Central California SARS2 battlefield, personal experience included

The two brave emergency physicians (technically urgent care, which is usually dealing with lesser illnesses, at least during presentation) have dared to speak up. The gall. The utter disregard for the Moral Authoritarians, most often colored Smurf-blue is wondrous to behold. Their first video which was removed almost entirely from YouTube, and perhaps totally by now obtained 5 million views. But here is the sin: they told the truth.

Links to episode 6 in a series presented by Journeyman Pictures deals with re-iteration of their experience, international experience, conversations with CEOs of hospital chains and of businesses large and small in their Bakersfield community. They recite opinions of primarily Swedish virologists and epidemiologists concerning the inevitable course of infection.

The inevitable course of infection ends when either the entire host species dies or much more often host immunity becomes community-wide. This means herd immunity.

Herd immunity cannot occur as long a majority of the herd is sheltered in place, waiting for the next episode, possibly more lethal than the previous.

I practiced Neurosurgery and Neurology for 37.75 years in Santa Maria, 150 miles southwest of Bakersfield. In my practice, I both received follow-up patients from Bakersfield or sent my Bakersfield patients back home. So I know the lay of the land.

How about some facts: listen to the linked video(s). You'll get facts. I'll give some Santa Barbara County facts which is where my physicians are. And then I'll give your San Luis Obispo facts, which is where my current practice is located.

The figures I give are from yesterday, so may be outdated even 24 hours later.

SBCo has about 450 - 500 confirmed cases and about 45 deaths. Not too bad. Beds at my Northern SBCo. are empty except for about 12 SARS2 cases, some being in ICU. Elective procedures have disappeared, just like the jobs of people victims of collateral damage.

The SLOCo picture is much rosier: just a little more than 200 confirmed cases and 2 deaths.

So, as far as North SBCo and all of SLOCo, things are loosening up. This occurs not by governmental edict. It occurs because the big bad monster virus is statistically only bad for the elderly, comirbidity-burdened population.

Drs. Massihi and Erickson give fact-based assessments of what they see. This conforms pretty much to Cal's Central Coast where I live.

Doctors both, I congratulate you. After 38 years practicing Neurosurgery and Neurology in your neighboring community of Santa Maria, I appreciate first hand the utility of urgent care centers such as yours. I have two questions for you:
1. Do your Urgentcares function as a one-stop, then off to hospital if need be, or do you continue treating patients with non-hospital requiring care?

2. You mentioned treating your Covid-19 patients with antibiotics. Does that include CQ or HCQ? If you fear repercussions from an affirmative answer, I can well understand your reluctance to so state.

This entire process has been politicized from the moment of arrival in the public awareness. This virus doesn't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, Independent. It can kill you just as dead.

Too many people believe that if a healthy person goes outdoors, social distancing or not, that this act diminishes their immediate safety. It doesn't. But delayed consequences of suppressing development of herd immunity will almost see a continuation of this disease through perhaps several disease cycles until herd immunity (whether or not vaccine-facilitated) occurs.

Thank you for taking a fact-based, apolitical position on the epidemic.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f0VRtY9oTs]

Episode 1: https://youtu.be/d6MZy-2fcBw
Episode 2: https://youtu.be/lGC5sGdz4kg
Episode 3: https://youtu.be/VK0Wtjh3HVA
Episode 4: https://youtu.be/cwPqmLoZA4s
Episode 5: https://youtu.be/k0Q4naYOYDw

A transcript of this interview can be found https://www.thepressandthepublic.com/...

Just remember folks, people died for Fauci's sins:

No one needed to die except for Fauci

Note my statement is ambiguous, purposefully so.

Cheers and Good Day, Sunshine

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Alligator Ed's picture

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@Alligator Ed

at Boy Scout camp in Southern Oregon some older friends of mine
who were on staff somehow commandeered the PA system and in
place of morning reveille woke us up to "Good Day Sunshine".

And it was good.

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Anja Geitz's picture

Of herd immunity for covid-19, or are we suppose to die first to get that answered?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz of $39,000 per patient put on a ventilator. Hence the reason NYC is such a mathematecal outlier.

Who needs cheap non invasive morally responsible treatment when you can go straight to the treatment with a 76% fatality rate and make millions.

Capitalist medecine at its finest.

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CB's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain
Then lose untold trillions on the markets and economy. Doesn't sound like a money making plan to me.

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@CB But when did that ever matter?

