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FWIW, blood clotting, strokes, etc are known complications of pathological cytokine release syndrome, and we see these same symptoms occurring in other diseases

FWIW, blood clotting, strokes, etc are known complications of pathological cytokine release syndrome, and we see these same symptoms occurring in other diseases like Influenza. Unfortunately there is a huge faction of people who seek to selectively represent facts to promulgate the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is unusually dangerous, which as far as I can tell is just completely false. SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer. Those interested in learning about hoe it spreads might find some of the research findings around interferon-mediated early course immunosuppression interesting. IMO it is a plausible mechanism for why SARS-2 exhibits PRE-symptomatic spread (not asymptomatic). BTW the above (great spreader, with outcomes overwhelmingly positive) is precisely why I think SARS-2 was the worst possible candidate to respond to with a “lockdown”. It really saddens me to see destructive and unethical measures paraded as “common sense”, when they’re anything but. [/rant]

emersonrsantos 6y ago
Is this why they say nicotine may be a protective drug? Cigarette smoking products suppress anti-viral effects of Type I interferon via phosphorylation-dependent downregulation of its receptor - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  It might be the smoke and not the nicotine. Lots of non-smoking methods of getting nicotine that may not help. And lots of ways of breathing in smoke that don’t involve nicotine.
emersonrsantos 6y ago
Also, hidrohychloroquine downregulates interferon activation... too good to be true? https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/59/1/107/5523045 https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/59/1/107/55230...
Fjolsvith 6y ago
"It is tempting to surmise that the complicated pandemic definitions used by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States of America involved severity in a deliberate attempt to garner political attention and financial support for pandemic preparedness." [1] 1. https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/ https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/
jquery 6y ago
I’m getting a little exhausted with doom and gloom that fails to contextualize exactly how much worse things are than an abnormally bad flu season + pneumonia season. If you tell people that they will have lingering effects from a flu or cold, they are much more likely to report lingering effects. People are quite suggestible and medicine is complex.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  You seem to be implying that stroke can be psychosomatic. That's certainly a novel take.
  - jquery 6y ago
    That’s not what I was implying at all.
fzeroracer 6y ago
I'm saddened to see people on HN selectively represent facts to try and spread the narrative that SARS-CoV2 isn't very dangerous. Which as far as I can tell is just completely false. The reality is that it is in fact dangerous. People try to point to the idea that it only kills a low percent of the population and not putting into perspective that a disease killing around 1% or so of all humans would be a rather big deal.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  It is dangerous, but how dangerous? Every year, about 1% of the population in the US dies. The median age of COVID deaths is above life expectancy. If you are elderly, death from pneumonia is quite likely even without COVID. For a middle aged person, ordinary Influenza is statistically more dangerous than COVID. For a child, Influenza is vastly more dangerous. Efficacy of Influenza vaccination varies seasonally and averages around 50%. Furthermore, COVID death rates are going down across the board, even while cases are rising.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    > Every year, about 1% of the population in the US dies. > The median age of COVID deaths is above life expectancy. If you are elderly, death from pneumonia is quite likely even without COVID. People using the "they were going to die anyway" argument need to explain why they didn't die last year, or next year, but died this year, and died in huge numbers. Excess mortality is pretty high. Research tells us people are dying more than 10 years early. https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 > Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (13 and 11 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and <3 years for people with ≥6). > Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data on LTCs is needed to better understand and quantify the global burden of COVID-19 and to guide policy-making and interventions.
FuckButtons 6y ago
A preprint I was reading yesterday noted an 8 fold increase in risk of stroke in COVID patients vs severe flu patients. COVID is dangerous, it’s not the flu, but nor is it the Black Death. It’s far more dangerous for the elderly than flu. But more importantly for everyone else, Lock downs are a response not to the individual risk of the disease but to the collective risk of not having a functioning healthcare system.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  >A preprint I was reading yesterday noted an 8 fold increase in risk of stroke in COVID patients vs severe flu patients. The problem I have with these statement is the lack of context. Does the additional risk of stroke in COVID patients meaningfully impact the overall risk profile? If an elderly person has say a X% chance of death from COVID, and a 0.00X% of stroke, news reporting on this for public consumption is just fear mongering.
mattigames 6y ago
As you know so far it has killed 133K people (out of 3000K infected) in the US alone, you consider this number not high enough to instate a "lockdown", so the question is what number would have been enough for one to be necessary according to you?
- Jommi 6y ago
  That translates to around 0.4, which is in-line with normal influenza seasons.
  - panta 6y ago
    133k in 3000k is more like 4.4%, so an order of magnitude higher.
    - Jommi 6y ago
      Oops. Missed a zero, classically. So that does make it look more alarming. However could still be heavily effected by things such as low testing amounts, or vulnerable people front loading the numbers.
      - spaced-out 6y ago
        Deaths from Covid have already passed 100k, way more deaths than any flu season since those infamous pandemics, and that's despite lockdowns. No amount of fiddling with numbers changes that.
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        > or vulnerable people front loading the numbers So vulnerable people dying should not contribute to covid mortality statistics? Why is that?
        Jommi 6y ago
        I mean that when we are in the middle of a pandemic most likely deaths are frontloaded in that those that are going to be affected the most, will most likely be the most effected by now. If that makes sense. So it's more of a thing to keep in mind when comparing mortality statistics of an in progress pandemic to past pandemics.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
> to promulgate the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is unusually dangerous What is wrong with you? There is no evidence in your post to justify anything you say, you are either wishing things away or actively spreading FUD. Flu: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-... "The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited [as influenza deaths] do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates [...] In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths—that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts." > SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer And actual mortality figures https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality > with outcomes overwhelmingly positive Why the hell are you posting this? Your disinformation may contribute to people dying, are you ok with that? I'm all for contrarian views if they are backed up with evidence - so produce some.
- jakeogh 6y ago
  CDC Influenza and pneumonia deaths by influenza season and age: United States, 2008–2015: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pneumonia-deaths-2008-2015.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pn... (these are not estimates, see the footnote) 2015-2016 Flu: 7,961 Pneumonia: 131,858 All: 1,769,940 Excess deaths are all that really matters. Why not talk about those instead?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Thanks for that. I don't understand the discrepancy between the article and the link you posted, however from your cite of 7,961 flu deaths (in the US) agrees with what the sciam article said. > Excess deaths are all that really matters. Why not talk about those instead? Good point, but I don't have them. What my and your posts seem to show is that flu is a heck of a lot less mortal than this covid. Which is the point.
scarmig 6y ago
SARS-CoV-2 has an IFR that's ~5x that of regular flu and spreads significantly faster. It's worth pointing out that it's killed more people than all natural disasters and terrorist attacks in the US combined. So if COVID-19 is a poor killer, so were Osama bin Laden and Hurricane Katrina. And that's with the lockdowns. Without them, we'd probably be at half a million deaths by now. The lockdowns also bought us time to develop more effective treatment strategies.

