The Money Mustache Community
Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: kenmoremmm on January 23, 2020, 02:43:29 PM
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anyone preparing for it? if so, how?
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Yes. We live in China. It’s big here. Buy N95 face masks or surgical masks. Stock up (they’re sold out at the medical clinic, pharmacy, and local grocery stores in our neighborhood). Wear them if you have to leave your house. Wash hands frequently with water and soap. Carry alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Avoid contact with anyone who has been to Wuhan in the last two weeks. Avoid handling live or dead animals. Stay away from crowded areas such as subway, airport, shopping centers, and major tourist areas. Drink more warm water to keep your throat moist.
Expatartist lives in HK and has also been preparing.
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My management canceled a planned all hands meeting in China and will be using video conference instead
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All employees traveling for CNY were advised to wear face masks for the entire flight/train trip to their destination. I can’t imagine having to wear a hot, stuffy N95 mask for a 15-hour international flight. Ugh.
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So far it is less worrying than SARS and MERS, but I always have some N95 masks and bleach in my house.
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I wore an N95 mask every moment I was outside of the hotel or factory on my last business trip to China. It sucks but it is better than breathing the air there. Bonus points if it can help protect against disease. The thing is it can be really tough to get it to it exactly right at every moment. I feel for the people there.
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I'm in the US so no, but I was really sick over the weekend with the strangest respiratory bug where I had a severe headache, chest tightness, eye irritation, no fever, and tested negative for the flu. When I read the symptoms of it I thought wait, this sounds just like what I have but I live in the northern New England and I haven't traveled in awhile. Can't be.
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anyone preparing for it? if so, how?
I've not prepared for it because I live so far off of the beaten path.
I have pondered if a pandemic or fear of one could panic stock markets.
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Joke going around the young Chinese tennis player gave it to Serena Williams before beating her at the Australian Open.
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
Most of the people who have died so far were in poor health or fairly old.
So far it's something like 10,000 people sick out of a city of 13 million. Frankly I like my odds.
Even with SARS and MERS the total number of reported sick (surely undercounted) was under 10k and the deaths were in the hundreds. By comparison, influenza kills tens of thousands every year, once again mostly those who are in poor health already.
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Not doing anything because I live in rural-ish Canada, but if I lived in China, I'd be less worried about stocking up on masks, etc and more about having a very full pantry. Any city that's shut down for a while is going to run out of food quickly, or at least, it won't make it down the supply chain. I mean, it's China, how can you avoid crowds when going about your daily life, including the food sector workers.
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
Most of the people who have died so far were in poor health or fairly old.
So far it's something like 10,000 people sick out of a city of 13 million. Frankly I like my odds.
Even with SARS and MERS the total number of reported sick (surely undercounted) was under 10k and the deaths were in the hundreds. By comparison, influenza kills tens of thousands every year, once again mostly those who are in poor health already.
As i mentioned to my husband this morning, I agree with you that so far it seems the absolute risk isn’t that great. We likely are more at risk from idiots who don’t vaccinate their children living right around us.
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
Please explain what a "pneumonia vaccine" is. Vaccines offer protection against organisms not symptoms.
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
Please explain what a "pneumonia vaccine" is. Vaccines offer protection against organisms not symptoms.
Not a doctor, but I think there are pneumococcal (sp?) vaccines which protect against the common pneumonia infections?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html)
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
Please explain what a "pneumonia vaccine" is. Vaccines offer protection against organisms not symptoms.
Not a doctor, but I think there are pneumococcal (sp?) vaccines which protect against the common pneumonia infections?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html)
Sorry gang - the pneumococcal vaccine won't protect against this virus.
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
Please explain what a "pneumonia vaccine" is. Vaccines offer protection against organisms not symptoms.
Not a doctor, but I think there are pneumococcal (sp?) vaccines which protect against the common pneumonia infections?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html)
The vaccine you linked offers protection specifically to the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Coronavirus is a completely different organism (not even a bacteria). It is a virus. To my knowledge, no coronavirus vaccines are commercially available. Note: there are many different strains of Coronavirus. A vaccine against one strain would not provide protection against all strains.
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Drinking copious amounts of hard liquor to kill it.
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
There's not a pneumonia vaccine. Pneumonia is a lung infection. It can be bacterial or viral, and caused by an enormous number of things.
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I've seen a few people here (New Zealand) wearing masks on planes. Asian but no idea of their specific ethnicity.
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Schools have been closed for a month. Our CNY holiday was just extended by another two weeks. And some educational institutions are out until the end of February. N95 masks are pretty much sold out or else are being sold at exorbitant prices. It’s a bit crazy here, and we are not even in Wuhan. People are starting to talk about stocking up on food because if they close the city, there’ll be no way to get food into the city.
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Wash your hands, cover your mouth while coughing, and sneeze into your elbow.
It's a respiratory virus. Like the common cold and the flu. It's just new and scary. So, wash your hands. It'll help protect you from the far more common viruses floating around too.
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
Please explain what a "pneumonia vaccine" is. Vaccines offer protection against organisms not symptoms.
Not a doctor, but I think there are pneumococcal (sp?) vaccines which protect against the common pneumonia infections?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html)
The vaccine you linked offers protection specifically to the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Coronavirus is a completely different organism (not even a bacteria). It is a virus. To my knowledge, no coronavirus vaccines are commercially available. Note: there are many different strains of Coronavirus. A vaccine against one strain would not provide protection against all strains.
That’s the vaccine I was thinking of. I didn’t realize it only protected against those specific bacterial causes of pneumonia. But upon further investigation, it seems to me that if you have had that specific vaccine, you would indeed be at a reduced risk of developing pneumonia when exposed to one of these viral pandemics, as many of the resulting pneumonia cases are from secondary bacterial pneumonia. I’m not a doctor (it’d be great if we could get one to chime in on this), but my layman’s interpretation of this paper on the NIH site seems to support that conjecture:
Laboratory, clinical and epidemiological research has made it abundantly clear that bacterial co/secondary infection can significantly increase the morbidity and mortality of viral infections (Gupta et al., 2008). Up to 75% of those infected with influenza that go on to acquire pneumonia, are confirmed to have bacterial co-infection (Zambon, 2001). Bacterial co/secondary infection of influenza infection appears to occur frequently. Studies have shown that up to 65% of laboratory confirmed cases of influenza infection exhibited bacterial co/secondary infection, although Klein et al. (2016) state that in the majority of the research included in their meta-analysis this figure ranged between 11 and 35%. In the setting of an influenza epidemic or pandemic bacterial co/secondary infection can have devastating consequences, particularly in at-risk groups such as the immunocompromised/immunosuppressed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5481322/
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This virus causes pneumonia, and I believe that’s what people are dying of, so if you’ve had the pneumonia vaccine would you basically be immune to the life-threatening symptoms of Coronavirus?
Please explain what a "pneumonia vaccine" is. Vaccines offer protection against organisms not symptoms.
Not a doctor, but I think there are pneumococcal (sp?) vaccines which protect against the common pneumonia infections?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/index.html)
The vaccine you linked offers protection specifically to the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Coronavirus is a completely different organism (not even a bacteria). It is a virus. To my knowledge, no coronavirus vaccines are commercially available. Note: there are many different strains of Coronavirus. A vaccine against one strain would not provide protection against all strains.
That’s the vaccine I was thinking of. I didn’t realize it only protected against those specific bacterial causes of pneumonia. But upon further investigation, it seems to me that if you have had that specific vaccine, you would indeed be at a reduced risk of developing pneumonia when exposed to one of these viral pandemics, as many of the resulting pneumonia cases are from secondary bacterial pneumonia. I’m not a doctor (it’d be great if we could get one to chime in on this), but my layman’s interpretation of this paper on the NIH site seems to support that conjecture:
Laboratory, clinical and epidemiological research has made it abundantly clear that bacterial co/secondary infection can significantly increase the morbidity and mortality of viral infections (Gupta et al., 2008). Up to 75% of those infected with influenza that go on to acquire pneumonia, are confirmed to have bacterial co-infection (Zambon, 2001). Bacterial co/secondary infection of influenza infection appears to occur frequently. Studies have shown that up to 65% of laboratory confirmed cases of influenza infection exhibited bacterial co/secondary infection, although Klein et al. (2016) state that in the majority of the research included in their meta-analysis this figure ranged between 11 and 35%. In the setting of an influenza epidemic or pandemic bacterial co/secondary infection can have devastating consequences, particularly in at-risk groups such as the immunocompromised/immunosuppressed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5481322/
Bacterial pneumonia, as a secondary infection, can be caused by all sorts of bacteria. It's regularly caused by bacteria that people are normally exposed to but because of their reduced immune response after an illness like flu, the bacteria can take hold when it wouldn't ordinarily. That's what makes secondary infections so insidious. Having a vaccine against one type of bacteria, which definitely causes pneumonia, won't actually protect you from secondary pneumonia. And we're only talking about bacteria. Viral pneumonia is also quite common, and so is fungal pneumonia. Pneumonia is caused by reduced immune system, by specific organisms that attack the lungs, by all sorts of odd organisms that take hold if given the chance, by dust and other particles etc etc. Pneumonia is a condition, kind of like back pain or redness of the eye. It can be caused by an enormous number of things.
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Not preparing for it . . . as I don't really know what you would do to prepare for a virus of this sort. Your only real chance is to completely avoid all other people, which is pretty close to impossible without already having dug a bunker and stocked canned food.
Just doing the regular common sense things that everyone does - washing my hands and avoiding people who are obviously sick.
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Bad news. Looks like both the numbers and virility of this coronavirus have been... understated by the Chinese government (surprise!).
It is not only old age and people who already have something. And of course the bad thing is this is a new virus. Highly likely to mutate now that it is on humans first time. With bad luck it could get as easily to catch as the normal cold viruses. In that case we are looking at millions of death, but I am sure you still know this from the SARS panic, where it luckily didn't happen.
But having said that, are the people now buying masks in panic because on the other side of the world in a city 1 in 200 people have been infected in the last 4 weeks - are they the same that usually say "Flu vaccination? Hell no, only one in twenty get the flu!"?
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I live in pretty populated area super close to central Toronto... BUT I work 95% remotely from home and besides taking my kids to school, I actually don't get into contact with many people on a daily basis.
I'm worried... not YET... have I stock piled anything... not really but I do wood working so always have plenty of mask if it comes to that. Bottled water I always have a few cases in the basement and some canned foods. Unless some staggering numbers come out from a reputable source I'm not gonna go too crazy. So far there are 2 cases in Canada (Toronto) which were from people coming back from China.
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not really but I do wood working so always have plenty of mask if it comes to that.
PSA: mask is not the same as mask. I am quite sure woodworking masks are terrible against viruses.
That is also true for those surgeons masks many people buy. Those are meant to prevent that the surgeon infects the patient with his saliva or hairs etc. They prevent stuff from going out, less from going in.
People "in the west" should learn from Japan (whole Asia?) where people wear these masks if they are sick to not infect others. That is effective!
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I've been wearing a full body SCUBA suit to work. The tank is heavy, but the peace of mind is worth it.
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not really but I do wood working so always have plenty of mask if it comes to that.
PSA: mask is not the same as mask. I am quite sure woodworking masks are terrible against viruses.
N95 is N95, 95% of particles down to 0.3 microns. It's literally the same mask that my wife uses in a BSL 2+ laboratory.
EDIT- these are what I use for working near fiberglass: https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-N95-Woodworking-and-Sanding-Painted-Surfaces-Respirator-Mask-10-Pack-8511PB2-A/202077815
EDIT 2: more links:
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/personal-protective-equipment-infection-control/masks-and-n95-respirators
https://www.envirosafetyproducts.com/resources/dust-masks-whats-the-difference.html
https://www.eheinc.com/blog/clinical-laboratories-using-bsl-2-plus-when-working-with-pathogens-transmitted-via-inhalation/
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not really but I do wood working so always have plenty of mask if it comes to that.
PSA: mask is not the same as mask. I am quite sure woodworking masks are terrible against viruses.
N95 is N95, 95% of particles down to 0.3 microns. It's literally the same mask that my wife uses in a BSL 2+ laboratory.
EDIT- these are what I use for working near fiberglass: https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-N95-Woodworking-and-Sanding-Painted-Surfaces-Respirator-Mask-10-Pack-8511PB2-A/202077815
EDIT 2: more links:
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/personal-protective-equipment-infection-control/masks-and-n95-respirators
https://www.envirosafetyproducts.com/resources/dust-masks-whats-the-difference.html
https://www.eheinc.com/blog/clinical-laboratories-using-bsl-2-plus-when-working-with-pathogens-transmitted-via-inhalation/
A) the vast majority of stuff your wife works with in the lab are not respiratory and transmitted person to person. Her mask is as much to prevent her messing up samples as it is to protect her
B) your wife will have a well fitted mask which is a whole lot different from one purchased from a hardware store
C) the bulk of corona viruses are actually transmitted through saliva droplets entering the infectee via the eyes or hands that go on to touch the infectee's face. Complete barrier nursing includes body suits, eye covers and gloves, as well as stringent washing.
D) the droplets containing virus particles that can infect people are orders of magnitude smaller than fibreglass particles
E) N-95 isn't anywhere near 100% prevention of a corona virus but a whole lot better than nothing
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You can prepare for this by
- having your yearly flu shots. Won't give you immunity but might lessen the impact, if the virus has some similarity to other flu.
- Wearing a well fitting, appropriate face mask and wash hands often if you're frontline staff working with the public, especially the sick public. Your GPs and nurses and their admin staff will already be doing this.
- being prepared for your town to be quarantined. Could be anywhere at any time. This means maintaining a reasonable amount of petrol in your car, food in your cupboards and water in your house, vital medication etc. Also a heating source. You don't have to go overboard but a week or two of supplies isn't a terrible idea.
- minimising travel so you don't get caught in or out of a quarantine zone. If you do travel, take some extras for medication etc. If you were stuck in an airport for a few days, life would be easier with any medication your need and a handful of supplies, right? If you travel with a truck or car, have a little kit with food and water. Why not, right?
A real outbreak in your area is always pretty unlikely but taking some measures is only sensible, and they're also measures against any other short term breakdown in supplies. You don't have to be a doomsday prepper to just maintain a bit extra on a regular basis.
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E) N-95 isn't anywhere near 100% prevention of a corona virus but a whole lot better than nothing
Absolutely, but I didn't actually buy the masks for 2019-nCov, which I'm not afraid of. They are however the standard for these sorts of things (unless you want to spring for an N100). Or to put it another way, go google for "ebola hospital" in google images. The folks from the CDC show up in BSL4 space suits but the locals and Médecins Sans Frontières use whatever they can, and most of them live. They are however covered head to toe which you cover in your post.
If anything I would say that what people are missing in this 2019-nCov scare is eye protection, but I AM NOT an MD. Also, I have a beard which is my other big problem if I wanted to be protected.
D) the droplets containing virus particles that can infect people are orders of magnitude smaller than fibreglass particles
Not according the the link that I posted above which clearly states that fibreglasss particles can and do come in 1 micron dimensions while typical droplets that would actually be floating around in the air would be ~5 microns.
C) the bulk of corona viruses are actually transmitted through saliva droplets entering the infectee via the eyes or hands that go on to touch the infectee's face. Complete barrier nursing includes body suits, eye covers and gloves, as well as stringent washing.
I never said otherwise. I personally would fear for my lack of paying attention more than anything else.
B) your wife will have a well fitted mask which is a whole lot different from one purchased from a hardware store
Her lab stocks 3M part number 8271 if you want to look it up. Technically a P95 mask, but I doubt that I'll find much 2019-nCov floating around in oil. I would imagine that her biggest advantage is decades of training to not touch herself somewhere dumb, and knowing how to put the mask on right. Also, her biosafety cabinet but there's nothing I can do about that.
A) the vast majority of stuff your wife works with in the lab are not respiratory and transmitted person to person. Her mask is as much to prevent her messing up samples as it is to protect her
Absolutely, because then it would be BSL3, not BSL 2+. But to the best of my knowledge N95 still meets OHSA/NIH/CDC requirements for BSL3, whether or not her hospital would require something better. If you have any evidence to the contrary I would be very interested in seeing it. I didn't find a good BSL3 document with a few minutes of googling.
EDITed to add - a quick google showed someone saying that they wear a N95 mask for avian influenza research in the BSL3 lab at the University of Warsaw.
EDIT2: if you really wanted to you could read this (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24552359).
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E) N-95 isn't anywhere near 100% prevention of a corona virus but a whole lot better than nothing
Absolutely, but I didn't actually buy the masks for 2019-nCov, which I'm not afraid of. They are however the standard for these sorts of things (unless you want to spring for an N100). Or to put it another way, go google for "ebola hospital" in google images. The folks from the CDC show up in BSL4 space suits but the locals and Médecins Sans Frontières use whatever they can, and most of them live. They are however covered head to toe which you cover in your post.
If anything I would say that what people are missing in this 2019-nCov scare is eye protection, but I AM NOT an MD. Also, I have a beard which is my other big problem if I wanted to be protected.
D) the droplets containing virus particles that can infect people are orders of magnitude smaller than fibreglass particles
Not according the the link that I posted above which clearly states that fibreglasss particles can and do come in 1 micron dimensions while typical droplets that would actually be floating around in the air would be ~5 microns.
C) the bulk of corona viruses are actually transmitted through saliva droplets entering the infectee via the eyes or hands that go on to touch the infectee's face. Complete barrier nursing includes body suits, eye covers and gloves, as well as stringent washing.
I never said otherwise. I personally would fear for my lack of paying attention more than anything else.
B) your wife will have a well fitted mask which is a whole lot different from one purchased from a hardware store
Her lab stocks 3M part number 8271 if you want to look it up. Technically a P95 mask, but I doubt that I'll find much 2019-nCov floating around in oil. I would imagine that her biggest advantage is decades of training to not touch herself somewhere dumb, and knowing how to put the mask on right. Also, her biosafety cabinet but there's nothing I can do about that.
A) the vast majority of stuff your wife works with in the lab are not respiratory and transmitted person to person. Her mask is as much to prevent her messing up samples as it is to protect her
Absolutely, because then it would be BSL3, not BSL 2+. But to the best of my knowledge N95 still meets OHSA/NIH/CDC requirements for BSL3, whether or not her hospital would require something better. If you have any evidence to the contrary I would be very interested in seeing it. I didn't find a good BSL3 document with a few minutes of googling.
