Studies like this and I'm sure the many to come make me really wish we had better contact tracing from the get go and hopefully in years to come there can be some better implementations
Since smoking is allowed in most casinos, they have extremely powerful ventilation and air filtration systems, so that their non-smoking customers aren't excessively bothered. If you've been in a Vegas casino and seen someone smoking, you notice that the smoke almost instantly gets sucked into the ceiling. This may dramatically reduce transmission in casinos or other venues that allow smoking.
This was often cited as a reason why everyone on a flight won't catch it, just those in nearby rows.
Vegas also doesn't have a subway system, which was cited as why it spread so rapidly in NY.
Then again, they can't even give health care workers PPEs.
I believe micro-droplets being evaporated by the notorious South Asian heat is playing a part.
The story I heard is that Vegas hotels/casinos mix in small amount of certain gas/chemical in the circulating air that makes people not want to sleep, which makes people gamble more and spend more money.
Some crazy theories people have...
So I can see (as a non-expert) that the well ventilated casinos is the reason for low infection rate in Vegas.
NYC on the other hand has had the extremely highly infection rate because EVERYONE has to take subway and pretty sure there's not much air circulation in the subway cars...
Either way, I think not spending too much time indoors is the key to avoid covid-19. Unfortunately most all indoor space has recirculated, air-conditioned, stale air.
Edit: I personally think businesses that can leave windows open for fresh air will have lower chance of spreading Covid-19 than ones with barely functioning AC system with little air circulation.
Sure no masks and what may appear crowded is not really that, high ceilings, powerful HVAC heat exchange systems which bring air from the outside and overall low population density in the urban areas make Vegas seem actually a pretty safe place compared to say packed motels during Gra or Spring Break.
P.S. on an anecdotal note about 6-7 years ago after BH USA I’ve personally witnessed a person that was all sweaty and coughing like they are about to die being escorted by security of the floor after about 15-20min of being around the tables.
While I don’t have any sources on to confirm this policy, it really wouldn’t surprise me if casino security monitors people who seem to be ill if nothing else than to avoid the optics of having medics on the casino floor.
It's behind only New York and Miami in the US, and has more international arrivals than LA, Berlin, Moscow, or Athens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_internationa...
However, fuel your brain with these bits: if lots of transmissions happened in Vegas then they likely counted against another states numbers when those folks went home.
I guess what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas.
It's really very unlikely that any of you had covid 19 in Las Vegas in late December.
Perhaps a lot of those visitors left the area before symptoms developed.
But, if it became endemic in Vegas it would start to infect locals. The blackjack dealer and the waitress and the floor manager are still there after you come home.
My flight was delayed, so I was in the airpot for about 8 hours. I decided to walk a lot during my time at the airport (I do that when I have long flights), so I walked about 20,000 steps in total back and forth in the waiting hall.
About one week later (beginning of March), I started with symptoms and since then it has been a nightmare from which I still haven't completely recovered.
Some viruses, like flu, prefer dry air. That's actually the reason flu spreads better in winter -- because colder air is less humid.
https://news.yale.edu/2019/05/13/flu-virus-best-friend-low-h...
Also, there's a chance your stats are being thrown off by the fact that Las Vegas the city doesn't have very many world-class casinos. All the popular areas are actually in unincorporated Clark county, in an unincorporated community known as Paradise, NV. Make sure you include those.
1. Visitors who are vulnerable went home and took Covid with them. They contributed to their home city counts.
2. Vegas natives who work on the strip are protected via second hand smoke inhalation. Source: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/05/02/...
/crazy
Most people who work in customer facing roles in Vegas are already extremely paranoid and careful about hygiene. Gloves, constant cleaning of commonly touched surfaces, etc. Being a low level casino/hotel employee teaches you very quickly that humans are just sentient germ dispersal machines.
https://www.lvcva.com/stats-and-facts/visitor-statistics/faq...
I play a lot of table games, and casino chips are pretty disgusting in the best of time. I Immediately washed my hands every time I left the table.
[1] counting Kent county and all adjacent counties.
I really want to do a serological test for Covid just to see if we might have gone through it in January, when 0 cases were reported in our vicinity (Slovenia, which is next to Italy).
Same in UK, people were sick a lot of the time, October through December 2019. But that wasn't the COVID-19. It was just a bad colds and flu season.
I had the normal story of being sick in January in London with the "worst flu ever" and suspected it might have been COVID. But I recently had a lab-based IgG antibody test and it came back negative.
Everyone else in my family was also negative. Also, friends who have family members who work in the NHS with similar stories of being sick were also negative. No one I know directly has tested positive yet.
I can't speak to the overall accuracy of the test, but the one I took was the private IgG antibody offered through the company 'Qured'.
People want to believe that covid-19 has already worked its way through the entire community because they want to believe that this is almost over.
