Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[KQ]

Nicely baited there KQ

Heh.

I'm not going to ditch my mask but I am more than just a little pissed at the disparity and Trump's irresponsibility that just serves to feed the fire/add to the confusion.

[tetzen]

Reuters reporting Fauci threw a hand grenade into the Oval Orfice.

Dude would deserve a Presidential Medal of Freedom for that alone.

[XXX-er]

I gotta say, Trump sure makes it look easy. He's got me ready to ditch the mask and wondering if maybe we haven't been over reacting. I mean look at him, he's old, overweight, doesn't exercise, eats poorly, sleeps never and he's fine after a week of almost nothing.

KQ perhaps its time to reinterate the situ, world wide there are > 37million infected > 1 million dead due to Covid, Trump sat on the response and there are > 200,000 dead Americans , of those 10's of thousands didnt have to die, trump is by most accounts a sorry excuse for a human being and will likley be gone in about a month

Trump uses a helicopter to get to the hospitol where he has a team of MD's and all kinds of drugs, this is not you or anybody else in America ... wear your mask and 6' distance

[KQ]

KQ perhaps its time to reinterate the situ, world wide there are > 37million infected > 1 million dead due to Covid, Trump sat on the response and there are > 200,000 dead Americans , of those 10's of thousands didnt have to die, trump is by most accounts a sorry excuse for a human being and will likley be gone in about a month

Trump uses a helicopter to get to the hospitol where he has a team of MD's and all kinds of drugs, this is not you or anybody else in America ... wear your mask and 6' distance

Trump is a puss bag who knows nothing about what public service means or what it means to be a Christian. According to those who claim to know Christ said " I am in your midst as one who serves."

Trump serves only himself.

Forget about how he's brazenly cast aside all of those he is supposed to be serving, keeping the spoils of medical technology for himself so that he, a pussy grabbing, cheating philanderer can live to lie, bully and steal another day and wonder....how is his sick wife doing or the dozen who support him that are sick?

I really don't like him and hate that he received life saving treatment when there are/were so many lives that deserve it more. Lives that actually add value to this world rather than suck it dry like a giant black hole of fetid narcissistic puss.

So there.

[riser4]

Modern US evangelistic "Christianity" is about the gospel of wealth.

[old goat]

Fever control is felt to be okay, acetoaminophen (Tylenol or paracetamol for you Brits) is preferred, as there are some reports of NSAIDs (ibuprofen, etc) leading to worse outcomes, but these are primarily anecdotal. No data on symptomatic management (cough, diarrhea) in terms of worsening outcomes, so treating the symptoms with antitussives and antidiarrheals is thought to be fine.

As far as transitioning from outpatient management, hypoxemia is the key to determining whether a patient should be admitted to the hospital, and subjective measures (shortness of breath) and oxygen saturation (cheap monitors work pretty well) are both important for evaluation.

Age and comorbidities, especially pulmonary, cardiac and immunosuppression are also super important and taken into account as to whether a patient warrants closer observation in the hospital. Ethnic origin is not felt in itself to be a risk factor, as it is believed the preponderance of Black/LatinX patients is more likely due to socioeconomic determinants rather than genetic.

I don't see Regeneron availability ramping up meaningfully any time soon, as Lego has very clearly described why scaling is a significant challenge, even if it does demonstrate efficacy and gets fast-track approval. Cost will be prohibitive as well, unless you're the POTUS, in which case cost is no object.

And current thinking is that SARS CoV2 has not mutated to a more benign form, but that decreased death rates are systemic and epidemiologic as described above.

Thanks for the info about symptomatic treatment.
As far as the monoclonal antibodies--assuming we get a vaccine that produces a strong antibody response in at least some people, it seems like the easiest and fastest way produce antibodies would be vaccinating people. Then perhaps we could treat people who either didn't get vaccinated or who didn't get a good response with plasma from those who did, as well as from those who recovered from infection. ?

All, Incubator maybe the wrong term. breathing machine you pour medicine in and breathe through a tube.

IPPB. Intermittent positive pressure ventilation. Commonly used to deliver lung meds. Thanks for clarifying.

[bennymac]

I think he means a nebulizer?

[Bunion 2020]

Trump is a puss bag who knows nothing about what public service means or what it means to be a Christian. According to those who claim to know Christ said " I am in your midst as one who serves."

Trump serves only himself.

