Four more athletes test positive for coronavirus
The University announced Friday that four more athletes tested positive for coronavirus. Detroit News story here. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/2020/07/17/four-121-michigan-athletes-tested-positive-covid-19/5459569002/
And?
EVERYBODY PANIC!!!
(or not).
I appreciate that the OP didn't need to opine on it. It's just news about Michigan athletes. It's kind of refreshing.
I wish there was a clearer picture how this manifests, mostly because I have a kid going back to college in August and I'm 100% expecting he'll test positive at some point. He's rooming with 5 other guys, two of whom are from California. I've heard about the severe cases, which seem to be able to affect just about anyone, but definitely some groups way more than others. For these athletes who test positive, at Michigan and elsewhere, what does the disease look like? Do they all have or develop symptoms? If they do, how long do the symptoms last? Are there lingering effects after the disease passes? Do some get symptoms while others don't? I wish there was more in-depth data on this age group.
Which colleges and or where? My kids Fall semester is now online.
Small liberal arts college in Ohio. They have protocols including masks, daily symptom check in's, new rules for cafeterias and libraries, and the ability to go all online if you so choose. I would imagine campus will not be at capacity because some kids will either take a gap year, which they are honoring, or stay home and learn online. There are also a good number of foreign students, so those numbers are TBD too, simply because they may choose to avoid coming back to the US and do online learning at home. Also, no visitors on campus. My kid wants to go back so that's what we've agreed to. Crossing my fingers, and would love more specific data on that age group.
My daughter’s a freshman and the school is in LA so she’s fine online for a bit. Good luck with your school in Ohio.
I know other parents who's kids want to take a gap year but there is nothing to do during the gap year except stay home and either do nothing or take classes online.
My daughter is a senior in high school and they're doing all online. I don't love that he's going but he's close enough to come home if he needs to.
It affects everyone differently. The younger you are the greater chance you are of being asymptomatic which means that your body is not noticeably (symptoms) fighting the disease but you can still spread it because you are infected. There have been a couple of small studies so far that show around 60% of asymptomatic people who have had CT-scans show lung damage. There are also other side affects including weakness to disease and inflammation issues.
Most young people that are asymptomatic and have lung damage don't notice it because a slight loss in lung capacity won't be noticeable. However, it may be noticeable in athletes - we will probably know more in the next couple of months.
"Damage" is a strong word and used incorrectly here. They've found abnormalities and that's relative to healthy people. We don't even know if that's unique to this virus or common for respiratory diseases.
Per a Denver based pulmonologist (interviewed by NPR) re: the tiny study you refer to:
"Usually if someone is asymptomatic [with a common cold or flu virus], we would never even see them at all," she says, "and we would never think to get a CT scan on them." So there's no comparable data to say whether the lung abnormalities are specific to asymptomatic coronavirus carriers, or common among respiratory viruses.
We need to stop hanging on certain things, trying desperately to make this seem worse than it really is for young healthy people.
This is a completely irresponsible conclusion. The fact is, we don't know what the long-term health effects of the virus are, including for people who were originally asymptomatic. It's a novel virus. Maybe you're right (I hope so!) but maybe you're wrong. Time will tell.
Your baseless fear mongering is completely irresponsible.
This is an RNA coronavirus, very similar to ones we know a lot about. It even attacks the exact same part of cells (the ACE2 inhibitor) as the common cold coronavirus HCoV-NL63 It doesn't lay dormant like HIV or herpes (so all those comparisons you see are completely wrong and irresponsible). It's an unsatable, short-living virus. We know these things.
There is absolutely no evidence or reason to believe these lung abnormalities amongst asymptomatic people that don't even cause people to notice (no cough, no shortness of breath) and which heal/the inflammation reduces would cause any more long term damage than other respiratory infections.
The fact it's novel means it's ravaging older and unhealthy people who didn't build up immunity when they were younger (like they did with other coronoviruses). And that's serious. We need to protect those populations and wear masks and all that but we also need to properly contextualize what this means for younger, healthy people.
It's a Mom's duty to worry, but you can be very close to sure that if your kid tests positive they will either be in the up to 70% of those who are asymptomatic, or in the rest who have mild symptoms. Under 40 year olds have a statistically greater risk from the flu than they do from C19.
They don't all develop noticeable symptoms. If they do, they last anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks. Too early to tell about lasting effects but if they don't end up on a ventilator in the hospital (which is extremely unlikely) then they probably won't have any.
Amongst these younger age groups, this really isn't any more dangerous than the flu. Probably even closer to a common cold.
The reason they don't have a lot of definitive data about this age group is that other than these athletes and people that are forced to get tests, the vast majority of the cases are so mild they never even get detected. So they don't have meaningful denominators for any % calculations but the risk is likely extremely small.