The data does not support that position.
Being sick today, still likely means you have something OTHER than covid-19
What seems to indicate that it wasn't Covid was that at the same time as all of us had that monster flu in january, the hospitals weren't filling up with people who couldn't breathe.
Maybe there is a second actor there teaming with it
It appears that by late November, the government first took a notice of the outbreak, and by early December it was already a complete freak out.
How the government knew? China has built a nationwide electronic infectious disease reporting system after the first SARS outbreak with specific intent of spotting SARS recurrence. Hospitals in China are required by law to report anything with a remote semblance of SARS into the system. China also holds nationwide drills for infectious disease specialists annually with SARS comeback in mind.
Any claim that China was caught unprepared are hard to believe.
Given that first reliably confirmed info on Beijing dispatching orders to provincial governments on handling a "disaster" also comes onto first days of December, it seems very, very likely to me that they already knew of it being SARS in December.
I also heard of what I have no ability to confirm, like the talk of huge pileups at HK border crossings in first days of December, and a spike of private jet departures.
Presumably Chinese government holds such events regularly to test preparedness as well. They could be easily confused with prescience if there is not enough transparency about such things.
The term for "Novel Coronavirus" started trending on Dec 11th
So that suggests they noticed people getting sick around the 1st and had identified the virus by the 11th.
Say case zero was on Nov 1 and it doubled every 3 days then there I guess there would be about 1000 infected by Dec 1st and maybe 5 or 10 seriously ill. (guessing it takes 12 days to get seriously ill and maybe 5% of those infected). I think epidemiologists actually estimated it started about Nov 10th.
Link to paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.24.20026682v...
Google doesn't give me any result if I search "武汉 肺炎" (Wuhan Pneumonia) prior to December 30. December 30 was definitively the first time it appeared on the news, and when it did, it quickly became the top news in about a week.
SCMP is itself source refer to a third party source. Caixin had a deleted report with about the same message. A few other apparently refer to the same blurry pics with a document saying something about SARS that were going around in Wechat groups in first week of January.
The first "something is going on" signal I remember was an article on aboluowang in the last week of December, where they cite a report of major mobilisation in provincial governments, and preparation for "medical emergency" starting first days of December.
And yet it appears manifestly to be the case, no?
I'm no fan of China, but I give credit where credit is due.
Also this is not the first hospital to do that in France, IHU Méditerannée Infection, from Raoult and Chloroquine fame did that at the beginning of the epidemic in China, they tested 2500 samples from several month ago and found absolutely nothing.
That said, I do agree that a seismological test of the patient would be more definitive, but sometimes you cannot contact the patient due to privacy concerns/ IRB rules. I don't know how French hospitals deal with patient data, but if it's anything like America, you are highly unlikely to be able to do those sort of things without additional approval.
Even with antibody testing, it would still be possible that the sample from December was a false positive, and the patient later contracted CoVID-19 and developed antibodies, but it would increase the certainty a great deal. If the person has antibodies and does not report having had an additional bout of CoVID-19-like symptoms after the initial disease, then this would be much more certain.
See also this analysis of a few articles based on the genome of the virus : https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/realitesbiomedicales/2020/04/30/...
The only reason I'm confused about stories like the one above or the few about Covid-19 in California in January is that wouldn't we see such data inevitably?
A lot of people have stories about getting the worst sickness of their life in February which I understand but am also skeptical of (with bias probably 10% of the population gets a self-described worst flu of their life every year and Bayesian thinking would suggest almost none of these were Covid). However, it seems like nursing home data would be concrete.
http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/locations...
[1] https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?branchLabel=aa&dmax=2020-...
Of 14 samples, from 124 patients in Dec/Jan, one tested positive for COV by PCR. How well can we bound our uncertainty about false positive in such circumstances?
They support the COVID-19 diagnosis by looking at the patient's lung CT scan, which "revealed bilateral ground glass opacity in inferior lobes."
A decent explanation of PCR amplification can be found here: https://www.promega.ca/resources/guides/nucleic-acid-analysi...
"Each cycle of PCR includes steps for template denaturation, primer annealing and primer extension. The initial step denatures the target DNA by heating it to 94°C or higher for 15 seconds to 2 minutes. In the denaturation process, the two intertwined strands of DNA separate from one another, producing the necessary single-stranded DNA template for replication by the thermostable DNA polymerase. In the next step of a cycle, the temperature is reduced to approximately 40–60°C. At this temperature, the oligonucleotide primers can form stable associations (anneal) with the denatured target DNA and serve as primers for the DNA polymerase. This step lasts approximately 15–60 seconds. Finally, the synthesis of new DNA begins as the reaction temperature is raised to the optimum for the DNA polymerase. For most thermostable DNA polymerases, this temperature is in the range of 70–74°C. The extension step lasts approximately 1–2 minutes. The next cycle begins with a return to 94°C for denaturation."
