried clamping down on rumours which spread fast online
- It comes after a British expert warned misinformation fuels more cases
- Today the death toll hit 1,363. More than 64,000 cases have been diagnosed
Hand dryers won't kill the coronavirus and nor will UV lamps, WHO says
The WHO also said dousing the body with alcohol spray or sesame oil won't work against COVID-19. Today the death toll hit 1,363. More than 64,000 cases have been diagnosed.www.dailymail.co.uk
Well...
That will give Ainitfunny a stroke...
jward
passin' thru
Gert van der Hoek
@GertvanderHoek
11m
Update Flu in Europe (ECDC-WHO). A number of Member States reported very high (n=3) and high (n=5) intensity. Widespread influenza activity was reported by the majority of Member States and areas across the Region. https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/europe/seasonal-flu-2009-2014-including-h1n1-pandemic-2009-aa/821723-europe-seasonal-influenza-2019-2020-ecdc-who?p=829395#post829395
--------------
People are tested at sentinel primary healthcare sites. I am sure the labs know how to distinguish #influenza from #COVID19 / #SARSCoV2 . Most samples are from Influenza A type.
@GertvanderHoek
11m
Update Flu in Europe (ECDC-WHO). A number of Member States reported very high (n=3) and high (n=5) intensity. Widespread influenza activity was reported by the majority of Member States and areas across the Region. https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/europe/seasonal-flu-2009-2014-including-h1n1-pandemic-2009-aa/821723-europe-seasonal-influenza-2019-2020-ecdc-who?p=829395#post829395
--------------
People are tested at sentinel primary healthcare sites. I am sure the labs know how to distinguish #influenza from #COVID19 / #SARSCoV2 . Most samples are from Influenza A type.
jward
passin' thru
BNO Newsroom
@BNODesk
· 2m
U.S. tells Americans on quarantined cruise ship that a plane will arrive in Japan on Sunday night to take them to the U.S., but says they'll be quarantined for another 2 weeks - CNN
The message from the U.S. Embassy says people who decline to take this flight "will be unable to return to the United States for a period of time." The CDC will determine for how long, it said
Quote Tweet
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Yeah... This is the WHO, so I'd like to see some independent confirmation. If heat, alcohol, and UV doesn't stop it, we might as well just start digging our own graves...
I mean, the WHO is saying in that article that pets can't carry the virus but the Chinese are tossing pets out the window because they CAN carry it... They are saying it can't be carried on letters or envelopes but there is evidence that it can live up to 9 days on surfaces
7. Letters or packages from China do not carry coronavirus
8. Pets can't get ill with coronavirus
Hand dryers won't kill the coronavirus and nor will UV lamps, WHO says
The WHO also said dousing the body with alcohol spray or sesame oil won't work against COVID-19. Today the death toll hit 1,363. More than 64,000 cases have been diagnosed.
Some of the article makes sense but some, I'm not buying into...
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
I just soak a wash cloth with Isopropyl alcohol ( 91% )... Walmart has bottles for $2.50...
I have to check doors, input on keypads, phones, keyboards, radios, etc.
I wash everything down when I start shift and carry the wash cloth with me to cover my finger using the keypads locks and to open door handles...
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Since things just Got Real-
Federal Disaster (United States) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference
Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference for Federal Disaster (United States)www.radioreference.com
Federal Disaster
Input Frequencies: Hidden Shown
Updated in the last 7 days
Updated in the last 24 hrs
Disaster
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS)
Frequency License Type Tone Alpha Tag Description Mode Tag 406.26250 RM 421 NAC FEMA 1/2 Ch. 1/2 P25 Federal 407.06250 RM FEMA 3/4 Ch. 3/4 P25 Federal 407.66250 RM 421 NAC FEMA 5/6 Ch. 5/6 P25e Federal 409.06250 RM 421 NAC FEMA 7/8 Ch. 7/8 P25E Federal 410.46250 RM 421 NAC FEMA 9/10 Ch. 9/10 P25E Federal 407.45000 RM FEMA 11/12 Ch. 11/12 P25 Federal
National Disaster Medical System
Frequency License Type Tone Alpha Tag Description Mode Tag 412.82500 M MERS 1 Ch. 1 P25E Federal 412.85000 M MERS 2 Ch. 2 P25E Federal 412.83750 M MERS 3 Ch. 3 P25E Federal 412.86250 M MERS 4 Ch. 4 P25E Federal 412.87500 M MERS 5 Ch. 5 P25E Federal 412.90000 M MERS 6 Ch. 6 P25E Federal 412.88750 M MERS 7 Ch. 7 P25E Federal 412.91250 M MERS 8 Ch. 8 P25E Federal 410.86250 RM MERS 9/10 Ch. 9/10 P25E Federal 407.45000 RM MERS 11/12 Ch. 11/12 P25E Federal 408.06250 RM MERS 13/14 Ch. 13/14 P25E Federal 409.46250 M MERS 15 Ch. 15 P25E Federal
Urban Search and Rescue (USAR)
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Bookmarked...
And, a big, "Thank you!"
Here is another Nurse Model for that...
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
I have direct skin contact with 91% all night long... No problems...
But, then, I'm Nordic and we don't scar easily...
pops88
Girls with Guns Member
Yeah... This is the WHO, so I'd like to see some independent confirmation. If heat, alcohol, and UV doesn't stop it, we might as well just start digging our own graves...