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Alligator Ed's picture

@Anja Geitz @Anja Geitz has not yet emerged. None will appear until the infection has affected more people--as proven by reliable tests. Estimates I have seen on medical sites such as MedCram and Peak Prosperity estimate that at least 60% of the public needs to be immune ignorer to reduce R0 below 1.0. With R0

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CB's picture

@Alligator Ed
2 1/4 million out a population of 330 million would die in one year to gain herd immunity. It would probably be less due to better health care today but that would quickly get swamped.

I'm assuming same R0 and death rate. I'm wondering if the Drs. consider Covid-19 better or worse than the 1918 flu.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB please explain the rationale for it. What do you base this death rate on? Where do you consider that herd immunity develops..60%, 70%. 80+%?

The reasons for the devastation wrought by the 1918 flu were manifold, including the deprivations on huge populations due to famine and other epidemic diseases including typhus, trench foot (yes, trench foot was a distinct comorbidity, open flesh with disrupted barriers to bacterial entry, leading to sepsis.)

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CB's picture

@Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed
The US population was 130 million in 1918. The rest of the world, at that time were probably in worse condition (sanitation, living conditions, food supplies than the US.

The doctors should be able to get better info than I as to the R0, death rate and herd immunity % of the 1918 flu and give us a comparison.

I want to know what they believe the death rate would be for Covid-19 if no lock-downs were done at all or even it partial lock-downs were done for old folks. Don't forget that there are now more elderly with comorbidity that have been kept alive due to medical advances.

They are the ones advancing the proposal to go for herd immunity so I'd like to know more. They can't simply pick apart the current situation using facts and figures w/o giving us the alternative c/w facts and figures.

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@Anja Geitz

the following:
(from a recent Brazilian study)

In a pandemic scenario, off-label and consented use of drugs with good safety profiles and potential benefits, as demonstrated by preliminary researches, should be considered as treatment options. Assuming that hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin on early stages of COVID-19 could inhibit viral replication and prevent progression to severe forms of the disease, it is rational to hypothesize that treating patients at the beginning of the viral infection could have potential benefits (23), possible decreasing the need for hospitalization.
5
Nevertheless, limited supply of tests for detection of COVID-19 and time for diagnosis can pose a serious obstacle for treating patients at the beginning of infection. On the other hand, empirical treatment has been routinely performed in medicine, especially for serious infections when antibiotic therapy must be chosen empirically, despite the lack of knowledge of the etiologic pathogen (33). The strategy of empirical treatment prescription is based on the principle of risk assessment versus benefits for each individual case and the therapeutic safety profile must be considered. Use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for treating patients with suspected COVID-19 fulfill the principles of empirical treatment and may be a reasonable approach to refrain the disease.
In a critical pandemic situation, many people become infected in a short period of time, which can significantly burden the health system. Strategies to improve accessibility to medical appointments through telemedicine can be a fundamental tool for screening patients suspected with COVID-19. Although little data are available, empirical treatment with safe profile drugs that have demonstrated potential benefits could be a pragmatic strategy in controlling the epidemic, as scientific evidence will be gradually established. It is of great importance that patients are followed closely, concerning safety and efficacy of the therapeutic intervention.

That looks (to me, the medical non-professional) to be a reasonable statement about the rationale for empirical treatment in a situation like this - but Fauci and company appear to reject it as illegitimate somehow?

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Alligator Ed's picture

@Blue Republic

Empirical treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for suspected cases of COVID-19 followed-up by telemedicine

There were no serious side-effects in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin (Table 3). Two patients in the treatment group died during the follow-up; first death was due to acute coronary syndrome and second death due to metastatic cancer. On the treatment group, 1.9% required hospitalization, compared to the control group, which was 5.4% (p That is, 2.8 times greater need for hospitalization compared to those without medication (Figure 1). It means an Absolute Risk Reduction (RAR) of 3.5% and a Number Needed to Treat (NNT) of 28 to prevent one hospitalization. When the treatment group was stratified concerning the day of the symptom on which the drugs were started, we observed that patients treated before versus after day 7 of symptoms required less hospitalization (1.17% and 3.2%, respectively p

Elsewhere in the text it states affirmation of this regimen, AZ + CQ / HCQ as safe and valid. The non-treated group represents a cohort which is known as the intention to treat analysis. Thus patients self-=select to get or avoid treatment. It might be argued that those refusing treatment had milder infections. But the data weren't presented by which to prove or disprove any self-selection bias. The treatment was inexpensive and government purchased. Telemedicine is a benign procedure which place no infection risk on either patient group. One conceivable objection to telemedicine is that it might not be sensitive enough to pick mild complications, such as conjunctivitis or polyarthritis of minimal degree.

