May 29, 2020

expect your local goon fuckstick MAGAts to be sporting these soon as they run riot in armed

astroturfed 'protests' over lockdowns and defending the murder-coppers, all egged on by BLOTUS the Shit-Mouth.

May 29, 2020

CHINA!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1266354084036194306
He is fucking down to grunts

May 29, 2020

this tweet about mail-in voting by Rump is just as bad as the first one they flagged, it needs to be

flagged (or semi-blocked like his 'thugs' tweet was) as well

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1266172570983940101

May 28, 2020

Breaking: The Premier League season is set to restart on 17 June

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/52833725

https://twitter.com/BBCSport/status/1266011232060018695

May 28, 2020

With so much attention on #COVID19 in children, time for an updated #tweetorial on what we do and

don't know!

Alasdair Munro

@apsmunro

Paediatric registrar | Clinical Research Fellow Paeds ID

https://twitter.com/southamptonCRF

@southamptonCRF
|
@DFTBubbles

#COVID19 review lead | Origami and Nando's | Husband and dad

Joined April 2013

Research interests: Paediatric infectious diseases, Biofilms, Antimicrobial Resistance, Sepsis, Bacteraemia

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2zPIy8cAAAAJ&hl=en




https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1263493025650614279.html

We'll talk impact, risk, hyperinflammation syndrome, transmission, schools and more

Lets go!


1/21

Children remain grossly underrepresented in all case numbers, hospital admissions and deaths worldwide

See latest ISARIC report of >15,000 severe cases, or @PHE_uk UK deaths

https://media.tghn.org/medialibrary/2020/05/ISARIC_Data_Platform_COVID-19_Report_6MAY20.pdf

https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/04/23/coronavirus-covid-19-using-data-to-track-the-virus/


2/21




This report from @sunilbhop and friends looks at child deaths from #COVID19 compared to other causes to put them in perspective

Of ~37,000 child deaths, 43 were from COVID19

In the words of @d_spiegel , children are "unbelievably low risk"


3/21

https://twitter.com/sunilbhop/status/1262315964898697217

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1262315964898697217.html

Are some children higher risk?

Small numbers, but children usually at risk from viral respiratory infections look equally at risk from #COVID19, including tech dependent, neurodisability, malignancy or chronic lung disease

Outcomes of Children With COVID-19 Admitted to US and Canadian Pediatric Intensive Care Units

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2766037


Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes of Hospitalized and Critically Ill Children and Adolescents with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) at a Tertiary Care Medical Center in New York City
To describe the clinical profiles and risk factors for critical illness in hospitalized children and adolescents with COVID-19.

https://tinyurl.com/yaudwm9c



4/21

Important to note outcomes still pretty good for these groups, and there a number of documented cases for some (e.g. oncology, immunosuppressed) which had a predominantly mild clinical course

Even most of these children don't get very sick

COVID-19 in Children With Cancer in New York City
This cross-sectional study assesses the risk associated with Coronavirus Disease 2019 for pediatric patients with cancer.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/2766112


5/21

What about this hyperinflammatory syndrome?

It's called PIMS-TS (or MIS-C in the USA)

It seems to be an immune reaction after COVID19 infection (approx 2 - 4 weeks)

Usually starts with persistent fever, abdo pain and D&V, then can present similar to Kawasakis (+/- shock)


6/21



We currently have 3 published cohorts from London, Italy and France

Many kids get very sick, but most recover well

It seems to be dissipating (following trends in peaks of infection)

Read more about it here

Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome

It has become increasingly clear that children are less frequently affected by severe COVID-19 than adults.

https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/pims-ts/


7/21

It can be serious, but is incredibly rare

In Europe there have been about 230 cases and very few deaths. There are >80 million children

Europe CDC considers it a low risk. Be reassured

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/covid-19-risk-assessment-paediatric-inflammatory-multisystem-syndrome-15-May-2020.pdf


8/21

OK - transmission. Let's go step by step.

How easily to children catch it?

5 studies have looked at transmission to children (mainly household) and 4/5 found *significantly lower* attack rates in children than adults

The missing link? Children and transmission of SARS-CoV-2

https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/the-missing-link-children-and-transmission-of-sars-cov-2/


9/21



How many children actually have/had COVID19?

<2% of known cases have been in children, but given symptoms are so mild have we just missed them all? Are they mainly asymptomatic? Are they silent assassins?