EDITed to add - a quick google showed someone saying that they wear a N95 mask for avian influenza research in the BSL3 lab at the University of Warsaw.
EDIT2: if you really wanted to you could read this (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24552359).
Nitpicking 101, thanks....
FYI, in response to bolded bit above. IF they're wearing N95 masks, they're wearing them in conjunction with a bodysuit, a plastic faceplate, double elbow gloves and either a negatively pressured environment or a positively pressured suit. Not to mention incredibly stringent washing and checking practices. There's no one doing research on any respiratory virus in just an N95 mask, my friend. No one. No point bringing up Ebola in this debate - it's transmitted by body fluids which is quite a different enterprise altogether. It's also a huge virus compared to a corona virus.
FYI 2, the filtration ability of the mask is completely overshadowed by the fit of the mask. Masks designed for sale in hardware stores often have significantly different types of attachment and nose/eye socket shapes/ability to be tightened in these areas, to masks designed for medical/health. The people working with infectious patients in hospitals right now will have had masks FITTED. That means no facial hair, nose clips that have been individually checked for fit (they bend, like the nose clips on your glasses), eye masks or perspex full face plates that are placed over the N95 masks, double attachments that have been checked for both attachment to the mask and fit around the head/neck.
FYI 3, corona viruses tend to be large but some are nanometers. SARs was literally nanometers big, and SARs is a corona virus. I'm not aware of actual size information having been released about this virus??? but by your own measurements it can fit through an N95 mask which is only 95% effective..... Personally I would use one rather than not, but a mask is just not a fix-all.
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As I don't live in China I see no reason to get worked up about this. If the situation would worsen I would follow any public information advice.
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Nitpicking 101, thanks....
Hey, you decided to respond to my post where I wrote simply that "N95 is N95, 95% of particles down to 0.3 microns." That was my only statement.
EDITed to add - her lab stock is labeled 3M 8271 NIOSH P95. My preferred fibreglass mask is labeled 3M 8511 NIOSH N95. Have your pick, they're both on Amazon.
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I read that having the flu vaccine makes your immune system less likely to be able to fight this virus. I had pneumonia when I was 45 and in excellent health and it lasted for weeks and I felt like I was going to die. Now at 65 with asthma I might not survive it. Nothing to do except to practice good hygiene and since I am retired I can avoid large crowds.
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As I don't live in China I see no reason to get worked up about this. If the situation would worsen I would follow any public information advice.
This. As I live in the US, I will follow what the CDC recommends. At this point, here is what they are saying:
The risk to individuals is dependent on exposure. At this time, some people will have an increased risk of infection, for example healthcare workers caring for 2019-nCoV patients and other close contacts. For the general American public, who are unlikely to be exposed to this virus, the immediate health risk from 2019-nCoV is considered low.
From: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html
If that changes, I will reassess.
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Cassie, where did you read this?
“I read that having the flu vaccine makes your immune system less likely to be able to fight this virus.”
That seems extremely unlikely.
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Well, the first case showed up here in the greater Bay Area (Santa Cruz; not really Bay Area but close enough). China isn’t far écoute away apparently.
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I've been wearing a full body SCUBA suit to work. The tank is heavy, but the peace of mind is worth it.
I thought I was the only one!
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Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this just a new version of the common cold? There are dozens or hundreds of viruses that cause the common cold, among them variations of coronavirus and rhinovirus. The mortality rate for this novel coronavirus is currently around 2-3% based on confirmed deaths (~250-300) and confirmed cases (~10,000), but it's likely that those confirmed cases are way undercounting anyone who just got a case of the sniffles and didn't get tested. So maybe the mortality rate is closer to 1% or 0.5%
Influenza meanwhile kills tens of thousands every year.
Maybe I'm just very jaded about how the media will cling on to anything that sounds dangerous and pump the shit out of it to get clicks and eyeballs. Somehow I don't think this is like Spanish Flu that's going to end up killing tens of millions worldwide.
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It's more like a bad strain of the flu than the common cold, but I agree, the effects are being blown way out of proportion.
People who wouldn't think twice about buying a cigarette or driving unseat belted (or, for that matter, not getting vaccinated) are all of a sudden becoming public health experts.
Humans are funny creatures.
I'm still worried about whether Ebola is going to turn me into a monkey.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51214864
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2820%2930211-7/fulltext
75% of the first 100 hospitalised patients had pneumonia, 17% developed acute respiratory distress syndrome, 11% patients worsened in a short period of time and died of multiple organ failure. Two cases mentioned where ventilation and an artificial lung failed to save lives. The worst risk is for people with existing conditions, including diabetes.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this just a new version of the common cold? There are dozens or hundreds of viruses that cause the common cold, among them variations of coronavirus and rhinovirus. The mortality rate for this novel coronavirus is currently around 2-3% based on confirmed deaths (~250-300) and confirmed cases (~10,000), but it's likely that those confirmed cases are way undercounting anyone who just got a case of the sniffles and didn't get tested. So maybe the mortality rate is closer to 1% or 0.5%
Yes. It is "common" cold in an uncommon strain. The high risk of it is based on the high infection risk. Even 0.01% death rate is a lot when everyone gets it.
And still magnitudes more of people die because of bad health decisions, including the decision to not get vaccinated.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this just a new version of the common cold?
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Influenza meanwhile kills tens of thousands every year.
It's a common cold the way that the 1918 flu was a common flu. A few points:
- Typical seasonal flu has an R0 of 0.9~2.1 and a mortality rate of ~0.13% (it varies year to year)
- 1918 flu had an R0 of 1.4~2.8 and a mortality rate of 10~20%
- 2019-ncov has an R0 of 1.4 to 3.8 (or more, some Chinese researchers put it at 5.5) and a mortality rate of ~2%
But a large part of the fear is that it's novel. That means we don't really know what R0 and the mortality rate will be, nor the best medical care or detection schemes. That's what makes it scary.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this just a new version of the common cold?
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Influenza meanwhile kills tens of thousands every year.
It's a common cold the way that the 1918 flu was a common flu. A few points:
- Typical seasonal flu has an R0 of 0.9~2.1 and a mortality rate of ~0.13% (it varies year to year)
- 1918 flu had an R0 of 1.4~2.8 and a mortality rate of 10~20%
- nConv-2019 has an R0 of 1.4 to 3.8 (or more, some Chinese researchers put it at 5.5) and a mortality rate of ~2%
But a large part of the fear is that it's novel. That means we don't really know what R0 and the mortality rate will be, nor the best medical care or detection schemes. That's what makes it scary.
An even larger part of what makes it scary is that it could become endemic in humans the way the common cold and influenza have, with new and possibly more fatal mutations appearing every year.
It's not about your (current lack of) individual risk, folks. It's about stopping it from becoming endemic.
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nConv-2019 has an R0 of 1.4 to 3.8 (or more, some Chinese researchers put it at 5.5) and a mortality rate of ~2%
You are right, seems to be 2%. Strange, I was quite sure that the infected were already above 100K, instead the table from yesterday shows 11700. Maybe it was headline from some shitty "newspaper" that talked about 100K+
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I read that Chinese report causes of death differently than we do. So if you have another chronic respiratory condition such as asthma and die of the virus your cause of death would be asthma. That means that the death count is underreported.
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nConv-2019 has an R0 of 1.4 to 3.8 (or more, some Chinese researchers put it at 5.5) and a mortality rate of ~2%
You are right, seems to be 2%. Strange, I was quite sure that the infected were already above 100K, instead the table from yesterday shows 11700. Maybe it was headline from some shitty "newspaper" that talked about 100K+
Maybe here (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-could-infect-100000-globally-experts-warn)? Again, this is novel, reporting what we know when we know it doesn't mean the reporting was shitty. It means that some legitimate accredited epidemiological researcher thinks that there might be 100K wild cases because a real credible mathematical model says so. Also, no one is quite sure how honest China is being with their data.
EDITed to add - just because you have 100K infections and 100 deaths doesn't make the mortality rate 0.1%, because you need to give people time to die.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this just a new version of the common cold? There are dozens or hundreds of viruses that cause the common cold, among them variations of coronavirus and rhinovirus. The mortality rate for this novel coronavirus is currently around 2-3% based on confirmed deaths (~250-300) and confirmed cases (~10,000), but it's likely that those confirmed cases are way undercounting anyone who just got a case of the sniffles and didn't get tested. So maybe the mortality rate is closer to 1% or 0.5%
Influenza meanwhile kills tens of thousands every year.
Maybe I'm just very jaded about how the media will cling on to anything that sounds dangerous and pump the shit out of it to get clicks and eyeballs. Somehow I don't think this is like Spanish Flu that's going to end up killing tens of millions worldwide.
No. This is something more similar to SARs. Had SARs popped up in 1918, it also could have killed many millions of people. We're more at risk of pandemic because of our travel habits now, but we're also MUCH better at identifying and treating, and at communicating globally than we were in 1918. There are many, many corona viruses, and the new ones have the potential to be extremely dangerous. We just don't know quite how this thing works yet, and we just don't know the rates at which people will become infected or die. The media will hype things for sure. On the other hand, in just a few weeks this is in 19 countries and transmitted person to person. That's a worst case scenario for a pandemic starting. We'll probably be lucky - low mortality rate. That's no reason to be complacent.
Don't forget the common cold is a killer for anyone newly exposed to it and without some immunity passed on from their parents. Ask any colonised country.
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Also I read a Pubmed article yesterday saying that the flu vaccine lowers your ability to fight this virus. It’s called virus interference. Now the link won’t work.
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Also I read a Pubmed article yesterday saying that the flu vaccine lowers your ability to fight this virus. It’s called virus interference. Now the link won’t work.
My understanding of viral interference is quite the other way around - exposure to one virus can produce an immuno response to an entirely different virus. For example (and this is how vaccines where invented), exposure to cowpox by milkmaids back in the 1400s generally meant they did not get smallpox. You know the fairytales have the fresh complexioned, fecund and mythically beautiful milk maid? Well, aside from the fact she was probably getting quite a lot of dairy products, she might well have looked better than most people when smallpox was very common.
I'm pretty sure that viral interference has been under research for a looooong time, and it's not that well understood in human subjects. Quite difficult to know what people have been exposed to in their lives, so difficult to know what any "interference" was caused by.
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Also I read a Pubmed article yesterday saying that the flu vaccine lowers your ability to fight this virus. It’s called virus interference. Now the link won’t work.
My understanding of viral interference is quite the other way around - exposure to one virus can produce an immuno response to an entirely different virus. For example (and this is how vaccines where invented), exposure to cowpox by milkmaids back in the 1400s generally meant they did not get smallpox. You know the fairytales have the fresh complexioned, fecund and mythically beautiful milk maid? Well, aside from the fact she was probably getting quite a lot of dairy products, she might well have looked better than most people when smallpox was very common.
I'm pretty sure that viral interference has been under research for a looooong time, and it's not that well understood in human subjects. Quite difficult to know what people have been exposed to in their lives, so difficult to know what any "interference" was caused by.
Possibly not referring to interference but instead something like this (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404712/):
We randomized 115 children to trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) or placebo. Over the following 9 months, TIV recipients had an increased risk of virologically-confirmed non-influenza infections (relative risk: 4.40; 95% confidence interval: 1.31-14.8). Being protected against influenza, TIV recipients may lack temporary non-specific immunity that protected against other respiratory viruses.
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I really wish I had copied the article because it makes me wonder why they took it down so fast.
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I really wish I had copied the article because it makes me wonder why they took it down so fast.
The one lost in the endless aisle has posted is still up
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So, just in case anyone needs a reminder: Circle of Control.
Wash your hands. Avoid sick people as best you can. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. Wash your hands.
And most importantly: wash your hands.
Cassie - even if the flu shot is somehow detrimental to this particular virus, what are the odds of you being exposed to the flu vs. this new virus? And if you'd be in trouble with this virus, you're also likely going to be in trouble with the flu, or even a cold. You're better off doing what you can to support your overall health and avoid getting sick. Wash your hands! That's assuming that the flu shot is detrimental, based on my (general) understanding of the immune system, I doubt that's a serious risk.
Re the numbers coming out of China, they're not accurate, there's no way. Between deliberate fudging, natural under/over counting due to mild cases or mis-identified cases, and presumably chaos in trying to compile numbers... there's no way they're right. They might be in ballpark, they may be way out. We won't know for a while. Take all numbers with a huge grain of salt, and then go wash your hands.
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(https://i.imgur.com/11QE3tR.png)
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(https://i.redd.it/biuz069hcge41.jpg)
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nConv-2019 has an R0 of 1.4 to 3.8 (or more, some Chinese researchers put it at 5.5) and a mortality rate of ~2%
You are right, seems to be 2%. Strange, I was quite sure that the infected were already above 100K, instead the table from yesterday shows 11700. Maybe it was headline from some shitty "newspaper" that talked about 100K+
Maybe here (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-could-infect-100000-globally-experts-warn)? Again, this is novel, reporting what we know when we know it doesn't mean the reporting was shitty. It means that some legitimate accredited epidemiological researcher thinks that there might be 100K wild cases because a real credible mathematical model says so. Also, no one is quite sure how honest China is being with their data.
EDITed to add - just because you have 100K infections and 100 deaths doesn't make the mortality rate 0.1%, because you need to give people time to die.
I would worry about people in slums in poor countries, as the combination of poor nutrition, poor lifetime health care, and poor incident-specific health care are likely to hit them hard.
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It could go either way. We as a country have things going for us, and things going against us. Us population is more spread out and we have in general higher quality hospitals (and great research). Downsides is that we are a highly mobile population, and our health coverage is spotty. Alot of under insured, uninsured also homeless who are not going to get treated in a timely manner, also may continue to work/be out in public during that time. Also the CDC and nih, in particular funding for public health and pandemic response was hollowed out under trump. We are less prepared now than we were 5 years ago for this kind of thing.
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Don’t be this jerk, folks. If you’re ordered to self-isolate, then yes, the rules do apply to you.
NH’s 1st Coronavirus Patient, Told to Stay Isolated, Went to Event Instead (https://www.nbcboston.com/news/national-international/2nd-presumed-case-coronavirus-new-hampshire/2085211/?amp)
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My guess is that the number of infections reported is artificially low and the mortality rate is artificially high.
You think that there isn't a single epidemiologist on staff at the WHO? Or perhaps you haven't noticed that South Korea is testing 20 people to find one case of Covid-19?
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I have always been vigilant about hand washing. I have no medical background so appreciate people’s responses especially if you do. Since we are retired we can self quarantine. I can’t imagine being so selfish as to put others at risk just because you don’t want to stay home. Locally we have no cases yet. Like many others I have 2 inherited conditions despite taking good care of myself. I am grateful it’s not hitting kids hard because as much as I want to live having a child die is horrendous. I am not panicking because it’s outside my circle of control.
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I would not worry too much about coronavirus in the US, except if/when it gets into a nursing home or similar place with a lot of immunocompromised people in close quarters.
I would worry about people in slums in poor countries, as the combination of poor nutrition, poor lifetime health care, and poor incident-specific health care are likely to hit them hard.
I was going to say that this comment had aged like milk, but apparently you don't read/watch the news. It has hit a skilled nursing facility in Kirkland, WA. (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/first-days-at-the-heart-of-an-outbreak-life-care-nursing-home-becomes-national-epicenter-of-coronavirus/) That's why we suddenly jumped up to 9 deaths in just a few days. (One was a death that hadn't previously been tied to COVID-19 but postmortem testing showed that it was the likely cause of death.)
My mom is in hospice and her facility is locked down (in Seattle) because of this. I'm not worried that she'll die because of it (she's dying anyway), I'm worried that she'll die without the family getting to see her again and say goodbye.
Maybe some of you don't have elderly or immunocompromised loved ones?
As to OP's question, yes. Here in Seattle we've prepped. Not guns 'n ammo 'n toilet paper. What I mean is that I watched this unfolding, and fortuitously guessed correctly that I should make my quarterly Costco run a few days early. As it turned out, I made that run the day before the news of community transition in WA came out, and not long before the first death. So I avoided the rush. And now we have lots of food, so we're going to get creative and see how long we can go without feeling deprived. (We get milk and eggs delivered.) HusbandX works from home, so we're doing some light social distancing. And we have a few extra prepared foods on hand in case the adults in our household get sick, so we can still feed the kids. (This illness doesn't seem to affect them as much, so if they get sick it will likely be milder than for the adults.) Other than that, we are still exercising, taking in fresh air (gotta walk the dog and get the kid from school, get the garden ready), eating well, etc.
Worst case scenario for all of this: We save a little money by not running to the store a few times every week, and don't have to buy certain foods for a while. The other side of the coin: Our family get sick but it's not a major event because we've planned for it. I don't see either of those as a bad outcome.
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Don’t be this jerk, folks. If you’re ordered to self-isolate, then yes, the rules do apply to you.
NH’s 1st Coronavirus Patient, Told to Stay Isolated, Went to Event Instead (https://www.nbcboston.com/news/national-international/2nd-presumed-case-coronavirus-new-hampshire/2085211/?amp)
A New Hampshire hospital employee diagnosed with coronavirus broke quarantine to attend an event on Feb. 28, “despite having been directed to self-isolate” the state’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has confirmed in a press release. The DHHS has since issued an official order of isolation for the man.
Jerkiness^2.
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Worst case scenario for all of this: We save a little money by not running to the store a few times every week, and don't have to buy certain foods for a while. The other side of the coin: Our family get sick but it's not a major event because we've planned for it. I don't see either of those as a bad outcome.
i think worst case scenario is that the US has intermittent quarantines for the next year+, sending everything into chaos and severe recession. locally, here in W Washington, we have, what, 50 schools closed now? how long will that go on? when they reopen, and someone else gets sick, will they shut down again? rinse and repeat for months/years until someone finally says: ok, just let it spread?
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I would not worry too much about coronavirus in the US, except if/when it gets into a nursing home or similar place with a lot of immunocompromised people in close quarters.
I would worry about people in slums in poor countries, as the combination of poor nutrition, poor lifetime health care, and poor incident-specific health care are likely to hit them hard.
