Posted on 04/11/2020 11:55:44 AM PDT by george76
There has been speculation for weeks around the possibility that the COVID-19 virus hit the United States, and possibly Wyoming, weeks before previously thought, and many more people already have had it and don’t realize it, and those people are now immune. Right now this is just conjecture, but it is worth having the discussion.
Buckrail. posted an article on April 9th about a Jackson doctor who shares this belief and has been fairly outspoken about it. Every community seems to have their own local name for it, and in Jackson they call it "that awful JH crud" that was circulating back in December 2019 and in January. In Pinedale it is often called "the Pinedale crud." It included a terrible cough that just couldn’t be shaken and seemed to last for weeks, longer than usual. It was passed off as an upper respiratory infection. There was no test for it then.
Jackson Hole gets many international tourists, including many from China. Yellowstone National Park has three million visitors a year; Grand Teton Park over two million. All the park gateway communities, including Pinedale, see a fraction of those visitors each summer.
The implications, the article says, are crucial. It means this virus may have already started working its way through Wyoming weeks to months earlier than thought and there might already be some herd immunity to it in Wyoming. The answer won’t be known until there is a test for antibodies in the blood. So it is still very important to continue all the current directives for hand washing, social distancing, and keeping sick people away from vulnerable populations.
Right now this is just a theory, but it is definitely something to think about if you are one of the ones who got awfully sick in the November/December/January timeframe last fall and are still alive today to talk about it. Once tested for antibodies, if positive, those people could immediately go back to work and our economy could get moving a whole lot faster than what was earlier thought. The people who haven’t had it could continue to self-isolate by choice, rather than by state shut-down directive, until there is either a vaccine (which may take at least a year or more) or drugs that can minimize the impacts of the effects of getting the virus.
No.
We know how severe this illness can be in the elderly, obese, and diabetic. The pneumonia like symptoms that lead to patients being placed on respirators is unmistakable. I agree this is not a world-ending pandemic by any stretch, but what has happened in Italy, Spain, and NYC would have been hard to miss last year.
That moose may have gotten hold of some bad cheez prior to biting her.
Safety should have mandated the quarantine of all a) sisters, b) parks, c) dairy related industries.
Moose bites are nothing to sneeze at !
Actually, the actual curve is not really that steep. The original curve had a margin for error depicted both above and below the actual curve that is a heavy line.
It is the top most band that is the most argued about. It is formed by a variable margin of error that diminishes with time. That makes it look steep.
I can’t cite the actual margin of error but at the greatest value, it exceeds 100%. That represents acknowledged ignorance and inability to accurately predict.
The models that are so roundly rejected by various band wagons carrying happily waving unbelievers produced the curve based on extrapolation of available data from China, Italy and Seattle.
Covid a lower respiratory infection that would have shown up with bi-lateral pneumonia.
And since the first indications of the disease were in early December in China, it is unlikely it spread to the US until late December at the earliest—and mostly likely not until during the Lunar New Year period.
[[By the second day I could not smell or taste anything. ]]
They say that happens with covid
I had something just a few days before Christmas that had all the symptoms of the Kung Flu, right down the pneumonia.
I was sick for over a month and thought I was going to die. Even with Zpak it wouldn’t go away.
I have had this conversation with former medical colleagues in Upstate South Carolina. December thru February saw a higher than average load of bad flu cases and subsequent deaths. Of course without testing or even the contagion being on the radar, we will never for sure.
And remember, we are using a very limited amount of data.
The other thing is that the data is presented as affecting the entire country at one time. In reality, this will move from place to place over time.
For example, it will probably plateau in NYC around now—but not in Boston for two more weeks. And its going to spread from East to West. It WILL reinfect the West Coast as the East Coast version (the Italian/Iranian strain L) is much more viral that the S strain that originally went into Washington and Oregon.
But anyone using thirty data points, with all of the limiting factors, to predict ANYTHING doesn’t understand how predictive theory works.
The Models were always flawed. I have been ridiculing people putting up charts and tracking data since January. Did you realize for the first month the Deaths/Cases in china was the same percent? That shit doesn’t happen in nature.
Limits on tests, limits on tests being run, Limits of hospitalizations...all of these things impact the ability to make a projection.
The ONLY number of all of this stuff that is scary—which is the recent R-naught of 5.7. That is incredibly high. Like, small-pox high. Measles is around 12, and the annual flu is marginally higher than 1. 5.7 is something to be concerned about.
But models and curves? Its stupid math at best.
bert wrote: “Actually, the actual curve is not really that steep. The original curve had a margin for error depicted both above and below the actual curve that is a heavy line.”
Does the flatness/steepness of the curve possibly indicate that the virus might have been in the US in the very early fall is I suspect?
BTW, the 2018 ‘Spanish Flu’ began with a wave of infections that were almost indistinguishable from the common influenza. Very similar mortality rates. Then, things changed and the ‘Spanish Flu’ became highly lethal. Hopefully, that isn’t what is in store now.
The ‘Spanish Flu’ was commonly reported, at least in the early stages, to be ‘just the flu’, “nothing to worry about”.
I was saw a squirrel catch and eat a live sparrow—no kidding!
It went thu the country USA before the Dr in China figured out it was not the flu...
That is why other parts of China seem to have missed out...it could have been floating around for months??
Doctors just though it was the flu
My wife had the something..four weeks around the last week in February
There are 6 million visitors to Orland a month..
but Florida has not had many cases
all got it before... these are just the end or second wave
——Does the flatness/steepness of the curve possibly indicate that the virus might have been in the US in the very early fall is I suspect?——
I don’t know.
There actually three curves. One is the projection, in the middle and above and below are margin of error curves.
No, it was not Covid-19.
The first Covid-19 case occurred in China on Nov 17, 2019. By Dec 15, 2019, 27 people were infected.
In order for the virus to have spread in a single month from one case in China to millions of cases all over the world, each sick person would have to infect thousands of others in a very short time. No one has contact with thousands of people on a daily basis.
Any number of respiratory viruses are in circulation at any given time. Contracting a respiratory virus does not mean you had Covid-19.
Forgot to mention in my post directly above that I have a doctor appointment on Monday for a blood pressure check and I’m going to see if he will order me a test for the presence of the anti-body to see if I did have “it”.
We saw a ton of oddly ill patients starting in January. One of my patients was admitted and intubated.
I saw some funky pnemonias.
I became ill in February and my wife right behind me.
I can’t prove it, but I was seeing patients with it in January.
From a purely logical standpoint, it is a virtual certainty that this virus was in the US no later than November 2019.
China had their Wuhan freakout beginning in December, and we can safely assume that it would have taken at least a few weeks of the virus being passed around before they got to the point of freaking out, therefore it was circulating in Wuhan and elsewhere in China since November at the latest, and we had untold thousands of Chinese flying back and forth to the US at various points of entry EVERY DAY until mid January.
Simple math tells us the virus has been here months longer than is being considered.
Yes, but the curves I’ve seen do not show the early fall months of 2019. Extrapolating from Dec 2019, one would suspect that there were significant infections in the last four months of 2019.
I had something very nasty in January. I suspect it was covid and want to get the antibody test. It certainly could have gotten lost in the middle of a worse than usual flu season
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