April 17, 2020

New Covid-19 crisis hits ICUs as more patients need dialysis

Source: CNN

Emergency room doctors say they are running into a new crisis as they struggle to treat patients with Covid-19 -- a shortage of dialysis machines and supplies.
They say they are overwhelmed, not only because patients are going into kidney failure, but also because the body's intense reaction to the virus is often causing their blood to clot too much, and the clots are literally clogging up the dialysis filters.
It's part of the new syndrome that doctors are seeing in Covid-19 patients. They are not dying from the pneumonia that has been one of the defining symptoms of serious Covid-19 disease, but from other systemic effects on their hearts and other organs.

What exactly are 'underlying conditions?' And why people with them may experience more serious illness from coronavirus
"It's taken everyone by surprise because it is acting so different from everything else," said Dr. Sam Parnia, a critical care specialist at New York University Langone Medical Center.

"They are not dying because they can't get enough oxygen. They are actually dying because of other complications and it is predominately due to blood clots."

And these blood clots are clogging up the filters used to clean the blood during dialysis, Parnia and other doctors told CNN. Intensive care units are already struggling to get enough dialysis equipment and staff to care for Covid-19 patients and the crisis is made worse because they go through so many supplies. "There aren't enough filters," Parnia told CNN.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/health/coronavirus-kidney-dialysis-need/index.html

April 12, 2020

Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective cells, warn scientists

Source: South China Morning Post, Hong Kong

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 could kill the powerful immune cells that are supposed to kill the virus instead, scientists have warned.

The surprise discovery, made by a team of researchers from Shanghai and New York, coincided with frontline doctors' observation that Covid-19 could attack the human immune system and cause damages similar to that found in HIV patients.
...

Further investigations to the coronavirus infection on primary T cells would evoke "new ideas about pathogenic mechanisms and therapeutic interventions," the researchers said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology this week.
...

A doctor, who works in a public hospital treating Covid-19 patients in Beijing, said the discovery added another piece of evidence to a growing concern in medical circles that the coronavirus could sometimes behave like some of the most notorious viruses that directly attack the human immune system.

"More and more people compare it to HIV," said the doctor who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Read more: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3079443/coronavirus-could-target-immune-system-targeting-protective

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I hope to god these preliminary reports turn out to be unsubstantiated.

But it raises the question, are we being told everything about this disease?

Have governments around the world all agreed to shut down their economies for months because there actually are insidious aspects of covid-19 that are not public knowledge yet?

EDIT: Ok, that last part sounded a bit conspiratorial, as some posters have pointed out. Let me clarify that. I do not mean to imply there is a cover-up, rather, that the ramifications of the latest findings are known better to the experts and government leadership that we in the general public at this time.

The steps taken to date have been extraordinary in scope and breadth, with nations shutting down entire economies and talk now of keeping them shut down into the summer, Trump's posturing to "re-open" the country not with standing.

Personally, I am just starting to wrap my head around how big the pandemic is in both medical and economic terms.

Thanks out to those that have discussed this with me down thread already.