Wednesday, March 18, 2020

COVID-19 also hits young adults


Younger Adults Comprise Big Portion of Coronavirus Hospitalizations in U.S.

By Pam Belluck

Pam Belluck is a health and science writer for The New York Times. In 2015, she was one of seven Times staffers awarded the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Ebola epidemic.


New C.D.C. data showed that nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were aged 20 to 54. But the risk of dying was significantly higher in older people.

American adults of all ages — not just those in their 70s, 80s and 90s — are being seriously sickened by the coronavirus, according to a report on nearly 2,500 of the first recorded cases in the United States.

The report, issued Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that — as in other countries — the oldest patients had the greatest likelihood of dying and of being hospitalized. But of the 508 patients known to have been hospitalized, 38 percent were notably younger — between 20 and 54. And nearly half of the 121 patients who were admitted to intensive care units were adults under 65, the C.D.C. reported.

“I think everyone should be paying attention to this,” said Stephen S. Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “It’s not just going to be the elderly. There will be people age 20 and up. They do have to be careful, even if they think that they’re young and healthy.”

The findings served to underscore an appeal issued Wednesday at a White House briefing by Dr. Deborah Birx, a physician and State Department official who is a leader of the administration’s coronavirus task force. Citing similar reports of young adults in Italy and in France being hospitalized and needing intensive care, Dr. Birx implored the millennial generation to stop socializing in groups and to take care to protect themselves and others.


“You have the potential then to spread it to someone who does have a condition that none of us knew about, and cause them to have a disastrous outcome,” Dr. Birx said, addressing young people.

In the C.D.C. report, 20 percent of the hospitalized patients and 12 percent of the intensive care patients were between the ages of 20 and 44, basically “Younger people may feel more confident about their ability to withstand a virus like this,” said Dr. Christopher Carlsten, head of respiratory medicine at the University of British Columbia. But, he said, “if that many younger people are being hospitalized, that means that there are a lot of young people in the community that are walking around with the infection.”

The new data represents a preliminary look at the first significant wave of cases in the United States that does not include people who returned to the country from Wuhan, China, or from Japan, the authors reported. Between Feb. 12 and March 16, there were 4,226 such cases reported to the C.D.C., the study says.

The ages were reported for 2,449 of those patients, the C.D.C. said, and of those, 6 percent were 85 and older, and 25 percent were between 65 and 84. Twenty-nine percent were aged 20 to 44.


The age groups of 55 to 64 and 45 to 54 each included 18 percent of the total. Only 5 percent of cases were diagnosed in people 19 and younger.

The risk of a patient requiring hospitalization or dying of the infection caused by the coronavirus increased with age, as has been the pattern in other countries.

The report included no information about whether patients of any age had underlying risk factors, such as a chronic illness or a compromised immune system. So, it is impossible to determine whether the younger patients who were hospitalized were more susceptible to serious infection than most others in their age group.

But experts said that even if younger people in the report were medical outliers, the fact that they were taking up hospital beds and space in intensive care units was significant.

And these more serious cases represent the leading edge of how the pandemic is rapidly unfolding in the United States, showing that adults of all ages are susceptible and should be concerned about protecting their own health, and not transmitting the virus to others.

The youngest age group, people 19 and under, accounted for less than 1 percent of the hospitalizations, and none of the I.C.U. admissions or deaths. This dovetails with data from other countries so far. This week, however, the largest study to date of pediatric cases in China found that a small segment of very young children may need hospitalization for very serious symptoms, and that one 14-year-old boy in China died from the virus.

Of the 44 people whose deaths were recorded in the report, 15 were age 85 or older and 20 were between the ages of 65 to 84. There were nine deaths among adults age 20 to 64, the report said.


Some of the patients in the study are still sick, the authors noted, so the results of their cases are unclear. Data was missing for a number of the cases, “which likely resulted in an underestimation of the outcomes,” the authors wrote. Because of the missing data, the authors presented percentages of hospitalizations, I.C.U. admissions and deaths as a range. The report also says that the limited testing available in the United States so far makes this report only an early snapshot of the crisis.

Still, the authors wrote, “these preliminary data also demonstrate that severe illness leading to hospitalization, including I.C.U. admission and death, can occur in adults of any age with Covid-19.”

Roni Caryn Rabin contributed reporting.

Above is from:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-people.html

Hoax becomes a War—what a difference a week makes.