One of the big bugaboos about CQ etc is the alleged incidence of QT interval prolongation which is an early indicator of possible serious arrhythmias. Both CQ / HCQ are prolongers of QT interval as is AZ. But none emerged in this study.

Another, flawed Brazilian study detected no arrhythmias even though the patients were given CQ + AZ + oseltamivir. The latter is like Tamiflu. All 3 drugs in that other Brazilian study prolong the QT interval. And the Study used much higher HCQ doses than the other study you linked. Yet none of thaose treated patients experienced life-threatening arrhythmias, most typical of which is torsade pointes.

Editorial: Caution Needed on the Use of Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine for Coronavirus Disease 2019

Further enlightenment may be obtained from reading comments to the editors.

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@Alligator Ed

One point about the Brazilian telemedicine study, though.

You wrote, "It might be argued that those refusing treatment had milder infections. But the data weren't presented by which to prove or disprove any self-selection bias. "

That's a little unclear to me - but the study did say this:

The baseline clinical characteristics were similar
between groups except by a higher rate of diabetes and previous stroke in the
treatment group (Table 1). The treatment group also had higher prevalence of flu-like
12
symptoms than the control group, such as fever, cough, dyspnea, diarrhea, myalgia,
coryza, and headache. Dyspnea at baseline was more prevalent in the treatment
group compared to controls (22.1% versus 16%, p

(end quote)

Which I understand to say that the treatment group was both sicker and higher risk (more co-morbidities) compared to the control group. In spite of this the hospitalization rate was significantly higher for the control group and almost five times higher (5.4% v. 1.17%) than the rate for those of the treatment group who started treatment in under seven days from the onset of symptoms. Seems like a pretty dramatic difference.

Was wondering more generally though your thoughts on the appropriateness of treating on an empirical basis in a situation like this where waiting for test results (or full clinical trials) could pose a serious danger to the patient. Have you had to deal with this sort of problem in your own practice?

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Alligator Ed's picture

@Blue Republic Thanks for catching it. Absolutely, the treated group should have done worse unless the treatment was effective. Obviously the figures speak for themselves.

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of them by YouTube would, by itself, make me seek out their videos just to find out why YouTube is crapping their pants.

I guess being "on the front lines" doesn't always get you a firetruck parade.

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CB's picture

for the deaths in excess of normal levels during this period if they have not been caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported
Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across 14 countries analyzed by the FT.

BTW, Sweden's economy will be affected just as much as their neighbors. The majority of Swedes actually self-quarantined to a large extent in spite of having no quarantine due to the fear factor. But a significant number did not. The country had 2,300 (28%) excess deaths. Norway, which had a strict quarantine had zero excess deaths.

Is there anything in their reports that estimate the number of deaths if there were absolutely no quarantines in the world (w/ or w/o the Wuhan lock-down)? What would the economies of the world be now if there were no quarantines?

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB will be the best estimate of coronavirus mortality. But even this won't be accurate on a 1 to 1 correlation. For instance, how many alcoholic cirrhotics will be tipped over the edge by increased imbibing? How many frail, elderly will fail to get adequate nutrition and die because of lack of funds and family? How many chronic bronchitics will poison their already compromised airways through excess smoking. Simply saying that excess deaths are ALL relate to SARS2 is incorrect. Because this plandemic (yes, I still believe this is a plandemic) has induced massive collateral damage including economic, family-based, stress-based. Consider myocardial infarctions which always increase during stressful times. People during prolonged stress have lowered immune function, thus permitting infections other than SARS2 to kill them.

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CB's picture

@Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed
Have they done any reporting on how to account for excess deaths? From what I've read they seem to be basing all their information on where they live in California. Most people living in widely spaces houses in the suburbs, inordinately wealthy by world and even American standards, excellent health system with sufficient doctors, no travel on crowded subways/trains, fewer multiple occupant dwellings, well nourished, healthy and educated. Disease always ravages the poor no matter the country.