Forget about how he's brazenly cast aside all of those he is supposed to be serving, keeping the spoils of medical technology for himself so that he, a pussy grabbing, cheating philanderer can live to lie, bully and steal another day and wonder....how is his sick wife doing or the dozen who support him that are sick?

I really don't like him and hate that he received life saving treatment when there are/were so many lives that deserve it more. Lives that actually add value to this world rather than suck it dry like a giant black hole of fetid narcissistic puss.

So there.

I think he had a common fall head cold and not Covid 19.

[XXX-er]

Did he really have covid OR could it have also been a publicity stunt for a POTUS who at this point appears to be badly behind

[Bunion 2020]

From behind todays Paywall Wapo.

Voices from the Pandemic
‘What are we so afraid of?’
Tony Green, on dismissing, denying, contracting and spreading the coronavirus
By Eli Saslow
October 10, 2020

When President Trump got sick, I had this moment of deja vu back to when I first woke up in the hospital. I know what it’s like to be humiliated by this virus. I used to call it the “scamdemic.” I thought it was an overblown media hoax. I made fun of people for wearing masks. I went all the way down the rabbit hole and fell hard on my own sword, so if you want to hate me or blame me, that’s fine. I’m doing plenty of that myself.

The party was my idea. That’s what I can’t get over. Well, I mean, it wasn’t even a party — more like a get-together. There were just six of us, okay? My parents, my partner, and my partner’s parents. We’d been locked down for months at that point in Texas, and the governor had just come out and said small gatherings were probably okay. We’re a close family, and we hadn’t been together in forever. It was finally summer. I thought the worst was behind us. I was like: “Hell, let’s get on with our lives. What are we so afraid of?”

Some people in my family didn’t necessarily share all of my views, but I pushed it. I’ve always been out front with my opinions. I’m gay and I’m conservative, so either way I’m used to going against the grain. I stopped trusting the media for my information when it went hard against Trump in 2016. I got rid of my cable. It’s all opinion anyway, so I’d rather come up with my own. I find a little bit of truth here and a little there, and I pile it together to see what it makes. I have about 4,000 people in my personal network, and not one of them had gotten sick. Not one. You start to hear jokes about, you know, a skydiver jumps out of a plane without a parachute and dies of covid-19. You start to think: “Something’s really fishy here.” You start dismissing and denying.

I told my family: “Come on. Enough already. Let’s get together and enjoy life for once.”

They all came for the weekend. We agreed not to do any of the distancing or worry much about it. I mean, I haven’t seen my mother in months, and I’m not supposed to go up and hug her? Come on. We have a two-story house, so there was room for us to all stay here together. We all came on our own free will. It felt like something we needed. It had been months of doing nothing, feeling nothing, seeing no one, worrying about finances with this whole shutdown. My partner had been sent home from his work. I’d been at the finish line of raising $3.5 million for a new project, and that all evaporated overnight. I’d been feeling depressed and angry, and then it was like: “Okay! I can breathe.” We cooked nice meals. We watched a few movies. I played a few songs on my baby grand piano. We drove to a lake about 60 miles outside of Dallas and talked and talked. It was nothing all that special. It was great. It was normal.

I woke up Sunday morning feeling a little iffy. I have a lot of issues with sleeping, and I thought that’s probably what it was. I let everyone know: “I don’t feel right, but I’m guessing it might be exhaustion.” I was kind of achy. There was a weird vibration inside. I had a bug-eye feeling.

A few hours later, my partner was feeling a little bad, too. Then my parents. Then my father-in-law got sick the next day, after he’d already left and gone to Austin to witness the birth of his first grandchild. I have no idea which one of us brought the virus into the house, but all six of us left with it. It kept spreading from there.
Green and the five others who were at the get-together he hosted tested positive for the virus shortly thereafter. The 43-year-old says he feels extremely guilty about what happened. (Allison V. Smith for The Washington Post)

