As far as I understand, they still have shortness of breath and may require oxygen, just not to the point of needing a ventilator or to be in ICU.
Wouldnât those patients have been sent home at the height of the epidemic, perhaps with oxygen?
I think it is sometimes challenging to know when a patient who can be maintained at home or itâs some supplemental oxygen will suddenly need much more and perhaps these patients are being hospitalized preventively, especially if they have multiple risk factors of bad outcomes? I donât know.
Iâm not arguing with the decision to admit or not admit patients; I understand that hard decisions have to be made. Iâm just saying that in the worst of the epidemic in New York City, patients who had shortness of breath and needed no breathing support or just some oxygen were in many cases not admitted to the hospital. They were sent home.
The explanation for fewer infected people with the most severe symptoms could be fewer infected people overall. Or not. Itâs just a theory.
No, I think he was saying that patients in the same condition when admitted now donât deteriorate or not as fast as before. He thought maybe it could have been a lower viral load due to masks and generally being careful. But itâs pointless for us to try and guess here.
Exactly. We are debating a hearsay. 
Yes, we are. Anything wrong with that while we wait something more conclusive by research? I wouldnât act on it but it is good to know the possibility.
There were some speculations earlier regarding fatalities in CA and NY, with NY being much higher. Some said it might be a different strain. CA virus could have lost some punch already. NY virus is from Italy. Now, in NY and Italy, doctors are finding something similar. It may or may not mean much but sure interesting to me.
@Igloo, that theory has not been confirmed as far as I know.
From Washington Post this morning. âOfficials found asymptomatic carriers did not leave traces of the virus on items they touchedâŠâ Good news.
After mass testing in Wuhan, officials say they detected just 300 asymptomatic cases
Officials in the city of Wuhan, the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, found zero active coronavirus cases and only 300 asymptomatic ones after carrying out a mass testing initiative in recent weeks, Chinese media reported Tuesday.
Since mid-May, nearly 10 million people in the city of about 11 million were tested for the virus in a dramatic effort to weed out asymptomatic carriers and prevent a second wave of infections. The city, which reopened in April, spent about $126 million on the nucleic acid tests, which were examined in small batches to speed up the process.
Officials found asymptomatic carriers did not leave traces of the virus on items they touched, including doorknobs and elevator buttons, Reuters reported. The English-language edition of the Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled news outlet, said the results of the tests âserved as an unquestionable milestone to Chinaâs virus battle, and cemented the countryâs phased victory over the horrifying virus.â
By SiobhĂĄn OâGrady
10M tests administered in under a month? Maybe they have some extra to sell the US!
This is what iâm most concerned about. The medical news is really slow right now. Why is testing not improving fast enough? Why donât we definitively know yet about antibodies? Are they just hiding from us the fact that you are immune if youâve gotten the disease so that people donât go out and try to get infected in order to have 'immunity passports"? The lack of new information is frustrating.
First, I would not trust anything coming out of China. Second, they said they are batching individual samples into one. So I call baloney on 10M âtests.â
I agree. Why are people giving an outlet to Chinese news media by quoting them? Thereâs something weird about it. Increasing the audience of Chinese gov controlled news media?
True, but the reports donât say 10M tests. They say 10M people tested. Batching is a great idea when looking for a small number of cases: Test 100 people, test is negative, all are cleared. Test another 100 people, test is positive, now test in smaller groups.
Now that we have a better idea of which groups of people are more affected, we can do the same thing with our surveillance testing of students. Test UCSD students in groups of 100 or 200 or whatever, and they could all be eliminated at once.
I donât trust China, but donât understand why theyâd lie about this. The cat is out of the bag.
There is zero info about the Missouri hair dressers and the results of all the tests of their customers. This is frustrating -they should know by now. This would give all info on effectiveness of masks.
@âCardinal Fangâ - I deal with foreign documents and translations daily. Letâs say a lot of it gets lost in translation. Plus, we know - anyone can run a million tests, and we have seen the quality of the Ab tests coming out of China (and out of some opportunistic US entities). Unless they ran 10M FDA-quality tests, I am not impressed.
There is a reason for China to continue to drum up their stellar response to the outbreak while the other superpowers are struggling. But that would steer this thread into politics, and I do not want to do so.
No matter if China is lying, UCSD should batch tests if they can, now that theyâve seen their small results for the students already tested.
Sorry I used the wrong term. They are pooling the samples. Batching means waiting for a sufficient number of samples to arrive so they all can be individually processed in a batch. A typical PCR machine can handle multiple samples at a time, so it is inefficient to run one or two samples. Batching slows down the TAT when there are very few samples trickling in. For those situations, you need systems allowing on demand testing (like GX or IDNow). Pooling of samples presents its own issues.
I also get frustrated with the pace of science/medicine, especially when compared to the 24 hour news cycle which constantly throws out information.
However, no one is deliberately hiding public health information. In fact mistakes have been made in sending out too early information without good evidence, such as with the mask advice and the âstay home until you are having trouble breathingâ advice (given in the hardest hit areas of NY, but not fully explained, or revoked once we realized how fast patients could decompensate).
Advice from China to intubate early and avoid steroids also turned out to be wrong. Because this is a new virus and an unprecedented situation, we do have to learn some things the hard wayâthrough experience, trial & error.
As far as antibodies, thereâs no conspiracy to withhold info. Doctors and scientists simply donât know whether or for how long antibodies will be protective. Now, the regions of the country where large percentages of the population got the virus (such as about 20% in NYC) have flattened the curve down to almost zero. So, the people with antibodies are not being re-exposed. It would not be ethical to spray them with virus, so we wonât have answers unless there is a second wave.