I was going to say that this comment had aged like milk, but apparently you don't read/watch the news. It has hit a skilled nursing facility in Kirkland, WA. (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/first-days-at-the-heart-of-an-outbreak-life-care-nursing-home-becomes-national-epicenter-of-coronavirus/) That's why we suddenly jumped up to 9 deaths in just a few days. (One was a death that hadn't previously been tied to COVID-19 but postmortem testing showed that it was the likely cause of death.)
My mom is in hospice and her facility is locked down (in Seattle) because of this. I'm not worried that she'll die because of it (she's dying anyway), I'm worried that she'll die without the family getting to see her again and say goodbye.
Sorry, but I don't watch the news unless it is forced upon me.
I'm sorry to hear about your mom.
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Lots of good info on this topic in this thread:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/coronavirus-preparedness
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Few cases in my state, but not my immediate area yet.
I went ahead and bought a few cases of water and nonperishables (gatorade mix, dry beans, rice, tinned tomatoes) and an extra bag of food for my dog.
More just to ensure that I don't have to go to crowded grocery stores than any doomsday prepping. I needed supplies, anyway, in case I lose power during another storm, so it can't hurt.
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Worst case scenario for all of this: We save a little money by not running to the store a few times every week, and don't have to buy certain foods for a while. The other side of the coin: Our family get sick but it's not a major event because we've planned for it. I don't see either of those as a bad outcome.
i think worst case scenario is that the US has intermittent quarantines for the next year+, sending everything into chaos and severe recession. locally, here in W Washington, we have, what, 50 schools closed now? how long will that go on? when they reopen, and someone else gets sick, will they shut down again? rinse and repeat for months/years until someone finally says: ok, just let it spread?
Oh, I meant the worst case scenario in terms of, what if I did "all this preparation" for nothing? It didn't take any extra time (needed to go to Costco anyway), doesn't make me feel panicked (because I'm as prepared as a person can be, given the known facts), and there really isn't a down side. But that's always the argument that comes up in these types of situations. What if you prepare and nothing happens??! Um, okay. That's like asking someone why they're putting up smoke detectors in their house. You don't smoke, what if you never have a house fire? Huh? Bet you'll feel silly then! /s
My point is really that you can prepare for something like this without going overboard, but the "why bother?" camp is always going to be out there acting like anyone who tries to mitigate a potential disaster is getting ready for the zombie apocalypse.
If you want to talk worst case scenarios, there are plenty of them that have gone through my mind. I'm pretty fascinated by all the possibilities, and if things go in certain ways I can actually see some good coming out of it. (Pollution in China is way down!) I also see all the potential downsides to this. It's definitely an interesting event. And hey, it beats the piss out of talking nothing but politics for the next six months (here in the US)!
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The ecnomy is booming! Supermarkets in Germany report record sales!!
So far I think we have no death here in Germany because of Covid-19 (likely to change). We do have 280 death caused by the normal influenza in Jan+Feb, a very low number compared to other years, mainly thanks to the incredibly warm weather.
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Could use some advice: I am scheduled to go to Israel for work on 3/15. Right now there are no travel restrictions for Israel (or in Israel for visitors from the U.S.), though there are now 15 COVID-19 cases in Israel, and of course increasing numbers of cases in the U.S.
It's possible that new travel restrictions will be put in place before my departure date, which would make the go/no go decision for me.
But if there are no announced travel restrictions on/by the 15th, should I still go?
I am worried about getting stuck in Israel if the situation changes suddenly while I'm there (new travel restrictions or in-country quarantines) - I can't really afford to be away from my kids and spouse for 2+ weeks if that happens.
I'm not ordinarily a risk-averse person, but I'm not sure how to weigh this out. The two colleagues that I'm going with also have spouses and young children and I don't hear them voicing any of these concerns.
What would you do?
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Could use some advice: I am scheduled to go to Israel for work on 3/15. Right now there are no travel restrictions for Israel (or in Israel for visitors from the U.S.), though there are now 15 COVID-19 cases in Israel, and of course increasing numbers of cases in the U.S.
It's possible that new travel restrictions will be put in place before my departure date, which would make the go/no go decision for me.
But if there are no announced travel restrictions on/by the 15th, should I still go?
I am worried about getting stuck in Israel if the situation changes suddenly while I'm there (new travel restrictions or in-country quarantines) - I can't really afford to be away from my kids and spouse for 2+ weeks if that happens.
I'm not ordinarily a risk-averse person, but I'm not sure how to weigh this out. The two colleagues that I'm going with also have spouses and young children and I don't hear them voicing any of these concerns.
What would you do?
I can't see Trump tolerating a travel ban that involves Israel.
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Personally I wouldn’t go. Some people think that it won’t happen to them.
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Could use some advice: I am scheduled to go to Israel for work on 3/15. Right now there are no travel restrictions for Israel (or in Israel for visitors from the U.S.), though there are now 15 COVID-19 cases in Israel, and of course increasing numbers of cases in the U.S.
It's possible that new travel restrictions will be put in place before my departure date, which would make the go/no go decision for me.
But if there are no announced travel restrictions on/by the 15th, should I still go?
I am worried about getting stuck in Israel if the situation changes suddenly while I'm there (new travel restrictions or in-country quarantines) - I can't really afford to be away from my kids and spouse for 2+ weeks if that happens.
I'm not ordinarily a risk-averse person, but I'm not sure how to weigh this out. The two colleagues that I'm going with also have spouses and young children and I don't hear them voicing any of these concerns.
What would you do?
I can't see Trump tolerating a travel ban that involves Israel.
Trump banning travel from Israel does seem unlikely. That said, he does listen to advisers from time to time . . . and nobody knows where the next major outbreak will happen. Israel doesn't have too many cases yet. Travel does significantly increase your risk of infection (simply from a 'contact with other people' point of view) but if you're under 40, there's little risk that the virus will kill you. You will certainly be quarantined if you get sick though and will be away from your spouse/kids for 2+ weeks.
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I also would not go and cancelled a work trip recently. You potentially can get a doctor's note requesting that you be excused from the trip due to coronavirus concerns, if your company does not formally cancel non-essential travel.
This has been spreading undetected in the US for awhile, and some states are still not testing unless there is known travel from China/Italy/Iran or hospitalization. The first few cases in my state involved people taking flights on 2/26, when I also was flying. I'd just as soon not risk exposing others.
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here's some fun math:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html
at some point, a govt authority (state/federal) will need to instruct citizens to remain at work, otherwise it will result in a complete meltdown of our economic engine, food supply, consumables, etc. the virus will need to spread to the whole population. those 50+ or immunocompromised will have to hide.
i really don't see an alternative to this. our society is too on-demand. too industrialized. when the chain breaks down, the SHTF, hard. civil unrest, riots, pillaging, etc are not unreasonable, especially here in the US with no national healthcare, no safety nets (unless you're a bank), and a lot of guns.
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here's some fun math:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html
at some point, a govt authority (state/federal) will need to instruct citizens to remain at work, otherwise it will result in a complete meltdown of our economic engine, food supply, consumables, etc. the virus will need to spread to the whole population. those 50+ or immunocompromised will have to hide.
i really don't see an alternative to this. our society is too on-demand. too industrialized. when the chain breaks down, the SHTF, hard. civil unrest, riots, pillaging, etc are not unreasonable, especially here in the US with no national healthcare, no safety nets (unless you're a bank), and a lot of guns.
Interesting article.
As for "back to work" orders. Who would issue such an order? Further, who would obey or enforce such an order in a time of widespread problems? The compliance rate would likely be less than compliance with hurricane evacuation orders. Compliance with evacuation orders for Hurricane Sandy was less than half. I think the compliance rate for a quarantine would be higher, but by no means universal.
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here's some fun math:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html
at some point, a govt authority (state/federal) will need to instruct citizens to remain at work, otherwise it will result in a complete meltdown of our economic engine, food supply, consumables, etc. the virus will need to spread to the whole population. those 50+ or immunocompromised will have to hide.
i really don't see an alternative to this. our society is too on-demand. too industrialized. when the chain breaks down, the SHTF, hard. civil unrest, riots, pillaging, etc are not unreasonable, especially here in the US with no national healthcare, no safety nets (unless you're a bank), and a lot of guns.
Interesting article.
As for "back to work" orders. Who would issue such an order? Further, who would obey or enforce such an order in a time of widespread problems? The compliance rate would likely be less than compliance with hurricane evacuation orders. Compliance with evacuation orders for Hurricane Sandy was less than half. I think the compliance rate for a quarantine would be higher, but by no means universal.
Well the military and many government jobs can force you to work (without pay) or be arrested. I doubt civilian jobs would or could legally do that unless Martial Law was enacted and the choice was to be forced (constription) to work or go to jail. Like the Draft.
BTW both the Feds and the states )within their states) have authority to do that if martial law is enacted.
While theoretically possible, it's practically unenforceable to get every industry back to work by force. Really all they can do is ensure critical industries keep working like farming, and only a bit.
But... none of this will happen, so don't worry.
If you really think it will come to this (looting, pillaging, all out chaos), you probably shouldn't be reading internet forums and should be driving to somewhere remote and getting an underground bunker with lots of beans, rice, and ammo.
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Oh I'm not worried personally but was just answering a post with what I believe to be a very highly unlikely but legal method to force people to work. I REd, have everything invested in US aluminum foil, underground bunkers and rice and beans so I'm good to go ;-).
Posting from Seattle here - You're waaaay behind the times. Don't you know you should also have enough toilet paper to see everyone you've ever met through Armageddon??! It's what your bunker should be made of!
Seriously, though, the "panic" the media has been talking about here is waaaay overblown. Yeah, the traffic jams are gone because people are working from home more. But I consider that a good thing. Yay, fewer emissions! And when I took my kid to the park today it was busy busy. COVID-19 is a daily topic of conversation but no one--including the family I know who's under self-quarantine due to exposure--is terribly upset. Pragmatic is what I'd say.
If you want to do something helpful, donate money to food banks and homeless shelters. They're going to be pretty stretched for resources. There is also a GoFundMe to help feed healthcare workers in the Seattle area, since they're working overtime (https://www.gofundme.com/f/lunch-for-seattle-area-hospital-caregivers?teamInvite=YS67OOZ0JrAq4yTuwKhIY5wYtpSpUQMuRN96AvKrjRn3z1T9e5Y2i3bL0L6HVTsS&fbclid=IwAR0eBgU8V1RNN9jUU-TPkSa39tNsN-KdJzr60qj22bA3SJB0xAPERFSie38). (Already, due to the flu, and now this on top of that.) (I know, I hate GoFundMe too. But that's how this was set up, I don't control it.)
Last, check on your elderly neighbors please.
here's some fun math:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html
at some point, a govt authority (state/federal) will need to instruct citizens to remain at work, otherwise it will result in a complete meltdown of our economic engine, food supply, consumables, etc. the virus will need to spread to the whole population. those 50+ or immunocompromised will have to hide.
i really don't see an alternative to this. our society is too on-demand. too industrialized. when the chain breaks down, the SHTF, hard. civil unrest, riots, pillaging, etc are not unreasonable, especially here in the US with no national healthcare, no safety nets (unless you're a bank), and a lot of guns.
I joked to my husband that if this turns into a full-blown survival situation I'm going to be pissed that I only ordered five lbs. of potato starts. :)
One of the CCP's stated reasons for lifting lockdown measures and wanting to get the country back to work was to ensure planting of spring crops happened on time. Farmers in the US are on average older than the general populace (over 55), which since it's the US also generally means in poor health. And since so many rural hospitals have closed in the last decade it also means that they're less likely to receive adequate healthcare (timing can be important), or that there will be enough beds in hospitals to treat all the rural people who cluster at the nearest ones *if this outbreak gets bad enough*. I don't think this will actually happen, at least not enough to impact the food supply. But it is interesting to think about from a purely theoretical standpoint.
Much of what I said above could also be applied to truckers. There aren't enough long-haul truckers in the country as it is, and due to the sedentary job they are generally overweight. If enough of them get sick then things might get rough for a short period of time. But that's a pretty big 'if' at this point. It feels more like speculating about what would happen if Seattle also had a major earthquake at the peak of this outbreak. Could it happen? Sure. Is it likely to? Statistically no. It would be silly to plan around it and assume that it will happen.
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Wouldn't anyone else be relieved to see the reduction in air travel, should a widescale flight restriction take place? More grounded flights mean less damage to the environment. Similar to the reduction in pollution in China.
Is it realistic to think this reduction in pollution and global warming might indirectly lead to more lives saved when this ordeal is over?
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Wouldn't anyone else be relieved to see the reduction in air travel, should a widescale flight restriction take place? More grounded flights mean less damage to the environment. Similar to the reduction in pollution in China.
Is it realistic to think this reduction in pollution and global warming might indirectly lead to more lives saved when this ordeal is over?
You win the optimism prize for today, but my realism prize is going to business-as-usual, with only a slight blip in 2020.
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Wouldn't anyone else be relieved to see the reduction in air travel, should a widescale flight restriction take place? More grounded flights mean less damage to the environment. Similar to the reduction in pollution in China.
Is it realistic to think this reduction in pollution and global warming might indirectly lead to more lives saved when this ordeal is over?
You win the optimism prize for today, but my realism prize is going to business-as-usual, with only a slight blip in 2020.
Hopefully it makes people question the need to travel for meetings. Due to company policys, I have had meetings postponed. Today, it was decided that a meeting were people were going to fly and take the train into was moved to Teams due to company restrictions related to travel.
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Wouldn't anyone else be relieved to see the reduction in air travel, should a widescale flight restriction take place? More grounded flights mean less damage to the environment. Similar to the reduction in pollution in China.
Is it realistic to think this reduction in pollution and global warming might indirectly lead to more lives saved when this ordeal is over?
Airplanes fly empty. If they would fly less, the companies would lose their route slots.
At least that is what I have read about the EU, don't know if it is even true.
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Wouldn't anyone else be relieved to see the reduction in air travel, should a widescale flight restriction take place? More grounded flights mean less damage to the environment. Similar to the reduction in pollution in China.
Is it realistic to think this reduction in pollution and global warming might indirectly lead to more lives saved when this ordeal is over?
Airplanes fly empty. If they would fly less, the companies would lose their route slots.
At least that is what I have read about the EU, don't know if it is even true.
That is true it the EU, which is appalling from a climate perspective, especially since the EASA could temporarily ease that regulation based on the current demand. It is not true in the US, because we don't have the same slot regulations. It's possible that there could be localized impacts at a given airport around the assignment of gates, etc., but that seems as likely as not to be spread fairly evenly across the industry. (Some US airports will assign gates to airlines on the basis of scheduled flight frequency. So if a given airline had 20 flights/day, which entitled them to 4 gates, but then they cancelled them all because they were all to China, while all the other airlines at that airport had more evenly-distributed flights, the first airline could lose their gates.)
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Could use some advice: I am scheduled to go to Israel for work on 3/15. Right now there are no travel restrictions for Israel (or in Israel for visitors from the U.S.), though there are now 15 COVID-19 cases in Israel, and of course increasing numbers of cases in the U.S.
It's possible that new travel restrictions will be put in place before my departure date, which would make the go/no go decision for me.
But if there are no announced travel restrictions on/by the 15th, should I still go?
I am worried about getting stuck in Israel if the situation changes suddenly while I'm there (new travel restrictions or in-country quarantines) - I can't really afford to be away from my kids and spouse for 2+ weeks if that happens.
I'm not ordinarily a risk-averse person, but I'm not sure how to weigh this out. The two colleagues that I'm going with also have spouses and young children and I don't hear them voicing any of these concerns.
What would you do?
FYI, "All people entering Israel from abroad will be required to spend 14 days in home-isolation, the prime minister said Monday. The measure is effective immediately."
https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Israeli-diagnosis-two-more-people-with-coronavirus-patients-40-and-41-620347 (https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Israeli-diagnosis-two-more-people-with-coronavirus-patients-40-and-41-620347)
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Wouldn't anyone else be relieved to see the reduction in air travel, should a widescale flight restriction take place? More grounded flights mean less damage to the environment. Similar to the reduction in pollution in China.
Is it realistic to think this reduction in pollution and global warming might indirectly lead to more lives saved when this ordeal is over?
Airplanes fly empty. If they would fly less, the companies would lose their route slots.
At least that is what I have read about the EU, don't know if it is even true.
At least here the airlines are cancelling thousands of flights. It seems to affect 80% of the slots if the EU doesn’t relent the rules.
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Well, this escalated quickly: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097 (https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097)
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Well, this escalated quickly: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097 (https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097)
Yes, it makes me wonder what if anything the states will do.
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Wouldn't anyone else be relieved to see the reduction in air travel, should a widescale flight restriction take place? More grounded flights mean less damage to the environment. Similar to the reduction in pollution in China.
Is it realistic to think this reduction in pollution and global warming might indirectly lead to more lives saved when this ordeal is over?
Airplanes fly empty. If they would fly less, the companies would lose their route slots.
At least that is what I have read about the EU, don't know if it is even true.
At least here the airlines are cancelling thousands of flights. It seems to affect 80% of the slots if the EU doesn’t relent the rules.
There's an EU Slots Regulation that says a slot will be lost if it's not at least 80% used. There are provisions in Article 10 for this not to apply in exceptional circumstances: they weren't drafted to take account of this particular cirucumstance but could possibly be used with a bit of latitude being granted -
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31993R0095&from=EN
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Well, this escalated quickly: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097 (https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097)
Yes, it makes me wonder what if anything the states will do.
the US will do nothing - at least from a nationally coordinated standpoint. local jurisdictions are left to fend on their own with all sorts of random people and agencies making decisions.
nearby to me, 1 school district is closed. 4 others are open. microsoft and amazon are telling people to work from home; the rest of us are at work. preschool is closed one week, the open the next.
i feel bad for the countries that are doing due diligence. the US will subvert them all by continually having outbreaks over the course of the next year+. there is only so long you can shut down a whole city/country before shit gets real.