I told myself it wouldn’t be that bad. “It’s the flu. It’s basically just the flu.” I didn’t have the horrible cough you keep hearing about. My breathing never got too terrible. My fever peaked for like one day at 100.5, which is nothing — barely worth mentioning. “All right. I got this. See? It was nothing.” But then some of the other symptoms started to get wild. I was sweating profusely. I would wake up in a pool of sweat. I had this tingling feeling all over my body, this radiating kind of pain. Do you remember those old space heaters that you’d plug in, and the red lines would light up and glow? I felt like that was happening inside my bones. I was burning from the inside out. I was buzzing. I was dizzy. I couldn’t even turn my head around to look at the TV. I felt like my eyeballs were in a fishbowl, just bopping around. I rubbed Icy Hot all over my head. It was nonstop headaches and sweating for probably about a week — and then it just went away. I got some of my energy back. I had a few really good days. I started working on projects around the house. I was thinking: “Okay. That’s it. Pretty bad, but not so terrible. I beat it. I managed it. Nothing worth shutting down the entire world over.” Then one day I was walking up the stairs, and all of the sudden, I couldn’t breathe. I screamed and fell flat on my face. I blacked out. I woke up a while later in the ER, and 10 doctors were standing around me in a circle. I was lying on the table after going through a CT scan. The doctors told me the virus had attacked my nervous system. They’d given me some medications that stopped me from having a massive stroke. They said I was minutes away.

I stayed in the hospital for three days, trying to get my mind around it. It was guilt, embarrassment, shame. I thought: “Okay. Maybe now I’ve paid for my mistake.” But it kept getting worse.

Six infections turned into nine. Nine went up to 14. It spread from one family member to the next, and it was like each person caught a different strain. My mother-in-law got it and never had any real symptoms. My father is 78, and he went to get checked out at the hospital, but for whatever reasons, he seemed to recover really fast. My father-in-law nearly died in his living room and then ended up in the same hospital as me on the exact same day. His mother was in the room right next to him because she was having trouble breathing. They were lying there on both sides of the wall, fighting the same virus, and neither of them ever knew the other one was there. She died after a few weeks. On the day of her funeral, five more family members tested positive.

My father-in-law’s probably my best friend. It’s an unconventional relationship. He’s 52, only nine years older than me, and we hit it off right away. He runs a construction company, and I would tag along on his jobs and ride with him around Dallas. I’ve been through a lot in my life — from food stamps to Ferraris and then back again — so I could tell a good story and make him laugh. He builds these 20,000-square-foot custom homes, but he’d been renting his whole life. We decided to go in together on 10 acres outside Dallas, and he was finally getting ready to build his own house. We’d already done the plumbing and gotten streets built on the property. We’d planted 50 pecans and oaks to give the property some shade. He had his blueprints all drawn up. It was all he wanted to talk about.

He was on supplemental oxygen, but the doctors kept reducing the amount he was getting. They thought he was getting better. He was still making jokes, so I wasn’t all that worried. He told me: “They’ve got you upstairs in the Cadillac rooms because you’re White, but all of us Mexicans are still down here in the ER.” I got sent home, and I had a lot of guilt about leaving him there. I called him at the hospital, and I was like: “I’m going to come bust you out Mission Impossible style.” He said he preferred El Chapo style. We were laughing so hard. I hung up, and a few hours later I got a call from my mother-in-law. She was hysterical. She could barely speak. She said one of his lungs had collapsed and the other was filling with fluid. They put him on a ventilator, and he lay there on life support for six or seven weeks. There was never any goodbye. He was just gone. It’s like the world swallowed him up. We could only have 10 people at the funeral, and I didn’t make that list.

I break down sometimes, but mostly I’m empty. Am I glad to be alive? I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that.

There’s no relief. This virus, I can’t escape it. It’s torn up our family. It’s all over my Facebook. It’s the election. It’s Trump. It’s what I keep thinking about. How many people would have gotten sick if I’d never hosted that weekend? One? Maybe two? The grief comes in waves, but that guilt just sits.

Just the flu.

[old goat]

"Sheeple". I love how people who blindly follow what Trump says and do whatever he says to do accuse other people of being sheeple.
I love how Mike Pence says he trusts the American people to make the right decisions about Covid--because the average American does so well treating their own illness, fixing their own teeth, building their own house, acting as their own lawyer, and flying their own airplane.

[XXX-er]

I was just thinking I don't believe I have ever heard anyone say " my prime minister "

[old goat]

I was just thinking I don't believe I have ever heard anyone say " my prime minister "

How about "my Queen"? or "your Majesty"?

[The SnowShow]

From behind todays Paywall Wapo.




Just the flu.

^^^ fuck that story just shook me up.

[bennymac]

Crazy story. Super sad. Thanks for posting it though.

