COVID 19 GLOBAL

[roobob]

1 hour ago, Nightcrawler said:

Just a minor point. Heart conditions are rarely contagious. They develop naturally and often either genetic or has a result of lifestyle.  You cannot catch heart disease at a football match but you can catch the corona virus by doing so at the present time. 

It appears to me that there are 2 schools of thought 

1. Is to do nothing and carry on as normal and let nature do its work and allowing the natural spread of the virus and if some die then tough luck as its a natural culling process of the weak and vulnerable. The fittest survive. 

2. Use the science and technology that we have invested so much in over the last 70 years to treat and prevent as many people who are sick and to prevent as many premature deaths possible. To reduce and prevent the same results as the Spanish Flu in 1917 which wiped out a third of the world's population by isolation measures and sanitation. 

But there is a third factor creeping in which is the usual "blame culture" and "conspiracy theories" who got it right and who got it wrong? 

Doesn't help at all only serves for people trying to justify their opinions but the truth is that None of Us can say with any exact confidence whether we are right or wrong because we are still in the middle of this world crisis and none of know the consequences. We still do not know whether there will be fresh outbreaks and how many as a result of easing current lock downs. Sure people can predict what they want or what they think everyone else wants but it makes little difference. 

We got through WW2 and people suffered hardship, heartbreak injury and death (and that was just the civilian population). 

People gave things up and made sacrifices for 6 long years and the years that followed 

Why is so much to expect that people cannot do that for 6 months in today's society.?

Understand what you say about heart disease ...yes maybe not contagious but it is hereditary.

My point is that the world has come to a standstill for Covid 19 but we have had other pandemics.... other diseases that claim way more lives than the current one.... they have been mentioned.... but we have never had a reaction like this one. If there is a Covid 20 you can bet your bottom dollar that the reaction will be worse.... we will end up going back to the stone age.... living in isolation is caves.....555.

You mention the war.... yes there were hardships, heartbreaks, injuries and death..... but the restrictions being put on the population now is far more worse than when that occurred. In war years you could go to a restaurant...a bar... dancing...a pub...cinema..etc..etc.

Also that is another line that the authorities seem to spin...we are at war.... garbage ...we are not at war.....we fronted with a disease that starts off with the same systems as the flu and is spread the same way. The big worry here.... will all the restrictions that have been put in place now..... will all of them be rescinded.... I reckon that will be a ...No.

Yes be vigilant....as said other diseases have had more impact than covid 19 but the world did not over react and shut done. Actually I reckon that some scientist are treating this as like the "new" climate change.... a whole industry was created by them for that and now they have latched onto Covid 19 to start another one.

With all these so called experts in the scientific and medical fields... it makes you wonder why they have not made any type of break through as yet.... if I was a cynical bloke...I would reckon they want to drag it out for their own financial gains..... but hey...that is only my opinion.

cheers  

Edited May 11, 2020 by roobob

[fatbhoytim]

46 minutes ago, Nightcrawler said:

We got through WW2 and people suffered hardship, heartbreak injury and death (and that was just the civilian population). 

People gave things up and made sacrifices for 6 long years and the years that followed 

Why is so much to expect that people cannot do that for 6 months in today's society.?

1 -- This is not a wartime situation.

2-- People did not "give things up"- there was no availability and had to make do with what there was. We are being denied by a government and prime minister who doesn't know if he wants to shite or wind his watch.

3--Why should we ?? We are getting conflicting opinions on medical advice between England and the rest of the UK. Who is right -who is wrong ?? What do you believe ?

It is time to be grown up about this and allow people to do what their own conscience dictates. If you feel you have to stay at home and protect yourself, or go out wearing a facemask and gloves then that should be your decision to make. As Boris said last night, stay alert. (whatever the f**k that means in this situation) 

It should be said that I understand the situation, but am less than happy with the "evidence" coming from all sides. If I can get out for a pint and people want to stand 6 feet from me while wearing a hazmat suit, that is their perogative -- but I want the same freedom to go for that pint.

[farangme]

51 minutes ago, roobob said:

Understand what you say about heart disease ...yes maybe not contagious but it is hereditary.

My point is that the world has come to a standstill for Covid 19 but we have had other pandemics.... other diseases that claim way more lives than the current one.... they have been mentioned.... but we have never had a reaction like this one. If there is a Covid 20 you can bet your bottom dollar that the reaction will be worse.... we will end up going back to the stone age.... living in isolation is caves.....555.

You mention the war.... yes there were hardships, heartbreaks, injuries and death..... but the restrictions being put on the population now is far more worse than when that occurred. In war years you could go to a restaurant...a bar... dancing...a pub...cinema..etc..etc.

Also that is another line that the authorities seem to spin...we are at war.... garbage ...we are not at war.....we fronted with a disease that starts off with the same systems as the flu and is spread the same way. The big worry here.... will all the restrictions that have been put in place now..... will all of them be rescinded.... I reckon that will be a ...No.

Yes be vigilant....as said other diseases have had more impact than covid 19 but the world did not over react and shut done. Actually I reckon that some scientist are treating this as like the "new" climate change.... a whole industry was created by them for that and now they have latched onto Covid 19 to start another one.

With all these so called experts in the scientific and medical fields... it makes you wonder why they have not made any type of break through as yet.... if I was a cynical bloke...I would reckon they want to drag it out for their own financial gains..... but hey...that is only my opinion.

cheers  

I think you are correct, not cynical.

The only War we are at is the War of truth, we are being fed a daily dose of terror and lies.

[Bazle]

[Nightcrawler]

7 minutes ago, farangme said:

I think you are correct, not cynical.

The only War we are at is the War of truth, we are being fed a daily dose of terror and lies.

But what is the truth? 

Your truth? 

World government truth? 

Conspiracy theoretical truth? 

Scientific truth? 

Where is your evidence deciding which are lies and which is truth? 

Well as we all know in life, it is about who we chose to believe and who not

I think that I would be safe in saying that

you are not a scientist 

You are not an economist

You are not billionaire 

You are not a politician

You are not an expert in diseases 

What you know is from what you read like the rest of us and what you chose to believe based upon your mindset

So what I would ask, is why I should believe what you have said? 

What is the qualification for saying that we are being fed a daily dose of terror and lies? 

I would suggest that it IS pure cynicism.  Nothing wrong with that by the way and not criticising you personally but like most Conspiracy theories., they are quickly debunked(to coin a phrase from my old mate, Mangosteen) 😊😊

 

 

 

 

[code_slayer_bkk]

3 minutes ago, Nightcrawler said:

But what is the truth? 

Your truth? 

World government truth? 

Conspiracy theoretical truth? 

Scientific truth? 

Where is your evidence deciding which are lies and which is truth? 

Well as we all know in life, it is about who we chose to believe and who not

I think that I would be safe in saying that

you are not a scientist 

You are not an economist

You are not billionaire 

You are not a politician

You are not an expert in diseases 

What you know is from what you read like the rest of us and what you chose to believe based upon your mindset

So what I would ask, is why I should believe what you have said? 

What is the qualification for saying that we are being fed a daily dose of terror and lies? 