This is harder to tell, but there is some evidence...

10/21

Iceland tested those at risk and found 1/2 rate of infection in children <10y compared to adults, and 0 cases in asymptomatic screening

Spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Icelandic Population | NEJM
Original Article from The New England Journal of Medicine — Spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Icelandic Population

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100


Vo, Italy screened >85% of the population. 2.6% had COVID19, but 0 children <10y

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20053157v1


11/21

Some say ONS data shows there's no difference between children and adult infection rates

But they found ~30 positive cases in 10,000 people

The CIs are too wide for inference about relative infection rates (compatible with 10x rates in any group)

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/england14may2020?WT.mc_id=9e5557c21c93a6f19d36bf985082f4de&WT.sn_type=TWITTER&hoot.message=There%20is%20currently%20no%20evidence%20that%20age%20affects%20the%20likelihood%20of%20being%20infected%20with%20COVID-19%20%5BLINK%5D&hoot.send_date=2020-05-14%2013%3A15%3A14&hoot.username=ONS&hoot.send_dayofweek=Thursday&hoot.send_hour=13&hootPostID=602e6bfaca6d5de6b869e70e6e9a7230#main-points


12/21



The same principle applies for 2 sero-epi studies from Switzerland & Germany

Despite lower rates of infection in children, numbers too small to be statistically significant

This is not evidence for equal rates of infection

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20088898v1

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.04.20090076v1


13/21




What do we find if we do proper sized sero-epi?

Infection rates of 1-3% in children compared to 5% in adults in a Spanish study of >60,000 people

https://www.ciencia.gob.es/stfls/MICINN/Ministerio/FICHEROS/ENECOVID_Informe_preliminar_cierre_primera_ronda_13Mayo2020.pdf



14/21



How infectious are children when infected?

Hard to say. Some examples of children not spreading at all despite multiple exposures (>100 other children) but spreading other respiratory viruses

Cluster of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in the French Alps, 2020

Abstract Background. On 07/02/2020, French Health authorities were informed of a confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in an Englishman infected in Singapore

https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa424/5819060


15/21


A German study claimed to find similar viral loads in children as adults, stating they're "just as infectious"

https://zoonosen.charite.de/fileadmin/user_upload/microsites/m_cc05/virologie-ccm/dateien_upload/Weitere_Dateien/analysis-of-SARS-CoV-2-viral-load-by-patient-age.pdf

Amongst other issues, if analysed properly the data actually showed significantly lower viral loads in children

https://osf.io/bkuar/


16/21



National reports from Netherlands

https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-covid-19/children-and-covid-19

Iceland

https://www.eapaediatrics.eu/eap-blog-covid-19-series-5-icelands-data-on-the-infectivity-of-children-cross-infection-risk/

Norway

https://www.fhi.no/contentassets/c9e459cd7cc24991810a0d28d7803bd0/notat-om-risiko-og-respons-2020-05-05.pdf

Australia

http://ncirs.org.au/sites/default/files/2020-04/NCIRS%20NSW%20Schools%20COVID_Summary_FINAL%20public_26%20April%202020.pdf

Have found limited evidence of children contributing to spread of COVID19. Most transmission is adult to adult.

17/21




What does it mean for schools?


Children are not COVID-19 super spreaders: time to go back to school

https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2020/05/19/archdischild-2020-319474


Children can get COVID19 so can almost certainly spread it

But, they are barely affected by infection, and appear less likely to catch or spread it than adults

Schools seem lower risk than adult work environments



18/21

Will outbreaks happen? Of course.

But this is our new reality for the foreseeable future. We need to mitigate against the risks and ensure mechanisms for quick response (track/trace/isolate) are in place

Children suffer harm from lockdown

https://bmjpaedsopen.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000701


19/21

Now for WHY children seem so much less affected...

Still no clear answers. Possible differences in ACE2 expression, but they seem small

Nasal Gene Expression of Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 in Children and Adults

This study compares angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) gene expression, which has been associated with SARS-CoV-2 cell entry, in the nasal epithelium of children vs adults.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2766524?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=content-shareicons&utm_content=article_engagement&utm_medium=social&utm_term=052020#.XsVklEVpvmF.twitter


Some suggest immune differences. Need to be proven.

The immune system of children: the key to understanding SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility?



https://tinyurl.com/ybzfdfuq


More research needed...!


