Centre For Local Research into Public Space (CELOS)
See also: Bios of people quoted here, and authors of linked articles
Reports out of China that looked at more than 70,000 COVID-19 patients found that about 80% of illness was mild and people recovered. 15 to 20% developed serious illness. Let’s talk about who those people are. So far it seems like it’s not children. Of the 70,000 cases, only about 2% were in people younger than 19. This seems to be a disease that affects adults. And most seriously older adults. Starting at age 60, there is an increasing risk of disease and the risk increases with age. The highest risk of serious illness and death is in people older than 80 years. People with serious underlying health conditions also are more likely to develop serious outcomes including death. The people who are at greatest risk are those older and who also have serious long-term health conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or lung disease.....We have more than 1,500 people who have worked on this response so far. ....To date no one in CDC’s workforce has tested positive for COVID-19.....We know that in South Korea no one under the age of 30 has died and in Japan no one under the age of 50 has died.....You know, right now in the United States most communities by far the vast majority of communities are not having community transmission.
"Most of the people that have symptoms right now in Waterloo region and that are tested for coronavirus do not have the virus," [medical officer of health] Wang said. "To give you a sense, over 90 people in the region have been tested for coronavirus and are negative."
British Columbia http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/diseases-conditions/covid-19/case-counts-press-statements
64 confirmed cases including:
Four individuals who have recovered, as indicated by the resolution of symptoms, followed by two successive negative test results 24 hours apart.
One individual who has died.
6,326 individuals tested as of March 13, 2020.
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2020HLTH0081-000493 “We are announcing 11 new cases of COVID-19, for a total of 64 cases in British Columbia. The individuals are all in the Vancouver Coastal Health region and were confirmed positive, based on BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) testing.
“Three cases are connected to a cluster at Lions Gate Hospital, one is a close contact of the previously identified worker at the Lynn Valley Care Centre, five cases are travel-related and the remaining two cases are under investigation.
“The three individuals at Lions Gate Hospital are administrative staff. They have no known link to the Lynn Valley Care Centre, nor do they have regular contact with patients.
“Of those cases linked to travel, patients include two from Egypt, one from Iran, one from the Philippines and one from Mexico.
“Public health teams continue to be on site at both the Lynn Valley Care Centre and the Hollyburn House Retirement Residence, working to contain potential transmission to other residents and workers.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/coronavirus-covid-19-panic-buying-stockpiling-1.5496381
As of late Thursday, there are at least 179 confirmed and presumed cases of COVID-19 in Canada.
Seventy-nine of those cases are in Ontario, mainly concentrated throughout the GTA. The total includes a new case that was reported late Thursday — in Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, the prime minister's wife.
The new cases include men and woman ranging in age from their 20s to 80s. One man, in his 80s, has been hospitalized while the rest — in Toronto, York Region, Peel Region, Ottawa, Niagara, and Waterloo — are in self-isolation.
GENEVA (AP) — Countries may gain time in the short-term as they limit travel to fight the new coronavirus pandemic, but the World Health Organization thinks overall that “it doesn’t help to restrict movement,” a top adviser to the U.N. health agency’s chief said Thursday.
Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led a WHO team in China during the raging COVID-19 outbreak there last month, said in an interview that travel bans “generally aren’t part of the armamentarium you bring to bear on something like this.”
“What we found, as a general principle - not a general principle, a pretty robust principle - is that it doesn’t help to to restrict movement,” Aylward, a former WHO emergencies chief, said outside a room at agency headquarters devoted to the outbreak. “What you’re really interested in is: Where is the virus? The viruses in the cases, the viruses in their close contacts.”
Why draconian measures may not work. Authors: Dr. Neil Rau is an infectious diseases specialist and medical microbiologist in private practice in Oakville, Ont. He is also an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Dr. Susan Richardson is a retired infectious diseases specialist and medical microbiologist. She headed the Ontario Laboratory Working Group for the Rapid Diagnosis of Emerging Infections during the 2003 SARS outbreak. She is a professor emerita at the University of Toronto.
We are making decision without reliable data. Author: John P.A. Ioannidis is professor of medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford’s Meta-Research Innovation Center.
