5 ms·

There's also the "mystery respiratory illness" that was never identified in July 2019 which could potentially point to an even earlier start. Does anyone know i

There's also the "mystery respiratory illness" that was never identified in July 2019 which could potentially point to an even earlier start. Does anyone know if they've looked into it being related? https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/health-officials-to-give-update-after-respiratory-illness-sickens-dozens-at-virginia-retirement-community/135890/ https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/health-officials-to... > Three people have also died, but Dr. Benjamin Schwartz of the Fairfax County Health Department said Wednesday afternoon that those who died were "older" and had complex health problems. Officials don't yet know the extent to which the respiratory illness contributed to their deaths, he said.

drran 6y ago
It's one of thousands mystery respiratory illnesses caused by a virus/bacteria/fungus/chemicals/bad food/bad water/bad air.
Munky-Necan 6y ago
Culture negative pneumonia is a relatively common phenomena. It's also quite difficult to get adequate sputum cultures, but in this case where n=60 I'm skeptical that was the issue. There could be a lot of potential causes for this, but COVID is low on the differential. I want to say that spillover events, or a virus jumping from X host to humans, happens all the time. COVID became a pandemic because human to human transmission was possible from genetic mutation. Usually with spillover events humans are a dead end host and the person infected will be an n=1.
- arkades 6y ago
  > It's also quite difficult to get adequate sputum cultures Heck yes. PNA cx will come back negative a good 2/3 of the time. Doesn't mean an awful lot.
deleted 6y ago
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