Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[Andrew C]

As of today, 4.18 million Americans have been tested

 

[thomas998]

Read my reply.

I misread your comment and though it was for emergency use only not an emergency exemption. And actually the emergency exemption doesn't help Disney at all because when you look at the caveats to the FDA exemption they are as follows:

"The ID NOW COVID-19 EUA has not been FDA cleared or approved. It has been authorized by the FDA under an emergency use authorization for use by authorized laboratories and patient care settings. The test has been authorized only for the detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2, not for any other viruses or pathogens, and is only authorized for the duration of the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of in vitro diagnostic tests for detection and/or diagnosis of COVID-19 under Section 564(b)(1) of the Act, 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(b)(1), unless the authorization is terminated or revoked sooner "

Which means it can only be used by healthcare providers and will not be useable once the pandemic passes unless the FDA give full approval. So not really going to be of any value to Disney in checking guests.

 

[SoCalMort]

As of today, 4.18 million Americans have been tested

I think it is that there have been 4.18 million tests, not people tested. Remember, to be cleared of COVID, you need two negative tests plus, obviously, the test that indicated you have COVID.

 

[icc2515]

s of today, 4.18 million Americans have been tested

Only 325.32 million to go.

 

[easyrowrdw]

Comorbidity for obesity has not been established in the US cases, these have by a Johns Hopkins study published on the 3rd:

View attachment 464889

All of those are associated with obesity. It could be a mediated model. Obesity increases risk of heart disease, diabetes, etc., which in turn is related to Covid death risk. Maybe?

Just looking at fatality rates for people with different conditions isn't really going to pin down the level of risk associated with the conditions anyway.

 

[DCBaker]

One announcement made at the briefing today that was very overdue -

Nursing homes now must directly report to patients, families and the CDC when there are Covid-19 cases in the facility.

 

[flynnibus]

Disney outsourced most of their IT staff long before this situation.

kind of a distortion... depends on what business and what disciplines you are talking about. Don't take the story about orlando IT folks being laid off 2yrs ago or whatever to mean something across the board.

 

[DisneyDebRob]

One announcement made at the briefing today that was very overdue -

Nursing homes now must directly report to patients, families and the CDC when there are Covid-19 cases in the facility.

I wonder to this day why things that should be common sense take so long to institute. Does anyone not think that patients and their families shouldn’t be notified? Sort of like not telling students by text at a college that a man with a gun is on property. Wow.

 

[Giss Neric]

Here is an example of the process on how they got tested.

 

[monykalyn]

I am asking a sincere question, because I wonder something but i also have zero knowledge about how viruses attack our body, so I am genuinely wanting to understand.

But part of the reason it’s hitting us so hard is because no one has antibodies because it’s novel virus. Even if we didn’t develop lifelong natural immunity, would our bodies still be better at fighting it off a second time around since now our bodies recognized the virus? Once we are all exposed, would it really be this bad every “Covid-19” season, even with no vaccine?

(Again, forgive me if that’s a dumb question, I really have no idea)

The immune system

All organisms are connected in a complex web of relationships. Although many of these are benign, not all are, and everything alive devotes significant resources to identifying and neutralizing threats from other species. From bacteria through to primates, ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

It’s a long explanation of how Immune system works, and some technical aspects (and still it’s a pretty simplified version) but skip to “summaries” of each section. I’d think it’d be extremely rare to never have anyone anywhere develop antibodies, but part of it depends on how fast it mutates too. For instance- we do develop immunities to rhinoviruses but there’s so stinking many of them we still will get sick (anecdotally I notice about 3-4 years I get major for what seems like all year- then for a couple years I don’t get sick at all or very minor even when I’m surrounded by everyone else sick). Influenza and malaria are also slippery devils that change juuuuust enough to evade the killer immune cells and the memory immunity from previous strains - but with flu at least there is still some underlying “help” from the immune system as it seems that the killer cells- once clued in to the new strain- join the fight- and why the vaccine usually offers some protection from most strains. I guess we will find out just where the novel coronavirus falls in this spectrum. Best bet is lifelong immunity, middle ground is vaccination yearly to deal with strains like flu. Along with that though hopefully is also better ideas how to treat.
Can I just say I’m really weary of the all the experts with worst case scenario out there? Is it enough to say we don’t know yet but are working through discovery vs always the doom and gloom view?

 

[Kevin_W]

Iceland tested 6% of its entire population prior to April 4th. It found 43% of those who tested positive had yet to experience any symptoms but could have been contagious. How to deal with identifying that group of possible virus-spreaders remains problematic.

since it's been 2 weeks, do you know how many of those 43% later developed symptoms?

 

[DisneyCane]

Iceland tested 6% of its entire population prior to April 4th. It found 43% of those who tested positive had yet to experience any symptoms but could have been contagious. How to deal with identifying that group of possible virus-spreaders remains problematic.

The other 57% of positive cases possibly could have been identified early (ie. before hospital admission) with measures like temp checks. Onward spread of the illness can be limited from this 57% population group providing the temp check is accompanied by isolation practices and contact tracing.

A solution to both problems is required to substantially reduce transmission in workplaces and public-facing businesses. Nobody is there yet in providing the solutions that will allow the entertainment/tourism market to open fully.

