totm april 2020 Coronavirus

[tater]

2 minutes ago, Barzon said:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtN-goy9VOY 

Yeah, it spread in November/December. The Chinese first reported it internally (a cluster of pneumonias) on Dec 31. They didn't tell people at large until January. So that video is pretty garbage (didn't watch past them saying it spread later, since it was already everywhere before they started talking about it.

[tater]

(note that this is for symptomatic cases)

[tater]

So the US gov is all-in on the HCQ treatment. One issue that my wife brought up was that they are always short of all drugs, all the time (at the hospital). We need more drug production, in short.

[Flavio hc16]

 

Elon musk to the rescue? 

Edited March 19, 2020 by Flavio hc16

[DDE]

An outlet I haven't even heard of managed to score an interview with the guy in charge of Russia's designated COVID hospital.

https://moskvichmag.ru/lyudi/massovaya-sdacha-testa-na-koronavirus-ne-tolko-bessmyslenna-no-i-vredna-glavvrach-bolnitsy-40-denis-protsenko/amp/?

On the subject of the proposal of dragging out the infection until a population reaches herd immunity:

Quote

And what if it doesn't?

Also, he's really not happy that a private biomed company is planning to roll out a COVID test within a month, sending countless false positives their way or into needless self-quarantine.

6 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Elon musk to the rescue? 

Elon Musk sounds like he's out of the Hyperloop...

Edit:

 

[StrandedonEarth]

11 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Elon musk to the rescue? 

Wasn’t there a post somewhere up thread quoting a ventilator manufacturer as saying  they could increase production 500% but they were waiting for the USG to place/give the order?

[DDE]

7 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Wasn’t there a post somewhere up thread quoting a ventilator manufacturer as saying  they could increase production 500% but they were waiting for the USG to place/give the order?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2020/03/14/ventilator-maker-we-can-ramp-up-production-five-fold/#2e82aef55e9a
No thanks necessary.

[tater]

49 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Elon musk to the rescue? 

Elon would be well served to act less like someone else who tweets $#!†

I'll believe that when I see vents coming out of a Tesla or SpaceX factory.

 

Regarding Italy, etc:

That second graph has everything scaled to US=1. So China, Singapore, SK have fewer old people than we do in the US, and Europe and Japan have substantially more.

[mikegarrison]

Capitalist market economies use price to control decisions about what to invest in. So if the price of masks goes up, more money gets invested in making them. This generally works pretty efficiently, but....

First of all, there are lags. If the demand spikes faster than the market can respond, the price skyrockets and the supply runs into shortages. Then businesses are faced with the decision of whether to ramp up production with the possibility that by the time they have ramped up, the demand will have dropped again.

Secondly, this is hella bad for vulnerable people. When the price spikes up, it's a PITA for the wealthy, but it's catastrophic for the poor. Is a crisis really the time to have the prices of needed humanitarian supplies skyrocket?

Edited March 19, 2020 by mikegarrison

[tater]

6 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Secondly, this is hella bad for vulnerable people. When the price spikes up, it's a PITA for the wealth, but it's catastrophic for the poor. Is a crisis really the time to have the prices of needed humanitarian supplies skyrocket?

PPE is not terribly useful for regular people. They don't use it properly, and they use it for the wrong reasons. I'd be happy for PPE to be so expensive only medical professionals/organizations can afford it, frankly. I'll admit bias here, my wife has to see patients, including in the ER, my friend has to be in the ICU all day long. Legit at-risk people could have N95s prescribed (and hence covered).

Seems like the best response might have been to "lockdown" the most vulnerable (immunosupressed, elderly, and people with serious comorbidities), then have the rest of society carry on almost as usual, but while taking extra care to wash hands, not go to work sick, etc. In addition, the rest of us could do what was needed to facilitate helping those at-risk people out (delivering food/supplies to them, etc).

Edited March 19, 2020 by tater

[Nightside]

3 hours ago, tater said:

 

didn't he just get fired?

1 hour ago, Flavio hc16 said:

 

Elon musk to the rescue? 

Yeah, that worked well for him last time he offered help in an international crisis...

Edited March 19, 2020 by Nightside

[tater]

Meanwhile:

 

[TheSaint]

12 minutes ago, tater said:

Elon would be well served to act less like someone else who tweets $#!†

I think the entire world would be better served if there were less ways for people to spew whatever thought came into their head directly into a forum where it can be seen by half of the world's population. Whoever they are.

10 minutes ago, tater said:

PPE is not terribly useful for regular people. They don't use it properly, and they use it for the wrong reasons. I'd be happy for PPE to be so expensive only medical professionals/organizations can afford it, frankly. I'll admit bias here, my wife has to see patients, including in the ER, my friend has to be in the ICU all day long. Legit at-risk people could have N95s prescribed (and hence covered).

