Posted on 04/17/2020 7:29:29 PM PDT by Lazamataz
On rounds in a 20-bed intensive care unit (ICU) one recent day, physician Joshua Denson assessed two patients with seizures, many respiratory failure and others whose kidneys were on a dangerous downhill slide. Days earlier, his rounds had been interrupted as his team tried, and failed, to resuscitate a young woman whose heart had stopped. All shared one thing, says Denson, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Tulane University. “They are all COVID positive.”
As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 surges past 2.2 million globally and deaths surpass 150,000, clinicians and pathologists are struggling to understand the damage wrought by the coronavirus as it tears through the body. They are realizing that although the lungs are ground zero, its reach can extend to many organs including the heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain.
“[The disease] can attack almost anything in the body with devastating consequences,” says cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, “Its ferocity is breathtaking and humbling.”
Understanding the rampage could help the doctors on the front lines treat the fraction of infected people who become desperately and sometimes mysteriously ill. Does a dangerous, newly observed tendency to blood clotting transform some mild cases into life-threatening emergencies? Is an overzealous immune response behind the worst cases, suggesting treatment with immune-suppressing drugs could help? What explains the startlingly low blood oxygen that some physicians are reporting in patients who nonetheless are not gasping for breath? ...
What follows is a snapshot of the fast-evolving understanding of how the virus attacks cells around the body, especially in the roughly 5% of patients who become critically ill. Despite the more than 1000 papers now spilling into journals and onto preprint servers every week, a clear picture is elusive, as the virus acts like no microbe humanity has ever seen. ....
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
“To date, “We have no evidence” that fecal transmission is important, says coronavirus expert Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa.”
There goes San Fran
I’m not questioning this, but, shouldn’t the body count be much, much higher? Isn’t the gloom and doom number of 2.2 mil. too low?
Facts on the ground seem to be in conflict.
The only “score” that counts is the score at the end of the game.
During the game there is a lot of yelling, screaming, finger pointing, analysis, charts, graphs, “experts” etc.
The best way to win a game like this one, of course, is not to play.
There is no real “mortality rate” until all cases are identified and resolved.
Is it Covid-19 directly that initiates the attacks on all sorts of tissues, or is a lot of it a growing consequence of (1) hemoglobin’s loss of oxygen directly as a result of the Wuhan Virus, thus causing oxygen not getting delivered where human cells need it, and (2) the resulted free roaming oxygen, freed from the hemoglobin, and the inflammation that free roaming oxygen causes? I think 90% of the damage comes from those two things, and it continues until either (a) the Wuhan Virus is stopped from robbing oxygen from the hemoglobin (which hydroxychloroquine helps do), or (b) direct oxygen (preferably not by ventilator) infusion is given, or both. I think the worst cases are those who are not hospitalized soon enough, and/or interventions to stop, or mitigate, the loss of oxygen in the hemoglobin are not begun soon enough. Not soon enough means many tissue damages have already begun.
That is the fast replicating version of this virus.
My high school classmate died from coronavirus April 13. He was in his late 40s. According to the telephone grapevine, he got it from a co worker. I have not seen him since high school so no other info on him or his health condition.
I graduated in 1963. We have a couple dozen from the 73 classmates living in the area and we are keeping in touch by having a monthly dinner ... until recently. We are keeping in touch via phone, to have each others’ back.
Correct. Of Sars-CoV-2, there are two versions defined by two different single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), 'S' and 'L'. One is mild, and the other leads to Covid-19 that destroys oxygen-carrying ability that can lead to catastrophic failure of organs.
And the people who are dismissing this and demanding to return to life as usual are idiots. Look at the dummies crowding the beaches in Florida today. Not wearing masks, not practicing social distancing. This virus isn’t wiped out; it’s still here waiting to explode again. I hope the people who are calling it a hoax and nothing worse than the flu get infected with it. They deserve to.
Thanks for posting this. Birx and Fauci looked beaten and defeated on Friday. Like they’ve tried to warn Trump and he just isn’t listening. If the outbreak worsens in a couple of weeks or months and more people sicken and die, he will get blamed and he should be. I used to be impressed with him. I voted for him. I’m thinking maybe I’ll stay home in November.
“I hope the people who are calling it a hoax and nothing worse than the flu get infected with it. They deserve to.”
I’ve learned not to expect anything less from Presbyterians.