I mean, the WHO is saying in that article that pets can't carry the virus but the Chinese are tossing pets out the window because they CAN carry it... They are saying it can't be carried on letters or envelopes but there is evidence that it can live up to 9 days on surfaces
7. Letters or packages from China do not carry coronavirus
8. Pets can't get ill with coronavirus
Hand dryers won't kill the coronavirus and nor will UV lamps, WHO says
The WHO also said dousing the body with alcohol spray or sesame oil won't work against COVID-19. Today the death toll hit 1,363. More than 64,000 cases have been diagnosed.
Some of the article makes sense but some, I'm not buying into...
The article has to be read kind of carefully to get around their playing with words. If you're infected (internally) then spraying alcohol all over yourself won't help (emphasis on after being infected). The sesame oil was a new one to me. Wonder who made $ on that advice (local market?). As for the UV, it specifically was with regard to using on one's skin. As for the mail and packages, I consider that an outright light so as not to scare people. That's my $0.02 on that crappy article.
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Saw a video a billion pages back that isopropyl alcohol bottles are going for over $100.00 in China...
There is probably a reason... I'll go with the higher concentrate until definitive proof that this is just another run-of-the mill virus that reacts like everything you would learn about in nursing school.
For me... I'm assuming it is a bio-weapon, at this point
pops88
Girls with Guns Member
Did you see the post about 70% alcohol vs 90-100%? You're better off using something between 70-85%.
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
They aren't... I am 100% convinced from reading every post in this thread, that it is mutating too quickly to vaccinate.
It is an incredibly lethal virus that acts as a common cold.
You never catch the same cold twice...
You will never catch the same version of coronavirus twice.
Last edited:
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
A scientist at the forefront of researching the coronavirus says it could "potentially" spread to 60% of the population.
"This virus... concerns me the most of everything I've worked on."
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1228414511981395971
"This virus... concerns me the most of everything I've worked on."
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1228414511981395971
Texican
Live Free & Die Free.... God Freedom Country....
Spent nearly 12 hours going and coming from a city in Texas where I spent most of the day shopping at Sams, Tractor Supply, Home Depot, Walmart, Kroger and Albertson's and the only shelves that were empty was the candy aisle at Walmart....
There were crowds at most locations except at Tractor Supply and Home Depot, but did not see anyone that looked like they had the common flu.... Did watch one woman cough into her arm at Walmart, but was more than 15 feet from her and went away from her....
Good masks are not in stock at any of the stores, but plenty of nitrile gloves, but could not find the heavy duty black steel nitrile gloves....
Talked to a floor person at Walmart about the China Virus and he was aware of the Virus and what it portends.... Did leave him with the advice to stock up on food....
Have not seen any shortages in Oklahoma....
The sheeple have not awoken at least in Texas and Oklahoma....
Unless totally required, will not be going back shopping at the city in Texas....
Taking summerthyme's Elderberry Syrup which is good and other natural remedies such as D3 to fight against the Virus....
One report has stated that there are more than 15 infected in America.... The virus will start to spread as it did early in China and exponentially expand.... How long do we have???? A month or a month and a half but probably not two months....
Prepare while you still can and be ready to isolate especially if a case of the infection shows up in your area....
Pray for your family and friends and America and the world.
God bless and help us all.
Texican....
In the sticks in SE Okieland....
There were crowds at most locations except at Tractor Supply and Home Depot, but did not see anyone that looked like they had the common flu.... Did watch one woman cough into her arm at Walmart, but was more than 15 feet from her and went away from her....
Good masks are not in stock at any of the stores, but plenty of nitrile gloves, but could not find the heavy duty black steel nitrile gloves....
Talked to a floor person at Walmart about the China Virus and he was aware of the Virus and what it portends.... Did leave him with the advice to stock up on food....
Have not seen any shortages in Oklahoma....
The sheeple have not awoken at least in Texas and Oklahoma....
Unless totally required, will not be going back shopping at the city in Texas....
Taking summerthyme's Elderberry Syrup which is good and other natural remedies such as D3 to fight against the Virus....
One report has stated that there are more than 15 infected in America.... The virus will start to spread as it did early in China and exponentially expand.... How long do we have???? A month or a month and a half but probably not two months....
Prepare while you still can and be ready to isolate especially if a case of the infection shows up in your area....
Pray for your family and friends and America and the world.
God bless and help us all.
Texican....
In the sticks in SE Okieland....
Wyoming goes to San Francisco?!?!?!?
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
7 PM, Wuhan, China. A picture is taken of a housing building usually filled with room lights on. Now only a few stay lit.
View: https://twitter.com/livecrisisnews/status/1228385249798840321/photo/1
View: https://twitter.com/livecrisisnews/status/1228385249798840321/photo/1
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Rising #coronavirus outbreak tensions cause police to pull his gun out as the crowd errupts.
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1228110045822496774
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1228110045822496774
marsh
On TB every waking moment
27:19 min
Coronavirus Worst Day Yet Explained | 15,181 NEW CASES | COVID-19 VLOG
Matt, the recumbent cyclist who does travel vlogs is living in Chincago with his family under self imposed quarantine. (He is from Ningbo. He arrived before the shut offs and there was no quarantine required of him. He did it out of his own sense of responsibility.) He reacts to what the news is out of China.
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Naresh Kumar Sagar
@Nksagar
·
6h
Chinese commentator says 1200 bodies are being burned everyday More than 1.5 million are under observation Not 20,000 or 30,000, more than 50,000 are gone
twitter.com
@Nksagar
·
6h
Chinese commentator says 1200 bodies are being burned everyday More than 1.5 million are under observation Not 20,000 or 30,000, more than 50,000 are gone
Naresh Kumar Sagar (@Nksagar) | Twitter
The latest Tweets from Naresh Kumar Sagar (@Nksagar). Sagar Media Inc. Online Media,Theosophist, MSME- Mentor, Enterpreuner, Branding, Social transform, Multifacet, Motivator.Intutive mind. New Delhi: India
twitter.com
Old Gray Mare
TB Fanatic
Government laws, quotas and regulations helped get us into this mess. More government laws are making it harder to get out of it.
