Just curious, anyone have a plan, or preps for global pandemic?

[Ron Put]

40 minutes ago, Todd Allen said:

You have confused death rates with the number of dead.  Despite a slowing of the death rate the number of dead is increasing. ...

Silly me.... I guess I was confused by this: "The number of daily coronavirus deaths in Italy fell to the lowest level in more than a week, as the head of the country's National Health Institute, Silvio Brusaferro, said...."

But your reading comprehension is obviously so much better than mine and you insist that they mean the "death rate." As you insist that we should shut down the economy and impose martial law based on just such "noisy signals."
 

40 minutes ago, Todd Allen said:

Don't take the lack of answers personally, most of Fernando Gabriel's questions don't get answered either.

Tushe! :D

Let me try again:

"By making a distinction between the viruses, Tedros has sought to rally global action against the new microbe. He and other WHO officials urged governments confronting the coronavirus to implement the public health measures that have been shown to reduce viral spread, such as isolating infected people, following those who come in contact with cases to see whether they develop illness, and suspending activities that bring together lots of people.

“We don’t even talk about containment for seasonal flu — it’s just not possible,” Tedros said. “But it is possible for Covid-19. We don’t do contact-tracing for seasonal flu — but countries should do it for Covid-19, because it will prevent infections and save lives. Containment is possible.”

Tedros said, “We have never seen before a respiratory pathogen that’s capable of community transmission but at the same time which can also be contained with the right measures. If this was an influenza epidemic, we would have expected to see widespread community transmission across the globe by now and efforts to slow it down or contain it would not be feasible.”...

People should try to protect themselves individually from flu strains, said Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s emergencies program, but at a societal and global level, “we don’t necessarily attempt to contain or stop them because we fundamentally believe they will spread unabated.”...
 

[P]eople who have been infected with influenza but are not yet showing symptoms drive a lot of the spread of that virus. WHO officials have said that, based on data from China’s outbreak, only a tiny fraction of infected people do not show symptoms and that they do not seem to be accounting for much transmission."

OK, this is the argument made by Tedros for why we should all implement lock-downs, which was adopted by the Right in Italy and the Left in the US to clobber their respective opposition.

I guess if someone has difficulties seeing the glaring factual and logical problems in the above excerpt, it's really too much to ask of them to differentiate between my question and Fernando's.

Kind of goes with believing the headline that 230,000 centenarians are missing in Japan.... (I couldn't resist, the parallels are just too obvious :)

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Ron Put

[Todd Allen]

10 minutes ago, Ron Put said:

But your reading comprehension is obviously so much better than mine and you insist that they mean the "death rate."

I was commenting on your words which I quoted exactly as written, thus my incomprehension.  https://www.crsociety.org/topic/17223-just-curious-anyone-have-a-plan-or-preps-for-global-pandemic/?do=findComment&comment=35076

 

[KHashmi317]

Are cats the next species jump for (COVID-19) coronavirus? Seems to have already happened. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00984-8

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cats-can-get-coronavirus-study-suggests-but-pet-owners-need-not-panic/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/science/tiger-cats-coronavirus.html

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/06/health/tiger-cat-coronavirus-wellness/index.html

 

[Todd Allen]

50 minutes ago, Ron Put said:

I guess if someone has difficulties seeing the glaring factual and logical problems in the above excerpt, it's really too much to ask of them to differentiate between my question and Fernando's.

Yes.

I don't see glaring factual or logical problems in your excerpt.  Tedros and I see covid-19 as fundamentally different from seasonal flu.  Covid-19 is a single virus with a high degree of novelty while seasonal flu is a collection of many viruses that have been in circulation.  Mutations among the seasonal flu viruses can generate modest novelty but it is very rare for one to come along with all three of these important factors:  very little preexisting immunity such that a large percentage of the population could develop a major infection, highly infectious in the absence of measures to limit the spread and high morbidity and mortality.  Covid-19 appears to possess all of those traits.  We can't yet put concrete numbers on those traits making it hard to know for certain its ultimate lethality but it has shown it has the potential to explode into a disaster if we sit back and wait until we have all of the answers.  My guess is there will be countries that are too large and too poor to take effective counter measures, Pakistan strikes me as a high risk example, that will in hindsight let us know if we dodged a bullet or dodged something much worse.  And it remains to be seen to what degree we will dodge it.  The measures we are taking are difficult to sustain and are unlikely to achieve China's degree of containment.