The virus is indeed an unseen enemy but it is not magic. How on earth can it access the hemoglobin in red blood cells to bind Heme? I am listening. Please anyone because the mechanism by which this takes place would be an unprecedented discovery in biochemistry. Full props to Andrew Gaiziunas for thinking of it, working backward from the symptoms to imagine a cause, but there is no known science for this.
Anyway it was easy to discount:
https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/claim-that-sars-cov-2-binds-to-hemoglobin-in-red-blood-cells-unsupported-and-implausible-andrew-gaiziunas/
I am very curious if anyone has specific detail about this hemoglobin business. Thanks!
Also I am very curious about HOW these brilliant Chinese scientists created this thing if anyone can provide detail. I mean not spy fiction type detail which is all very exciting and intriguing, but I mean the like you know science stuff and whatever. K?
I does not “access” the oxygen.
The receptors it connects to in the hemoglobin cause the release of the red blood cells iron. Iron is what binds the oxygen. Iron release winds up releasing the oxygen. It is an indirect action that causes the release of the oxygen, not a direct attack on, or access to the oxygen. The effect is the same - hemoglobin cannot deliver as much oxygen.
When patients are identified and brought in early, low oxygen levels are noticed, but the lungs, the bronchial tubes, the heart and the whole respiratory system looks fine, yet the patient is breathing harder than they should be - missing oxygen even though the respiratory system is working normally.
But, slowly, with the lack of oxygen in the hemoglobin (not delivering oxygen to cells) and the free roaming oxygen in the blood, damage grows on internal tissues, including the respiratory system. Unfortunately too many serious cases do not get to the doctor or the hospital before the ancillary damages to the respiratory system have begun, and what the doctor sees is a damaged respiratory system and thinks the central cause was a direct attack on the respiratory system. It was not that, initially, it begins with the chemistry of detaching the iron in the hemoglobin which - the iron - had bound the oxygen. The brain knows only that oxygen is not finding its way around the body and the main signal it has is to tell the respiratory system to get more.
Here are some links, among many others.
Why does Hydroxychlorquine work? IT binds heme (the parts of hemoglobin) blocking Covid-19’s entry there, blocking the Covid-19 action that releases the iron there, which released the oxygen.
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/032820/why-scientists-are-studying-if-chloroquine-could-t
Thank you for trying to help me!
I don’t know what you meant about accessing the oxygen.
if You can explain what those “hemoglobin receptors” would be that would help.
Also what is the chemistry for HcQ binding heme?
I can’t read those links yet but thanks I’ll get it. If the answers are there just point me with my thanks!
Would you read the article I linked and tell me where it goes wrong?
I appreciate the chance to learn.
The only follow-up I saw on this front was this story (which has a doctor for the Science article) noting that some survivors have lingering organ damage. So, a) is that unusual with a virus, and b) it still sounds like this isn't just influenza.
But how is it possible to believe anything the scientists say about this virus?
Everything they told us turned out to be not only wrong but politically motivated!
For example, do I think the JH counts are totally kosher? No - we've seen too many revisions and heard from too many State officials about funny business in the recording of deaths, to not be skeptical. But, I believe a very nasty coronavirus infected over one million Americans and was a bigly contributing factor in the death of tens of thousands of people.
We have ALL read more technical medical journals and biostatistics papers this year than ever before...we are all a lot smarter than we were in January. Thus, I believe the FR powers of discernment are a lot better than that of Imperial College UK, and we aren't as National Enquirer about it.
I would add that in my opinion the biological virus from Wuhan has not been anywhere near as virulent or as powerful as the political one.
It’s a good point, and we shouldn’t be suffering from lockdowns any more. However, you can still have occasional COVID surges, such as is apparently happening in Wisconsin, where a field hospital apparently had to be built due to a nearby ICU getting packed.
Sooooooo, as these lockdowns ease, we still must be prudent. I hardly leave my house, because nearly all my friends and relatives are vulnerable in one way or another. I hope to visit a couple of these relatives soon — they’re agreeable — but I will remember to take my temperature before leaving the house. If you have people in your life who are vulnerable, relax. Eat outdoors instead of in the dining room at a restaurant. Get some Netflix (shudder) or Hulu, instead of going to the movie theater. Etc.
That Broadway star who had it for months lost both of his legs and had so much damage to his lungs that they predicted that he would need a double lung transplant to recover. He died and did not recover, leaving a wife and new born baby boy and unfulfilled promising career.
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