I would suggest that it IS pure cynicism.  Nothing wrong with that by the way and not criticising you personally but like most Conspiracy theories., they are quickly debunked(to coin a phrase from my old mate, Mangosteen) 😊😊

 

 

 

 

The only truth a person has is their own .... that is a pretty east answer ...

You believe in what you believe considering all of the input you want to consider or believe

No ... I am not a billionaire, economist ( even though my undergraduate was in Economics from NYU), a politician, etc.  ... I am only me and I believe what I believe ...

 

[Nightcrawler]

Just now, code_slayer_bkk said:

The only truth a person has is their own .... that is a pretty east answer ...

You believe in what you believe considering all of the input you want to consider or believe

No ... I am not a billionaire, economist ( even though my undergraduate was in Economics from NYU), a politician, etc.  ... I am only me and I believe what I believe ...

 

Absolutely

[farangme]

1 minute ago, code_slayer_bkk said:

The only truth a person has is their own .... that is a pretty east answer ...

You believe in what you believe considering all of the input you want to consider or believe

No ... I am not a billionaire, economist ( even though my undergraduate was in Economics from NYU), a politician, etc.  ... I am only me and I believe what I believe ...

 

Yup, my answer too. I evaluate, I look around me I speak to people with different opinions. I totally disregard the MSM because of their lies and scare tactics.

I can see what's happening, the false inflated counts the tag everything as a Covid death. No need to be a conspiracy nut to look at all this with a furled brow.

[Nightcrawler]

12 minutes ago, farangme said:

Yup, my answer too. I evaluate, I look around me I speak to people with different opinions. I totally disregard the MSM because of their lies and scare tactics.

I can see what's happening, the false inflated counts the tag everything as a Covid death. No need to be a conspiracy nut to look at all this with a furled brow.

The truth is what you chose to believe. But that is our own truth. Like yourself I have friend and colleagues that I talk to. We discuss things but it's always opinions rather than fact. 

Where do you get your factual inside information from regarding covid deaths and I don't mean by talking to a nurse in Scotland. I mean the facts globally. The UK is amongst many countries that have reported thousands of deaths. The USA has about 80000 C19 deaths. Is that also a lie??? 

To date there has been approx 283000 covid19 related deaths reported World wide. How many do you think have died? And what is your source? 

[roobob]

3 minutes ago, Nightcrawler said:

The truth is what you chose to believe. But that is our own truth. Like yourself I have friend and colleagues that I talk to. We discuss things but it's always opinions rather than fact. 

Where do you get your factual inside information from regarding covid deaths and I don't mean by talking to a nurse in Scotland. I mean the facts globally. The UK is amongst many countries that have reported thousands of deaths. The USA has about 80000 C19 deaths. Is that also a lie??? 

Well the question could also be asked....is it the truth?? 

Is there an actually link from authorities where they lay out how they can say without a shadow of doubt that all the deaths that have occurred is actually and positively due to the Covid 19 virus and not nothing else??

I know what is fact.... we are not at war.

Yes we get our views/opinions from what information is given to us.....and going by what the authorities have dished up over the time...... I for one would take more notice of a nurse who is actually physically on the job where all this is occurring..be it she is from Scotland....Australia...NZ...US...etc..... than anything a politician gives up.

cheers

[Nightcrawler]

10 minutes ago, roobob said:

Well the question could also be asked....is it the truth?? 

Is there an actually link from authorities where they lay out how they can say without a shadow of doubt that all the deaths that have occurred is actually and positively due to the Covid 19 virus and not nothing else??

I know what is fact.... we are not at war.

Yes we get our views/opinions from what information is given to us.....and going by what the authorities have dished up over the time...... I for one would take more notice of a nurse who is actually physically on the job where all this is occurring..be it she is from Scotland....Australia...NZ...US...etc..... than anything a politician gives up.

cheers

We are not at war in the conventional sense but we are fighting a Virus. We can't see it, we can only fight to stop it. 

Ever heard the expression "war on drugs"? But not a conventional war 

In a sense C19 is more like an Invasion

[Nightcrawler]

I think the One thing that everyone unanimously agrees with it that we all want this to be over soon. 

When that will happen is anyone's guess

I don't want to be indoors either. I have just got over cancer and the brutal treatment of radiotherapy.  I was just about to book a month in Pattaya then boom comes C19. Its a pig of a situation but I don't blame anyone for it

[Evil Penevil]

Another long article, but one of the best I've seen so far in explaining the dangers of COVID-19.  Some other links:

Coronavirus destroys lungs. But doctors are finding its damage in kidneys, hearts and elsewhere.

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying of strokes

Children are falling ill with perplexing inflammatory syndrome thought to be linked to covid-19

A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients

Frostbite’ toes and other peculiar rashes may be signs of hidden coronavirus infection, especially in the young

Evil

Doctors keep discovering new ways 
the coronavirus attacks the body 

Lenny Bernstein, Ariana Eunjung Cha 15 hrs ago 

Deborah Coughlin was neither short of breath nor coughing. In those first days after she became infected by the novel coronavirus, her fever never spiked above 100 degrees. It was vomiting and diarrhea that brought her to a Hartford, Conn., emergency room on May 1. 
 
“You would have thought it was a stomach virus,” said her daughter, Catherina Coleman. “She was talking and walking and completely coherent.” 

But even as Coughlin, 67, chatted with her daughters on her cellphone, the oxygen level in her blood dropped so low that most patients would be near death. She is on a ventilator and in critical condition at St. Francis Hospital, one more patient with a strange constellation of symptoms that physicians are racing to recognize, explain and treat. 

“At the beginning, we didn’t know what we were dealing with,” said Valentin Fuster, physician-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. “We were seeing patients dying in front of us. It was all of a sudden, you’re in a different ballgame, and you don’t know why.” 

Today, there is widespread recognition the novel coronavirus is far more unpredictable than a simple respiratory virus. Often it attacks the lungs, but it can also strike anywhere from the brain to the toes. Many doctors are focused on treating the inflammatory reactions it triggers and its capacity to cause blood clots, even as they struggle to help patients breathe.
 
Learning about a new disease on the fly, with more than 78,000 U.S. deaths attributed to the pandemic, they have little solid research to guide them. The World Health Organization’s database already lists more than 14,600 papers on covid-19. Even the world’s premier public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have constantly altered their advice to keep pace with new developments. 

“We don’t know why there are so many disease presentations,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Bottom line, this is just so new that there’s a lot we don’t know.” 

More than four months of clinical experience across Asia, Europe and North America has shown the pathogen does much more than invade the lungs. “No one was expecting a disease that would not fit the pattern of pneumonia and respiratory illness,” said David Reich, a cardiac anesthesiologist and president of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
 
It attacks the heart, weakening its muscles and disrupting its critical rhythm. It savages kidneys so badly some hospitals have run short of dialysis equipment. It crawls along the nervous system, destroying taste and smell and occasionally reaching the brain. It creates blood clots that can kill with sudden efficiency and inflames blood vessels throughout the body.
 
It can begin with a few symptoms or none at all, then days later, squeeze the air out of the lungs without warning. It picks on the elderly, people weakened by previous disease, and, disproportionately, the obese. It harms men more than women, but there are also signs it complicates pregnancies. 