emersonrsantos 6y ago

Is this why they say nicotine may be a protective drug? Cigarette smoking products suppress anti-viral effects of Type I interferon via phosphorylation-dependent downregulation of its receptor - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/

Scoundreller 6y ago
It might be the smoke and not the nicotine. Lots of non-smoking methods of getting nicotine that may not help. And lots of ways of breathing in smoke that don’t involve nicotine.

emersonrsantos 6y ago

Also, hidrohychloroquine downregulates interferon activation... too good to be true? https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/59/1/107/5523045 https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/59/1/107/55230...

Fjolsvith 6y ago

"It is tempting to surmise that the complicated pandemic definitions used by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States of America involved severity in a deliberate attempt to garner political attention and financial support for pandemic preparedness." [1] 1. https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/ https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/

jquery 6y ago

I’m getting a little exhausted with doom and gloom that fails to contextualize exactly how much worse things are than an abnormally bad flu season + pneumonia season. If you tell people that they will have lingering effects from a flu or cold, they are much more likely to report lingering effects. People are quite suggestible and medicine is complex.

Godel_unicode 6y ago
You seem to be implying that stroke can be psychosomatic. That's certainly a novel take.
- jquery 6y ago
  That’s not what I was implying at all.

fzeroracer 6y ago

I'm saddened to see people on HN selectively represent facts to try and spread the narrative that SARS-CoV2 isn't very dangerous. Which as far as I can tell is just completely false. The reality is that it is in fact dangerous. People try to point to the idea that it only kills a low percent of the population and not putting into perspective that a disease killing around 1% or so of all humans would be a rather big deal.