My wife was just telling me that her friend who works with AZ Dept of Health was issued N95 masks this week to wear when they are doing field testing. They were only issued one size, none of them were trained on their use, they were all wearing them wrong. Complete waste of money and masks. I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that is the norm, not the exception.

10 minutes ago, tater said:

Seems like the best response might have been to "lockdown" the most vulnerable (immunosupressed, elderly, and people with serious comorbidities), then have the rest of society carry on almost as usual, but while taking extra care to wash hands, not go to work sick, etc. In addition, the rest of us could do what was needed to facilitate helping those at-risk people out (delivering food/supplies to them, etc).

This, X1000. I think that when the dust settles we're going to discover that the economic impact of this whole thing was vastly out of proportion to the actual health threat.

23 minutes ago, Nightside said:

didn't he just get fired?

I thought he quit.

https://www.thewrap.com/bill-gates-to-step-down-from-microsoft-board/

[tater]

3 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

I think the entire world would be better served if there were less ways for people to spew whatever thought came into their head directly into a forum where it can be seen by half of the world's population. Whoever they are.

IKR?

3 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

My wife was just telling me that her friend who works with AZ Dept of Health was issued N95 masks this week to wear when they are doing field testing. They were only issued one size, none of them were trained on their use, they were all wearing them wrong. Complete waste of money and masks. I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that is the norm, not the exception.

Yeah. My wife and one of her partners were getting fitted for the next level PPE (don't remember the name) past N95s. Think it's full mask plastic type stuff, more like a gas mask. Her head is too small for the normal size the hospital has, his is too big (the 3 sizes each fit a range with proper fitting, so she was off std size low, he was off std size high). Both need that ordered in. This allows them to go in the worse areas from a risk standpoint when/if that is a thing (hurrah!?).

Surgical masks are a good thing for sick people to wear to minimize spread from them, but the use in the public at large is nothing short of bizarre when I see it.

3 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

This, X1000. I think that when the dust settles we're going to discover that the economic impact of this whole thing was vastly out of proportion to the actual health threat.

Yeah, this lockdown is incredibly destructive.

 

 

[mikegarrison]

13 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

I thought he (Bill Gates) quit.

"Retired" is probably the right word to use. He's 64 and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He's probably tired of being involved with Microsoft. He does seem to be way more interested in his charitable work these days.

16 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

I think that when the dust settles we're going to discover that the economic impact of this whole thing was vastly out of proportion to the actual health threat.

And how will we discover that? Time is a one-way street. Life is an uncontrolled experiment (usually).

Perhaps the closest we may come to this is studying different countries that handled things differently and seeing what the outcomes were, but even then you can't really know for sure.

Remember, the goal here is for nothing terrible to happen, so if nothing terrible does happen then you have to decide whether that was because the correct measures were applied or because nothing terrible was ever going to happen anyway. You definitely can't just assume the latter.

[Kerbart]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, this lockdown is incredibly destructive.

Sadly I don't have a link, but I saw an analysis that listed some interesting numbers. If we treated the virus like the seasonal flu, about 80% of the US would get infected. Casualties would be much higher than they are right now, as hospitals would run out of equipment like ventilators, resulting in people dying that would survive right now. The total body count would be around 4 million. I'm not an expert, but the analysis seemed legit, taking demographics into account, etc.

While the lock down is incredibly destructive, the big question is: can we afford not to? And is it worth risking to do that?

 

[tater]

21 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Sadly I don't have a link, but I saw an analysis that listed some interesting numbers. If we treated the virus like the seasonal flu, about 80% of the US would get infected. Casualties would be much higher than they are right now, as hospitals would run out of equipment like ventilators, resulting in people dying that would survive right now. The total body count would be around 4 million. I'm not an expert, but the analysis seemed legit, taking demographics into account, etc.

While the lock down is incredibly destructive, the big question is: can we afford not to? And is it worth risking to do that?

 

80% don't get flu.

In the cruise ship petri dish, trapped among the infected, 20% caught it.

The total mortality for this thing in the US is going to end up ~0.5% at most in retrospect I'll bet. At most. So 0.5% of the subset that get it. 30% of the population would be huge compare to flu. 100 million. So 500k deaths. 10X seasonal flu. That said, ~2.8 million people die in the US every single year (more each year because pop grows, obviously). Of that 2.8M, over a million are in the same age range most affected by COVID-19, and they have preexisting conditions such that definitionally they were going to die anyway (this is the million who WILL die in 2020). My guess is that most of the people who die were going to die anyway. Not all. There will be excess deaths, and that's terrible if we can prevent them, but I think the death of 500k mostly retired people is not a huge impact on the economy vs shutting down everyone else. (to be clear, talking economic impact, and economics doesn't care about people as people—and with that, economics can also cause harm/death. People who slide from a normal life into poverty impacts their chance of death)

If this doesn't start killing people in excess of the flu (flu season averages 100 dead every 8 hours in the US, sometimes higher than that) in a few weeks, we're not even near flu. Note that 300/day is average, flu also climbs in a bell shaped curve, so it's higher at peak, and lower in the middle. I'm not saying this might not be worse than flu, my point is that by 4 months into flu season, we're at peak, and this has been in the US since December... I want to see some random antibody testing, and see what % of people already had it without anyone noticing.

