LISTEN: Today's "The Daily" Podcast has good information on what we now know about COVID

Thanks.

Thanks OP. That was both informative and sobering. Good luck everybody!

Some highlights if you don't have the time/inclination to listen:

The virus enters through the respiratory system and finds its way inside blood vessels. Anywhere in the body that has masses of fine blood vessels -- including the lungs, kidneys, gut and brain – can be attacked. Autopsies find thousands of tiny little blood clots throughout the body.

Lack of testing capacity is hindering detection and treatment. This disease can present itself in so many different ways. For example, someone can see a doctor with arthritis-like feeling in their toes -- that patient should be tested for Covid-19 because it can spread via blood vessels to every other part of the body. But we don't have the testing infrastructure.

The virus is always mutating -- like every two weeks -- but most mutations haven't been of any consequence. One mutation, though, is the object of a great deal of examination -- the Italian strain appears to make transmission 5x-10x more efficient than the original Wuhan version. There is much disagreement about this.

In any case, transmission throughout the U.S. is happening not because of this mutation, but because of human behavior.

There’s more and more confirmation that you are much safer outdoors than indoors. It looks like there have been no big spikes from protests. That doesn’t mean that anything you do outdoors is safe. Masks or no masks, you want to maintain a distance of six feet.

Virtually any kind of indoor environment you can imagine, there have been super-spreader events. There may be ways to make indoor interactions safer, but we can’t make them completely safe.

More and more hints that it may be relatively safe to open schools in fall, especially for very young children. It appears young kids may not transmit the virus very efficiently.

The number of cases per day could rise well beyond 100,00 if we’re not careful.

We are just in the opening phases of this pandemic – this is the second inning and there are already 120,000-plus dead.

Governors are beginning to catch on that the things you do today make a difference weeks from today.

One other piece I found interesting--it seems the virus did mutate and the prevailing strain is now easier to spread but less deadly than the original Wuhan strain.

McNeil explains this logically--Person A gets the deadly version, Person B gets the less deadly mutation. Person A dies quickly and thus doesn't really spread it, Person B does not die and thus is able to spread that strain to more people. That's also why the version that is more easily spread is prevailing (it infects more people)

I’m relieved that deaths are way down. Highest rates in New Jersey and NewYork.

[quote]One other piece I found interesting--it seems the virus did mutate and the prevailing strain is now easier to spread but less deadly than the original Wuhan strain.

Did he say it was "less deadly" or "not any more deadly"? The Italian version certainly caused a lot of death in Italy and NYC.