A while back affirmative action hit the tool and die makers. Standards were lowered with unsurprising results. So there are still a very few of those old timers out there who have the skill, experience and tools to make the tools needed to make the machinery and then make or repair machinery that's been idle for decades.
It used to be skills like this were taught via a informal hands on apprenticeship program and trade schools.
Below is video on how California has made it illegal to teach trades to students without a GED or high school diploma.
Fair use.
Why is Teaching a Crime? California Denies Blue-Collar Workers Entry to Trade Schools
•Oct 24, 2017
http://www.ij.org/donate Earlier this year, Bob Smith, owner of the Pacific Coast Horseshoeing School, opened his mailbox to find a notice from the state of California threatening to shut him down. The notice said that Bob was violating state law by admitting students to his horseshoeing school who hadn’t first graduated from high school or passed an equivalent government-approved exam. A few months later, Esteban Narez, a ranch hand working odd jobs, applied to attend PCHS’s eight-week course. He’d heard from other PCHS graduates that shoeing horses was a great way to turn his love of working with horses into a stable profession that would help him better support himself and his family. But because Esteban hasn’t graduated from high school, Bob was forced to deny his application. For students with limited education, trade schools like Bob’s are often the best opportunity to learn a skill and join a trade that empowers them to earn an honest living. By denying students’ right to a quality education in a profession of their choice, California’s prerequisite education law hurts the very students it was intended to help. Standing in front of a room of students and teaching a vocational skill is no different than writing a how-to book, publishing a series of newspaper stories, or uploading an instructional video to YouTube. In other words, teaching is a form of Constitutionally-protected free speech. That’s why Bob and Esteban have partnered with the Institute for Justice to file a lawsuit against the state of California to vindicate their First Amendment rights to teach and learn.
Link to source:
Runtime 4:11
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Here’s what coronavirus does to the bodyFrom blood storms to honeycomb lungs, here’s an organ-by-organ look at how COVID-19 harms humans.
MUCH REMAINS UNKNOWN about the novel coronavirus ripping through China, but one thing is certain. The disease can cast a storm over the whole human body.
Such has been the nature of past zoonotic coronaviruses, ones that hopped from animals to humans like SARS and MERS. Unlike their common-cold-causing cousins, these emergent coronaviruses can spark a viral-induced fire throughout many of a person’s organs, and the new disease—dubbed "COVID-19" by the World Health Organization on Tuesday—is no exception when it is severe.
That helps explain why the COVID-19 epidemic has killed more than 1,300 people, surpassing the SARS death toll in a matter of weeks. While the death rate for COVID-19 appears to be a tenth of SARS, the novel coronavirus has spread faster.
Confirmed cases rose to more than 60,000 on Thursday, nearly a 50 percent jump relative to the prior day. This leap reflects a change in the way Chinese authorities are diagnosing infections instead of a massive shift in the scope of the outbreak. Rather than wait for patients to test positive for the virus, diagnoses now include anyone whose chest scan reveals COVID-19’s distinctive pattern of pneumonia. This method will hopefully allow authorities to isolate and treat patients more quickly.
If this outbreak continues to spread, there’s no telling how harmful it could become. A leading epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong warned this week that COVID-19 could infect 60 percent of the globe if left unchecked. On Thursday, China’s National Health Commission said more than 1,700 health care workers are ill with the new virus, and the announcement came just a day after the WHO wrapped a summit on the best protocols for hospital care and the development of therapeutics, like vaccines.
But what actually happens to your body when it is infected by the coronavirus? The new strain is so genetically similar to SARS that it has inherited the title SARS-CoV-2. So combining early research on the new outbreak with past lessons from SARS and MERS can provide an answer.
The Lungs: Ground zero
For most patients, COVID-19 begins and ends in their lungs, because like the flu, coronaviruses are respiratory diseases.
They spread typically when an infected person coughs or sneezes, spraying droplets that can transmit the virus to anyone in close contact. Coronaviruses also cause flu-like symptoms: Patients might start out with a fever and cough that progresses to pneumonia or worse. (Find out how coronavirus spreads on a plane—and the safest place to sit).
After the SARS outbreak, the World Health Organization reported that the disease typically attacked the lungs in three phases: viral replication, immune hyper-reactivity, and pulmonary destruction.
Not all patients went through all three phases—in fact only 25 percent of SARS patients suffered respiratory failure, the defining signature of severe cases. Likewise, COVID-19, according to early data, causes milder symptoms in about 82 percent of cases, while the remainder are severe or critical.
Look deeper, and the novel coronavirus appears to follow other patterns of SARS, says University of Maryland School of Medicine associate professor Matthew B. Frieman, who studies highly pathogenic coronaviruses.
In the early days of an infection, the novel coronavirus rapidly invades human lung cells. Those lung cells come in two classes: ones that make mucus and ones with hair-like batons called cilia.
Mucus, though gross when outside the body, helps protect lung tissue from pathogens and make sure your breathing organ doesn’t dry out. The cilia cells beat around the mucus, clearing out debris like pollen or viruses.
Frieman explains that SARS loved to infect and kill cilia cells, which then sloughed off and filled patients’ airways with debris and fluids, and he hypothesizes that the same is happening with the novel coronavirus. That’s because the earliest studies on COVID-19 have shown that many patients develop pneumonia in both lungs, accompanied by symptoms like shortness of breath.
