Smoking may raise the risk of Covid-19 by elevating enzymes that allow the coronavirus to gain access into lung cells, according to a new study.
Smokers and people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may have elevated levels of an enzyme called ACE-2, which helps the virus enter cells in their lungs, where it replicates, a study published in the European Respiratory Journal Thursday showed.
I can say I have been required to wear a mask at work the past week. My only assumption is its to prevent someone with Coronavirus from contaminating anything, because its not always (especially immediately) apparent who has it. Because otherwise I'm wearing this for no reason. And tbh outside of occasionally walking to different areas, most of my time is spent more than 6 feet from anyone even normally.
My work is essential (pay me more then :V) but its not a hospital or anything health related like that, just in case you're wondering.
@NEStalgia We don't the circumstances for those 51 cases in South Korea. Those numbers imply a highly unlikely scenario that may have no implications for you or me, yet. Divide 51 by number of known south korea cases to determine how much we should worry. Not saying it's not bad, but the lack of specifics, they don't even describe the reactivated infection symptoms as serious or mild. They could be minimal, or asymptomatic for all we know.
@NEStalgia coincidentally, NHK World show on now "Today's Close Up" is taking about a guy that had covid. Got over it. Tested negative. Then later tested positive. He's 70 years old. In this case, they say they didn't know if it reactivated or if he got reinforced. So far, the show says covid can take longer to get over completely, like 3 weeks. Im only half way into the show. So i don't know how this story ends.
I love NHK World <3 It's so peaceful & interesting. It's possibly my favorite channel. I especially love their shows: Science View, Great Gear.
@ivory_soul Thanks for laying that all out; I feel more assured with my prevention methods now (social distancing, hand washing, remembering not to touch my head/face). Part of what brought that on is that my state (IL) is now recommending (though not requiring, and at least in my neck of the woods there don't seem to be any fines) everyone wear them out in public. That's mainly due to the fact that Chicago and its surrounding suburbs have so many active cases right now. I live downstate in a less populated area and honestly try to practice good hygiene and keep my distance from most people even during less strange times; I like my space. I was basically wondering if they were necessary outside of the realms I mentioned before. I feel less bothered about seeking them out now...unless I were to become ill, of course.
I did know about glove hygiene to an extent but definitely didn't know how much care went into the masks, nor that they become useless once touched or contaminated in any way. With how they should be used vs. how they are being used by the general public appears to be pretty appalling.
@WoomyNNYes Thanks for linking that. I don't have time right now to read the full article, but I have bookmarked it for later. Cheers!
@WoomyNNYes I believe the Bloomberg article mentioned cases in China where people died after it "reactivated" but it was attributed to the dodgy false negatives. Maybe or maybe not. BUT given the fact that having it once builds some resistance, and the fact that many people are asymptomatic, it makes one wonder how many "cured" people could in fact be reactivating silently and spreading it asymptomatically.
Yeah 3 weeks isn't unusual for many illnesses. I believe from the China cases it was technically contagious up to 37 days in the longest measured numbers.
@NEStalgia yeah, in this nhk world show, talking about taking weeks to get over it, they would get positive & negative results. Now before they let someone leave the hospital, they have to test negative twice to get clearance. In not implying its its a perfect system, but what you said is in line with the show. It seems to be tough to totally get rid of the virus
@NEStalgia Like I said before, your mileage may vary. There are supplies here. Walmart even has wipes at the entrance for use. There a small businesses here making cloth masks. Gloves are available for purchase. Bleach, soap, sanitizer.
@WoomyNNYes I’d also point out that smokers are generally more susceptible to respiratory illness anyway. Not because of any enzymes, but because smoke inhalation damages and obstructs the cilia in the nasal passages and upper respiratory system that are like a filter for larger particles. Also, since nicotine is a diuretic, smokes and nicotine users are predisposed to an elevated blood pressure.
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@HobbitGamer wait until your state realizes the threat for real. The days of Clorox on the shelves will be over, even at wholesale. Though i haven't seen a Walmart. My nearest Walmart or any other big box of well outside the distance were really supposed to travel. No big box shopping here until this is all done. And that Walmart has no groceries anyway.
