Covid19mathblog.com

It is still 2020 – so here is some bad news on the covid front – https://www.sciencealert.com/case-study-reveals-rare-patient-who-showed-no-symptoms-but-shed-infectious-sars-cov-2-for-70-days

“A team of researchers and doctors has now reported the case of one woman with leukemia who had no symptoms of COVID-19 but 70 days after her first positive test, she was still shedding infectious SARS-CoV-2 particles.”

“She first tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on 2 March 2020 after she was admitted to hospital for severe anaemia related to her cancer. She then tested positive for COVID-19 another 13 times and yet showed no symptoms of the disease. Twice she received plasma from people who had recovered from COVID-19, and eventually cleared the virus from her system sometime in mid-June.

Doctors don’t know exactly when she acquired the coronavirus, but most likely it was at a rehabilitation facility which had a large COVID-19 outbreak in February, where the woman had stayed days earlier.

From the throat swabs collected over the course of her 15-week infection, the researchers showed that the woman was shedding infectious SARS-CoV-2 particles for 70 days. Some of its genetic material was also detected up to 105 days after she first tested positive.

We have to be careful here to distinguish between infectious viral particles and the results of a diagnostic test, which just detects shreds of viral RNA. Importantly, in this study the researchers actually isolated SARS-CoV-2 from a few swab samples – day 70 included – to test whether the virus collected was able to replicate in lab-grown cells, which it was.

"This indicates that, most likely, the infectious virus shed by the patient would still be able to establish a productive infection in contacts upon transmission," the researchers wrote.”

Trying to contain something like this would require a very long quarantine – and perhaps permanent quarantine from the rest of the world AFTER testing all in the bubble – and then kicking out those positive from the bubble – also a good way to get rid of people you don’t like.

Death per 100K Population by Country – Filtered for 50+ – interesting to note no Asian country in this list.

School review – same conclusion schools not likely super spreader places – there are some better schools in terms of implementation to reduce viral load and we need to learn from them:

TX – School most open and open longest Ft. Bend not seeing any increase in confirmation. El Paso TX the most closed schooling county seeing a surge in confirmation. Travis TX opened up a month ago and still no major increase. Fort Bend should be evaluated to what they did.

FL – Broward county opened up and saw an increase in confirmation. However Pinellas been opened and did not see an increase. Palm Beach has started to climb but this was a month plus of already being opened. Pinellas should be examined on how and what they did.

CA – poor sample – but most opened was San Diego – yet not much different vs. Santa Clara who was closed.

OH All counties below growing but Lorain never opened school – so it would not seem schools is causing the expansion of confirmation

CO – Confirmation rising for all. El Paso rapid rise and probably needs to review what exactly is going on. Adams has bee rising but was rising even before school opening.

PA – Dauphin PA just opened up but confirmation was already climbing. Centre has been opened but confirmation are actually holding steady.

Big confirmation for France and US – Spain, France, and US deaths over 1K

TX lead in both confirmation and death

The leading county in death and confirmation in TX was El Paso – again. Maricopa AZ actually lead all counties in death.

Clearly the issue is quite focus with the top 5 counties representing 10% of the confirmation for the entire country. We need to figure out was is going on in El Paso TX Cook IL Rhode Island and Los Angeles.

Rolling up the regions you can see the pain Europe is seeing. Comparing US totals with European individual countries mask Europe issues and makes US seems overwhelming. However Europe as a whole has much bigger problems than the US.