VolkswagenX
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COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)
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People around here are raving mad about the safety measures, saying having to wear masks violates their rights, other safety measures are met with total disobedience. And all that despite the freaking ALARMING surge in infections. 1/3rd of the people don't wear masks despite the laws, the others take off their masks when having a conversation - its ludicrous.
I don't know what it is with the country I live in, but people here don't understand and don't care anymore.
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Joey D
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I don't believe there's any concrete number on this or at least none I've seen, but all you need to do is look at your local news report. Most states report the age range of the person who died and if they had any underlying conditions or not. They can't get into specifics due to HIPAA, but they can give you an idea of what's going on.
There have also been several news stories across the country of people who've died who were deemed healthy.
As for what I mean by healthy? In this case, no underlying conditions since that's the only thing being reported.
- 2,329
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- FuriousDemon
Thing is, masks are not 100% protection, especially if not everyone is wearing one. It decreases the chances, sure, but transmission still can happen. Just like that 6’ rule. Outdoors maybe 6’ is enough, but indoor with the heat blasting, I doubt it will do much.
Anyway, despite a lot of people in our neighborhood with Biden signs, most trick or treaters today were not wearing masks from what I could tell looking out the window. So seems like people in general (not just republicans) decided that COVID is no big deal and since everyone is tired of quarantine it must be over. And I would say numbers weren’t any different than any other year either. Maybe similar to one where we’d have rainy weather. I dunno man, seriously, if all of us died tomorrow cause of something caused by stupidity I wouldn’t be surprised.
Anyway, despite a lot of people in our neighborhood with Biden signs, most trick or treaters today were not wearing masks from what I could tell looking out the window. So seems like people in general (not just republicans) decided that COVID is no big deal and since everyone is tired of quarantine it must be over. And I would say numbers weren’t any different than any other year either. Maybe similar to one where we’d have rainy weather. I dunno man, seriously, if all of us died tomorrow cause of something caused by stupidity I wouldn’t be surprised.
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CodeRedR51
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Other than "masks must be worn inside" signs and plexiglass shields in most buildings that I enter, I have not seen any other restrictions being enforced. Even the local Walmart that was limiting the number of people through their doors are now letting people come/go freely without monitoring numbers. Grocery stores have given up on sanitizing carts. It's not just people not wearing masks.
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Given you posted the below earlier I'm surprised you're not hiding under the covers, shaking in your bed given death is clearly 'just around the corner'
Lol, thanks for your professional psychological diagnosis, Dr. Phil. It's a good job I don't work in an explosives factory or anything, that would be really dangerous. Just in the handful of factories that belong to my company someone dies in an accident every few years. I mean, not my company, obviously I'd be too scared to work a job like that.
But if I did, then perhaps a few days ago I'd have had a discussion about just how awful laymen are at correctly assessing risk. I didn't think I'd have an example proving me right so quickly though.
Nice strawman. Who said "everyone's going to die from it"? And like, you're wrong that it only kills old people who are already sick, but you're not going to take that from me so whatever.
It's killed a million people. The second quote that you chose to pull was me making an observation that there's a generation of people in the west who grew up in the 90's and 00's that could reasonably assume that they would reach old age. There wasn't any major wars, there wasn't the threat of mutually assured destruction, vaccinations were widespread and effective for all the previous major killers, the only real danger was HIV/AIDS and that could be largely minimised through personal protection that you should probably be using anyway.
For a lot of people, this is their first exposure to a society-wide threat that requires them to respond in order to protect their community. And as you're capably demonstrating, they'll go to great feats of intellectual dishonesty to try to convince themselves that this is rational.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz#Civil_defence
The Germans are bomb London, a city of ~9 million people, for a solid 8 months. There are approximately 40,000 killed and 100,000 injured, plus major property damage. That's a 1 in 225 chance of death and 1 in 90 chance of injury, which is pretty comparable to COVID. Were the citizens of London fools for bothering to have shelters, blackouts and air defence?
You never answered the question either. You're going to die one day anyway. Why do you not get it over with right now? Or to think of it another way, why is killing someone a crime when they were eventually going to die anyway? You clearly see little difference between dying today and dying a year from now, at least for older people.
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VolkswagenX
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Is 420 deaths in the age group 0 to 65 on a population of 17 million plenty? There have been reports of very young people dying but all of them were already very sick.
I go buy the data my government provides. I rather not get corona, but the idea I get from the data is not the "we're all going to die unless.." scenario the daily news is providing us.