[XXX-er]

About "my Queen"? or "your Majesty"?

well thats ^^ different ... fucking Royalty eh

In any case they don't get much respect its the British parliamentary system where the PM can be defeated on a non confidence vote, lose the job then we are all going to the polls. Joe Clark lasted 273 days , John Turner lasted 79 days, Sir Charles Tupper holds the record at 69 days

[KQ]

From behind todays Paywall Wapo.




Just the flu.

I believe the pandemic is real and that Covid is a bad bad virus but sometimes I read stories and wonder. I guess I'm a skeptic at heart. What I wonder about that story is: No one was sick when they got together then suddenly everyone was, is that the mystery of this virus or are we not hearing the whole story?

[bodywhomper]

High schools open tomorrow by me. Everybody on campus will be required to wear masks on campus except for special circumstances with special ed kids, or for when they’re outdoors eating a snack and socially distanced.

I went to the grocery across the street from the biggest HS yesterday. This store is usually frequented by HS kids after school ends in afternoons.

This store has been proactive with all the guidance, limiting the # of shoppers, requiring employees to wear masks, giving additional outdoor employees breaks, etc. it’s a co-op and community treasure. When I was there, 6 HS kids came in wearing the masks provided to them by the door clerk as required wearing. They went into a centralized high traffic area, and they all took off their masks and started to goof off, loudly. 10-15 minutes later, the floor manager asked them to put on their masks and escorted them out of the store. Another example of when cases pick up, my area is fucked.

[KQ]

Fauci says he was taken out of context in new Trump campaign ad touting coronavirus response

Dr. Anthony Fauci did not consent to being featured in a new advertisement from the Trump campaign touting President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the nation's leading infectious disease expert told CNN his words were taken out of context.

"In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials," Fauci said in a statement provided exclusively to CNN when asked if he agreed to be featured in the ad.

The Trump campaign released the new ad last week after the President was discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center following treatment for Covid-19. The 30-second ad, which is airing in Michigan, touts Trump's personal experience with the virus and uses a quote from Fauci in an attempt to make it appear as if he is praising Trump's response.

"President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus, and so is America," the ad's narrator says. "Together we rose to meet the challenge, protecting our seniors, getting them life-saving drugs in record time, sparing no expense."

The ad then flashes to an interview with Fauci in which he says, "I can't imagine that anybody could be doing more."

Though no date is provided in the ad, Fauci's quote is from an interview with Fox News in March. During that interview, Fauci praised the White House coronavirus task force's round-the-clock effort to respond to the pandemic, which he says included numerous White House meetings and late-night phone calls.

"We've never had a threat like this. The coordinated response has been...There are a number of adjectives to describe it -- impressive, I think is one of them. We're talking about all hands on deck. I, as one of many people on a team, I'm not the only person," Fauci said at the time. "Since the beginning, that we even recognized what this was, I have been devoting almost full time on this. I'm down at the White House virtually every day with the task force. It's every single day. So, I can't imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more."

In response to Fauci saying the ad took his words out of context, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said, "These are Dr. Fauci's own words. The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump Administration. The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci's mouth."

The use of Fauci in the new ad appeared to be a recognition by the Trump campaign that the doctor is a voice voters trust when it comes to the pandemic. Trump has privately and publicly compared Fauci's approval with his own.

In late July, Trump publicly wondered why the doctor's approval rating is so high when his is so low.

"It's interesting: he's got a very good approval rating. And I like that, it's good," Trump said. "Because remember: he's working for this administration. He's working with us. We could have gotten other people. We could have gotten somebody else. It didn't have to be Dr. Fauci. He's working with our administration. And for the most part we've done what he and others -- and Dr. (Deborah) Birx and others -- have recommended."

Trump continued: "And he's got this high approval rating. So why don't I have a high approval rating with respect -- and the administration -- with respect to the virus? We should have it very high."

On ABC News Sunday, Jon Karl, who was guest hosting "This Week," said he requested Fauci for an interview, and although he was willing to come on, the White House blocked the appearance. Karl said other medical experts on the task force were also requested, but the White House did not offer anyone.

White House communications director Alyssa Farah noted on Twitter later Sunday that Fauci had made multiple appearances on television in the last week.

[Norseman]

I believe the pandemic is real and that Covid is a bad bad virus but sometimes I read stories and wonder. I guess I'm a skeptic at heart. What I wonder about that story is: No one was sick when they got together then suddenly everyone was, is that the mystery of this virus or are we not hearing the whole story?