Symptoms of covid-19 appear to include: 
Brain: Strokes from blood clots, neurological issues 
Eyes: Pinkeye 
Nose: Loss of smell and taste (anosmia) 
Blood: Unexpected blood clotting; attacks the lining of blood vessels 
Gastro­intestinal system: Vomiting and diarrhea in some people 
Lungs: Clogs and inflames alveoli (air sacs), hampering breathing; pulmonary embolism from breakaway blood clots and microclots 
Heart: Weakens heart muscle; causes dangerous arrhythmias and heart attacks due to small clots 
Kidneys: Damage to structures that filter waste from blood; patients often require dialysis 
Skin: “Covid toes,” or fingers, a purple rash from the attack on blood vessels 
Immune system: Widespread impact, including overactive immune response that attacks healthy tissue 

It mostly spares the young. Until it doesn’t: Last week, doctors warned of a rare inflammatory reaction with cardiac complications among children that may be connected to the virus. On Friday, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced 73 children had fallen severely ill in the state and a 5-year-old boy in New York City had become the first child to die of the syndrome. Two more children had succumbed as of Saturday.
 
That news has shaken many doctors, who felt they were finally grasping the full dimensions of the disease in adults. “We were all thinking this is a disease that kills old people, not kids,” Reich said. 

Mount Sinai has treated five children with the condition. Reich said each started with gastrointestinal symptoms, which turned into inflammatory complications that caused very low blood pressure and expanded their blood vessels. This led to heart failure in the case of the first child who died. 

“The pattern of disease was different than anything else with covid,” he said. 

Of the millions, perhaps billions, of coronaviruses, six were previously known to infect humans. Four cause colds that spread easily each winter, barely noticed. Another was responsible for the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome that killed 774 people in 2003. Yet another sparked the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012, which kills 34 percent of the people who contract it. But few do. 

SARS-CoV-2, the bad seed of the coronavirus family, is the seventh. It has managed to combine the infectiousness of its cold-causing cousins with some of the lethality of SARS and MERS. It can spread before people show symptoms of disease, making it difficult to control, especially without widespread and accurate testing. At the moment, social distancing is the only effective countermeasure. 

It has infected 4 million people around the globe, killing more than 280,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. In the United States, 1.3 million have been infected and more than 78,000 have died.  Had SARS or MERS spread as widely as this virus, Rasmussen said, they might have shown the same capacity to attack beyond the lungs. But they were snuffed out quickly, leaving only a small sample of disease and death.
 
Trying to define a pathogen in the midst of an ever-spreading epidemic is fraught with difficulties. Experts say it will be years until it is understood how the disease damages organs and how medications, genetics, diets, lifestyles and distancing impact its course.
 
“This is a virus that literally did not exist in humans six months ago,” said Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who works in cardiovascular medicine. “We had to rapidly learn how this virus impacts the human body and identify ways to treat it literally in a time-scale of weeks. With many other diseases, we have had decades.”
 
In the initial days of the outbreak, most efforts focused on the lungs. SARS-CoV-2 infects both the upper and lower respiratory tracts, eventually working its way deep into the lungs, filling tiny air sacs with cells and fluid that choke off the flow of oxygen.
 
But many scientists have come to believe that much of the disease’s devastation comes from two intertwined causes.  The first is the harm the virus wreaks on blood vessels, leading to clots that can range from microscopic to sizable. Patients have suffered strokes and pulmonary emboli as clots break loose and travel to the brain and lungs. A study in the Lancet, a British medical journal, showed this may be because the virus directly targets the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.
 
The second is an exaggerated response from the body’s own immune system, a storm of killer “cytokines” that attack the body’s own cells along with the virus as it seeks to defend the body from an invader. 

Research and therapies are focused on these phenomena. Blood thinners are being more widely used in some hospitals. A review of records for 2,733 patients, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicates they may help the most seriously ill. 

“Things change in science all the time. Theories are made and thrown out. Hypotheses are tweaked. It doesn’t mean we don’t know what we are doing. It means we are learning,” said Deepak Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
 
Inflammation of those endothelial cells lining blood vessels may help explain why the virus harms so many parts of the body, said Mandeep Mehra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the Lancet study on how covid-19 attacks blood vessels. That means defeating covid-19 will require more than antiviral therapy, he said. 

“What this virus does is it starts as a viral infection and becomes a more global disturbance to the immune system and blood vessels — and what kills is exactly that,” Mehra said. “Our hypothesis is that covid-19 begins as a respiratory virus and kills as a cardiovascular virus.” 

The thinking of kidney specialists has evolved along similar lines. Initially, they attributed widespread and severe kidney disease to the damage caused by ventilators and certain medications given to intensive-care patients, said Daniel Batlle, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
 
Then they noticed damage to the waste-filtering kidney cells of patients even before they needed intensive care. And studies out of Wuhan found the pathogen in the kidneys themselves, leading to speculation the virus is harming the organ.  “There was nothing unique at first,” Batlle said. But the new information “shows this is beyond the regular bread-and-butter acute kidney injury that we normally see.”
 

Like other coronaviruses, SARS-Cov-2 infiltrates the body by attaching to a receptor, ACE2, found on some cells. But the makeup of the spikes that protrude from this virus is somewhat different, allowing the virus to bind more tightly. As a result, fewer virus particles are required to infect the host. This also may help explain why this virus is so much more infectious than SARS, Rasmussen said.
 
Other factors can’t be ruled out in transmission, she said, including the amount of virus people shed and how strictly they observe social distancing rules.
 
Once inside a cell, the virus replicates, causing chaos. ACE2 receptors, which help regulate blood pressure, are plentiful in the lungs, kidneys and intestines — organs hit hard by the pathogen in many patients. That also may be why high blood pressure has emerged as one of the most common preexisting conditions in people who become severely ill with covid-19. 
  
The receptors differ from person to person, leading to speculation that genetics may explain some of the variability in symptoms and how sick some people become.
 
Those cells “are almost everywhere, so it makes sense that the virus would cause damage throughout the body,” said Mitchell Elkind, a professor of neurology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and president-elect of the American Heart Association.
 
Inflammation spurs clotting as white blood cells fight off infection. They interact with platelets and activate them in a way that increases the likelihood of clotting, Elkind said.
 
Such reactions have been seen in severe infections, such as sepsis. But for covid-19, he said, “we are seeing this in a large number of people in a very short time, so it really stands out.” 

“The virus can attack a lot of different parts of the body, and we don’t understand why it causes some problems for some people, different problems for others — and no problems at all for a large proportion,” Elkind said.
 
Coughlin, in critical condition at a hospital in Connecticut, deteriorated quickly after she reached the emergency room. Her fever shot up to 105 and pneumonia developed in her lungs. 

On Wednesday, she called her six daughters on FaceTime, telling them doctors advised she go on a ventilator. 
“If something happens to me, and I don’t make it, I’m at peace with it,” she told them.
 
The conversation broke daughter Coleman’s heart.
 
“I am deciding to help her go on a ventilator, and she may never come off,” she said. “That could have been my last phone conversation with her.”  