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Well, this escalated quickly: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097 (https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097)
Yes, it makes me wonder what if anything the states will do.
the US will do nothing - at least from a nationally coordinated standpoint. local jurisdictions are left to fend on their own with all sorts of random people and agencies making decisions.
nearby to me, 1 school district is closed. 4 others are open. microsoft and amazon are telling people to work from home; the rest of us are at work. preschool is closed one week, the open the next.
i feel bad for the countries that are doing due diligence. the US will subvert them all by continually having outbreaks over the course of the next year+. there is only so long you can shut down a whole city/country before shit gets real.
I read an opinion piece that said the USA will suffer more than any other country from this - because you don't have universal paid sick days, you don't have universal health care, and you have a large underclass of people that simply can't afford to not work if they are sick. And those people are in high people contact roles. I guess we'll find out soon enough, huh?
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Could use some advice: I am scheduled to go to Israel for work on 3/15. Right now there are no travel restrictions for Israel (or in Israel for visitors from the U.S.), though there are now 15 COVID-19 cases in Israel, and of course increasing numbers of cases in the U.S.
It's possible that new travel restrictions will be put in place before my departure date, which would make the go/no go decision for me.
But if there are no announced travel restrictions on/by the 15th, should I still go?
I am worried about getting stuck in Israel if the situation changes suddenly while I'm there (new travel restrictions or in-country quarantines) - I can't really afford to be away from my kids and spouse for 2+ weeks if that happens.
I'm not ordinarily a risk-averse person, but I'm not sure how to weigh this out. The two colleagues that I'm going with also have spouses and young children and I don't hear them voicing any of these concerns.
What would you do?
FYI, "All people entering Israel from abroad will be required to spend 14 days in home-isolation, the prime minister said Monday. The measure is effective immediately."
https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Israeli-diagnosis-two-more-people-with-coronavirus-patients-40-and-41-620347 (https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Israeli-diagnosis-two-more-people-with-coronavirus-patients-40-and-41-620347)
I had decided last week to bow out anyway, but our trip is now officially cancelled. :) Happily, I got a full refund from United when I cancelled my flight yesterday.
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Well, this escalated quickly: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097 (https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-whole-of-italy-put-on-lockdown-11954097)
Yes, it makes me wonder what if anything the states will do.
Well, this happened: Coronavirus in N.Y.: ‘Containment Area’ Is Ordered for New Rochelle (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/nyregion/coronavirus-new-rochelle-containment-area.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage)
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Well, this happened: Coronavirus in N.Y.: ‘Containment Area’ Is Ordered for New Rochelle (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/nyregion/coronavirus-new-rochelle-containment-area.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage)
Yes, 3.1 square miles of the USA compared to all of Italy.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mrPHO-nkVE
I fear we are 2 weeks away from this. My city not taking it seriously. Bumbling, ineffective & untrained public health workers using PPE haphazardly. Lots of politicians all the way up the chain making assurances but no specifics. I don't need politicians to give me their emotional read on the situation, I need their TACTICAL plans, numbers, supplies, etc! We are not even testing!
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South Korea came up with a quick and dirty and cheap virus test and has done nearly 200k tests, found 6K cases.
I'm told the US refuses to do anything similar, and that tests are $1000-3000 each. You can bet that all the high mucky-mucks from Big Pharma are counseling decision-makers 'not to risk the health of Americans on low quality' or some such line of shit, meant to protect their profits.
The US could prevent billion dollar damage to the economy by applying testing like that and sorting out who is spreading now while its still containable, instead of acting like a third-world country with no resources to do anything.
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South Korea came up with a quick and dirty and cheap virus test and has done nearly 200k tests, found 6K cases.
I'm told the US refuses to do anything similar, and that tests are $1000-3000 each. You can bet that all the high mucky-mucks from Big Pharma are counseling decision-makers 'not to risk the health of Americans on low quality' or some such line of shit, meant to protect their profits.
The US could prevent billion dollar damage to the economy by applying testing like that and sorting out who is spreading now while its still containable, instead of acting like a third-world country with no resources to do anything.
No argument here. Instead, the CDC is publicly deferring to the “very stable genius” in the Oval Office, and we don’t have official confirmed infection numbers because those might make him look bad. As far as I know, he refuses to cancel his adoration campaign rallies.
I volunteer at a nursing home/hospice facility. Yesterday, national nursing home industry leaders issued guidelines asking the public to stop all non-essential visits, and my state’s government issued a state of emergency because non-CDC testing has finally confirmed that we do have cases here. Today, one of the facilities where I volunteer just closed their doors to the public. I think there’s a sense that we all have to make decisions at a state, local, or private level because the federal government is not even up to the task of providing unified guidelines.
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[I think there’s a sense that we all have to make decisions at a state, local, or private level because the federal government is not even up to the task of providing unified guidelines.
Basically, what you're describing is a Libertarian paradise!
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In my state, people are only now getting results from COVID 19 tests taken 7 days ago.
This week they say the turnaround is 48 hours because it’s now being done in-state, albeit hours away.
Our administration had MONTHS to prepare for this.
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In my state, people are only now getting results from COVID 19 tests taken 7 days ago.
This week they say the turnaround is 48 hours because it’s now being done in-state, albeit hours away.
Our administration had MONTHS to prepare for this.
Yep. Public health is not ever a concern for this administration—if it were, Pence would never have been chosen—but at least the Very Stable Genius has been able to maintain his regular taxpayer-funded golf-and-club routine.
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I think there’s a sense that we all have to make decisions at a state, local, or private level because the federal government is not even up to the task of providing unified guidelines.
Basically, what you're describing is a Libertarian paradise!
Exactly! The tea party promised to dismantle the federal bureaucracy until it was non-functional. They have succeeded.
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reading this should make your blood boil:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/its-just-everywhere-already-how-delays-in-testing-set-back-the-u-s-coronavirus-response-2/
(open in private window if needed to subvert paywall)
sure seems like the administration should be held accountable. how does one penalize for trillions of lost $$$?
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sure seems like the administration should be held accountable.
Absolutely, French Revolution style.
how does one penalize for trillions of lost $$$?
Guillotines on the house floor.
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i think this whole corona virus thing is just a test run for something bigger. intentional or otherwise. i'm not paranoid though.
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sure seems like the administration should be held accountable.
Absolutely, French Revolution style.
how does one penalize for trillions of lost $$$?
Guillotines on the house floor.
The French Revolution spared nobody, and in the end they voted in a dictator and then a king.
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The French Revolution spared nobody, and in the end they voted in a dictator and then a king.
Define "nobody." Most people did not lose their head. I for one would like to skip the hyperinflation part, but I'd love a unicameral parliamentary democracy. The founders of the USA though that we would rewrite the constitution every one or two generations. I'd be fine with that.
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The French Revolution spared nobody, and in the end they voted in a dictator and then a king.
Define "nobody." Most people did not lose their head. I for one would like to skip the hyperinflation part, but I'd love a unicameral parliamentary democracy. The founders of the USA though that we would rewrite the constitution every one or two generations. I'd be fine with that.
Parliamentary democracies also have flaws, just different ones. Getting election procedures run by an independent body (like Elections Canada) (i.e. voter registration, riding boundaries that make sense) is standard, and helps a lot. No reason you can't have that in a federal system.
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Parliamentary democracies also have flaws, just different ones.
Absolutely, but at this point in my tenure in the USA I'd dearly like to try out those new and exciting flaws. Particularly the flaw where one party can be in power and actually get something done.
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Parliamentary democracies also have flaws, just different ones.
Absolutely, but at this point in my tenure in the USA I'd dearly like to try out those new and exciting flaws. Particularly the flaw where one party can be in power and actually get something done.
Careful. The only reason the ACA hasn’t been repealed entirely is because the GOP doesn’t currently control every branch of government.
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Careful. The only reason the ACA hasn’t been repealed entirely is because the GOP doesn’t currently control every branch of government.
I'm aware. But remember the six years when Obama was in office when he couldn't get anything done? I'm willing to take the bad with the good, having spent my entire adult life in this system.
EDITed to add: and remember, a unicameral parliamentary system would mean throwing the Senate and the Electoral College in the trash.
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The French Revolution spared nobody, and in the end they voted in a dictator and then a king.
Define "nobody." Most people did not lose their head. I for one would like to skip the hyperinflation part, but I'd love a unicameral parliamentary democracy. The founders of the USA though that we would rewrite the constitution every one or two generations. I'd be fine with that.
By nobody, I meant no class or political persuasion. Robespierre killed, Marat killed, even some of the really good guys like Thomas Paine and Marquis de Lafayette narrowly escaped death due to outside influence and a hell of a lot of luck. And when you consider the common revolutionaries, how many died in the wars that consumed some million French people? All to cheer the return of a king in 1814/1815?
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Careful. The only reason the ACA hasn’t been repealed entirely is because the GOP doesn’t currently control every branch of government.
I'm aware. But remember the six years when Obama was in office when he couldn't get anything done? I'm willing to take the bad with the good, having spent my entire adult life in this system.
EDITed to add: and remember, a unicameral parliamentary system would mean throwing the Senate and the Electoral College in the trash.
I've spent my entire 42-year life in this system so yes, I do remember. I remember panicking about healthcare during the last recession. Repeal of the ACA would have meant that many people would be deemed uninsurable and therefore, what will likely be a bad situation over the next few months would have been even worse.
If we had two sane parties, I'd say sure, let's give it a go. The Electoral College in its current form makes no sense. But right now, one party is essentially a cult devolving towards a banana republic. The mere idea of giving them more control is horrifying.
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Parliamentary democracies also have flaws, just different ones.
Absolutely, but at this point in my tenure in the USA I'd dearly like to try out those new and exciting flaws. Particularly the flaw where one party can be in power and actually get something done.
That is a plus and a minus. A party with a solid majority can be as arbitrary as any dictatorship. And if there is an upper house, it can also slow things down. Not stop, but certainly delay.
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Parliamentary democracies also have flaws, just different ones.
Absolutely, but at this point in my tenure in the USA I'd dearly like to try out those new and exciting flaws. Particularly the flaw where one party can be in power and actually get something done.
Careful. The only reason the ACA hasn’t been repealed entirely is because the GOP doesn’t currently control every branch of government.
Even when they had control, they couldn't repeal it or get any of their replacements passed, such as "skinny repeal". But they did manage to get the mandate penalty reduced to $0 as part of the tax bill, and a federal judge in a Texas direct court ruled the mandate unconstitutional and that the rest of the ACA was inseverable and falls as well. An appeals court agreed with the district court on the mandate being unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court is going to hear the case next term. So, there's a chance the entire ACA could fall due to that small change to the penalty in the tax bill, with the republicans never having voted successfully to repeal the ACA. It's up to SCOTUS now, so we'll be waiting a while.
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i think this whole corona virus thing is just a test run for something bigger. intentional or otherwise. i'm not paranoid though.
My most Hollywood-esque conspiracy theory idea is that the COVID-19 virus is just insider trading on a grand scale.
Create a situation that our gov't is unwilling to properly manage, let people panic and sell off investments, let well-funded insiders buy them up, etc.
Perhaps rinse and repeat next year if like flu - this becomes an annual sickness.
In reality I don't think it is a conspiracy - just another example of why we Americans can't rely on the gov't (especially Republican led gov'ts) to take care of people. Look to US hurricanes and earthquakes for examples.
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i think this whole corona virus thing is just a test run for something bigger. intentional or otherwise. i'm not paranoid though.
My most Hollywood-esque conspiracy theory idea is that the COVID-19 virus is just insider trading on a grand scale.
Create a situation that our gov't is unwilling to properly manage, let people panic and sell off investments, let well-funded insiders buy them up, etc.
Perhaps rinse and repeat next year if like flu - this becomes an annual sickness.
In reality I don't think it is a conspiracy - just another example of why we Americans can't rely on the gov't (especially Republican led gov'ts) to take care of people. Look to US hurricanes and earthquakes for examples.
my theory is that it's a targeted virus aimed at old and/or immunocompromised people to reduce economic drag on medicare, SS, etc. also, possible democratic fix to kill off trump's supporters.
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No fans, no crowds at the acc. This is big.
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In reality I don't think it is a conspiracy - just another example of why we Americans can't rely on the gov't (especially Republican led gov'ts) to take care of people. Look to US hurricanes and earthquakes for examples.
In The Dictator's Handbook - why bad behavior is often good politics
the authors also compare reactions to such catastrophes in different countries.
Their main point of the book is that the amount of people the ruler needs means how good (for all) the politics are.
The US, with a 2 party system and such things as the electoral college, are on the lowest end of Democracies and as such cannot expect good policies whoever they vote on.
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Sports:
-NBA season is suspended
-NHL season is suspended
-MLS season suspended for at least 30 days
-Nearly all college basketball conference tournaments are cancelled
-I believe the WTP announced cancellations as well
Entertainment:
-Live Nation expected to announce a cancellation of concerts for the next month.
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At least they can still do Robot Wars, since robots can't catch a cold!
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Sports:
-NBA season is suspended
-NHL season is suspended
-MLS season suspended for at least 30 days
-Nearly all college basketball conference tournaments are cancelled
-I believe the WTP announced cancellations as well
Entertainment:
-Live Nation expected to announce a cancellation of concerts for the next month.
More importantly . . . BIKE RACES BEING CANCELLED LEFT, RIGHT, AND CENTER! Will the tour even be on this year???
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i think this whole corona virus thing is just a test run for something bigger. intentional or otherwise. i'm not paranoid though.
My most Hollywood-esque conspiracy theory idea is that the COVID-19 virus is just insider trading on a grand scale.
Create a situation that our gov't is unwilling to properly manage, let people panic and sell off investments, let well-funded insiders buy them up, etc.
Perhaps rinse and repeat next year if like flu - this becomes an annual sickness.
In reality I don't think it is a conspiracy - just another example of why we Americans can't rely on the gov't (especially Republican led gov'ts) to take care of people. Look to US hurricanes and earthquakes for examples.
What do you think the federal government should be doing? Declaring a complete lockdown of multiple cities or states? Requiring that everyone who could have become infected get tested and quarantined? The virus is already in almost every single state and most of the countries around the world. Is shutting down large parts of the country for weeks an appropriate response? We have thousands die every month from auto accidents and we still drive, same with other endemic diseases like the flu.
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We have thousands die every month from auto accidents and we still drive, same with other endemic diseases like the flu.
Ah the dumb whataboutism to other causes of death. Proof positive we need education reform in this country.
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What do you think the federal government should be doing? Declaring a complete lockdown of multiple cities or states? Requiring that everyone who could have become infected get tested and quarantined? The virus is already in almost every single state and most of the countries around the world. Is shutting down large parts of the country for weeks an appropriate response? We have thousands die every month from auto accidents and we still drive, same with other endemic diseases like the flu.
I personally think that you should look to Italy and South Korea for an appropriate response. The more you slow the spread the more people who need an ICU bed will get one.
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What do you think the federal government should be doing? Declaring a complete lockdown of multiple cities or states? Requiring that everyone who could have become infected get tested and quarantined? The virus is already in almost every single state and most of the countries around the world. Is shutting down large parts of the country for weeks an appropriate response? We have thousands die every month from auto accidents and we still drive, same with other endemic diseases like the flu.
Have you talked to any Italians recently?
Italy had about 240 flu deaths this year - may end up being a little higher as the season isn't over yet.
Italy has about 3000-3500 traffic related fatalities per year (source: wikipedia). That's about 9-10 per day.
Today, Italy lost 189 people due to COVID-19. Just today. Yesterday it was 196. That's almost 200 deaths a day and considering they only started to seriously lock down the area/country last weekend, this number is expect to go up for a while.
Just two to three weeks ago, when I talked to my Italian friends the coronavirus was an overblown thing, mostly a Chinese problem. Today, every single Italian I know (there's about 15 Italians in my regular social circle, from all over the country but mostly the very affected north) wished their country would have acted earlier. The Italian community in my city is urging everyone to stay home, to help prevent the spread, to stop travel to just about anywhere that's not the supermarket.
I've heard the stories from Italy. Heard the rumour they have to choose which patient can get IC care and how they have to base it on chance of survival (so young, healthy folks first)? Yeah, they're true. Their death rate is so high because they cannot help all the patients that need intensive care. Healthcare workers can barely get a break and they often fall sick themselves, burdening the system even more.
When it was China/Wuhan people said 'yeah, it's a major city with an insufficient health care system'. Well, in Italy it's spread out in cities and villages and Italy is known to have one of the best healthcare systems in the world. They still can't manage.
Don't be Italy. Act now.
ETA: Nobody said that flu deaths shouldn't be prevented (that's why we get shots!) and that car deaths shouldn't be prevented (that's why we go against car clowns and promote biking!).
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i think this whole corona virus thing is just a test run for something bigger. intentional or otherwise. i'm not paranoid though.
My most Hollywood-esque conspiracy theory idea is that the COVID-19 virus is just insider trading on a grand scale.
Create a situation that our gov't is unwilling to properly manage, let people panic and sell off investments, let well-funded insiders buy them up, etc.
Perhaps rinse and repeat next year if like flu - this becomes an annual sickness.
In reality I don't think it is a conspiracy - just another example of why we Americans can't rely on the gov't (especially Republican led gov'ts) to take care of people. Look to US hurricanes and earthquakes for examples.
What do you think the federal government should be doing? Declaring a complete lockdown of multiple cities or states? Requiring that everyone who could have become infected get tested and quarantined? The virus is already in almost every single state and most of the countries around the world. Is shutting down large parts of the country for weeks an appropriate response? We have thousands die every month from auto accidents and we still drive, same with other endemic diseases like the flu.
Right, if only folks could keep their auto accidents from infecting those more susceptible to auto accidents we could save more lives. Amirite?
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I'm certainly not a doctor, virologist or epidemiologist, but it seems to me that in light of an exponentially spreading virus to which we have no immunity, the best thing to do to actually solve the problem is just shut everything down for 2-4 weeks and use the resources of the federal government to prop up the economy for that time. Plan B would be to due rampant testing Oprah-style (you get a test, and you get a test) and use the data to selectively quarantine people and places. Plan C would be to keep people from going into places that are virus-free (assuming you could actually know a place was virus free). What you absolutely wouldn't do is know that major cities have ongoing outbreaks and allow people to flow into and out of those cities unchecked and refuse to test anyone unless they fit very specific criteria completely unrelated to their actual probability of having the virus.