Can't find the exact quote I read earlier but this link says basically the same.
https://www.heart.co.uk/news/coronavirus/french-covid-case-d...
0. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=binomial+distribution+...
The problem lies with the test itself, which might have an unknown false positive rate. Although in this case we're basically looking at what I understand to be the gold standard in RNA/DNA evidence, combined with matching symptoms.
Also apparently they had 2 separate teams testing the samples using different methodology, so we've got at least a decent amount of confidence that something is going on with that sample, although it doesn't rule out systematic bias.
Then again had some light respiratory stuff in early March. I live alone, isolation was already starting in some places, and I'm fortunate enough to work somewhere that WFH is easy.
I had plenty of "I might have already had it!" type conversations.
So I got my antibody test last week at my primary care physician. Negative. Was just a bad flu, I guess.
""" [Elitza Theel's] team has found that it's mostly the sickest patients — those who've been hospitalized — who produce IgG antibodies. And it appears that a small percentage of patients with milder cases of the disease aren't making the robust IgG antibodies.
"This is very preliminary," Theel warned. "But there might be a differential immune response between very sick individuals and individuals who have a more mild course of disease." """
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/antibody-tests-ca...
Their definition of "mild" means that you didn't require hospital care. So if you're under ~30 and otherwise healthy, you may be one of the people who beat the infection by some other mechanism. Or you just had influenza. It's impossible to know for sure right now.
As someone who really hopes there will be a long-lasting immunity, I really, really hope you had a bad flu.
Coincidentally, I got sick after several of my coworkers/close friends returned from trips to China.
Then a month later, after my roommate returned from a trip to Vancouver, BC, we both became ill. This time it lasted about a week.
Next, about a month and a half later I was feeling unwell for weeks with very different symptoms. I went to urgent care. This turned out to be an episode of diabetic ketoacidosis, and I was diagnosed with adult onset type 1 diabetes.
No clue if it was COVID-19, but it was strange. And we're ground zero for it (I work in Manhattan and used to commute every day on public transit).
or another seasonal infection that is normally benign is going around.
Sars-Cov-2 debilitates linings of the lungs and other organs and the immune system and blood cell oxygen transport efficiency all at once
But if nothing takes advantage of that then nothing happens, and you heal before something does happen.
With HIV we studied it in reverse: we saw people were dying of benign illnesses and then discovered they had been infected with this other virus for a decade. This first exposure to HIV presents itself as a flu/fever until it is sufficiently surpressed by the immune system and takes a decade of iterative mutations to bypass the immune system.
With COVID19 a similar result happens within a week, but we aren't really looking at which bacteria or viruses could have been benign that may also be present.
Not that complicated, just no bandwidth to figure it out yet.
But if you follow this rabbit hole, it could easily suggest that in late fall 2019 there were just few people that had Sars-Cov-2 and they either statistically were not getting exposed to the opportunistic infections, or a seasonal benign opportunistic infection was not running in conjunction that season.
This notion has been vehemently rejected by people over the past month, but it looks like people might be a little more open to it. Maybe the right people will begin to entertain the hypothesis.
There were a spike in bacterial pneumonia cases in regional Australian hospitals in the middle of summer prior to the known outbreak. I know of 1/2 dozen people (including myself) who caught some highly contagious non-flu virus and had varying symptoms. One person developed pneumonia but tested negative for both the flu and SARS-CoV-2 at the time - which was how I heard about the spike in hospitalisations.
My pet theory is that someone infected with the milder version was co-infected with the bat originated virus in Wuhan resulting in a highly contagious version that can cause COVID-19.
Whether they worked in the lab or got it from the market is a matter of debate. I'm thinking lab as the market didn't have bats and patient zero didn't go to the market, while the lab did have bats at some point. There was a serious effort to hide the evidence which makes it all the more suspicious.
There was evidence of a human-specific immune response mutation which could indicate it was neither manufactured or required an intermediary host.
What I think we have to be careful of is that the milder version doesn't provide immunity for the more dangerous one.
A lot of people in this thread an to be clutching at the assumption it couldn't possibly have been anywhere else before it was detected. One case in France not spreading is fairly lucky if it's true.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-...
October 2019 is even earlier than the earliest known cases.
"taken from a 42 years old. ... One of his child presented with ILI prior to the onset of his symptoms. His medical history consisted in asthma, type II diabetes mellitus. He presented to the emergency ward on December 27 2019 with hemoptysis, cough, headache and fever, evolving for 4 days" ... "evolution was favorable until discharge on December 29,2019."
---
ILI == Influenza-like illness
Hemoptysis == coughing up of blood
0. http://virological.org/t/early-phylodynamics-analysis-of-the...
> Clearly they wanted the result as well.
Based on what? If anything, I'd say it's clear you don't want the result.
