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Don't assume that the cause of death reports in Asia are similar to our own. Someone may have had heart disease and died while sick with the coronavirus. It is likely that it will be reported as heart disease as the cause of death, not the virus.
I would look at the current overall death rate demographics and measure that against the normal death rate for that community parsed by age and sex. The difference is likely the coronavirus. When looking at the differential if older men are highest consider the likely impact of smoking. In Asia, many older men smoke, a lot.
Take a look at the case report in the New England Journal of Medicine of the hospital course of the first coronavirus patient treated here in the US, and you will realize how very serious this virus is.
Take a look at the case report in the New England Journal of Medicine of the hospital course of the first coronavirus patient treated here in the US, and you will realize how very serious this virus is.
Yes China reports cause of death differently than the states. So if you have a heart problem and die from the virus it will be listed as a heart problem. They are also at a disadvantage because of poor air quality and many are heavy smokers.
If you find my thread here which discusses the case report, you'll see how very serious it is. The issue isn't 6 days of fever. The issue is delayed onset of serious viral pneumonia.
And, the cat's definitely out of the bag. According to the case report above, six days into the course of the patient's illness, serum (blood) samples were negative for coronavirus, while nasal and oral swabs, and stool samples, were positive. People who are at risk of having coronavirus have been being tested by blood tests (which apparently, in this severely ill patient, were negative). In addition, in the case reported above, the initial symptom was cough, without fever. There is a confirmed case at ASU in Tempe (although the person doesn't live on campus), so students who are ill who have returned from Wuhan have been seeking medical care. One student was given a blood test and quarantined until it came back negative - but the case report above had a negative blood test even six days into the illness. Another student, also returned from Wuhan, sought care because of a cough without fever, and was turned away without testing, because the student was told that they had a common cold - but the case report above presented with cough before developing fever, and in fact did not develop definitive fever until six days into the illness. Cough was the initial symptom.
Because of China's lack of transparency about this virus (early medical reports of a SARS-like virus were suppressed, and China initially refused entry to US and WHO medical investigators), it was not known how this virus was transmitted until about a month and a half after the virus began spreading in Wuhan. And until this case report was published a few hours ago, it was not known that blood samples could test negative even six days after the patient became symptomatic, or that the patient could have symptoms for six days, before developing measurable fever. People returning from Wuhan apparently have been declared to not have coronavirus on the basis of a blood test alone, or have been turned away for testing, even though they had cough, because they did not have fever.
24,000 signatures have been obtained in an attempt to get ASU to cancel classes, because students are afraid and want to go home, but don't want to be penalized for missing classes. But if sick students who returned from Wuhan were improperly told they did not have coronavirus because they had a negative blood test, or weren't even tested because they didn't have fever, then there is a significant chance that some cases have gone undetected, and are spreading. And if this is how it's been handled at schools across the country, and in other clinical settings, that people at risk of having been infected in Wuhan, who are coughing but do not have fever, are being told that there is no chance that they have coronavirus, and are not being properly tested by nasal swab and oropharyngeal swab, or who do have fever but are only being tested by a blood test, which is obviously NOT a sensitive way of testing for coronavirus infection, then we are really in very big trouble.
Anyone who returned from Wuhan after winter break needs to self-quarantine until 14 days after they have returned. And anyone who returned from Wuhan and has a cough needs to be tested by nasal and oropharyngeal swab, and self-quarantine until the tests come back as negative for coronavirus.
"To increase the likelihood of detecting 2019-nCoV infection, CDC recommends collecting and testing multiple clinical specimens from different sites, including all three specimen types—lower respiratory, upper respiratory, and serum specimens. Additional specimen types (e.g., stool, urine) may be collected and stored. Specimens should be collected as soon as possible once a PUI [person under investigation] is identified regardless of time of symptom onset."
I read that the first five cases of the disease in the US were considered mild and that the patient's symptoms have subsided (including his fever) but that due to the coronavirus and wanting to continue to monitor the long term effects of this virus, he is still hospitalized.
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