This is from the CBC-Canadian Broadcasting Company

Trump's fans were shrugging off COVID-19. Now it's a war, and he's their leader

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Alexander Panetta · CBC News · Posted: Mar 18, 2020 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: an hour ago

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U.S. conservative media have shifted to a far more aggressive tone in talking about coronavirus, which until a few days ago several were deriding as a Democrat exaggeration. Now, like President Donald Trump, Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity, seen here speaking at a 2018 political rally, are calling it a generational threat. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The MAGAverse has gotten the memo: Coronavirus is a bona-fide emergency that requires myriad actions from citizens and government in order to avert catastrophe.

The message to American conservatives is now being driven home in stark terms on President Donald Trump's favourite morning TV show. On Tuesday, the co-hosts of Fox & Friends eschewed their normally cozy seating arrangement on a shared couch and took up positions in distant parts of their studio.

Lest any viewer fail to grasp the new reality, co-host Steve Doocy emphasized it with a public-service announcement to lead off the 6 a.m. show. He cited guidelines from the U.S. Centers For Disease Control to keep six feet of distance from other people in explaining the change in policy.

"Stay away from each other," Doocy urged his viewers. "Because you don't want to get infected, and you don't want to spread infection.

"Usually we sit about 18 inches apart," Doocy added, referring to his co-hosts. "[Now] I'm up here on the curvy couch, all by myself."

A few hours later, Trump was at the White House podium promising emergency measures to send money to Americans, and also to bail out the airline industry, on top of numerous other health and economic actions.

What a difference a week makes.

The hosts of Trump's favourite morning show, Fox & Friends, usually sit pretty close together on a couch, as in this 2016 photo. Not anymore. On Tuesday, they explained that they would practice social distancing and each appear on camera from different parts of their studio. (Richard Drew/Associated Press)

The whiplash-inducing change in tone from American conservatives comes after prominent voices on the American right derided coronavirus as an exaggerated crisis at best — and at worst, a plot hatched by the media-Democrat industrial complex to take down Trump.

That what-me-worry attitude had potentially lethal real-world effects — with Trump's own fans facing the biggest risk. Republican voters overwhelmingly believe what the president says, according to one new survey, in contrast to the overall public.

After weeks of White House messaging downplaying the severity of the threat, it's no surprise several surveys showed Republicans being far likelier to shrug off health warnings.

One indicated Republicans were twice as likely to think that coronavirus news was exaggerated, and likelier to proceed with planned gatherings. Another showed similar findings.

But the latest of these surveys shows a narrower gap in attitudes between the left and right on an issue of basic public health.

Everything changes

What's changed?

For starters, Trump's message.

After COVID-19 case numbers undeniably grew in the U.S., and global markets unquestionably collapsed, and allies like Steve Bannon and Fox News host Tucker Carlson urgently pleaded with him, Trump ramped up his response.

Just a few days ago, he was spinning sunny messages of continued economic prosperity that had been central to his re-election strategy.

Trump was saying things about the virus like, "We have it totally under control … it's going to be fine" (Jan. 22), and "We've pretty much shut it down" (Feb. 2). He added that cases would drop to zero "within a couple of days" (Feb. 26) or disappear "like a miracle" (Feb. 27), and was quoting a Fox host approvingly when they blamed CNN for stoking panic.

Now that same Fox host has been sidelined by the network.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

“Anti-Trump Network @CNN doing whatever it can to stoke a national Coronavirus panic. The far left Network pretty much ignoring anyone who they interview who doesn’t blame President Trump.” @trish_regan @FoxNews Media refuses to discuss the great job our professionals are doing!

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8:53 PM - Feb 27, 2020

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And now President Trump is treating the virus for what it is: a historic health, economic and political crisis that is the biggest test of his presidency.

He insists he always took it seriously. For example, he points to his Jan. 31 restriction on travel from China. "I've always known this is a real … pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic," Trump said.

"I feel the tone is similar."

His favourite TV personalities were certainly striking a different tone. On the morning Fox show, hosts expressed horror at pictures of crowded Florida beaches and suggested the federal government might have to order a shutdown.

Just a few days earlier, the conservative commentariat was mocking the idea of shutting down big events, especially Trump campaign rallies.