[Sibiriak]

UK

Quote

The latest report into patients admitted into critical care so far from the  [UK] Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (IANARC), showed 2,621 admissions up to 3 April, most of whom are still there.

The mean age was 60 and 73% of them were men. More than 35% of them were overweight, with a body mass index (BMI) between 25 and 30, and 37% were obese.

Quote

The death rate of those admitted to intensive care in the UK with Covid-19 has topped 50%, according to the latest figures [...]   based on a sample of 2,249 coronavirus patients.   The data showed of the 690 patients in the sample whose care outcomes were known, 346 - 50.1% - had died, while 344 had been discharged.

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Sibiriak

[Sibiriak]

Short video,  worth a look.

 

(Trigger Warning-- Ron Put-- contains BBC thought control talking points encouraging viewers to follow government social distancing guidelines. 😷)

[Gordo]

On Monday, 23andMe launched a new study intended to illuminate any genetic differences that might help explain why people who’ve contracted Covid-19 have such varying responses to the infection

[mccoy]

20 hours ago, Dean Pomerleau said:

It seems likely in places where the system is overwhelmed (or close to it) we may never have an accurate count on the number of CV-related deaths, or deaths from other causes that wouldn't have occurred had it not been for the CV-induced strain on the medical system. When this wave is over it will be instructive to look at total deaths around the peak to try to estimate the number of deaths in excess of what would be expected during normal times and thereby get a more comprehensive picture of the actual death toll.

In some parts of Italy it has already been done. Some small towns in the Bergamo area, Lombardy, one of the worst COVID19 clusters. They took the historical average of numbers of deceased in March before 2020. They realized the figures this March were different in one place by 150 deaths, 120 of which unaccounted for  by the COVID19 official deaths .  Downright explanation:  same as what's happening in NYC, many people who died at home were not counted as deceased of COVID19. The high number is due to the fact that in small towns most people are elders. 

[TomBAvoider]

I was just talking to a friend Sunday, and we agreed that there is likely some genetic background to people's responses to the CV infection. It just doesn't make sense that there are tons of people of all ages who get it and are apparently completely symptomless, even if they otherwise have all sorts of morbidities, diabetes etc., meanwhile young people with zero co-morbidities, some even athletes or health nuts succumb in no time at all. 

But really, without definitive studies, all we have are conjectures and speculations. Meanwhile people are so desperate for answers that they take any marginal or accidental correlations and draw far-reaching conclusions from it. Dean posted about the not-as-yet peer reviewed study coming out of China that pegged people's vulnerability according to blood type, a study which these days is seen in an extremely skeptical light - the effect was small and the sample was small, rife with error possibilities. Anectdotally I hear reports from Eastern Europe to the effect that doctors noted a correlation between those who were immunized against tuberculosis back in the day seemingly being more resistent to CV and being largly symptomless when they get it - but I put that down to another spurious correlation that is almost certainly completely false. 

We'll be hearing a lot of these theories going forward, and I'm not sure we'll ever have much in the way of answers. The 23-and-me project is interesting, but I'm pretty skeptical too - back in the day, they had profiles for folks showing what conditions you might be vulnerable to - and it was a mixed bag. For me, some of it was accurate, and some completely wrong. The truth is, that even if you have a given gene that predisposes you to X, it very often is the case that it must be paired with another gene or more to really express that vulnerability, and the fact that there are so many interactions between thousands of genes, and then throw in the environment, and drawing conclusions from such data is very iffy. I don't have too much faith in this, but we'll see.

[Dean Pomerleau]

9 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

Dean posted about the not-as-yet peer reviewed study coming out of China that pegged people's vulnerability according to blood type, a study which these days is seen in an extremely skeptical light - the effect was small and the sample was small, rife with error possibilities.

I was skeptical too, but less so now after discovering that it is pretty widely accepted that one's blood type can significantly impact one's susceptibility to viral infections via a variety of mechanisms. Here is a review article [1] on the topics.

--Dean

-------------

[1] Clin Microbiol Rev. 2015 Jul;28(3):801-70. doi: 10.1128/CMR.00109-14.

Blood Groups in Infection and Host Susceptibility.

Cooling L(1).

Author information: 
(1)Department of Pathology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
lcooling@med.umich.edu.