They are currently not performing tests in the Seattle area unless and until to test negative for a myriad of other conditions. They are not administering the test if you do not have a fever - even if you have all the other symptoms. We have no idea how widespread the virus is. What's worse is that we aren't seriously trying to find out.
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I'm certainly not a doctor, virologist or epidemiologist, but it seems to me that in light of an exponentially spreading virus to which we have no immunity, the best thing to do to actually solve the problem is just shut everything down for 2-4 weeks and use the resources of the federal government to prop up the economy for that time. Plan B would be to due rampant testing Oprah-style (you get a test, and you get a test) and use the data to selectively quarantine people and places. Plan C would be to keep people from going into places that are virus-free (assuming you could actually know a place was virus free). What you absolutely wouldn't do is know that major cities have ongoing outbreaks and allow people to flow into and out of those cities unchecked and refuse to test anyone unless they fit very specific criteria completely unrelated to their actual probability of having the virus.
They are currently not performing tests in the Seattle area unless and until to test negative for a myriad of other conditions. They are not administering the test if you do not have a fever - even if you have all the other symptoms. We have no idea how widespread the virus is. What's worse is that we aren't seriously trying to find out.
This thing was out of control weeks ago. I think all that can be said now is that everyone is going to get it. If I were in charge I'd be gearing up hospitals on one hand, and gearing up finding a vaccine on the other. The entire planet will have it within 12 months. There needs to be a free vaccine for all people at severe risk NOW or literally hundreds of millions will die in the next year or so. That's the reality. The only point of keeping it out of any country is to buy time to get a vaccine. This IS the zombie apocalypse. We're just incredibly lucky that it's not a worse virus. Maybe well learn from this before the next really bad thing comes along.
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I'm certainly not a doctor, virologist or epidemiologist, but it seems to me that in light of an exponentially spreading virus to which we have no immunity, the best thing to do to actually solve the problem is just shut everything down for 2-4 weeks and use the resources of the federal government to prop up the economy for that time. Plan B would be to due rampant testing Oprah-style (you get a test, and you get a test) and use the data to selectively quarantine people and places. Plan C would be to keep people from going into places that are virus-free (assuming you could actually know a place was virus free). What you absolutely wouldn't do is know that major cities have ongoing outbreaks and allow people to flow into and out of those cities unchecked and refuse to test anyone unless they fit very specific criteria completely unrelated to their actual probability of having the virus.
They are currently not performing tests in the Seattle area unless and until to test negative for a myriad of other conditions. They are not administering the test if you do not have a fever - even if you have all the other symptoms. We have no idea how widespread the virus is. What's worse is that we aren't seriously trying to find out.
This thing was out of control weeks ago. I think all that can be said now is that everyone is going to get it. If I were in charge I'd be gearing up hospitals on one hand, and gearing up finding a vaccine on the other. The entire planet will have it within 12 months. There needs to be a free vaccine for all people at severe risk NOW or literally hundreds of millions will die in the next year or so. That's the reality. The only point of keeping it out of any country is to buy time to get a vaccine. This IS the zombie apocalypse. We're just incredibly lucky that it's not a worse virus. Maybe well learn from this before the next really bad thing comes along.
A workable vaccine in the short-run seems unlikely, but who knows. The good news is there might be other treatments (https://youtu.be/vE4_LsftNKM?t=80) that can help.
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i think this whole corona virus thing is just a test run for something bigger. intentional or otherwise. i'm not paranoid though.
My most Hollywood-esque conspiracy theory idea is that the COVID-19 virus is just insider trading on a grand scale.
Create a situation that our gov't is unwilling to properly manage, let people panic and sell off investments, let well-funded insiders buy them up, etc.
Perhaps rinse and repeat next year if like flu - this becomes an annual sickness.
In reality I don't think it is a conspiracy - just another example of why we Americans can't rely on the gov't (especially Republican led gov'ts) to take care of people. Look to US hurricanes and earthquakes for examples.
What do you think the federal government should be doing? Declaring a complete lockdown of multiple cities or states? Requiring that everyone who could have become infected get tested and quarantined? The virus is already in almost every single state and most of the countries around the world. Is shutting down large parts of the country for weeks an appropriate response? We have thousands die every month from auto accidents and we still drive, same with other endemic diseases like the flu.
In a word, yes. Lock this down. Lock it down hard. Quarantine like there's no tomorrow. We're already past containment. This is a flipping war, and we need to treat it as one. We do not want the same situation that Italy is finding itself in: doctors deciding which patients get on ventilators because they simply don't have enough to go around. If the medical system gets overwhelmed, and it might, a lot of people who didn't need to die will.We can minimize a lot of death and suffering by some shared inconvenience.
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In a word, yes. Lock this down. Lock it down hard. Quarantine like there's no tomorrow. We're already past containment. This is a flipping war, and we need to treat it as one. We do not want the same situation that Italy is finding itself in: doctors deciding which patients get on ventilators because they simply don't have enough to go around. If the medical system gets overwhelmed, and it might, a lot of people who didn't need to die will.We can minimize a lot of death and suffering by some shared inconvenience.
Yes, but I firmly believe that the USA won't. There are still people in my social media circles, today, that think that this is all a media hoax. I am convinced that the USA will see massive casualties, but would love to be wrong.
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In a word, yes. Lock this down. Lock it down hard. Quarantine like there's no tomorrow. We're already past containment. This is a flipping war, and we need to treat it as one. We do not want the same situation that Italy is finding itself in: doctors deciding which patients get on ventilators because they simply don't have enough to go around. If the medical system gets overwhelmed, and it might, a lot of people who didn't need to die will.We can minimize a lot of death and suffering by some shared inconvenience.
Yes, but I firmly believe that the USA won't. There are still people in my social media circles, today, that think that this is all a media hoax. I am convinced that the USA will see massive casualties, but would love to be wrong.
At my work (corporate HQ with close to 1000 employees on site) the response has been as follows:
1) send out a vague email telling sick employees to stay home (but maximum sick days per year is 5)
2) prop open a door that is normally closed so that people don't have to touch it to pass through
That's it! As far as 1) goes, I spent all day listening to all of the different dry coughs around the office. People are still not taking any of this seriously and Rudy Gobert is their patron saint. I actually think the sports cancellations are getting some of the troglodytes to finally take notice of the situation.
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In a word, yes. Lock this down. Lock it down hard. Quarantine like there's no tomorrow. We're already past containment. This is a flipping war, and we need to treat it as one. We do not want the same situation that Italy is finding itself in: doctors deciding which patients get on ventilators because they simply don't have enough to go around. If the medical system gets overwhelmed, and it might, a lot of people who didn't need to die will.We can minimize a lot of death and suffering by some shared inconvenience.
Yes, but I firmly believe that the USA won't. There are still people in my social media circles, today, that think that this is all a media hoax. I am convinced that the USA will see massive casualties, but would love to be wrong.
Yep. And the people who think it’s a hoax are supporters of a president who desperately needs to keep them on his side. So he’s going to do everything he can to minimize, for as long as he can.
Which means, no way will we lock this down.
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In a word, yes. Lock this down. Lock it down hard. Quarantine like there's no tomorrow. We're already past containment. This is a flipping war, and we need to treat it as one. We do not want the same situation that Italy is finding itself in: doctors deciding which patients get on ventilators because they simply don't have enough to go around. If the medical system gets overwhelmed, and it might, a lot of people who didn't need to die will.We can minimize a lot of death and suffering by some shared inconvenience.
Yes, but I firmly believe that the USA won't. There are still people in my social media circles, today, that think that this is all a media hoax. I am convinced that the USA will see massive casualties, but would love to be wrong.
It's going to happen only at state/local levels. Last night, the governor of Michigan ordered all preK-12 schools closed until April 6. Many of our colleges and universities have voluntarily opted for online classes only. My city cancelled city council meetings and closed the libraries and senior centers. At least one local mosque cancelled services, and I'm waiting for churches to follow suit after the interfaith network decided to switch their meeting to virtual format.
Our federal government has proven useless, which is why state governors are stepping up.
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This thing was out of control weeks ago. I think all that can be said now is that everyone is going to get it. If I were in charge I'd be gearing up hospitals on one hand, and gearing up finding a vaccine on the other. The entire planet will have it within 12 months. There needs to be a free vaccine for all people at severe risk NOW or literally hundreds of millions will die in the next year or so. That's the reality. The only point of keeping it out of any country is to buy time to get a vaccine. This IS the zombie apocalypse. We're just incredibly lucky that it's not a worse virus. Maybe well learn from this before the next really bad thing comes along.
Millions, but not hundreds of millions, luckily it is not that bad a virus. It won't be "Arrival of the Europeans in the New World" style of pandemic.
If you want to help the efforts to find a vaccine, you can donate your computer's calculating power here: https://foldingathome.org/
Here in Germany my company is now basically remote-only (not that hard for programmers), and other companies are doing the same, often crushing their VPN infrastructure.
In many areas schools are already close or have extended holidays. Universities etc. are putting the new semester one month forward into April.
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I think there’s a sense that we all have to make decisions at a state, local, or private level because the federal government is not even up to the task of providing unified guidelines.
Right!? I have gotten 10x more communication from my employer about how we're going to go forward with this, vs. state and local leaders.
My company just announced this morning that we are 100% WFH across the globe (tens of thousands of workers). Our local office actually officially closed yesterday and told people to wfh indefinitely.
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I think there’s a sense that we all have to make decisions at a state, local, or private level because the federal government is not even up to the task of providing unified guidelines.
Right!? I have gotten 10x more communication from my employer about how we're going to go forward with this, vs. state and local leaders.
My company just announced this morning that we are 100% WFH across the globe (tens of thousands of workers). Our local office actually officially closed yesterday and told people to wfh indefinitely.
Here in Sweden, the one that have been proactive are the companies that have put in effect travel bans and asked people to work from home. The government and the health authorities have for a long time told that the carantine and tracing routine is enough until two days ago when they told that it is spreading internally and not only due to trips to Italy, China etc. The local muncipalities are also jo closing facilities for elders from visits and issuing travel bans.
We are joking that the productivity of the officeworker will go significantly up as everyone can work undisturbed from home and you don’t need to travel for business.
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Millions, but not hundreds of millions, luckily it is not that bad a virus. It won't be "Arrival of the Europeans in the New World" style of pandemic.
A hundred million deaths are possible, if we continue business as usual (thankfully, that is not happening). The mortality rate has been shown to be significantly less than 1% when people receive first-world treatment, but spike to several percent when hospitals are overwhelmed. Multiply this by the world population and divide by 2 (assuming only half the world gets it prior to herd immunity kicking in), and we could see the number quoted.
I wouldn't by any stretch call this the zombie apocalypse, but it does appear to have the potential to be the worst pandemic in a hundred years.
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It's going to happen only at state/local levels. Last night, the governor of Michigan ordered all preK-12 schools closed until April 6. Many of our colleges and universities have voluntarily opted for online classes only. My city cancelled city council meetings and closed the libraries and senior centers. At least one local mosque cancelled services, and I'm waiting for churches to follow suit after the interfaith network decided to switch their meeting to virtual format.
But none of these state responses are at the level of South Korea, China, or Italy. South Korea is testing 20K people a day. Italy won't let you travel to the neighboring town.
I'm in OR which is not quite as bad and CA, WA, or NY. We're closing all schools, but I've been asking local businesses how it's going. Coffee shops traffic is down but not nonexistent. Convenience store traffic is as usual. My two yoga studios are still open with traffic at ~50%. I have a wedding to go to out of state in May with no travel ban in place (weddings are banned in Italy, as is unnecessary travel far away from your home). The convenience store manager would love to close, but its a corporate chain and her boss will fire her if she's not there 6am-3pm five days a week (it's 24 hours).
EDITed to add - and no queue control. In Italy businesses are responsible for making sure people queue 1m apart, and police are on the streets to enforce it.
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In a word, yes. Lock this down. Lock it down hard. Quarantine like there's no tomorrow. We're already past containment. This is a flipping war, and we need to treat it as one. We do not want the same situation that Italy is finding itself in: doctors deciding which patients get on ventilators because they simply don't have enough to go around. If the medical system gets overwhelmed, and it might, a lot of people who didn't need to die will.We can minimize a lot of death and suffering by some shared inconvenience.
Yes, but I firmly believe that the USA won't. There are still people in my social media circles, today, that think that this is all a media hoax. I am convinced that the USA will see massive casualties, but would love to be wrong.
Yep. And the people who think it’s a hoax are supporters of a president who desperately needs to keep them on his side. So he’s going to do everything he can to minimize, for as long as he can.
Which means, no way will we lock this down.
I think Trump and Pence need to get this virus and recover. And the world needs to know about it. Trump needs to be forced to acknowledge reality for once.
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Trumps not in the age or health category that does well with Covid-19.
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I thought about that. Don't want to wish death on anyone even Trump who I dislike bigly.
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I think Trump and Pence need to get this virus and recover. And the world needs to know about it. Trump needs to be forced to acknowledge reality for once.
Unfortunately, if they got it and recovered, all we would hear is how overblown this whole thing is: "the libtards said this virus kills people like us, but look! We're back better than ever. What a hoax!"
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This thing was out of control weeks ago. I think all that can be said now is that everyone is going to get it. If I were in charge I'd be gearing up hospitals on one hand, and gearing up finding a vaccine on the other. The entire planet will have it within 12 months. There needs to be a free vaccine for all people at severe risk NOW or literally hundreds of millions will die in the next year or so. That's the reality. The only point of keeping it out of any country is to buy time to get a vaccine. This IS the zombie apocalypse. We're just incredibly lucky that it's not a worse virus. Maybe well learn from this before the next really bad thing comes along.
Millions, but not hundreds of millions, luckily it is not that bad a virus. It won't be "Arrival of the Europeans in the New World" style of pandemic.
If you want to help the efforts to find a vaccine, you can donate your computer's calculating power here: https://foldingathome.org/
Here in Germany my company is now basically remote-only (not that hard for programmers), and other companies are doing the same, often crushing their VPN infrastructure.
In many areas schools are already close or have extended holidays. Universities etc. are putting the new semester one month forward into April.
What's 3.4% of the world's population?
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What's 3.4% of the world's population?
Many people on this forum think that since China, South Korea, and Singapore seem to have things under control that everyone else will be okay. I'm not in this camp.
(7,770,409,772 - 1,386,000,000 - 51,470,000 - 5,612,000) * 0.7 * 0.034 = 150,590,401
That 70% of the world population outside of China, Singapore, and South Korea getting infected with 3.4% dying. That could be wildly off, but I'd be surprised if it is off by 10x. We'll see, I'd love to be wrong.
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What's 3.4% of the world's population?
Many people on this forum think that since China, South Korea, and Singapore seem to have things under control that everyone else will be okay. I'm not in this camp.
(7,770,409,772 - 1,386,000,000 - 51,470,000 - 5,612,000) * 0.7 * 0.034 = 150,590,401
That 70% of the world population outside of China, Singapore, and South Korea getting infected with 3.4% dying. That could be wildly off, but I'd be surprised if it is off by 10x. We'll see, I'd love to be wrong.
South Korea is converging to ~0.9%-1% case fatality rate where testing has been most extensive. Of course, outcomes depend on demographics (age, smoking matter a lot), possibly virus strain, and how overwhelmed medical resources are.
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lost_in_the_endless_aisle,
I agree, which is one of the reasons I could be off. Meanwhile, Italy is over 6% (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/how-many-will-die-of-coronavirus-in-the-uk-a-closer-look-at-the-numbers).
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What's 3.4% of the world's population?
Many people on this forum think that since China, South Korea, and Singapore seem to have things under control that everyone else will be okay. I'm not in this camp.
(7,770,409,772 - 1,386,000,000 - 51,470,000 - 5,612,000) * 0.7 * 0.034 = 150,590,401
That 70% of the world population outside of China, Singapore, and South Korea getting infected with 3.4% dying. That could be wildly off, but I'd be surprised if it is off by 10x. We'll see, I'd love to be wrong.
South Korea is converging to ~0.9%-1% case fatality rate where testing has been most extensive. Of course, outcomes depend on demographics (age, smoking matter a lot), possibly virus strain, and how overwhelmed medical resources are.
Yup, South Korea is basically a best case scenario for low mortality from this virus: affluent society, most of the infected were disproportionately young,* and their healthcare system's capacity for urgent and intensive care wasn't overwhelmed.
*The church where the virus first spread widely in Korea seems to have been mostly people in their 20s and 30s.
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What's 3.4% of the world's population?
Many people on this forum think that since China, South Korea, and Singapore seem to have things under control that everyone else will be okay. I'm not in this camp.
(7,770,409,772 - 1,386,000,000 - 51,470,000 - 5,612,000) * 0.7 * 0.034 = 150,590,401
That 70% of the world population outside of China, Singapore, and South Korea getting infected with 3.4% dying. That could be wildly off, but I'd be surprised if it is off by 10x. We'll see, I'd love to be wrong.
South Korea is converging to ~0.9%-1% case fatality rate where testing has been most extensive. Of course, outcomes depend on demographics (age, smoking matter a lot), possibly virus strain, and how overwhelmed medical resources are.
Yup, South Korea is basically a best case scenario for low mortality from this virus: affluent society, most of the infected were disproportionately young,* and their healthcare system's capacity for urgent and intensive care wasn't overwhelmed.
*The church where the virus first spread widely in Korea seems to have been mostly people in their 20s and 30s.
The public is also more willing to follow these quarantine measures. A lot of folks seem a bit paranoid and overzealous when it comes to wearing masks, but it's better than thumbing their nose at government health directives. A couple nights ago someone pointed out that if our homes are supposed to be a safe place to be, what about the moving company crews that pack and unpack our household goods shipments? The garrison commander pointed out that the Korean government now requires those crews to wear gloves and masks when they're working. The management team in my apartment complex has someone come out and spray down the elevator and lobby once a week. Two weeks after the Daegu church outbreak my base up here near Seoul instituted a lock down where everybody coming onto the base gets a temperature check and gets asked where they've been in the last month. If they show symptoms they get further screening and instructions. Out of a population of about 12,000 working on the base and living in the surrounding area we've had one person infected. Daegu is still a petri dish with 60% of the country's infections being there (US military infections you can count on your fingers), but the spread across the country has been very slow.