That’s when phase two and the immune system kicks in. Aroused by the presence of a viral invader, our bodies step up to fight the disease by flooding the lungs with immune cells to clear away the damage and repair the lung tissue.
When working properly, this inflammatory process is tightly regulated and confined only to infected areas. But sometimes your immune system goes haywire and those cells kill anything in their way, including your healthy tissue.
“So you get more damage instead of less from the immune response,” Frieman says. Even more debris clogs up the lungs, and pneumonia worsens. (Find out how the novel coronavirus compares to flu, Ebola, and other major outbreaks).
During the third phase, lung damage continues to build—which can result in respiratory failure. Even if death doesn’t occur, some patients survive with permanent lung damage. According to the WHO, SARS punched holes in the lungs, giving them “a honeycomb-like appearance”—and these lesions are present in those afflicted by novel coronavirus, too.
These holes are likely created by the immune system’s hyperactive response, which creates scars that both protect and stiffen the lungs.
When that occurs, patients often have to be put on ventilators to assist their breathing. Meanwhile, inflammation also makes the membranes between the air sacs and blood vessels more permeable, which can fill the lungs with fluid and affect their ability to oxygenate blood.
“In severe cases, you basically flood your lungs and you can’t breathe,” Frieman says. “That’s how people are dying.”
The Stomach: A shared gateway
During the SARS and MERS outbreaks, nearly a quarter of patients had diarrhea—a much more significant feature of those zoonotic coronaviruses. But Frieman says it’s still not clear whether gastrointestinal symptoms play a major part in the latest outbreak, given cases diarrhea and abdominal pain have been rare. But why does a respiratory virus bother the gut at all?
When any virus enters your body, it looks for human cells with its favorite doorways—proteins on the outside of the cells called receptors. If the virus finds a compatible receptor on a cell, it can invade.
Some viruses are picky about which door they choose, but others are a little more promiscuous. “They can very easily penetrate into all types of cells,” says Anna Suk-Fong Lok, assistant dean for clinical research at the University of Michigan Medical School and former president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
Both SARS and MERS viruses can access the cells that line your intestines and large and small colon, and those infections appear to flourish in the gut, potentially causing the damage or the leakage of fluid that becomes diarrhea.
But Frieman says we don’t know yet if the novel coronavirus does the same. Researchers believe COVID-19 uses the same receptor as SARS, and this doorway can be found in your lungs and small intestines.
Two studies—one in the New England Journal of Medicine and one preprint in medRxiv involving 1,099 cases—have also detected the virus in stool samples, which might indicate the virus could spread via feces. But this is far from conclusive.
“Whether that kind of fecal transmission is occuring for this Wuhan virus, we don’t know at all,” Frieman says. “But it definitely looks like it’s there in the stool and it looks like people do have GI symptoms associated with this.”
Blood storm
Coronaviruses can also cause problems in other systems of the body, due to the hyperactive immune response we mentioned earlier.
A 2014 study showed that 92 percent of patients with MERS had at least one manifestation of the coronavirus outside of the lungs. In fact, signs of a full body blitz have been witnessed with all three of the zoonotic coronaviruses: elevated liver enzymes, lower white blood cell and platelet count, and low blood pressure. In rare cases, patients have suffered from acute kidney injury and cardiac arrest.
But this isn’t necessarily a sign that the virus itself is spreading throughout the body, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and associate research scientist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. It might be a cytokine storm.
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
( Continued... )
Cytokines are proteins used by the immune system as alarm beacons—they recruit immune cells to the site of infection. The immune cells then kill off the infected tissue in a bid to save the rest of the body.
Humans rely on our immune systems to keep their cool when facing a threat. But during a runaway coronavirus infection, when the immune system dumps cytokines into the lungs without any regulation, this culling becomes a free-for-all, Rasmussen says “Instead of shooting at a target with a gun, you’re using a missile launcher,” she says. That’s where the problem arises: Your body is not just targeting the infected cells. It is attacking healthy tissue too.
The implications extend outside the lungs. Cytokine storms create inflammation that weakens blood vessels in the lungs and causes fluid to seep through to the air sacs. “Basically you’re bleeding out of your blood vessels,” Rasmussen says. The storm spills into your circulatory system and creates systemic issues across multiple organs.
From there, things can take a sharp turn for the worse. In some of the most severe COVID-19 cases, the cytokine response—combined with a diminished capacity to pump oxygen to the rest of the body—can result in multi-organ failure. Scientists don’t know exactly why some patients experience complications outside of the lung, but it might be linked to underlying conditions like heart disease or diabetes.
“Even if the virus doesn’t get to kidneys and liver and spleen and other things, it can have clear downstream effects on all of those processes,” Frieman says. And that’s when things can get serious.
Liver: Collateral damage
When a zoonotic coronavirus spreads from the respiratory system, your liver is often one downstream organ that suffers. Doctors have seen indications of liver injury with SARS, MERS, and COVID-19—often mild, though more severe cases have led to severe liver damage and even liver failure. So what’s happening?
“Once a virus gets into your bloodstream, they can swim to any part of your body,” Lok says. “The liver is a very vascular organ so [a coronavirus] can very easily get into your liver.”
Your liver works pretty hard to make sure your body can function properly. Its main job is to process your blood after it leaves the stomach, filtering out the toxins and creating nutrients your body can use. It also makes the bile that helps your small intestine break down fats. Your liver also contains enzymes, which speed up chemical reactions in the body.
