We still don’t know how much we don’t know about COVID-19.
The immediate effects of the disease are devastating.But what has confronted doctors and patients alike since American hospitals began to fill up in March has been another, deeply sobering prospect: that of long-term, maybe permanent organ damage among those who contract severe COVID-19 infections.
This confirms what TPM reader JO wrote on May 6th. [Josh posted it at 9:53 am]
It makes ‘herd immunity’ (what a degrading term!) much less manageable and not at all desirable. Let the magats volunteer.
“If you come out of COVID, you may actually realize or find out that you’re on dialysis, and that you have organ failure, and that it may not come back."
But it’s no worse than the flu.
(The permanently-destroys-your-heart-lungs-liver-kidneys-and-brain-if-it-doesn’t-kill-you flu.)
I’ll continue with my half an aspirin a day. Been taking a half a tablet a day for more than ten years. It has many benefits and no downside because I have a high tolerance for aspirin. When I do cut myself by accident every once in a while, I do bleed slightly more than I used to. Aspirin also helps with inflammation.
Doesn’t do a thing for inflation though because things still keep going up every year.
Quick extremely rough math, with about 70% infection rate required for herd immunity and a roughly 20% hospitilization rate, going with the lower 40% kidney damage rate since not all hospitalizations require the ICU that is roughly 17.9 million with kidney damage on top of the 2 million dead assuming a 1% fatality rate. This whole wash over us plan is going to work great.
“It was a mystery at the beginning, because we all mistakenly thought it was just a respiratory virus,” the nurse said.”
I suspect this is because Chinese did not have significant clotting issues as clotting is known to vary between races. Chinese clot at lower rate than European Americans & African Americans clot at higher rate than European Americans. Which also likely accounts for the disproportionate mortality rates.
“researchers at Thomas Jefferson University found that African American have an more potent blood clotting factor then Caucasians. In the experiment, Bray et.Al. took blood samples from 154 subjects( 70 blacks and 84 whites) and tested the blood clotting affinity. They found that that Blacks blood clots faster because of the clotting agent PAR4. PAR4 bind more thrombin, a blood platelet activator, faster then other agents in Whites. Another gene called PCTP, which mediates platelet activation of the PAR4 was another difference between clot formation of blacks and whites. PCTP was expressed higher in black then in whites.”
A lot of people— people who are currently making the calculation that economic damage resulting from public health orders aimed at mitigating contagion outweighs the public health benefits of keeping infection rates well below the intensive care unit capacity— those people may yet find themselves in need of evacuation to a jurisdiction without an extradition treaty.