I doubt there is anyone without elevated blood pressure at this point, so I'm not sure that measures much.
I had a scary thought. There are people saying the curve is flattening in the US. The last several days have been all around the 30-35k mark.
But is the curve flattening, or is the country just at the absolute limit for how many tests it can process each day? They can only make testing kits so fast and there are only so many people who can carry out the tests - there is a limit to how many people can be tested each day. It strikes me as entirely possible the numbers maybe be worse, but America hit the limit for how many tests it can process.
Or maybe it's true, maybe this is the flattening of the curve at 30k per day?
On another note, here in Japan my local government is setting up to do something impressive, impressively stupid. Classes are cancelled again but not until Monday. And from Monday, home room teachers have to go from house to house to check on the students. How does this plan make any sense? We gathered everyone up, they're upstairs as I type this - taking their start of the year standardized test - and then once that's done they'll all go home. And if even one kid has it and doesn't know, we're probably all screwed. But then add to that - this plan of astronomical stupidity, to have the teachers go from house to house completely destroying any meaning to the isolation in the first place!
I said screw it. I'm using personal time and taking next week off. I can't sit in this staff room for another week waiting for bad news. Maybe after another week someone will grow a brain in city hall. And frankly, if we're destroying any point to the isolation, I want to have class. I'm an ALT, my job is to teach English to the kids. I am really grateful that I have a paycheck right now. But I am sick of sitting here with no actual job to do.
@NEStalgia There was a run on those things, but it’s stabilized. My state already has over 11k cases and 419 deaths. We are under a shelter in place, and both the city and county have curfews. However, the Walmart distribution and UPS distribution centers are just outside our town, within the county. Like I said, your mileage may vary.
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My brother-in-law was hospitalized yesterday (not with COVID symptoms). Really not excited about that.
@Heavyarms55 Well, apparently hospitals in the harder hit areas have been seeing slower growth in hospitalization rates, so hopefully that's a good sign. But it doesn't matter too much, because numbers will still be high for a while, and even if the "curve is flattening," that'll change once restrictions ease up.
Between this gd disease and our unemployment numbers expected to hit greater highs than the Great Depression, life is going to suck until scientists rush through a vaccine. And even then, we'll likely have to deal with some unfortunate side-effects of that down the road, since vaccines usually take way longer to make.
Maybe we'll have a good, old-fashioned world war at the end of this to help carry us out of this economic downturn.
@Ralizah It's true that it seems like a lot of people don't realize that the curve flattening just means the rate of infection has just stopped increasing - that if the curve flattens at 30k a day, that still means 30,000 more people are testing positive each day...
Still though, It's a very big difference between the curve actually flattening, or just hitting the limit for max amount of tests that can be done in a single day.
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@NEStalgia That sounds like a US problem to me. I don't have to pay anything if I had to be hospitalised, healthcare will cover that for me.
Anyway, the point of lowering the curve is to prevent the hospitals from getting overcrowded, and resulting in unnecessary deaths on top of it all. That's not really hard to follow now, is it?
I'm in Thailand and it's now law to wear a mask when outside. In my city, they're handing out 100,000 baht ($3000) fines and/or 1 year in jail for anyone caught without one. 2 days ago, 3 locals were jailed for 3 months for being outside after the 10pm curfew. They actually got off lightly as the police chief said violators face up to 2 year in jail and you will be punished without exception.
My city was totally sealed off from the rest of Thailand 2 weeks ago and 2 days ago they started sealing off parts within the city. Army are patrolling the streets at night.
@HobbitGamer Heck even commercial suppliers, even for wholesale has nothing in those categories.
@Ralizah "Second Great Depression", "Worse than the first", "WWIII is essential and inevitable" - Someone's been doing their homework! I remember not long ago when @Heavyarms55 and just about everyone else thought I was crazy for saying such things.