No, I think it highlights one of the most important things to respect about this virus: that folks are contagious days before showing symptoms.

[jono]

No, I think it highlights one of the most important things to respect about this virus: that folks are contagious days before showing symptoms.

I also get the impression that people don't appreciate the degree to which symptoms of many diseases are actually host responses. I'm sure someone can better explain that than I can, since I only learned it over my wife's shoulder (and a long time ago). But that story ("different strains") and a lot of layperson descriptions make it seem like people expect that symptoms are totally virus-dependant when the immune system of the victim probably has more to do with it.

I'm wondering if the fact of pre-symptomatic contagiousness would be more intuitive if that was widely understood?

[The AD]

No, I think it highlights one of the most important things to respect about this virus: that folks are contagious days before showing symptoms.

People may be in denial, too. Who wants to be Typhoid Mary?

[old goat]

I also get the impression that people don't appreciate the degree to which symptoms of many diseases are actually host responses. I'm sure someone can better explain that than I can, since I only learned it over my wife's shoulder (and a long time ago). But that story ("different strains") and a lot of layperson descriptions make it seem like people expect that symptoms are totally virus-dependant when the immune system of the victim probably has more to do with it.

I'm wondering if the fact of pre-symptomatic contagiousness would be more intuitive if that was widely understood?

Very true. If someone with a significant immune deficiency gets a serious infection they often look very sick but without fever or local signs of infection--if they have pneumonia they don't have a cough; if they have appendicitis they don't have abdominal pain; if they have a urine infection it doesn't hurt to pee. By significant immune deficiency I don't mean just people with transplants or on chemotherapy--this is often true of the elderly as well, especially over 80 or so.

As far as whether knowing that would help people understand pre--symptomatic contagiousness who don't already understand it, don't hold your breath.

[Toadman]

Fauci says he was taken out of context in new Trump campaign ad touting coronavirus response

Dr. Anthony Fauci did not consent to being featured in a new advertisement from the Trump campaign touting President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the nation's leading infectious disease expert told CNN his words were taken out of context.

"In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials," Fauci said in a statement provided exclusively to CNN when asked if he agreed to be featured in the ad.

The Trump campaign released the new ad last week after the President was discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center following treatment for Covid-19. The 30-second ad, which is airing in Michigan, touts Trump's personal experience with the virus and uses a quote from Fauci in an attempt to make it appear as if he is praising Trump's response.

"President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus, and so is America," the ad's narrator says. "Together we rose to meet the challenge, protecting our seniors, getting them life-saving drugs in record time, sparing no expense."

The ad then flashes to an interview with Fauci in which he says, "I can't imagine that anybody could be doing more."

Though no date is provided in the ad, Fauci's quote is from an interview with Fox News in March. During that interview, Fauci praised the White House coronavirus task force's round-the-clock effort to respond to the pandemic, which he says included numerous White House meetings and late-night phone calls.

"We've never had a threat like this. The coordinated response has been...There are a number of adjectives to describe it -- impressive, I think is one of them. We're talking about all hands on deck. I, as one of many people on a team, I'm not the only person," Fauci said at the time. "Since the beginning, that we even recognized what this was, I have been devoting almost full time on this. I'm down at the White House virtually every day with the task force. It's every single day. So, I can't imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more."

In response to Fauci saying the ad took his words out of context, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said, "These are Dr. Fauci's own words. The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump Administration. The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci's mouth."

"It's interesting: he's got a very good approval rating. And I like that, it's good," Trump said. "Because remember: he's working for this administration. He's working with us. We could have gotten other people. We could have gotten somebody else. It didn't have to be Dr. Fauci. He's working with our administration. And for the most part we've done what he and others -- and Dr. (Deborah) Birx and others -- have recommended."

On ABC News Sunday, Jon Karl, who was guest hosting "This Week," said he requested Fauci for an interview, and although he was willing to come on, the White House blocked the appearance. Karl said other medical experts on the task force were also requested, but the White House did not offer anyone.

White House communications director Alyssa Farah noted on Twitter later Sunday that Fauci had made multiple appearances on television in the last week.

Seen the propaganda ad a few times already. Fauci could always resign, and go full on scorched earth on Trump.

[powdrhound]

Joe would hire him back.