Not to say it's zero, but it's very, very low for college aged kids.
I’m sorry, but those statements and articles are nearly as hard to stomach as articles that claim the whole thing is just a hoax. They are fear-mongering without a shred of evidence. Just as there are people who irresponsibly claim that the world should just carry on, business as usual, there are those who seem to have an active agenda to promote completely speculative information designed only to scare people and make sure the disruption to life and commerce goes on for as long as possible.
I don’t know their motivations, they may be political, they may just want to hear the sound of their own voice but they are completely irresponsible and they should be publicly rejected by everybody including the experts that so many people give so much credence to.
Ive said all along when discussing it with friends and family, its more serious than the flu, but its not the end of the world either. The truth, like everything, is somewhere in the middle. Im frustrated more and more that the truth gets overshadowed by agendas. And thats not just in regards to covid
It's more serious than the flu if you're over 60, if you're under 40 its far less serious than the flu
The challenge is that this is a new disease that we don’t know lots about. While it is irresponsible to suggest that most asymptomatic folks will have long term impacts, it is equally irresponsible to suggest that we know they won’t. There are multiple cases where imaging has been done on asymptomatic people and there has been noticeable lung damage. The hope is that they will heal fine and there will be no long term impacts, but that is something we don’t know conclusively. Hopefully someone is doing studies following these patients long term so that we can see the improvement in the lungs that doctors are hopeful to see. Until we have more studies, we don’t know that for sure. i thought this linked article provided a fairly impartial treatment of the issue (there is an underlying paper linked in the article).
A new paper in Nature Medicine, published June 18, documents the clinical patterns of asymptomatic infections. It finds that many of the people studied developed signs of minor lung inflammation — akin to walking pneumonia — while exhibiting no other symptoms of the coronavirus.
The study shows that being asymptomatic doesn't always mean that no damage has occurred in someone's body; follow-up studies will help researchers assess for potential long-term impacts. It also demonstrates that the intense scrutiny applied to novel coronavirus infections could shed light on how other respiratory diseases operate: Asymptomatic carriers of flu or common cold viruses are not studied much, so it's unclear whether the documented inflammation is a typical immune response or specific to the novel coronavirus.
"To find so many asymptomatic patients with such significant changes on CTs is quite surprising," says Dr. Alvin Ing, a professor of respiratory medicine at Macquarie University who was not involved with the study. It shows that even people with no outward signs of infection can be experiencing some temporary damage to their lungs. It feeds into a pattern he's seen in treating COVID-19 patients: "The symptoms underestimate the severity of the disease."
"I suspect that, if you followed up with these asymptomatic people in several months, most of their CT scans would be completely normal unless they were known to later develop symptoms," Taylor-Cousar says.
I hear you, but that last sentence should be the headline on the issue. Articles that pop up that I see say things for example say “vaccine for Covid not likely, top doc says,” and then you read the article and it is a doctor saying that given the relatively short-lived antibodies, it will most likely be an annual vaccine and not a one-time lifetime immunity. It is just dishonest, and more so because most people don’t read the actual article.
We are just letting bad news drive the car right now on every issue related to Covid. People legitimately need good news right now, but people seriously turn over every possible stone to eliminate any shred of hope. It is getting crazy now. I don’t understand the impulse that people have to do that.
The last sentence is pure speculation. That is why it would be irresponsible to make it the headline. Doctors have been surprised at the imaging they’ve seen in asymptomatic people. They don’t know enough to conclusively say it is something we should worry about or if it will just resolve itself.
“Doctor believes that lung damage in asymptomatic patients likely only temporary” would not be a purely speculative headline. It was just be a positive one.
I’m not sure you understand the definition of the word speculative. He has no evidence, that makes it speculative. His speculation is likely better than yours or mine, it is nonetheless still speculative.
I understand the meaning of the word "speculative" just fine. It is not "speculation" that the doctor made the statement. He did. He may be speculating, but that is no different than the speculation that is occurring toward gloom and doom for many other doctors, and their speculation is good enough to frame the tone of entire article and even the title, thus, positive speculation from doctors and experts should be no less the basis for a news story than should negative speculation from others.
You are absolutely correct. That guardian article is a freaking opinion piece. Anyone sharing an opinion piece in a scientific discussion should show themselves to the door immediately.
It's nothing but unsupported fear-mongering with no context. And that's the motivation. The media, especially trash opinion writers, peddle in fear and shock. They know that's what gets clicks and shares and pays their bills and every time someone shares these terrible articles they reward that kind of writing.