@Heavyarms55 The whole "flat curve thing" is a misnomer to begin with given that the whole population isn't tested (and can't be repeatedly tested forever anyway). It's the wrong metric. We don't know how many infections there are, only how many people seek medical attention and include getting tested. The number I think that matters more is getting a handle on what percentage of infections lead to hospitalization and where the hospitalization numbers are. The infection numbers are guesstimates at best and, as you say, limited by testing, whereas hospitalization numbers are hard data. I mean the real ideal would be that the disease spreads freely but hospitalizes nearly nobody. It doesn't seem fast at mutating though - good for vaccines, bad for it adapting to be less dangerous naturally.
I think they're currently thinking it hospitalizes about 20% (and 1/4 of those needing ICU.) If that's true, lock-down can never end. A fifth of the population needing hospitalization is simply not possible ever, no matter how slow the curve. Though if the lockdown doesn't end at least a fifth to half of the population is dead either way, and once finances get that desperate everyone will ignore lockdown leading to max hospitalization anyway. "Risking death is better than guaranteeing it no matter how many others you kill along the way" will be the standard, and not really incorrect, thinking.
@Octane Yes, it's a US thing. Insurance, even pretty good insurance will cover up to a certain amount of money, after a certain amount of money. You're likely in for $10,000-30,000 debt plus if you're hospitalized for a lengthy time. And that's if you have pretty good insurance. And you already pay thousands of year for that insurance.
If you followed US politics, remember the hoopla a decade ago about the healthcare bill and "affordable coverage"? What that really meant was regulating insurance policies and selling really cheap ones (or free as a welfare program) that cover next to nothing, then mandating that everyone must buy one because previously many people didn't. The policies have loaded caveats like "covers 80% of hospital room fee up to $300,000 year, after the first $30,000. (Covers 100% of prenatal & maternity care!)" If you can't afford to drop $30k, then the insurance is effectively like having none at all, but you spend thousands a year on it - you're paying out of pocket. Unless it all gets classified as ER which is usually more covered....figuring that stuff out is Hobbits game if I'm not mistaken. I had one of those dismal plans. A lot of people do. It's way of saying you "have insurance" but you know you can never ever actually require medical care. But your level of coverage is tied to your job/employer. Buying it yourself you'll spend fortunes and get garbage. Your job determines your healthcare. So when you see "unemployment" numbers here, remember that also means "people that now have no medical coverage" during a plague. Now some of the unemployed still have medical through a 30/70 insurance copay (if their employer is still in business), some are still covered by their employer while on furlough. Many never had it to begin with if gig working or part time. If you're poor enough and thoroughly unemployed there's Medicaid which is a welfare program for the very poor that works a bit more like you're insurance...though you still need a policy from the government, and it's still handled by an insurance company. If you're old, there's Medicare, that's kind of a permanent "we cover a percentage, and you definitely can't afford the rest, but you're old so the debt only partially matters to you." It's really sucky and the wealthier retirees buy "real" insurance to go along with it to make it actually useful.
My current plan is definitely better than the garbagiest ones, but I still can't afford to actually USE it. DON'T GET SICK is the general rule of medical/insurance here. They technically dropped the mandate to buy it at all in the past few years. But it doesn't help the actual insurance.
This is a country where 60% of the population can't afford a $1000 unexpected emergency. Now with 20% unemployment, and medical they don't have or can't afford to use. But overall this country just can't afford a plague that sends people to a hospital. It needs to be made to "go away" because it can't be endured at all. We're not set up for it. That comes with a secondary problem. Money > Health. You can't keep your heath if you have no money. Sheltering only works if you have money to do it while doing it. So the worse employment gets, the more people will just go out and about and not really give a care who else they infect because they're just trying to survive. The more companies will just ignore any lockdowns if doing business is worth more than the fines and the workers are beating down the doors to get in even at sub-China prices. And misery loves company.
@OorWullie I'm curious to see where your numbers end up. That's very harsh, but I can't help but wonder if it's actually very smart. If that level of extreme actually DOES contain the disease in short order, then it means you guys did it right and we've all done it very very wrong.
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