Yes, it is possible for healthy people to die. I knew a guy who was in his early twenties and died of a heart attack. Didn't drink or smoke and was in good shape. It can happen..
Would 0 to 65, non smoker/minimal drinker and someone who does regular exercise be considered a healthy group?
As for the problems with hosipital capacity and putting the blame on the people, I agree with @Stotty here. I can only speak for the Netherlands but the first wave of corona was not the first warning of capacity issues. There were ICU capacity problems during the 2018 flu season and there were warnings sent back then. We've halved ICU capacity in the Netherlands since 2015 to save costs. We've being seeing cost cutting in health care for years but prices have gone up. We've been getting less for paying more.
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Danoff
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Citation needed. I'm not saying you can't find one, I'm saying I don't know where this is coming from.
Where? Because globally this statement is incorrect.
VolkswagenX
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The link is in the post you quoted but Here you go:
I should have worded that in a different way. Like I said, I'm going by the data my country provides but the data doesn't show underlying conditions. @Joey D pointed out that you can find out more about the conditions by looking at local news sources. My response to that is that the young people that have been reported on that I know of, all of them had underlying issues. (example)
I'm not only focussing on deaths but it is part of the discussion on Covid-19 and it's what I responded to. I mentioned heath care in my response to Joey D .
Edit: I am interested in the statistics about the lingering effects. We have between 8.000 and 10.000 daily cases over here. I would really like to know how many of them are effected and how they are effected by the lingering effects. What age groups are effected the most? All I have is anecdotal stories from friends, family and colleages.
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McLaren
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The issue is too many people believe it is the entire discussion which becomes the basis of why people under-estimate it.
VolkswagenX
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Can you really blame people? Have you forgotten how this all was reported on in the beginning? Basically everyday reporting on the deaths without any context and shown images of dead people being moved around in hospitals. Remember that Island in New York? Mainstream news media has done a terrible job at informing the public about what is going on.
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Which island? Long Island or Manhattan itself? I have family members and friends in both locations and I am curious where you are referencing.
VolkswagenX
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VolkswagenX
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Did you understand what I was discussing with McLaren? I know about Hart Island and what it is. The point was peoples focus on the deaths and where it comes from. At the beginning of the Covid-19 issue the main focus of most news outlets was the amount of people dying. Images of Hart Island and refrigerated trucks were a part of that and most of it presented with very little context.
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- 1,320
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It's too early to have statistics about the lingering effects, but you can google something even now, that's why caution is adviced.
What we know is that reinfection is possible, because of mutation and/or loss of antibodies over time (in months). Some people can require hospitalization when reinfected even if first infection was without serious symptoms.
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5 reported cases Worldwide...
https://www.ajmc.com/view/first-case-of-covid-19-reinfection-detected-in-the-us
But let’s not let facts get in the way of more alarmist statements.
Joey D
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I guess I wasn't aware you were in the Netherlands. I can't really comment on its situation as I don't know anything about it.
Maybe, but as I said, I don't really know. All I can go off of is what's being reported and since we have HIPAA in the US (which protects patient's health information) we're not really going to see anything detailed.
I know virtually nothing about the healthcare system in the Netherlands outside that most use Epic (the EMR), past that I'm not sure how well equipped or unequipped they are so I'll take you at your word on this. Looking at the data, it appears that the country is experiencing its first real surge in cases right now so I suppose only time will tell if the healthcare system gets overrun.
And with the capacity issue, it still comes down to staffing. Staffing a hospital is really difficult since you need to balance the provider to patient ratios. Too many providers and not enough patients mean the hospital loses money, while the opposite means patients get sub-par care. You also run into the issue where a critical care nurse will typically get paid more than a nurse who works in L&D. So cutting the ICU in half probably made sense at the time, the thing is expanding it is going to be difficult due to the level of training required. I don't know the specifics in the Netherlands, but I have to imagine they're similar to other countries where it's somewhere between 18-24 months of training.
Unfortunately, COVID hasn't been around long enough for us to know the long term effects. They could be dire or they could be nothing, we just don't know. According to Harvard Medical School though, it appears the nearly 40% of the cases they studied from a Chicago hospital had lasting neurological effects. Per the World Health Organization, they're seeing that 35% of cases have lingering effects (over three weeks). What that means long term is hard to say. Anecdotally, I know people who contracted the illness back in June and still haven't fully recovered. They still have a horrible cough and need an inhaler to treat their respiratory system. In that same WHO report, it says that 20% of patients age 18-35 are seeing lingering effects, so that should give you a rough idea of what age groups are being affected.
