mikegarrison Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Picture of a man who is glad he is retired: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 15 minutes ago, mikegarrison said: Picture of a man who is glad he is retired: He even retired before another virus related to that vessel's role, HPV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 (edited) So Russia and Belgium got WHO's praise for their 'aggressive' response, eliminating the spread entirely. Meanwhile, the Moscow government has launched a 'deratization' campaign, which risks turning into a massacre of all stray animals. And now for some mildly political on-topic content! Edited February 28, 2020 by DDE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?query=RP Should have added the TL;DR summary. In short, they are saying that the number of mild cases is likely substantially under reported, and the actual mortality rate might well be close to a bad flu season (well under 1%), and dangerous to the same population subset flu is (elderly, preexisting conditions, etc). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 (Requesting to the thread Yudkowski's fans) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 Since treatment is supportive (only), the key is that anyone who feels sick needs to self-quarantine. Seems to me the public health response should be that once it is spreading in a community, all employers should make it clear that staying away from work is OK, and they need to be paid. They need to stay home, not go out. It requires people to have personal responsibility (which is asking a lot). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrandedonEarth Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 A little perspective.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 (edited) 2 hours ago, tater said: Seems to me the public health response should be that once it is spreading in a community, all employers should make it clear that staying away from work is OK, and they need to be paid. Yeah, just received strict orders to take the laptop home and be prepared for the office to be shuttered without prior notice. Had at least one case from Iran spend the night in a Moscow pod hotel at the airport. At this point, it's fairly likely we have an undetected infection spreading under the cover of seasonal flu. It's not like the US, where a COVID test costs an arm and a leg - back here in Russia you can't even volunteer for a test at all. Edit: oh, look, we just got a case of an arrival from Milano... naturally, the six people who shared the hospital room with him have been pressed into signing NDAs. https://m.lenta.ru/news/2020/03/01/molchat/ Edited March 1, 2020 by DDE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 10 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said: A little perspective.... While entirely true, the critical issue is that COVID-19 certainly has a higher mortality rate than seasonal flu (even if the denominator is vastly understated), and R0 seems to be fairly high (how many people the average infected person also infects). As a result, it is concerning. It's important to also note a few things: 1. This is also seasonal flu season (til May?). Flu alone strains healthcare systems, my wife's hospital on divert much of this season due to flu taking up beds. 2. Idiots don't get vaccinations for their kids (aside from very, very rare medical exceptions anyone not vaccinating their kids is an idiot, and should be shamed as such). As a result, healthcare now has to sometimes deal with Measles outbreaks—rare still, but very infectious (airborne), and strains healthcare delivery (few negative pressure rooms, etc). I'm personally not concerned this is going to be an apocalypse, but I think it could be quite disruptive as all the current incentives are wrong. Meaning people are incentivized to work sick, attend school sick, etc. Employers and school tell people to stay home if sick—then make it hard on them when they do. My kids' private school is academically rigorous, and they would not want to stay home unless really sick, because catching up from even a week off would be onerous. My wife (doc) has worked so sick that she's had nurses put IV fluids in her so she could operate in between bouts of barfing (hygiene obviously maintained in OR 100%, work sick, then case is over, throw up, scrub in for next case, etc, patients not at risk, she wasn;t barfing into a wound ). We probably need a way so that workers are incentivized to do 2 things. 1. Get a flu shot if they haven't, immediately. (stay healthy for work, and to minimize other strain on healthcare system) 2. If they can demonstrate they did #1, then if they get symptoms (cold/flu/ COVID-19 type symptoms), they stay home and get paid per their existing sick leave policy, else 75% pay after that is used up. 3. Anyone refusing a flu shot get fired if they so much as sneeze at work, and minus the flu shot, they get their usual sick days, no 75% pay after that (and they show up sick, they get fired). Just now, DDE said: Had at least one case from Iran spend the night in a Moscow pod hotel at the airport. At this point, it's fairly likely we have an undetected infection spreading under the cover of seasonal flu. It's not like the US, where a COVID test costs an arm and a leg - back here in Russia you can't even volunteer for a test at all. There are not enough tests available yet in the US, either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Codraroll Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 20 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said: A little perspective.... It's wrong to compare a disease which is endemic in the population already, with a disease with only a few tens of thousands of cases known worldwide. If the coronavirus became endemic the same way the flu is, we'd be deep in the doo-doo. Or, well, not that it would wipe out humanity or anything, but the extra strain on the healthcare system in addition to all the other stuff the healthcare system is already having its hands full of, would at the very least be hellishly expensive. It's an inconvenience worth fighting against. