COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[RKC]

Mountain Home, Idaho Mayor Threatens to Fine and Arrest People but Uses Taxpayer-Funded Gym! - GregPruett.com

And the douche bags just keep on coming...

[spacediver]

Right. An exponential increase that culminates in the entire mass of the visible universe consisting of COVID-19 particles by October 1. Look at the NYC data on this page, second one down, "Daily Counts." Check it every day as it's updated:COVID-19: Data - NYC Health

Here's the latest data from your link:

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

That looks like a clear peak at the end of March.

We'll learn a lot over the next few days. In particular, I'm curious to see the daily death rate in New York.

I think death occurs 2-3 weeks after infection

The social distancing measures in New York seem to have kicked off properly on March 14th, which was ~2 weeks ago.

Best case scenario is that the peak death rate has just passed.

We're gonna need to wait 2-3 more days to be more confident, but here's a glimmer of hope:

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

If the peak indeed was yesterday, then the state may have saved itself from an even bigger shit storm by acting when it did.

So it looks like we have a two week lag between social distancing and peak death rate for NYC.

Here's a question for you:

Do you think that there is a causal relationship between the social distancing in NYC and the death rate peaking 2 weeks later?

If you do, then you implicitly understand that there are two processes at play here:

1) An exponential growth of infection.
2) The modulating influence of social distancing.

The net result (the shape of the curve) is a composition of these two processes. No sane epidemiologist is claiming unchecked exponential growth - there are often modulating influences in nature (and if there aren't, we can introduce them, like we do in the case of controlling a nuclear chain reaction with control rods).

Even if a community doesn't adapt their behaviour in the midst of an epidemic, herd immunity is control rod that checks the exponential growth.

[jfsully]

EPO takes a while from what I’ve researched. Surely there is a faster way to raise a person’s red blood cell count?

I agree with the population factor. However, there are several cities of similar size that have much fewer reported infections compared to those at lower altitudes. I’ve yet to see a high altitude city with a high infection rate per capita, but the same can’t be said for low altitude cities. Compare vegas, el paso, Albuquerque, denver VS new orleans, detroit, portland.

There is no reason I know of that increasing a normal hemoglobin would reduce the risk of infection. The problem of low blood oxygen in pneumonia (including covid) comes from reduced oxygen exchange in the lungs, not from lack of red blood cells to carry it. Adding red blood cells would help marginally, if at all, and potentially causes some problems. And epogen would take far too long to be helpful.

Honestly, if you don’t know these basic things, it’s probably not worth your time to try to cure the most significant (hopefully) infectious disease of our lifetime. I like the outside-the-box thinking, however.

[spacediver]

I agree with the population factor. However, there are several cities of similar size that have much fewer reported infections compared to those at lower altitudes. I’ve yet to see a high altitude city with a high infection rate per capita, but the same can’t be said for low altitude cities. Compare vegas, el paso, Albuquerque, denver VS new orleans, detroit, portland.

If this is true, might be interesting to figure out why. If it is indeed causally related to altitude, it might be through some genetic adaptation other than level of hemoglobin. This wiki link might have some relevant info.

Might even be that some populations incidentally inherited immune enhancements to their genome through high altitude selection (e.g. if population A came into contact with population B, and population B had adaptations to high altitude and to certain classes of viral pathogens, then both those sets of genes may be incorporated into population A even if only one of them (high altitude genes) was causally involved in the selection process.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Mountain Home, Idaho Mayor Threatens to Fine and Arrest People but Uses Taxpayer-Funded Gym! - GregPruett.com

And the douche bags just keep on coming...

But he has really nice arms.

If this is true, might be interesting to figure out why. If it is indeed causally related to altitude, it might be through some genetic adaptation other than level of hemoglobin. This wiki link might have some relevant info.

Half of them just got there from California a couple of years ago, just long enough to fuck up local politics, but not within the scope of genetics. Like JF, I seen no mechanism by which an increase in H&H would mitigate the effects of a virus.

[Soule]

There is no reason I know of that increasing a normal hemoglobin would reduce the risk of infection. The problem of low blood oxygen in pneumonia (including covid) comes from reduced oxygen exchange in the lungs, not from lack of red blood cells to carry it. Adding red blood cells would help marginally, if at all, and potentially causes some problems. And epogen would take far too long to be helpful.

Honestly, if you don’t know these basic things, it’s probably not worth your time to try to cure the most significant (hopefully) infectious disease of our lifetime. I like the outside-the-box thinking, however.

Doc, I’m not insinuating that a higher RBC reduces infection rates. What I’m driving at is that when people don’t feel as symptomatic they don’t go and get tested for covid19. See what I’m saying?

[Mark Rippetoe]

That's pretty good, Soule.

[spacediver]

Half of them just got there from California a couple of years ago, just long enough to fuck up local politics, but not within the scope of genetics. Like JF, I seen no mechanism by which an increase in H&H would mitigate the effects of a virus.

Yep, I re-read the original post after sending mine through, and realized the error after seeing the list of cities. I was thinking on a more global level.

If Soule's onto something, then you might expect the pattern to exist in countries by elevation, but I doubt there's an relationship.

[RKC]

But he has really nice arms.

Probably works his “core” too...

[Yngvi]

Spot on. I lived in China back in 2013-14 and what that guy says is exactly correct.

After this debacle is over, I think the West's relationship with China is going to have to resemble our relationship with the USSR during the Cold War. No way can we keep trading with China now that it's become obvious they're our generation's Nazi Germany.

Have you seen how the 代购 (daigou) problem has played into this? Really disgusting.
The media still seems to think the toilet paper hoarders were the big crooks. These gangs of 代购 "merchants" that exist to evade import/export taxes cleared out U.S., Aus and EU stockpiles of masks and PPE beginning in early January (often bragging about how the locals didn't know what was coming and there would be no masks left for them). They hoarded them, then have been selling back to the public at a 25X markup. (still available on Amazon and Ebay).

So, people who live in high altitudes have a higher red blood cell count.

Good observation! I don't want to run the numbers to see if the correlation pans out, but the physiological effects of altitude is could be an important consideration that I had overlooked.

It also correlates with population density.

Would be interesting to better understand the exact correlation. Could get us officially out from under house arrest sooner.


I wonder how many patients who are suspected of dying of pneumonia are actually dying from cardiovascular complications.

The proposition of a newly elucidated porphyrin-dependent viral entry mechanism is interesting.

If the previously linked heme paper is correct, would we may be seeing deaths from a combination of:

-Systemic inflammatory response derived from abnormal heme metabolism

-Lower blood oxygen saturation due to a combination of lung damage, pneumonia, and reduced hematocrit (or hematocrit with impaired ability to interact with oxygen, CO2 and sugar)

-Porphyria-like pathophysiology

If the previously linked heme paper is incorrect, we still may have greater reason to speculate on or investigate the interaction of the virus with hemoglobin and its corresponding effects.