Could that nasty crud you had last fall have been COVID-19?
by Pinedale Online!
April 11, 2020
Editor's note: See the end of this story for additional comments from readers regarding this theory.
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Orignal post:
There has been speculation for weeks around the possibility that the COVID-19 virus hit the United States, and possibly Wyoming, weeks before previously thought, and many more people already have had it and don’t realize it, and those people are now immune. Right now this is just conjecture, but it is worth having the discussion.
Buckrail.com posted an article on April 9th about a Jackson doctor who shares this belief and has been fairly outspoken about it. Every community seems to have their own local name for it, and in Jackson they call it "that awful JH crud" that was circulating back in December 2019 and in January. In Pinedale it is often called "the Pinedale crud." It included a terrible cough that just couldn’t be shaken and seemed to last for weeks, longer than usual. It was passed off as an upper respiratory infection. There was no test for it then.
Jackson Hole gets many international tourists, including many from China. Yellowstone National Park has three million visitors a year; Grand Teton Park over two million. All the park gateway communities, including Pinedale, see a fraction of those visitors each summer.
The implications, the article says, are crucial. It means this virus may have already started working its way through Wyoming weeks to months earlier than thought and there might already be some herd immunity to it in Wyoming. The answer won’t be known until there is a test for antibodies in the blood. So it is still very important to continue all the current directives for hand washing, social distancing, and keeping sick people away from vulnerable populations.
Right now this is just a theory, but it is definitely something to think about if you are one of the ones who got awfully sick in the November/December/January timeframe last fall and are still alive today to talk about it. Once tested for antibodies, if positive, those people could immediately go back to work and our economy could get moving a whole lot faster than what was earlier thought. The people who haven’t had it could continue to self-isolate by choice, rather than by state shut-down directive, until there is either a vaccine (which may take at least a year or more) or drugs that can minimize the impacts of the effects of getting the virus.
Click on the links below for more stories on this topic.
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This article has generated additional comments. Below is a posting that was forwarded to us that appeared on Facebook, written by Jackson physician Jim Little, Jr. in response to the buckrail.com story:
"So I feel compelled to respond as a physician to a recent news media article speculating that the "crud" in Jackson in December and January was actually an early outbreak of COVID. And furthermore the article speculates that we may be approaching the point of "herd immunity". This is a highly speculative, and inaccurate report. I’m certain of it. And I think this is highly dangerous speculation. Here is why.
1) Roughly 18% of the patients with COVID are sick enough to be hospitalized, most in the ICU, and around 2% of COVID patients die. But we didn’t see any increase in hospital admissions for viral pneumonia or ARDS, increase in transfers, increase in ICU admissions, or deaths in Jackson in December or January. If the "crud" that went around in December or January was actually COVID, we would have seen a significant spike in hospitalizations. We did not.
2) COVID has very unusual appearance on CT scan of the chest. In fact the CT findings are so unusual with COVID that the protocol to diagnose COVID in China was to do a CT scan FIRST (because it was fast and accurate), and only do a COVID nasal swab (which took more time and wasn’t as accurate) if the CT was positive. COVID on CT doesn’t look like bacterial pneumonia. It doesn’t look like blood clots. It doesn’t look like influenza. But we didn’t see a SINGLE CT scan that fits the classic appearance of COVID in December or January. Not one. The first time we saw that CT was in mid-March.
3) COVID is highly contagious, and nobody in the world has immunity to it. Epidemiological studies show that COVID is doubling every 2-3 days in "hot spots", and every 5-6 days in most of the US. The "R-naught" for COVID suggests that for every one person infected, 2-3 people will get COVID. So if Jackson Hole had 1 person with COVID on January 1st, and we assume a very conservative rate of doubling every 6 days, we would have had >30,000 cases of COVID by February. That is how exponential growth works. But we do NOT have that many people sick. And we are still seeing new confirmed cases every day, with a rate of doubling every 5-6 days.
4) My clinic is a sentinel provider site for the CDC and Wyoming Health Department. So we test most of our patients with "influenza like illness" for influenza. And guess what... in December and January most of the patients we tested were positive for Influenza A or B.
So why does this matter? Well if you had "the crud" (or more likely influenza) in December or January, and you make the incorrect assumption that you had COVID and therefore are immune, you could literally DIE from that mistake. And more importantly you could expose your wife, your kids, your parents, or your neighbors if you stop social distancing.
What we are doing now is WORKING. Sun Valley, a community very, very similar to our own, is a disaster zone. Sun Valley has a higher density of COVID per 100,000 people than New York City. So don’t fall victim to false speculation. Keep up the good work. We do NOT need to be like Sun Valley, New York, or Italy.
Continue to socially isolate. Wash your hands. Try not to touch your face. Wear a mask in public. Get outdoors. Exercise. Eat healthy food. Spend more time with your family and tell them you love them. Learn a new skill. We can beat this thing. But we need to stick together and stay the course. Don’t let yourself fall victim to speculation. It isn’t worth the gamble."
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