Breitbart News

@BreitbartNews

LOL. Cancel Trump rallies? Dream on! https://trib.al/jNAG9QY

Dem Rep. Speier: Trump Putting 'His Most Ardent Supporters at Risk' By Not Canceling Rallies

Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) complained Sunday on MSNBC that President Donald Trump was putting "his most ardent supporters at risk" by not canceling his upcoming political rallies in light of...

breitbart.com

FDR and Trump: Wartime leaders

Perhaps the best encapsulation of the before-and-after messaging came from Trump friend and prime-time Fox host Sean Hannity.

On March 9, Hannity bemoaned "mass hysteria," the "newest hoax" from Democrats, and "manufactured, irresponsible, over-the-top rhetoric."

He lumped it in with a variety of other ailments to fret about: "You should be concerned about the flu. You should be concerned about a cold," he said, but added that the media coverage of COVID-19 was "beyond despicable."

Fast-forward a week. In his show this Tuesday, Hannity had a picture of Second World War leader Franklin D. Roosevelt on the screen — and he cast this virus as a war, with Donald J. Trump as America's wartime leader.

He called the coming 15-day period critical in containing the spread. Rest assured, Hannity said, America and its leader are up to the challenge.

"We're going to get through this," Hannity said.

"This country defeated Nazism, fascism, communism, Imperial Japan. We made it through a Great Depression, the Great Recession, 9/11, the Cold War. We're the American people. We face our problems head-on."

A week ago, Trump friend and Fox host Sean Hannity was mostly complaining about the crisis as a media exaggeration. (Fox News television)

A week later, Hannity is calling coronavirus a generational battle that he says America will win, like the Second World War and the Cold War. (Fox News television)

That choice of language brings to mind another lesson of the American presidency, embodied in the trajectory of George H.W. Bush: a tanking economy cost him re-election, but he was popular as a wartime president.

In his press conferences Monday, Trump twice referred to the virus as a war effort; five other times, he called it an "enemy" to defeat.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

The world is at war with a hidden enemy. WE WILL WIN!

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Other partisan allies have also backpedalled from their laissez-faire messages that downplayed the virus threat.

The Republican governor of Oklahoma deleted a weekend tweet where he promised to keep visiting restaurants — on Monday, he issued an emergency declaration, and on Tuesday he shut schools.

Last weekend, senior Republican congressman Devin Nunes told people to stop panicking and go out: "If you're healthy, you and your family, it's a great time to just go out. Go to a local restaurant … don't run to the grocery store and buy $4,000 of food, go to your local pub."

The next day Nunes blamed "media freaks" for distorting his message. He said he was simply encouraging people to go get takeout.

When it comes to brushing off urgency measures, however, nobody did so more brazenly than Rush Limbaugh.

Watch

Trump surprises Rush Limbaugh with honour
  • 1 month ago
  • 2:10

U.S. President Donald Trump awards Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the state of the union address. 2:10

The right-wing radio host spent days ridiculing responses to the virus. In one episode alone, on March 12, he called sports leagues "wimps" for shutting down; promised to keep traveling; accused Democrats of conspiring to shut down Trump rallies; also accused Democrats of trying to use the virus as an excuse to cancel the rest of their presidential primaries; urged listeners to stop watching the news; and said the deaths are being blown out of proportion.

"How many deaths are we talking about? And yet we are reacting this way?," Limbaugh fumed. "We're wrecking the United States economy … I don't like all these shutdowns. I think this is so overblown. But remember, this is political."

Things were different just a month ago, in those simpler times, when Trump was awarding Limbaugh the presidential medal of freedom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexander Panetta

Alexander Panetta is a Washington-based correspondent for CBC News who has covered American politics and Canada-U.S. issues since 2013. He previously worked in Ottawa, Quebec City and internationally, reporting on politics, conflict, disaster and the Montreal Expos.

    CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices|About CBC News

    Above is from:  https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/maga-memo-virus-1.5501024

    March 18: 7,038 confirmed cases of COVID-19



    Cases in U.S.


    Updated March 18, 2020

    This page will be updated regularly at noon Mondays through Fridays. Numbers close out at 4 p.m. the day before reporting.

    CDC is responding to an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus. The outbreak first started in Wuhan, China, but cases have been identified in a growing number of other locations internationally, including the United States. In addition to CDC, many public health laboratories are now testing for the virus that causes COVID-19.

    COVID-19: U.S. at a Glance*

    • Total cases: 7,038
    • Total deaths: 97
    • Jurisdictions reporting cases: 54 (50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and US Virgin Islands)

    * Data include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020, with the exception of testing results for persons repatriated to the United States from Wuhan, China and Japan. State and local public health departments are now testing and publicly reporting their cases. In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.