20/21



Thanks for making it to the end!

For our comprehensive review of all paediatric #COVID19 literature (cited by @UKRI_News and @WHO ) check it out here on @DFTBubbles


21/21

AN EVIDENCE SUMMARY OF PAEDIATRIC COVID-19 LITERATURE

https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/evidence-summary-paediatric-covid-19-literature/

May 28, 2020

Bolivian Orchestra Stranded in 'Haunted' German Castle Surrounded by Wolves During Pandemic

https://variety.com/2020/music/news/orchestra-stranded-german-castle-haunted-wolves-coronavirus-bolivia-pandemic-1234615376/

A Bolivian orchestra group has been stranded in a German castle for 73 days after the countries closed their borders during the coronavirus pandemic.



The musicians, some of whom are as young as 17 years old, arrived in Germany for a spring concert tour just as the COVID-19 crisis was beginning, the BBC reports. However, their concerts were soon called off as Germany imposed a social gathering ban, and their flight back to Bolivia was canceled after the country closed its borders as a coronavirus precaution.

Since then, the group has been staying safe at the Rheinsberg Palace, a 600-year-old castle located an hour and a half northwest of Berlin. “Our bus broke down on the motorway. I remember joking that this was bad luck and perhaps our concerts would be cancelled. But never did I think it would actually happen,” said one member named Carlos.

The ancient estate was home to German royalty dating back to the 1500s, including Frederick the Great, who the group jokes is haunting the castle halls. “We all joke that Frederick’s ghost is following us and trying to trip us up. I don’t usually believe in such things but it does feel as if there are ghosts on the grounds,” said Camed Martela, a 20-year-old member of the orchestra.

The castle grounds and surrounding woodland are also home to more than a dozen packs of wolves. One member, named Tracy Prado, said she saw three wolves while out for a walk. “I froze in fear but they were just play fighting and moved on,” she said. The nearby town of Rheinsberg has been mostly welcoming to the musicians, who socially distance themselves and remain on the castle grounds. The group stays at a guest house on the estate, which has a kitchen staff that drops off food for their unplanned guests. People have also donated clothes to the group during their longer-than-expected stay.

snip

May 28, 2020

The Most "Unmanly" President? Trump Is The Definition Of Right Wing Manliness

There is no more weak and fearful creature than the white Republican voter.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/the-most-unmanly-president-trump



Tom Nichols, one of the more prominent Never Trump conservatives, dropped an article in The Atlantic on Monday titled “Donald Trump, the Most Unmanly President.” Nichols did not call Trump out on his cowardice, lying, narcissism, corruption, or immaturity. Instead, he called out Trump’s supporters for clinging to a man who does not live up to their own image of what a man is supposed to be: The key to Nichols’ entire article is just five words found in this passage: ...among whom I was raised. Nichols is 59 years old. Those manly men of his youth are long gone, replaced by a mob of terrified and aggrieved children, eager for a strongman to lead them. This is why they adore and worship Trump, a fact that Nichols would be aware of if he actually knew any of the people who comprise his former party’s base.

The Republican Party Is Full Of...Republicans?

Driftglass of The Professional Left podcast has been having fun with that line for the last couple of years at the expense of Never Trumpers. After decades of molding their party’s base into a frothing stew of easily manipulated paranoid bigots, they were shocked to discover that the average Republican could be easily manipulated by someone spewing paranoid bigotry at them. Now, Never Trumpers like Nichols make a living professing their outrage that the Republican base is exactly what he and people like Steve Schmidt turned them into while feigning total ignorance as to how this could have happened. But if they really didn’t know what the base was like, they’re not very good at their jobs. I knew exactly what they were like almost a decade ago when I first started writing about them.

This is from the third article I ever wrote back in 2011 (it’s awful so be kind):



Yeah, it’s not my best work (double spacing? Ugh!) but even back then, political novice that I was, it was screamingly obvious that the entire concept of the “manly conservative” both Nichols and I had been indoctrinated with since we were kids was laughably false. But then again, unlike Nichols and Schmidt, who are quite wealthy and only hobknob with their fellow elites, I had been talking to random right wingers online for years at that point. Since then, I’ve had lovely chats with literally thousands of white Republican voters and contrary to what Nichols claims, Donald Trump is exactly their ideal of manhood.

