Quote:
At least eight strains of the coronavirus are making their way around the globe, creating a trail of death and disease that scientists are tracking by their genetic footprints.
While much is unknown, hidden in the virus's unique microscopic fragments are clues to the origins of its original strain, how it behaves as it mutates and which strains are turning into conflagrations while others are dying out thanks to quarantine measures.
Huddled in once bustling and now almost empty labs, researchers who oversaw dozens of projects are instead focused on one goal: tracking the current strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that cause the illness COVID-19.
Labs around the world are turning their sequencing machines, most about the size of a desktop printer, to the task of rapidly sequencing the genomes of virus samples taken from people sick with COVID-19. The information is uploaded to a website called NextStrain.org that shows how the virus is migrating and splitting into similar but new subtypes.
While researchers caution they're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, the tiny differences between the virus strains suggest shelter-in-place orders are working in some areas and that no one strain of the virus is more deadly than another. They also say it does not appear the strains will grow more lethal as they evolve.
This projection shows that 250,000 people will be in a hospital bed in American at one point in time!?Shanked Punt said:
I came across these projections the University of Washington. This one is for hospital resources. There are others as well, on a state by state basis, or nationwide.
If this is anywhere close to accurate, we're good to go in terms of hospital and ICU beds with a significant amount of headroom on top of that..
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Mentioned this earlier, the website adjusts as new data become available.Shanked Punt said:
I came across these projections the University of Washington. This one is for hospital resources. There are others as well, on a state by state basis, or nationwide.
If this is anywhere close to accurate, we're good to go in terms of hospital and ICU beds with a significant amount of headroom on top of that..
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Exsurge Domine said:
I don't like Turner either, but it's pretty clear it was tongue in cheek
I'll loan you a very energetic lab that loves long walks and has zero sense of personal space when I get back into town later this week.swimmerbabe11 said:Exsurge Domine said:
I don't like Turner either, but it's pretty clear it was tongue in cheek
It's crazy right now... how sensitive people are right now. Everyone is super jumpy.
I am trying to get an appointment to go to a shelter.. and the county shelter is appointment only and won't book more than two days in advance...and they are booked. I begged for a Thursday appt because I have gotten that answer multiple times.
The lady snapped and got super mad at me when I told her I would appreciate if she passed along this struggle to her supervisors, because I am seriously looking for a dog.
Everyone is so on edge.. you can barely joke
Exsurge Domine said:
Oh thank God, for a second I was worried you were homeless posting on TexAgs.
Quote:
At the start of 2020, we believed random mass death did not stalk the Earth. For most of human history, infectious disease was a constant threat, and the struggle against it was an essential element of human civilization. By the mid-nineteenth century, science began to gain the upper hand against afflictions such as cholera.
In the early 1900s, Europeans learned how to limit the damage from malaria and yellow fever, at least for themselves. Penicillin and streptomycin were deployed in force during the 1940s. Childhood vaccinations for smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox soon followed.
Over two centuries, roughly from the invention of inoculation against smallpox to its eradication, science rose to dominate the environment. To be sure, new diseases emerged beginning in the 1980s, for example, when HIV/AIDS devastated some communities and countries. But the prevailing view was that such health emergencies while needing resources and demanding attention were not central to the organization of our economies, our societies, and our lives.
The global impact of COVID-19 makes that view obsolete. Random mass death is back, and this reality will now dominate everything, for two reasons.
First, and more generally, this is not the first coronavirus, and it is one of several lethal variants to emerge since the turn of the millennium, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). There is no reason to think it will be the last.
Second, this particular coronavirus derives its lethal power from its specific profile: it is highly infectious and can be transmitted even by asymptomatic people. And, while many people who contract COVID-19 will suffer only a mild form, it appears most likely to kill older people and those with underlying health conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity.
Once you have had that thought, it is not possible to believe that we can return to the pre-virus world. Everything we do, all of our investments, and the way we organize ourselves will be influenced by consideration of whether we are protected from COVID-19 and its successors or made more vulnerable to them.
Right now our numbers are greatly skewed by what's happening in NYC since they represent half of all Covid cases. No other city in America has NYCs density (save SF) so it's hard to extrapolate out what the nationwide effect will be based on current data. A better look at the spread might be LA, (a more typical US city) where the numbers have been lower than expected.Thomas Ford 91 said:
The ICU bed shortage went negative 210 in one day.
The ventilator need increased 650 in one day.
The peak deaths per day went from 102 to 155 in one day.
The peak death day was pushed out 4 days in one day.
I think (didn't screenshot yesterday) the total projected death toll increased about 20% in one day.
Yesterday must have been a pretty bad day. I'm impressed with your optimism that we'll ok here in Texas.
Thomas Ford 91 said:
The ICU bed shortage went negative 210 in one day.
The ventilator need increased 650 in one day.
The peak deaths per day went from 102 to 155 in one day.
The peak death day was pushed out 4 days in one day.
I think (didn't screenshot yesterday) the total projected death toll increased about 20% in one day.
Yesterday must have been a pretty bad day. I'm impressed with your optimism that we'll ok here in Texas.
Folks on my team were saying yesterday that some of the shelters here in Dallas have completely emptied out (which is a good thing). People are lonely and looking for companions, I guess.swimmerbabe11 said:Exsurge Domine said:
Oh thank God, for a second I was worried you were homeless posting on TexAgs.
Oh, yes, looking for a dog, not a place for myself to stay.
So far, I'm still okay.
More like head up assExsurge Domine said:
I don't like Turner either, but it's pretty clear it was tongue in cheek
239 dead. And 438 on ventilators.aggiehawg said:
Louisiana's numbers for today.
LINK
Not good.
Quote:
The government is preparing to release an app which alerts people if they come too close to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, Sky News can reveal.
The contact tracking app, which will operate on an opt-in basis, will be released either just before or just after the lockdown is lifted, according to several people with close knowledge of the project.
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.
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The app will detect other phones in close vicinity using short-range Bluetooth signals, then store a record of those contacts on the device, the sources say.
If someone tests positive for COVID-19, they will be able to upload those contacts, who can then be alerted - after a suitable delay, to avoid accidentally identifying an individual - via the app.
As I said. Not good. And not boding well for next two weeks, given the lag time between testing and result. They will start to catch up with the testing time.aginlakeway said:239 dead. And 438 on ventilators.aggiehawg said:
Louisiana's numbers for today.
LINK
Not good.