Edited March 19, 2020 by tater

[Guest]

Don't forget the big problem with COVID-19: it spreads really fast if given the chance. Casualties are not tied just to how many people get sick, but how many get sick at once. The lockdown helps with precisely that. Just look at Italy, they are definitely worse for wear than they would be had they instituted a quarantine early. The 0.5% death rate is the case if and only if the health system can cope. Not only that, if the hospitals are filled with COVID patients, you'll get an increase in mortality for all the other diseases, because stuff that'd otherwise be treatable isn't getting the attention. In an overwhelmed health system, you'd soon start losing far more than just the elderly and people with preexisting conditions.

So yeah, the costs of locking things down are peanuts compared to the costs of doing nothing. The measures being taken are absolutely necessary. Yes, it's got its costs, but I'm also seeing some long-term positive effects, in the education system, especially. For instance, a lot of work that could have been done from home wasn't, resulting in wasted time, money and increased emissions due to commuting. Now that the lockdowns forced many people into a work from home model, one can hope it'll become more accepted. 

[Flavio hc16]

go U.S.A. !! You might be able to beat us (Italy)!!! Today italy becomes the state with the most dead people in the world from this disease

http://<a href="https://ibb.co/DRQ5cqt"><img src="https://i.ibb.co/4VpPvQ7/covid-italia-vs-usa.jpg" alt="covid-italia-vs-usa" border="0"></a>

 

 

it seems that you are doing what happened to us, with a 12 day delay

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by Flavio hc16

[sh1pman]

49 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

go U.S.A. !! You might be able to beat us (Italy)!!! Today italy becomes the state with the most dead people in the world from this disease

Any signs of slowing down? 

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Don't forget the big problem with COVID-19: it spreads really fast if given the chance. Casualties are not tied just to how many people get sick, but how many get sick at once. The lockdown helps with precisely that. Just look at Italy, they are definitely worse for wear than they would be had they instituted a quarantine early. The 0.5% death rate is the case if and only if the health system can cope. Not only that, if the hospitals are filled with COVID patients, you'll get an increase in mortality for all the other diseases, because stuff that'd otherwise be treatable isn't getting the attention. In an overwhelmed health system, you'd soon start losing far more than just the elderly and people with preexisting conditions.

So yeah, the costs of locking things down are peanuts compared to the costs of doing nothing. The measures being taken are absolutely necessary. Yes, it's got its costs, but I'm also seeing some long-term positive effects, in the education system, especially. For instance, a lot of work that could have been done from home wasn't, resulting in wasted time, money and increased emissions due to commuting. Now that the lockdowns forced many people into a work from home model, one can hope it'll become more accepted. 

This is the main issue, in Italy the number of critical cases peaked way above the number of beds for this. And intensive care hospital posts are expensive, they require special equipment and nurses trained for their use. 
Unlike field hospitals its not something you can ramp up fast. 

Personally I say this is a bit overblown, but is also an live fire drill  We have had some real scary stuff coming up like sars and bird flue. 
That we need is an fast way to get an vaccine out some weeks after detecting an new virus, that lab should also be nice for genetic engineering, making it profitable down the line. 

[tater]

Yeah, this is a dress rehearsal for something actually serious.

[StrandedonEarth]

27 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, this is a dress rehearsal for something actually serious.

Yeah, funny, I was just telling my wife that this could be considered a global drill. And it looks like it needs work. We did better with SARS...

Hopefully it’ll usher in a new cultural paradigm of hygiene and disinfection, which will curb the nuisances of influenza and the common cold,amongst other things. It’ll be increasingly necessary as the global population approaches 10B

Luckily, my job is tied to the essential transportation industry, so no shutdown yet...

[DDE]

10 hours ago, tater said:

Regarding Italy, etc:

6 hours ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Today italy becomes the state with the most dead people in the world from this disease

5 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Any signs of slowing down? 

Yeah, about that...

Remember China's bump due to methodology?

2 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, this is a dress rehearsal for something actually serious.

And some people were better-prepared.

And some obligatory fearmongering as a fitting epilogue.

 

[kerbiloid]

Since 2020 the general greeting gesture will be self-handshaking, to avoid contact with greetee.

Another one: touching the interlocutor's nose with a finger _{(usually the middle one, as it's the longest)} of straight arm to ensure that everyone's staying enough far from each other.

Edited March 20, 2020 by kerbiloid