In a normal body, Lok explains, liver cells are constantly dying off and releasing enzymes into your bloodstream. This resourceful organ then quickly regenerates new cells and carries on with its day. Because of that regeneration process, the liver can withstand a lot of injury.
When you have abnormally high levels of enzymes in your blood, though—as has been a common characteristic of patients suffering from SARS and MERS—it’s a warning sign. It might be a mild injury that the liver will quickly bounce back from or it could be something more severe—even liver failure.
Lok says scientists don’t completely understand how these respiratory viruses behave in the liver. The virus might be directly infecting the liver, replicating and killing off the cells itself. Or those cells might be collateral damage as your body’s immune response to the virus sets off a severe inflammatory reaction in the liver.
Either way, she notes that liver failure was never the sole cause of death for SARS patients. “By the time the liver fails,” she says, “oftentimes you’ll find that the patient not only has lung problems and liver problems but they may also have kidney problems. By then it becomes a systemic infection.”
Kidney: It’s all connected
Yes, your kidneys are caught up in this mess, too. Six percent of SARS patients—and a full quarter of MERS patients—suffered acute renal injury. Studies have shown the novel coronavirus can do the same. It may be a relatively uncommon feature of the disease, but it is a fatal one. Ultimately 91.7 percent of SARS patients with acute renal impairment died, according to a 2005 study in Kidney International.
Like the liver, your kidneys act as a filter your blood. Each kidney is filled with about 800,000 of microscopic distilling units called nephrons. These nephrons have two main components: a filter to clean the blood and a little tubes that return the good stuff back to your body or send the waste down to your bladder as urine.
It’s the kidney tubules that seem to be most affected by these zoonotic coronaviruses. After the SARS outbreak, the WHO reported that the virus was found in kidney tubules, which can become inflamed.
It’s not uncommon to detect a virus in the tubules if it’s in your bloodstream, says Kar Neng Lai, a professor emeritus at the University of Hong Kong and consultant nephrologist at Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital. As your kidneys are continuously filtering blood, sometimes the tubular cells can trap the virus and cause a transient, or milder, injury.
That injury could become lethal if the virus penetrates the cells and begins to replicate. But Lai—who was also a member of the first group of researchers reporting on SARS and contributed to the Kidney International study—says there was no evidence that the SARS virus was replicating in the kidney.
That finding, Lai says, suggests acute kidney injury in SARS patients might be due to a diverse set of causes, including low blood pressure, sepsis, drugs, or a metabolic disturbance. Meanwhile, the more severe cases that led to acute renal failure showed signs of—you guessed it—a cytokine storm.
Acute renal failure can also sometimes be brought on by antibiotics, multi-organ failure, or being connected to a ventilator for too long. Everything is connected.
Pregnancy and coronavirus?
It’s the great irony of the Twitter age that we know too little about the novel coronavirus as we drown in information updates about it. Medical journals have published several studies about this outbreak—some more vetted than others as researchers rush to feed the maw. Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting every development. All this information whirls around the internet where discerning fact from fiction is a notorious challenge.
“This is really unprecedented in terms of the up-to-the-minute reporting on what’s going on in these studies,” Rasmussen says. “It’s really tricky trying to sort through all of the information and figure out what’s really supported, what’s speculative, and what’s plain wrong.”
For example last week, doctors at a hospital in Wuhan reported that two infants tested positive for the novel coronavirus, one just 30 hours after birth. Naturally, this troubling headline spread across news organizations, given it raised questions of whether pregnant women can infect their unborn children in utero or whether the disease can be transmitted during birth or through breast milk.
But let’s pump the breaks. Mother-to-infant transmission wasn’t observed with SARS nor MERS despite numerous cases involving pregnant women. Plus, there are other ways a newborn could catch the coronavirus, Rasmussen says, such as by being born at hospital overrun with infected patients during a hectic emergency.
In fact, a new study published Thursday in The Lancet offers preliminary evidence that the coronavirus cannot be passed from mother to child.
In the report, researchers observed nine women in Wuhan who had COVID-19 pneumonia. Some of the women had pregnancy complications, but all cases resulted in live births without evidence of transmitting the infection. While this study doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of transmission during pregnancy, it underscores the need to exercise caution in speculating about this disease.
“There needs to be a high standard of evidence before you can say that’s happening definitively—and certainly before you start making changes to how cases are managed clinically or in terms of public policy,” Rasmussen says.
Frieman agrees. He hopes this epidemic will prompt more funding for coronavirus research like the recent pledges from the European Union and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Frieman wants the support and interest to last even if this outbreak eventually fizzles out, unlike what happened with SARS research.
“Right after the SARS outbreak, there was a big bunch of money and then it went away,” Frieman says. “Why don’t we have these answers? Nobody funded these things.”
www.nationalgeographic.com
Cytokines are proteins used by the immune system as alarm beacons—they recruit immune cells to the site of infection. The immune cells then kill off the infected tissue in a bid to save the rest of the body.
Humans rely on our immune systems to keep their cool when facing a threat. But during a runaway coronavirus infection, when the immune system dumps cytokines into the lungs without any regulation, this culling becomes a free-for-all, Rasmussen says “Instead of shooting at a target with a gun, you’re using a missile launcher,” she says. That’s where the problem arises: Your body is not just targeting the infected cells. It is attacking healthy tissue too.
The implications extend outside the lungs. Cytokine storms create inflammation that weakens blood vessels in the lungs and causes fluid to seep through to the air sacs. “Basically you’re bleeding out of your blood vessels,” Rasmussen says. The storm spills into your circulatory system and creates systemic issues across multiple organs.