Data Suggests Many New York City Neighborhoods Hardest Hit by COVID-19 Are Also Low-Income Areas
...
This week, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene published a breakdown of COVID-19 cases by zip code. As of April 3, the highest case counts (indicating anywhere between 409 and 1245 cases in particular ZIP codes) are concentrated in parts of the Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx boroughs, while mostly white and upper-class neighborhoods in Manhattan have relatively fewer cases.
...

These doctors can't make their herd immunity proposals w/o estimating the true costs, not only in America, but around the world. We live in a highly mobile connected world. Can you imagine what would have happened in China if they hadn't done the extreme lock-down in Wuhan and let 5 to 10 million from the province to travel to every corner of the country and world for Chinese New Year. The highest demographic of tourists in the world now come from China - about 200 million going to every corner of the world. Over twice that number within China itself.

I think they are living in a bubble and extrapolating from that bubble.

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@Alligator Ed How many people living because they weren't in a car as much? How many stopped drinking as much because they're not at a job they hate? Except for health care disruptions, the numbers could cancel out. But I don't think we'll ever know. We probably can't ever know.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@tle These factors which I shall call collateral damage to my mind have not been studied referenced to specific disease states. Even the great 1918 pandemic would have been impossible for this calculation because of the vast number of independent variables drastically affecting outcome.

Future epidemiological surveys must involve economists, sociologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists as well as other medical professionals. I would hope that such future uncovering of the resultant health and societal ills could be performed in an apolitical fashion.

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@Alligator Ed

of collateral damage

The head of a global partnership to end tuberculosis (TB) said she is “sickened” by research that revealed millions more people are expected to contract the disease as a result of Covid-19 restrictions.

Up to 6.3 million more people are predicted to develop TB between now and 2025 and 1.4 million more people are expected to die as cases go undiagnosed and untreated during lockdown. This will set back global efforts to end TB by five to eight years.

as reported in the UK Guardian

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2020-05-07 United States Coronavirus 1,263,243 Cases and 74,809 Deaths Worldometer.png
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

More than 0.13% of the population of New York has already died from Covid-19 in the last three months.

The death rate from the seasonal flu is around 0.1% of the people who get infected. Many people do not get the flu so the overall number of deaths from flu is much less than 0.1% of the population.

Three fourths of the people in New York with confirmed cases of Covid-19 have not yet had an outcome for their disease.

If only 1% of the people known to have Covid-19 in New York do not survive then we will lose another 25,000 people. If the pandemic completely stops tomorrow New York will still wind up losing more than 50,000 of its citizens to Covid-19.

This is not the seasonal flu. California needs to avoid becoming another New York.

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CB's picture

already done that could answer some of the questions I had. Do you know if the doctors have cited any?

https://www.medrxiv.org/search/Epidemiology%252Band%252BTransmission%252... 1,799 Results for term "Epidemiology and Transmission of COVID-19"

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@CB
I agree with you about that.

The value for herd immunity I saw most often was 70%, but that looked like a guess. That was before the claims that a large number of people had already recovered without showing symptoms. If there are more asymptomatic individuals higher the percentages of immunity are necessary and I did see some estimates of 80% to 85%.

It sounds like the antibody tests were giving a lot of false positives. Apparently there have not been as many infected (and either dead or recovered) as the test vendors claimed. It is also not clear how long the immunity will last once someone recovers.

The coronavirus that caused a cold two years ago does not generally protect against the cold going around this year. Herd immunity might only last a year or two. Nobody knows.
Spreading the virus on purpose is not likely to make the population more immune to other coronaviruses or a mutant of this one.

I have not tried to do anything beyond simple, short-term modeling because there just is not good data. The deluge of papers that are not even refereed is just too much to follow. Even the refereed review articles are only good guesses at this point. There was a lot of good work on SARS so progress with this virus is impressive given the short time frame, but I think we share in opposing the idea of using a large number of people as guinea pigs.

I had trouble with the sound on the two videos I tried to watch, but there were a lot more opinions than facts presented. The two urgent care guys were generalizing about the situation in their wealthy, privileged neighborhood to the situation in places where there are a lot of poor people. Maybe they think it is OK to sacrifice the lives of a bunch of poor people to protect their profits.

This might get better papers on this topic although some of the papers probably have as much politics as science.
https://www.medrxiv.org/search/abstract_title%3ARo%2Bcontagious%2B%20abs...

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB There were > 1800 such pertinent articles. Naturally I didn't read them all. But I did read the following article:

Model the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 propagation with public health intervention as published without peer-review on MedRxiv.