Blood group antigens represent polymorphic traits inherited among individuals and
populations. At present, there are 34 recognized human blood groups and hundreds 
of individual blood group antigens and alleles. Differences in blood group
antigen expression can increase or decrease host susceptibility to many
infections. Blood groups can play a direct role in infection by serving as
receptors and/or coreceptors for microorganisms, parasites, and viruses. In
addition, many blood group antigens facilitate intracellular uptake, signal
transduction, or adhesion through the organization of membrane microdomains.
Several blood groups can modify the innate immune response to infection. Several 
distinct phenotypes associated with increased host resistance to malaria are
overrepresented in populations living in areas where malaria is endemic, as a
result of evolutionary pressures. Microorganisms can also stimulate antibodies
against blood group antigens, including ABO, T, and Kell. Finally, there is a
symbiotic relationship between blood group expression and maturation of the
gastrointestinal microbiome.

Copyright © 2015, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

DOI: 10.1128/CMR.00109-14 
PMCID: PMC4475644
PMID: 26085552  [Indexed for MEDLINE]
 

[mccoy]

12 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

Anectdotally I hear reports from Eastern Europe to the effect that doctors noted a correlation between those who were immunized against tuberculosis back in the day seemingly being more resistent to CV and being largly symptomless when they get it - but I put that down to another spurious correlation that is almost certainly completely false. 

This alleged effect has been cited by Dr. Sehult of Medcram. The possible mechanism explained in the literature is that the acquired immune system interacts with the innate immune system (the latter is the main defense against SARSCOV2). In a few words, the acquired immunity from the TBC vaccine stimulates in some unknown way the innate immune system. this has been noticed for a few vaccines.

[TomBAvoider]

Thanks, Dean and mccoy - I guess I should be less skeptical :)

[Ron Put]

18 hours ago, Todd Allen said:

Yes.

I don't see glaring factual or logical problems in your excerpt.  Tedros and I see covid-19 as fundamentally different from seasonal flu.  ...

Yeah, OK.... So, you read it and you then agree with the listed WHO reasons for imposing China's draconian measures in the West, because:
1. According to WHO, Covid-19 is not nearly as contagious as the flu, thus it can be contained through forced isolation and contact tracing, which is impossible for the flu, because it is much more contagious.
2. Covid-19 has a death rate of 3.4%.

I must be confused, because it is pretty clear that both of these claims are false. Yet the question remains, if the claims used by WHO to promote the China isolation model are false, why isn't someone pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes? Politics, maybe? Because these questions are asked in trade publications, but not in the media....
 

14 hours ago, Sibiriak said:

Short video,  worth a look.

...

I wonder what is the purpose of posting these "human interest" videos or social media posts, when they provide no useful information but only serve to amp up the feeling of doom and gloom. Again, search for ERs overwhelmed by flu cases in 2018, for instance, and you'll find plenty of just such human interest anecdotal "reports."
 

37 minutes ago, Dean Pomerleau said:

I was skeptical too, but less so now after discovering that it is pretty widely accepted that one's blood type can significantly impact one's susceptibility to viral infections via a variety of mechanisms. Here is a review article [1] on the topics....

There are clear differences in all sorts of areas, but the evidence is all over the place and often contradictory. My understanding is that is because the complexity is far greater than the simple blood group delineations. But I haven't seen a reliable study to confirm that this is really the case. The paranoid use this supposed greater A susceptibility to claim that this is a Chinese weaponized virus, since A is much more prevalent among Caucasians than among Asians :D

32 minutes ago, mccoy said:

This alleged effect has been cited by Dr. Sehult of Medcram. The possible mechanism explained in the literature is that the acquired immune system interacts with the innate immune system (the latter is the main defense against SARSCOV2). In a few words, the acquired immunity from the TBC vaccine stimulates in some unknown way the innate immune system. this has been noticed for a few vaccines.

Interesting observation. I recall reading a study about a particularly deadly flu strain in the late 1960s which killed predominantly those under 60 (and it is one of the most deadly epidemics in the US, much deadlier than Covid-19). It turned out that those older than 65 had antibodies from a flu strain they had been exposed to decades earlier and had developed partial resistance to the late 1960s strain. I'll look for something on this later. But while possible, I also doubt that most of Eastern Europe is testing as much as the wealthier parts, so it may skew the number of infections. If Covid-19 is really a third more contagious than the average flu, it is likely that the infection rates are much, much higher than official stats (I see models suggesting 10x - 15x).

[Todd Allen]

2 hours ago, Ron Put said:

I must be confused

I'm pleasantly surprised by your moment of lucidity.

