Allergy shots for severe allergies

From a friend, authorship unconfirmed: "re #Care for COVID-19, here are notes from a panel held 3/10/20

notes were passed onto me. Seem to have been written by someone who attended. autho

“University of California, San Francisco BioHub Panel on COVID-19 March 10, 2020

• Panelists • Joe DeRisi: UCSF’s top infectious disease researcher. Co-president of ChanZuckerberg BioHub (a JV involving UCSF / Berkeley / Stanford). Co-inventor of the chip used in SARS epidemic. • Emily Crawford: COVID task force director. Focused on diagnostics • Cristina Tato: Rapid Response Director. Immunologist.
• Patrick Ayescue: Leading outbreak response and surveillance. Epidemiologist.
• Chaz Langelier: UCSF Infectious Disease doc

What’s below are essentially direct quotes from the panelists. I bracketed the few things that are not quotes. • Top takeaways • At this point, we are past containment. Containment is basically futile. Our containment efforts won’t reduce the number who get infected in the US.
• Now we’re just trying to slow the spread, to help healthcare providers deal with the demand peak. In other words, the goal of containment is to "flatten the curve", to lower the peak of the surge of demand that will hit healthcare providers. And to buy time, in hopes a drug can be developed. • How many in the community already have the virus? No one knows. • We are moving from containment to care.
• We in the US are currently where Italy was a week ago. We see nothing to say we will be substantially different. • 40-70% of the US population will be infected over the next 12-18 months. After that level you can start to get herd immunity. Unlike flu this is entirely novel to humans, so there is no latent immunity in the global population. • [We used their numbers to work out a guesstimate of deaths— indicating about 1.5 million Americans may die. The panelists did not disagree with our estimate. This compares to seasonal flu’s average of 50K Americans per year. Assume 50% of US population, that’s 160M people infected. With 1% mortality rate that's 1.6M Americans die over the next 12-18 months.]
• The fatality rate is in the range of 10X flu. • This assumes no drug is found effective and made available. • The death rate varies hugely by age. Over age 80 the mortality rate could be 10-15%. [See chart by age Signe found online, attached at bottom.]
• Don’t know whether COVID-19 is seasonal but if is and subsides over the summer, it is likely to roar back in fall as the 1918 flu did • I can only tell you two things definitively. Definitively it’s going to get worse before it gets better. And we'll be dealing with this for the next year at least. Our lives are going to look different for the next year.

• What should we do now? What are you doing for your family? • Appears one can be infectious before being symptomatic. We don’t know how infectious before symptomatic, but know that highest level of virus prevalence coincides with symptoms. We currently think folks are infectious 2 days before through 14 days after onset of symptoms (T-2 to T+14 onset). • How long does the virus last? • On surfaces, best guess is 4-20 hours depending on surface type (maybe a few days) but still no consensus on this • The virus is very susceptible to common anti-bacterial cleaning agents: bleach, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol-based. • Avoid concerts, movies, crowded places. • We have cancelled business travel.
• Do the basic hygiene, eg hand washing and avoiding touching face. • Stockpile your critical prescription medications. Many pharma supply chains run through China. Pharma companies usually hold 2-3 months of raw materials, so may run out given the disruption in China’s manufacturing. • Pneumonia shot might be helpful. Not preventative of COVID-19, but reduces your chance of being weakened, which makes COVID-19 more dangerous. • Get a flu shot next fall. Not preventative of COVID-19, but reduces your chance of being weakened, which makes COVID-19 more dangerous. • We would say “Anyone over 60 stay at home unless it’s critical”. CDC toyed with idea of saying anyone over 60 not travel on commercial airlines. • We at UCSF are moving our “at-risk” parents back from nursing homes, etc. to their own homes. Then are not letting them out of the house. The other members of the family are washing hands the moment they come in. • Three routes of infection • Hand to mouth / face • Aerosol transmission • Fecal oral route

• What if someone is sick? • If someone gets sick, have them stay home and socially isolate. There is very little you can do at a hospital that you couldn’t do at home. Most cases are mild. But if they are old or have lung or cardio-vascular problems, read on. • If someone gets quite sick who is old (70+) or with lung or cardio-vascular problems, take them to the ER. • There is no accepted treatment for COVID-19. The hospital will give supportive care (eg IV fluids, oxygen) "

flattenthecurve / decisionsupport

Allergy shots for severe allergies #1