    Cases of COVID-19 Reported in the US, by Source of Exposure*†

    Cases of COVID-19 Reported in the US, by Source of Exposure

    Travel-related
    269

    Close contact
    276

    Under investigation
    6,493

    Total cases
    7,038

    * Data include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020, with the exception of testing results for persons repatriated to the United States from Wuhan, China and Japan. State and local public health departments are now testing and publicly reporting their cases. In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.

    † CDC is no longer reporting the number of persons under investigation (PUIs) that have been tested, as well as PUIs that have tested negative. Now that states are testing and reporting their own results, CDC’s numbers are not representative of all testing being done nationwide.

    States Reporting Cases of COVID-19 to CDC*

    * Data include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020, with the exception of testing results for persons repatriated to the United States from Wuhan, China and Japan. State and local public health departments are now testing and publicly reporting their cases. In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.

    Above is from:  https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html


    COVID-19 Cases in ILLINOIS:  288

    Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday announced the first death in Illinois from the new coronavirus, a woman who family identified as a retired nurse from Chicago, and later activated about 60 service members to assist with the response to COVID-19.

    Wednesday, a day after voters went to the polls as 55 new cases of COVID-19 brought the total in the state since the start of the outbreak 160, people were expected to hunker down and settle in for a period of isolation.


    Officials Tuesday also announced 22 cases at a nursing home in Willowbrook where an initial case was announced there over the weekend. The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 200,000 people around the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 8,000 have died, about half of them outside mainland China.

    In the United States, at least 4,500 people have been infected and at least 100 have died.

    Above is from:  https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-coronavirus-pandemic-chicago-illinois-news-20200317-hztvkm3zszfmzj7sgdege2s7z4-story.html

    Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

    ************************************************************************************************************8

    Daily COVID-19 Press Conferences

    Persons Under Investigation (PUI) for COVID-19

    Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Illinois Test Results

    Positive (Confirmed)

    288

    Deaths

    1

    Total Tested

    2052

    Information regarding the number of persons under investigation updated on March 18, 2020.
    Information to be updated Daily.

    COVID-19 Illinois Positive Cases

    <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = "[default] http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" NS = "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" />

    Positive (confirmed)288Deaths1

    Positive (confirmed)Deaths

    The Illinois Department of Public Health, local health departments, and public health partners throughout Illinois, and federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are responding to an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel coronavirus called COVID-19 that was first identified in December 2019 during an outbreak in Wuhan, China. COVID-19 has spread throughout the world, including the United States, since it was detected and was declared a public health emergency for the U.S. on January 31, 2020 to aid the nation’s healthcare community in responding to the threat.  The World Health Organization announced March 11, 2020 that the spread of coronavirus qualifies as a global pandemic.

    In addition, Gov. JB Pritzker issued a disaster proclamation March 9, 2020 regarding COVID-19 that gives the state access to federal and state resources to combat the spread of this newly emerged virus.

    The first case of COVID-19 in the United States was reported January 21, 2020 and the first confirmed case in Illinois was announced January 24, 2020 (a Chicago resident). The first cases outside Chicago and Cook County were reported March 11, 2020 in Kane and McHenry counties. The current count of cases of COVID-19 in the United States is available on the CDC webpage at www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html. Illinois case totals and test results are listed below.

    Person-to-person spread of COVID-19 appears to be mainly between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet) through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.  It also may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes. Signs and symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, and shortness of breath.  Preliminary data suggest older adults and people with underlying health conditions or compromised immune systems seems to be at greater risk of developing serious illness from the virus.

    If you are sick and have respiratory symptoms, such as fever, cough, and shortness of breath, stay home unless you need medical attention.  Remain in your home until you feel better and have no symptoms.  Keep in mind there is no treatment for COVID-19 and people who are mildly ill can isolate at home. While at home, as much as possible, stay in a specific room and away from other people. Those who need medical attention should contact their health care provider who will evaluate whether they can be cared for at home or need to be hospitalized.

    This is a rapidly evolving situation and information will be updated as needed here and on the CDC website at cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html.
    For general questions about COVID-19 and Illinois’ response and guidance, call 1-800-889-3931 or email DPH.SICK@ILLINOIS.GOV.

    Page Last Reviewed: March 18, 2020

    Above is from:  http://www.dph.illinois.gov/topics-services/diseases-and-conditions/diseases-a-z-list/coronavirus