Corona Virus, How Has It Affected Your Area So Far?

On lockdown... watching a lot of One Piece and other animes...

Illuminati conspiracy.

They want to prove a non governamental organization (WHO) can control every country through fear.

Can we just end this already, tell the virus to go home

It's going to be months sadly.

Oh god, I can't stand those two

They are just peddling false hope. We are up to a year away from any "vaccine." It literally does not matter if the drug "works" on coronavirus if a side effect kills you 4 months from now.

Coronavirus cleaning up the environment for us!

Oh yeah, I'm sure the side effects are killing people, and not the coronavirus itself. Delusion.

Yes, we are ignoring the opinion section of Fox News, just like we are ignoring that British doctor that said millions will die.

^

The Rnaught of this is at least 3.5. For those unfamiliar with Biological terms like Rnaught: 3.5 is more than double the rate of infection of any flu in the history of humanity. It's probably much higher than this and closer to 6. That's why it's so dangerous. The virus itself is not that inherently lethal.

People will die due the sheer number of cases and the fact that almost every health system in all countries will likely get overwhelmed. Look at Italy, a country with a very good national health system has about a 7% fatality rate. Of course many factors can be attributed to this fatality rate, but clearly their system is overwhelmed with the sheer number of cases.

Diseases, especially a virus with a high Rnaught, in general, spread quickly, have higher rate of mutation, are difficult to develop a vaccine for (due to rates of mutation).

If you get this are you going to die? Most likely not. Will it cause long term health problems? Again most likely not. The U.S. seems to have a 1-2% fatality rate, with probably 10% of those infected needing serious medical attention. An estimated 60 million americans got the swine flu in 2009. That disease had an Rnaught of 1.5 and killed 12,600. Simple math says be afraid.

In the last 2 days the US has added over 35k new cases and had 700 deaths, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see its getting worse. New York believes their Apex will be 3 weeks from now. The Surgeon General has said New Orleans (way to go Mardi Gras), Chicago, and Detroit are candidates to become the next epicenter after New York. Even states with a low amount of cases are going on lockdown. Its realistic to believe shelter in place will be nation wide soon. This could last well into the summer.

lol

Maybe Thanos was right?

To the best of my knowledge, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is NOT recommended as general prophylaxis except in India. There's an ongoing trial going on (sponsored by Columbia University) on the usage of HCQ as PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis) in healthy individuals (or asymptomatic, more correctly) with one or more documented risky exposures. It's true that (at least in italy, where it's not off-label anymore) we're using HCQ right now in people with a positive swab or chest ct scan, even without symptoms; the most recent scheme includes HCQ 3x 200mg/die (PO) for 5-7 days, together with either a macrolide or a 3rd gen Cephalosporin (such as Cefriaxone) for an average of 10 days. There's a big debate going on whether to include Low-molecular-weight heparin, for the documented cases of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC)(among the main causes of death in infected young individuals) and corticosteroids (controversial findings).
Keep in mind that HCQ, among the other known side effects, has been found to be able to cause cardiac arrests due to QT prolongation, even more so if in association with macrolides, so it makes sense not to promote its widespread/non rational usage among healthy individuals.

Then why isn't there a vaccine for the common cold? Or for any form of hepatitis?

There are many viral diseases that have no vaccine. This particular corona virus might be one. We don't know yet.

Because google hasn't found it yet.

I'm a doctor too, and that statement makes no scientific sense whatsoever.

That's correct, there are many infectious diseases for which we haven't been able to develop a molecule that induces a strong and durable immune response in the host. Although we do have a vaccine against HAV and HBV (both responsibile for hepatitis).

First of all, i want to say that I appreciate your enthusiasm. I had read that study before, and a colleague of mine even brought it up during one of the multidisciplinary meetings we had about COVID-19 in my hospital. Long story short, that's an "in vitro" model, meaning it works on the cells cultivated on a petri dish. We have no guarantee that's how it works in the human body (in vivo), mostly because almost every compound you take (orally or not) gets processed/modified by your liver to a certain extent. There are also other factors that play a role, like bioavailability and how well a drug can reach and stay in the organs you want it to go.
Right now, the general consensus is that, speaking about COVID-19, HCQ is proving effective for its immunomodulatory properties (decrease of the interleukin cascade, TNF-alpha expression and so on) rather than its (dubious) antiviral properties. Keep in mind, HCQ is not even our best drug in fighting severe cases of COVID-19, as it's unclear if it helps when the disease has progressed to respiratory failure. In those cases we tend to use Tocilizumab, which is an immunomodulatory drug, in a single administration.
The role of inflammation in COVID-19 pathogenesis and progression is becoming very clear over time, even when looking at its epidemiology: women and children (weaker immune system compared to adult males) usually get less severe forms, as well as younger non-obese subjects (body fat produces several interleukines, among all IL-6; while inflammation indexes usually rise with the age, mostly due to chronic damage to cells' DNA by oxygen radicals, which makes them release pro-apoptotic signaling and flags them to white cells).