[Todd Allen]

2 hours ago, Ron Put said:

1. According to WHO, Covid-19 is not nearly as contagious as the flu, thus it can be contained through forced isolation and contact tracing, which is impossible for the flu, because it is much more contagious.

China contained covid-19 because they started their efforts when a very tiny fraction of their population had been infected.  Pretty much all of humanity has been infected by the flu.

[Thomas G]

I haven't seen this posted here before. Apologies if it has and I missed it. Another interesting AI project, this one based out of NYU. All of these results should taken with a grain of salt right now I would say, but if they keep it up and the sample size gets big enough, it could help us see things we might not otherwise in terms of why some people have severe cases and others don't. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/march/experimental-ai-tool-predicts-which-patients-with-pandemic-virus.html

 

Quote

 

The researchers were surprised to find that characteristics considered to be hallmarks of COVID-19, like certain patterns seen in lung images (e.g. ground glass opacities), fever, and strong immune responses, were not useful in predicting which of the many patients with initial, mild symptoms would go to develop severe lung disease. Neither age nor gender were helpful in predicting serious disease, although past studies had found men over 60 to be at higher risk. 

Instead, the new AI tool found that changes in three features—levels of the liver enzyme alanine aminotransferase (ALT), reported myalgia, and hemoglobin levels—were most accurately predictive of subsequent, severe disease. Together with other factors, the team reported being able to predict risk of ARDS with up to 80 percent accuracy.

ALT levels—which rise dramatically as diseases like hepatitis damage the liver—were only a bit higher in patients with COVID-19, researchers say, but still featured prominently in prediction of severity. In addition, deep muscle aches (myalgia) were also more commonplace and have been linked by past research to higher general inflammation in the body.

Lastly, higher levels of hemoglobin, the iron-containing protein that enables blood cells to carry oxygen to bodily tissues, were also linked to later respiratory distress. Could this explained by other factors, like unreported smoking of tobacco, which has long been linked to increased hemoglobin levels. Of the 33 patients at Wenzhou Central Hospital interviewed on smoking status, the two who reported having smoked, also reported that they had quit.

 

 This is not great news for me since the most recent time I had a physical all of my results were either excellent off the charts good, or well within the "normal" range except for an ever so slightly elevated ALT level which the doctors said they weren't concerned about because it was only a little high. But for whatever reason, that might mean that I am more likely to have a severe case. Not sure there is anything I can do about it, and again I'm taking these early results as interesting but not slam dunk definitive.

[Ron Put]

 

3 hours ago, Todd Allen said:

China contained covid-19 because they started their efforts when a very tiny fraction of their population had been infected.  Pretty much all of humanity has been infected by the flu.

Wow! This is what you got out it...?!! I guess it affirms the old adage that you can't lose money or an election by underestimating the public's intellectual acuity.

On another note, to keep things in perspective, here are the latest US mortality estimates for Covid-19 and for the flu:

Flu:

 

Covid-19:

I am certain that partisans still feel it was "great leadership" to seed fear and hysteria, and to plunge the US into a depression.


 

31 minutes ago, Thomas G said:

except for an ever so slightly elevated ALT level which the doctors said they weren't concerned about

Interesting, although  based on a small number of what seems to be Chinese patients, so I'd be curious if it's supported by a larger and more reliable dataset.

Have you checked your your past results?  ALT levels may jump up for a variety of reasons, like if you've had a few glasses of alcohol, or if you've taken something with acetaminophen, or if you are taking medication for cholesterol. If you didn't have elevated levels before, it's likely an aberration.

 

Edited April 8, 2020 by Ron Put

[Gordo]

The False Choice Between Lockdowns and the Economy

Countries without lockdowns are in a state of economic free fall too

I don't have a subscription so haven't read the full article... but this is something I was thinking about anyway - if they were to lift restrictions ("lockdowns") tomorrow, would it actually make a significant difference?  The fear of getting or spreading the virus is going to prevent most people from going back to "normal" until a vaccine is out.

 

vs.

‘Big Short’ investor says the shutdown is worse than the coronavirus: ‘It bleeds deep anguish and suicide’

 

I do think these orders from governors that "essential businesses only" remain open are far too extreme.  Not every business is high risk for spreading disease and just taking precautions could allow many businesses to remain open.  A friend of mine owns a specialty construction business, his employees can maintain social distance and still get work done, but our governor has ordered "non-essential" business to close, for now he isn't doing the jobs, and yet his monthly burn rate for equipment and trucks is killing him, the business could easily go bankrupt.  Stimulus bill is still confusing to most small business owners.