Nobody had yet quantified asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread. The key with respect to WDW and other entertainment venues is whether short (a few minutes) or medium (3 hrs) duration exposure to an asymptomatic person is likely to infect you or does it take prolonged contact (like living with someone or working in close proximity) to have substantial risk? I don't know the answer but it is something important for the scientists to figure out.

 

[TrojanUSC]

Nobody had yet quantified asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread. The key with respect to WDW and other entertainment venues is whether short (a few minutes) or medium (3 hrs) duration exposure to an asymptomatic person is likely to infect you or does it take prolonged contact (like living with someone or working in close proximity) to have substantial risk? I don't know the answer but it is something important for the scientists to figure out.

Considering there is lots of anecdotal evidence of super-spreading type events when nobody is symptomatic, it is pretty clear brief contact is more than enough.

Consider this story from WA:

A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal. Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead

The deadly outbreak among members of a choir has stunned health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms.

www.latimes.com

 

[DisneyCane]

Considering there is lots of anecdotal evidence of super-spreading type events when nobody is symptomatic, it is pretty clear brief contact is more than enough.

Consider this story from WA:

A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal. Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead

The deadly outbreak among members of a choir has stunned health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms.

www.latimes.com

Except that in an area of major outbreak it is also possible that those people picked it up independently somewhere else. Asymptomatic people need to be discovered and studied in a lab where they can measure viral shedding. Also, how long was the practice if it did spread there? Certainly a lot longer than the time spent in contact with most people at WDW if 100% virtual queues were used.

 

[Kevin_W]

I get whatever is mandatory to function in society. If it is like the flu shot where it’s a personal choice then no I would not.

My hope for a silver lining out of this current pandemic is that it encourages better behavior about the flu and other diseases we know about. I know the flu has been talked about to death in this thread, but again: flu kills 20-60,000 American yearly and the WHO estimates at least a quarter million world-wide per year. Perhaps we should start taking the flu a tad bit more seriously as well..

 

[Prince-1]

Now I happen to have a fact supported by evidence. Approximately 82% of people around the world who have COVID-19 that are put on ventilators die so doctors are not choosing to put patients on any ventilator unless they think they will absolutely die without one. And here is my supporting evidence. And FYI the article is for NYC only so the percentage is a little lower.

80% of NYC's coronavirus patients who are put on ventilators ultimately die, and some doctors are trying to stop using them

Ventilators are an extreme attempt to get oxygen into patients' lungs, and some doctors want to find more efficient methods of treatment.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[TrojanUSC]

Except that in an area of major outbreak it is also possible that those people picked it up independently somewhere else. Asymptomatic people need to be discovered and studied in a lab where they can measure viral shedding. Also, how long was the practice if it did spread there? Certainly a lot longer than the time spent in contact with most people at WDW if 100% virtual queues were used.

The results of a study were released this week just on this. They found that you are actually most infectious just before symptoms appear.

Report: COVID-19 is most contagious before symptoms; up to 44% of spread was asymptomatic

According to researchers, patients who eventually tested positive were contagious for up to three days before symptoms began to present.

www.silive.com

 

[thomas998]

One announcement made at the briefing today that was very overdue -

Nursing homes now must directly report to patients, families and the CDC when there are Covid-19 cases in the facility.

Of course the bigger question is how will the nursing homes manage to ever manage to get any of the test to use on the people.

 

[monykalyn]

but I'm still a little baffled by the push for antibody testing as someone could show the antibodies while still being contagious

where do you see that? Cannot find this anywhere. If you have a link to a study I’d appreciate it,

Considering there is lots of anecdotal evidence of super-spreading type events when nobody is symptomatic, it is pretty clear brief contact is more than enough.

Consider this story from WA:

A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal. Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead

The deadly outbreak among members of a choir has stunned health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms.

www.latimes.com

Yes this has been shown to “prove “ a/pre-symptomatic spread as an absolute fact. However I highly highly highly doubt that they did everything “perfectly” and not touch their eyes/nose etc- most people’s recall memory is terrible and is revisionist. Doesn’t mean people aren’t a/Pre-symptomatic spreaders, but it’s not been a proven fact (yet) nor is viral load known, still going off best guess/worst case theories.

 

[TrojanUSC]

Everyone is a clinician nutritionist/ registered Dietitan these days, so many experts in obesity. Glad we got that solved. (Hint: it’s not always just a matter of “eat less” )
where do you see that? Cannot find this anywhere. If you have a link to a study I’d appreciate it,

Yes this has been shown to “prove “ a/pre-symptomatic spread as an absolute fact. However I highly highly highly doubt that they did everything “perfectly” and not touch their eyes/nose etc- most people’s recall memory is terrible and is revisionist. Doesn’t mean people aren’t a/Pre-symptomatic spreaders, but it’s not been a proven fact (yet) nor is viral load known, still going off best guess/worst case theories.

Posted another study a few posts later where they did viral load testing and found that it was highest before symptoms appear. Therefore people who are asymptomatic are indeed the biggest spreaders.

You also have to factor in people with 102º fevers aren't going to want to traipse through a theme park in August.