It turns out, Santa Clara County announced today, that someone died here, at home, of COVID-19 on Feb. 6. This is now the first known coronavirus death in the United States. We had already known of a couple of cases of coronavirus in Santa Clara County in late January and early February, but this death is new information.
My husband and I had always expected cases here early. We have a large Chinese American population, and people coming home from a New Year’s visit to China could have (and evidently did) bring the virus. The Chinese travel ban didn’t ban Americans from returning from China.
I’m confused about the notion of a deadlier strain of covid-19 and a less deadly strain. If you listen to/read what doctors and nurses treating covid-19 say, they’re all describing the same clinical signs, all over the United States and all over the world. There are more people dying in New York hospitals, but that seems to be because there are more people infected, not because the people who get infected get sicker.
I was wondering the same thing . Our area has a very large Chinese American population as well, and it is also very popular with Chinese real estate investors. BTW, some earlier deaths from Life Care preceding the first reported death have been reclassified as Covid deaths.
But the rate of death does not seem to be consistent all over. For example, France and Germany are neighboring countries with roughly the same amount of cases, but France has reported 4 times the number of deaths as Germany. France also has a slightly higher infection rate in relation to its population, but not enough to account for the wide disparity in death rate. (Data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)
Different strains would not necessarily change the overall effects of the virus – but it might very well impact something like the rate of viral replication or its tenacity (that is, how strong the virus is at overcoming the body’s efforts to resist it.) Or the undetected presence of a milder strain within a population might contribute to more asymptomatic people who have built up some level of immunity to the more severe strain. So all that might impact how readily the virus spreads, and the distribution of cases between asymptomatic to moderate to gravely ill to fatal.
The reports about symptoms and clinical course of the disease really seem to be all over the place, in any case. Part of the reason the hospitals and ICU’s are seeing people who have acute, severe respiratory symptoms is that they are telling people with different symptomatic patterns not to come in – but anecdotally there are all sorts of different symptoms being reported. Today its bruises on people’s feet. Some people report loss of sense of smell; others don’t. Some people have GI symptoms; others don’t.
I would love to understand the medical success of Germany since it’s such an outlier. Their timeline was in line with the US, but as mentioned, much fewer deaths per capita and earlier flattening.
Well, Germany also has triple the rate of per-capita testing as France, so that could be part of the difference. But Italy’s testing rate compares favorably to Germany – so that’s definitely not the whole story. I think there are a lot of different factors at play. Variant strains of the virus is only one possible piece of the puzzle.
There’re several factors correlated with lower infection and death rates in Germany:
The first wave of infected Germans are young.
Germans tend to be strict rule followers, unlike the Italians, for example.
Germany produced one of the first testing kits and did a better job testing from the start (Italy only caught up later when it was already too late).
Germans were much better prepared so their hospitals were never overwhelmed. Their unused ICU spare capacity apparently exceeds the entire capacity in Italy.
Read @3SailAway post above. That statement is questionable. Came out of a study that is not peer reviewed with a limited sample and done on a monkey’s cell not on human.
Most former East Germans were vaccinated with the BCG vaccine. There’s a high correlation between BCG vaccination and lower COVID-19 infection and death rates. It may help explain lower rates in Eastern Europe and Asian countries as well.
“There is no evidence that the Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine (BCG) protects people against infection with COVID-19 virus. Two clinical trials addressing this question are underway, and WHO will evaluate the evidence when it is available. In the absence of evidence, WHO does not recommend BCG vaccination for the prevention of COVID-19.”
@Iglooo no…we all didn’t get BCG vaccine growing up. How do I know? Because we all still have to have TB tests when applying for new jobs…we can’t just show proof of a vaccine.
We DID have TB tests that were given in our schools when I was a little tyke, but not a vaccine. Are you maybe thinking of this?
@Iglooo BCG is the tuberculosis vaccine and it is not recommended by the AAP. We lived overseeas when one of our children was born and my pediatrician here told me under no circumstances to have our child receive it. (so she didn’t.)
Anyone else listen to the most recent TWIV? It’s a discussion of the protective effect of the oral polio vaccine (against many viruses). The study should be starting in a few weeks. It’s just a hypothesis now, but if the OPV is found to lessen the severity of COVID19 it would be tremendous as the vaccine is already safe for use in people.
Yes, I think that’s what I am thinking. My D had a test. I thought she also had the vaccine following the test.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Why is that? In Asia, I believe they vaccine kids against TB. I think the reason masks are widely used in Asia is because of TB. The size of TB bacteria is about 10 times bigger than a virus and a mask would stop it.
^^thx. Something new to listen to on my way to work today. Well, at least doing paper work today so I can get out of my house… Lol… There’s always paperwork…
@iglooo Bc tb skin tests will always be positive for TB and he said you would have to have a chest xray to prove you don’t have TB. We were not at high risk of exposure for TB where we lived and were only overseas for a few yrs and were not planning on living there long-term.