[TomBAvoider]

2 hours ago, Thomas G said:

I haven't seen this posted here before. Apologies if it has and I missed it. Another interesting AI project, this one based out of NYU. All of these results should taken with a grain of salt right now I would say, but if they keep it up and the sample size gets big enough, it could help us see things we might not otherwise in terms of why some people have severe cases and others don't. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/march/experimental-ai-tool-predicts-which-patients-with-pandemic-virus.html

 

 This is not great news for me since the most recent time I had a physical all of my results were either excellent off the charts good, or well within the "normal" range except for an ever so slightly elevated ALT level which the doctors said they weren't concerned about because it was only a little high. But for whatever reason, that might mean that I am more likely to have a severe case. Not sure there is anything I can do about it, and again I'm taking these early results as interesting but not slam dunk definitive.

Interesting, but as reported somewhat useless - they give no hard numbers. What does "a bit higher" mean? Or "higher levels of hemoglobin"? Ordinary blood panels have reference ranges which differ from lab to lab. This by itself doesn't tell you much about health status, because the way the reference ranges are derived, it's simply what the majority of people tested show. There was a Peter Attia podcast where one of his guests discussed NAFLD and one of the points made was how liver enzymes have been rising for *decades* in America - and how once upon a time a level which these days is smack in the middle of most reference ranges was considered *high* and was outside the reference range. Now, because of obesity and other factors, liver health has deteriorated in the entire population to the point where the upper limit of the reference range has been stretched much beyond what was considered excessive in the past - NAFLD is widespread and frequently undiagnosed. So, if you look at most of today's population - from whom the upper limit of the reference range has been derived - all those even within the higher end of "normal" range would've been considered impaired back in the day when livers were less stressed than they are today across the broad population.

Therefore, going just by current reference ranges is not a guide to your health status. Apparently, particularly when it comes to liver enzymes. In this context, it is therefore critical to know the exact numbers, and not rely upon generalities like "within range" - what "range" and what lab, and what population? If this is a study using numbers coming out of China (they say it was a "collaboration), this is particularly misleading as what is a "normal" range in China might not be "normal" in the U.S.

Maybe in fact we should be worried unless the ALT levels are actually LOW - anything above, even well within the reference ranges (in the U.S.) might... or might not... fall into the "danger area" identified by the AI program.

Unless we know the exact numbers, this is all a lot of generalities that are hard to pin down. Of the "three factors" the only one we can speak of with any degree of confidence is myalgia. 

Bottom line - who the hell knows what this means; another FAIL in reporting.   

[Sibiriak]

1 hour ago, Gordo said:

The fear of getting or spreading the virus is going to prevent most people from going back to "normal" until a vaccine is out.

 

Bill Gates has been making the same point:

On 3/31/2020 at 8:58 AM, Sibiriak said:

Bill  Gates argues that extended shutdowns are necessary,  and that if they are ended before absolute numbers of infections are brought way down,  widespread fear will still stop people from returning to  normal economic activity

Short version (10:51):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A71lfXrQlxU

Long version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHLJ0DaMIIc

On 4/1/2020 at 11:43 PM, Dean Pomerleau said:

think it's a false dichotomy to think we can either save lives or save the economy. The idea that we could "let it rip" and attempt to go about our lives as usual as the number of infections and deaths grows exponentially is untenable. As Bill Gates said recently:

It’s tough to tell people ‘keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner.'

[TomBAvoider]

1 minute ago, Sibiriak said:

The fear of getting or spreading the virus is going to prevent most people from going back to "normal" until a vaccine is out.

Really? I know Bill Gates believes that... but I find it hard to reconcile. I rather suspect not - first, there will be a group of people, a very *large* group of people who will be economically desperate enough to go ahead and go back to "normal"; think of all the retail workers and other "workers" who are working despite being scared to death because they need that paycheck. Fear doesn't mean much, if you have an even greater fear of not being able to feed yourself or your family. Not everyone can *afford* to fear the virus - they might have to overcome that fear. I realize that such a scenario might not occur to Bill Gates, being somewhat outside of his range of experiences :) 

The other thing is that people get inured to all this. It becomes just another risk to deal with, out of sight, out of mind. Are people afraid of the flu virus? Sure they are. People are afraid of HIV, but from what one reads, unsafe practices in affected communities (especially young LGBT) have resumed full swing.