From there, things can take a sharp turn for the worse. In some of the most severe COVID-19 cases, the cytokine response—combined with a diminished capacity to pump oxygen to the rest of the body—can result in multi-organ failure. Scientists don’t know exactly why some patients experience complications outside of the lung, but it might be linked to underlying conditions like heart disease or diabetes.
“Even if the virus doesn’t get to kidneys and liver and spleen and other things, it can have clear downstream effects on all of those processes,” Frieman says. And that’s when things can get serious.
Liver: Collateral damage
When a zoonotic coronavirus spreads from the respiratory system, your liver is often one downstream organ that suffers. Doctors have seen indications of liver injury with SARS, MERS, and COVID-19—often mild, though more severe cases have led to severe liver damage and even liver failure. So what’s happening?
“Once a virus gets into your bloodstream, they can swim to any part of your body,” Lok says. “The liver is a very vascular organ so [a coronavirus] can very easily get into your liver.”
Your liver works pretty hard to make sure your body can function properly. Its main job is to process your blood after it leaves the stomach, filtering out the toxins and creating nutrients your body can use. It also makes the bile that helps your small intestine break down fats. Your liver also contains enzymes, which speed up chemical reactions in the body.
In a normal body, Lok explains, liver cells are constantly dying off and releasing enzymes into your bloodstream. This resourceful organ then quickly regenerates new cells and carries on with its day. Because of that regeneration process, the liver can withstand a lot of injury.
When you have abnormally high levels of enzymes in your blood, though—as has been a common characteristic of patients suffering from SARS and MERS—it’s a warning sign. It might be a mild injury that the liver will quickly bounce back from or it could be something more severe—even liver failure.
Lok says scientists don’t completely understand how these respiratory viruses behave in the liver. The virus might be directly infecting the liver, replicating and killing off the cells itself. Or those cells might be collateral damage as your body’s immune response to the virus sets off a severe inflammatory reaction in the liver.
Either way, she notes that liver failure was never the sole cause of death for SARS patients. “By the time the liver fails,” she says, “oftentimes you’ll find that the patient not only has lung problems and liver problems but they may also have kidney problems. By then it becomes a systemic infection.”
Kidney: It’s all connected
Yes, your kidneys are caught up in this mess, too. Six percent of SARS patients—and a full quarter of MERS patients—suffered acute renal injury. Studies have shown the novel coronavirus can do the same. It may be a relatively uncommon feature of the disease, but it is a fatal one. Ultimately 91.7 percent of SARS patients with acute renal impairment died, according to a 2005 study in Kidney International.
Like the liver, your kidneys act as a filter your blood. Each kidney is filled with about 800,000 of microscopic distilling units called nephrons. These nephrons have two main components: a filter to clean the blood and a little tubes that return the good stuff back to your body or send the waste down to your bladder as urine.
It’s the kidney tubules that seem to be most affected by these zoonotic coronaviruses. After the SARS outbreak, the WHO reported that the virus was found in kidney tubules, which can become inflamed.
It’s not uncommon to detect a virus in the tubules if it’s in your bloodstream, says Kar Neng Lai, a professor emeritus at the University of Hong Kong and consultant nephrologist at Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital. As your kidneys are continuously filtering blood, sometimes the tubular cells can trap the virus and cause a transient, or milder, injury.
That injury could become lethal if the virus penetrates the cells and begins to replicate. But Lai—who was also a member of the first group of researchers reporting on SARS and contributed to the Kidney International study—says there was no evidence that the SARS virus was replicating in the kidney.
That finding, Lai says, suggests acute kidney injury in SARS patients might be due to a diverse set of causes, including low blood pressure, sepsis, drugs, or a metabolic disturbance. Meanwhile, the more severe cases that led to acute renal failure showed signs of—you guessed it—a cytokine storm.
Acute renal failure can also sometimes be brought on by antibiotics, multi-organ failure, or being connected to a ventilator for too long. Everything is connected.
Pregnancy and coronavirus?
It’s the great irony of the Twitter age that we know too little about the novel coronavirus as we drown in information updates about it. Medical journals have published several studies about this outbreak—some more vetted than others as researchers rush to feed the maw. Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting every development. All this information whirls around the internet where discerning fact from fiction is a notorious challenge.
“This is really unprecedented in terms of the up-to-the-minute reporting on what’s going on in these studies,” Rasmussen says. “It’s really tricky trying to sort through all of the information and figure out what’s really supported, what’s speculative, and what’s plain wrong.”
For example last week, doctors at a hospital in Wuhan reported that two infants tested positive for the novel coronavirus, one just 30 hours after birth. Naturally, this troubling headline spread across news organizations, given it raised questions of whether pregnant women can infect their unborn children in utero or whether the disease can be transmitted during birth or through breast milk.
But let’s pump the breaks. Mother-to-infant transmission wasn’t observed with SARS nor MERS despite numerous cases involving pregnant women. Plus, there are other ways a newborn could catch the coronavirus, Rasmussen says, such as by being born at hospital overrun with infected patients during a hectic emergency.
In fact, a new study published Thursday in The Lancet offers preliminary evidence that the coronavirus cannot be passed from mother to child.
In the report, researchers observed nine women in Wuhan who had COVID-19 pneumonia. Some of the women had pregnancy complications, but all cases resulted in live births without evidence of transmitting the infection. While this study doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of transmission during pregnancy, it underscores the need to exercise caution in speculating about this disease.
“There needs to be a high standard of evidence before you can say that’s happening definitively—and certainly before you start making changes to how cases are managed clinically or in terms of public policy,” Rasmussen says.