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The US is about two weeks (https://twitter.com/elipariser/status/1237840413857202178) behind Italy. A friend at WMT just told me they are doing WFH for all corporate employees effective immediately. This morning, I told my employees to not even think about coming to work and to WFH if they get a fever or any other symptoms; the meeting I held preempted a set of meetings on the official HR policy (something I found out since I booked the same conference room in front of HR). After that HR meeting, all employees received an email on how many times the door handles would be scrubbed at corporate HQ each day. My boss said WFH is fine short-term if schools close to handle childcare... Nothing about any actual contingency planning or emphasizing how sick people should not come to work under any circumstances, etc. If there is a confirmed positive case, we are to let HR and our manager know immediately (there is a presumptive local case but probably no confirmed cases if no testing readily available!). By the time there is one confirmed case, there will probably be 5 active cases and 25 incubating cases. Estimating that current policy is killing 0.2-0.5 statistical people. If I was smarter, I would not work here.
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Everyone in the know is suggesting that this will become the next endemic disease we all deal with, and that it will have global spread within 12 months. If everyone is infected, and there's a lower than reported death rate... we're still talking about close to a hundred million people in the next 12 months. If countries slow the saturation and "flatten the curve", it's just changing the time factor (and the lessening the social chaos factor). We're still talking about a hell of a lot of people dying. Sure, a lot of them had advanced age and underlying issues maybe, but that's a lot of deaths. I'm pretty sure it's unavoidable. We are very, very lucky as a species that is not a truly awful virus. Because we're not capable of dealing with that at ALL. I think people will look back on this in a hundred years and call is a massively lucky escape for human kind - and a frickin wakeup call.
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I think people will look back on this in a hundred years and call is a massively lucky escape for human kind - and a frickin wakeup call.
I hope this is true. In reality - How many people before the last few months knew anything about the flu virus of 1918? We tend to have tragic events, then move on.
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I think people will look back on this in a hundred years and call is a massively lucky escape for human kind - and a frickin wakeup call.
I hope this is true. In reality - How many people before the last few months knew anything about the flu virus of 1918? We tend to have tragic events, then move on.
Well, now we've seen just how fast a virus could wipe us all out, even with our modern technology etc etc. Next time, I hope people will act rapidly and decisively. That has worked, in part at least, for the asian countries that had previously dealt with SARS. Politicians need to realise that their chance of re-election has no relevance at all in this kind of situation. Their job is to take change and lead, not worry about losing face. And the same goes for WHO and CDC, who have been utterly weak and pathetic.
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This thing was out of control weeks ago. I think all that can be said now is that everyone is going to get it. If I were in charge I'd be gearing up hospitals on one hand, and gearing up finding a vaccine on the other. The entire planet will have it within 12 months. There needs to be a free vaccine for all people at severe risk NOW or literally hundreds of millions will die in the next year or so. That's the reality. The only point of keeping it out of any country is to buy time to get a vaccine. This IS the zombie apocalypse. We're just incredibly lucky that it's not a worse virus. Maybe well learn from this before the next really bad thing comes along.
Millions, but not hundreds of millions, luckily it is not that bad a virus. It won't be "Arrival of the Europeans in the New World" style of pandemic.
If you want to help the efforts to find a vaccine, you can donate your computer's calculating power here: https://foldingathome.org/
Here in Germany my company is now basically remote-only (not that hard for programmers), and other companies are doing the same, often crushing their VPN infrastructure.
In many areas schools are already close or have extended holidays. Universities etc. are putting the new semester one month forward into April.
What's 3.4% of the world's population?
It is not that easy.
As already mentioned a lot, the actual death rate is far lower due to high amounts of undetected cases, possible 1/10th of the number you wrote. Let's be a little bit optimistic and say it is 0,5% overall in developed countries (where we have numbers), okay?
The pandemic will come to a "stop" if about 2/3 of people are infected - herd immunity. After that it will be "just" another seasonal flu.
At 7 billion people that means - let's err a bit on more people - 5'000'000'000 infected.
Means 5'000'000'000 * 0,005 = 25'000'000 people.
You may now say that since the health system in poor countries is a lot worse, more people will die.
BUT we know that the virus is far less dangerous to younger people and poorer countries tend to have a way younger age structure. The death rate there may actually be a lot lower than the (assumed real) 0,5% in rich countries.
Or in short: Nobody knows for sure. Personally I think we will have a lot less than 100 million death this year, even if there will be no vaccine.
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This thing was out of control weeks ago. I think all that can be said now is that everyone is going to get it. If I were in charge I'd be gearing up hospitals on one hand, and gearing up finding a vaccine on the other. The entire planet will have it within 12 months. There needs to be a free vaccine for all people at severe risk NOW or literally hundreds of millions will die in the next year or so. That's the reality. The only point of keeping it out of any country is to buy time to get a vaccine. This IS the zombie apocalypse. We're just incredibly lucky that it's not a worse virus. Maybe well learn from this before the next really bad thing comes along.
Millions, but not hundreds of millions, luckily it is not that bad a virus. It won't be "Arrival of the Europeans in the New World" style of pandemic.
If you want to help the efforts to find a vaccine, you can donate your computer's calculating power here: https://foldingathome.org/
Here in Germany my company is now basically remote-only (not that hard for programmers), and other companies are doing the same, often crushing their VPN infrastructure.
In many areas schools are already close or have extended holidays. Universities etc. are putting the new semester one month forward into April.
What's 3.4% of the world's population?
It is not that easy.
As already mentioned a lot, the actual death rate is far lower due to high amounts of undetected cases, possible 1/10th of the number you wrote. Let's be a little bit optimistic and say it is 0,5% overall in developed countries (where we have numbers), okay?
The pandemic will come to a "stop" if about 2/3 of people are infected - herd immunity. After that it will be "just" another seasonal flu.
At 7 billion people that means - let's err a bit on more people - 5'000'000'000 infected.
Means 5'000'000'000 * 0,005 = 25'000'000 people.
You may now say that since the health system in poor countries is a lot worse, more people will die.
BUT we know that the virus is far less dangerous to younger people and poorer countries tend to have a way younger age structure. The death rate there may actually be a lot lower than the (assumed real) 0,5% in rich countries.
Or in short: Nobody knows for sure. Personally I think we will have a lot less than 100 million death this year, even if there will be no vaccine.
I hope you're right. Either way, we're all on the frickin train to the capital of Find Out, aren't we? Thanks, world leaders!
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and for me, it’s starting. Someone from an organization I’m affiliated with died from COVID 19. (Not someone I knew personally though) They passed before their test results were back.
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I read elsewhere where someone made a case that the U.S. was more like Italy than South Korea, so I did a comparison of the fatality rate among CLOSED cases.
Italy
1266 deaths
1439 recovered
2705 closed cases
46.8% fatality rate
S. Korea
72 deaths
714 recovered
786 closed cases
9.16% fatality rate
Note: again, this is only among closed cases as we don't yet know the outcome of active cases.
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The pandemic will come to a "stop" if about 2/3 of people are infected - herd immunity. After that it will be "just" another seasonal flu.
That's pure speculation. I've heard multiple experts on the matter state multiple times that they do not know if this will be a seasonal reoccurrence, and they are very clear that this virus is NOT the flu.
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I read elsewhere where someone made a case that the U.S. was more like Italy than South Korea, so I did a comparison of the fatality rate among CLOSED cases.
Italy
1266 deaths
1439 recovered
2705 closed cases
46.8% fatality rate
S. Korea
72 deaths
714 recovered
786 closed cases
9.16% fatality rate
Note: again, this is only among closed cases as we don't yet know the outcome of active cases.
And note, as has been discussed over and over again: it takes a lot longer to close a case of this virus from recover than it does to close a case through death, so this is an exceedingly misleading statistic and will be for as long as the number of active cases is a significant proportion of total cases.
In China -- where there are now plenty of closed cases to look at -- the fatality rate for this disease is in the 2-3% range. In Italy it may be 2x that because of how overwhelmed their healthcare system is. As a result cases that could have recovered with heroic medical intervention are dying instead.
Look, a virus that can spread asymptomatically, is now well established in countries across the globe, puts 20% of the people it infects into the hospital, and kills anywhere from 1-6% of the people it infects is plenty enough to be taken extremely seriously.
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In Italy they are triaging older people who do not receive treatment due to the shortage of equipment. Since they are more likely to succumb, this may explain the higher death rate.
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I read elsewhere where someone made a case that the U.S. was more like Italy than South Korea, so I did a comparison of the fatality rate among CLOSED cases.
Italy
1266 deaths
1439 recovered
2705 closed cases
46.8% fatality rate
S. Korea
72 deaths
714 recovered
786 closed cases
9.16% fatality rate
Note: again, this is only among closed cases as we don't yet know the outcome of active cases.
I made it clear that I was referring only to CLOSED cases, so anyone taking the time to read it should not be misled on that matter.
But just an FYI on where I took the numbers from, this was my reference at the time I posted.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
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In Italy they are triaging older people who do not receive treatment due to the shortage of equipment. Since they are more likely to succumb, this may explain the higher death rate.
That's true. I read the following article, and some are making a case that it could be worse than that in the U.S. within a few weeks because of the number of people over 60, who are obese, who smoke/vape, have diabeties, other respiratory problems, and/or high blood pressure
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/
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In Italy they are triaging older people who do not receive treatment due to the shortage of equipment. Since they are more likely to succumb, this may explain the higher death rate.
That's true. I read the following article, and some are making a case that it could be worse than that in the U.S. within a few weeks because of the number of people over 60, who are obese, who smoke/vape, have diabeties, other respiratory problems, and/or high blood pressure
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/
Yeah I think the US is going to have real issues pretty soon. It's been spreading pretty quietly for a bit and the infected will probably start getting more symptoms all at the same time.
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I made it clear that I was referring only to CLOSED cases, so anyone taking the time to read it should not be misled on that matter.
My guess is that some people will indeed be mislead because its not intuitive that people remain active cases much longer when they survive than when they die. But since you agree it's a misleading number, why keep bringing it up?
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I made it clear that I was referring only to CLOSED cases, so anyone taking the time to read it should not be misled on that matter.
My guess is that some people will indeed be mislead because its not intuitive that people remain active cases much longer when they survive than when they die. But since you agree it's a misleading number, why keep bringing it up?
I don't believe it's misleading if you actually read the post that I'm referring to "closed" cases. I actually think some of the commonly mentioned fatality rates that include "active" cases are more misleading, because we don't really know the outcome of active cases, and I see them brought up far more often.
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In Italy they are triaging older people who do not receive treatment due to the shortage of equipment. Since they are more likely to succumb, this may explain the higher death rate.
That's true. I read the following article, and some are making a case that it could be worse than that in the U.S. within a few weeks because of the number of people over 60, who are obese, who smoke/vape, have diabeties, other respiratory problems, and/or high blood pressure
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/
Yeah I think the US is going to have real issues pretty soon. It's been spreading pretty quietly for a bit and the infected will probably start getting more symptoms all at the same time.
Right, and judging from the increase we're seeing being inline with other countries like Italy, it's going to happen very quickly, within 2 weeks. See attached.
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I actually think some of the commonly mentioned fatality rates that include "active" cases are more misleading, because we don't really know the outcome of active cases, and I see them brought up far more often.
So, to be clear:
You are stating that you genuinely believe your number of 9-46.8% is closer to the true proportion of people who are infected with the coronavirus who will go on to die than the 2-3% (which seems to be the most widely reported number at this point)?
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I actually think some of the commonly mentioned fatality rates that include "active" cases are more misleading, because we don't really know the outcome of active cases, and I see them brought up far more often.
So, to be clear:
You are stating that you genuinely believe your number of 9-46.8% is closer to the true proportion of people who are infected with the coronavirus who will go on to die than the 2-3% (which seems to be the most widely reported number at this point)?
To be clear, do you lack reading comprehension skills or are you being intentionally dense? That is not at all, ever, what American GenX has said. Not even once. I don't even have skin in this game but having you hammer at this by intentionally (I believe) misreading and misrepresenting what this other person is saying is pissing me off.
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I think the point is that elevating death rates by comparing them only to known recoveries is mathematically unsound because the majority of the 'active' cases are also going to recover; therefore, reducing the denominator of the fraction to only "active" cases produces a vast over-estimation of death rate.
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I also think it's worth keeping in mind that medical authorities are likely in most countries to overplay risk, not underplay it, since they're aware of people's general inability to follow prudent medical advice, and they'd rather err on the side of caution. Therefore what we are being told is likely to be closer to the worst-case scenario than the best-case, and I also think a lot of these estimates are worse than the median Expected Value. Humans tend to overestimate the magnitude of both positive and negative outcomes, because they let emotion cloud rationality, and because the health system (quite properly, I guess) would rather expend more energy than is required, to ward off the worst case scenario, than treat public health like an economic market.
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I actually think some of the commonly mentioned fatality rates that include "active" cases are more misleading, because we don't really know the outcome of active cases, and I see them brought up far more often.
So, to be clear:
You are stating that you genuinely believe your number of 9-46.8% is closer to the true proportion of people who are infected with the coronavirus who will go on to die than the 2-3% (which seems to be the most widely reported number at this point)?
To be clear, do you lack reading comprehension skills or are you being intentionally dense? That is not at all, ever, what American GenX has said. Not even once. I don't even have skin in this game but having you hammer at this by intentionally (I believe) misreading and misrepresenting what this other person is saying is pissing me off.
"Most misleading" is certainly a nonspecific phrase.
However, I cannot come up a good way to quantify which number is more misleading than another number other than which number is farther away from the true value. Just because I cannot think of another option doesn't mean one doesn't exist. If you, or someone else, can think of another better way of quantifying which number is more misleading than another, then please let me know.
Yes, you are right that -- if I had to guess -- I'd guess that the original poster does not actually believe that a 46.8% mortality rate a less misleading estimate of the mortality rate of COVID-19 in Italy. Although obviously I cannot know what goes on in someone else's head. But it sure does seem to be what they've written. If there is another meaning that is obvious to everyone else, then all I can say is that I may indeed be dense, but not intentionally so.
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Posting to follow (and get in on the conversation).
I keep thinking about how things are so rapidly changing in this. Just last Saturday I sat down early morning like now and started to see how we all were headed straight for a brick wall. I was anxious and nervous at work on Tuesday and Wednesday, but everyone else seemed business as usual. Then on Thursday everyone collectively looked up and panicked. Grocery stores were being emptied with people stocking up, schools were closing across the county, libraries followed behind, churches and synagogues moving to online (or at least encouraging people to not come)...
Just last weekend my family (parents, in-laws, and siblings) were still trying to optimistically plan what excursions we wanted to do on our cruise in June. Now that Canada has closed ports through July I can't help but think its not going to happen.
When I called on Thursday to encourage my MIL to pull grandma from her adult day-care, I was surprised when MIL asked if I thought it was really necessary. I predicted her to just need someone else to say it out loud to feel like she could go ahead and do it. I said yes, your state now has its first confirmed case, and the fatality rate for her age and health conditions mean she's highly at risk. (This is easily the grandparent my husband and I are most concerned for, even before the virus started).
I can't help but feel in the last week I've felt more pessimism about the future than any other point in my life. Its frustrating to feel that life as we know it is likely going to change for a very long time, and no one seems to want to realize and accept that. Everyone at my workplace thinks "there's no way this place will close" but I can tell you, workplace drug testing has a threshold of demand that can drop to make a lot of us not necessary, and that's assuming we don't hit the point that requires us closing based on the spread of this virus. My husband has been protesting my encouragement to WFH for almost a week now (thankfully the office is close to forcing his hand...)
I was folding a t-shirt from my marathon race. I ran the half marathon two years ago, and the marathon last year. Its supposed to happen in November, but a nagging thought passed me by that its unlikely to happen now. My spring half marathon is already postponed to October, but I'm skeptical on that one as well.
The state is closing a bunch of alcohol stores starting Monday, so once they open today hubs and I are going to go stock up.
And crap I used to get from Amazon within a day or two is already taking three, which I don't take as a very good sign.
But, a funny to keep my post from being all doom and gloom; a coworker stated "I used to cough to cover up my farts, now I fart to cover up my coughs!"
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Interesting stat:
Korea testet all people, Italy only the sick. That is how you get different death rates etc.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETH1TViXgAAO7Q2?format=jpg&name=large)
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But, a funny to keep my post from being all doom and gloom; a coworker stated "I used to cough to cover up my farts, now I fart to cover up my coughs!"
Now that's funny.
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@LennStar where'd you find that chart? And did you anything also adding in rates of hospitalization, death, etc?
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LennStar, I suspect you are right that part of this is Korea doing much broader testing and Italy only have the resources to focus on sick people.
But do also keep in mind that the church the virus was originally spreading through in Korea was mostly young people in their 20s and 30s (probably why Korea has that big spike in the 20-29 category), and also that Italy (median age 47) is an older nation as a whole than Korea (median age 40)
Randomness: if you want to make charts and other pictures easier to read on the forum, you can add a "width" tag to the image so it's not wider than some monitors.
[img width=600]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETH1TViXgAAO7Q2?format=jpg&name=large[/img]
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@LennStar where'd you find that chart? And did you anything also adding in rates of hospitalization, death, etc?
Someone on Twitter who says he is a doctor. So no guarantee, but it aligns with what I read elsewhere.
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@LennStar from what I know it's only partially the issue with the amount of testing. The incredibly high number of people in their 20s getting infected was because they had the church outbreak. This church had followers mostly in their 20s and 30s.
It also partly explains the gap in death rate between Italy and South Korea.
Note; I do expect that Italy has much higher rates of young people with COVID-19 as well, but as long as it's not tested, it's hard to say whether it's a testing only the sick vs everyone issue or an outbreak-in-a-certain-demographic issue.
Basically, much data but little clues so far.
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
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buckle up:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/upshot/coronavirus-jobless-claims-states.html?searchResultPosition=3
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/world/coronavirus-update-cases.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
The Trump administration is asking state labor officials to delay releasing the precise number of unemployment claims they are fielding, an indication of how uneasy policymakers are about further roiling a stock market already plunging in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
In an email sent Wednesday, the Labor Department instructed state officials to only “provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)” until the department releases the total number of national claims next Thursday.