Successful High-Dose Vitamin C Treatment of Patients with Serious and Critical COVID-19 Infection: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#sent/FMfcgxwHMPlMCSvgzkVVCrhsQRBQMktB
This blood test can tell us how widespread coronavirus really is: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#sent/FMfcgxwHMPlMCRpnmKGwFFsrnblPRrhT
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-covid-pandemic-response-scientists-1.5502423
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The-evidence-on-Covid-19-is-not-as-clear-as-we-think
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgxwHMZLFXvMZWkFjJtkZkzTCzdvh (keeping community gardens open -- Rhonda)
https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.20.0080
April 4, 2020, symptoms of mild cases
April 7, 2020, from CCLA
Kurt Wittkowski: math underlying his analysis
Arundhati Roy on India
The death of the doorman: At eight o’clock the next morning, the doctor called Walkiris and asked her to help persuade Sanabria to be intubated. He’d deteriorated overnight, and now needed to be on a respirator. “Am I going to die?” Sanabria asked Walkiris. “No, pápi,” she told him. “They’re going to put you to sleep for a little while, so you can relax your lungs. You’re breathing too fast.” He seemed dazed. “I don’t feel sick,” he said calmly. “Will you be here when I wake up?”
“I’ll see you on the other side,” she replied. “Let them do this.” As the nurses prepared to intubate him, he bragged about how his daughter was a nurse. Just before he went under, he sent Walkiris one last selfie.
Piece in the Globe (not online), by former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins: "Ontario currently has 197 COVID-19 patients on ventilators; roughly 80 per cent of the province's 2,811 ventilator-equipped critical care beds are unoccupied and ready for use by new patients."
Why Seattle did better than NYC.
The C.D.C.’s Field Epidemiology Manual, which devotes an entire chapter to communication during a health emergency, indicates that there should be a lead spokesperson whom the public gets to know—familiarity breeds trust. The spokesperson should have a “Single Overriding Health Communication Objective, or SOHCO (pronounced sock-O),” which should be repeated at the beginning and the end of any communication with the public. After the opening SOHCO, the spokesperson should “acknowledge concerns and express understanding of how those affected by the illnesses or injuries are probably feeling.” Such a gesture of empathy establishes common ground with scared and dubious citizens—who, because of their mistrust, can be at the highest risk for transmission.....
Public-health officials say that American culture poses special challenges. Our freedoms to assemble, to speak our minds, to ignore good advice, and to second-guess authority can facilitate the spread of a virus. “We’re not China—we can’t order people to stay inside,” Besser said. “Democracy is a great thing, but it means, for something like COVID-19, we have to persuade people to coöperate if we want to save their lives.”...
[In NYC] “The C.D.C. was ordered into lockdown,” a former senior official at the agency told me. “They can’t speak to the media. These are people who have trained their entire lives for epidemics—the finest public-health army in history—and they’ve been told to shut up!”
....A political leader’s job, in most situations, is to ease citizens’ fears and buoy the economy. During a pandemic, however, all those imperatives are reversed: a politician’s job is to inflame our paranoia, because waiting until we can see the danger means holding off until it’s too late.
...The effort was blocked over fears that it might create a panic, but such alarm might have proved useful. After all, the official told me, panic is pretty effective at getting people to change their behavior.
John Ionnisdis et al.
CONCLUSIONS: People <65 years old have very small risks of COVID-19 death even in pandemic epicenters and deaths for people <65 years without underlying predisposing conditions are remarkably uncommon. Strategies focusing specifically on protecting high-risk elderly individuals should be considered in managing the pandemic.
On Monday, Marguerite Blais, Quebec’s Minister of Seniors, used similar language in announcing a dramatic shift in policy. “It’s inhumane that someone can’t see a loved one for two months,” she said as the province eased the nursing-home lockdown. Residents can now walk outside alone, and visit with family outdoors – with physical distancing, of course.
Quebec, despite the horror shows unfolding in its long-term care homes (or maybe because of it), is also urging family caregivers to return and help.
Quebec’s policy change, billed as a humanitarian gesture, is also a tacit admission that understaffed seniors’ care facilities never have and never will be able to meet residents’ needs without the essential contributions of family caregivers. (This applies doubly to caregivers of children with severe disabilities who require institutional care.)....
....The underpaid, overworked personal support workers and orderlies in these homes barely have the time to complete the most essential of chores such as feeding, toileting and bathing. To think they would be able to also take residents for walks or sit down and converse with them was never a realistic expectation.
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