I can absolutely agree with this, the media has done a terrible job when it comes to reporting on COVID. This is why I pay little attention to news stories and try to focus on data and scientific papers. While they're not going to be 100% accurate, I can at least look over and/or read it, then make up my own mind. I also have the added benefit of being apart of my work's COVID taskforce, which means I get exposed to more concrete data than the average person would because my paycheck depends on knowing it.
And yes, the media is hung up on deaths. Deaths aren't the problem with COVID, it's the number of people needing critical care and the potential for lasting effects. Chances are you're going to survive a bout with COVID, even if you already have an underlying condition. However, what isn't known is what will happen months or years down the line. You could easily get over COVID quickly only to find out that you need continuing care because of cardiovascular disease.
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Exactly this.
When all of this started, I began working from home in March and didn't go back until early June because we knew nothing about it then and I was doing the best I could to protect my son from it any way I could. My wife didn't have the luxury of being able to work from home so since she was out already, she started doing all the shopping.
Fast forward to now and while we know more about it, the long term effects are what have me concerned. I'm not as worried about getting it, nor am I worried about him getting it. Maybe a bit anecdotal but researching it has shown that CFers that have tested positive haven't really been as knocked out by it as we assumed they would.
Long term, though, we just don't know. Going in to it with a cavalier "it's not a big deal" attitude is just careless. It might not be a big deal, and I certainly hope so, but... what if it isn't? A bit of caution is certainly warranted if you ask me.
McLaren
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Mainstream media has done a terrible job, but when they report on ICU capacities, that's a step in the right direction towards letting people to take more caution.
The people who focus solely on deaths as a way of pointing out how severe this pandemic is, are at least more in line with understanding the seriousness of the disease than the people focused solely on deaths to point out how "overblown" it is. Both types of people are missing out on other high-alert issues, but the former is at least more likely to be heed professionals' advice on what they should be doing. The people who think deaths "is what it is" or are nothing serious, are the ones directly boosting the numbers. Ol' Trump for example and his super-spreader rallies are linked to 30,000 cases & 700 deaths alone.
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As an aside, I hate this phrase with a burning passion.
Even ignoring the fact that anyone who uses it sounds like Popeye, a colleague used to use it a lot, and it broadly translated to "I know it's broken, and I could do something about it, but I can't be bothered and I don't care, so deal with it". In most other contexts it's meaningless word soup - put an actual object in there, and it becomes "a cat is a cat". Well thanks, Socrates, for that genius insight...
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The results of the nationwide testing in Slovakia.
I'm eagerly awaiting what conclusions can be drawn from this. It's also a curiosity I think others might find interesting.
For Bratislava itself, the case rate was less than 0.25%; despite being by far the biggest and densest population centre, it hasn't been a problem area; the problem areas are always clustered, individual communities rather than whole areas or regions.
I'm eagerly awaiting what conclusions can be drawn from this. It's also a curiosity I think others might find interesting.
For Bratislava itself, the case rate was less than 0.25%; despite being by far the biggest and densest population centre, it hasn't been a problem area; the problem areas are always clustered, individual communities rather than whole areas or regions.
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Joey D
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The best way to stop a pandemic is to go the China route. Except in this case, don't have any testing done and have all constituents have no idea who to trust! Extra bonus points if you instill a replacement for Fauci that thinks a pandemic only happens to pandas.
One of the candidates in my district has decided he's going to outlaw masks with his first bill if he's elected. I'm in a very blue state so this is someone trying to curry favor with Trump in a district that is a toss up in for Congress but could well spell problems if he wins. Once again people seem to fail in grasping that the public good might ensure that the freedoms we have been given for so long in this country actually stay in place.
Danoff
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I can't do much with that.
"Underlying conditions" applies to a LOT of things, things which LOTs of people have. And any illness is likely to result in higher mortality among people with underlying conditions. Try finding a 60 year old person without underlying conditions, and yes, that statistical anomaly is more likely to survive covid. But that's what you need to overcome this very significant illness. When it hits, it hits very hard. Even young people, who can survive a lot, are sometimes killed by it. The statistics in the US (for the same illness) does include mortality under 60. But beyond that, you need to understand that this illness, even when it does not kill, can be very severe. Trump and Boris Johnson were both hospitalized by it, despite having the best access to healthcare you could have (and tailored nutrition). Even young fit people who survive report how hard it hits. Nobody wants to carry around an oxygen tank for months, but that does happen, even with otherwise healthy people.
It's serious (for some, and inexplicably not for others), I don't know why anyone is in a hurry to get it.
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