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 There is a confirmed case in my city (one of the biggest/most prominent cities in the US) and the official word from the public health department is that there are no cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 (edited) 47 minutes ago, sevenperforce said: There is a confirmed case in my city (one of the biggest/most prominent cities in the US) and the official word from the public health department is that there are no cases. I think it's been loose worldwide for a while, just masked by seasonal flu. The people at risk are primarily the elderly and those with preexisting medical issues (this is the same for flu, as well). Of the young people, I'd wager that a decent % of the 0.2% also have comorbidities, as do the older populations (the 50 YOs are when people tend to show up with some cancers, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, etc, so I bet a decent chunk of the 1.3% have health issues). Note also that those stats are from China, where smoking is about like it was in the US in the 1960s vs now (I literally cannot think of the last time I saw someone smoke a cigarette here in the US, I'm sure I have, but as something I saw commonly, it's been decades). That matters because of all the respiratory issues associated with that habit, and the likelihood it negatively impacts outcomes. In short, wash your hands. Not palm rubbing, between fingers, back of hands, etc. Avoid touching your face. You clean your hands, then touch stuff, then touch your face all the time. If you feel sick (true generally) stay home. If you have parents/grandparents who are in one of those upper brackets, don't visit them if you are sick, and if you are not, and it's at large in a serious way, maybe bring them groceries, etc, so they don't have to go out and get exposed. One thing seems clear, either the Chinese numbers are total garbage, and the true number infected is 10s or 100s of millions there, or they have been amazingly successful in containing this. 80k cases is nothing (we have 10s of millions of flu cases here every year). This is being hyped, with every case and death making the news here in the US, but even if the death rate is 20X the flu on average, or heck, 100X the flu, we don;t see national news coverage of every time the flu count increments by 100, do we? How about every hundred flu deaths? In a regular bad flu year in the US, 100 people die of the flu every 8 hours or so. People need to calibrate their concerns. Edited March 2, 2020 by tater Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngrybobH Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 On 3/1/2020 at 12:05 PM, tater said: they stay home and get paid per their existing sick leave policy There is so many problems with this in the US. There is a large number of jobs that do not pay for sick days or they pay so extremely poorly that it equates to no pay. I can go to work for less than 2 hours and make 2 whole days worth of sick pay. Plus I require a doctors note to get paid, then you add in high deductible insurance. Needless to say, I go to work sick. I my opinion, the US is not capable of containing any form of pandemic. I don't think COVID-19 is worth panicking over but , if it was, the US would have major problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 47 minutes ago, AngrybobH said: I my opinion, the US is not capable of containing any form of pandemic. There's containment and there's containment. But yeah, the US consistently seems to plunge new depths in perverse incentives and vicious cycles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 Just now, DDE said: There's containment and there's containment. But yeah, the US consistently seems to plunge new depths in perverse incentives and vicious cycles. Most market economies have many workers who, you know, need to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrandedonEarth Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 (edited) E: ya know, with my lousy eyes, it's easy to read "Main St" as "Maw St," and it makes sense in that context too! Edited March 2, 2020 by StrandedonEarth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 (edited) My daughter's school trip to Europe got cancelled. I was honestly not all that concerned. I'm unsure if there was some way they could recover airfare by cancelling now, we were perfectly fine with rolling the the dice at cancelling at literally the last minute even if it meant eating the $1500. Edited March 2, 2020 by tater Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 I was out sick all last week. I don't know if I had "the" coronavirus but based on the symptoms I very likely had "a" coronavirus. Fortunately, I have sick leave benefits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh1pman Posted March 3, 2020 Share Posted March 3, 2020 A colleague told me today that it’s better to stop giving handshakes because of the virus. Not sure if he was serious or he just dislikes me for some reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 3, 2020 Share Posted March 3, 2020 https://theconversation.com/worried-about-your-child-getting-coronavirus-heres-what-you-need-to-know-131909?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton TL;DR: Unsure why so few little kids have tested positive (only ~1% of cases). 1, not exposed. 2, not infected, or 3, got such mild disease few presented at hospital so didn't get tested. Betting it's 3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted March 3, 2020 Share Posted March 3, 2020 5 hours ago, sh1pman said: A colleague told me today that it’s better to stop giving handshakes because of the virus. Not sure if he was serious or he just dislikes me for some reason. I always find this strange masonic tradition disgusting. Why should I touch everybody's palms getting into a room? (And later have a trip to wash my own.) Hope, coronavirus will put an end to this barbarian habit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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