I have family members who had it, with symptoms. They said it was milder than the flu, and were through with it within 3-4 days. Everyone seems to react differently. The scary part is, which one are you going to be: the person whose symptoms are super mild or the person who ends up in the hospital with lingering symptoms long after it's over, or worse?
How one reacts is highly correlated to age and relevant comorbidities (obesity, HBP, diabetes are the big ones). So if you don't fall into those categories, the risk is very low.
Yes, there are high risk groups but there are also outliers. I know two college aged kids who got very sick and were in the hospital. No underlying conditions. They had been abroad in Italy and contracted it there. Thankfully they both survived.
I agree there are outliers. There are also outliers with common colds. Some people die of pneumonia from those. Outliers are by definition extremely rare. So it's not worth worrying about.
Question about the college aged kids: were they hospitalized while in Italy? That was very early in the pandemic when people were probably over-admitting in hospitals. Were they put on mechanical ventilation? If not, they probably were admitted more out of caution than anything else.
I’m in my late 40’s and my wife is similar. We’ve both tested positive recently and I’ve seen basically no change. Had a couple days of fatigue but I ran around 40 miles this week and have not felt much different. I’ve heard the strain going around here is not as bad as earlier but I’m not an expert or know as much as most of you. I do know that we have been testing 20-25,000 daily and our capacity to do so makes me feel like we are getting a better handle on it here. Just my 2 cents.
I know two marathoners who had symptoms (one tested negative),
One had extreme fatigue for weeks and even after fatigue lifted couldn't run a mile.
The other one started noticing their pace slowed by a minute or two per mile on runs, before obvious symptoms appeared, but recovered quickly.
I have strong doubts that we can conclude anything from personal anecdotes.
For elite athletes, the margin between,say, an "average" elite and a superstar elite is very small. Effects of the virus that are insignificant for everyday life may be significant for them.
As parent of an athlete, I want to know this stuff. As parent of a potential recruit, I want to know this stuff.
Transparency is good.
As far as I'm concerned, transparency is only self-evidently good in martinis and negligee. Otherwise...it depends.
Omg I love martinis ?
I love negligees. They really accentuate my curves.
Wow! That’s...wow!
Pet peeve: the media needs to stop saying that someone "tests positive for coronavirus." There are hundreds of coronaviruses. It's like saying that a guy "hunted animal" or "played sport."
The weather looks crummy today. I might read book.
However many there are, I don't want any of them. And I don't want anyone else unnecessarily exposed to any of them. It's that simple.
This very concept is one where people struggle as they bag on the media for reporting new case numbers. The vast majority of people in the country are scared to death of getting this virus. And therefore they want information.
Weird response.
Chances are you have already had several of them.
I think at this point it is fair to say, in response to the poster asking the question, if it is being reported in this context it was a positive for SARS-Cov-2. I don’t think the testing results have anything to do with whether the positive test indicated Covid-19, the actual cluster of symptoms that can result from being infected with that particular coronavirus.
At least that is how I understand it. Like, SARS-Cov-2 is essentially akin to HIV in the AIDS equation. That particular coronavirus can, in statistically rare cases, cause what we have come to know as Covid-19, which is not actually a “coronavirus” nor any virus at all, but a particular illness caused by one.
I could be wrong, and please advise if I am Mgoexperts.
Really? Do you think there's any chance that if they were talking about SARS the Elder, MERS, or some other coronavirus, they wouldn't indicate that they were talking about something other than the current pandemic coronavirus SARS-Cov-2 that has, you know, changed the lives of humanity in a way humans haven't experienced in 100 years?
If this is your pet peeve then I think you are a fucking weirdo.
Well this is one way to boost their numbers then.
Big deal.
I don't even get why this is news anymore except to try to cause panic. Are they going to start announcing every time someone gets a new virus, infection, or disease of some kind?
Affirmative.
It's news ... but not really in the way most people are seeing it. I view all these various releases as a decent estimate (with an error range, of course) for the infection rate among the general population. That percentage can be useful from a modelling POV.
But otherwise ... yeah, it's not really news. Some U-M athletes, who may not have been tested except for the fact they have more access to tests than the general population, tested positive.
OK. But many (I would conjecture over 100,000!) other Michigan citizens would test positive too if they had the same testing access.
Maybe because it's a global pandemic that is hospitalizing and killing a lot of people? I wouldn't worry about announcements around the seasonal cold and flu, if that makes you feel any better.
Covid 19 is less lethal than the seasonal flu. Why are we still talking about this?
“COVID19 is not a high-risk disease for ppl under 70. We’re seeing focus on cases but it doesn’t matter how many cases. It only matters who gets the cases: infection fatality rate for ppl under 70 is 0.04%—that’s less than or equal to seasonal flu”
—Dr Scott Atlas, Stanford Univ