gridlockd 6y ago
It is dangerous, but how dangerous? Every year, about 1% of the population in the US dies. The median age of COVID deaths is above life expectancy. If you are elderly, death from pneumonia is quite likely even without COVID. For a middle aged person, ordinary Influenza is statistically more dangerous than COVID. For a child, Influenza is vastly more dangerous. Efficacy of Influenza vaccination varies seasonally and averages around 50%. Furthermore, COVID death rates are going down across the board, even while cases are rising.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > Every year, about 1% of the population in the US dies. > The median age of COVID deaths is above life expectancy. If you are elderly, death from pneumonia is quite likely even without COVID. People using the "they were going to die anyway" argument need to explain why they didn't die last year, or next year, but died this year, and died in huge numbers. Excess mortality is pretty high. Research tells us people are dying more than 10 years early. https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 > Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (13 and 11 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and <3 years for people with ≥6). > Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data on LTCs is needed to better understand and quantify the global burden of COVID-19 and to guide policy-making and interventions.

FuckButtons 6y ago

A preprint I was reading yesterday noted an 8 fold increase in risk of stroke in COVID patients vs severe flu patients. COVID is dangerous, it’s not the flu, but nor is it the Black Death. It’s far more dangerous for the elderly than flu. But more importantly for everyone else, Lock downs are a response not to the individual risk of the disease but to the collective risk of not having a functioning healthcare system.

s1artibartfast 6y ago
>A preprint I was reading yesterday noted an 8 fold increase in risk of stroke in COVID patients vs severe flu patients. The problem I have with these statement is the lack of context. Does the additional risk of stroke in COVID patients meaningfully impact the overall risk profile? If an elderly person has say a X% chance of death from COVID, and a 0.00X% of stroke, news reporting on this for public consumption is just fear mongering.

mattigames 6y ago

As you know so far it has killed 133K people (out of 3000K infected) in the US alone, you consider this number not high enough to instate a "lockdown", so the question is what number would have been enough for one to be necessary according to you?

Jommi 6y ago
That translates to around 0.4, which is in-line with normal influenza seasons.
- panta 6y ago
  133k in 3000k is more like 4.4%, so an order of magnitude higher.
  - Jommi 6y ago
    Oops. Missed a zero, classically. So that does make it look more alarming. However could still be heavily effected by things such as low testing amounts, or vulnerable people front loading the numbers.
    - spaced-out 6y ago
      Deaths from Covid have already passed 100k, way more deaths than any flu season since those infamous pandemics, and that's despite lockdowns. No amount of fiddling with numbers changes that.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      > or vulnerable people front loading the numbers So vulnerable people dying should not contribute to covid mortality statistics? Why is that?
      - Jommi 6y ago
        I mean that when we are in the middle of a pandemic most likely deaths are frontloaded in that those that are going to be affected the most, will most likely be the most effected by now. If that makes sense. So it's more of a thing to keep in mind when comparing mortality statistics of an in progress pandemic to past pandemics.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

> to promulgate the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is unusually dangerous What is wrong with you? There is no evidence in your post to justify anything you say, you are either wishing things away or actively spreading FUD. Flu: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-... "The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited [as influenza deaths] do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates [...] In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths—that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts." > SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer And actual mortality figures https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality > with outcomes overwhelmingly positive Why the hell are you posting this? Your disinformation may contribute to people dying, are you ok with that? I'm all for contrarian views if they are backed up with evidence - so produce some.

jakeogh 6y ago
CDC Influenza and pneumonia deaths by influenza season and age: United States, 2008–2015: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pneumonia-deaths-2008-2015.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pn... (these are not estimates, see the footnote) 2015-2016 Flu: 7,961 Pneumonia: 131,858 All: 1,769,940 Excess deaths are all that really matters. Why not talk about those instead?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  Thanks for that. I don't understand the discrepancy between the article and the link you posted, however from your cite of 7,961 flu deaths (in the US) agrees with what the sciam article said. > Excess deaths are all that really matters. Why not talk about those instead? Good point, but I don't have them. What my and your posts seem to show is that flu is a heck of a lot less mortal than this covid. Which is the point.

scarmig 6y ago

SARS-CoV-2 has an IFR that's ~5x that of regular flu and spreads significantly faster. It's worth pointing out that it's killed more people than all natural disasters and terrorist attacks in the US combined. So if COVID-19 is a poor killer, so were Osama bin Laden and Hurricane Katrina. And that's with the lockdowns. Without them, we'd probably be at half a million deaths by now. The lockdowns also bought us time to develop more effective treatment strategies.