In the process of COVID-19 spreading, the spreading among these seven
states is governed by the following assumptions. It is assumed that β is the con-
tact rate of susceptible individuals with spreaders and the disease transmission
follows the mass action principle. A researcher assume that susceptible individ-
uals home quarantine or stay at home at the rate θ. And at a rate θ0 staying at
home is not fully protected from the virus due to ineffectiveness of home quar-
antine. The one who completed incubation period becomes to infected at a rate
of σ, that means 1 is the average duration of incubation. According to clinical σ
examination, the exposed and infected individuals becomes isolated at a rate of η and α respectively. It is assumed that the infectious infected individuals, leading to disease prevalence. The average duration of infectiousness is 1 , when
γ
γ is the transmission rate from infected to recovery or death. In my assumption recovery from isolated infected is better than and infected class due to clinical treatment. Infected and isolated infected are recover with a probability of κ1 and κ2, and also they will becomes to death with a probability of (1 − κ1) and (1−κ2) respectively. The parameter Λ is the recruitment, while μ natural birth and death rate of each state individuals. The parameters are all non-negative.
Based on the above considerations, COVID-19 spreading leads to dynamic transitions among these states, shown in figure 1. The model can be described by the following system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations:
dS
dI =σE−(γ+α+μ)I, dt
dQ =ηE+αI−(γ+μ)Q, dt
dR =κ1γI+κ2γQ−μR, dt
dD = (1−κ1)γI +(1−κ2)γQ−μD, dt
dH =θS−(μ+θ0)H, dt
= Λ − βSI − (μ + θ)S + θ0Q, N
= βSI −(σ+η+μ)E, dt N
dt dE
(1)
N(t) = S(t) + H(t) + E(t) + I(t) + Q(t) + R(t) + D(t).

Each line of this MODEL represents a supposition based upon assumptions which may or may not be applicable to the current SARS2 epidemic. Yes, the variables inserted representing the various population groups might be reasonable and proper, but assumptions are made in the field--not by pathology / autopsy confirmation of total members in each class, as represented in figure 1. We have discussed this issue in multiple essays and comments before.

Populations S, H, I, Q, E, R are all based upon incomplete knowledge.

I distrust models because they are purported to be real-world related, which is what CNN purports to be. The Central California area is having a light go of it. But the model I see does not take into account population density, personal hygiene, economic status, occupation/employment, etc.

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CB's picture

Covid-19 just "another flu". We already have vaccines for the winter flu and they are in widespread use in the country. These vaccines will cover two of the most dangerous aspects of Covid-19: 1) asymptomatic spread by young, healthy people and 2) higher death rate in elders with comorbidity.

Another VERY important factor is that there is already a very high herd immunity with the winter flu. That's why we don't have to worry about a pandemic developing.

Once herd immunity and vaccines are developed THEN we can say Covid-19 is just like the flu.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB This is not "the flu". The mortality is much higher as judged from excess death statistics. As I have mentioned in the essay and comments above this one, excess deaths is not a simple matter of parsing. Other factors as I alluded to are obvious confounders. My opinion is that SARS2 is quite deadly for the high risk groups, which contain many members, including myself.

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with those who point out the clear difference in outcomes between Wuhan and New York City, both with 11 million people, but where Wuhan closed all transportation into, out of, and around the province, but which New York still hasn't done, I hate to be the one who brings up the terrifying news of possible new problems. We're not aware of what we're dealing with yet.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/07/851725443/mystery-i...

Mystery Inflammatory Syndrome In Kids And Teens Likely Linked To COVID-19

May 7, 20208:00 AM ET

MARIA GODOY

The serious inflammatory syndrome sending some children and teens to the hospital remains extremely uncommon, doctors say. But if your child spikes a high, persistent fever, and has severe abdominal pain with vomiting that doesn't make them feel better, call your doctor as a precaution.

Sixty-four children and teens in New York State are suspected of having a mysterious inflammatory syndrome that is believed to be linked to COVID-19, the New York Department of Health said in an alert issued Wednesday. A growing number of similar cases — including at least one death — have been reported in other parts of the U.S. and Europe, though the phenomenon is still not well-understood...

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Alligator Ed's picture

@Linda Wood Perhaps this autoimmune-like inflammatory disease, resembling Kawasaki syndrome, is due to SARS2 but was not apparent until overall pediatric-adolescent caseload increased to a certain point.