 

[Nightcrawler]

4 minutes ago, Evil Penevil said:

Another long article, but one of the best I've seen so far in explaining the dangers of COVID-19.  Some other links:

Coronavirus destroys lungs. But doctors are finding its damage in kidneys, hearts and elsewhere.

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying of strokes

Children are falling ill with perplexing inflammatory syndrome thought to be linked to covid-19

A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients

Frostbite’ toes and other peculiar rashes may be signs of hidden coronavirus infection, especially in the young

Evil

Doctors keep discovering new ways 
the coronavirus attacks the body 

Lenny Bernstein, Ariana Eunjung Cha 15 hrs ago 

Deborah Coughlin was neither short of breath nor coughing. In those first days after she became infected by the novel coronavirus, her fever never spiked above 100 degrees. It was vomiting and diarrhea that brought her to a Hartford, Conn., emergency room on May 1. 
 
“You would have thought it was a stomach virus,” said her daughter, Catherina Coleman. “She was talking and walking and completely coherent.” 

But even as Coughlin, 67, chatted with her daughters on her cellphone, the oxygen level in her blood dropped so low that most patients would be near death. She is on a ventilator and in critical condition at St. Francis Hospital, one more patient with a strange constellation of symptoms that physicians are racing to recognize, explain and treat. 

“At the beginning, we didn’t know what we were dealing with,” said Valentin Fuster, physician-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. “We were seeing patients dying in front of us. It was all of a sudden, you’re in a different ballgame, and you don’t know why.” 

Today, there is widespread recognition the novel coronavirus is far more unpredictable than a simple respiratory virus. Often it attacks the lungs, but it can also strike anywhere from the brain to the toes. Many doctors are focused on treating the inflammatory reactions it triggers and its capacity to cause blood clots, even as they struggle to help patients breathe.
 
Learning about a new disease on the fly, with more than 78,000 U.S. deaths attributed to the pandemic, they have little solid research to guide them. The World Health Organization’s database already lists more than 14,600 papers on covid-19. Even the world’s premier public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have constantly altered their advice to keep pace with new developments. 

“We don’t know why there are so many disease presentations,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Bottom line, this is just so new that there’s a lot we don’t know.” 

More than four months of clinical experience across Asia, Europe and North America has shown the pathogen does much more than invade the lungs. “No one was expecting a disease that would not fit the pattern of pneumonia and respiratory illness,” said David Reich, a cardiac anesthesiologist and president of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
 
It attacks the heart, weakening its muscles and disrupting its critical rhythm. It savages kidneys so badly some hospitals have run short of dialysis equipment. It crawls along the nervous system, destroying taste and smell and occasionally reaching the brain. It creates blood clots that can kill with sudden efficiency and inflames blood vessels throughout the body.
 
It can begin with a few symptoms or none at all, then days later, squeeze the air out of the lungs without warning. It picks on the elderly, people weakened by previous disease, and, disproportionately, the obese. It harms men more than women, but there are also signs it complicates pregnancies. 

Symptoms of covid-19 appear to include: 
Brain: Strokes from blood clots, neurological issues 
Eyes: Pinkeye 
Nose: Loss of smell and taste (anosmia) 
Blood: Unexpected blood clotting; attacks the lining of blood vessels 
Gastro­intestinal system: Vomiting and diarrhea in some people 
Lungs: Clogs and inflames alveoli (air sacs), hampering breathing; pulmonary embolism from breakaway blood clots and microclots 
Heart: Weakens heart muscle; causes dangerous arrhythmias and heart attacks due to small clots 
Kidneys: Damage to structures that filter waste from blood; patients often require dialysis 
Skin: “Covid toes,” or fingers, a purple rash from the attack on blood vessels 
Immune system: Widespread impact, including overactive immune response that attacks healthy tissue 

It mostly spares the young. Until it doesn’t: Last week, doctors warned of a rare inflammatory reaction with cardiac complications among children that may be connected to the virus. On Friday, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced 73 children had fallen severely ill in the state and a 5-year-old boy in New York City had become the first child to die of the syndrome. Two more children had succumbed as of Saturday.
 
That news has shaken many doctors, who felt they were finally grasping the full dimensions of the disease in adults. “We were all thinking this is a disease that kills old people, not kids,” Reich said. 

Mount Sinai has treated five children with the condition. Reich said each started with gastrointestinal symptoms, which turned into inflammatory complications that caused very low blood pressure and expanded their blood vessels. This led to heart failure in the case of the first child who died. 

“The pattern of disease was different than anything else with covid,” he said. 

Of the millions, perhaps billions, of coronaviruses, six were previously known to infect humans. Four cause colds that spread easily each winter, barely noticed. Another was responsible for the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome that killed 774 people in 2003. Yet another sparked the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012, which kills 34 percent of the people who contract it. But few do. 

SARS-CoV-2, the bad seed of the coronavirus family, is the seventh. It has managed to combine the infectiousness of its cold-causing cousins with some of the lethality of SARS and MERS. It can spread before people show symptoms of disease, making it difficult to control, especially without widespread and accurate testing. At the moment, social distancing is the only effective countermeasure. 

It has infected 4 million people around the globe, killing more than 280,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. In the United States, 1.3 million have been infected and more than 78,000 have died.  Had SARS or MERS spread as widely as this virus, Rasmussen said, they might have shown the same capacity to attack beyond the lungs. But they were snuffed out quickly, leaving only a small sample of disease and death.
 
Trying to define a pathogen in the midst of an ever-spreading epidemic is fraught with difficulties. Experts say it will be years until it is understood how the disease damages organs and how medications, genetics, diets, lifestyles and distancing impact its course.
 
“This is a virus that literally did not exist in humans six months ago,” said Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who works in cardiovascular medicine. “We had to rapidly learn how this virus impacts the human body and identify ways to treat it literally in a time-scale of weeks. With many other diseases, we have had decades.”
 
In the initial days of the outbreak, most efforts focused on the lungs. SARS-CoV-2 infects both the upper and lower respiratory tracts, eventually working its way deep into the lungs, filling tiny air sacs with cells and fluid that choke off the flow of oxygen.
 
But many scientists have come to believe that much of the disease’s devastation comes from two intertwined causes.  The first is the harm the virus wreaks on blood vessels, leading to clots that can range from microscopic to sizable. Patients have suffered strokes and pulmonary emboli as clots break loose and travel to the brain and lungs. A study in the Lancet, a British medical journal, showed this may be because the virus directly targets the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.
 
The second is an exaggerated response from the body’s own immune system, a storm of killer “cytokines” that attack the body’s own cells along with the virus as it seeks to defend the body from an invader. 

Research and therapies are focused on these phenomena. Blood thinners are being more widely used in some hospitals. A review of records for 2,733 patients, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicates they may help the most seriously ill. 

“Things change in science all the time. Theories are made and thrown out. Hypotheses are tweaked. It doesn’t mean we don’t know what we are doing. It means we are learning,” said Deepak Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
 
Inflammation of those endothelial cells lining blood vessels may help explain why the virus harms so many parts of the body, said Mandeep Mehra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the Lancet study on how covid-19 attacks blood vessels. That means defeating covid-19 will require more than antiviral therapy, he said. 

