News: MLS Suspends season due to Coronavirus

With all this bad news just wanted to share that the 7 day running average for coronavirus deaths in the United States is at the lowest it's been since March 30.

 

There has been talk (Fauci I believe) that the virus appears to have mutated slightly into a more contagious version. Hopefully it's also a less lethal version as well.

 

Link? I've not seen anything about this. Not that I spend everyday reading about this, not to extent I did in March-April, anyway. I might have missed it. But there's been a lot of loose talk about mutations of this virus, but when you scratch the surface, every article I've reads says, yeah, it's mutating but at the rate one would expect for this type of virus. And that mutations haven't gotten to the point where what we're dealing with now constitutes a different version or strain of the disease.

 

This, presumably:

https://www.sciencealert.com/current-dominant-strain-of-covid-19-more-infectious-than-original-study

 

More indication that this isn't a second peak or wave, this is the first peak/wave hitting in areas that got off light in March/April.

 

Which also shows how totally avoidable this resurgence was. A couple of weeks more of distancing/quarantine and this would have gone away. Now, at best, it will be with us the rest of the year.

 

Meanwhile, a new study from Henry Ford Health System indicates the highly controversial Hydroxycloroquin (sp) is actually effective, despite numerous studies* showing otherwise.

*Some, but not all, of those studies have been retracted as it was determined by science people that they were deeply flawed, the researchers appear to have been more motivated to prove Trump wrong than to contribute legitimate scientific research.

 

I don't know about that. A lot of the states that are blowing up now were sitting on stable but somewhat sizable plateaus for a couple months. It wasn't disappearing.

 

And WHO discontinues the inclusion of it in their study as it showed little to no improvement in hospitalized patients. There was no increase in mortality among patients that took the drug but there were other safety concerns that warranted its removal given that it hadn’t shown any benefits.

https://www.who.int/news-room/detai...d-lopinavir-ritonavir-trial-arms-for-covid-19

Dueling studies is fun!

 

Henry Ford noted that their results were based on a very specific set of circumstances, patients given the drug within 48 hours of being admitted to hospital before they started to have severe immune reactions, who did not have aggravating heart conditions.

They also stated that the patients may also have been given other medications.

Or as the researchers at Henry Ford said, this result does not conflict with other studies which may have been carried out with different criteria.


https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/health/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-detroit-study/index.html

 

There Indianapolis 500 will be run end of August in front of fans at 50 percent capacity, which would be 125k or so...

 

Ufcs main event at fight island will have to be reshuffled as burns is not feeling well and will not be on the flight to Abu Dhabi.

 

That's talking about the mutation that appeared in (January?) in Europe, and then spread to the USA. Not the original Chinese strain that entered in Seattle and Vancouver, but then all but vanished.

Has there been yet another mutation though, that's leading this US surge of infections, with relatively fewer deaths? Or is it simply that the demographics are shifting younger (and much younger in some places ... 80% of the deaths in Canada were linked to long-term care homes), or treatments are improving (or both ...).

 

There is an even simpler theory on the decrease in deaths - this latest flareup hasn't actually reached the levels from April. The numbers are certainly higher now, but back in April it was nearly impossible to get tested, so those numbers are mostly meaningless. The death rate might actually be the same as before, just a smaller outbreak.

 

True ... though death rate was actually higher in some other places that didn't seem to have testing lag. But that could be demographics.

Too many unknowns.

I really WISH there was a less fatal strain circulating. Ideally a very unfatal strain that's even more contagious would be best solution to this whole situation. But probably wishful thinking.

BTW, here's a graphic of what strains were observed in British Columbia. Would be interesting to see something more recent and global.

 

I didn't know that the Bundesliga had ZERO known cases of COVID-19 in finishing its season. That's pretty freaking remarkable. https://t.co/6a10b3OzJy

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) July 4, 2020

The article only quotes Dortmund’s SD saying he “didn’t know of any.” Still, almost every other competition has reported cases so I think they weren’t allowed To report. Either by agreement With the players union, or privacy laws.

Thx,

Jay!

 

The thing that pisses me off about it was that he set off a run on that drug. A drug that people actually need to deal with medical issues it is prescribed for (like lupus). And suddenly these individuals couldn't get the drug because people were buying it up because the President was saying it will help. And I know to some people it isn't a big deal. But I've had family members who have needed drugs in order to manage medical problems. And if you or someone you care for ever has to go through that same situation you would understand why it is irresponsible and infuriating that the President did that.

 

It might not be enough to be noticed in the national numbers, but the death rate has been going up in the last two weeks in AZ, TX, and FL. Not so much in California yet.

 

The run on the drug started before he mentioned it. Doctors around the world were using it before he mentioned it. He didn't pull it out of thin air.

Did he overhype it and defend it? Sure, but let's not project that he was the cause of the frenzy behind it. It is a prescription that a doctor needs to prescribe, and doctors in multiple countries were prescribing it because what little we knew indicated some promise

 

Usual capacity is 250k seats plus 50k in the infield.

 

It's been reported as effective in preventing some seriously ill people from dying.

It does not prevent Covid-19.

 

Certainly a reporting issue due to Independence Day, but could be worth noting that the number of deaths for 4th of July was the lowest since March 23...

That was the good news. The bad news is that Minnesota, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Kentucky did not report cases at all. In California there were no reports from Los Angeles or San Diego. And with that the country still had 45k cases. Yikes.

 

Florida has surpassed New York's record for most cases :-(

 

What's interesting here (to me, anyway) is how we use the word "strains" while in scientific publications you'll see "variant" or something similar used. To the average reader, the difference might not matter. To a researcher, I think it does.

From everything I've read, researchers see Covid-19 as having one strain, with a number of variants that align with what would have been expected from a coronavirus. That is, this type of virus mutates, but somewhat slowly (more slowly than does influenza, by comparison). As these expected mutations occur, they're tracked and studied. It's only if a mutation results in a substantial change in the the way the virus affects people, that a new strain of the virus is said to exist. It could be that this mutation eventually clears that bar, but it'll take a lot more study (and time) before the scientific community would be ready to call this a new strain of this disease.

This article from The Atlantic spells it out rather well. It's two months old, and addresses where things were then regarding this very same mutation. The group doing this research is well-respected, but even in their article (or the summary, which I've read) they don't claim it's a new strain.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/coronavirus-strains-transmissible/611239/