Instead, I see it in different terms - people will swing right back into "normal", and it will be a distinct minority who will bother observing any mitigating practices on account of the CV.

So that's my take. I'm speculating and I might be wrong, but then again, so is everyone else :)... I guess we'll see!

[Sibiriak]

2 hours ago, TomBAvoider said:

Really? I know Bill Gates believes that... but I find it hard to reconcile. I rather suspect not

Good points. The truth maybe somewhere inbetween, imo.  It will depend on location,  and to some extent on  if and how fast infections/deaths start climbing again after the lockdowns are "prematurely" lifted.    What happens when a workplace reopens and the virus starts rapidly spreading there?

(Btw, see this interactive map of Covid-19 workplace strikes.  You click on the the icons and get info like this:

 

Quote

McDonalds Workers strike

Date

April 4, 2020

Description

After a co-worker tested positive for COVID-19, McDonalds' workers walked off the job. 

Source: https://www.foxla.com/video/670820

 

I'm not saying there would be widespread massive strikes,  but there could be a lot of disruption of normal work routines.)

Keep in mind,   Gates's whole idea is:  get infection numbers way down,  then relax constraints, test people for antibodies,  identify/ contact trace remaining infections, and most importantly, get everyone vaccinated (with the trackable vaccine Gates will develop!)

From the video below [33:45],  posted March 25.

Quote

[Bill Gates:] Now, we don’t want to have a lot of recovered people.

To be clear, we’re trying, through the shut-down in the United States, to not get to one percent of the population infected. We’re well below that today, but with exponentiation, you know you could get past that three million. 

I'm... I believe we will be able to avoid that with the... having this economic pain. 

Eventually, what we'll have to have is certificates of who is a recovered person, who is a vaccinated person...

 

 

Perhaps Ron Put ought to take up the fight against Gates's  vast influence, rather than obsessing over  some  statement  made by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus back on March 3  which virtually no one puts any stock into today.    Note also:  the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated HUNDREDS of millions of dollars  to the evil WHO!

Edited April 8, 2020 by Sibiriak

[Sibiriak]

1 hour ago, TomBAvoider said:

Interesting, but as reported somewhat useless - they give no hard numbers.

[...]Therefore, going just by current reference ranges is not a guide to your health status.

All true,  but this study was about predicting which patients who already have mild COVID-19 symptoms would be most likely to progress to severe symptoms.  It wasn't about predicting which people in the general population would get severe symptoms if they were to contract the disease.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Sibiriak

[Gordo]

6 hours ago, Sibiriak said:

All true,  but this study was about predicting which patients who already have mild COVID-19 symptoms would be most likely to progress to severe symptoms.  It wasn't about predicting which people in the general population would get severe symptoms if they were to contract the disease.

That's right, Thomas you misinterpreted that article.  Having an elevated ALT before you get COVID-19 probably doesn't predict a higher risk of COVID-19 severity.  If you got COVID-19, and then your ALT shot up, that is essentially a sign that the disease is screwing with your organs and you may be headed for trouble.

Perhaps more importantly, you might want to try to figure out why your ALT is elevated.  Note that some CR Society members have seen elevated ALT in the past related to supplements or foods they had been taking/eating.  If you are taking anything you might consider "suspect", you might try eliminating that, and getting another blood test in 3-6 months to see if your ALT has gone back down.  Certain medications can also elevate ALT.

[Gordo]

New twist on SARS-CoV-2, there had been reports from China about people who had recovered, tested negative, then got reinfected.  Now there is some actual (preliminary) scientific data explaining this unfortunate possibility:

COVID-19 REINFECTION RISK QUESTIONED AFTER LOW LEVELS OF ANTIBODIES FOUND IN RECOVERED PATIENTS

I wonder what, if any, implications this has for the prospects of an effective vaccine?

Unrelated, but the same article also mentions another possible treatment candidate drug but I think they've only done in vitro studies (I haven't looked up the reference):

"More recently, Australian researchers announced that a drug commonly used to treat parasite infections can also kill coronavirus in a laboratory setting in under 48 hours. The team, from Monash University in Melbourne, found that the antiparasitic drug Ivermectin can inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus the causes COVID-19, according to a study published Friday in the journal Antiviral Research."

 

Edited April 8, 2020 by Gordo