“What this virus does is it starts as a viral infection and becomes a more global disturbance to the immune system and blood vessels — and what kills is exactly that,” Mehra said. “Our hypothesis is that covid-19 begins as a respiratory virus and kills as a cardiovascular virus.” 

The thinking of kidney specialists has evolved along similar lines. Initially, they attributed widespread and severe kidney disease to the damage caused by ventilators and certain medications given to intensive-care patients, said Daniel Batlle, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
 
Then they noticed damage to the waste-filtering kidney cells of patients even before they needed intensive care. And studies out of Wuhan found the pathogen in the kidneys themselves, leading to speculation the virus is harming the organ.  “There was nothing unique at first,” Batlle said. But the new information “shows this is beyond the regular bread-and-butter acute kidney injury that we normally see.”
 

Like other coronaviruses, SARS-Cov-2 infiltrates the body by attaching to a receptor, ACE2, found on some cells. But the makeup of the spikes that protrude from this virus is somewhat different, allowing the virus to bind more tightly. As a result, fewer virus particles are required to infect the host. This also may help explain why this virus is so much more infectious than SARS, Rasmussen said.
 
Other factors can’t be ruled out in transmission, she said, including the amount of virus people shed and how strictly they observe social distancing rules.
 
Once inside a cell, the virus replicates, causing chaos. ACE2 receptors, which help regulate blood pressure, are plentiful in the lungs, kidneys and intestines — organs hit hard by the pathogen in many patients. That also may be why high blood pressure has emerged as one of the most common preexisting conditions in people who become severely ill with covid-19. 
  
The receptors differ from person to person, leading to speculation that genetics may explain some of the variability in symptoms and how sick some people become.
 
Those cells “are almost everywhere, so it makes sense that the virus would cause damage throughout the body,” said Mitchell Elkind, a professor of neurology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and president-elect of the American Heart Association.
 
Inflammation spurs clotting as white blood cells fight off infection. They interact with platelets and activate them in a way that increases the likelihood of clotting, Elkind said.
 
Such reactions have been seen in severe infections, such as sepsis. But for covid-19, he said, “we are seeing this in a large number of people in a very short time, so it really stands out.” 

“The virus can attack a lot of different parts of the body, and we don’t understand why it causes some problems for some people, different problems for others — and no problems at all for a large proportion,” Elkind said.
 
Coughlin, in critical condition at a hospital in Connecticut, deteriorated quickly after she reached the emergency room. Her fever shot up to 105 and pneumonia developed in her lungs. 

On Wednesday, she called her six daughters on FaceTime, telling them doctors advised she go on a ventilator. 
“If something happens to me, and I don’t make it, I’m at peace with it,” she told them.
 
The conversation broke daughter Coleman’s heart.
 
“I am deciding to help her go on a ventilator, and she may never come off,” she said. “That could have been my last phone conversation with her.”  

 

F**k me, a lot to read but very interesting indeed. Thanks for posting

[roobob]

4 minutes ago, Nightcrawler said:

We are not at war in the conventional sense but we are fighting a Virus. We can't see it, we can only fight to stop it. 

Ever heard the expression "war on drugs"? But not a conventional war 

In a sense C19 is more like an Invasion

We have been fighting different types of virus for years..... some worse than this one ...but we have never had the restrictions put in place like now virtually bringing the world to a standstill with the authorities dragging out the comment to justify the restrictions by saying...we are at war.

The tripe that has come out of the mouths by WHO and varies Govts beggars belief.... and that is why I will go with the information of an on the job nurse than what is being dished up to us at the moment.

Bottom line.....Govts and WHO have been treating citizens like ignorant morons and people have had enough....all they want to know is the relevant information and the reason behind the restrictions...… simple... but it is not happening.

Agree with you on one thing....lets hope it is all over soon.

cheers 

 

[Esco]

9 hours ago, Smiler said:

No cheap shots, it's not an easy job, he has difficult decisions to make and he is doing his best.

Kind of things you say about 9 year kids when they're playing football, not in relation to world leaders and heads of state.

Yeah fill your boots Esco, even that leftie, tree hugging, knit your own yoghurt, communist rag the Daily Mail is apparently having a pop today.

How much of this would you consider a cheap shot? 

"December 31st China alerts WHO to new virus.

January 23rd Study reveals a third of China’s patients require intensive care.

January 24th Boris Johnson misses first Cobra meeting.

January 29th Boris Johnson misses second Cobra meeting.

January 31st The NHS declares first ever ‘Level 4 critical incident’ Meanwhile, the government declines to join European scheme to source PPE.

February 5th Boris Johnson misses third Cobra meeting.

February 12th Boris Johnson misses fourth Cobra meeting. Exeter University published study warning Coronavirus could infect 45 million people in the UK if left unchallenged.

February 13th Boris Johnson misses conference call with European leaders.

February 14th Boris Johnson goes away on holiday. Aides are told keeps Johnson’s briefing notes short or he will not read them.

February 18th Johnson misses fifth cobra meeting.

February 26th Boris Johnson announces ‘Herd Immunity’ strategy, announcing some people will lose loved ones. Government document is leaked, predicting half a million Brits could die in ‘worse case scenario’

February 29th Boris Johnson retreats to his country manor. NHS warns of ‘PPE shortage nightmare’ Stockpiles have dwindled or expired after years of austerity cuts.

March 2nd Boris Johnson attends his first Cobra meeting, declining another opportunity to join European PPE scheme. Government’s own scientists say over half a million Brit’s could die if virus left unrestrained. Johnson tells country “We are very, very well prepared.”

March 3rd Scientists urge Government to advise public not to shake hands. Boris Johnson brags about shaking hands of Coronavirus patients.

March 4th Government stops providing daily updates on virus following a 70% spike in UK cases. They will later U-turn on this amid accusations they are withholding vital information.

March 5th Boris Johnson tells public to ‘wash their hands and business as usual’

March 7th Boris Johnson joins 82,000 people at Six Nations match.

March 9th After Ireland cancels St Patrick’s day parades, the government says there’s “No Rationale” for cancelling sporting events.

March 10th - 13th Cheltenham takes place, more than a quarter of a million people attend.

March 11th 3,000 Atletico Madrid fans fly to Liverpool.

March 12th Boris Johnson states banning events such as Cheltenham will have little effect. The Imperial College study finds the government’s plan is projected to kill half a million people.

March 13th The FA suspends the Premier League, citing an absence of Government guidance. Britain is invited to join European scheme for joint purchase of ventilators, and refuses. Boris Johnson lifts restrictions of those arriving from Coronavirus hot spots.

March 14th Government is still allowing mass gatherings, as Stereophonics play to 5,000 people in Cardiff.

March 16th Boris Johnson asks Britons not to go to pubs, but allows them to stay open. During a conference call, Johnson jokes that push to build new ventilators should be called ‘Operation Last Gasp’

March 19th Hospital patients with Coronavirus are returned to care homes in a bid to free up hospital space. What follows is a boom of virus cases in care homes.