The Rotten Fruit Of The Poisoned Republican Tree.....

snip

May 27, 2020

Trump's Reelection Strategy Is Going To Backfire Spectacularly

Trump is basing his reelection strategy on deeply flawed predictions.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trumps-reelection-strategy-is-going



The stock market appears to have largely recovered from the Coronavirus wipeout. After the Trump administration doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to ailing companies on the verge of bankruptcy, investors have once again been reassured that the government is willing to use everything at its disposal to ensure their survival. “It almost feels like today is the first day,” Trump said during a White House meeting last week. “People are starting to go out. They’re opening. They get it.” And thus the great American capitalist machine marches onward. Or will it? If you take a deeper look at America’s so-called recovery, it becomes immediately apparent that all is not well, and Trump should be extremely worried about his reelection chances.

The gamble that almost certainly won’t work

Trump has been busy ignoring the deadly pandemic that has killed over 100,000 Americans so that he can get the economy back up and running, gambling that dead Americans are less important than good stock market numbers. This gamble might be working in the short term (some Democrats are, predictably, panicking over this), but there are good reasons to believe that this success is likely to be short term. Despite some investors and economists predicting a “V-shaped recovery” (a huge dip followed by a huge recovery), the US is more likely about to enter a prolonged depression that has the potential to make the last decade of pain seem like a bountiful paradise. Nouriel Roubini, the remarkably prescient economist who accurately predicted the market meltdown in 2008, has been sounding the alarm again about what is actually happening to the US economy. In an interview with New York Magazine, Roubini warned that contrary to the rosy picture being painted by Trump officials, “we are one step away from food riots”. His reasoning is extremely difficult to disagree with:

Wall St vs Main St

The $1200 stimulus check may have helped Americans pay the rent for a few weeks, but it isn’t going to pay for a new flat screen TV, family vacation to Florida, or new car. The disconnect between what is happening on Wall St and they everyday experience of working Americans has now reached the point of parody. The unemployment rate in the US has gone from 4 percent to 20 percent in two months (roughly 30 million people), food banks around the country are at breaking point, unemployment benefits are running out, and people are being evicted from their homes because they have exhausted all their savings. Yet the stock market is back up and investor confidence is running high. Trump might think he can run on the stock market alone, but the pain everyday Americans are feeling is going to cost him dearly at the ballot box in November if he does not take dramatic action to ease their suffering. Throwing billions of dollars at giant corporations with few strings attached might help boost the S&P 500, but it isn’t helping blue collar workers in states crucial to his re-election.

Swing State Collapse.........

snip

May 27, 2020

Trump asks diabetic seniors to repay him w/ votes just hours after Kellyanne Conway insisted insulin

plan not about politics

'I don't use insulin. Should I be?' non-diabetic president asks in latest bizarre comment

https://www.independent.co.uk/us-election-2020/trump-speech-today-insulin-plan-diabetes-coronavirus-2020-election-a9533841.html


President Donald Trump gestures to people in the audience after an event on protecting seniors with diabetes in the Rose Garden White House, Tuesday, May 26, 2020. 'I don’t use insulin. Should I be?' he asked at the event

Donald Trump wants older voters with diabetes to repay him in November for a deal his administration struck to lower their insulin costs, even though a top aide hours earlier said the move was not about politics. "I hope the seniors are going to remember it because Biden is the one who put us in the jam. They were incompetent," he said of former Vice President Joe Biden and his former Obama administration teammates. (Mr Biden is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.)

The president made the remark during an afternoon Rose Garden event during which he announced a deal with insulin producers that will make health plans available to Medicare recipients with capped $35 copay for seniors with diabetes. With the comment, the always politically minded Mr Trump broke with what one of his top counselors, Kellyanne Conway, told reporters on a call earlier in the day.

"We're talking about policy today at the White House, not politics," Ms Conway said on a call previewing the insulin price announcement. "The timing really is geared toward open enrollment," and not the 2020 election, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Director Seema Verma said on the same briefing call with reporters.