In drug trials, the concept of Phase 4 evaluation is well-known. This is also called after-market experience. Such information cannot be obtained until a certain informational critical mass has been achieved. For drugs, this might require millions of doses of a particular medicine.

But the same concept can be applied to the emergence of of more case information. One example is Alzheimer's Disease. Dr. Alzheimer's did not discover the disease named for him but he was the first to comprehensively describe a disorder which was never well-enough represented in populations prior to the advent of the revolutions in technology and hygiene. These permitted greater numbers of patients to survive longer than the 65 year old age at which AD cases become progressively more common.

So, now with SARS2 we may be seeing an inflammatory disorder in younger patients due to multiple mechanisms, all of which have been described in adults:
conjunctivitis
cough
sore throat
pneumonia
cytokine storm
anti-phospholipid antibody disorders (of which there is a large spectrum, many of which target the nervous system both central and peripheral)
intravascular thrombosis-->disseminated intravascular coagulation-->micro emboli-->multi-organ involvement, also including brain and heart.

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@Alligator Ed ,

I know you're watching for everything relevant, and I look to you for insights of all kinds. I'm just weighing in on the side of instinct that may cause us to freeze in place when encountering an unknowable, unseeable, unpredictable predator. If you think we're cautious now, imagine how this will change if it threatens children.

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mimi's picture

you all did an excellent, magnificent job, in the essay as well the comments. So, I need to be the sheep in the herd that wants to get immunity, right? Do I (or we) want to decide on our own of how much risk we take to get infected (not even knowing if we have been infected or not) or do we want be ordered to do things, which hurts us otherwise, because politicians pee in their pants out of fear being blamed for the death rates, of which we even don't know yet of how much they have really increased due to covid-19 ?

As the guy in the video said, the virus is everywhere, with lockdown or without. And you guys in the US are members of a sophisticated society, (such lucky bunch you are indeed) and got a liberal education (forget that's just for the rich kids). So, the so-called collateral damage, that the lockdown causes, we do not have to accept. Yeah, we don't.

The discussion about the pro and cons are everywhere. Most people who get damaged through the lockdown, don't want to be damaged. The average Joe and Ann sense it and start to rebel against the collateral damage. Makes sense to me.

I hate to constantly try to figure out who has the better, more right, more sophisticated arguements, and it's too much for me. So, as much as I love you all, can't you all go along and/or shut up, at least for a couple of hours or so?

My personal opinion (have only listened to the full episode 6 interview posted in the essay so far) that the fear factor has increased sometimes to hysterical levels, which gives the revolutionary dreamers for freedom of expression and rebels against the oppressive government agencies regulation, a great festival in the parks to show up their heroism, while at the same time they give the extreme right-winger racist-based big mouths a nice come-back to fight the social-minded left.

Hallelujah, we live in totally not interesting times, but basically in the muddiest shithole swamps of no-man's land.

Thanks Alligator Ed and CB. I hereby allow myself to donate gold and silver medals and the reward for being the most annoyinglovable mud-slinging doctors to you both. And the winner is: ... I have my opinion, but I don't want to influence your own choice, so I won't tell you. (Note to JtC, I am a good German and don't cause troubles. See?)

Sigh, at a side note, having had fears to go to doctors in the US due to FUBAR costs, but the few times I actually did, compared to having no fears to go to the doctors in Germany, because it doesn't cost me a dime, I learned too, that the quality of a doctors analysis is not dependent on how much the patient has to pay for it. Socialized health care should be a right, but it doesn't guarantee higher quality analysis of individual doctors. Hugh, I have spoken.

Kudos for all the efforts to help us making our own decision what we should accept and what we should not. So far, I wear masks religiously and keep distance, but want to go everywhere I want and not allow that the lockdown ruins all people, who loose their income generating potential, because they loose their jobs, or have less paid working hours and simply can't make a living anymore. If I wouldn't fear some vandalizing right-wingers use the demonstrations against the virus lockdown, I would march with the anti-lockdown folks. But the frigging evil-doers lock the demonstrators down as well.

I can't stand it.

Thanks Alligator Ed.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@mimi I love your comment. I don't like medals because the ribbons get tangled on my neck when I swim. But thanks for the recognition that I am an annoying alligator. Because if I weren't annoying, I wouldn't be doing my job.

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mimi's picture

@Alligator Ed
your beloved prey, I am ok with you being lovable and annoyable. No offense meant. Bye

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