Future of Division III

[OzJohnnie]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/25/oxford-university-analysis-coronavirus-death-rate-hospitals/

Eventually folks will start accepting this good news.

The risk of dying from coronavirus after being admitted to hospital has fallen dramatically since the beginning of April, analysis by Oxford University has shown.

Around the peak of Britain's epidemic, six per cent of people hospitalised with Covid-19 died from the virus but figures show that by June 15, just 1.5 per cent died.

Experts at Oxford University say doctors may be becoming better at treating people with the virus. There are now several drugs in use or being trialled in the NHS that appear to have an impact on survival.

[Pat Coleman]

The reality here in this hemisphere doesn't really lend itself to good news.

[jamtod]

The reality here in this hemisphere doesn't really lend itself to good news.

Death numbers haven't spiked yet, but hospitalization is nearing capacity in some places so it's only a matter of time

[Ron Boerger]

Death rate is coming down, which I would call good news, because we know more about COVID now than we did three months ago and there are some treatment regimens that have shown some success at improving patient outcomes.  Younger people are responsible for much of the recent increase in cases, and younger people do a better job at fending off the worst impacts of the disease than the older people who were the majority of early diagnoses.   More people are still going to die and with uncontrolled increases in caseloads more will die as care becomes harder to come by.

Even with a decrease in overall death rate, the fact of the matter is that there are thousands upon thousands of Americans suffering in ICUs, a number that increases daily, running up ridiculous amounts of debt, many of whom will suffer the effects of this disease even if they recovered from the illness.  There is no overall improvement in sight when the whole country is taken into consideration, despite the excellent work done in the northern tier of states, because the south (and some of the west) refused to take the disease seriously and opened things back up when they had no business doing so. 

[OzJohnnie]

The reality here in this hemisphere doesn't really lend itself to good news.

Death numbers haven't spiked yet, but hospitalization is nearing capacity in some places so it's only a matter of time

Where?

[OzJohnnie]

Death rate is coming down, which I would call good news, because we know more about COVID now than we did three months ago and there are some treatment regimens that have shown some success at improving patient outcomes.  Younger people are responsible for much of the recent increase in cases, and younger people do a better job at fending off the worst impacts of the disease than the older people who were the majority of early diagnoses.   More people are still going to die and with uncontrolled increases in caseloads more will die as care becomes harder to come by.

Even with a decrease in overall death rate, the fact of the matter is that there are thousands upon thousands of Americans suffering in ICUs, a number that increases daily, running up ridiculous amounts of debt, many of whom will suffer the effects of this disease even if they recovered from the illness.  There is no overall improvement in sight when the whole country is taken into consideration, despite the excellent work done in the northern tier of states, because the south (and some of the west) refused to take the disease seriously and opened things back up when they had no business doing so. 

Show me the data linking stay at home relaxations with increased hospitalisations.  Also, can you explain why the relaxations lead to increased hospitalizations?

[jamtod]

The reality here in this hemisphere doesn't really lend itself to good news.

Death numbers haven't spiked yet, but hospitalization is nearing capacity in some places so it's only a matter of time

Where?

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/18/texas-coronavirus-hospitalizations/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/3249937001

[OzJohnnie]

Again, I would like to draw your attention to the CDC data on excess deaths.  Back to normal.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

And Europe is... back to normal.

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps


There are two reasons that infections are increasing and mortality outcomes remain normal:

1. Despite our best efforts to kill them off, the vulnerable in nursing homes and other long term care are better protected as staff learn better procedures and policy makers stop trying to kill them.

2. Doctors are become far more skilled with experience and treatments have vastly improved, along with drug interventions.  It turns out that just as with other flu-like illnesses, treatments are subtle and benefit from experience.  A big problem in March and April was cross infection of the already sick in hospital.  It takes time to learn how to keep infections spreading in hospital.  Italy really suffered this and the rest of the world learned from their unfortunate experience, but still needed to learn more.  Now is much better.

