Worried About Coronavirus- thread 35

[TheStarryNight]

New thread

Dominic Raab was not very charismatic was he

So 3 or 5 per cent :(

OK here is the new version of the Italy vs UK deaths chart.

Psoriasis can be mild and it can also be severe. My husband has it and gets the occasional small plaque when stressed. They're barely noticeable. When he had swollen fingers a few years ago he was thoroughly checked over by doctors in case he had psoriatic arthritis (he didn't).

I get nail psoriasis, usually just a few pits, but when it started half my big toenails detached and I had loads of pits. I still get pitting and the odd bit of onycholosis. I was referred to rheumatology on the basis of my nails and swollen fingers combined. Bloods were negative.

A friend of mine has quite severe psoriasis which is very visible and very distressing for her. It started in her early teens and was on her scalp, arms, legs and torso. She had to take some very nasty drugs for it.

Psoriasis and/or psoriatic arthritis which requires immune suppressant drugs would absolutely make you more vulnerable to Covid-19, in much the same way as taking them to treat Rheumatoid arthritis would.

Also, asthma kills 3 people a day in the UK on average and isn't taken seriously enough by a lot of people. It can and does kill, and some people have much harder to control asthma than others.

To anyone that thinks I'm minimising what is going on by saying it only affects the very old/poorly/last legs brigade....

Absolutely not! I'm well aware that there are large chunks of the population that are very vulnerable to this.

I'm also aware that even if that were true, the impact on NHS workers is horrendous. Even if they managed to save almost everyone, the trauma the medics are experiencing and the deaths among HCPs is awful.

The impact on care homes and care home staff, their residents and their families...

On the isolated who cannot cope well with isolation

This is a devastating world wide tragedy, and it will be years before we fully understand what happened.

So please don't talk about PPs like me as being effectively 'Covid deniers' because we are trying to understand the stats.

My FIL has psiorasis, it looks quite bad although we've never discussed it (because you dont really do you?) I had no idea it affected the immune system - although it's obvious when you think about it, wounds to the skin etc.

Wow Crunchy that amended chart

Thanks CrunchyCarrot

How can Raab say we are tracking France when those numbers suggest we’re still tracking Italy?

Yes I don't see it either namechange. And it's not like France has got off lightly either :(

@picklemewalnuts

Much of the burden on the NHS is ICU overload, though, and if you look at our stats 44% of ICU patients are in the 16-59 bracket. And when compared to patients that contracted viral pneumonia between 2017-2019 they are less likely to have co-morbidities that restrict independence — 90.6% of covid ICU admissions are described as “able to live without assistance with daily activities” compared to 73.4% of standard viral pneumonia admissions.

www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/b5f59585-5870-ea11-9124-00505601089b

That chart is so close!

Still tracking Italy

It's not good, that chart, is it, in terms of numbers.

Absolutely not @Crunchy. I need to stop looking at stuff. thanks for keeping it updated and posting. I don't know why I'm surprised - it's exactly what we've thought all along really.

We've had a fair while longer to prepare than Italy, I think. In terms of mobilising these super hospitals and increasing ICU capacity, as well as the whole ventilator/CPAP engineering.

The hope we can have is that possibly in the UK we may have been more proactive in identifying and shielding the very vulnerable group with a high mortality rate to this virus (1.5 million people). I asked a while ago on here whether Italy had done the same and I think TheCanterburyWhales didn't think they had. Even so our timings to put in place social distancing and shutdowns have been slow so it is still a waiting game now.

I know about asthma but normal flu usually doesn't cause pneumonia and ICU for those people. A few people out of millions have a really bad case of it

When I see Raab on tv be I'm reminded of Rick Mayall, The New Statesman

Slide deck from the press conference today if anyone is interested : assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/876889/FINAL_Press_Conference_Slides_20200330.pdf

On the subject of obese people being more susceptible. There’s evidence now that in some people obesity is as a result of autoimmune problems.

Basically, in some individuals, episodes of food poisoning cause the immune system to attack proteins in the gut lining. This causes problems with gut motility as it can lead to nerve damage. So the gut can’t clear itself.

This leads to either Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth or Intestinal Methanogen Overgrowth ( or in some cases both). The former leads to diarrhoea and weight loss, the latter to constipation and weight gain. Some people alternate between the two. Usually these people are given a diagnosis of IBS, although that is changing. Roughly 70% of people with IBS have either the precursor stage to the autoimmune condition or the autoimmune condition itself. At first the body attacks the food poisoning bugs and produces an antibody (Anti-CdtB) for that, then via repeated episodes of food poisoning and molecular mimicry it can start to mistakenly attack the proteins in the cells of the gut wall- at that point it is an autoimmune condition and a different antibody produced- Anti-Vinculin.

In the case of methanogen overgrowth, methane further slows gut motility and has been shown to increase the amount of calories people can absorb from food. So people can literally be eating the recommended number of calories a day for their height/activity level and still rapidly gain weight.

An autoimmune condition is where the body produces too strong a response to invaders, and it has occurred to me that that type of response could be linked to cytokine storms as they are an immune system over reaction too. Some people have methanogen overgrowth with either the autoimmune condition or it’s precursor though.

It’s very much an emerging field. The research of Drs Pimental, Mathur and Rezaie of Cedars-Sinai in LA is really pioneering.

Thanks Sansa, so the gov. is tracking from when each country reached 50 deaths. That makes sense that we are closely following France's trajectory.

If 10 000 don't die in two weeks it will be three weeks

Oh did i miss an informative update?

That's really interesting, Starry.

I'm borderline morbidly obese, and have mild asthma. I'm certainly not in the 'bound to get it mildly' cohort.

@TheStarryNight

That is really interesting, thanks...