covid-19

[SkyDekker 1,278]

16 minutes ago, airdvr said:

Still getting that feeling that we might be over reacting a bit.

I hope you continue to have that feeling. That means we reacted in time and did the right thing.

[airdvr 201]

6 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

I hope you continue to have that feeling. That means we reacted in time and did the right thing.

When will you know?  How will you know?

[gowlerk 2,076]

26 minutes ago, airdvr said:

Pretty soon I think you'll see people ignoring the advice.

Yup, we already are. Neither of us live in a police state so containment is not going to be 100% effective. As the dying starts to get going there is going to be enormous social pressure to comply. But you are right, we can't hide away forever. That's why I say that eventually we will all come into contact with it. Maybe next year there will be an effective vaccine or anti virals or both. Maybe not. We don't know if it will confer long lasting immunity or not. We don't know if it will mutate and become worse, or kill off the vulnerable and become just a background virus. But we do know that it is a major event and that our reaction is warranted and then some.

[JoeWeber 2,535]

40 minutes ago, airdvr said:

No need to worry about that.  Pretty soon I think you'll see people ignoring the advice.  We're lucky (probably everyone in here).  We have the means to continue for quite some time under these rules.  A majority don't.

You didn't answer. Last time I played the P word analogy and was turned in to the principal by the hall monitors. This time I'll just say please be more honest.

[gowlerk 2,076]

Maybe this picture will help

.

 

This is the description that goes with it:

"We Italians are all watching this on the media now. An Army convoy that is carrying right now the bodies of the deceased people from Bergamo to Modena, 202 Km. The bodies will be cremated there. The family members of the dead couldn’t assist their loved ones in their last hours, they died alone, surrounded by people wearing biohazard suits. Their relatives were notified about the demise by a phone call of the doctor, expressing his/her condolence."

[airdvr 201]

30 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

Maybe this picture will help

.

 

This is the description that goes with it:

"We Italians are all watching this on the media now. An Army convoy that is carrying right now the bodies of the deceased people from Bergamo to Modena, 202 Km. The bodies will be cremated there. The family members of the dead couldn’t assist their loved ones in their last hours, they died alone, surrounded by people wearing biohazard suits. Their relatives were notified about the demise by a phone call of the doctor, expressing his/her condolence."

No words.

[ryoder 1,538]

Two members of the House have tested positive:

 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/addybaird/mario-diaz-balart-first-coronavirus-test-positive-congresss

[gowlerk 2,076]

11 minutes ago, ryoder said:

Two members of the House have tested positive:

 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/addybaird/mario-diaz-balart-first-coronavirus-test-positive-congresss

It turns out that the virus is bi-partisan!

[ryoder 1,538]

4 minutes ago, RobertMBlevins said:

Trump and the US Treasury say they are sending people checks. This is how it works, more or less: Anyone with a tax return from last year either gets a check mailed to them, or if you are hooked up with IRS to receive refunds electronically, it goes to that band account. If you get Social Security, SSI, or some other government money each month, it goes to you that way. They want to do two payments, April and May. More likely is May and June. Pretty much everyone making under $85,000 will get the money. 

Trump can say anything, but here is how it works: Laws are passed by the House, then by the Senate. Trump and the Treasury cannot decide to send out checks on their own. The purse strings are controlled by Congress.

[gowlerk 2,076]

Apparently as the restrictions on the economy are taking effect people who identify as R are starting to feel the preparations are a step too far. I predict enough of them will ignore the restrictions to really mess with the system. Only when things go badly will they take it seriously again. They were a couple weeks ago, but now that it is a pocketbook issue, not so much.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/816501871/poll-as-coronavirus-spreads-fewer-americans-see-pandemic-as-a-real-threat

[billvon 2,690]

Just now, RobertMBlevins said:

The biggest problem I see isn't possibly CATCHING the disease. The biggest problem is whether the economy will go into a total crash-and-burn BECAUSE of the disease. This is far more likely than any other result of it. 

And to be blunt the epidemic will end one way or another.  It might kill 100K, it might kill 10 million - and a lot of that depends on the actions we take now.  So how much economic activity is worth a thousand lives?  A hundred thousand?  If you could eliminate all economic impact (except that caused by people dying) by doing absolutely nothing - is that worth losing .5% of our population?

[Divalent 106]

Looks like I double posted this

Edited March 19, 2020 by Divalent

[Divalent 106]

3 hours ago, airdvr said:

Still getting that feeling that we might be over reacting a bit.  CDC estimates that influenza was associated with more than 35.5 million illnesses, more than 16.5 million medical visits, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths during the 2018–2019 influenza season.  Without testing everyone we don't really know the impact and we won't, perhaps ever.

To put this in perspective, assuming your flu numbers are correct, 490,000 hospitalizations over the duration of a flu season is a pretty low load for a country that has 160,000 ventilators. It's also about 1% of all that got the flu. So even if all 2018-19 flu hospitalizations required an ICU bed, when spread over 4-6 months it would not have come close to overwhelming the system. 