The email, which was shared with The New York Times, noted that the reports were monitored closely by financial markets and should therefore remain embargoed. “States should not provide numeric values to the public,” wrote Gay Gilbert, the administrator of the department’s Office of Employment Insurance.
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Whoa, how did she even get tested? People with actual symptoms who have been traveling haven't been able to get tested. It was sounding like almost no one was getting tests.
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
Came back negative. He was just sick with something else for a couple days. There's a big meeting going on right now discussing how we can mitigate the effects of someone in the headquarters catching it. I really think that discussion should have happened four weeks ago, but I'm curious to see what they come up with.
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
Came back negative. He was just sick with something else for a couple days. There's a big meeting going on right now discussing how we can mitigate the effects of someone in the headquarters catching it. I really think that discussion should have happened four weeks ago, but I'm curious to see what they come up with.
Little hint: do not be the guy that gets coronavirus from the meeting on how to handle coronavirus
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
Came back negative. He was just sick with something else for a couple days. There's a big meeting going on right now discussing how we can mitigate the effects of someone in the headquarters catching it. I really think that discussion should have happened four weeks ago, but I'm curious to see what they come up with.
Little hint: do not be the guy that gets coronavirus from the meeting on how to handle coronavirus
The 2020 version of the comission to find ways to reduce unneccessary comissions.
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
Came back negative. He was just sick with something else for a couple days. There's a big meeting going on right now discussing how we can mitigate the effects of someone in the headquarters catching it. I really think that discussion should have happened four weeks ago, but I'm curious to see what they come up with.
Little hint: do not be the guy that gets coronavirus from the meeting on how to handle coronavirus
The 2020 version of the comission to find ways to reduce unneccessary comissions.
talking to you Biogen....
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article241246261.html (https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article241246261.html)
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
Came back negative. He was just sick with something else for a couple days. There's a big meeting going on right now discussing how we can mitigate the effects of someone in the headquarters catching it. I really think that discussion should have happened four weeks ago, but I'm curious to see what they come up with.
Little hint: do not be the guy that gets coronavirus from the meeting on how to handle coronavirus
Thankfully they've moved almost all executive meetings to webcams, but they're working on a solution to a problem we identified a long time ago. Back of the envelope, I have personal contact with 20 coworkers a day in our building in three different departments. I have a pretty boring personal life even without the restrictions so I don't think I'm a candidate to go out and catch it, but if anyone gives it to me I'm running that thing up and down the entire building.
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Whoa, how did she even get tested? People with actual symptoms who have been traveling haven't been able to get tested. It was sounding like almost no one was getting tests.
She was the 11th(?) case in the state so maybe around here it's not such a logjam compared to other areas. Also I guess the testing red tape has finally been cut--but every article I read about testing contradicts the others so I have no clue at this point.
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I've been getting very interested lately in what the symptoms look like in actual humans. I've read the articles and seen lots of little videos describing the progression of symptoms, but given how little testing has been done (except for South Korea) it seems like these could be really skewed. Most things say that most cases will be mild or moderate, but not to mistake "mild" as meaning it won't be absolutely terrible. But, there are a few people that I've seen describe their symptoms that depart significantly from what's being described out there. Of course, a couple of people departing significantly isn't inconsistent with the official descriptions of the vast majority of cases, but I still suspect there might be a lot we don't know about the human experience of this disease just based on lack of testing.
One nurse in CO describing her symptoms never had a fever or cough, but had severe fatigue for a day or two and a day of diarrhea/vomiting, and eventually some small amount of being winded. A person in a lawyer's group I'm in described fatigue and headache, I think also some digestive symptoms, no cough or fever, until like day 5 when she had severe respiratory symptoms (tightness of chest/hard to breathe). Actor Idris Elba says "I really haven't witnessed any major symptoms," (from here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/03/22/coronavirus-oprah-winfrey-talks-idris-elba-new-covid-19-series/2893782001/).
There's no way I'm gonna get access to get tested. But I've had the mildest of tickles in my throat/cough for about 5 days now. I have a real cough like 2-3 times per day and then several other times I need to clear my throat or have a single cough. I have no other symptoms at all. But where the hell did I get this cough from? I've never had just a simple cough with no other symptoms. Certainly not a cold or flu and I don't have allergies. It isn't super important, in that I'm self-isolating and doing all the proper cleaning and hygiene recs. But, it sure would be nice to know and hearing a broader range of actual people's experience with it is interesting and helpful.
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I've been getting very interested lately in what the symptoms look like in actual humans. I've read the articles and seen lots of little videos describing the progression of symptoms, but given how little testing has been done (except for South Korea) it seems like these could be really skewed. Most things say that most cases will be mild or moderate, but not to mistake "mild" as meaning it won't be absolutely terrible. But, there are a few people that I've seen describe their symptoms that depart significantly from what's being described out there. Of course, a couple of people departing significantly isn't inconsistent with the official descriptions of the vast majority of cases, but I still suspect there might be a lot we don't know about the human experience of this disease just based on lack of testing.
One nurse in CO describing her symptoms never had a fever or cough, but had severe fatigue for a day or two and a day of diarrhea/vomiting, and eventually some small amount of being winded. A person in a lawyer's group I'm in described fatigue and headache, I think also some digestive symptoms, no cough or fever, until like day 5 when she had severe respiratory symptoms (tightness of chest/hard to breathe). Actor Idris Elba says "I really haven't witnessed any major symptoms," (from here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/03/22/coronavirus-oprah-winfrey-talks-idris-elba-new-covid-19-series/2893782001/).
There's no way I'm gonna get access to get tested. But I've had the mildest of tickles in my throat/cough for about 5 days now. I have a real cough like 2-3 times per day and then several other times I need to clear my throat or have a single cough. I have no other symptoms at all. But where the hell did I get this cough from? I've never had just a simple cough with no other symptoms. Certainly not a cold or flu and I don't have allergies. It isn't super important, in that I'm self-isolating and doing all the proper cleaning and hygiene recs. But, it sure would be nice to know and hearing a broader range of actual people's experience with it is interesting and helpful.
I don't know for sure that I had it when I got sick 3 weeks ago, but I had a sudden onset of crushing fatigue with a sore throat, joint pain, and low-grade fever that lasted for a few days, intermittent diarrhea and headache across my temples for about a week, and a persistent dry cough that was near constant at first and is now intermittent (when it does kick in, it is irrepressible). It was an unusual cluster of symptoms, and at the time I didn't think I had COVID-19 because testing was only just starting in my area (although logically I knew it had been in our area as soon as international students and holiday travelers returned). I am horrified to think that I might have infected others. I was washing my hands and not going out during the worst of the symptoms, but I didn't have the chest tightness or a high fever so I figured it couldn't be COVID-19 and didn't isolate for 2 weeks. Husband had similar but milder symptoms without the joint pain, and a week later his co-worker got very ill for a few days.
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I just have to say that people who have flu like illnesses, but still go out are crazy and are the reason this thing is going around like a fucking wildfire. You do realize that there are a lot of people in your community who spend everyday with compromised immune systems and die of the regular old flu. Americans need to stay home and should have been staying home when sick for years. But somehow we have convinced ourselves that it is heroic to go out and about our business when sick! Maybe you didn't have COVID, maybe you did. But you had something, and probably did infect others with it.
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I just have to say that people who have flu like illnesses, but still go out are crazy and are the reason this thing is going around like a fucking wildfire. You do realize that there are a lot of people in your community who spend everyday with compromised immune systems and die of the regular old flu. Americans need to stay home and should have been staying home when sick for years. But somehow we have convinced ourselves that it is heroic to go out and about our business when sick! Maybe you didn't have COVID, maybe you did. But you had something, and probably did infect others with it.
I did stay home for several days while symptomatic. I work from home so that was never an issue, and canceled all volunteer work. I had felt completely fine even the day before; when the fatigue and other symptoms hit, it was like a switch flipped. Yes, I may have infected people while being completely asymptomatic, before my symptoms kicked in, but I don't know how I could have known to stay home before I fell ill.
I already feel horrible about this, and fully realize now that I should have stayed in for a full 2 weeks. My case is a good warning and argument for a 3-week total lockdown, as I can't imagine that thousands of oblivious people aren't flocking to giant grocery stores within 24 hours before symptom onset.
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I wish they had antibody tests so people could see if they already had it.
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I wish they had antibody tests so people could see if they already had it.
Might have one soon:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.17.20037713v1
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
You'll never guess what happened at work today...
It wasn't me, but by the end of the week I may be the only one left.* The infectious individual did two things that may make this a big one. He ate at the food court across the street from the headquarters where damn near everybody passes through on a typical lunch period**, and he works in one of the IT help desks. People come to see him frequently. The rest of his cubicle mates go out and sit at other people's desks. My team has physical interactions with him weekly. I'm at 6 out of 13 quarantined from my team and the notification is only 4 hours old. Nobody has symptoms and nobody has been tested yet, but it's about to be an interesting week.
* If a member of my team caught it from this guy and passed it on to me, then my earlier post still stands. I was in a conference room with 20 other people on Monday and had conversations with at least 10 others since then.
** It doesn't sound like he showed symptoms until the day after this lunch routine.
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Since you can be infectous for days before getting symptoms (or even getting none), this may get very interesting.
My little town has the first confirmed 3 cases, too.
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Here's another account of symptoms from an administrator at a school not far from my home. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2020/03/24/west-village-academy-carletta-counts-coronavirus/2906260001/ (https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2020/03/24/west-village-academy-carletta-counts-coronavirus/2906260001/)
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
You'll never guess what happened at work today...
It wasn't me, but by the end of the week I may be the only one left.* The infectious individual did two things that may make this a big one. He ate at the food court across the street from the headquarters where damn near everybody passes through on a typical lunch period**, and he works in one of the IT help desks. People come to see him frequently. The rest of his cubicle mates go out and sit at other people's desks. My team has physical interactions with him weekly. I'm at 6 out of 13 quarantined from my team and the notification is only 4 hours old. Nobody has symptoms and nobody has been tested yet, but it's about to be an interesting week.
* If a member of my team caught it from this guy and passed it on to me, then my earlier post still stands. I was in a conference room with 20 other people on Monday and had conversations with at least 10 others since then.
** It doesn't sound like he showed symptoms until the day after this lunch routine.
Based on where this guy traveled around the base for lunch, coffee, and his office job, over 100 people were ordered to 3-14 day quarantines. I got two of my soldiers back this evening and might get another one on Monday. The rest are stuck at the house for two weeks. I've been directed to split my team in half and start working day on/day off to minimize the number of people in the building. The office he works in was devastated. 30/40 in two week quarantine.
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so flattening the curve i understand. is it possible to tell how far we need to flatten it? i've seen the curve skyrocketing upwards but is it possible to overlay that curve onto the flattened curve?
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Here's a good explanation of curve flattening:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
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So one of my employees is now quarantined because his wife tested positive. No symptoms. She got it from someone at her work who got it from someone visiting from CA.
edit: oh, I'll add the testing went really fast--less than 3 hours.
Someone in my office is at home pending test results because he's had flu symptoms for a couple days. If the virus actually makes it into my building we're all screwed. On a typical day I have face to face contact with about 20 people in five separate offices on opposite sides of the building. I barely interact with this particular soldier, but it's two to three degrees of separation to the people I do interact with.
You'll never guess what happened at work today...
It wasn't me, but by the end of the week I may be the only one left.* The infectious individual did two things that may make this a big one. He ate at the food court across the street from the headquarters where damn near everybody passes through on a typical lunch period**, and he works in one of the IT help desks. People come to see him frequently. The rest of his cubicle mates go out and sit at other people's desks. My team has physical interactions with him weekly. I'm at 6 out of 13 quarantined from my team and the notification is only 4 hours old. Nobody has symptoms and nobody has been tested yet, but it's about to be an interesting week.
* If a member of my team caught it from this guy and passed it on to me, then my earlier post still stands. I was in a conference room with 20 other people on Monday and had conversations with at least 10 others since then.
** It doesn't sound like he showed symptoms until the day after this lunch routine.
Based on where this guy traveled around the base for lunch, coffee, and his office job, over 100 people were ordered to 3-14 day quarantines. I got two of my soldiers back this evening and might get another one on Monday. The rest are stuck at the house for two weeks. I've been directed to split my team in half and start working day on/day off to minimize the number of people in the building. The office he works in was devastated. 30/40 in two week quarantine.
A soldier who works with the original infected contractor somehow didn't get quarantined. The soldier received a positive test last night and now that entire barracks, along with anybody who may have traveled with them on three buses, a cafeteria, and a gym are quarantined for 72 hours.
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Not sure. They seem to be using it for the folks who had tertiary contact with the infected (happened to pass by them). The soldier who got missed in the sweep on Tuesday and came up positive last night was most likely infected on Friday. If you had physical contact with the infected you're getting 14 days quarantine, and if you show the slightest symptoms you're getting tested and getting 14 days. We've identified 3 or 4 more as of an hour ago who are now infected from this ongoing chain. We just had a meeting in what is left of my department arguing how they need to just shut us all down for a week and see who gets it from this particular incident.
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Do you remember all those useless N95 masks I had on page one of this thread? I just gave them all away to a friend of a friend who is an EMT. His company is 100% out of masks, zero left.
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Wait to find out if the have symptoms?
An unreliable, but easy way.
so flattening the curve i understand. is it possible to tell how far we need to flatten it? i've seen the curve skyrocketing upwards but is it possible to overlay that curve onto the flattened curve?
The easy part of the math is this:
maximum allowed curve size: new infected * rate of people needing emergency care * rate of emergency beds getting free
Let's say you have 7000 beds (respirators or whatever the critical equipment is).
A patient stays 7 days on average. Means you get 1000 free beds per day.
5% of infected need a hospitel bed. That leaves you with a care capacity of 1000 / 5% = 20'000 newly infected per day.
The other half of the equation:
If nothing is done, infections double approximately every 3 days. So if you have 1000 newly infected today, it will be 2000 in 3 days. 4000 in 6 days, 8000 in 9 days, 16000 in 12 days and in two weeks you are screwed.
The shockingly simple math of early retirement, but in this case the unwanted eternal one. (sorry, a bit of gallows humor here)
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found this:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Wait to find out if the have symptoms?
An unreliable, but easy way.
Yeah, but a fair number of people are asymptomatic. You need a 14 day period and test to be sure.
A 72 hour quarantine smacks of the same kind of foolishness as making everyone take off their shoes before boarding an airline. It's pageantry masquerading as security.
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found this:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
That's horrifying. And it's not even the end of the pandemic.
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found this:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
That's horrifying. And it's not even the end of the pandemic.
you're not kidding. i wonder if the covid19 link is backwards-revising, or if their numbers are scarily accurate.
compare to this: https://ncov2019.live/
prediction is 1542 and actual is 1591
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Wait to find out if the have symptoms?
An unreliable, but easy way.
Yeah, but a fair number of people are asymptomatic. You need a 14 day period and test to be sure.
A 72 hour quarantine smacks of the same kind of foolishness as making everyone take off their shoes before boarding an airline. It's pageantry masquerading as security.
The guy who got sick on Friday last week? Infected at least two others in his office who didn't get positive test results until Thursday night/Friday morning. I haven't seen the full report, but I assume because that's when they started to feel sick and went in to be tested. The former was not given a quarantine order at all, and the latter received the 72 hour order on Tuesday when we learned about the first guy.
Since the 2nd patient lives in the barracks, that entire building is now quarantined for at least 72 hours (200 soldiers), but the rumor is they've been extended to 14 days. That soldier is roommates with a soldier in my department. Since she didn't get scooped up in the 72-hour order on Tuesday she went about her business for 4 days. I'm now down to 3/13 including me assuming I get back one of my earlier 72-hour soldiers on Monday. Even for the departments that weren't decimated yesterday, we've all been ordered to bare minimum manning for at least a couple weeks.
The timeline of "I feel sick, I should get tested, here are my results" backdated to when the infection occurred is looking like 7 days around here. Even for those identified as being possibly exposed, there is a gap of a couple days.
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The Koreans seem to be doing a pretty good job of testing and contact tracing to minimize spread. Are they aware of the spread at your installation? Are there Koreans, civilian or military at the installation? Is there any cooperative effort to contain this?
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The local news is surreal. All interview clips are via phone or video calls. Besides the deaths of a state-level representative and university senior this morning, the anchors talked about FEMA turning the big downtown convention center into a field hospital, which began right after the auto show was cancelled for the first time since WWII. They've already also flagged other sites for additional field hospitals.
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The Koreans seem to be doing a pretty good job of testing and contact tracing to minimize spread. Are they aware of the spread at your installation? Are there Koreans, civilian or military at the installation? Is there any cooperative effort to contain this?
We have a large population of Korean nationals and Korean military who work on the base. We've been tied in very closely with the measures their government has taken and vice versa since our decisions have health and economic consequences on them as well. Compared to the grand scheme of things, our "spike" this last week was an aberration. Since this became a thing at the end of January, the infected US military population (including family members and US/Korean contractors) who have access to our bases has been 12 people out of a population of at least 30,000 over the course of three months. Conversely, the military population back in the US is seeing that number weekly now. We're privileged to have a work place where we can control access, but a large number of us live off base. All the contractors and Koreans do as well. It sounds like the contractor who got sick 8 days ago was off base doing something prohibited (sit down restaurant, social gathering). He brought it on base long enough to get two more sick and put hundreds at risk. Previously, the senior commanders here had little recourse for family members and contractors who did not follow military policies in these matters. Now with the declaration of a Public Health Emergency, the commanding general has some legal tools to hold them accountable (which really just means he can fire them or send them back to the US).
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/abbott-launches-5-minute-covid-19-test-for-use-almost-anywhere
This could be a game changer... and I hope that if it`s correct, that they will license the product/manufacturing process to every company that wants to make some.
Any comments from those more knowledgeable? This seems like exactly what is needed.
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Wait to find out if the have symptoms?
An unreliable, but easy way.
Yeah, but a fair number of people are asymptomatic. You need a 14 day period and test to be sure.
A 72 hour quarantine smacks of the same kind of foolishness as making everyone take off their shoes before boarding an airline. It's pageantry masquerading as security.