Lower drug prices, especially for older Americans, long has been one of bipartisan agreement, though congressional Republicans and the White House have been unable to strike a deal with Democrats. They did come to terms on 2018 legislation that Mr Trump signed into law aimed at helping patients obtain information to cheaper drug options from their pharmacist.

snip

May 27, 2020

The Malignant Cruelty of Donald Trump (The Atlantic article that made Rump go into red rage)

The president is defaming the memory of a woman who died nearly 20 years ago—and inflicting pain upon her family today.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/malignant-cruelty-donald-trump/612097/



“I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him—the memory of my dead wife—and perverted it for perceived political gain.” There may be a more damning thing that’s been said about an American president, but none immediately comes to mind. This sentence is from a heartbreaking May 21 letter written by Timothy Klausutis to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, asking Dorsey to delete a series of tweets by Donald Trump. Klausutis is the widower of Lori Kaye Klausutis, who died nearly 20 years ago. (Timothy Klausutis, who never remarried, still lives in the house he shared with his wife.) The autopsy conducted at the time of Lori’s death confirmed that it was an accident; she had fainted as the result of a heart condition, hitting her head on a desk. There’s not a thimble of evidence of foul play. But here’s where things go from being tragic to being twisted. When Lori Klausutis died, she worked for then–Republican Representative Joe Scarborough. Today, Scarborough is a fierce critic of the president from his perch at MSNBC, where he co-hosts Morning Joe. That is why the president has been peddling a cruel and baseless conspiracy theory that Scarborough had Klausutis murdered. This is a topic most journalists are inherently reluctant to cover, given the danger that it will draw more attention to a vile lie.

But with the president and his son Don Jr., who between them have more than 85 million Twitter followers, sending out lunatic tweets and calling for “the opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough,” human decency requires a response. That Donald Trump would resort to conspiracy theories to attack his perceived enemies is hardly a revelation. After all, Trump employed a racist conspiracy theory against Barack Obama, which helped him gain political prominence in the Republican Party, and later claimed that President Obama had wiretapped his phones. During the 2016 primary, Trump linked Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and retweeted a supporter who claimed that Marco Rubio was ineligible to run because his parents were not natural-born U.S. citizens. Trump suggested that the suicide of Vince Foster, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, and the death of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia were murders; that childhood vaccines cause autism; and that windmills cause cancer. He’s claimed that climate change is “a total and very expensive hoax” by China’s government, that a cybersecurity company framed Russia for election interference, that Ukraine was hiding Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, and that voter fraud cost him the popular vote in 2016. (Business Insider provided a useful summary of more than two dozen of Trump’s conspiracy theories in October.)

Conspiracy theories have long been evidence of Trump’s twisted psychology. He has always traveled quite easily from the real world to the twilight zone, depending on which reality suits his needs at the moment. And when someone holds him accountable—when someone calls him out for his incompetence and ethical wrongdoing—conspiracy theories often become his weapon of choice. At such moments, conspiracy theories are fine, but conspiracy theories with the added element of cruelty are even better. Which brings us back to the heartbreaking letter from Timothy Klausutis. Donald Trump doesn’t merely want to criticize his opponents; he takes a depraved delight in inflicting pain on others, even if there’s collateral damage in the process, as is the case with the Klausutis family. There’s something quite sick about it all. A lot of human casualties result from the cruelty of malignant narcissists like Donald Trump—casualties, it should be said, that his supporters in the Republican Party, on various pro-Trump websites and news outlets, and on talk radio are willing to tolerate or even defend. Their philosophy seems to be that you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet. If putting up with Trump’s indecency is the price of maintaining power, so be it.

Will Trump’s white evangelical supporters—Franklin Graham Jr., Robert Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed—defend his behavior as the perfect embodiment of the New Testament ethic, the credo of Jesus, the message from the Sermon on the Mount? “Blessed are the brutal, for they shall inherit the Earth.” Some people will argue that Trump’s promotion of this conspiracy theory is just his latest distraction, a shiny object to pull our focus away from the human and economic cost of COVID-19. Maybe. But I’m not at all convinced that this will help Trump politically. Remember, Trump’s approval rating was often well under 50 percent even when the economy was doing well and America was at relative peace abroad. There’s plenty of evidence, including the 2018 midterm elections, that Trump’s dehumanizing tactics erode his support, especially among white suburban women. And I rather doubt that people will have forgotten Trump’s reckless handling of the pandemic by November; defaming the memory of a woman who died nearly two decades ago and causing renewed grief for her family isn’t likely to help him with most voters, either. But whatever the political ramifications of this current lie being promulgated by the president, the rest of us need to name it, and to make Trump supporters own it. They are his, and he is theirs.

snip