March 20th The Government states that PPE shortage crisis is “Completely resolved” Less than two weeks later, the British Medical Association reports an acute shortage in PPE.

March 23rd UK goes into lockdown.

March 26th Boris Johnson is accused of putting ‘Brexit over Breathing’ by not joining EU ventilator scheme. The government then state they had not joined the scheme because they had ‘missed the email’

April 1st The Evening Standard publishes that just 0.17% of NHS staff have been tested for the virus.

April 3rd The UK death toll overtakes China.

April 5th 17.5 million Antibody tests, ordered by the government and described by Boris Johnson as a ‘game changer’ are found to be a failure.

April 7th Boris Johnson is moved to intensive care with Coronavirus.

April 16th Flights bring 15,000 people a day into the UK - without virus testing.

April 17th Health Secretary Matt Hancock says “I would love to be able to wave a magic wand and have PPE fall from the sky.” The UK has now missed four opportunities to join the EU’s PPE scheme.

April 21st The Government fails to reach its target of face masks for the NHS, as it is revealed manufactures offers of help were met with silence. Instead millions of pieces of PPE are being shipped from the UK to Europe.

April 23rd - 24th Government announces testing kits for 10 million key workers. Orders run out within minutes as only 5,000 are made available.

April 25th UK death toll from Coronavirus overtakes that of The Blitz.

April 30th Boris Johnson announces the UK has succeeded in avoiding a tragedy that had engulfed other parts of the world - At this point, The UK has the 3rd highest death toll in the world.

May 1st The Government announces it has reached its target of 100,000 tests - They haven’t conducted the tests, but posted the testing kits.

May 5th The UK death toll becomes the highest in Europe.

May 6th Boris Johnson announces the UK could start to lift lockdown restrictions by next week."

[Nightcrawler]

21 minutes ago, roobob said:

We have been fighting different types of virus for years..... some worse than this one ...but we have never had the restrictions put in place like now virtually bringing the world to a standstill with the authorities dragging out the comment to justify the restrictions by saying...we are at war.

The tripe that has come out of the mouths by WHO and varies Govts beggars belief.... and that is why I will go with the information of an on the job nurse than what is being dished up to us at the moment.

Bottom line.....Govts and WHO have been treating citizens like ignorant morons and people have had enough....all they want to know is the relevant information and the reason behind the restrictions...… simple... but it is not happening.

Agree with you on one thing....lets hope it is all over soon.

cheers 

 

How do you know that the information is not relevant? Why do you think that we are not being told everything. Is there some sort of World. Orwelian plot at foot or some major conspiracy to take over the lives of people??? 

Why would every country affected by the virus spend trillions of dollars fighting the virus and weakening their economies it they did not think it right?.. It really makes no sense. 

What has the world to gain from C19??? 

I think that a number of mistakes have been made particularly in the time some governments have taken to react

[code_slayer_bkk]

34 minutes ago, Nightcrawler said:

I think the One thing that everyone unanimously agrees with it that we all want this to be over soon. 

When that will happen is anyone's guess

I don't want to be indoors either. I have just got over cancer and the brutal treatment of radiotherapy.  I was just about to book a month in Pattaya then boom comes C19. Its a pig of a situation but I don't blame anyone for it

Good attitude Bro .. Patts isn't going anywhere ... 

All the best to you and your health .. just keep fighting !  

[Smiler]

13 minutes ago, Esco said:

How much of this would you consider a cheap shot? 

"December 31st China alerts WHO to new virus.

January 23rd Study reveals a third of China’s patients require intensive care.

January 24th Boris Johnson misses first Cobra meeting.

January 29th Boris Johnson misses second Cobra meeting.

January 31st The NHS declares first ever ‘Level 4 critical incident’ Meanwhile, the government declines to join European scheme to source PPE.

February 5th Boris Johnson misses third Cobra meeting.

February 12th Boris Johnson misses fourth Cobra meeting. Exeter University published study warning Coronavirus could infect 45 million people in the UK if left unchallenged.

February 13th Boris Johnson misses conference call with European leaders.

February 14th Boris Johnson goes away on holiday. Aides are told keeps Johnson’s briefing notes short or he will not read them.

February 18th Johnson misses fifth cobra meeting.

February 26th Boris Johnson announces ‘Herd Immunity’ strategy, announcing some people will lose loved ones. Government document is leaked, predicting half a million Brits could die in ‘worse case scenario’

February 29th Boris Johnson retreats to his country manor. NHS warns of ‘PPE shortage nightmare’ Stockpiles have dwindled or expired after years of austerity cuts.

March 2nd Boris Johnson attends his first Cobra meeting, declining another opportunity to join European PPE scheme. Government’s own scientists say over half a million Brit’s could die if virus left unrestrained. Johnson tells country “We are very, very well prepared.”

March 3rd Scientists urge Government to advise public not to shake hands. Boris Johnson brags about shaking hands of Coronavirus patients.

March 4th Government stops providing daily updates on virus following a 70% spike in UK cases. They will later U-turn on this amid accusations they are withholding vital information.

March 5th Boris Johnson tells public to ‘wash their hands and business as usual’

March 7th Boris Johnson joins 82,000 people at Six Nations match.

March 9th After Ireland cancels St Patrick’s day parades, the government says there’s “No Rationale” for cancelling sporting events.

March 10th - 13th Cheltenham takes place, more than a quarter of a million people attend.

March 11th 3,000 Atletico Madrid fans fly to Liverpool.

March 12th Boris Johnson states banning events such as Cheltenham will have little effect. The Imperial College study finds the government’s plan is projected to kill half a million people.

March 13th The FA suspends the Premier League, citing an absence of Government guidance. Britain is invited to join European scheme for joint purchase of ventilators, and refuses. Boris Johnson lifts restrictions of those arriving from Coronavirus hot spots.

March 14th Government is still allowing mass gatherings, as Stereophonics play to 5,000 people in Cardiff.

March 16th Boris Johnson asks Britons not to go to pubs, but allows them to stay open. During a conference call, Johnson jokes that push to build new ventilators should be called ‘Operation Last Gasp’

March 19th Hospital patients with Coronavirus are returned to care homes in a bid to free up hospital space. What follows is a boom of virus cases in care homes.

March 20th The Government states that PPE shortage crisis is “Completely resolved” Less than two weeks later, the British Medical Association reports an acute shortage in PPE.

March 23rd UK goes into lockdown.

March 26th Boris Johnson is accused of putting ‘Brexit over Breathing’ by not joining EU ventilator scheme. The government then state they had not joined the scheme because they had ‘missed the email’

April 1st The Evening Standard publishes that just 0.17% of NHS staff have been tested for the virus.

April 3rd The UK death toll overtakes China.

April 5th 17.5 million Antibody tests, ordered by the government and described by Boris Johnson as a ‘game changer’ are found to be a failure.

April 7th Boris Johnson is moved to intensive care with Coronavirus.

April 16th Flights bring 15,000 people a day into the UK - without virus testing.

April 17th Health Secretary Matt Hancock says “I would love to be able to wave a magic wand and have PPE fall from the sky.” The UK has now missed four opportunities to join the EU’s PPE scheme.