Oxford University has been considering the fact that the death rate is declining much faster than the hospitalisation rate and discussed the reasons that may have driven this.  Although they don't draw a firm conclusion (recommending more study) all of their ideas can be summarised simply: more experience with the illness and better treatment decisions.

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/declining-death-rate-from-covid-19-in-hospitals-in-england/

[OzJohnnie]

The reality here in this hemisphere doesn't really lend itself to good news.

Death numbers haven't spiked yet, but hospitalization is nearing capacity in some places so it's only a matter of time

Where?

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/18/texas-coronavirus-hospitalizations/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/3249937001

No, where are they nearing capacity?  Those articles say hospitalisations are increasing but that Houston article says there is plenty of capacity.  One hospital is almost full in Houston, it points out, but the city overall remains at 20% capacity.  And although hard to find in the Arizona article, it says that are running at half capacity and ICU usage is decreasing. So where are they actually nearing capacity?

[jamtod]

I am quite capable of accepting that there are positive signs in places, that treatment has improved drastically, and that the biggest concern for death is within the elderly and vulnerable populations AND also that there are a serious number of unknowns still about the immune response (antibody levels showing very low for asymptomatic cases), alarming numbers of new cases and hospitalizations, and the actual COVID sickness does not seem like much fun for people I have known with it, regardless of death or hospitalization, particularly with family members that fit into vulnerable categories.

[OzJohnnie]

I'm going to assume you didn't like the comment about how C19 is labeled on deaths...

As one with family and friends in the medical field especially a father who besides being a general surgeon and a family practitioner is also a medical examiner. I ain't spinning anything. Simply telling you what people with ten-times more experience and knowledge than I explain it.

I am sorry you don't like it. But this is how it works. One doesn't die of C19 as much as you die from what it does to other parts of the body and how that then allows things like pneumonia to invade and kill a person. It sucks.

Ok.  I guess I need to provide the actual facts to this discussion.  I notice this tends to be a one way flow of commitment to this debate.

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/declining-death-rate-from-covid-19-in-hospitals-in-england/

On June 12, Tennessee's number of COVID-19 cases rose sharply once again. It jumped to 21,126 cases — up nearly 800 from the day before.

But the state department of health is now including "probable" cases in that total number, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control.

As to hollow appeals to authority, if I say my brother-in-law is one of the 50 leading global experts on COVID drug treatment regimes does that give my posts more weight?

[Ralph Turner]

Oz,

The article that caught my eye early was by Didier Raoult.

He uploaded a copy of the paper to Google Drive in mid March, which I downloaded.

His regimen of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin killed the virus such that patients were sero-negative on Day-6.  (p< 0.001) There was no virus detected in his patients who took that regimen versus controls who did not wish to have his regimen and patients from another hospital who did not have the regimen. Here is the link to the article.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32205204/

What is your brother seeing with respect to Hydrozychloroquine/Azithromycin +/- oral Zinc?  Thanks

[Ralph Turner]

Actually Oline89, that is the basic science that is foundation for the clinical trials.  I thought that the denizens of the MIAC boards would be a good place to start patient recruitment.

[jamtod]

Oz,

The article that caught my eye early was by Didier Raoult.

He uploaded a copy of the paper to Google Drive in mid March, which I downloaded.

His regimen of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin killed the virus such that patients were sero-negative on Day-6.  (p< 0.001) There was no virus detected in his patients who took that regimen versus controls who did not wish to have his regimen and patients from another hospital who did not have the regimen. Here is the link to the article.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32205204/

What is your brother seeing with respect to Hydrozychloroquine/Azithromycin +/- oral Zinc?  Thanks

This Didier Raoult?
https://forbetterscience.com/2020/04/22/chloroquine-witchdoctor-didier-raoult-barking-mad-and-dangerous/amp/
Or if you are up for a long read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/magazine/didier-raoult-hydroxychloroquine.html

[Gray Fox]

A couple of things from New England Journal of Medicine

https://www.nejm.org/coronavirus?query=main_nav_lg

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2017594?query=featured_home