“ He presented to the emergency ward on December 27 2019 with hemoptysis, cough, headache and fever, evolving for 4 days. Initial examination was unremarkable and the performed CT scan revealed bilateral ground glass opacity in inferior lobes”
Actually many in China suspect that maybe a weak version has been around in SE Asia and China for years (remember that Malay pangolin?).
Sure? No. But taking their statement at face value, it does seem unlikely.
- Airborne
- 8+ daily flights between Paris and Algiers on one company (8 others)
- It's a matter of days if it's not already in Algiers.
Went back to Algiers. I canceled meetings in Paris for February. Algeria had its first confirmed case on 25 February 2020 - an Italian national coming back from Italy, and no airport measures whatsoever at the time -.
We established work from home for some teammates - who take public transportation - a few days later while we learn more about this as the risk/reward of not doing it was high and we transitioned to exclusively remote for everyone when it hit 17 confirmed cases in the country 4 March.
Is there a another opinion on this? It's where the virus originated (Lab created or from eating a bat or even US military doing it - whatever you are opting to believe) in November 2019 and it took them until late Jan 2020 to say that there's human to human transmission despite their own doctors warning and telling the world earlier than that (and they were silenced)
I looked at putative drug-related adverse event case reports submitted to the US FDA. Interestingly, there are 61 case reports that mention drugs used to treat "corona virus infection." 52 of those cases were filed in 2020.
Oddly, 6 cases involved drugs used to treat "corona virus infection" in 2019 (all submitted in the US). My speculation was that those 6 cases were unrelated to SARS-CoV-2, but you never know.
Here is the most relevant chart: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hrhtVnswxPI/Xq_7-HsE97I/AAAAAAABv...
Dec 2017 - 700k cases - http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/29/c_136933793.htm
Dec 2018 - 712k cases - http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/27/c_137778435.htm
Dec 2019 - 1.71m cases - http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/01/c_138748020.htm
Dec 2017 - 93% of class C cases were infectious diarrhea, influenza, foot and mouth disease.
Dec 2018 - 93% of class C cases were infectious diarrhea, influenza, foot and mouth disease.
Dec 2019 - 98% of class C cases were infectious diarrhea, influenza, foot and mouth disease.
Dec 2017 - 10 deaths were class C
Dec 2018 - 16 deaths were class C
Dec 2019 - 18 deaths were class C
We know that most countries have made this mistake, even if their intentions are good.
We know that every authoritarian nation has intentionally misrepresented Covid cases in extreme ways. Russia for example was aggressively lying about their cases, claiming hospitalizations were pneumonia early on and not Covid. Eventually Russia was unable to maintain the lies, which is what happened in China's case as well (the lie gets overwhelmed).
Back in early January The Wall Street Journal caught China lying about Covid deaths, they were putting pneumonia on the death certificates when they knew it was Covid.
First that's where CDG airport is. This is the second largest airport in Europe by passenger traffic and the main gateway into Paris for tourists (not least Chinese tourists).
Second, that's where Paris' Gare du Nord is. This is the largest train station in Europe by traffic, where trains from CDG airport arrive, and the start of high speed trains to London, Brussels, Amsterdam.
So to me it's not surprising that this virus arrived there early.
But it also means that the area should be monitored closely, not only by French authorities, but by British ones, etc. as well because any highly contagious disease that shows up there will be around Europe in no time.
With a doubling time of 3 days and a morality rate of 1% a single person had it December 31st it would have infected a million people by around the end of February, killed approximately 10,000 and 150,000 would have been hospitalized by it.
I've seen a lot of articles about how it may have been spreading earlier but none seem to account for the exponential growth.
https://mobile.twitter.com/UNMC_DrKhan/status/12574400820191...
Unless, the antibody test gave a false positive, and he did not get the virus. Then, how the hell did an American politician get the virus, before China even noticed it on their radar, and reported it to the W.H.O. in December 2019?
This timeline also seems to coincide with CDC warnings of strange flu and pneumonia patterns late last year, with people having more difficult symptoms than normal.
If you recall getting very sick late last year in 2019, then you should consider taking a coronavirus antibody test, to confirm whether you got the virus or not.
[1] https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/04/nj-mayor-thinks-he-ha...
There could very well be a less infectious, less severe strain circulating out there.
Maybe I was patient 0 for both california and new york :|
I think the bigger question is, let's say it did arrive much earlier that we think, does that mean the virus grows at a much smaller rate than current models?
CDC estimates the basic reproduction number to be 6, German Robert-Koch-Institut IIRC around 3. Maybe the presence of earlier, undetected cases have lead to an overestimation of R0.
This absolutely makes sense to me and would explain a lot of weirdness in the statistics. Less infectious, with a longer incubation period and circulating among the population for longer.
Oh and also from KC.