April 21st The Government fails to reach its target of face masks for the NHS, as it is revealed manufactures offers of help were met with silence. Instead millions of pieces of PPE are being shipped from the UK to Europe.

April 23rd - 24th Government announces testing kits for 10 million key workers. Orders run out within minutes as only 5,000 are made available.

April 25th UK death toll from Coronavirus overtakes that of The Blitz.

April 30th Boris Johnson announces the UK has succeeded in avoiding a tragedy that had engulfed other parts of the world - At this point, The UK has the 3rd highest death toll in the world.

May 1st The Government announces it has reached its target of 100,000 tests - They haven’t conducted the tests, but posted the testing kits.

May 5th The UK death toll becomes the highest in Europe.

May 6th Boris Johnson announces the UK could start to lift lockdown restrictions by next week."

Better ask some other BMs mate 😉

 

[fforest]

46 minutes ago, Nightcrawler said:

I think the One thing that everyone unanimously agrees with it that we all want this to be over soon. 

When that will happen is anyone's guess

 

How many many many times have you heard the term THE NEW NORMAL.......Its in the news every day.........They dont keep repeating THE NEW NORMAL for no reason...

They mean what they say...

They want how things are now to be the NEW NORMAL....FOREVER.....

As in not going back to the pre virus normal ever again....

Can they do it?........The powers the be are immensely powerful....But eventually the pendulum will swing in completely the opposite direction of where they want it to go....They can not overcome universal laws......

The best we can hope for is to see thing change for the better while we are still here.....

But I must say all these mask wearing zombies is not giving me much hope for the present...

Edited May 11, 2020 by fforest

[galenkia]

42 minutes ago, Evil Penevil said:

Another long article, but one of the best I've seen so far in explaining the dangers of COVID-19.  Some other links:

Coronavirus destroys lungs. But doctors are finding its damage in kidneys, hearts and elsewhere.

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying of strokes

Children are falling ill with perplexing inflammatory syndrome thought to be linked to covid-19

A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients

Frostbite’ toes and other peculiar rashes may be signs of hidden coronavirus infection, especially in the young

Evil

Doctors keep discovering new ways 
the coronavirus attacks the body 

Lenny Bernstein, Ariana Eunjung Cha 15 hrs ago 

Deborah Coughlin was neither short of breath nor coughing. In those first days after she became infected by the novel coronavirus, her fever never spiked above 100 degrees. It was vomiting and diarrhea that brought her to a Hartford, Conn., emergency room on May 1. 
 
“You would have thought it was a stomach virus,” said her daughter, Catherina Coleman. “She was talking and walking and completely coherent.” 

But even as Coughlin, 67, chatted with her daughters on her cellphone, the oxygen level in her blood dropped so low that most patients would be near death. She is on a ventilator and in critical condition at St. Francis Hospital, one more patient with a strange constellation of symptoms that physicians are racing to recognize, explain and treat. 

“At the beginning, we didn’t know what we were dealing with,” said Valentin Fuster, physician-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. “We were seeing patients dying in front of us. It was all of a sudden, you’re in a different ballgame, and you don’t know why.” 

Today, there is widespread recognition the novel coronavirus is far more unpredictable than a simple respiratory virus. Often it attacks the lungs, but it can also strike anywhere from the brain to the toes. Many doctors are focused on treating the inflammatory reactions it triggers and its capacity to cause blood clots, even as they struggle to help patients breathe.
 
Learning about a new disease on the fly, with more than 78,000 U.S. deaths attributed to the pandemic, they have little solid research to guide them. The World Health Organization’s database already lists more than 14,600 papers on covid-19. Even the world’s premier public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have constantly altered their advice to keep pace with new developments. 

“We don’t know why there are so many disease presentations,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Bottom line, this is just so new that there’s a lot we don’t know.” 

More than four months of clinical experience across Asia, Europe and North America has shown the pathogen does much more than invade the lungs. “No one was expecting a disease that would not fit the pattern of pneumonia and respiratory illness,” said David Reich, a cardiac anesthesiologist and president of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
 
It attacks the heart, weakening its muscles and disrupting its critical rhythm. It savages kidneys so badly some hospitals have run short of dialysis equipment. It crawls along the nervous system, destroying taste and smell and occasionally reaching the brain. It creates blood clots that can kill with sudden efficiency and inflames blood vessels throughout the body.
 
It can begin with a few symptoms or none at all, then days later, squeeze the air out of the lungs without warning. It picks on the elderly, people weakened by previous disease, and, disproportionately, the obese. It harms men more than women, but there are also signs it complicates pregnancies. 

Symptoms of covid-19 appear to include: 
Brain: Strokes from blood clots, neurological issues 
Eyes: Pinkeye 
Nose: Loss of smell and taste (anosmia) 
Blood: Unexpected blood clotting; attacks the lining of blood vessels 
Gastro­intestinal system: Vomiting and diarrhea in some people 
Lungs: Clogs and inflames alveoli (air sacs), hampering breathing; pulmonary embolism from breakaway blood clots and microclots 
Heart: Weakens heart muscle; causes dangerous arrhythmias and heart attacks due to small clots 
Kidneys: Damage to structures that filter waste from blood; patients often require dialysis 
Skin: “Covid toes,” or fingers, a purple rash from the attack on blood vessels 
Immune system: Widespread impact, including overactive immune response that attacks healthy tissue 

It mostly spares the young. Until it doesn’t: Last week, doctors warned of a rare inflammatory reaction with cardiac complications among children that may be connected to the virus. On Friday, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced 73 children had fallen severely ill in the state and a 5-year-old boy in New York City had become the first child to die of the syndrome. Two more children had succumbed as of Saturday.
 
That news has shaken many doctors, who felt they were finally grasping the full dimensions of the disease in adults. “We were all thinking this is a disease that kills old people, not kids,” Reich said. 

Mount Sinai has treated five children with the condition. Reich said each started with gastrointestinal symptoms, which turned into inflammatory complications that caused very low blood pressure and expanded their blood vessels. This led to heart failure in the case of the first child who died. 

“The pattern of disease was different than anything else with covid,” he said. 

Of the millions, perhaps billions, of coronaviruses, six were previously known to infect humans. Four cause colds that spread easily each winter, barely noticed. Another was responsible for the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome that killed 774 people in 2003. Yet another sparked the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012, which kills 34 percent of the people who contract it. But few do. 

SARS-CoV-2, the bad seed of the coronavirus family, is the seventh. It has managed to combine the infectiousness of its cold-causing cousins with some of the lethality of SARS and MERS. It can spread before people show symptoms of disease, making it difficult to control, especially without widespread and accurate testing. At the moment, social distancing is the only effective countermeasure. 

It has infected 4 million people around the globe, killing more than 280,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. In the United States, 1.3 million have been infected and more than 78,000 have died.  Had SARS or MERS spread as widely as this virus, Rasmussen said, they might have shown the same capacity to attack beyond the lungs. But they were snuffed out quickly, leaving only a small sample of disease and death.
 
Trying to define a pathogen in the midst of an ever-spreading epidemic is fraught with difficulties. Experts say it will be years until it is understood how the disease damages organs and how medications, genetics, diets, lifestyles and distancing impact its course.
 