Frieman agrees. He hopes this epidemic will prompt more funding for coronavirus research like the recent pledges from the European Union and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Frieman wants the support and interest to last even if this outbreak eventually fizzles out, unlike what happened with SARS research.
“Right after the SARS outbreak, there was a big bunch of money and then it went away,” Frieman says. “Why don’t we have these answers? Nobody funded these things.”
Here’s what coronavirus does to the body
From blood storms to honeycomb lungs, here’s an organ-by-organ look at how COVID-19 harms humans.
www.nationalgeographic.com
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Today - - -
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.—The U.S. government is preparing to evacuate American citizens from aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the site of the biggest outbreak of the novel coronavirus outside China, according to an official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 380 Americans and their families on the ship, docked in Yokohama, Japan, will be offered seats on two State Department-organized planes flying back to the U.S., said Henry Walke, director of the CDC’s Division of Preparedness and Emerging Infections, on Friday. They are arriving in the U.S. as early as Sunday, he said.
The cruise ship was put under a two-week quarantine on Feb. 5. Since then, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases from the ship has climbed to 218.
A CDC team is on the ground in Japan to assess the health of the passengers, Dr. Walke said. Those with a fever, cough or other symptoms won’t be allowed on the flights.
Evacuees will likely arrive first at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif., where they will undergo additional health screenings, said Dr. Walke. Some will likely remain at Travis to undergo a mandatory quarantine, which will likely be 14 days, he said. Others may be moved to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio to quarantine.
Travis is already the quarantine site for roughly 230 people evacuated from Wuhan earlier this month, and Dr. Walke spoke in a town-hall meeting with those people on Friday. These evacuees will be kept separate from the fresh group arriving from the ship, he said.
Write to Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com
U.S. to Evacuate Some Americans From Diamond Princess Cruise Ship
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Old Gray Mare
TB Fanatic
This article is dated February 10, 2020. I have hear say the number is greater than one but not by much. "A couple" was what I heard. - OGM
Fair use.
First Person Sent to Coronavirus Quarantine in Hawai‘i
By Max Dible
February 10, 2020, 3:43 PM HST (Updated February 10, 2020, 3:43 PM)
Health officials on Monday ushered the first person into Hawai‘i’s Coronavirus quarantine system at Pearl Harbor.
The patient, a male resident of Hawai‘i, arrived at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) in Honolulu between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. Monday morning. He was found to have traveled through Hubei Province — where Coronavirus is believed to have originated — on Saturday, Feb. 8.
Lieutenant Governor Josh Green said state officials were aware of the situation within an hour and quarantined the man based on policy and an overabundance of caution. It is mandatory to quarantine anyone who arrives in Hawai‘i with a two-week travel history that includes the Hubei Province.
“This person is well, healthy, no symptoms,” Dr. Sarah Park, state epidemiologist, said of the individual in quarantine.
Park, Green and DOH Director Bruce Anderson in a press conference Monday reiterated time and again that there are no confirmed cases of Coronavirus in the state even despite the day’s developments.
“I repeat, we have no cases,” Green said.
The news of the traveler’s arrival in Honolulu Monday came on the heels of a report that DOH is currently monitoring 26 separate individuals across the state for signs of the Coronavirus, all of whom have visited at least one part of China within the last two weeks.
These individuals are also engaged in self-quarantines — separating themselves as much as possible from society and paying close attention to their health — as officials monitor them several times daily via methods like videoconferencing and telephone calls.
Bruce Anderson.
Anderson said “a handful” of those 26 people are residents of the state, while others are just passing through Hawai‘i and are utilizing various other lodging options including hotels.
“That number is going to change every day,” he continued. “People are coming and going … whether they stay here for two days or a week.”
“There will be more people returning from China, for sure,” Green added.
Park explained that the names and precise locations of all 26 individuals being monitored, as well as the name of the one patient in quarantine, can not be shared due to privacy laws.
US citizens, parents of citizens and green card holders are allowed to travel to the US from China, with their entries restricted to 11 airports, HNL among them.
There are no direct China–Hawai‘i flights. The quarantined man who visited Hubei Province — though not the city of Wuhan believed to be the Coronavirus epicenter — traveled from China through another country and then arrived in Honolulu. DOH confirmed he was traveling alone.
If any of the 27 people in question become symptomatic, they will be taken to a hospital and put in isolation.
“Their movements are monitored,” Anderson said. “Their health conditions are monitored every day. We’re following up on those individuals.”
Lt. Gov. Josh Green
None of the 27 have yet been officially tested for the virus, though Green said the man in quarantine will be. The state expects to have the capability to test on-site in a matter of days.
As for the people who flew on one or more airplanes with the quarantined man, Park said it’s highly unlikely any of them need to worry about infection.
Officials would not provide the name of the airline or the number of the relevant flight, referring those questions to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While the medical community is still studying to understand the Coronavirus better, it’s generally believed people suffering from contagious respiratory conditions are most infectious during those times when they present symptoms. Furthermore, positive tests are only coming from people already displaying symptoms of the disease, which are believed to show up between 2 and 14 days after exposure.
The Hawai‘i resident in quarantine has shown no symptoms. Neither have any of the 26 monitored individuals who were in the state Monday.
“If this becomes a global pandemic, it’ll change everything. But for now, this is also a good test for us,” Green said of the opportunity to evaluate the state’s quarantine system.
Located at Pearl Harbor, the quarantine center is akin to a dormitory, Green continued. The set up allows for monitoring a patient without making any direct contact for a period of two weeks.
“It’s highly likely this individual will ride out 14 days and return to their regular (life),” Green said.