From the Diamond Princess cohort, ~50% of the 700 Covid-19 positives had symptoms, and IIRC, 30% required hospitalization, and half of them (15% of 700) needed an ICU bed with ventilator. But if 15% of just 35 M get Covid, (about 10% of US population), we're talking about 5 million needing an ICU at some point. (And is it reasonable to think we can limit this to just 10% of the population?) It would appear that we could only tolerate about 1 million or so people being infected at any one time to fill our existing ventilator capacity, unless we ramp up ICU beds and ventilators. (And what to do with non-Covid folks that would normally be occupying those beds? Estimates are that only 30% of them are available on average at any one time under normal circumstances.)

Italy reached the breaking point with official counts in the tens of thousands. Yes, case counts are way below reality due to testing constraints, but our trajectory is about 10 days behind Italy, and based on per capita ventilator numbers, maybe we have another 6-10 days before the US would have hit the breaking point had we waited as long as Italy did to react.

A lot is unknown and/or unclear, but hopefully the time we are buying will allow additional tools to come into play.  If nothing else, time produce more masks and hazmat suits so at least we keep our existing medical folks from getting taken out of action (permanently or for recovery) and acquire more ventilators, test kits, and increased hospital space so we can handle a higher load.  And more time to discover better treatments.

[Divalent 106]

Sorry, looks like I Triple(!) posted this

Edited March 19, 2020 by Divalent

[JoeWeber 2,535]

5 minutes ago, RobertMBlevins said:

These scientists need to get off their dead butts, work together, receive whatever funding and assistance they require to beat this thing...and frickin' FAST. You cannot put the world on hold forever.

I've been saying this non-stop. For example, BillVon's a genius why is he allowed to have a normal day to day life while we're fretting about this stuff? That makes no sense. Time to round up these slackers, I say, and set them to work!

[gowlerk 2,076]

2 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

I've been saying this non-stop. For example, BillVon's a genius why is he allowed to have a normal day to day life while we're fretting about this stuff? That makes no sense. Time to round up these slackers, I say, and set them to work!

There are several teams working both cooperatively and separately flat out on a vaccine. Testing for both safety and efficacy will take a year even if they are immediately successful.

[JoeWeber 2,535]

4 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

There are several teams working both cooperatively and separately flat out on a vaccine. Testing for both safety and efficacy will take a year even if they are immediately successful.

Fine. But I want names, home addresses and cell phone numbers so I can keep up on progress. As it is now I have to wander from brewery to brewery looking for BillVon to get answers and that's not right.

[airdvr 201]

We're quoting numbers with no real way of knowing if they are valid.  We don't know the total number of cases but we know the number of dead.  You can't quote percentages without both.

[SivaGanesha 2]

27 minutes ago, RobertMBlevins said:

 

• Test subjects? I would offer immediate parole, or even Presidential Pardons, to inmates in Federal prison for volunteering as a test subject...as long as they were not violent offenders or considered really dangerous to the public. White collar criminals, some drug offenders, etc. 

 

Agreed.

 

While we are on the topic of prisons--and even more so jails--it seems to me that jails present a huge problem in terms of beating this thing. In a jail you have very overcrowded conditions which seem to me to be prime breeding grounds for spreading this virus. It is especially a problem in a jail because a jail, moreso than a prison, is run by the county and has a bit of a revolving door. These inmates then come into contact with correctional officers who in turn come into contact with the larger community. Big problem.

 

[ryoder 1,538]

5 minutes ago, airdvr said:

We're quoting numbers with no real way of knowing if they are valid.  We don't know the total number of cases but we know the number of dead.  You can't quote percentages without both.

Iceland is on the right track for some good statistics:

https://theweek.com/speedreads/903131/why-iceland-might-key-understanding-coronavirus

The island country is providing large-scale COVID-19 testing for its citizens, which is made easier by its small population, but they're crucially offering tests to people who aren't exhibiting symptoms.

[lummy 4]

A town in Italy just did something similar and haven't had a new case in 10 days. Basically, they tested everyone, and caught most of the people who  were asymptomatic

 

 

https://www.ft.com/content/0dba7ea8-6713-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3

Edited March 19, 2020 by lummy

[JoeWeber 2,535]

4 hours ago, airdvr said:

When will you know?  How will you know?

When you are spewing phlegm and breathing seems difficult? When Fox News blames Obama?  Seriously, what the hell are you yo's thinking? airdvr, take a big deep breath, while you still can, and unlax: there isn't a boogie man and no monsters are under your bed.

[airdvr 201]

31 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

When you are spewing phlegm and breathing seems difficult? When Fox News blames Obama?  Seriously, what the hell are you yo's thinking? airdvr, take a big deep breath, while you still can, and unlax: there isn't a boogie man and no monsters are under your bed.

There isn't for me but there are many people who are being so negatively impacted by this they're going to need to know.  I hope we have an answer in a couple of weeks.

[ryoder 1,538]

Mark Rober's latest video has some interesting experiments with hand-washing and hand-shaking:

 

[jakee 1,328]

4 hours ago, airdvr said:

We're quoting numbers with no real way of knowing if they are valid.  We don't know the total number of cases but we know the number of dead.  You can't quote percentages without both.

But again, the death rate is irrelevant when it comes to knowing that there's potential for complete collapse of healthcare. Unless you're going to bet that the death rate is low enough that it's acceptable to not bother treating people.