“This is a virus that literally did not exist in humans six months ago,” said Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who works in cardiovascular medicine. “We had to rapidly learn how this virus impacts the human body and identify ways to treat it literally in a time-scale of weeks. With many other diseases, we have had decades.”
 
In the initial days of the outbreak, most efforts focused on the lungs. SARS-CoV-2 infects both the upper and lower respiratory tracts, eventually working its way deep into the lungs, filling tiny air sacs with cells and fluid that choke off the flow of oxygen.
 
But many scientists have come to believe that much of the disease’s devastation comes from two intertwined causes.  The first is the harm the virus wreaks on blood vessels, leading to clots that can range from microscopic to sizable. Patients have suffered strokes and pulmonary emboli as clots break loose and travel to the brain and lungs. A study in the Lancet, a British medical journal, showed this may be because the virus directly targets the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.
 
The second is an exaggerated response from the body’s own immune system, a storm of killer “cytokines” that attack the body’s own cells along with the virus as it seeks to defend the body from an invader. 

Research and therapies are focused on these phenomena. Blood thinners are being more widely used in some hospitals. A review of records for 2,733 patients, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicates they may help the most seriously ill. 

“Things change in science all the time. Theories are made and thrown out. Hypotheses are tweaked. It doesn’t mean we don’t know what we are doing. It means we are learning,” said Deepak Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
 
Inflammation of those endothelial cells lining blood vessels may help explain why the virus harms so many parts of the body, said Mandeep Mehra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the Lancet study on how covid-19 attacks blood vessels. That means defeating covid-19 will require more than antiviral therapy, he said. 

“What this virus does is it starts as a viral infection and becomes a more global disturbance to the immune system and blood vessels — and what kills is exactly that,” Mehra said. “Our hypothesis is that covid-19 begins as a respiratory virus and kills as a cardiovascular virus.” 

The thinking of kidney specialists has evolved along similar lines. Initially, they attributed widespread and severe kidney disease to the damage caused by ventilators and certain medications given to intensive-care patients, said Daniel Batlle, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
 
Then they noticed damage to the waste-filtering kidney cells of patients even before they needed intensive care. And studies out of Wuhan found the pathogen in the kidneys themselves, leading to speculation the virus is harming the organ.  “There was nothing unique at first,” Batlle said. But the new information “shows this is beyond the regular bread-and-butter acute kidney injury that we normally see.”
 

Like other coronaviruses, SARS-Cov-2 infiltrates the body by attaching to a receptor, ACE2, found on some cells. But the makeup of the spikes that protrude from this virus is somewhat different, allowing the virus to bind more tightly. As a result, fewer virus particles are required to infect the host. This also may help explain why this virus is so much more infectious than SARS, Rasmussen said.
 
Other factors can’t be ruled out in transmission, she said, including the amount of virus people shed and how strictly they observe social distancing rules.
 
Once inside a cell, the virus replicates, causing chaos. ACE2 receptors, which help regulate blood pressure, are plentiful in the lungs, kidneys and intestines — organs hit hard by the pathogen in many patients. That also may be why high blood pressure has emerged as one of the most common preexisting conditions in people who become severely ill with covid-19. 
  
The receptors differ from person to person, leading to speculation that genetics may explain some of the variability in symptoms and how sick some people become.
 
Those cells “are almost everywhere, so it makes sense that the virus would cause damage throughout the body,” said Mitchell Elkind, a professor of neurology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and president-elect of the American Heart Association.
 
Inflammation spurs clotting as white blood cells fight off infection. They interact with platelets and activate them in a way that increases the likelihood of clotting, Elkind said.
 
Such reactions have been seen in severe infections, such as sepsis. But for covid-19, he said, “we are seeing this in a large number of people in a very short time, so it really stands out.” 

“The virus can attack a lot of different parts of the body, and we don’t understand why it causes some problems for some people, different problems for others — and no problems at all for a large proportion,” Elkind said.
 
Coughlin, in critical condition at a hospital in Connecticut, deteriorated quickly after she reached the emergency room. Her fever shot up to 105 and pneumonia developed in her lungs. 

On Wednesday, she called her six daughters on FaceTime, telling them doctors advised she go on a ventilator. 
“If something happens to me, and I don’t make it, I’m at peace with it,” she told them.
 
The conversation broke daughter Coleman’s heart.
 
“I am deciding to help her go on a ventilator, and she may never come off,” she said. “That could have been my last phone conversation with her.”  

 

My workmate who died was originally admitted with breathing problems then developed kidney failure. 

There is so much more to this virus than people appreciate. 

[galenkia]

There is a 2 part documentary on BBC2 tonight at 9pm that follows NHS staff dealing with virus patients. Part 2 is same time tomorrow. 

[Nightcrawler]

12 minutes ago, fforest said:

How many many many times have you heard the term THE NEW NORMAL.......Its in the news every day.........They dont keep repeating THE NEW NORMAL for no reason...

They mean what they say...

They want how things are now to be the NEW NORMAL....FOREVER.....

As in not going back to the pre virus normal ever again....

Can they do it?........The powers the be are immensely powerful....But eventually the pendulum will swing in completely the opposite direction of where they want it to go....They can not overcome universal laws......

The best we can hope for is to see thing change for the better while we are still here.....

But I must say all these mask wearing zombies is not giving me much hope for the present...

Emm, why? I think they mean that we cannot resume normality as we knew it 3 months ago until safe to do so. What's in it for any government to have shops closed, factories closed, pubs closed and people spending less money? Why would they want that? Once we get on top of the virus, there will be no need for social distancing and masks etc. Freedom of people leads to a better economy.  I think that most governments want to see things back to the old normal but it won't be for a while. Most people want the old normal but know it won't happen over night

[galenkia]

1 minute ago, Nightcrawler said:

Emm, why? I think they mean that we cannot resume normality as we knew it 3 months ago until safe to do so. What's in it for any government to have shops closed, factories closed, pubs closed and people spending less money? Why would they want that? Once we get on top of the virus, there will be no need for social distancing and masks etc. Freedom of people leads to a better economy.  I think that most governments want to see things back to the old normal but it won't be for a while. Most people want the old normal but know it won't happen over night

Seems to be some strange attitudes to the lockdown. 

Anyone mentioned 7 foot lizards yet?. 

[lazarus]

22 minutes ago, galenkia said:

My workmate who died was originally admitted with breathing problems then developed kidney failure. 

There is so much more to this virus than people appreciate. 

I just received this note (below) from a friend who had it for over a month. I ordered an O2 monitor for her.
She lives in one of the US' early hot spots.

________________________________________

Hi 'Laz', the monitor arrived. I need to pick up some batteries for it. I’d like to try it out and see what happens as I start to up my excersize level.  

I see dr Paris next Monday and hope to hear what he says about my chances of contracting it again now that I’m hopefully building antibodies.
We’ll see I have to wait to get tested. Any way I can send it back to you but I would like to monitor myself as we reopen.

Thank you so much🙏💖. 
I hope you guys are doing great! 
I’m on my way to the clinic fir blood tests to see why 1/2 of my hair fell out while I was sick!