Dr. Sarah Park, state epidemiologist. DOH photo.
As of Monday, doctors had confirmed only 12 cases of Coronavirus in the United States. Ten had originated in China, two had spread by close interpersonal contact upon return. There have been no deaths from Coronavirus inside the US.
As of Monday, more than 40,000 cases of the virus had been confirmed in China, with an international death toll topping 1,000, including more than 100 who died Monday. Over the weekend, Coronavirus surpassed the death toll from the SARS outbreak in 2003.
Still, those numbers pale in comparison to the number of flu cases in 2020. More than 22 million cases of the flu have been confirmed this year, Green said, and one of every 1,000 of those cases will result in death.
“If someone is sick, they’re more than likely going to be found to have the flu,” Anderson said.
Health officials continue to stress handwashing and other hygienic health practices to curb the spread of all infectious diseases.
Link to source:
bigislandnow.com
Fair use.
First Person Sent to Coronavirus Quarantine in Hawai‘i
By Max Dible
February 10, 2020, 3:43 PM HST (Updated February 10, 2020, 3:43 PM)
Health officials on Monday ushered the first person into Hawai‘i’s Coronavirus quarantine system at Pearl Harbor.
The patient, a male resident of Hawai‘i, arrived at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) in Honolulu between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. Monday morning. He was found to have traveled through Hubei Province — where Coronavirus is believed to have originated — on Saturday, Feb. 8.
Lieutenant Governor Josh Green said state officials were aware of the situation within an hour and quarantined the man based on policy and an overabundance of caution. It is mandatory to quarantine anyone who arrives in Hawai‘i with a two-week travel history that includes the Hubei Province.
“This person is well, healthy, no symptoms,” Dr. Sarah Park, state epidemiologist, said of the individual in quarantine.
Park, Green and DOH Director Bruce Anderson in a press conference Monday reiterated time and again that there are no confirmed cases of Coronavirus in the state even despite the day’s developments.
“I repeat, we have no cases,” Green said.
The news of the traveler’s arrival in Honolulu Monday came on the heels of a report that DOH is currently monitoring 26 separate individuals across the state for signs of the Coronavirus, all of whom have visited at least one part of China within the last two weeks.
These individuals are also engaged in self-quarantines — separating themselves as much as possible from society and paying close attention to their health — as officials monitor them several times daily via methods like videoconferencing and telephone calls.
Bruce Anderson.
Anderson said “a handful” of those 26 people are residents of the state, while others are just passing through Hawai‘i and are utilizing various other lodging options including hotels.
“That number is going to change every day,” he continued. “People are coming and going … whether they stay here for two days or a week.”
“There will be more people returning from China, for sure,” Green added.
Park explained that the names and precise locations of all 26 individuals being monitored, as well as the name of the one patient in quarantine, can not be shared due to privacy laws.
US citizens, parents of citizens and green card holders are allowed to travel to the US from China, with their entries restricted to 11 airports, HNL among them.
There are no direct China–Hawai‘i flights. The quarantined man who visited Hubei Province — though not the city of Wuhan believed to be the Coronavirus epicenter — traveled from China through another country and then arrived in Honolulu. DOH confirmed he was traveling alone.
If any of the 27 people in question become symptomatic, they will be taken to a hospital and put in isolation.
“Their movements are monitored,” Anderson said. “Their health conditions are monitored every day. We’re following up on those individuals.”
Lt. Gov. Josh Green
None of the 27 have yet been officially tested for the virus, though Green said the man in quarantine will be. The state expects to have the capability to test on-site in a matter of days.
As for the people who flew on one or more airplanes with the quarantined man, Park said it’s highly unlikely any of them need to worry about infection.
Officials would not provide the name of the airline or the number of the relevant flight, referring those questions to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While the medical community is still studying to understand the Coronavirus better, it’s generally believed people suffering from contagious respiratory conditions are most infectious during those times when they present symptoms. Furthermore, positive tests are only coming from people already displaying symptoms of the disease, which are believed to show up between 2 and 14 days after exposure.
The Hawai‘i resident in quarantine has shown no symptoms. Neither have any of the 26 monitored individuals who were in the state Monday.
“If this becomes a global pandemic, it’ll change everything. But for now, this is also a good test for us,” Green said of the opportunity to evaluate the state’s quarantine system.
Located at Pearl Harbor, the quarantine center is akin to a dormitory, Green continued. The set up allows for monitoring a patient without making any direct contact for a period of two weeks.
“It’s highly likely this individual will ride out 14 days and return to their regular (life),” Green said.
Dr. Sarah Park, state epidemiologist. DOH photo.
As of Monday, doctors had confirmed only 12 cases of Coronavirus in the United States. Ten had originated in China, two had spread by close interpersonal contact upon return. There have been no deaths from Coronavirus inside the US.
As of Monday, more than 40,000 cases of the virus had been confirmed in China, with an international death toll topping 1,000, including more than 100 who died Monday. Over the weekend, Coronavirus surpassed the death toll from the SARS outbreak in 2003.
Still, those numbers pale in comparison to the number of flu cases in 2020. More than 22 million cases of the flu have been confirmed this year, Green said, and one of every 1,000 of those cases will result in death.
“If someone is sick, they’re more than likely going to be found to have the flu,” Anderson said.
Health officials continue to stress handwashing and other hygienic health practices to curb the spread of all infectious diseases.
Link to source:
First Person Sent to Coronavirus Quarantine in Hawai‘i | Big Island Now
Health officials are also monitoring 26 people across the state for signs of Coronavirus. All have been to at least one part of China within the last two weeks.
bigislandnow.com