The guy who got sick on Friday last week? Infected at least two others in his office who didn't get positive test results until Thursday night/Friday morning. I haven't seen the full report, but I assume because that's when they started to feel sick and went in to be tested. The former was not given a quarantine order at all, and the latter received the 72 hour order on Tuesday when we learned about the first guy.
Since the 2nd patient lives in the barracks, that entire building is now quarantined for at least 72 hours (200 soldiers), but the rumor is they've been extended to 14 days. That soldier is roommates with a soldier in my department. Since she didn't get scooped up in the 72-hour order on Tuesday she went about her business for 4 days. I'm now down to 3/13 including me assuming I get back one of my earlier 72-hour soldiers on Monday. Even for the departments that weren't decimated yesterday, we've all been ordered to bare minimum manning for at least a couple weeks.
The timeline of "I feel sick, I should get tested, here are my results" backdated to when the infection occurred is looking like 7 days around here. Even for those identified as being possibly exposed, there is a gap of a couple days.
Totally random observation: "Decimate" originally meant lose 1 in 10. Thus the "Deci" in the word. (I know, now it means "kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of")
/Lexography geeking
Travis, I'm sorry, and I hope you stay healthy (and that your employees/soldiers mostly do, too).
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Wait to find out if the have symptoms?
An unreliable, but easy way.
Yeah, but a fair number of people are asymptomatic. You need a 14 day period and test to be sure.
A 72 hour quarantine smacks of the same kind of foolishness as making everyone take off their shoes before boarding an airline. It's pageantry masquerading as security.
The guy who got sick on Friday last week? Infected at least two others in his office who didn't get positive test results until Thursday night/Friday morning. I haven't seen the full report, but I assume because that's when they started to feel sick and went in to be tested. The former was not given a quarantine order at all, and the latter received the 72 hour order on Tuesday when we learned about the first guy.
Since the 2nd patient lives in the barracks, that entire building is now quarantined for at least 72 hours (200 soldiers), but the rumor is they've been extended to 14 days. That soldier is roommates with a soldier in my department. Since she didn't get scooped up in the 72-hour order on Tuesday she went about her business for 4 days. I'm now down to 3/13 including me assuming I get back one of my earlier 72-hour soldiers on Monday. Even for the departments that weren't decimated yesterday, we've all been ordered to bare minimum manning for at least a couple weeks.
The timeline of "I feel sick, I should get tested, here are my results" backdated to when the infection occurred is looking like 7 days around here. Even for those identified as being possibly exposed, there is a gap of a couple days.
Totally random observation: "Decimate" originally meant lose 1 in 10. Thus the "Deci" in the word. (I know, now it means "kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of")
/Lexography geeking
Travis, I'm sorry, and I hope you stay healthy (and that your employees/soldiers mostly do, too).
Extra fun fact - decimate didn't really mean 'lose 1 in 10'. It was a punishment handed out to a Roman military unit for screwing up in a big way (cowardice/desertion/etc) . . . where one in every ten soldiers was randomly chosen by lot to be executed by his fellow soldiers.
:P
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As a totally random factoid, decimate as in kill a certain percentage, was used in WWII by the German army/Nazis. My Dad told me where he lived in Greece all the able bodied men were rounded up in prison. If a Nazi soldier was killed by anyone in town, they would take 10 men out of prison and execute them in public to make an example. (They would also firebomb an entire small village, if a guerrilla soldier who killed a Nazi was traced to that village).
I think because of the long delay between catching the virus and showing symptoms (and apparently a lot of kids don't show symptoms) this virus is highly contagious. I know by the end of April things are not going to look good. What worries me, is my county's stay at home order is until April 30. I don't see anything dramatically changing that that stay at home order won't be extended. Hopefully i'm wrong.
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Extra fun fact - decimate didn't really mean 'lose 1 in 10'. It was a punishment handed out to a Roman military unit for screwing up in a big way (cowardice/desertion/etc) . . . where one in every ten soldiers was randomly chosen by lot to be executed by his fellow soldiers.
:P
Yes, but it also means that bible passages using decimate would almost certainly be using this 1:10 meaning.
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Wait to find out if the have symptoms?
An unreliable, but easy way.
Yeah, but a fair number of people are asymptomatic. You need a 14 day period and test to be sure.
A 72 hour quarantine smacks of the same kind of foolishness as making everyone take off their shoes before boarding an airline. It's pageantry masquerading as security.
The guy who got sick on Friday last week? Infected at least two others in his office who didn't get positive test results until Thursday night/Friday morning. I haven't seen the full report, but I assume because that's when they started to feel sick and went in to be tested. The former was not given a quarantine order at all, and the latter received the 72 hour order on Tuesday when we learned about the first guy.
Since the 2nd patient lives in the barracks, that entire building is now quarantined for at least 72 hours (200 soldiers), but the rumor is they've been extended to 14 days. That soldier is roommates with a soldier in my department. Since she didn't get scooped up in the 72-hour order on Tuesday she went about her business for 4 days. I'm now down to 3/13 including me assuming I get back one of my earlier 72-hour soldiers on Monday. Even for the departments that weren't decimated yesterday, we've all been ordered to bare minimum manning for at least a couple weeks.
The timeline of "I feel sick, I should get tested, here are my results" backdated to when the infection occurred is looking like 7 days around here. Even for those identified as being possibly exposed, there is a gap of a couple days.
Totally random observation: "Decimate" originally meant lose 1 in 10. Thus the "Deci" in the word. (I know, now it means "kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of")
/Lexography geeking
Travis, I'm sorry, and I hope you stay healthy (and that your employees/soldiers mostly do, too).
Thank you Pedantic Police, lol. I used that term for its mathematical value on purpose. The barracks being quarantined reduced some departments by 10%, while in my case it reduced me to 10%. They let everyone out last night, but we got another case from an off-base contractor unrelated to the last few cases. I have no idea where he works, but it appears to be a different part of the base. Even with their brief isolation lifted, my team isn't being allowed back into the building for another week.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/abbott-launches-5-minute-covid-19-test-for-use-almost-anywhere
This could be a game changer... and I hope that if it`s correct, that they will license the product/manufacturing process to every company that wants to make some.
Any comments from those more knowledgeable? This seems like exactly what is needed.
I'll take the bait.
There are other similar technologies on the market already. In my province we use the Gene Xpert rapid test platform, and they also have a COVID test: https://www.healthpolicy-watch.org/new-covid-19-rapid-test-approved-for-genexpert-tb-platform-could-pave-way-for-more-testing-in-low-middle-income-countries/
The issue with these rapid tests is that they perform only one test at a time. So even if it is 5 minutes (and it's always longer than claimed), the throughput is only 288 samples/day.
The lab I work in has this instrument with a COVID test available: https://www.industryweek.com/operations/safety/article/21126261/fda-gives-roches-covid19-test-emergency-clearance. It has a much higher throughput and could be a game changer.
Currently, the issue with ALL of these manufactured assays is the supply and demand. Right now there is a lot of demand....and no supply.
So in the meantime we will continue to use our Lab Developed Assays.
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Wait to find out if the have symptoms?
An unreliable, but easy way.
Yeah, but a fair number of people are asymptomatic. You need a 14 day period and test to be sure.
A 72 hour quarantine smacks of the same kind of foolishness as making everyone take off their shoes before boarding an airline. It's pageantry masquerading as security.
The guy who got sick on Friday last week? Infected at least two others in his office who didn't get positive test results until Thursday night/Friday morning. I haven't seen the full report, but I assume because that's when they started to feel sick and went in to be tested. The former was not given a quarantine order at all, and the latter received the 72 hour order on Tuesday when we learned about the first guy.
Since the 2nd patient lives in the barracks, that entire building is now quarantined for at least 72 hours (200 soldiers), but the rumor is they've been extended to 14 days. That soldier is roommates with a soldier in my department. Since she didn't get scooped up in the 72-hour order on Tuesday she went about her business for 4 days. I'm now down to 3/13 including me assuming I get back one of my earlier 72-hour soldiers on Monday. Even for the departments that weren't decimated yesterday, we've all been ordered to bare minimum manning for at least a couple weeks.
The timeline of "I feel sick, I should get tested, here are my results" backdated to when the infection occurred is looking like 7 days around here. Even for those identified as being possibly exposed, there is a gap of a couple days.
Totally random observation: "Decimate" originally meant lose 1 in 10. Thus the "Deci" in the word. (I know, now it means "kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of")
/Lexography geeking
Travis, I'm sorry, and I hope you stay healthy (and that your employees/soldiers mostly do, too).
Thank you Pedantic Police, lol. I used that term for its mathematical value on purpose. The barracks being quarantined reduced some departments by 10%, while in my case it reduced me to 10%. They let everyone out last night, but we got another case from an off-base contractor unrelated to the last few cases. I have no idea where he works, but it appears to be a different part of the base. Even with their brief isolation lifted, my team isn't being allowed back into the building for another week.
On top of all your other problems, it looks like your Korean employees and contractors are about to get furloughed over a funding dispute.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/u-s-base-workers-set-for-furlough-in-blow-to-korea-alliance
I'll bet you regret signing up for two years over there about now...
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I don't get it. How does a 72 hour quarantine help anything?
Wait to find out if the have symptoms?
An unreliable, but easy way.
Yeah, but a fair number of people are asymptomatic. You need a 14 day period and test to be sure.
A 72 hour quarantine smacks of the same kind of foolishness as making everyone take off their shoes before boarding an airline. It's pageantry masquerading as security.
The guy who got sick on Friday last week? Infected at least two others in his office who didn't get positive test results until Thursday night/Friday morning. I haven't seen the full report, but I assume because that's when they started to feel sick and went in to be tested. The former was not given a quarantine order at all, and the latter received the 72 hour order on Tuesday when we learned about the first guy.
Since the 2nd patient lives in the barracks, that entire building is now quarantined for at least 72 hours (200 soldiers), but the rumor is they've been extended to 14 days. That soldier is roommates with a soldier in my department. Since she didn't get scooped up in the 72-hour order on Tuesday she went about her business for 4 days. I'm now down to 3/13 including me assuming I get back one of my earlier 72-hour soldiers on Monday. Even for the departments that weren't decimated yesterday, we've all been ordered to bare minimum manning for at least a couple weeks.
The timeline of "I feel sick, I should get tested, here are my results" backdated to when the infection occurred is looking like 7 days around here. Even for those identified as being possibly exposed, there is a gap of a couple days.
Totally random observation: "Decimate" originally meant lose 1 in 10. Thus the "Deci" in the word. (I know, now it means "kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of")
/Lexography geeking
Travis, I'm sorry, and I hope you stay healthy (and that your employees/soldiers mostly do, too).
Thank you Pedantic Police, lol. I used that term for its mathematical value on purpose. The barracks being quarantined reduced some departments by 10%, while in my case it reduced me to 10%. They let everyone out last night, but we got another case from an off-base contractor unrelated to the last few cases. I have no idea where he works, but it appears to be a different part of the base. Even with their brief isolation lifted, my team isn't being allowed back into the building for another week.
On top of all your other problems, it looks like your Korean employees and contractors are about to get furloughed over a funding dispute.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/u-s-base-workers-set-for-furlough-in-blow-to-korea-alliance
I'll bet you regret signing up for two years over there about now...
We've been tracking that coming for a couple months now. It's going to be interesting starting tomorrow.
Not regretting the move at all. I feel safer here than at a US base right now.
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So South Korea has been at roughly 10 or fewer new infections/day for the last 2 weeks. For over a week all of them have been people who got off a plane from outside the country and the Korean government put them in quarantine, so #killthevirus may actually be a thing here shortly. I expect we'll remain at our current health condition posture for the rest of May. We're not done with this, but it's very encouraging.
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So South Korea has been at roughly 10 or fewer new infections/day for the last 2 weeks. For over a week all of them have been people who got off a plane from outside the country and the Korean government put them in quarantine, so #killthevirus may actually be a thing here shortly. I expect we'll remain at our current health condition posture for the rest of May. We're not done with this, but it's very encouraging.
I guess over time we'll see if the Korean/New Zealand/Australian approach of locking down until there is virtually no spread is better than the US approach of half assing a lockdown and then opening places while cases are still rising. I have my suspicions about which was the right path to follow. :P
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So South Korea has been at roughly 10 or fewer new infections/day for the last 2 weeks. For over a week all of them have been people who got off a plane from outside the country and the Korean government put them in quarantine, so #killthevirus may actually be a thing here shortly. I expect we'll remain at our current health condition posture for the rest of May. We're not done with this, but it's very encouraging.
I guess over time we'll see if the Korean/New Zealand/Australian approach of locking down until there is virtually no spread is better than the US approach of half assing a lockdown and then opening places while cases are still rising. I have my suspicions about which was the right path to follow. :P
And we have our own experiment running here, as different provinces have different infection levels, different containment levels and different levels of opening up.
As an Ontarian, I love this Beaverton article, since no-one expected Ford to behave as responsibly as he has during this mess.
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2020/04/doug-ford-rattles-bars-on-cell-as-imposter-continues-to-competently-manage-covid-19-pandemic/ (https://www.thebeaverton.com/2020/04/doug-ford-rattles-bars-on-cell-as-imposter-continues-to-competently-manage-covid-19-pandemic/)
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Well, looks like Michigan is signing up for another round of shutdowns this summer. Note that cases in West (including Grand Haven) and Northern Michigan are still increasing at rates higher than the state average.
https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2020/05/grand-haven-asks-public-to-stay-away-from-beach-after-crowds-ignore-social-distancing.html (https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2020/05/grand-haven-asks-public-to-stay-away-from-beach-after-crowds-ignore-social-distancing.html)
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So South Korea has been at roughly 10 or fewer new infections/day for the last 2 weeks. For over a week all of them have been people who got off a plane from outside the country and the Korean government put them in quarantine, so #killthevirus may actually be a thing here shortly. I expect we'll remain at our current health condition posture for the rest of May. We're not done with this, but it's very encouraging.
I guess over time we'll see if the Korean/New Zealand/Australian approach of locking down until there is virtually no spread is better than the US approach of half assing a lockdown and then opening places while cases are still rising. I have my suspicions about which was the right path to follow. :P
And we have our own experiment running here, as different provinces have different infection levels, different containment levels and different levels of opening up.
As an Ontarian, I love this Beaverton article, since no-one expected Ford to behave as responsibly as he has during this mess.
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2020/04/doug-ford-rattles-bars-on-cell-as-imposter-continues-to-competently-manage-covid-19-pandemic/ (https://www.thebeaverton.com/2020/04/doug-ford-rattles-bars-on-cell-as-imposter-continues-to-competently-manage-covid-19-pandemic/)
Yeah, I've been continuously surprised by Ford's reasonableness. He hasn't been perfect, but a damn sight better than I thought he would have been.
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It helps that Rob set the bar so low!
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And just like that, one ass hat set the clock back by a month.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html)
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And just like that, one ass hat set the clock back by a month.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html)
this is the entire problem with the lockdown approach. there will always, always be a new case that starts. then what? you lock down again? this is unreasonable unless the true goal is to shatter life and economy. same thing will happen in china. i mean, while the virus rages in the US, europe, africa, india, japan, etc - is china just going to lock down all travel to/from those countries for the next 2 years? good luck with that. hope they don't want any of their shipping containers back.
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And just like that, one ass hat set the clock back by a month.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html)
this is the entire problem with the lockdown approach. there will always, always be a new case that starts. then what? you lock down again? this is unreasonable unless the true goal is to shatter life and economy. same thing will happen in china. i mean, while the virus rages in the US, europe, africa, india, japan, etc - is china just going to lock down all travel to/from those countries for the next 2 years? good luck with that. hope they don't want any of their shipping containers back.
With most of the world that seems to be the issue. Here in Korea we went a week where the only people showing up sick were getting off planes from other countries and going straight to quarantine. The week before that new domestic infections were down to 10 per day for the entire country. I don't know what this one guy's story was, but it seemed like we were close to the virus burning itself out domestically. I'm not entirely clear on the scale of Korea's "lockdown," but I know for US soldiers we have not been allowed to go to church, sit down in restaurants, do anything in public in groups of 10, and half of us are working from home. I was shocked that clubs and bars were open in Seoul at all.
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And just like that, one ass hat set the clock back by a month.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html)
this is the entire problem with the lockdown approach. there will always, always be a new case that starts. then what? you lock down again? this is unreasonable unless the true goal is to shatter life and economy. same thing will happen in china. i mean, while the virus rages in the US, europe, africa, india, japan, etc - is china just going to lock down all travel to/from those countries for the next 2 years? good luck with that. hope they don't want any of their shipping containers back.
You make a complete lockdown so that the virus has no chance to infect new people.
Then you open up but keep eyes open, too.
Then, if a new infected is found, you "only" lock up his contacts (and not whole cities or conutries).
You can track (and isolate) 10 new infected a lot more easy than 10000. You may even succeed in complete virus killing, as has happened with SARS ten years ago.
Or, of course, you could worry about the next election and go the Trump way and infect everyone.
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And just like that, one ass hat set the clock back by a month.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/07/business/ap-as-virus-outbreak-asia.html)
this is the entire problem with the lockdown approach. there will always, always be a new case that starts. then what? you lock down again? this is unreasonable unless the true goal is to shatter life and economy. same thing will happen in china. i mean, while the virus rages in the US, europe, africa, india, japan, etc - is china just going to lock down all travel to/from those countries for the next 2 years? good luck with that. hope they don't want any of their shipping containers back.
You make a complete lockdown so that the virus has no chance to infect new people.
Then you open up but keep eyes open, too.
Then, if a new infected is found, you "only" lock up his contacts (and not whole cities or conutries).
You can track (and isolate) 10 new infected a lot more easy than 10000. You may even succeed in complete virus killing, as has happened with SARS ten years ago.
Or, of course, you could worry about the next election and go the Trump way and infect everyone.
sorry. this is not practical in any sense. we don't have 10 people infected. we have multiple millions (assuming you believe that there are 10-20x more actual cases than reported.
it's too late.
the time to do lockdown and contract tracing of this thing was december. after that, it was too late, there needed to be a coordinated, worldwide shutdown of travel and contact tracing at that point. now, you're talking about 40-80M people worldwide that have contracted it. contract trace that. good luck.